THIS BOOK
IS FROM
THE LIBRARY OF
Rev. James Leach
CLARK'S
FOREIGN
THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY
THIRD SERIES.
VOL. XVIII.
Sonifr on tljt iSri^oii of (Ci)nst.
DIVISION II. VOL. IIL
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLAKK, 38, GEOIiGE STREET.
189 2.
PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB.
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
DUBLIN, GEORGE HERBERT.
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER's SONS.
NOV 1 <5 ly^'^
HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT
OF THE DOCTRINE OF
THE PERSON OE CHRIST.
DR J. A. DORNEE,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERTJK.
DIVISION SECOND,
FROM THE END OF THE FOUETH CENT TOY TO THE PRESENT TIME
VOLUME III.
WITH APPENDIX.
CONTAININ'G A REVIEW OF THE CONIliOVERSlES ON THE SUBJECT. AVHICH
HAVE BEEN AGITATED IN BRITAIN SINCE THE MIDDLE OF THE
17th century to THE PRESENT TIME.
BY PATRICK PAIRBAIRN, D.D.,
AUTHOR OF TYPOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE, ETC
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLAKK. 38, GEORGE STREET.
1892.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2010 with funding from
University of Toronto
http://www.archive.org/details/d2historyofdevel03dorn
ANALYSIS or THE FIVE VOLUMES.
DIVISION I. VOL. I.
INTRODUCTION.
1. The fundamental idea of Christianity, that which it gives of the
God-man, can be elucidated neither from Judaism nor from
Heathenism per se, though it be that of which both are in
quest, ......
A. "Western and Eastern Heathenism; — Hellenism, Parsism,
Buddhism, ....
B. Hebraism and the later Judaism,
a. Maleach Jehovah, Chochma (comp. p. 43, Servant
Son of God, etc.), .
b. The Son of Sirach ; Book of Wisdom,
Philo,
Philo's doctrine of God,
of the Logos,
of the 'S'orld and man,
chinah
of God
Pag-e
4
13
13
18
19
19
22
31
c. Theologoumcna ; Adam Kadmon Memra ; She
Metatron, . . . . . 41
2. This fundamental idea is original to Christianity, and essential to
it ; but to develop it, and adequately to set it forth to the
consciousness, is the task assigned to the age that follows, 45
3. Nature and design of a history of dogmas, with especial reference
to our dogma. The testimony of Christ and His Apostles
must necessarily be taken into account, in so far as this
forms the impulse whence the dogmatico-historical process
in the Church proceeded, . . . . .47
(Comp. pp. 73-76.)
Higher form of Christological doctrine :
Paul, John, Epistle to the Hebrews, . . . .50
Lower form :
a. The Synoptic Gospels, . . 61
b. James, ....... C)2
c. Peter ; Jude ; 2d Epistle of Peter, . . . .67
(Noteou theconcpptof Heresy, Appendix, Note U ; comp. Note ^'VV.)
VI ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Pag-?
Course of the development of the dogma in the general, in opposi-
tion to Hellenism and Judaism in the primitive Church, . 73
Division into periods of the entire history of the development, , 83
FIEST PERIOD. (TILL A.D. 38L)
PERIOD OF THE SETTLING OF THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF THE
PERSON OF CHRIST ON THE DIVINE AND HUMAN SIDES. PRE-
SUPPOSED OR IMMEDIATE UNIO PERSONALIS.
FIRST EPOCH.
THE WITNESSING CHURCH. AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHEUS, TILL A.D. 150.
Chapter I. Evidence of the faith of primitive Christianity concern-
ing Christ, ...... 92
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THIS EPOCH.
I. The Christian writings of this age according to their Christo-
logical import.
A. The ideal tendency under the Apostolic Fathers. They pro-
pagate the apostolic doctrine of the higher divine nature
in Christ, and His pre-existence, . . . 96-121
1. Clement of Rome. Romish Church, . . .96
Appendix. Second Letter of Clement, . . . 101
2. Ignatius. The East ; Antioch, .... 102
3. Barnabas. Alexandria? ...... 113
4. Polycarp. Asia Minor, . . . . .116
5. Dionysius of Corinth. Greece ; Publius ; Quadratus ;
Aristides; Agrippa Castor ; Aristo, . . . 119
B. The realistic (Judaeo-Christian) tendency. Setting out from
the manifestation (^prif^a, Xo'yoj) of the divine {"TrvivfAoi), to
be perfected at the second coming of the historical Christ,
they advance to the position that in Christ the manifesta-
tion became a Person ; then that personal Word was pre-
existent, and also world-creative ; and in fine, that it was
the Wisdom {aoOix as /5^,««« or cvvctf/,!;), . . 121-161
(Comp. Note WAV, p. 403.)
a. Christology of the J udseo- Christian tendency.
1. The Shepherd of Hennas, .... 123
Montanism.
2. Papias, .... . . 135
8. Hegesii)pus.
Development of the Logos-doctrine in the Hellenizing
and Jur]nx)-Christian tendency, , . . 131
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES Vll
Page
6. llie JuJaeo-Cliristian tendency in respect of eschatology.
Significance of the eschatology of the ancient Church in
general. Cliristological movement proceeding thence,
(») from the glorified to the pre-existent Christ,
(/3) from the kingly office to the priestly, . 142-150
Chiliasm.
1. SibylHue Books, . . . . .150
Book of Enoch ; The Fourth Book of Esdras, . . 151
2. Testament of the XII. Patriarchs, . . . 154
3. Other apocryphal writings, , . 160
Review, ...... lCO-161
II. Writings of Non- Christians of this Period, a.d. 266-273, 162-167
Celsus, ....... 162
Lucian ; Arrian ; PUny ; Hadrian, . . . .165
Jewish opponents, ...... 166
III. "Worship of the primitive Church in so far as it is sustained
by a Cliristological idea, .... 167-18-4
1. The formation of liturgical elements in the usages of the
Church (Lord's supper ; Baptism ; Rule of Faith ; Doxo-
logies), ....... 1G7
2. The gradual setting apart of Holy Seasons (Sunday ; Easter ;
Whitsuntide; Epiphany; Christmas), . . . 172
3. Beginnings of Christian Art and characteristic usages (Holy
Symbols ; Christian Hymns), . . . .179
Chapter II. The Cavils of the heretics of this Period against the
Person of Christ in the general, . . . 184-217
Certain forms of opinion which cannot as yet be called Chris-
tian heresies (comp. Appendix, Note U, p. 344). Simoni-
ans ; Ophites; Elkesaites ; Carpocrates, . . .185
I. Opponents of Christ's deity, .... 188-217
The Ebionites. Rise ; Division.
A. The Nazarenes. Maintenance of the supernatural birth of
Christ without advance to a pre-existent hypostasis of the
Son, ....... 192
B. Cerinthian Ebionites. Denial of the supernatural birth of
Christ. His baptism viewed as the commencing point of
the higher endowment of Christ, . . . .194
C. The Gnostic Ebionism of tlie Pseudo-Clementi'ies. Per-
version of the natural and ethical Divine Souship in favour
of a poor construction of the official Sonship of Christ as
the eternal Prophet of Trutli. In Christ a higher power,
2o(p/«. Passing of Ebionism over into Doketism, . . 203
Appendix, Note BBBB, p. 444. The Recognitions of the
Fseudo-Clement.
VUl ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
P&go
Chapter III.
II. Opponents of the hunaanity of Christ, . . 218-25i
The Doketism of the Gnosis.
A. The Gnosis in the general ; its varied relation to the concept
of God. Division on the ground of this, . . 221-228
1. The Gnostic systems with a physical (ethnico-pantheistic)
concept of God. (a) Of a Dualistic, (h) of a Monistic
kind. In the former, God viewed as a Light-nature ; in
the latter, as Absolute Being (Life, Power, Blessedness or
Beauty) and Knowledge, ..... 224
2. The Gnosis with a negative, ethical, or juridical concept
of God. The Pseudo-Clementines. God = Righteousness
(comp. pp. 204, 224), . . 226
3. The Gnosis with a positive ethical concept of God. Mar-
cion. God Love (without Righteousness), . . 227
B. The Gnosis in its relation to Christology, . . 229-252
1. Doketism common to all the Gnostics in respect of the
Person and work of Christ. Its different sources in the
different forms of the GnosLs. Ophites ; Valentinians ;
Pseudo-Clementines ; Marcion, .... 229
2. Its various forms.
a. In reference to Christ's higher nature. Valentinus and
his school ; Marcus ; Heracleon ; Pseudo- Clementines ;
:\Iarcion, . . . . . .230
b. In reference to the relation of the higher nature in Christ
to the human. Basilides ; Ophites ; Valentinians ; Mar-
cion (239) ; Apelles (243), . . . .235
Review. — Regression of Doketism into Ebionism by means of
that Gnosticism which did not by Marcion's steps pass
over to the Church's path, .... 246
Retrospect, ....... 251
SECOND EPOCH. (A.D. 150-325.)
AGE OF THE COMPLETION OF THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT OF GOD.
^E/CK\r]aia 6e6Xoyov(ra.
FIRST SECTION.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS AND THE DOUBLED MONARCHIANISM.
Chapter I. Suppression of Ebionism and Doketism by the Church's
completion of the doctrine of the Logos, who truly became
Man (A.D. 150-200).
Character of this age.
1. The Letter to Diognetus unites (as does Justin Martyr) the
Hellenic Reason and the hypostatic, world-creating real-
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES. IS
Page
principle in its view of the Logos. This Logos it calls x«i j,
and equals Him with God. Distinction in God without sub-
ordination of the 7ra<V) hut at the same time without ac-
commodation to the Divine Unity, . . . 26C
2. Justin Martyr, Theophilus, and Tatian approximate in their
thought of the Divine Unity to a certain subordination of
the Logos (TrpjiTou yivuYifict z-xrpog). Hesitating to infer a
hypostatic distinction in God Himself, they misplace the
hypostasis of the Logos on the world-side {"Koyo; -xpotpo-
omog)^ whilst they leave His essence (^ovaiet) to rest eter-
nally in God {hoyog hotti.dsrog). There is thereby threat-
ened internally, an identification of the Logos with God as
such, — externally, an identification of the Logos with the
world ; i.e., the possibility of SabelHanism, as of Arianism,
is not yet destroyed, .... 264-282
a. Justin. Doctrine of the .Logos. Generation of the Logos
by the wiU of God. Equality of essence with determinate
subordination of the Logos. Analogy of the hypostatic
in the Logos with a finite person, . . . 264
Christology, ....... 275
b. Theophilus of Autioch.
The Logos, the Divine Intelligence proceeding to the creation
of the world, and hypostatizing itself, . . . 279
c. Tatian.
The Logos as the ideal world still in indistinguishable unity
with God's essence, separates itself, and becomes a hypo-
stasis in the manifestation of God in the creation, . 280
S. Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus set them-
selves against that subordination of the Logos (see No. 2),
and ever more and more throwing aside His identification
with the principle of the world, or the world, carry back
the Logos to the inner essence of God. He is the Reason
of the Father, which is at the same time actual. But
Avhilst the tendency of Faith to a full equality of essence
of the Logos with the Father is thus satisfied, proportion-
ally little is accomplished towards a setting forth, in new
form, of the distinction of the Logos from the Father
through means of the idea of the world asserted by the
earlier writers, the consequence of Avhich is a transient
tendency towards Monarch ianism (of the Patripassian
form), ...... 283-326
a. Athenagoras rejects the hypostatizing of the Logos by the
creation, but gains as yet, apart from the world, no defi-
nite distinction of the Logos from the Father, . . 283
t. Clement of Alexandria prefers a personal Logos and revealer
of the incomprehensible God. SabelUan threatening of the
distinction of tlic Logos from the Father. The Logos, as
S. ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Page
the speaking creative Word, and the supremely mani-
fested "Wisdom and almighty Power of God, retains a
relative independence in relation to the Father iu His
eternal essence, ...... 285
Survey of the Logos-doctrine thus far, . . 289
Christology of Clement of Alexandria, .... 294
c. Irenseus, ....... 303
This writer characterized.
Doctrine of God, . . . . . .304
Doctrine of the Logos, ..... 306
[The Logos the unity of Reason and Word].
The incarnation of the Logos, . . . .312
Necessity of this. The mystical element in his Christology, 317
True humanity of Christ, ..... 320
Its difference from ours, ..... 322
Mode of the union of God and man, . . . 323
Christ's doctrine of the Holy Ghost and Lord's Supper, 323, 466
Appendix, ........ 327
DIVISION I. VOL. II.
FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH.
FIRST SECTION.
Ch.\ptek II. — Ebionitical Monarchianism, or the Revival of
Ebionism in a higher form (a d. 180 till about 270), . 1-15
Transition to ^lonarchianism. Alogi, the indeterminate middle
between its two possible forms, .... 1-5
I. Monarchianism of the Ebionitical form, . . . 6-15
Theodotus the Tanner, ..... 6
Theodotus the Money-changer ; his school ; connection with
Gnosticism ; the Melchizedekians, .... 6-8
Artemon, . . . . . . . 8, 9
Paul of Samosata, ...... 10-15
Chapter III.
II. Monarchianism of the Patripassian form, . . . 15-46
Period of its rise, ...... 15-19
Praxeas, ...... 19-20
His appearance in Rome. Relation to Marcion and to Mon-
tanisra, . . ... 19, 20
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES. XI
Tsige
His doctrine of the Trinity, . . . . . 20, 21
Tlie appearance of the Most High God in Christ a theophany
of longer continuance, . . . . .21
God's capability of sympathy and suffering in Himself and
in the finite nature (caro) of Christ, . . .28, 29
Objections of Tertullian, and critical examination of the
doctrine of Praxeas, . . . . . 23 ff.
Hcrmogenes ; Seleucus ; Hermas, . . . .25
Epigonus ; Cleomenes ; Noetus, .... 26-29
Beron, ....... 29-35
Beryll of Bostra, ...... 35-45
Relation between these two (Note 13), . . .44
Retrospect on the Patripassiaus, . . . . 45, 46
SECOND SECTION.
The Doctrine of the Son, and the Revival of Monarchianism
IN the form of Sabellianism and Subordinatianism, 47-180
Chapter I. The confutation of the revived Ebionism and Patripas-
sianism by the Church, . . . 47-149
1. Tertullian, ....... 48-80
Struggle with the revival of Ebionism, . . . 48, 49
Struggle with Patripassianism and Gnosticism for the true
humanity of Christ, ..... 49-57
His doctrine of the Son, of the triple growing divine Sonship
of Christ, ....... 58-74
His Trinitarian conception of God, .... 74-78
Concluding remai'ks on Tertullian's theory, . . . 78-80
Appendix on Novatian, ..... 80-82
2. Hippolytus' doctrine of Sonship, . . . 83-100
His writings (Note 15) ; controversy witli Beron, . . 83 ff.
Divine aspect of Christ, . . . . . 84 ff.
Incarnation, . . . . . . . 91 ff.
Relation between the divine and human in Christ, . . 94 ff.
8. Cyprian, ...... 100-103
Person of Christ, . . . . . 100 ff.
Death of Christ and Eucharist, . . . 101-103
Transition to the further development.
4. Origen, ...... 103-149
His relation to heretics and to the doctrine of the Church, 103-106
Total picture of the Christological and Trinitarian faith of
his age : Regula Fidei in Irenseus, Tertullian, Novatian,
Cyprian, Origen, ..... 106-108
His doctrine of the Trinity. Eternal generation of the Son ;
its relation to the eternal creation of the world, . 108-1 13
More precise determination of eternal generation as eternally
continuous, . . . . . .114
xu
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Pago
Relation of the Son to the Father. How Origen combines
the origin out of the divine essence and the divine will,
and what subordination is left behind by his doctrine of
communicable and incommunicable elements in God, 115-130
Relation of the Son to the world,
Incarnation of the Son of God,
Human soul of Christ,
Human body.
Defects of his Christology,
Retrospect of the First Chapter, .
Chapter II. SabelUanism, .
The various possible forms thereof,
Relation of Sabellius to Patripassianism and Origen (Note 26);
his doctrine of the Trinity, of the creation of the world,
and of revelation, ..... 153-162
Ebionitical cast of his doctrine, and affinity with Paul of Sa-
mosata, ...... 165-169
Critical review, ...... 169-170
131-
i-OL
-136
136
-141
141,
142
142-
-146
146-
-149
149-
-170
149
-152
Chapter III. The School of Origen,
Comp. pp. 195 ff., 216 ff.
Pierius ; Gregory Thaumaturgus ; Theognostus,
Methodius, ....
Dionysius of Alexandria, .
170-180
171-174
174-176
176-180
THIRD SECTION.
The Church's confession of the eteplNal hypostasis of the
Son, and of His essential equality with the Father, at
THE Council of Nic^a, .... 181-259
Chapter I. The controversy preliminarily carried on with Sabelliau-
ism and Subordinatianism, . . . 181-200
Dionysius of Alexandria controverted by Dionysius of Rome, 181-185
I.
II. The Latin Church prior to the Council of Nicsea,
Zeno of Verona, ....
Arnobius and Minucius Felix,
Lactantius, ....
Yictorinus (Note 40.)
III. The Oriental Church prior to the Council of Nicsea,
Pamphilus, .....
The Synods of Antioch,
Transitiju to Chapter II.,
Chapter II. Anus and his forerunners,
1. Lactantius. Ethical view of the Person of Christ,
2. Eusebius of Caesarea, ....
Lucian (Note 43).
185-194
186-190
190-192
192-194
195-200
195, 196
196-199
. 200
201-243
204-216
216-226
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES. Xlil
Page
,S, Anus, ....... 226-243
His historical position, .... 226-229
Controversy -with Alexander of Alexandria, . 229 S.
Doctrine of the creation of the Son in time by the will of the
Father — Definition of the Father as the first cause of the
world, ...... 230-234
Sinks down to constantly lower representations of Christ, 234-242
Rise of the Son out of nothing, .... 238
Imperfection of His knowledge, .... 238 f .
Mutability of His will, ..... 240 f.
Contradictions in the doctrine of Arius, . . 241 ff.
CHAPrER ni. The Council of Nicsea, and the beginnings of Athana-
sius, ...... 243-259
The CEcumenical Synod of Xicaea and its Confession of Faith, 243-246
Athanasius the Great. His beginnings, . . . 246-259
His doctrine of God, .... 248, 249
His doctrine of man, . . . 249, 250
His doctrine of the God-man, . . , 250-259
Demonstration of the necessity of the incarnation, . 252-257
Defects of his Christology in its first form, . 258, 259
THIED EPOCH.
FROM THE COUNCIL OF NIC^A TO THAT OF CONSTANTINOPLE
(ad. 325-381).
THE CHURCH SETTLES THE TWO ASPECTS OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST
IN THEIR COMPLETENESS.
FIRST SECTION.
TRINITARIAN MOVEMENTS.
Chapter I. The Arian School, . . 260-270
1. How far the Nicene Creed left room for furtner struggles, . 262
The theological tendencies of tliis period, . . . 263
2. The Arians Aiitius and Eunoniius, . . . 263-269
3 Semi-Arians. Acacius, . . 269
Cyrill, and his relation to the Somi-Arians, . . . 269
(Compare Note 51.)
JilV ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Page
Chapter II. Revival of Sabellianisra, and the Ebionism which
sprang from it, . . . . . 270-285
Marcellus of Ancyra, ..... 270-285
His doctrine of the Logos and of the Son, . . 270-273
Doctrine of the Trinity and the creation of the world, 274-276
Doctrine of the incarnation, .... 276-284
This form of Sabellianism passes into Ebionism in Pliotinus of
Sirmium, ....... 285
Chapter III. Confutation of Arianism and Sabellianism by the
great Church teachers of the Third Epoch, . 285-330
The Christian conception of God in Himself (the doctrine of
the attributes) could only maintain its ground, in opposi-
tion to Arianism and Sabellianism, by the settlement of
the doctrine of the Trinity, . . . 285-291
I. Critical examination of the systems, . . . 291-295
n. The confutation of their objections, . , 295-297
III. The further development of the doctrine of the Church, 299-330
Athanasius, ...... 300-303
Gregory Nazianzen, ..... 303-305
Basilius the Great, ..... 305-310
Gregory of Nyssa, . . . . . 310-319
Retrospect of the parties. Overthrow of the Sabellian idea
of substance, and the Arian idea of cause, by the doctrine
of the Church, ..... 319-324
On the meaning of " hypostasis," as used by the Church
teachers of this age, .... 323-325
Defects of the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity in general, 325-330
SECOND SECTION.
Christological Movements, .... 331-428
Chapter I. The Christology of the teachers of the Church pi-ior to
Apollinaris, ..... 331-345
Common to all is a mystical image of the Person of Christ in its
totality. Significance thereof for the history of Christo-
logy. Special form thereof in —
Origen, ...... 331-338
Athanasius, ...... 338-343
Gregory of Nyssa, and Basilius, . . . 343-345
Ephraem ; Chrysostom ; Cyrill of Alexandria ; Theodoret ;
Theodore of Mopsuesiia ; John Damascenus ; Theodorus
Abukara; Photius. (Note 58.)
Chapter II. The Christology of the Arians and of Marcellus, with
its rodargution by the teachers of tlie Church, . 345-351
1. Tbo Arian denial of the human soul of Christ combated by
Eustatliius, the forerunner of Theodore of Mopsuestia, 345-348
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES. XV
Page
2. Marcellus. His reduction of the human aspect to will-lessness, 348 f.
o. Athanasius on the humanity of Christ ; in particiilar, on its
soul and freedom of choice, . . . 349-351
Chapter III. Apollinarism, and its overthrow by the Church, 351-428
Distinction of ApoUinaris from his forerunners and his school, 351-858
Point of departure of the system of ApoUinaris, . . 358 f.
The Logos becomes the human vov; of Christ, . . 359-363
The personal unity of the God-man, indivisible through the
essential connectedness of the Logos and humanity, 363-370
His doctrine of the eternal humanity of Christ, and of His birth
from Mary, ..... 370-374
Christ's condescension to equality with our humanity, and the
inequality of the Logos with Himself therefrom resulting, 375-383
His doctrine of the Trinity, .... 383-386
Significance of Christ for faith. True idea of Mifinat; against
Mohler and Baur, ..... 386-390
Defects of his system ; refutation by the teachers of the Church, 390-398
Their attempts to solve the problem laid down by ApolHnaris
(the unity of the divine-human person) without excluding
the human soul of Christ, .... 398-427
1. Christology of Hilary of Pictavium, . . . 398-420
Sharp discrimination of the antitheses in the Person of Christ.
Human soul, ..... '398-404
Union of these antitheses through the deep condescension of
the Son (Evacuatio formas Dei ; Assumtio formse servilis),
and through his doctrine of the destiny of human nature, 404-413
This union a progressive process to the point of the comple-
tion of the Person of Christ, . . . 413-417
Christ's universal significance for humanity. Mystical image
of the Person of Christ in its totality, . . 418—121
2. Athanasius' doctrine of the fi/uats (pvamvi of the divine and
human in Christ. Other teachers of the Church. Defects
of the theory of the Church at this time. With the soul
of Christ, it is true, is given the full number of the ele-
ments or factors of His humanity (Council of Constanti-
nople, A.D. 381) ; but the recognition of the complete
actuality and true development thereof is defective, in
consequence of the predominance of the divine. View of
the anthropological movements of the next century, 420-428
SVl ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
DIVISION II. VOL. I.
SECOND PERIOD.
FBOM THE YEAli 381 TILL ABOUT 1800.
FIRST EPOCH.
FROM THE YEAR 381 TO THE REFORMATION.
PEgc
The time during which undue stress was laid on the divine,
AS compared with the human, aspect of the Person of
Christ, ...... 24-452
Introduction, ....... 1-24
The progress of Christology brought to a standstill by its de-
pendence on the progress of the doctrine of God and on
Anthropology.
The Greek and Romish Churches betray the imperfection of their
conception of God in their doctrine of the offices of Christ.
The human aspect of Christ remains curtailed, . . 1-4
Survey of the Second Period, and its results, . . 4-11
Survey of its First Epoch, ..... 11-16
Survey of the modes of representing the Unio in this Epoch, 16-24
FIRST SECTION.
The two aspects of Christ are decided to be two essentially
different natures, in one person. (From the Year 881 to
451,) 25-119
Chapter I. The two Syrian Schools. The Antiocheian Christology
Diodorus of Tarsus. Theodore of Mopsuestia. Nestorius
(compare 53 ff.), .
Chapter II. Conflict with Nestorianism, .
Cyrill of Alexandria in conflict with Nestorius, .
Cyrill's doctrine, ......
Compared with that of the Antiocheians,
Justification of Nestorianism as opposed to Cyrill,
Council of Ephesus, . . . .
Nestorian Schism, .....
Western C h urc h . A u gu sti ne and Leporius (compare Note 14),
Augustine and Julian,
25-51
51-79
51-74
65 ff.
56
71-74
75
76
77
78 f.
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES. XVU
Pagre
Chapter III. The attempt to seciire supremacy for Monophysitism,
and the Council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451, . . 79-119
Cyrill with Dioscurus ; Theodoret with Eusebius of Dorylaeum, 79-82
Eutyches, ....... 83
Council of Ephesus in 449, . . . . .85
Leo, . • 85-93
Inner history of the Council of Chalcedon, . . . 92 £f.
The Symbol of Chalcedon, its merits and defects, . 100 ff.
The second Monophysitic Schism — Monophysitism has still a
certain justification as opposed to the Symbol of Chal-
cedon, . . ... 93-119
SECOND SECTION.
The Settlement and logical Completion of the Chalcedonlan
DOCTRINE OF TWO NATURES. (From the Council of Chalce-
don to the Council of Frankfurt, a.d. 794,) . 120-268
Chapter I. Dyophysitism in conflict with Monophysitism. (From
the Council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451, to the Council of Con-
stantinople, A.D. 553.)
1. Monophysitism, ..... 120-144
The one class of Monophysites propagate Eutychianism. The
Theopaschitism of P. FuUo, . . . 125 ff.
Aphthartodocetists and Actistes (Julianists), . .128
Barsudaili, , • . . . • .132
The other class seeks to secure a place for distinction in the
unity of the nature of Christ (Philoxenus and Severus), 133 ff.
Mice (pvai; avvSiTo:. Agnoetes (Themistius), . . 142
Crisis brought about in Monophysitism by Stephen Niobes, 143 ff.
2. Church polemic against Monophysitism, . . 145-153
Relation of Nature and Person. Aristotehc influences (Joh.
Philoponus), . . . . . . 147 ff.
Relatiou of the general and individual in Christ, . . 149 f.
3. Inner relation between the doctrine of the Church and Mono-
physitism. Both treat the humanity as an accident ; and
regard deity and humanity as mutually exclusive, though
in opposite ways, ...... 152 ff.
Later history of Monophysitism, .... 154 f.
(Compare Note 36.)
Chapter II. The Monothelete Controversies of the seventh cen-
tury ; the Dyotheletic Synods of a.d. C80 and G93 ; and
the stagnation in Greek theology, . . . 155-247
1. Monotheletism, . . . . . . 155 ff.
F(>rerunners. Pseudo-Dionysiua Areopagita and his Chris-
tology. dixv'hoticrt ivipyiix, . . . 15o-lG3
XVlll ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Page
Occasion of the Monothelete Controversy. Its three stadia, 1G3-168
First Stadium until 638.
Mix ivipyiict. (Theodore of Pharan, Sergius, Cyrus) or 0:^0 ?
(Sophronius). Controversy as to the activity or mode of
operation, ...... 168-176
Second Stadium until 648.
One will of the one person (Honorius). Two wills of the
natures (Maximus). The "JLnSiai; of Heraclius for the
Monotheletes, ...... 176 ff.
Change at Rome, . . . . . .178
The Hv-TTo; intended to end the controversy. The Lateran
Council also against it in 649, .... 179
Third Stadium until 680, .... 184-206
Id the will matter of the person or of the natures? The
Monotheletes say the former, but, like the Monophysites
before them (pp. 133 ff.), arrive at a distinction in unity,
at the " composite will," ..... 193 ff.
Their doctrine of the gnomic will, .... 197
2. The Church decides that the will is matter of the natures, con-
sequently in favour of two wills, though in the one voli-
tional person. Polemic against Monotheletism. Maximus,
Anastasius, Agathon, .... 184-194
The Council of a.d. 681, and the antagonisms in its Symbol, 199 ff.
The problem of showing the unity of the person rendered
more difficult by the duality of vital systems now laid
down, ....... 201
On the other hand, the deity and its omnipotent will has a
Docetical preilominance, .... 201-206
Antagonism between the ostensible doctrine of the Church
and its necessary consequences (tlie impersonality of the
humanity), ...... 205 ff.
Later history of Monotheletism outside the Church. The
Maronites. The Druses (see Note 44), . . . 206
8. Stagnation in Greek theology. — Recapitulation by John of
Damascus. — Greek Scholasticism and Mysticism : John of
Damascus, ..... 206-247
His attempt to combine Dyophysitism and Dyotheletism with
the unity of the person, a. The Ilipiyc^P^oig^ according to
Maximus, docs not get beyond the Unio localis. h. The
' i\vrth(i(!ii loiuciXTuv is merely nominal, c. The Oiyoiiuai;
of the human (appropriation), and the Qeuaig (assimilation
to God through the heightening of the human), . 210-220
Retrospect and prospect, .... 220-227
Greek Scholasticism and Mysticism, .... 227 ff.
Progress of Mysticism from Maximus on the Areopagite, . 228 ff.
Hesychasts and Nic. Cabasilas, . . . 235-246
Later Greek theology, ..... 246 f.
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Chapter III. Adoptianism and the Council of Frankfurt,
794, ....
Historical connection of Adoptianism,
Distinction from Nestorianism,
Consequent carrying out of Dyotheletism,
Felix of Urgellis, ....
Elipantus, ....
The teachers of the Church, particularly Alcuin,
The Council of Frankfurt,
Christological transubstantiation. Impersonality of the
manity, according to teachers of the Church,
(Compare the corresponding Notes.)
Page
A.D.
248-268
248 f.
251 f.
253
254 fF.
262 ff.
263 ff.
26G
hu-
267, 268
THIRD SECTION.
THE MIDDLE AGES.
from the ninth century to the reformation.
Commencing Decay of the Dyophysitic Foundation of the Symbol
OF Chalcedon, ..... 269 -377
Introduction, . . . . • • 269-308
1. The Church occupies the central position, instead of Chris-
tology, 269-271
Surrogates for the human aspect of Christ ; the saints ; the
holy sacrifice of the Mass, . . . . 271-278
2. The Middle Age conception of God, . . . 278-30^
Emanatism. Joh. Scotus Eregina. .... 282 ff.
His Christology, 284-295
Ansehn's conception of God, .... 295
The two St Victors 296-300
New movement of Subordinatianism and Sabellianism, . 300 fT.
Conception of God of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, . 303 ff.
CH/VPTEr I. — The Controversy with Nihilianism, . . 309-329
1. Peter the Lombard, 309-319
2. Against him John of Cornwall and the Lateran Council, . 319 f.
Abaelard, . 320 f.
3. The necessity of the incarnation renounced. Limited to the
persona filii Dei, without His natura, . 321 ff., cf. 310
Germs of a new Christology in Rupert of Dcutz and Richard
de St Victor, 321-329
Chapter II. — Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, , . 329-369
1. Christology of Aquinas, and estimate thereof (compare 31 Off.), 329-339
2. Of Duns Scotus (compare 354), . . . 339-846
Criticism thereof, . . . . • . 346 f.
His Mariology. (Note 59.)
XX ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Page
3. The Mystical element in Scholasticism (or the Romanic Mysti-
cism, cf. 296, 321 fF.), as a preparation for that of Gfr-
many, ....... Ubi ff.
History of the question, Utrum Christus venisset si Adam
non peccasset ? .... 361-369
Chapter III. Decay of Scholasticism, . . 370-377
Causes and course of the decay, ..... 370 f.
Revival of Nominalism in a twofold shape, . . . 371 ff.
Dissolution of the preceding Christology into Scepticism. Oc-
cam, ....... 373 f.
His connection -with the Mysticism of Gerson, . . 376
Positive preparation for the Reformation by biblical -practical
tendencies and by Mysticism, . . 877
DIVISION II. VOL. II.
SECOND EPOCH.
TRANSITION TO THE REAL EQUIPONDERANCE OF THE TWO ASPECTS
OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST.
From the Comsiencement to the Symbolical Close of the
Reformation, ....... 1-265
INTRODUCTION.
the GERMANIC MYSTICISM.
Master Eckhart ; Eckhart the Younger ; Tauler ; Ruysbroch ; H. Suso, 1-11
Theologia Germauica. . . 11 £F.
What position does Gennan Jlysticism assign to Christology ? 12-28
The path leading to the Reformation forsaken by Nicolas Cusa-
nus and Bishop Berthold Pirstinger (compare Note 10), 29-50
Raymund de Sabonde, . . . . . , 50 f.
H. Savonarola, . . . . . . . 51 ff.
STADIUM FIRST.
TILL THE DEATH OF LUTHEE.
FIRST SECTION.
The Christology of Luthlu, .... 53-115
Ethical character given to Mysticism by evangelical faith, . 54 ff.
Great anthropological and soteriological progress, . . 56-72
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES. XXI
Page
Luther's Cliristological beginnings, from a.d. 1515 onwards. The
old speech and wisdom, and the new wisdom iu new tongues, 72-80
Luther's Chxistological image, . • • • ^oi^cr
1. Everything human appropriated by the dmne nature, . »1-St>
2 . The humanity receives for its own that which belongs to the
divine nature, ' ' ' ' ' ' an
3. Divine-human, true growth, . • • 89-100
Subsequent adoption of the scholastic " communicatio idio-
matum," though in another sense. The divine-human
person as the result of the union of the natures, . 100-106
Relation to Catholic Mysticism (Berthold and Theophrastus,
Note 10) • ]^l
Relation to Andr. Osiander and Schwenckfeld, . 107-li.i
Francis Stancaro. (Note 12.)
SECOND SECTION.
ZWINGLI AND Luther LN CONTROVEESY, . . . 116-140
ZwingU with GEcolampadius and the Suabians. Luther in 1526,
" 1527. Religious significance of the controversy, . 116-126
Luther's Larger Confession concerning the Holy Supper. New^
momentary turn in antagonism to the true humanity, 1^6-13^-
Melanchthon's Christology, . . . • jJf^,.;
Retrospect on the Lutheran and Swiss Christology, • ld&-i40
THIRD SECTION.
Christological Movements, of the Tite of the Reformation,
OUTSIDE OF THE ChURCH, . . • • 141-208
Fundamental Christological characteristics of the three Refor-
matory Parties outside of the Church, . • 141-143
Chapter I. — Schwenckfeld.
Relation to A. Osiander, the Swiss, Luther, Servetus, the Ana-
baptists U3-Ud^
His positive doctrine, ... • 149-15-
Chapter II. — The Anabaptists.
Melch. Hofmann, John of Leyden, Mcnno. Against them, John
ofLasky 152-157
Chapter III.— The Antitrinitarians, . • • 157-171
1 Antitrinitariau Anabaptists.— Denk, Hetzer, David Joris, Cam-
. 159 f.
panus, . • ■ ' , ,
2. Theosopliic Natural Philosophy of Servetus, . . 161-168
8. Transition to Sociiiianism.— Gribaldo, Gentile, and others. 168-171
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Page
STADIUM SECOND.
From Luther's Death to the Formula of Concord, . 172-208
1. Threatened overthrow of Luther's Christology, . 172-175
2. Partial restoration by the Wiirtembergers, Brentz, Jac.
Andreae, Schegck, Wigand, . . . 175-192
3. Opjoosition of the Jesuits, the Wittenbergers, and Martin
Chemnitz, to the Suabian Christology, . . 192-208
STADIUM THIRD.
S'ymbolical Close of the Reforjutory Movement, . 209-265
FIRST SECTION.
The Formula of Concord, ..... 209-219
Statement of its Christology, .... 209-211
Analysis of its contradictions and vacillations, . . 211-217
The ultimate cause of the defects of the Formula Concordise, 217-219
SECOND SECTION.
The Reformed Christology, .... 220-248
1. Calvin and the Reformed Confessions, . . . 220-225
2. The Reformed Christologians, — Beza, Lamb. Danasus, Sadeel,
Zach. Ursinus. Their defence of the Reformed, their
objections to the Suabian, Christology and the Formula
Concordise, ...... 225-242
3. Comparison of the Reformed witli the Lutheran Christology, 242-248
(Compare 135 ff., 241.)
THIRD SECTION.
The Socinians, ...... 249-265
Socinian Christology, ..... 249-258
Relation of the Socinian to the Roman Catholic, the Reformed,
and the Lutheran Christology. Crisis brought about by
the Socinians, ..... 258 f.
Basis of Socinianism is formed by remains of Roman Catho-
licism, ...... 260-262
Survey of the Christology of the Western Confessions, . 262-266
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES. XXllI
THIRD EPOCH.
FEOM A.D. 1680 TO 1800.
Page
Decay of the previous FOini of Christologt, akd the con-
version THEREOF INTO THE FORM OF ONE-SIDED SUBJEC-
TIVITY, ..... 266-vol. iii. 69
FIRST SECTION.
From a,d. 1580 to 1700, ..... 266-362
The Scholastic Age of Protestantism, and its variance with itself.
Chapter I. The Lutheran Christology, . . . 266-315
1. Controversy in the Lutheran Church regarding the Formula
Concordise, its value and its meaning. The Helmstadters,
T. Hesshus, D. Hofmann, on the one side ; on the other
side, Hutter, JEgid. Hunnius, . . . 266-274
Philipp. Nicolai's Mystical Christology, . . 274-281
2. The Giessen divines, Mentzer and Feuerborn ; and the Tiibiu-
gen divines, Hafenreffer, L. Osiander, Nicolai, Theod.
Thumm. Controversy relative to the Krypsis and
Kenosis, ...... 281-293
Comparison of Tubingen and Giessen. Inevitable alternatives
for both. Stagnation. Falling back on pre-Reformational
principles, and loss of the anthropological progress that
had been made. Apostasy from Luther's Christological
ideas, ...... 293-302
S. Christology of the Lutheran Dogmaticians iu the seventeenth
century, ...... 302-315
A. Calov, Gerhard, Meisner, Baier, Calixt, especially on the
communicatio naturae, personse, idiomatum. Growing
restoration of this communicatio idiomatum, . 303
(Compare Notes 43, 44, 45.)
Revival of the Dualistic view of the Natures. The capacitas
explained away, ..... 304-306
Subtle School questions, as, for example, The pre-existence of
Christ in Adam, Praeservatio or pm'ificatio of the massa
Adamitica, ..... 306-315
Scholasticism in Spain in the seventeenth century. Note 49.
Chapter II. Mysticism in the early Protestant Church, . 315-338
German Theosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 315-325
V. Weigel, 315-319
Jacob Bohm, ...... 319-325
The Quakers, ...... 325 f.
The doctrine of a heavenly humanity of Christ. Poirct, H. More,
Edw. Fowler, Th. Burnet, Goodwin, . . 326-333
Iram. Swedenborg, ..... 333-338
XXIV ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Page
ChaI'TER III. The Reformed Church, . . 338-362
1. Reformed Christology, especially Maresius, Heidegger, v. Mas-
tricht, Coccejus. Stress laid on the reality of the hu-
manity and its development. The unctio Spirit. Sanct.
as a surrogate for the Lutheran communicatio idiomatum.
Significance of the sufferings of the soul of Christ, 338-342
2. Relation of the Reformed Christology to the doctrine of the
offices, specially to that of satisfaction (Piscator) and to
Soteriology, ..... 342-346
Critical Review, ..... 347 f.
S. Commencing decomposition of the Reformed Christology by
Lutheran, Arminian, and Cartesian influences ; the Federal
Theologians and the Subordinatian and Sabellian movement
in England. Hobbes, Whiston, S. Clarke, Th. Bennet,
G. BuU, D. Whitby, W. Sherlock, R. South, and P. Maty
in Holland, 366-362
SECOND SECTION.
The Spread of Indifference to the old Form of Christology.
(From A.D. 1700 till about 1760,) . . . 363-382
Spener, Loscher, Mosheira, Pfaff, Heilmann, and others, . 363 f.
The Church Christology controverted by ne^v positive germs of
an ethical kind in Haferung and others, . . 364-370
By germs of a religious kind in Zinzendorf, . . 370-374
By those of a speculative nature in S. Urlsperger, . 374 ff.
Controverted negatively by such as Dippel, Edelmann, . 376-378
Review of the Process of Decomposition undergone by the dogma
in its old form, . . . 378-382
DIVISION II. VOL. III.
THIRD SECTION.
The Destruction of the old Form of Christology by a Puilosopuy
OF A One-sided Subjective Character, (a.d. 1760-1800,) 1-60
INTRODUCTION.
Philosophical Movements outside of Germany, . • 1-19
The importance of the philosophical movement after the Refor-
mation to Christology, both in an anthropological and
theological respect (compare Vol i 3-11), . 1-G
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUJIES. XXV
Des Cartes (compare ii. 244, 355),
Spinoza — his system and Christology,
Bayle, ....
Locke and English Deism,
Transition to German Philosophy,
Page
6f.
7-18
13 f.
14 f.
15-17
Chapter I.
FROM LEIBNITZ TO KANT.
Destruction of Christology by subjectivity, in its solely negative
efforts to realize self-emancipation, . . 18-30
Leibnitz and Wolf, . . . . . 18 f.
Kejectiou of the communicatio idiomatum, . . 20 f.
The curtailment of the influence of the divine nature followed
by the greater independence of the human nature (Doder-
lein, Tollner, Gruner) ; see also Note 2, . . 21
Renunciation of the Trinitarian position of the Son in Sabellian-
ism and Subordinatianism, . . . 21-24
Ernesti's grammatical, Semler's historical, exegesis. So-called
practical dogmatics. Socinianism, Ebionitism, Eudae-
monism, and Irreligiosity, . . . 24-30
Chapter IL
The KIantian Period, ..... 30-50
The negatively logical Ratio nalism having accomplished its -work,
reason begins to seek for eternal truth in itself, and philo-
sophy to strive for unity with Christianity. The Christo-
logical aspects of the system of Kant, . . 30-35
Morality recognised as an eternal idea, but in opposition to an
objective knowledge of the understanding and against
religion. Critical Review of practical Rationalism. Rohr,
Wegscheider, ..... 35-50
Chapter IIL
The Fichte-Jacobi Period, .... 50-69
Religion recognised, but without objective knowledge or an objec-
tive moral law. Out of this arises iEsthetic Ixationalism.
De Wette, Ease, Colani, .... 51-65
Summary view of the age of one-sided subjectivity and contra-
position of the one-sided objectivity, which culminated in
the Formula ConcordisB, 65-69
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
THIKD PERIOD.
THE AGE OF ATTEMPTS TO SHOW THAT THE DIVINE AND HU-
MAN ASPECTS OF CHRIST HOLD AN EQUALLY JUSTIFIED
POSITION, AND ARE ESSENTIALLY ONE, . 71-260
INTRODUCTION,
1. Forerunners. . . . . . . 73-93
Tersleegen, Lessing, Semler and others, Hamann, Herder
(Note 8), 73
Oetiuger, .... . 74-85
Franz Baader, ..... 85-88
Novalis, ...... 88-93
2. The transition from the entire old to the new period effected in
a strictly scientific manner by (1) Fichte, so far as he (a)
carried out the one-sided subjective tendency to its extreme
limit (Fichte's First Period) ; and no less also (b) as he
was driven to the opposite Spinozistic point of view (in his
Second Period). He thus recapitulated the two previous
forms of one-sidedness (the objective and the subjective)
in the two forms of his system. But in that subjectivity
thus returned for itself to Spinozism, which on its part,
along with the whole of the one-sided objective epoch at
which it appeared, had passed into subjectivity, both ten-
dencies showed themselves to be essentially connected with
each other, . . . . . 93-99
(2) This is clearly recognised and enounced by Schelling.
Subject -object.
FIRST SECTION.
The Foundations of Modern Christology laid by Schelling,
Hegel, and Schleiermacher, . . . 100-213
I. Schelling 100-121
1. Schelling's earlier point of view, . . . 100-109
2. Schelling's point of view in his " Freihcitslehre," . 109-115
Steffens (Note 17).
The principle of the philosophy of Schelling a real one, pnn-
cipium essendi, the Will.
3. Critical estimate, ..... 115-121
II. The Cliristology of the School of Hegel, . . 121-173
1. The Christological essays of the school prior to the publica-
tion of Hegel's " Rcligionsphilosophie," . . 121-131
Marheineke, ...... 122 f.
Rosenkranz, . .... 123 f
ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUJIES. X.<.VU
Page
Gosobel, . . . . . . 124 ff.
Conradi, . . . . . . 126 if.
2. General characteristics of Hegel's Christologj^, . 131-139
A. Relation of the bases of the system of Hegel to Cbristology.
D. F. Strauss, Baur, . . . . 139-149
B. Critique of these bases. The principle of the philosophy
of Hegel — absolute knowledge, . . . 149-1 GO
C. Later attempts to reconcile his system with itself and with
Christianity. Julius Schaller, Goschel, Conradi, ^lar-
heineke, Rosenkranz, Gabler, . . . 161-173
III. The Christology of Schleiermacher, . . . 171-213
1. Exposition. Its principle — religion, . . 174-193
2. Critical estimate, ..... 193-213
SECOND SECTION.
The Present State of Christology, ^vkd Doctrinal Results of the
PRECEDING History, .... 214-260
The Greek Church, . . . . . 216 f.
The Romish Church. . . . . 217 f.
The discord in the Romish Church. Giinther and his oppo-
nents. (Note 29 )
The Evangelical Church, . . . . 218 f.
I. The divine aspect of the Person of Christ, . . 219-229
Modern Ebionism in its deistic and pantheistic form over-
come, ...... 220 f.
The moral aspect of the Person of Christ in general better
understood. Necessity of recognising in the ethical essence
of Christ a revelation of God, . . . 221 ff.
Christ viewed in a Sabclliuu manner as the absolute image
of God by "\^'eisse, Rcdepenuing, and others, . 223 ff.
Connection with Subordinatianism and Ebionitism, when the
personal humanity excludes the divine personality ; with
Patripassianism, on the contrary, when the human per-
sonality and soul are excluded by the revelation of God
in Christ. Hence the necessity of an immanent Trinity
(compare Div. II. Vol. II. 208 ff. : Div. I. Vol. II. 149 ff.,
170 ff., 320-331). Nitzsch, Twesten, J. Miillor, Liebner,
Martensen, Lange, Mehring, !Merz, Sartorius, Tliomasius, 225-229
II. The human aspect, ..... 229-248
1. The true humanity. True, also ethical, growth. Errors of
Menken and Irving. Harmony in relation to tlie truth of
the humanity between the recent Reformed and Lutlieran
Christology ; as also in the recognition of the principle,
hnmaiia uatura capax divin?e, . . . 229-232
2. More precise determiualioii of the homoousia of Cln-ist with
XXVlll ANALYSIS OF THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Page
us. Christ the head of humanity. This truth the bond
between the historical Christ and the Trinity. Martensen,
Liebner, Rothe, Lange, and others. (Note 34,) . 232-237
3. The absolute necessity of the God-man for humanity — not
merely for its redemption, but also for its perfection.
Steffens, Goschel, Baader, Molitor, Martensen, Liebner,
Lange, Rothe, K. Ph. Fischer, Chalybseus, Ehrenfeuchter,
Schoberlein, Nagelsbach, Xitzsch, Schmid, Kling, Peter-
sen, Ebrard, and others. Examination of the objections
of Thomasius and J. Miiller, . . . 237-247
in. The divine-human Unio, . . . 248-260
1. In themselves, the divine and human personalities are cap-
able of being united, .... 248 f.
2. The unity as completed (in the state of exaltation), 249
3. The earthly God-manhood. State of humiliation. The
growth of the divine human unity, . . 249 ff.
Modern Theopaschitism, that is, theories of a self -exinanition
or depotentiation of the Logos Himself. Kbnig, Sartorius,
Liebner, Thomasius, Hofmann, Dehtzsch, Gaupp, Stein-
meyer, Schmieder, Hahn, Ebrard (Xote 37), . 249 £F.
Critical estimate thereof . Martensen, Rothe, Schmid. Posi-
tive exposition, ..... 252-260
APPENDIX.
HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE CONTROVERSIES
RESPECTING THE PERSON OF CHRIST, WHICH HAVE BEEN
AGITATED IN BRITAIN SINCE THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVEN-
TEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT TIME.
Sect. I. From the Middle to the End of the Seventeenth Century
or a little later, ..... 340-366
Sect. II. From the Close of the Seventeenth to near the Middle of
the Eighteenth Centuries, . . . 366-403
Sect. III. From the Middle to the End of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury, .... . 403-424
Sect. IV From the Ouse of last Century to the Present Time, 425-466
SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
SECTION III.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE OLD FORM OF CHRISTOLOGY
BY A PHILOSOPHY OF A ONE-SIDED SUBJECTIVE
CHARACTER.
(a.D. 1750-1800.)
INTRODUCTION.
PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTS OUTSIDE OF GERMANT.
^^jtj^JiOM. what has been previously advanced, it appears
^ that neither of the three Church tendencies antagon-
istic to it, Calixtinism, Pietism, or Herrnhutism, on
the one liand, nor philosophy on the other hand, but its own
inherent feebleness, was the proper cause of the decay of the
old form of Christology, which now set in with constantly more
iiTestrainable vigour. As far as concerns philoso})hy in ])ar-
ticular, it did but help, though undoubtedly in a decisive
manner, to give full dev^elopment to the seeds of ruin which
Christology already contained within itself.
To have shown that the possession to which claim was laid,
was a possession merely in appearance, is a merit not to be
slightly estimated ; but in addition to this, jihilosophy alone was
in a position to answer certain preliminary questions, and to
establish certain presuppositions, without which a satisfactory
doctrine of the Person of Christ was an impossibility.
The dogmatical aberrations which we find within the Church
itself, were, without exception, nothing but unvan(]uislK>d rem-
r. 2. — VOL. III. A
2 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
iiants of errors which had obtained admission from the extra-
Christian world. The Christological and anthropological here-
sies, in particular, were but coarser or finer forms of erroneous
views of the relation between God and the world in general, in
other words, remains of Pantheism or Deism.
The relation between nature and grace, between the first
and the second creation, is of so intimate a character, that an
error in regard to the former involves also serious consequences
relatively to the knowledge even of Christianity ; and a right
knowledge of the essence of nature is indispensable to the
successful formation of Christian dogmas. If it be certain, as
we have long ago shown, that the Church could not make
further advances until it first thoroughly investigated the
essence of human nature — a subject which had hitherto been
completely thrown into the background; so also is it evident
that theology is dependent for the immediate future on the
progress made by philosophy.
Prior to the lleformation, the dominant philosophy had been
the Aristotelian. Notwithstanding the position of antagonism
which Luther assumed towards it, from the want of a more
satisfactory philosophy the thinkers of the sixteenth century
recurred to it ever more and more, and Protestant theology in
the seventeenth century was as completely dominated by it as
the Roman Catholic. The cause of its being able to serve two
opposed systems at the same time, lay in the predominantly
formal character of that which was borrowed from it ; which
character fitted it admirably for analysing and ordering matter
derived from other sources, and providing, during a considerable
period, new ways in which the mind could logically justify to its
own satisfaction the dogma which had been assailed. The
subject-matter itself was taken for granted as established, be it
by the Church and tradition, or be it by the Holy Scriptures ;
and, indeed, the more abstruse scholastic distinctions, no less
than the fundamental doctrines of redemption. How very
different was the position of matters at the time of the Peforma-
tion ! Then, under the influence of religion, the mind refused
to be any longer content with the merely objective, threw off
its chains, began to walk in its freedom, and took the course of
endeavouring to understand that which in the first instance had
been handed down to it in the form of tradition, and which had
PHILOSOPHY BEFORE THE REFORMATION. 3
rested on external authority, as something wiiose inner power
and truth were its own support ; it began to constitute the
merely external its own spiritual property, to apprehend it in
its most inward truth and certainty. The minds of those who
were stirred by the spirit of the Reformation, refused to be
bound by anything save by the inner force of truth, and for
this reason they turned their backs on the system of the Eomisli
Church. But this same spirit entered into the chrysalis state
in the seventeenth century, and concealed itself under a form
which more and more assumed the features of the deserted
Roman Catholic Church ; and, returning to a point of view
substantiallv identical with that of Rome, Protestant theologians
appeared to know of no higher goal than that of establishing a
rival Church. This was shown in the most simiiPicant maimer,
by the mode in which the doctrines of justification and of the
Person of Christ Avere moulded after a type which was in prin-
ciple Roman Catholic. Not merely was the ethico-religious
aspect of faith, according to which it is " fiducia " and " certi-
tudo salutis," again unobservedly converted into a " good work"
of an intellectualistic character, into a consent of the intellect
to the ideas of orthodoxy, and into a subjection of the will
imder the dogmas of the Church, whose business it is to regulate
the interpretation of Scripture ; but the very centre of the life
of the Reformation, to wit, the assurance of salvation experienced
by him who is justified, and the new personality, which, through
the marriage of the divine and human in faith, had become the
all-sufficient starting-point of perfection, was again mutilated
and buried, nay more, was changed back, under an evangeli-
cal name, into the form which it had in the Roman Catholic
Church. For what else is an imputation of the righteousness
of Christ, which, instead of being the beginning and principle
of perfection, is made rather the goal, and does not form the
point of transition to a continuous new life, but to reduce the
believer again to a " donum superadditum" after the manner of
the Romish Church; a "donum" which neither can nor is in-
tended to become the essence of man ? Against this very
thing Luther spoke in the strongest terms, feeling well that it
lay at the root of the extreme point of his antagonism to Rome.^
' Compare further Luther's Commentary on CJcnesis, in Walch i. p. ^01,
§77.
4 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
But precisely the same thing took place also in connection with
Christology, where that which ought to have been regarded aa
a result of the " Communicatio idiomatum" was thought to be
most adequately described as a kind of " donum superadditum"
for the humanity of Christ. Not to mention the Docetical and
Catholic remnants contained in the Christology of even the
" Formula Concordiae." For if Jesus is not to be supposed to
have been bound to fulfil the divine will (which, notwithstand-
ing, consists universally very well with the freedom of love),
what is it but a denial of His true humanity? And if the
substitutionaiy satisfaction of Christ is to be based on the fact,
that though not under obligation to fulfil the law. He notwith-
standing fulfilled it by Plis work in acting and suffering, and
thus earned a merit which can be applied on our behalf, what
is it but to found the doctrine of redemption, at its very acme,
on the Romish error of " opera supererogatoria," their meritori-
ousness and interchangeableness ?
But where the doctrine of redemption was thus based, both
subjectively and objectively, on the idea of the " donum super-
additum," nature and supernatural grace were still conceived as
foreign to, and reciprocally exclusive of, each other; and by
consequence, a scientific theology, cast in one mould, was an
impossibility. As regards Christology, we only discern therein
the old fault of representing the divine and human as magni-
tudes standing in an essentially exclusive relation to each other,
— a fault whose eifects have so frequently come under our
notice since the Council of Chalcedon, which renders a true
doctrine of the God-man an impossibility, and cannot allow the
divine and human to interpenetrate and form one real vital
unity. It is true, Luther's idea of the " capacitas humange
naturaj" for the divine was still retained: not only, how-
ever, was it not further developed, but it was also reduced
down to the form of susceptibility for the divine " idiomata "
as "dona superaddita ;" nay more, it was soon limited and
retracted. How much further were Luther's presentiments
of a "new" and higher view of humanity, and of the dis-
coursing thereof " in new tongues," from passing into fulfil-
ment !
'J'he entire history of Christology testifies to the fact, that if
the conception of the divine and human, as two substances
PHILOSOPHY AFTEB THE REFORMATION. O
absolutely opposed to each other, which gained for itself the
sanction of the Church tlirough the adoption of the Chalce-
donian doctrine of the two natures in its historical sense, be
true, it is impossible to avoid falling into some form of Ebi-
onism or Docetism, or, at a higher stage, of Nestorianism
or Monophysitism. For this reason, it was impossible that a
purer form of Christology should make its appearance, until the
idea of the divine and human had been thoroughly investigated
and transformed.
Now the Church of the Reformation was stirred by an im-
pulse to undertake this investigation, and to the production of
a new Christian philosophy; nor was this impulse overshadowed
and extinguished by the numerous parasitic formations whicli
made their appearance in the Chiu'ch, and which properly be-
longed to an earlier stafje. Thoucrh the Lutheran theologians
looked back only too frequently with longing eyes to the flesh-
pots of Egypt, a return to bondage was impossible ; partly owing
to the meritorious efforts of the Reformed sister-Church, which
in one aspect kept up more rigidly the antagonism to the
Romish Church, acting the part of an avvakener of the con-
science of Protestantism, and renderinfj the sellintr of its birth-
right an impossibility ; and partly owing to the rich and healthy
evangelical vigour which opposed the spread of the old leaven,
and clung to the pure doctrine of justification by faith, thus
preserving, at all events, the principle of a new theology and
Christology. It was precisely the tendency to attach import-
ance to anthropology and personality, which first made its ap-
pearance in a grand sliape at the Reformation, and, in par-
ticular, the personal knowledge of salvation, that was attended
by, and led to, efforts to attain to a deeper knowledge of the
essence of human nature. The course taken by modern, that
is, Protestant {)hilosophy, marks, step by step, the stages through
which mind arrived at self-consciousness ; and even the momen-
tary rending asunder of the human and the divine (even in
Christ), and the remaining standing on the former alone, could
not but in the end serve the purpose of abolishing the abstract
conception of the human along with the abstract conception of
the divine, of bringing about the recognition of their essential
connection and unity, and of thus preparing the way for a true
Chrlstologj', by removing the wall of separation whicli had
6 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
ansen in consequence of tlie two natures being represented a?"
inmostly or essentially opposed to each other.
It cannot be denied that modern times, with their strongly
subjective tendencies, have gone to an extreme in giving pro-
minence to the human aspect of the Person of Christ ; and it
is not difficult to make this a ground of blame. But if this
blame is to be unconditional and universal, it ought not to be
forgotten that it was but the retribution for, and natural reac-
tion against, the opposed, and equally condemnable, one-sided
prominence given to the divine, which never allowed the human
its due position. Tlie Christian mind was not able to maintain
itself at the eminence to which it had soared in the age of the
Reformation : but still the period, which may be designated the
^liddle Age of Protestantism, when doctrine clothed itself in
rigid iron and mail, was not destined to last too long. The
principle of freedom, in a religious form, had taken too strong
a hold on the inmost substance of evangelical Christendom, for
it not to advance on from the consciousness of redemption as a
fixed point of departure, to attempt the revision and regenera-
tion of the dogmas, which it had received in the sixteenth
century solely as an inheritance, and to seek to bring these
doctrines into full inner connection and harmony with the
principle of the Reformation. The uniqueness and grandeur
of the Reformation consisted precisely in its carrying forward
the negative and positive work that had to be accomplished
simultaneoiisly ; nay more, in closest interpenetration. Whereas
now, on the contrary, the history falls into two acts, of which
the first bears a predominantly negative character. But still,
as we shall see, even during the time of this first act, new
germs shot forth in quietness and with increasing power.
To follow the course taken by philosophy from stage to
stage, is not our business here, but merely to consider the in-
fluence exercised by it on Christology at each separate stage.
Holland led the way; in other words, the domain occupied
by the Reformed Church, within which Des Cartes, Spinoza,
and Bayle found not merely protection, but also friends. In
this case also the Reformed Confession ran a more rapid course ;
for the Lutheran Church shut itself against the influence of
these thinkers long after the first-mentioned in particular had
become a power in the Reformed Church. We have already
DES CARTES. .7
referred more particularly above to the influence of the Car-
tesian philosophy on Christolog}'. Let it suffice to add here,
that the dualism it posited between the extended and the think-
ing substance, was throughout antichristological, and favour-
able to Nestorianism ; nay more, it was a confirmation of that
mode of thought which stretches the distinction between the
two natures to the point of inner incompatibility/ In this
respect Des Cai'tes remained a good Catholic. Further, how-
ever, he regarded God as infinite being, and that alone ; man
as finite being, and that alone. He did not yet conceive of
God as spirit ; still less as an ethical being, although he attri-
buted to Him ethical predicates. Equally far removed was he
from having formed the conception of an human-ethical de-
velopment, as is evident from his doctrine of ready-made innate
ideas. It is true, in his celebrated thesis, " cogito ergo sum,"
and in his demand that every external empirical authority should
be treated with a scepticism, wdiich he supposed would end in
the attainment of self- certainty by the thinking spirit, a Pro-
testant element is unmistakeably embodied. But how far does
it stand behind that of the Keformation ! For, in the first
place, the spirit which possesses the self-certainty is not the
self-conscious, ethico-religious spirit, but merely the thinking
intelligence, which is to have self- certainty apart altogethei
from the content of its thought. But, in the second place, he
occupies a completely empirical position, in so far as, inconsi-
derately and without examination, he makes a thinking Ego
out of thought ; and in so far as he holds this Ego to be that
which is most real, that which is primarily certain, because it
is that on which he deemed even the certainty that there is a
God to be based. In this manner, however, all knowledge is
grounded on the subjective ; instead of the idea of God being
recognised as the basis which bears up evervthincr else. Herein,
therefore, is already involved the germ of the absolutization of
subjectivity, which, when it had at a later period attained to
logical development, rejected the inconsistencies of Des Cartes,
who, in opposition to his premises, reduces back the idea of
God possessed by the thinking subject to God Himself, as the
^ In comparison with this difference, the points of coincidence with the
Lutheran Christology, to which we referred above (see Section Second,
Chapter Third), completely di8app?ar.
8 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
cau.se wlio originated it, and who attests it by His own truth-
fulness.
Whilst Des Cartes had not merely opposed thought and
extension dualistically to each other, but also put them into a
purely contingent, external relation to God (indeed, he philoso-
phized altogether little regarding God Himself (the substantia),
and rested satisfied with declarations of the most general cha-
racter),— Spinoza, on the contrary, sought to do away with, at
all events, the latter separation, and to identify thought and
extension with the " substantia," in the sense of the former
being the attributes under which we are compelled to think the
latter. He failed, however, to establish the duality of these at-
tributes, or to reduce them to inner unity (Eth. i. Prop. 2,
3,6).
Substance is Spinoza's main idea ; it is the idea, which, if it
be but thought at all, must be thought as having being ; its
very essential character not only permits, but, what is more,
requires us, to take our stand on it as that which is final and
supreme.^ It is infinite without limits, nay more, without
determination and distinction in itself ; for " omnis determinatio
est negatio ;" — indeed, all real distinctions in it are excluded by
its absolute simplicity.
For this reason also, there is no room for growth or change
in God, neither in the sense of His transforming Himself into
another being, that is, of His losing His identity as a subject ;
nor in the sense of His experiencing, as the same subject, alter-
ations from without or within. For changes even of the latter
kind, could only have a place in God on the supposition that
He was not yet perfect, and rather still had need to overcome
defects and to attain good. Both would be unworthy of God ;
wherefore, ahso, there remains no place for " causae finales."
Everything is good as it is ; all that is necessary is to know it
^ It is the "quod per se concipitur," but in such a sense that " ejus
cs.seiitia involvit existentiani ;" it is " causa sui" (Dof. i.). He attributes
to it "vita," that is, " vim, per quam res in suo esse perseverant ; " God
lias also, in his view, " ideam sui ipsius;" this is Ilis omniscience. 0pp.
eil. Gfrcirer, pp. G7, C9 ; Cogit. nietaphys. c. 6, 7. On the contrary, the
" substantia creata (natura naturata), although it also " per se concipitur,"
BO that we can form a clear conception of it, is that whose " conceptus"
remains the same, whether it has being or not ; " cujus essoniia," there-
fore, " non involvit existontiam." Cogit. Met. c. 8, Klh. i. Prop. 24.
SPINOZA. DES CARTES. 9
properly. The world is not substance, is not a conception in
which existence must be thought as united with being lExis-
tenz verbunden mit dem Sein) ; but it is to be conceived solely
as an attribute or modus of God ; it has being solely in God,
or in that substance besides which there is no other. (Eth. i.
Prop. 14, 15.) The " Substantia" alone is true being. The
" res cocitans" and the " res extensa" are not substances by
themselves, outside of which God is, but merely attributes of
God, who alone is their substance.^ If, therefore, Des Cartes
inclines rather to Deism, to giving the world a false independ-
ence in separation fi'om God, Spinoza inclines to the acosmistic
form of Pantheism. The former v/as a seduction to the Ee-
formtd system as to its one aspect ; he exaggerates the strict
distinction which it drew between God and the world to the
point of giving it a false independence outside of Him : Spinoza,
on the other hand, was a seduction to the Reformed system, so
far as its absolute predestinarianism allowed no independence
to the world, specially not to man, either in or alongside of
God.'
Des Cartes and Spinoza showed the theologians of the
Reformed Church, as in a mirror, the necessity which was laid
upon them of advancing on, either to assign a false deistic inde-
pendence to the world (if they continued to regard the distinc-
tion between God and the world as merely separative and not
also as unitive); or to condemn it to a pantheistic, yea, even
acosmistic, independence (in case they adhered to their absolute
determinism). Zwingli's system, under the influence of Picus
of Mirandula, had evinced a tendency to the former; but it
was repressed by the strict ethical determinism of Calvin.^
The system of Calvin, whilst representing God as the absolutely
determining principle of the world, was ])reserved from Panthe-
ism by the circumstance that, unlike Spinoza, he refused to
represent Him as under a necessity of nature to determine as
^ Ep. 21. " Deum cnim rcrum oiiiniuni causaiu immanentem, non vero
transe.untem statuo." Eth. i. Fi-op. 18.
* To Spinoza the idea of necessity, absolute determinism, is the conci-
liatory link between the infinite and the finite. Compare Ikiur's "Trini-
tatslehre" iii. p. 629. Similarly, nay even in a stronger degree, does this
lake place in the system of the Reformed Church. The worth of the finite
was deemed to consist in its necessity, not in its freedom.
' As Sigwart has shown in detail in his work on Zwingli.
10 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
He actually does determine, as the principle whose operations
are determined by its nature, and maintained Him, on the
contrary, to be " liberum arbitrium." This it was that preserved
Calvin from Pantheism. But to him also God remained the ab-
solutely transcendent, the absolutely supernatural being ; to him
also, God was inwardly therefore separated in His essence from
the world, and the unity of the two consists solely in the fact
of the determination of the latter by the former. But this dis-
tinction between the world and God was too dearly bought.
Spinoza, in reply to the view which teaches God to be, in the
last instance, mere " liberum arbitrium," and represents this as
the supreme principle, very justly asks, whether it rests with
God's arbitrary will to be a thinking being or not ? ^ For if
the " liberum arbitrium" be thus put in the highest place,
even the essence of God must be supposed to be dependent on
it ; to which we may also add, that precisely the supposition
that God is mere arbitrary volition, reduces Him to the level of
unethical nature. Furthermore, if we accept the idea of God
as the absolute " liberum arbitrium," a Pelagianistic mode of
thought might as easily (as the example of Arminianism after
Duns Scotus shows) he founded thereon, as a deterministic,
like that of Calvin's, especially where the doctrine of man's
bearing the image of God continued to be held. In this aspect,
the Calvinistic system leads at last to absolute contingency; for,
in the last instance, it is contingent whether God create a world
like that Avliich determinism describes, or one such as Pelagianism
pictures. The authority of the absolute predestinarianism of
Calvin having been broken in Holland by Arminianism and the
school of Cocceius, the determinism of Spinoza exerted the less
influence. Indeed, the attention of the thinkers of the Reformed
Church was predominantly turned rather in another direction,
that is, in that of the deistic independence of the world. This was
the case especially in England, to which the leadership in philoso-
phy was now for a time transferred ; whilst Spinoza was destined
to find, and, where freedom began to be denied to the creature,
could not but find, more sympathy in the Lutheran Church.
So far as Spinoza held the attributes in their distinctness, like
the Modi, to be something not merely subjective, but an actual
snrichmcnt of our knowledge, he had no alternative but to
^ For example, Etliica i. Prop. 32, Dcfinitio vii.
SPINOZA. CALVIN ] 1
admit distinctions and determinations into the "snbstantia;"
but, on the other hand, so far as they are merely subjective,
there is no such thing as a knowledge of God, substance is an
empty void, and the conception of God is a transcendent one,
like that of the Neo-Platonists. That he had no intention of
taking up the last-mentioned position is clear (compare, in
particular, the Tract, de Intell. Emendat.) ; consequently,
his doctrine of God is still marked by contradictions, and
does not meet his own requirements. What was necessary,
was to conceive things not merely " sub specie jBternitatis,"
but also to contemplate the "res seternas atque fixas" in God,
in their inner connection with each other and with the
" substantia." Instead of this, he simply imports these same
" res geternas atque fixas" out of the empirical sphere into
the eternal substance, as it were for the purpose of filling up
its infinite void. These eternal things, which remind us of the
ideal world of Plato and Philo, are all supposed to have simul-
taneous being, and to constitute the truly real ; the effect of
which is to break down beforehand the bridge over to the actual
Avorld. For the actual world must then necessarily be, either
subjective appearance, or else a useless repetition of that which
already had an eternal, actual existence in God. He speaks,
indeed, of the need of knowing the inner order of this ideal
world. But he applies his energies principally to the object of
sinking the multiplicity into the unity of the " substantia." Had
he, on the contrary, sought also for the absolute principle of
order, he must have been led to absolute teleology^ that is, to
a conception of God as willing, out of His own perfection
(amor), the existence of a world destined to pass through an
historical process of growth, of an ethically ordered succession
and growing in reality, or of a realization of that Avhich was
in God merely in the form of eternal decrees and world-thought,
and had not already actual and simultaneous reality. Spinoza
was prevented from this course by a false notion of the majesty
of God, of which the physical, or power, was the principal
element. He supposes it to be fitting, that what the Most High
wills should come immediately into being ; supposing tliat,
otherwise, God would lack for a time a good whicli it was His
will to possess. Mere power, however, cannot give rise even to
a kingdom of power : if relative independence be not conceded
12 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
to that which is brouglit into existence, the category of causality
sinks down to a category of identity ; and thus the " natura
naturata" becomes identical again with the " natura naturans."
Only love incorporating itself with power is able to be the prin-
ciple of a relatively independent world, because it posits the
world as an end to itself. Spinoza speaks very much, it is true,
of the love of God. But, as viewed by him, it is merely self-
communication to another being, which is again identical with
God Himself : it lacks the indispensable condition of all ethical
love, to wit, self-conscious reflection into itself (Reflexion in
sich), and the willing and maintaining itself as love, even whilst
communicating itself.
Being destitute of, nay more, being hostile to, any histori-
cal process, this system is unable to admit of a distinction be-
tween nature and revelation, and has, in particular, no place for
the fundamental idea of Christianity, the incarnation. To his
eye everything is divine, so far as it has being at all ; the
acosmism of his system leaves behind it nothing but Docetism.
But as Spinoza, on the other hand, takes his start with the em-
pirical world, and ever again involuntarily discriminates tlie
world from God, the effort to contemplate the world in unity
with God, leads him necessarily to lay down principles regard-
ing the world, particularly regarding the human mind, which
are favourable to a Christology, in that their aim is to bring to
light the inner susceptibility, specially of human nature, to the
communication of the divine essence. The strong mystical
element in Spinoza's constitution here comes into consideration.
The soul finds rest (acquiescentia) in God alone, in love to God,
which flows forth from the true knowledge of God. Ordinary
thought (opinio vulgi) is taken up solely with imaginations, with
a world of images and symbols. But this gives rise to con-
fusion, obscurity, sin, and unblessedness ; for the essence of our
spirit demands true, adequate knowledge of God, without which
it can find neither rest nor joy. This true knowledge of God,
to which we are destined, can only be attained by God's com-
municating His essence. His truth to the spirit ; and whoso has
acquired the true knowledge, by means of such self-communi-
cation of God, is able to show others the way thereto. The
merely positive, mere external authority, the merely statutory
belonging to the purely legal point of view, as such, have
SriNOZA. BAYLE. 13
nothinji to do with this true knowledo-e of God. The mind
rather knows things inwardly, in their essence or inner truth,
and is thereby united with God, free, and blessed.^ Christ is
the only one among men to whom was given this adequate
knowledge of God through the communication of the divine
essence to His soul ; He is the voice, yea, the mouth of God
— a personal revelation of God to humanity. (Note 1.)
From Naturalism Spinoza was far removed (Ep. 21) ; his
fault lies in the opposite direction, to wit, in his not permitting
nature and the world to have an existence really distinct from
that of God. But as this sinking of the world into God, even
where it took a mystical form, was foreign to the spirit of the
Reformed Church, with its ethical character, its deep, nay,
almost legal awe before God, Spinoza found, on the whole,
little sympathy with it, notwithstanding the pains he evidently
took to tack his doctrine on to the Calvinistic predestinarianism,
and to set it forth, at the same time, as the truly philosophical
mode of thought."^ His influence was calculated rather to be
far greater in a different direction, to wit, in awakening doubts
regarding an absolute predestinarianism which threatened those
who held it with such Spinozistic consequences.
So much the easier is it of explanation, that after a man re
sembling Occam, to wit, Bayle, had made his appearance, who
converted the dogmatism of Spinoza and Des Cartes into scepti-
cism, the mind of the age turned in the opposite direction, to wit,
towards Deism, which treated the empirical and the subjectivity
of man as the firm foundation. The negative aspect of this
tendency, as regards which it was at one also with Spinoza^ and
his followers, is the independence of thought on the dogmas of
the Church, in other words, Freethinking, which became the
watchword, first in Holland, and then still more generally in
England. The positive aspect is the la^nng stress on the in-
^ De Intellectus Emendatione, pp. 500, 517 ; Tract. Thool. Pulit. c. 2,
p. 99; c. 3, p. Ill ; c. 4, p. 119.
'^ An inclination to Spinozism was evinced by Frcdr. van Lconliofl,
" Der Himrael auf Erden," Amst. 1703 ; by AVilh. DeurhofF and othere.
See AYalch's " lieligionsstreitigkciten ausser d. evaiig. lutli. Kirche," 3
Theil, pp. 904 ff. 924 ff. v. fifi ff. Also by Abrah. Job. Cuffler, 1684, and
others. In the Lutheran Church, prior to Lessing, Spinozistic elementa
■were appropriated by Knutzen, Edelinani', and others.
» Tract. Theolog. Polit. c. 20, pp. 240 ff.
14 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
dependence of the world relatively to God. P. Bayle presses
men on to this by the consideration of evil. With its exist-
ence an absolute providence is incompatible. Manichseism was
not so destitute of arguments in its favour as at first appears.
A priori, indeed, dualism is easy enough to vanquish ; but an
a priori system cannot be the true one if it do not furnish an
explanation of the facts of experience. But to this end it is
not enough to assume the existence of an almighty, good prin-
ciple and its providence ; for such a principle could not permit
of evil. Much, therefore, may be urged in favour of the idea,
that the omnipotence of God is hindered by an opposed evil
principle ; for otherwise good alone would exist.^ Manichaeism
consequently can only be overcome by faith, not by rational
grounds. In his case, a correct perception of the fact, that the
ethical nature of God does not permit of a determination to
evil, is still combined with tlie Calvinistic presumption, that
mere omnipotence, by itself, can work what is good ; and as the
world is actually marked by evil, he is led constantly to ask
the question, whether we are not compelled to assume the exist-
ence of an independent causality of evil, not created by God;
that is, a limitation of the expression of the divine power by a
primal evil causality, independent of, and even opposed to, Him.
To appeal to the freedom of the human will did not appear
sufficient ; for he merely saw in it the unhappy privilege of
sinning — a privilege which will cease in the state of perfection.^
The Church's doctrines of the Trinity and of the Person of
Christ also were assailed by Bayle's scepticism. The basis of
all our syllogisms is this, — th£.t things which do not differ from
a third, do not differ from each other. But the revelation of the
mystery of the Trinity proves this axiom to be false, and so forth.
^ In his Die tionn aire, Art. Pyrrhon, he represents the sceptical Abbe as
saying, that, according to the doctrine of theologians, God had to choose
between this our present world and one that was well-ordered and adorned
with virtue ; and yet He preferred the one in which sin ruled, because it
wouM conduce more to His honour. God, however, could not prefer the
useful to the good ; He was not able, therefore, to choose a better world
than He did, because an insurmountable hindrance lay in His way. This
was taken as a point of departure by King in his " De origine mali," and
by Leibnitz in his " Theodicde." Compare also the article Manichdisme.
^ Compare Dictionnaire, ed. Arastd. 1715, Art. Marcionites. Also T. iii.,
the concluding dissertations on Manichseism and Pyrrhonism.
BAYLE. LOCKE. HUMiJ. 15
It is commonly liekl to be evident that the union of an human
body with a rational soul constitutes a person, and that the one
is inseparably connected with the other. But this must be in-
correct; for otherwise God could never bring it to pass that
they should not form a person (which Pie does, however, accord-
ing to the Church doctrine of the impersonality of human
nature). Accordingly, we must say, — personality is something
purely accidental in relation to the unity of body and soul ;
and we cannot therefore know whether we are ourselves per-
sonal or not.^
The English mind soon turned its attention decidedly to the
empirical sphere. To the present day, Locke has continued the
best philosophical representative of the English mind. But
this system, lacking as it does an ideal character, rather patron-
izes than recognises Christianity, and considers it predomi-
nantly from the point of view of an approved means of further-
ing the common well-being: — the general well-being of the
State was the central point of his interest. He does what he
can to give form and fulness to freedom in the finite, but not in
the absolute sphere. Finally, the Deists treated God as a means
for the world, and that not for a worthy moral form thereof,
but for its mere well-beinff. The riixht of freethinkino; was
soon fought out ; but when they had secured it, they were at a
loss liow to make a methodical, and therefore a fruitful, use of
it. The reason of Deists, which, as long as it was subjected to
a degree of pressure, appeared to be completely full of lofty
truths, showed itself, after having conquered on a large scale, to
be completely poor and destitute of inner unity and strength ;
and its impotence was revealed by the critical examination to
which the fundamental presuppositions of empiricism were
subjected by David Ilume. And with this the development of
philosophy in Great Britain came substantially to an end.
Nor can anything better be said of France ; on the con-
trary, naturalism and materialism, in company with a low euda'-
monism, sought to establish themselves firmly there.
Thus the first philosophical movement outside of Germany
ended either in scepticism, as in Holland and England, or in
atheism, or even frivolity, as in Franco.
In Germany it was tiiat philoso])hy was destined, for the
' Ibidem, T. iii. 267 a.
16 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
first time, to pursue a steady and gradually progressive course.
There also was it appointed that the traditional form of the
doctrinal system of the Church should be made the object, not
of tumultuary attacks by the arbitrary subjective fancies of
men, in order afterwards to be restored in an equally arbitrary
manner, but of sober examination by the greatest thinkers, who
should devote serious and connected labour to the inward trans-
formation of the old forms, and thus seek to continue the work
of a philosophical reformation.
In Germany — and this was in itself a good sign — the philo-
sophical movement began with theosophy. It is true the mystics
and theosophers to whom our attention has been hitherto directed,
were unable, owing to the singular and subjective character of
their point of view, to preserve the Church from sinking back
again into a state of rigidity, and to prevent the outbreak of a
one-sided subjectivity, wdiich marked the course of the entire
science, and the existence of which over against the torpidity
just referred to, is capable of relative justification. On the
contraiy, the tide of German theosophy, after reaching its
highest point in Jacob Bohm, began to ebb as soon as it made
efforts to attain to logical clearness ; and during the time of its
ebb, it turned with ever greater decision and unproductiveness
to a one-sided subjectivity, nay more, passed over into a natu-
ralism which converted the inward spiritual light of the mystics
into the natural light of reason. Men like Dippel, Adam
Miiller, Edelmann, Knutzen, may be mentioned in this connec-
tion ; and they partially gave in their adhesion to Spinozism.
Mysticism had no alternative but to pass over into philoso-
phy. German theosophy was the starting-point of German
])liilosophy, — in a certain sense, its mother. But the mother
was first able to understand herself in the dausrhter. It was
ordered, however, that the natural liglit sliould first be separated
from the Christian, in order that that mixture of the two, which
we find constantly recurring in the systems of the mystics,
might finally cease, in order that the human might know and
grasp itself in its own essence. Not till this had happened
could the Christian mind attain to that higher unity of nature
and grace, in which the distinction between the two points to
their mutual connection.
After the thinking subjectivity (die denkcnde Subjectivltat)
THEOSOPHY. MYSTICISM. 17
had emancipated itself, in the philoso})hy of Leibnitz and "Wolf,
from theology, it advanced unrestingly onwards, in the first
instance, to abolish all external presuppositions, with the feeling
that independence of these is an essential part of indepen-
dence of thought. Theology, however, and particularly Christ-
ology, followed it step by step in this destructive career ; and,
accordingly, this age of the predominance of subjectivity offers
a spectacle of a character diametrically opposite to that of the
period preceding the Reformation. AMiilst, during the period
last mentioned, one member after another had been added on to
Christology, as was rendered necessary by that which had once
been posited ; in Germany, now, on the contrary, one member
was cut away after another, in the order in which they had b<;en
previously annexed. And, what is more, the same presu])posi-
tion of an essential antagonism between the divine and human,
which had served as the foundation and principle of the edifice,
now became the principle of its overthrow ; with the single dif-
ference, that the other member of the antagonism — to wit, that
the divine excludes the human, and vice versa — was now brought
into play. In another respect also is it clear that the present
period was a counterpart to the previous one, to wit, that as
soon as, or indeed partly before, the work of destruction was
completed, it, no less than the old one, began to construct the
Person of Christ by addlno; one member thereof to another ; onlv
that the point of departure was in this case the opposite one, to
wit, the humanity. However gi'eat may be the antagonisms
through which the history of this dogma pursued its "vvay, we
discern ever again clearly, when Ave take a survey of the whole,
that the entire process is governed by a central idea, essentially
one, though explicating itself in time ; and that these antagon-
isms serve the purpose of evolving one of its momenta after the
other, of chastising and refuting one one-sided tendency by its
contrary. Nor will this process rest till the extremes combine
and interpenetrate to form one grand whole, and the one truth
dawns in all its fulness and glory on the consciousness of man.
This consideration may help to put our minds into the proper
liistorical tone for the examination of the history of our dognui
during the next epoch, which in other respects also presents
few elements of an encouraging character.
r. 2. — VOL nc B
18 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH
CPIAPTER FIRST
From Leibnitz to Kant.
DESTRUCTION OF CHRISTOLOGY BY SUBJECTIVITY, OWING
TO THE PURELY NEGATIVE CHARACTER OF ITS SELF-
EMANCIPATION.
The philosophical mind of Germany opened its career in
the most direct antagonism to Spinoza's doctrine of the absolute
substance, with its reduction of all beings to a state of imper-
sonality. For, as Jacob Bohm had sought to show that every
single soul is a living birth from God, so did the philosophy of
Leibnitz start with the principle of individuality. He held the
individual to be a monad, or complex of monads peculiaily de-
termined; though lie, at the same time, held each particular
monad to be a reflection of the universe, a microcosm setting
forth the whole in a peculiar form. The system of Leibnitz,
however, is intellectualistic in character ; little attention is paid
to the will. These monads he represents as so independent and
shy of any influence from without ; he insists so strongly on
their having a purely immanent development ; that one might
fairly fear their being totally separated from God, nay more,
their falling into Atomism, though, it is true, an Atomism of a
more animated character. In point of fact, the bond uniting
the monads with each other and with God, is one of the feeblest
and obscurest parts of Leibnitz's system ; — it occupies rather
the position of a postulate, of a requirement, which the system
makes of itself, to advance out beyond itself. The predicates
which he otherwise gives to the monads do not bear application to
the Central Monad. In order, therefore, to avoid giving absolute
independence to the monads, and thus also causing them, in their
multiplicity, to go asunder, he represents, after a deterministic
fashion, the nature and character of the series of evolutions
which they undergo, as arising out of, and determined by, their
original essence ; evolved too in such a manner, that they com-
bine harmoniously with the other monads, in particular as re-
spects the activity of the body and the soul, or of the monads
constituting them. In principle, a decision was thus arrived at
LEIBNITZ. WOLF. 19
in favour of a deistic view of tlie world, and that in a deter-
ministic form. Leibnitz, it is true, in opposition to the rigidity
of Spinozism, gives prominence to activity ; not, however, to a
free self-conscious personality, for individuality, as expounded
by him, does not reach even the idea of subjectivity ; for he
considered men to be mere unities or collections of monads,
one of which governs the rest.^
Christian Wolf put aside the doctrine of monads,^ but
clung both to the determinism, and to the idea of this world as
the best of all possible worlds, which lay at the basis of the Theo-
dicee of Leibnitz.^ But it was, in particular, the principle of
identity, that of contradiction, that of the excluded third and
the " principium indiscernibilium," on which Wolf, after the ex-
ample of Leibnitz, based his method ; and which dogmatistically
rests satisfied in formal logic with the proof of a thing's being
possible, that is, not self-contradictoiy.
At its first appearance, the Leibnitz- Wolfian philosophy
took up a by no means hostile position relatively to the biblical
Christology, or even only to that of the Church. On the con-
trary, the morning of the freer German philosophy presented
only the pleasing spectacle of science having voluntarily become
the ally of theology. By demonstrating the full agreement of
reason with the dogmas of the Church, it offered a further sup-
port to Christian faith, and supplied a weapon of defence whicli
could not but prove welcome at the time of the rise of English
Deism and French unbelief, whose representatives opposed tiie
authority of this same reason to that of revelation. Like
Leibnitz, Wolf took up a positive position relatively to llevela-
tion, and in particular to Christology ; philosophy was applied
solely for the purj)ose of proving the truth of revelation : so
much the more natural, therefore, must it appear for theology
^ We cannot, indeed, understand bow monads " which have no win-
dows," and which cannot be influenced from without, can be governed by
another. Apphcd to Christology, this system must lead to Nc^storianisni.
As occasion offered, liCibnitz defended the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity
and Dyothelctism.
2 His idea of God as the Highest Being, as the "ens porfectissimum,"
and his proof of immortality from the simpUcity of the soul, still remind
lis of Leibnitz's doctrine of monads.
^ As in the case of Bayle, this conceals a dualiam ; fiuitude is conctuvtxJ
ai? a limit of God.
20 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
to recognise it as an ally. On the other hand, however, even
the philosophy of Wolf itself contained elements enough calcu-
lated to brino; about a different state of matters. The mathe-
matical method of proof adopted by this school, as applied to
Christology, arrived still, it is true, at full agreement with the
dogma of Christ ; further, Wolf himself, and in particular his
followers, Carpzov and Reusch, demonstrated the necessity of
the incarnation quite in the manner of Anselm's " Cur Deus
Homo? " from the necessity of a satisfaction and substitution ;
but still a decidedly predominant intellectualistic tendency
was given to the mind by this method of demonstration. Doc-
trine was treated as the essence of Christianity ; and in view
of that, they left out of sight its real central feature, which is
deed, life, eternal history. Once this centre thrown into the
background, — and, following the example of the sinking ortho-
doxy, the philosophy of this period did throw it into the back-
ground,— the proofs for the revelation in Christ become com-
pletely external ; and philosophy, inasmuch as it appeals to
principles of the mind itself, necessarily becomes more convinc-
ing and important than the authority of theology. If reason
succeeded perfectly in proving the truth of revealed doctrines,
it had freely produced them out of itself. In this way, too,
revelation was naturally shown to be something that can be
dispensed with, seeing that reason possessed the power to pro-
duce its doctrines out of itself. If, however, reason failed in
proving the truth of the doctrines of revelation or of the Church,
then, the more the mind was strengthened in its independence,
and the more it became aware how much more certain and
convincing its own necessary demonstrations were than any
external authority, the more natural did it become for it to
refuse any longer patiently to submit itself to this external
authority and its utterances as the goal towards which its proofs
were to strive, and to venture on deciding by its own plenipo-
tence what is true and what is false. The simple logical law
of contradictories, which at first alone asked to be admitted into
theology, of itself necessarily caused matters to take this course.
The Church doctrine of the Person of Christ, particularly of
the " Communicatio idiomatum," was by no means beyond
the reach of attacs, even on the part of this law. And in point
of fact, we find the doctrine almost universally given up, even
WOLFIANISM. 21
as early as tlie middle of the last century.^ Indeed, the mind
of that age in general, estranged as it was from the spirit of
the Reformation, and completely devoted to bare logic, regarded
the symbolical books as a crushing yoke, which to shake off
was its next earnest effort. In this it succeeded even more uni-
versally after the middle of the eighteenth century. The system
of the Church found but few defenders ; and even those who
appeared spoke with only half boldness, or they no longer felt
animated by the mighty power of a faith which refers every-
thing to Christ. With the denial of the " Communicatio idio-
matum," a retrograde movement was begun, which landed the
mind again in Nestorianism. (Note 2.) But the deprecia-
tion of the influence of the divine nature, or of the Son of
God, was soon followed also by a depreciation of that divine
element which comes into consideration for Christology. They
were obliged to ask the question, whether it was not possible
for the one personal God to exert all the influences on Jesus,
which a merely Nestorian alliance of God and man leaves
behind I
Accordingly, the dogma of the Trinity also was now sub-
jected to a renewed investigation, and one constituent after
another was taken away from the conception of the deity of
the Son, which had been built up with so much labour. In
the first instance, the keystone added by the Council of Nicaea
was taken away, to wit, the ofioovata, which affirmed the essen-
tial equality of that which is distinct, and was intended to com-
bine in one the Sabellian momentum of the identity of essence
and the Arian momentum of hypostatical distinction. So soon
as predominant stress was laid on the simplicity of God, — which
was the case during the Wolfian period, because it directed its
attention mainly to the discrimination of God and the world, —
there only remained the choice between Sabellianism and
Arianism. The former found little sympathy with the thinkers
of an age which was dominated by a deistic tendency,^ and
1 Kocher's " de duarum naturarum commun. et Comm. idd. ex coni-
pendiis et system, theol. non proscribenda," Jen. 1764. Until the time of
F. Buddeus this was taught : the ancients show that it is necessary ; tliey
also have had insight. The Formula Concordiae requires it ; it is divine
doctrine. — The work contains twelve pages !
' Sec Div. II. Vol. II., pages 374-5, on Urlsperger.
22 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD ElOCa
therefore passed rapidly away ; moreover, as even its earlier
histoiy teaches us, notwithstanding its richer and fuller Chns-
tian substance at the commencement, it inevitably passed over
into ever more scanty forms. Arianism, on the contrary, had
its way prepared, on the one hand, by Arminianism, and by S.
Clarke, whose works Semler translated ; and, on the other hand,
found a support in the circumstance of its satisfying the onp
sided tendency of the age to the creatural aspect of Christ ;
whilst, at the same time, it masked itself pretty well in relation
to the Holy Scripture.
Let us consider both these tendencies into which the ortho-
dox doctrine of the Trinity branclied out, in order that we may
go back to the scantiest elements of the doctrine of the Person
of Christ and of God.
The most important point, — the point at which the doctrine
of the Trinity had remained standing during the age of the
Ileformation, — concerned the question, whether the generation
of the Son did not exclude aseity, and therefore involve the
dependence of the Son ? In England, the affirmation of the
aseity of the Son had already led some to the verge of a mon-
archian equality of the persons.-^ This same result now followed
in Germany. Leibnitz, it is true, had endeavoured to point
out the existence of a trinity in the process of the inner self-
consciousness of God, similarly to Melanchthon and other older
writers, and, at a subsequent period, to Lessing in his "Edu-
cation of the Human Race." But Wolfian theologians, like
Canz, Reusch, and Gruner, starting with the idea of the ab-
stract simplicity of the highest being, as laid down by Wolf,
converted the three persons of the Trinity into three series of
thoughts and volitions, relating to the world, and having it for
their subject-matter, that is, into three eternal and immanent
acts, which, although simultaneous, were supposed to presuppose
each the other. In the first act, God thinks the eternally
present ideas of all conceivable things ; in the second act, the
infinite divine understanding systematizes all these things, and
thus sketches all possible mundane systems, to which His will
inclined accordin"; to the measure of the o-oodness of each.
The third act is the judgment of the understanding, which
decides for the best possible world; and in the thought thereof
1 See Div. II. Vol. II., pp. 357 f.
SAILER. REINHARD. 23
the infinite will rests as its final aim, and realizes it. That this
is not the Church's doctrine of the Trinity, needs no proof
Gruner already set himself consciously in opposition thereto.^
Sailer at one time converts the persons of the Trinity into three
powers, which can very well be present in one being ; at
another time, he treats these powers as three subjects, and
accounts for the hesitation in accepting the idea of three think-
ing, willing subjects, by the feebleness of human knowledge,
which must content itself with the fact of the mystery. In-
deed, we find the theologians of Wolf's school at first reckoning
the communication of mysteries (that is, of that which is not
manifest) as one of the criteria of revelation, not merely rela-
tively and for the ante-Christian ages, but also for the Chris-
tian period.'^ Lastly, G. Schlegel,^ not without a hollow,
self-complacent feeling, resolves the Trinity into the three great
activities and providences of God — creation, sustentation, the
communication of knowledge by Jesus and of improvement by
the Holy Ghost. Eeinhard distinguishes between " essentia,"
which is the sum total of the divine perfections, and " sub-
stantia divina," which is the " vis agendi infinita;" that is, the
substance of God, which is only one, is the divine personality.
In this substance, however, there are three persons (supposita).
1 Institnt. Theol. dogmaticae, pp. 81 ff. ; although he terms his actus
divinos hypostatical. Compare Baur's " Trinitatslehre " iii. 690 ff. 700 ff. ;
Reusch's " Introduct. in theol. revel." Jena 1760. Canz, in his " Con-
sensus Philosophise Wolf. cum. Theol.," 1737, pp. 468 f., preserves a
closer connection between the history of the -world and his doctrine of the
Trinity, which also resolves it into " Actus." According to the first
" Actus," God is to be regarded as the infinite Ratio (as the creative cause) ;
according to the second^ as the principle of the restoration of the disturbed
harmony of the world ; according to the third, as communicating the good.
The Trinity is thus the activity of God as power, wisdom, love : the dis-
tinction between this and similar old theories, is simply that it speaks, not
of three fundamental powers (as Sailer almost did), nor of three attributes,
but of three activities, agreeably to the principle that God is " actus puris-
simus."
2 G. F. Sailer, " Ueber die Gottheit Christi," 1780. Similarly also
Tbllner.
' " Erneuerte Erwagung der Lehre von dor gottlichen Droicinigkeit,"
2 Tide. 1791. Compare Baur I.e. pp. 702 f. " Vereinfachte Darstcllung
der liChre von Gott als Vater, Jcbu dem Sohne und dem hciligon Geiste."
Riga 1781.
24 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCn.
And wliereas, otherwise, "persona" is used to denote that
which is concentrated or shut up in itself, and which, at the
utmost, can only be communicated to the " natura," not to the
" persona," Reinhard lays down as a definition, — " Persona
est, quod proprie subsistit, s. individuum subsistentice incom-
pletoe per se libere agens. Incompleta subsistentia " he styles
"eum existendi modum, quo individuum sine quodam alio,
per quod subsistit non potest esse." Many theologians, he
goes on to say, consider this dogma the most important of all,
but grant that our salvation does not depend on our conceiving
it after this or that manner, for no particular view of it is con-
tained in the Scriptures.^
That the knowledge of the Trinity is not necessary to salvation,
yea more, does not belong to the fundamental doctrines of Chris-
tianity, Tollner had already, at a previous period, endeavoured
carefully to show, although he himself meant to keep hold of a
Trinity.^ At first he taught that we must assume the existence in
God of three simultaneous, eternal, truly distinct actions (work-
ing, representation, desire), which point back to three eternal,
truly distinct, acting grounds. He herewith appropriates to
himself, from a Sabellianism which derives the distiuctions in
God solely from the world, the tendency to assert the existence of
distinctions in God. But as, on the one hand, he deemed the
simplicity of God to come into collision with the assumption of
three persons, and, on the other hand, the reduction of the
three acting "grounds" to attributes or powers in God appeared
not to harmonize with the Scriptures, particularly not with
Christology, he inclined towards Arianism. At the beginning,
he shyly expressed an opinion in its favour, after conscientious
though shortsighted exegetical inquiries ; ^ nor did he overlook
the difficulties which attend it. But it did not fail to meet
with approbation.* As a factor whose importance ought not to
be slightly estimated, we may mention the change in the view
^ Pasaira, see § 41, 42. About this time endeavours were made to prove
exegetically the identity of the divine in Jesus with the Holy Ghost, and
the impersonality of the latter.
2 " Kurze vermischte Aufsatze " ii. 1, 1769.
^ " Theol. Untereuchungen," 1762, Bd. i. St. 1. See Arianism.
* Hegelmaier published J. Vernet'a " Diss, de Christi deitate," 1777,
airain in 1782. The elder Flatt also was devoted to Subordinatianism.
TOLLNEP. ERNESTI. 25
taken of the system of the world, gradually broucrht about by
the discoveries of Copernicus. Not only did men cease to re-
gard the earth as the centre of the universe, but they took for
granted that the other celestial bodies also were tenanted by
rational and free beings : the question was asked, — Wheth(3r, if
they fell into sin, there would not be a deliverance also for
them? — which was answered in the affirmative. But as the
supposition of Christ's having appeared in other heavenly bodies
besides the earth, would necessarily have threatened His hu-
manity with Docetism, some inclined to the notion that He
was destined to be the Redeemer and King of this our planet,
whilst in other spheres of creation, other delivering revelations
of God are carried out by the heads of other circles of spirits.
(Note 3.)
Up to this time the Holy Scriptures had been deemed authori-
tative ; but the belief so long unsuspectingly cherished, that the
doctrine of the symbolical books is identical with that of the
Scriptures, had now come to an end. Many claimed that their
efforts should be looked upon as merely leading back the doctrine
of the Church, whose expressions are not contained in the
Scriptures, from its artificial scholastic form to its biblical sim-
plicity. So, for example, Morus, Less, Storr, Flatt, Reinhard,
Knapp. But the authority of Scripture also was soon assailed
in every sort of manner. With the publication of Ernesti's
Grammatical Method, exegesis took a new flight (Instit. Inter-
pretis, 1761); whilst at the same time the intention of its
author was to supply the doctrine of the Church with a new
weapon of defence. It proved to be so also, for the doctrine of
redemption and that of faith ; but not for all the Church's
dogmatical positions. Furthermore, this method, which corre-
sponds so completely to the spirit and words of the age of the
Reformation, did not at once find by any means an unprejudiced
application. Theology, now that it had thrown off the authority
of the symbolical books, and of the " regula" or " analogia
fidei" previously found therein, instead of explaining Scripture
by Scripture, and placing full trust in its power and right to
interpret itself, brought to its work another canon, to wit, the
rational ideas, the pretended wisdom of Illuminisni, and all
sorts of elements which it fancied to liave constituted primitive
Christianity. The historical principle of exegesis, brought into
26 SECOND PERIOD. THIUD EPOCH.
vogue especially by Semler, and the aAvakening spirit of criticism^
which with the boldness of youth proceeded to assail the Scrip-
tures, which had hitherto been the comer-stone of faith, had an
explanation ready for every sort of difficulty presented by the
sacred writings. All those parts, not only of Christology, but
also of the doctrinal system of the Church in general, which it
did not approve, it exj)lained away by referring them to accom-
modation or to ideas of the age, or by rejecting the passages of
Scripture which contained them as spurious. Semler's merits
as a theologian should not, indeed, be so slightly estimated as
they frequently are in the present day ; for, whatever confusion
and shapelessness characterized his own ideas, he had clearness
enouffh to discern and bring light into the confusion of the
Church's doctrinal positions — positions which had passed over
into the region of the unintelligible. He in particular, by his
works, revivified the no less indispensable, critical aspect of
Protestantism. The effect of his labours on theology, however,
— labours on which he expended great learning, — was in the first
in.stance only a destructive one : still he preserved his own
" private faith" through all the critical processes to which it was
exposed. The newly awakened freer spirit of historical investi-
gation applied itself also with special zeal to the history of the
doctrine of the Person of Christ, and found much new light of
which there had been no presentiment : but its determinations
were traced for the most part to a purely external, accidental
origin. The fact of the development or logical view of the dogma
having been a gradual work, was held to be an infallible proof
of its being a purely human and worthless thing. The work
of Souverain on the Platonism of the Fathers of the Church,
translated by Loffler, had, in particular, the effect of causing
the doctrine of the Trinity to be looked upon as an exotic plant.
Gruner specially took up this point of view, in relation to the
.so-called mysteries of the Christian faith. Others sought to
trace back the doctrine of the Trinity to a post-Babylonian,
Jewish philosophy of religion ; the doctrine of the Son of God,
to the misunderstood Orientalism of the Old and New Testament.
(Note 4.)
As about this time also the influence of the French and
Engli.sh freethinkers began to be felt ever more strongly in
Germany, the j)hilosophy of Wolf gradually lost itself in the
SKMLEK. 27
sands of popularization, and gave place to a Deism and Fatalism
which it had itself aided in producing by its purely logical and
formal tendency, and which naturally passed over into Mate-
rialism and Eudsemonism. Accordingly, this idealess age, shut
up as it was within the circles of finitude and of bald utilitarian
theories, necessarily became evermore alienated from the doctrine
of the Person of Christ ; the doctrine of the incarnation of God
inevitably became to it a stone of stumbling and a rock of
offence. In quick succession was extinguished, for the con-
sciousness of a carnalized age, one ray after another of the
glory with which the pious faith of the Fathers had seen the
incarnate Son of God surrounded; and there was no more
stoppiiig, till the measure of His humiliation was full.
To rest in the Subordinatianism which still hung, by the
weak thread of a higher pre-existent hypostasis dwelling in
Jesus, to the Church idea of the Son of God, was an impossi-
bility : it excluded the true humanity, about which the present
epoch was above all concerned, still more decidedly than the
doctrine of the Church itself, because, according to Arianism, if
the humanity of Jesus is to be conceived as complete, two finite
personalities must have formed one person. But as the concep-
tions formed of the work of redemption by the theologians of
that time did not at all necessitate or urge the positing of any-
thing so monstrous as Arianism posits, in assuming the descent
of an heavenly creature into a man ; and as, on the contrary, a
work, whose essential feature was doctrine (and such was the
kind of work ascribed to Christ), could also have been performeu
by a man whom God had endowed with special powers, the
divinity still attributed to Christ was reduced to the rank of a
communicated divine power, and the doctrine of Paul of
Samosata was thus once more resuscitated. This expresses
itself in the great interest with which the Socinian Christologv
— a Christology once repudiated by the teachers of the Church
with horror — began to be treated : by many, in fact, it was now
adopted,^ with the sole difference, that the remains of Super-
naturalism, phantastically retained by Socinianism, were more
consistently cast aside. — Thus, in their retrograde movement,
tiieologians consistently arrived again at the very Ebionism with
' For example, by von Basedow, Bahrdt, and Steinbart. Oelrichs and
Zio^lor made their contemporaries more accurately acquainted ther<!with.
28 SECOND PERfOD. THIRD EPOCH.
whose vanquishment the development of the dogma had taken
its start. The few who still clung to the deity of Christ,
either did so without the previous assurance and decision, and
as it were on the flight ; or, if they held it with greater deci-
sion, like the Tiihingen school, found themselves unable to force
back the tide.^ This was further aided in particular by the
rise of the so-called practical dogmatics, to which the more
believing theologians, who still remained, contributed their
part. The importance and truth of dogmas were measured
by their practical significance ;^ all purely speculative ele-
ments were described as non-essential. This dislocation of
the dogmatical organism, inspired as it was by the utilitarian
spirit of the age, gave to knowledge a perverse position.
Whilst, in point of fact, truth alone can fix for man his
true practical goal, the matter was now turned upside down:
the practical, action, was treated as that which first stands
fast, as the point of departure ; as though it were certain of
itself how we are to act, and what we are to accomplish by
our action. Christianity was now, accordingly, dominated by
this professedly practical tendency. Whatever would not ac-
commodate itself to this idea of the practical, — an idea formed
entirely a priori, and not under the influence of the truth, of
Christianity, — was thrown aside as unpractical. But this
tendency, with its hostility to the speculative elements of
Christianity — an hostility concealed under a beautiful, deceptive
name — inflicted a severe blow on Christian piety. The prac-
tical, not being integrated by the doctrinal, was an external,
finite thing, and became consequently unpractical. Many a
point which forms a constitutive element of the Christian con-
sciousness, was thus treated as non-essential, on the ground of its
being unpractical ; and, in particular, essential portions of Chris-
tology, and of that which is connected with it, were set aside.^
In this manner did even some more earnest theologians play
into the hands of the shallowness and superficiality of the age.
1 Besides Flatt, see Storr's " Doctrinse Christiaiiae pars theoretica,"
1793.
2 To this connection belong Less, Jerusalem, Spalding, Amnron, Miller.
3 Thus Spalding, in his " Nutzbarkeit dos Predigtamtes," speaks of the
doctrines of the two natures in Christ, of the Trinity, of the atonement, of
original sin, as unpractical and inapplicable to the pulpit.
PRACTICAL THEOLOGY. 29
As we have already seen, the heralds and heroes of Illumin-
Isra naturally went much further ; and as the theologians, m
consequence of the approximation of their point of view to the
Pelagianisni of the age, were unable to give satisfactory replies
to the question, as to the necessity of a divine revelation such as
faith beholds in Christ, nothing could be more natural than for
the subjective mind, which had ceased to accept anything without
previous proof, to go on to deny altogether the existence of a
divine revelation in Christ. The idea of the redemption from
the power of the flesh, promised by Christianity, naturally
presented itself to the Eudgemonism of the age as a less desirable
doctrine, as a doctrine that can be dispensed with : the doctrine
of a supernatural interference of God in the case of the Person
of Christ, necessarily seemed to it destitute of foundation ; and,
even apart from the representation given of this revelation by
the Supranaturalists, — a representation unscientific and destitute
of logical connection, — it appeared worthy of repudiation to this
age, because, having lost all sense for the ideal, whatever par-
took of such a nature was foreign to it.^ So completely had
the organ for the apprehension even only of the grandeur of
tlie human in Christ been lost, that they were unable to
imderstand and explain His thought of establishing a kingdom
oti earth, save by imputing motives drawn from that common
finite sphere, which had now come to be regarded as the only
actuality.^ A much more significant step backwards was thus
taken than in the age of Ebionitism. The spotless character of
the Redeemer was assailed: as once before the high priests,
so now before the bar of " Reason," Pie was charged with ambi-
tion, lust of })ower, dishonesty ; and as then, so also now, found
guilty. But now was the cycle completed ; the Person of
C'hrist had now afresh, in the consciousness of the human mind,
run through the same stages of humiliation that had fallen to
its lot in life. After Reason had accomplished its work of
effacing all higher glory from the image of the Redeemer, it
seated itself on the throne which the faith of the Church had
assigned to Christ as King, and placed the degraded one in
the circle of sinners, to the end that it might pronounce over
ai2;ain His sentence of condemnation. Ajxain, however, was the
' For the litorature of this subject, see Reinhard's Epit. p 120 If.
* ISee the AVolfeiibiittlor Fragtnentist ; Ventiirini and othei>*.
30 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH
way of humiliation to prove for Him a way to still greater
exaltation and glory. His death, in the consciousness of hu-
manity, was destined to be followed by an all the more glorious
resurrection. And after a short period of rest, during which
the mind meditated and repented in stillness the crime it had
committed, this resurrection was accomplished.
CHAPTER SECOND.
THE KANTIAN PERIOD.
Through the heaven of these frivolous and superficial thinkers,
who, being destitute of feeling for that which is lofty, could find
no other way of dealing with it than either annihilating or drag-
ging it into the dust ; who, blind to the true light, and intoxi-
cated with the fancy of enlightenment, pronounced judgment on
the profoundest questions which had stirred and enriched the
human mind for thousands of years, with a conceit characteris-
tic of the adherents of a hollow pretence of philosophy, there
darted suddenly and unexpectedly, like a flash of lightning in
an unclouded sky, Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason." It cast
down those dreams of wisdom as by the rush of a storm ; if
began to execute on Reason itself the judgment which Reason
had executed on Christianity. By appealing to the moral con-
sciousness, to which Kant gave expression in its full power and
inner truth with a kind of religious enthusiasm, he overthrew
the eudaemonistic tendency, which was so completely hostile to
Christianity, and aroused the human mind to such a flight that
the world was revived from its intellectual paralysis, and an
age destitute of sympathy with the ideal was again laid hold
on by its power. The newly awakening susceptibility to the
ideal was necessarily accompanied by a I'evival of susceptibility
to the centre of all that is ideal in humanity, to wit, the
Redeemer.
A philosophy of so earnest a tone could not but respect the
moral earnestness of Christianity, and must be far removed
from the frivolity of regarding it as mere superstition, or as
KANT.
31
an empty spiritless husk. This was soon perceived by the
theologians ; and tliey hastened accordingly to apply for the
behoof of the Chm-ch's doctrinal system, that aspect of Kant-
ianism which was favom'able to Christianity.
The attempts at concihation, however, pursued the following
course. We have seen that the fundamental characteristic of
this entire period was, that the subjective mind refused to be-
lieve on the mere external authority of a revelation, that it
wished to be convinced of the necessity of the doctrines pre-
sented by revelation, in the way of demonstration. Meanwhile,
the mind had been still more strongly confirmed in its sub-
jective tendency ; and as the idea of moral good had already
opened up to it a full fountain, the waters of which streamed
forth from its own inner being, it advanced so far in its self-
confidence as to refuse altogether to recognise anything objec-
tive as authoritative, save such as it was necessarily led to tlie
recognition of by thought itself. The attempts at mediation
between Christianity and philosophy were necessarily based on
the preliminary question, as to the possibility and necessity of a
divine revelation at all for moral ends. Then came the time of
" Critiques of all Revelation,"^ or of the " Religion of ^ Chris-
tianity," and of the " Review of the Protestant System."^ The
result arrived at was :— An external, immediate revelation, an in-
terference on the part of God, maybe expected when it is rendered
imperative by the highest aim of the world, morality ; to ad-
vance which by all moral means, belongs essentially to the nature
of God. Now such a case occurs when the moral decay of
humanity has gone so far that it neither knows nor is able,
by itself, any longer to j)ractise the pure moral law. It was
necessary, therefore, to show that, at the time when Jesus made
His appearance, the moral decay of humanity had reached this
stao-e. To prove this historically was difficult, especially for
tho'se who started with Kantian principles ; and even if it
succeeded, the necessity of Christ for all ages— for example, for
the present age— was not shown. And though Tieftrunk, in his
"Censur des protestantischen Lehrbegriffs," retains also the
miracles of Christ, the existence of a God-man was by no
means shown to be a necessity. For, on the contrary, that which
1 Fichte, 1791, " Kritik aller Offeubarung."
n'ieflruiik, 1790, 1791, " Censur dos protestautischou Lehrbegriffs."
32 SIXOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH
doctrine and example were supj)osed to effect for the raising of
men from moral decay, could quite as well have been accom-
plished by a wise and holy man.
Kant himself now gave the matter a different turn.^ Our
first duty here is to take note of the preliminary question re-
specting the possibility or necessity of a revelation at all ; for
in it is involved, only in an abstract manner, the question as to
the necessity of the revelation in Christ ; nay more, the con-
ception to be formed of the Person of Christ itself is entirely
dependent on this preliminary inquiry. Kant's course of
reasoning is as follows : —
I. In proof of the possibiUtij and necessity of a revelation at
all, he lays down, —
1. A deeper foundation in his doctrine of radical evil ; by
which he understood, not sensuality in itself, but the subor-
dination of the moral law to sensuality. In his view, this
subordination is not merely momentary and isolated, but the
evil has struck its roots into man ; not, indeed, as an inherited
disorder, as inherited guilt or as inherited sin, — that is, not
after a medical, juridical, or theological manner, — for otherwise
it would not be moral evil. He designates it radical, because it
shows itself as active prior to any actual employment of freedom
whatever : it is, consequently, not first acquired in time, by any
arbitrary act in time ; and yet it contains a bias to evil, which
is itself the root of all particular evil maxims and actions, be-
cause it corrupts the ground out of wliieh all maxims flow. This
tendency must have its ground in freedom ; otherwise it could
not be called morally evil ; but because the gi'ound does not
lie in any temporal act, it points to a free, intelligible (intelli-
gil)ilis) deed, by which the sujn-eme maxim, the root of all
others, was perverted.
2. But so certainly as this radical evil has become a power
in the entire race, even so certainly must it be again over-
come, and a radical restoration be effected by reversing the pre-
vious reversion of principles. Though the origin of good and
evil is alike inconqn-ehensible, we are still able to give to the
question — " How was such a reversal possible?" — the answer,
We can conceive it to be possible that the evil should be over-
' " Religion inncrhalb der Grenzen dcr blossen Veniunft" (" Religion
vithin the limits of mere reiison"), 1792.
KANT. 33
come by the good ; nay more, we can conceive it to be necessary ;
for this is involved in the absolute requirement of the moral
law, — "Thou shalt!" — therefore thou canst. But as radical
evil is only intelligible on the supposition of freedom, so also
the restoration. Self-improvement is a duty ; to wait for divine
help is idleness, immorality.
3. But this restoration is mediated through three momenta.
(1.) Through the idea of a God-pleasing, that is, perfect,
moral, and therefore blessed, humanity. By means of that idea,
man becomes conscious of his original capacity, destination
and perfection ; and when taken up amongst the maxims, it
works sanctifyingly, if only gradually. It is the duty of every
man to rise up to it, to believe in its attainableness, to trust in
its power, a. Empirically, indeed, its attainableness is neither
cognizable, nor, perhaps, perfectly possible. But if the good
principle have only been implanted in man, as its realization,
though only gradual, lies before the eye of God as a grand
unity, man is pleasing to Him on the ground of this same prin-
ciple. The defects in the manifestation of the principle dis-
appear on a view of the whole, h. Nor ought we to allow
ourselves to be disturbed by a fear lest the new moral temper
and disposition should prove not lasting ; for, by the exercise of
the good, its power and our confidence in the might of its idea
are increased. Furthermore, man does not at all need to be
made certain of the unalterableness of his good disposition ; it
would be rather injurious than not. c. As far as concerns
past sins, the consciousness of whose ill deserts might disturb
the joy of the new life, it must be borne in mind, that by his
change, man takes upon himself many sufferings and much
self-denial. These sufferings do not, strictly speaking, pertain
to him as a new creature ; but as he notwithstanding endures
them, we may regard them as sufferings substitutionarily borne
by the new man for the old, and may deem the divine jus-
tice and holiness to be by this means satisfied. We need scarcely
mention that, in this manner, all the methods of proving the
necessity of the Person of Christ from the fact of the need felt
by every individual man, hitherto attempted, were rendered
invalid. In this aspect, all that remained was a conditional
necessity of revelation, — to wit, its necessity, on the supposition
that the decay of luunanity should reach the point to which his
r. 2. — VOL. III. c
34 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD El'OCH.
followers refer. This course, however, he does not take so
directly, but seeks to effect the transition to Christianity in a
deeper manner, to wit, by means of the idea of the kingdom
of God.
(2.) The second momentum in the radical restoration of
humanity is, in his view, the idea and necessity of an ethical
community. Only in this form could he regard morality as
perfectly realized and realizable. Apart from the form of a
community, every one would be ethically in the condition of
nature, for every one would be giving law to himself ; a con-
flict and contradiction of the principles of virtue would thus
arise, and immorality be the result. This subjective state of
universal autonomy must therefore be quitted ; the highest
moral law must become the one universal principle.
Now, the founding of this ethical State can only be under-
taken by men through religion ; for one collective will must
hold all the individuals together in it, in that all submit them-
selves to the same. And this collective will must not be a
foreign will, but the moral will of all the individuals, — that is,
the will of the universal moral law, or of a lawgiver to whom
all are absolutely subject. To believe in such a lawgiver is
duty ; for without this faith, to believe in the perfection of the
moral community would be impossible. A point of transition
to religion is thus secured. The ethical State is at the same
time a Church : in the first instance, however, merely an ideal
one ; for this community cannot be based on anything external.
The pure and absolutely valid faith of reason is its law and
goal : its foundation is the unconditional authority of reason,
bearing in itself the moral idea : and marks of this ideal Church
are, freedom, unity, universality, purity, and unchangeableness.
(3.) But this pure, ideal Church, if it is to become a
reality, must necessarily in the first instance assume a statutory
shape. In order to its entrance into the world of manifesta-
tion, the idea must assume a sensuous form. The permanent
union of men into an universal visible Church presupposes a
fact, a founder ; owing to the peculiar nature of man, the re-
ligion of reason by itself is unable to effect an imion. It is
men's universal tendency to seek a sensuous confirmation for
the truths of reason ; and this renders it necessary to assume
tliat the true reliirion of reason will be introduced in an out-
KANT. 35
ward way. Without the assumption of a reveh\tion, men
would have no confidence in their reason, even though it should
give utterance to the same truths as revelation. Further, it is
so hard to bring men to the conviction that pure moral con-
duct is the only true worship of God ; they constantly try to
make it easier by a spurious worship. Still further are they
from beinfT able to found an ethical communitv, without bein<j
impelled thereto by faith in an higher authority. Although,
therefore, on the one hand, the ideal Church is contaminated
and reduced to something statutory, by its realization being
made dependent on historical and empirical conditions; although
its character of freedom, thus suffers, inasmuch as man is di-
rected to look to a binding history, instead of to his own spirit ;
its character of iiniversalitii also, because what is historical can
only have a particular validity, t< wit, for those to whom it
comes and who can test it ; its character of unity, because every
historical Clurrch faith splits up into many forms ; its character
of purihi, because every Church brings Avith it a forni of wor-
ship, and witli every form of worship are mixed up the impure
motives of fear and hope, — in other words, a court service is
rendered, instead of absolute respect for the moral law ; finally,
its character of imviKtabiUti/, because everything empirical is
subject to change ; — nevertheless, if even only the beginnings
of a moral union are to be brought to pass, regard must be had
to the needs of weak nature — statutes must be prescribed as
divine, in order that bv them, as a vehicle of the relimon of
reason, man may be strengthened both in himself and for the
labour of founding an ethical commonwealth.^
II. But now with regard to the relation of this theory to
Christianity in cjeneral, and to the doctrine of the Person of
Christ in particular, — according to the principles just set forth,
it assumes the following shape.
Neither for atonement, nor for sanctification and blessedness,
^ Of au actual revelation of God there can be no word in connection
with Kant, but merely of a religious faith. Similarly to Kant, going back,
however, to God, C. L. Nitzsch, in liis " De revelatione relig. externa
eademque publica," has combined " liationalisra of substance with Super-
naturalism of form." Compare C. J. Nitzsch's '" System der christliclien
I,ehre." The Kantian Stapfer proceeded more christologically, after the
manner of Lactantius, arguing from the necessity of the realization of tho
moral ideal. Schiieckeiiburirer has rccalli^d liini to rocalleotion.
36 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
in himself does man need external help and authority : but fc r
the founding of an ethical commonwealth faith in an externa'
revelation is necessary ; and such an external revelation may
accordingly become a means of preparing the way for the true
relicion of reason. Wliether Christianity discharges the func-
tion of a good vehicle of the religion of reason, depends on its
having a pure moral spirit. As to this matter, it depends above
all on the person of the founder. According to His character
and doctrine, His design was to estabU.sh a pure virtue and a
kingdom thereof, a kingdom of God on earth. So far,
therefore, it must be allowed that faith in Him does not con-
taminate pure morality, but that He is fitted to be the founder
of that statutory Church which we have above shown to be
necessarv. If, however, we ask after the actual, historical
essence of this person, we only arrive at a negative result ;
and, indeed, it is of no consequence to practical religion whether
our knowledge is widened so as to embrace this matter, or not.
As an historical, empirical being, he cannot be allowed to have
any authority. The historical features of Christ may be neces-
sary, in order to enable us to represent to ourselves the idea of
a humanity well-pleasing to God ; for we can only do this by
the aid of the thought of a man who proved his morality in
the midst of the sternest conflicts. In order that supra-
sensuous qualities, like the idea of the good, may become con-
cretelv intuible by us, we require an analog}' with natural
beings ; and we are unable to conceive of any moral worth of
importance without representing to ourselves the moral actions
in a human manner, without giving them dramatic shape.
The worth of this, however, can only consist in its purifying
the moral conceptions which already lie in us : to stamp this
schematism of the imagination as a widening of our expe-
rience, and because of this necessary character (or Unart)
of our thinking, to attemj)t to persuade ourselves that tlie
moral idea must needs be actually, objectively, and historically
realized, at the point from which Ave take our departure in
Iramatizing it, would be anthropomorphism. The appearance
in history of a sinless being is indeed a possibility; but, at
any rate, it would be unnecessary to hold him to have been
supernaturally generated, even though we nn"ght not be able
ajjsolutely to demonstrate its impossibility. But as the arche-
KANT. 87
type of a God-pleasing humanity is already contained in us, in
an incomprehensible mannei', what need is there for further
incomprehensibilities ? Nay more, to exalt such a saint above
all the frailty of human nature by representing his birth as
supernatural, would only detract from his archetypal charac-
ter ; for inasmuch as his virtue would then be inborn, and not
wrought out by himself, so great a distance would be put
between him and us, that he would be no proof of the pos-
sibility of our realizing the ideal. — Even if the great teacher,
who is held to serve as an example for the consciousness of
humanity, did not completely correspond to the ideal. He
might still have spoken of Himself, as though the ideal of the
good were corporeally and veritably set forth in Him : He
would then, namely, have referred to the disposition which He
had constituted His fundamental maxim. No less would He
then be able to accomplish that which He had to accomplish.
Even the introduction of the pure religion of reason does not
absolutely require that the founder of the ethical divine State
on earth should be entirely sinless.
The moral idea had not first to derive its reahty and obli-
gatory force from Him ; it bore this reality and force com-
pletely in itself, as an outflow of the moral, legislative reason.
Even though there should never have existed an absolutely
moral being, the idea would still equally possess objective
reality. Nothing historical, nothing empirical, can by itself
have obligatory force for us as example or doctrine. The his-
torical owes its binding force to the reason. For does not the
mind estimate the value of a professedly sinless being by an
mner standard?
Nay more, he goes still further. An external revelation,
which, as such, always leads to believing on authority, must
again disappear, even though faith in it were necessary at first
as a vehicle of the true religion of reason. Pure morality it is
not able to produce. It is rather punishable moral unbelief
to refuse to allow authority to the commands written in the
heart till they have been outwardly accredited. The only
value that can attach to a revelation is to lead men by the
path of authority to (conscious, free morality. A free morality
once arrived at, this historical crutch is no longer neces-
sary; nay xiion?, to retain it then would be a sin. To that
38 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH
radical restoration, ^vhich requires that the idea condescend
to assume the form of a statutory Churcli faith, it is essen-
tial that the idea should clothe itself in this husk, solely to
thQ end that the pure faith of reason might ripen to full
vigour, afterwards to lay aside its husk in order that the
pure moral religion may take its place, and be sustained by
nothing but itself. The process of purifying the idea of tlie
kingdom of God, which had entered into a state of humilia-
tion,— that is, had embodied itself in the form of a statutory
Church, — he did not wish to bring about in a revolutionary
manner. But it is the duty and task of the statutory Church,
if it is to have any right to exist at all, ever more and more to
cast aside the statutory elements, and thus to labour at its own
destruction. The time must necessarily come when religion
will be gradually freed from all determining grounds of an
empirical nature, from all statutes which are based on history,
and which provisionally unite men for the furtherance of the
good, by means of the faith of the Church, in order that pure
reason may at last reign universally, and God be all in all.
It is the duty of the wise man, whilst not prematurely with-
drawing from the multitude the supports which are indispen-
sable to it, to perceive that faith in the Son is only faith in one-
self, that humanity, so far as it is moral, is the well-beloved Son
of God; because it is only in virtue of this idea of humanity that
it could be the end of God in creating. This idea of humanity
proceeds from God's essence, is from eternity in Him. In so
far, therefore, it is not a created thing, but His only-begotten
Son, the Word, through which all things exist. Inasmuch as
it is not our mind that takes possession of this idea, but this
idea which takes possession of our mind, we, who do not under-
stand even our susceptibility thereto, can say that the arche-
type has descended from heaven on us, and has condescend-
ingly taken humanity upon itself. The Christ out of us and
Christ in us are not two principles, but one. To make faith in
the historical a])pearance of this idea of humanity in Christ a
condition of salvation, would be to set up two principles, an
empirical and a rational one. The latter, however, would
entirely lack true substance. For what have we from the
empirical without the rational, or that we have not already in
the rational ? The true God-man, therefore, cannot be that part
KA>JT. 39
of Him which falls under tlie notice of the senses, and which
can be known in the way of experience, but is the archetype
lying in our reason. This archetype we attribute to the histori-
cal Christ, because, so far as we can judge from His example,
He corresponds to the ideal of reason. This archetype is the
object of saving faith ; but such a faith is identical with the
principle of a God-pleasing walk and conversation.
As far now as concerns the judgment of this theory, one
might suppose that, strictly viewed, it effected nothing at all
for Christology; that, on the contrary', it shut out the possi
bility of a doctrine of the Person of Christ. Whatever relates
to the historical Christ, Kant leaves unconsidered ; nay more,
by reducing the historical element in Him to a dead mass, he
makes it altogether questionable, and is unable to give the
dogma of the Person of Christ any other than a symbolical
meaning. It would be unfair, however, to judge him merely
by what he has not accomplished. For the deity of Christ had
been given up by the wise of his century long before him ; he
added nothing thereto ; he rather confined the zeal of the de-
molishers within its proper limits, and showed how the despised
doctrine had more ideal substance than all the wisdom of the
age ; instead of attacking the old faith by storm, he endeavoured
to effect a conciliation with it. His deserts in connection with
the present doctrine are of the following nature.
By giving prominence to the idea of the morally good, he
brought his age again to the recognition of an absolute spiritual
power. On the ground of this idea, he entered into a friendlv
relation to Christianity ; for he looked upon it as the element
common to reason and to a Christianity which properly under-
stands itself. With Kant, therefore, the stormy attacks on
Christology ceased, and a tendency to seek a reconciliation
with it was initiated, although, it is true, scarcely the beginning
of an actual reconciliation had as yet been effected. Further,
in one aspect, his sj-stem was very favourable to a happy de-
velopment of Christology; to wit, that whereas hitherto the
divine had been regarded as something completely supernatural,
he maintained that something dwelt in man himself, or was, at
all events, destined for his essence, and connected therewith,
which possesses an absolute value : thus also did he prepare the
way for conceiv'ng the human, as no longer separated from the
40 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
divine, in Christ, and for passing from the human to vindicate
to Him also the divine.
The third respect, however, in which this system of philo-
sophy was a pioneer to Christology was, that it first set most
clearly before the mind the task of recognising no authority in
the sphere of spirit so long as it was, and purposed to remain, a
merely external thing ; of refusing to attach worth in itself to
any history, be it regarded as ever so holy, unless it be able and
willing to become also an inner fact, unless it be appropriated
either through the discovery of its necessity, by thought or by
the life. The dogma of the Person of Christ, in particular, had
become an object of such indifference, strangeness, nay more,
hatred to the mind, in consequence of having been treated too
much as a mere past history, and not sufficiently as an eternal
history, as an eternal necessity, and as essentially connected with
the life of the spirit itself. Kant took a profound view of the
bondage that results from making a dogma of something merely
historical, that is, of something which is only accredited by
external testimony. He saw clearly that mind neither can nor
may be bound by anything holding a purely external relation
to it : if the history of Jesus be merely a series of events that
has once happened, and be not informed by an eternal idea
which comes to light therein, it is a purely external, isolated
thing, to constitute which a dogma binding for faith, life,
thought, is something totally inappropriate to mind. If a histoiy
is to be binding on the mind, it can only be so in virtue of the
idea which has historically manifested itself therein. This idea
binds the mind, because it either now is, or must one day be-
come, an idea of the mind itself in the course of its develop-
ment. In that it is bound by the idea, it binds itself; that
is, it obeys simply the inner necessity of mind and of the
matter itself, in recoo;nisin;j both the idea and the historical
manifestation required by the idea. We have seen above that
this effort to realize the outward as something inward, to see in
what is strange something distinctively our own, to recogni.se
no authority in the spiritual sphere save that of the truth, which
has the power of proving itself to the mind (and in that very
way to give authority, for the first time, its full vigour and
truth), constitutes the peculiar strength and glory of Protestant-
ism. In this serious direction Kant took a great step ; for he
KANT. 41
classed the effort to become inwardly independent of any autho-
rity purely external, under the category of moral duty. The sub-
jective mind now takes its stand as a free-born power, justified,
nay more, bound by the nobility of its nature, to obey only a
spiritual authority, which, as such, either already is, or is des-
tined to become, a determination of its own inner being. This
right of the subject over against anything merely external or
objective, had indeed actually been exercised before Kant's
time, but capriciously, as a mere assumption ; not as n duty,
but rather without the recognition of that absolute idea,
which holds a place above the subject with its uncertainty
and arbitrariness. Kant's subjectivity, on the contraiy, aimed
at setting up as an inner standard, as an objective autho-
rity, the absolute power of the moral law, which is to be
recognised by all rational beings. To thought was thus given
the tendency no longer to regard the Person of Christ as an
absolute miracle, which, because absolute, is foreifin to the
mind, but to render the divine appearance of the Saviour more
intelligible to the human spirit.
But alongside of these light sides of his system, we must
rot overlook the defects which cleave to it, so far as it has any-
thing to do with Christology.
I. He extended the power of subjectivity over objectivity
very far, and continued to recognise the moral law, on which
he built his Christological views, solely because it is not some-
thing external, but an outflow of the self-legislation of the
reason. He did not, however, carry subjectivity through to its
full logical extent. For is not the moral law also, in the first in-
stance, simply something which we find already existing in our
inner being, a spiritually empirical thing ? its absolute authority
is not something which we properly know, but something imme-
diate, resting primarily on our feeling of the claims which it
makes. Now, as good a right as Kant had to put everything in
Christianity of an outwardly objective character to the test,
and to estimate its value by its relation to the individual sub-
ject, even so truly was it his duty to put this inner history (to
wit, the appearance of an idea in consciousness requiring abso-
lute obedience) and its authority to the test. Instead of which,
he suddenly brought his critical process to a halt, and allowed
it to blunt its sharpness on the categorical imperative. The
42 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD ErOCII.
absolute moral law, which, on the one liand, appears as an
rnrichment accruing to the subjective intellect from entering
into an examination of itself, appears, on the other hand, as
an authority not yet proved to the same subject, consequently
as a remainder of objectivity, borrowed from history, even
though that history may be an inner one. And to have pur-
sued the path of subjectivity to the end, would have involved
the criticism of this, as yet, non-justified portion of the wealth
of the subject. If this be the case with the groundwork of
Kant's Christology, be it as fully or as little successful in itself
as it may, its real character is that of a mere postulate.
II. But apart even from the uncertainty of its foundation,
it harmonizes neither with itself nor with Christianity.
1. Not loith itself. — (1.) To the ideal of man he attributes
absolutely binding power and absolute evidence through itself.
This ideal, says he, is the archetype in the universal reason of
man, which bears within itself the power of sanctifying. What,
then, remains for the historical person of the God-man? His
mission was not to implant the ideal, nor to inspire the convic-
tion of its absolutely obligatory power, but solely to serve as an
example. In order that the moral union may be established,
and the merely natural ethical condition cease, His autho-
rity must be regarded as divine, as an authority collecting all
\inder one will. But if the archetype is universally contained
in reason, and possesses sanctifying power in and through itself,
that which Christ uttered, little as it was, would yet appear to
have been too much. To what purpose, then, a founder of
the union who was either actually, or merely supposedly, sin-
less? If the idea by itself and alone has the power of improv-
ing, if the law can make alive, there is no need at all for
faith in an historical, sinless person.
(2.) Much less are we able to understand how an union
based on statutory determinations, that is, on determinations pro-
perly contradictory of the pure principles of reason, can lead to
pure morality, and thus the faith in a founder of the Church,
like Christ, be necessary. For inasmuch as an obedience to
merely statutor}', external commands would be a dependence on
impure motives, a disobedience and a punishable lack of faith
in the absolutely imperative and the absolutely warranted inner
authoi-ity of tlie j)ractical reason, Kant was logically compelled,
KANT, 43
either to say that moral faith must be brought about by a
punishable, moral unbelief, obedience by disobedience; or to
cease affirming the necessity of a Church, with an historical
founder possessed of divine authority.
(3.) He is altogether still involved in an abstract dualism.
On the one hand, he says, reason legislates for itself, and it is
its duty to obey only itself; and yet, on the other hand, he
constantly goes back to the thought of a God, who lends the
moral law its absolute worth because it is His will. From his
abstract point of view, God wears to him the aspect of a stranger,
as is particularly clear from his doctrine of the operations of
grace ; the aspect of one whose activity in the human mind
threatens freedom with destruction. But the good ought not
to be wrought out of regard to a foreign authority. And yet
this foreign will is, on the other hand, to be recognised as the
standard. The relation between these two absolute wills, the
divine and the human, f^d how they can be one, when accord-
ing to his principles they are two — he has not shown. It is
true, however, a decision was, strictly speaking, arrived at in
favour of the sole dominion of subjectivity, when he postulated
the idea of God solely for the sake of helping himself out of a
difficulty. The objective appeared to him to stand in so ex-
treme and abstract an antagonism to the subjective, that it was
impossible for justice to be done to both, and that the subject
looked upon every species of objectivity, even though entirely
impregnated by the moral idea, or the personal manifestation
thereof, a sa power hostile to, and restrictive of, its own freedom.
For this reason, although he was disposed to recognise in Chris-
tianity the pure religion of reason, and, at all events sceptically,
left the possibility of the religion of reason having been actually
realized in Christ an open question, he did not know what to
do with such an objectivity. For he would not allow it to be
possible that mind should recognise and submit to something
objective, on the ground tliat in so doing, it was really entering
into connection simply with itself, with its own true essence,
and with its destniy. This neces>'arily drove him on to the
denial of everytiung objective ; and attempts to enter again
into connection therewith were solely the fruits of inconsist-
ency.
2. Here, however, we are led on to consider the contlict of
44 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
this theory with Christianiti/, and in particular with the doc-
tiine of the person of Christ.
(1.) Religion is, in his view, simply morals. Every motive
drawn from religion con*upts the moral consciousness by hetero-
nomy, and causes man to do the good, not for its own sake, but
out of regard to a foreign authority, God, therefore, on Kant's
principles, is a being foreign to man. (Note 5.) MoraUty and
the moral law are not based on the idea of God, but the latter
on the former. Nevertheless, the subjective mind attributes to
its moral law, of itself and without criticism, an absolute value.
We can see clearly enough, even at this point, that this perver-^
sion of ideas, this apotheosis of the moral subject, must revenge
itself in the discerption of morality, as merely subjective, into
something accidental, and into an arbitrary product of empirical
subjectivity. Kant himself, indeed, did not take this step ; but
he not only failed to bring the ideal subjectivity, to which he
still clung, and by means of which he secured for the moral
law a semblance of objectivity, into true connection with God,
but also to show that the requirement made by the ideal sub-
jectivity is the requirement made by God, by the universal
reason itself. He remained standing by human reason, as he
found it ; and by attributing to it the absolute legislative power,
which beloncps alone to the absolutelv universal reason, he
undermined the objectivity of his moral law, and completely
shut himself out from the possibility of ascribing to Him, in
whom God became man, and out of whom, therefore, the uni-
versal reason itself speaks, any virtue binding on the individual
reason. Furthermore, as he deems God to stand outside of the
spirit of man as a stranger, a vital union between God and
humanity, such as was effected in Christ, necessarily appeared
to him an impossibility. This leads to the consideration of the
point of chief importance.
(2.) The Pelagianism of the system. Every sort of connec-
tion between the divine life and the human was cut off for him.
Divine influences on the life of the human spirit appear to him
to be magical, and destructive of the idea of morality — to be a
lowering of the ethical to the sphere of the mechanical. And
although, on the one hand, he said, — the good is the divine will,
he did not, as we have seen, cling so firmly to it as in any way
to grant that if God implant His life, His will, in a being, this
KANT. 45
life, because divine, is also good. On the otlier hand, however,
he always represents the good as only good when and because
man works it solely by his own power. In fact, where God and
man are made to occupy so abstract and reciprocally limiting
a position, relatively to each other, their intercourse cannot be
more than a mechanical action upon each other ; they cannot
be properly said to interpenetrate each other : and against such
a view the spirit, in defence of its subjectivity and freedom,
justly protests.
But if the possibility of the influences of grace is shut out,
so also is the person of a Redeemer naturally excluded. rAnd
if His activity in the kingdom of free spirits involves an inner
contradiction, the Person of the God-man Himself also involves
the same contradiction, only in its acutest form ; so far as those
impossible influences of the divine life upon the human are
raised in Him to their highest degree, to the degree of the per-
sonal indwelling of God in a man. The utmost he does is
to affirm for Him the dignity of the founder of a statutory
Church, and of having set an example of sinlessness — be the
sinlessness actual, or have it an existence solely in the faith of
tlie multitude ; — a dignity, however, which He only enjoyed
temporarily and for the purpose of leading all to autonomy,
that is, of making Himself dispensable.
The reverse aspect of this matter is, that man is his own
redeemer. Man is reconciled by sanctification ; but he must
make himself holy. The holiness or the sanctifying power of
another cannot help us. Christ's active obedience can no more
profit us, than His sufferings can free us from the consciousness
of punishment ; for He is another than we. He is a stranger to
us. But there is also no need of a mediator ; man is bound to
do, he therefore can do. With this autarchy of man, indeed,
Kant's doctrine of radical evil badly harmonizes. To this evil
as an original power, as a being evil, as a corruption, he assigns
a place in the very foreground of all maxims. The moral idea,
on the contrary, is merely a shall, an ideal, not being. How,
then, is the conflict against evil, which has veritable being, to
proceed forth from man himself, in whom the good has not
veritable being? That it remains incomprehensible whence
this power of the good is to be derived, Kant himself allows ;
but he falls back on the consideration, that the shall being de-
46 SKCOND PKRIOD. THIRD KI'OCU.
dared absolutely by reason, winch has certainty in Itself, the can
must also be taken for granted. But whence does he know-
that reason does not contradict itself ? Why has he, who else-
where— for example, in connection with the theoretical reason
— did not hesitate to posit antinomies, not posited also for the
practical reason the following antinomy : — Thou shalt absolutely,
but thou canst not? In this connection, it would have been
still more unobjectionable, and would have excluded neither the
fact of the infinite worth of the spirit, nor the absoluteness of
the contents of self-consciousness ; in that, on the contrary, a
solution of the antinomy remained possible. For in the em-
pirical man, who has not the power (nicht Kijnnender), there
lies still an infinite susceptibility, by means of which it is pos-
sible for him to arrive at power (ein Konnender). Storr already
justly made the fine observation, that the can, immediately in
our own strength, does not follow from the absolute shall ; but
merely the possibility of the moral being realized in some way
or other.
III. As far as Kant was from proving the necessity of a
redeemer, so far are the grounds which he advanced to show
that He might be dispensed with, and was an impossibility, from
having demonstrative force. As the shall does not exclude the
possibility of the caji being brought to pass by divine power, —
for the radical evil assumed by Kant rather seems to postulate
such a power, — the w^ay of its being brought to pass cannot be
barred by the consideration, that what is worked by divine power
would be morally worthless, because it would not be the sole deed
of man. For if the will of God is the ijood, the higher will
worked by God must also be good, because, whilst it is the will of
God, it is also the will of man, if not of the natural, empirical,
still of the regenerate man. Quite as untenable is the position he
takes up in recognising that the moral consciousness demands the
punishment of the evil that has once been done, whilst he at the
same time supposes that the new man endures this punishment
substitutionarily for the old ; in recognising, on the one hand,
that man, so long as evil still cleaves to him, — which in his view
is always the case, because it only decreases by infinitely gradual
degrees, — cannot in himself be justified in considering himself
to be well-pleasing to God, whilst, on the other hand, he seeks
to calm himself by supposing that God, who views everything
KANT 47
in ail eternal manner, and embraces the entire series at one
fi;lance, overlooks, for the sake of the good which, as to prin-
ciple, lies in the good disposition, the defects which characterize
its manifestation ; and that this warrants man regarding himself
as good in the sight of God, even during the time of his imper-
fection. It deserves, indeed, honourable recognition, that Kant
did not treat these anthropological needs slightingly ; but he
was very much mistaken in supposing himself to have stilled
them, and to have rendered a Saviour unnecessary, by the course
which he adopted. That atoning of the guilt of the old man by
the new is a bad substitute for the perfect and free forgiveness
which is offered by Christianity; but it is also an inward impos-
sibility, because the new man also, according to Kant's own
principles, has enough to do with itself during eveiy succeeding
moment of its existence, and has to atone for itself. So that
nothing remains for him but to suppose that punishment will
not be so strictly insisted on, or, in other words, to relax from
the stringency of the moral principle. To the same lowering of
the highest principle leads also the second point. That God be-
holds the entire series of moments of time at once, cannot calm
us in relation to the present; for, after all, this infinite series
is imperfect at every single point ; nay more, inasmuch as the
attainment of perfection at all remains an uncertainty, it can-
not possibly be viewed as perfect. Accordingly, the only way to
attain to calm, would seem to be that of representing the actu-
ality of virtue, its manifestation as the non-essential, and teach-
ino- the essential to consist solely in man's being good potentid.
In this case, however, the moral ideal has fallen from its height.
Consequently, when the good will, which is after all merely the
germ out of which the actuality of virtue is to be developed,
is secured, the goal is already reached : the said germ is itself
already the perfect good ; and that not merely because the actu-
ality of good is naturally and necessarily developed out of it, but
in Itself. For, according to Kant's principles, no pledge what-
ever can be given that there will be an advancing growth in good,
mucli less that it will arrive at perfection. A relapse always
remains a possibility ; man never can and Tiever may know that
lie is reconciled with, and pleasing to, God for time and eternity.
So comfortless does this theory leave us in our deepest needs,
with regard both to the past, to the present, ami to the future.
48 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
How very different is Cliristianity ! Not merely does it
promise full peace and reconciliation through faith in the Re-
deemer, but through the same faith it gives the future to be
enjoyed as a present. The Christian knows himself to be
pleasing to God, pure, and a child of God in Christ, and thus
in a certain way anticipates future blessedness ; for in Him he
lays hold, not merely of an ideal of the practical reason, but of
a living, operative principle, which contains within itself the
pledge of future perfection. And this leads us from the posi-
tion assigned by Kant to the historical Christ, to the considera-
tion of the ideal Christ sketched by himself.
It is not the Christ in whom the Church believes ; and this
ne does not attempt to conceal from himself. But because he
is unable to find a place for the historical Christ, seeing that in
his eyes the ideal of reason alone has validity, the entire wealth
of ideas, which the Church recognised in its Christ, Avas turned
over to the ideal. Around this ideal were clustered all the dignity
and adornments which pious faith ascribes to Christ, as a sym-
bolical, deeply significant decoration. All the momenta of the
life of Christ are treated as beautiful investitures of the moral
idea, to which such an adornment was of great advantage, espe-
cially as in the system of Kant it presents itself in a very
abstract form. That idea of the morally good has a superna-
tural birth, for it comes from God; Christ's sufferings signify
that the ideal humanity can only enter into glory through suffer-
ing: it does not celebrate its resurrection till death, and so forth.
One thing is clear, that neither so far as he tries to open up
for Christ an historical position, nor so far as he considers Him
to be the idea of moral humanity, does he succeed in construct-
ing a Christology. According to the principles of Kant, the
dogma of the Person of Christ does not for the future form
part of dogmatics, seeing that the historical Christ has not the
eternal worth which can constitute Him an object of faith ; but
the doctrine of the ideal Christ forms part of the doctrine of the
divine image.
If, then, there have existed, or still exist, theologians who,
on the basis of Kant's principles,^ build up a doctrine of Christ
wiiich represents the Sage of Nazareth as great and exalted in
^ Compare Rohr's " Briefe iiber den Rationalismus " xi. ; Wegscheider'a
"IiiKtitutiones," § 123, 128.
KANT. ROHR. 49
more than one respect, to wit, in His entire spiritual incliAd-
(luality, in His intellectual and moral character, in regard to the
religious and ethical principles which He taught, in regard to
the fates and deeds which distinguished Him, and in that He
founded a moral kingdom, an institution whose purpose is to
enlighten, improve, and bless the human race ; whilst at the
same time they expressly warn us to be on our guard against
finding in Him anything more than a product of the common
causal nexus of things ; or which represents Jesus Christ as the
" interpres vera divinse voluntatis, et ipse plenus numine (rw
deloi) non sine deo talis et tantus nobis propositus est," though
again with a supplementary clause,^ to the effect that the pious
man is accustomed to trace back everything in humanity pleas-
ing to God to the divine operation; — it is, on the one hand,
more than the principles of such men warrant them in teaching
(for even the assmnption that Christ was a sinless sage is not
allowable) ; and, on the other hand, it is not enough to preserve
tliis dogma its place in the doctrinal system of the Chnrch.'*
But a Christian system which •' is unable to make Christology
an integral part of itself," has pronounced its own judgment ;
it has really given up the claim to the title of Christian. The
Person of Christ then becomes a completely non-essential and
accidental thing, relatively to His doctrine; and this latter alone,
as tlie pure religion of reason, can be deemed essential.^
As regards Kant, however, with whom this form of Eation-
alism, wliich we may designate the practical, shares its essential
defects, he was in advance of it, partly in consistency, and
partly in the merit of having prepared positively, even though
distantly, the way for a Christology such as is required by
modern times. If the defect of the old Christology consisted
principally in its regarding the Person of Christ too predo-
minantly as coming from without, and not sufficiently as having
a relationship to, and a basis in, the race itself ; and if this
person had received ratlier an absolutely supernatural character,
had become sometliing torn off, something foreign to the con-
sciousness of man ; Kant, on the contrary, by breaking grt)un(l
' Wegscli eider, " Institutiones," § 123, 128.
^ Rohr, ill fact, has a correct perception of this fact. See Letter xvii ,
[lassim.
" Jiohr, pas.sini, p. 407.
P. 2. — VOL. III. D
50 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
in anthropology, and by descending into the depths of human
nature, discovered in it a God-related element ; for which
reason he designated it the Son of God, in whom God is well-
pleased, — a designation, it is true, which, according to the
Christian standard, cannot belong to it in itself, but only so
far as Christ dwells in it.
CHAPTER THIRD.
THE FICHTE-JACOBI PERIOD.
Whilst nothing else was able to keep its ground before his criti-
cism, Kant found for himself a firm hold, and a kind of concilia-
tion with Christianity and Christology, in the idea of moral good.
But even this last remainder of an objective, universally valid
groundwork, was inevitably destined to be shattered and re-
duced to something subjective, as the self-criticising reason
progressed in its work. Fichte and Jacobi were the men who
carried on Kant's work to this point, though each in a different
manner. How far Fichte did this, we shall see later; but
Jacobi's mode of thought has, both in itself and in virtue of its
direct applications, more affinity with theology. Subjectivity
advanced in Jacobi onwards to the principle, — Not because
something is good, do I will it, but because 1 will it, it is good.
The objective character of the moral law was thus under-
mined, or rather swallowed up and annihilated by the Ego.
This, however, is merely the negative aspect of the matter. Its
])Ositive and, for us, most important aspect is, that this deeper
•critical investigation of itself by the spirit, led at the same time
into a deeper region, into that of religion. For the lost objec-
tivity of the moral law, which also was, in fact, unable to sus-
tain itself, a higher objectivity, to wit, the world of faith, dawned
on the mind in presentiment (Ahnung), in religious feeling; —
and, indeed, it is owing to this living c(mnection with the
divine that the subjective mind fancies itself exalted above tiie
law. The advance made in the subjective, self-criticising ten-
dency, difl not render the spirit poorer, but was, at the same
JACOBI. DE WETTE. 51
time, a profounJer entering into itself ; — feelings rich in pre-
sage, the " immediate perception of the divine," took the place
of the practical reason, and revived its barren wastes. One-
sided subjectivity had thus arrived at the last stage of its
de^ elopment. Subjectivity, in this its extreme form, was by its
very nature indifferent to all objective knowledge : feeling has
its satisfaction in itself, and abides in itself, indifferent as to
whether it is the feeling of something objective, whether it
perceives this objective something veritably and as it is, or
merely itself in some particular determination and affection.
So also is it completely indifferent as to whether the good has
an objective existence : the only authority to it is its own sub-
jective, and indeed accidental, condition. But because its justi-
fication and inner satisfaction are not due to the fact of its
being the feeling of an objective something which is to some
extent still reflected by it, a completely critical and sceptical re-
lation to everything objective is very compatible therewith : the
understanding, which itself is also one aspect of the spirit, may
judge all objectivity by its own standard ; but even if it destroy
it, feeling persists none the less in its subjective moods of pre-
sentiment, of faith, and so forth, and has the consciousness of
being satisfied with its inner enjoyment, which in point of fact
is an enjoyment of its own noble nature.
Following out the principles of the philosophy of Fries, De
Wette transferred this aesthetic view of tlie world to theology.^
His fundamental view may be described as follows : That
religious feeling, which after an Hellenic manner he held to be
most intimately connected with the sense of beauty, is in itself
indifferent to the idea of the true. It is fitting, indeed, that
the true should have a place in religion ; in this aspect it is
faith: to beauty, on the contrary, corresponds i\\Q feeling which
is in faith. Now this feeling is the essential element in reli-
gion ; and in moments of j)ious excitement, the question is not
asked, whether or no that is true to which the feeling relates.
The understanding also has its rights, only not in connection
with a religious view of things : the view of things taken by
the understanding is totally different, nay more, o])posed ; for it
is concerned alone about the true, to which religious feelinir in
' " Religion und Theologie," 1815. Hints of this maybe found already
in Herder's work, " Voin Sohne Gottes," 1797.
52 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
and by itself is indifferent. It is possible that religious emotion
should become devotionally absorbed in something which the
reflective understanding is compelled to pi'onounce untrue ; but
we are not therefore justified in saying that feeling is some-
thing untrue, for the category under which we class truths of
the understanding is inapplicable to the sphere of sesthetical
contemplation. There may, therefore, be two different, nay
more, opposite modes of viewing the same object, the logical
and the ffisthetical.
The next doubt that then arises is, it is true, whether the
unity of consciousness is not desti'oyed by such a deep division
and duality? His answer to this question runs as follows : So
far as truth is an integral element of religious feelings, so far
does it remain unassailed by the understanding, whose mode
of consideration always ends in mysteries, and behind whicii
begins the kingdom of religious faith and of presentiment. The
eternal ideas are the essential element in religious feelings, so
far as truth is at all to be taken into consideration in connec-
tion therewith ; and these ideas must be left untouched by the
understanding, not indeed because it ought to put itself into a
positive relation to them, or to constitute them part of itself,
but because it cannot appropriate them to itself. Its sphere is
the finite ; the infinite transcends its measure, and exists only
for feeling. But because it never arrives at a termination in
its own domain, and always remains imperfect, a sphere lies
constantly open to religious feeling, which is totally foreign to
the understanding, though it is not assailed by it, because it
begins where that ends.
The application of these principles to Christianity and to
the doctrine of Christ is self-evident. In itself, the eternal idea
alone is that which has proper value ; it alone moves the soul.
But religion, feeling, cannot dispense with the symbolization of
tiie eternal ideas ; their substance and material must have an
outward husk ; if their force and peculiarities are not to deli-
quesce and evaporate, an outward clothing must be given to the
inner substance. Now this is the point at which a conciliation is
possible between the culture of the present age and CiuMstianity,
so far as the latter is intimately interwoven with the marvellous
history of Christ.
It is true, he iroes on to sav. it is onlv the idea, not the
DE WETTE. 53
(lead, historical material in which the idea has clothed itself,
that can nourish the religious sentiment. History has onlv
value so far as it is the husk and shell of the eternal idea ; and
this material may calmly be left over to the decomposine; or
negative influence of the understanding, which, on its part, is
also justified in tracing all things back to natural causes. It
may and is bound to see the naked truth, that is, it may and
must strip off from Christianity its glittering, miraculous husk :
this is, in particular, the task of Protestant theolog3^ But the
history is not therefore made worthless ; for feelin<2;, as has
been remarked, needs symbols, needs the form of beauty for its
ideas ; and whence is this form to be taken, if not from histori-
cal tradition ? Historical tradition does not by any means, it
is true, entirely harmonize with assthetical laws, and in so far a
transformation is desirable, in carrying out which the images of
Hellenic religious art should be used ; but, after all deductions,
these husks still remain worthy of regard. Scientific systems
of doctrine owe to them many a genuine expansion and develop-
ment of the universal religious ideas.
He is therefore far removed from wishing to overthrow the
doctrine of the divinity of Christ, although it is a self-contra-
dictory idea to represent deity as united with humanity in one
individual, because deity is thus lowered to the level of the
finite, and is strictly no longer conceived as deity .^ This doc-
trine, however, is to be regarded as an aesthetic idea, not as a
logical conception.^ History and the understanding teach us to
see in Christ the human spirit, as it had attained, for the first
time in the history of the world, to a perfect consciousness of
itself and of its high dignity : in Him it learnt for the first time
to feel itself as the Son of God, and as capable of becoming
equal to the heaAcnly Father. In Christ, as the first-born Son
of God, divine truth, the infinite depth and purity, revealed
itself. He was the lofty example, to imitate which others are
to strive. This truth, however, was converted even by the
Apostles into a sensuous conception ; they deified the earthly
Pei'son of Jesus. And ever more did the idea of the Son of
' Compare on this subject particularly Dc AVette, " Ueberden Ceistder
ncuern protcstantisclicn Thcologie," Studieu and Kritiken, 1828, 1, pp.
131-i;33.
'•^ " Religion und Theologio," p. 91.
54 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
God acquire a inetaphysical, whilst in reality it had only a moral
significance. Long did the human mind cleave to the mytho-
logical notion of His being a descended God ; but in the pre-
sent age, man's natural understanding has risen in rebellion
against the formulas of the Church, marked as they are by con-
tradictions. Many rejected the entire doctrine, or contented
themselves with deeming Jesus to have been a very virtuous,
wise man. But such a view neither does justice to the feelings
which the Christian is bound to cherish towards the Author of
his faith, nor does it exhaust the idea which dominated the
Apostles and primitive Church. Such criticism finds nothing
but meagre ideas clothed in husks, worthy to be rejected, for
the simple reason, that its point of view lies outside of Chris-
tianity and the religious sentiment altogether ; and it accordingly
judges solely with the cold understanding, instead of with feel-
ings of enthusiasm. The pious Christian, however, convinced
of the divine truth of the doctrine of Jesus, of the wisdom and
grace of God visible in its introduction, and carried away by
the purity and exaltedness of the character of Jesus, believes
and beJiolds in Him the Godhead bodily. When, then, religious
beauty is the subject of discourse, the doctrine of the deity of
Christ has its place, to wit, as an sesthetical idea. The pious
Christian does not indulge in useless speculations ; his under-
standing is taken possession of by the ideal vision. Away then,
cries he, with all those dogmatic determinations, of which the
Bible and the faith of the people know nothing : let Christ
henceforth be regarded by us as a divine ambassador, as God-
man, as the image of God ; let us not be too niggardly in His
glorification. But forget not the distinction between a logical
and an ideal estimate ! Let His entire history be viewed in a
genuinely symbolical spirit ! His miraculous conception and
birth symbolize the idea of the divine origin of religion and of
the divine dignity of Christ. His miracles represent the idea
of dominion, of the independent power of the human spirit, and
inwrap within tliemselves the sublime doctrine of spiritual self-
reliance. His resurrection, apart from its historical aspect,
according to which it is a visible effect and contrivance of the
divine government of the world, is an image of the victory of
truth. And finally, His ascension symbolizes the eternal glory
of reli<rion.
o
DE WETTE. 55
This distinction between symbol and idea, he goes on to say,
which puts us into a position to allow of the former, as a merely
historical thing, being made the subject of philosophical and
historical investigation, whilst the latter remains untouched, is
neither capricious nor dishonest. It is not capricious ; for logic
claims its rights ; and religious feelings, on the other hand, re-
quire symbols. It is not dishonest ; for whatever portion of the
eternal ideas is found in these images by the religious senti-
ment, did also objectively lie in the Person of Christ. In itself,
however, the historical can only stand to feeling in the relation
of a means of illustration, of a vehicle. One might, indeed, be
inclined to ask, whether, if the religious sentiment is to be led
en from those symbols to the idea, it is not essentially neces-
sary that it regard the symbols themselves as something objec-
tive, historical ? De Wette's answer to this appears to lie in
the following :^ — In moments of religious excitement, the under-
standing does not give way to useless speculations ; it is taken
})Ossession of by the vision of the ideal ; and it never begins its
proper action till the excitement has cooled. This implies, not
indistinctly, that, in moments of religious enthusiasm, man un-
doubtedly does surrender himself to those symbols as to histori-
cal facts ; only the understanding, which neither can nor may
assume this, then recedes to the background. To feeUng, on
the contrary, belongs no theoretical significance. A deep and
essential discord is thus posited in the organism of the spirit
itself, which is only wretchedly set aside by the supposition,
tliat in religious moments, the spirit is not at all primarily con-
cerned about the truth, save as related to the universal, eternal
ideas ; and these ideas are completely independent of the Person
of Christ. It may be that, at a stage wdien the understanding
has received little culture, the symbol and the idea are, in pious
moments, most intimately blended with each other ; and that
a pious disposition gives itself up, without therefore deserv-
ing blame, unsuspectingly and unhesitatingly to the symbol in
which, not separating between substance and form, it deems
itself to possess the very thing itself ; but the case must be
other at the stage when this distinction has ah-eady been etTected,
when the understanding considers itself to have recognised the
history to be mere symbol. Such a gain once made, the mind,
^ " Religion und ITieologie," p. 216.
56 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
which is, after all, one and identical, will not be able in pious
moments to feel and act as though it had not been made : on
the contrary, if the distinction has been made with truth, and
with a clear and logical rejection of the history as such, even
in pious moments, the mind will not be able any longer to give
itself up to the history as such, nor to the symbol, without a
distinct conviction of its being merely the symbol of a subjec-
tive, Eesthetical idea. But then these symbols also, taken from
the Christian history, in particular from the narratives concern-
ing the Person of Jesus, are completely subjective, arbitrary in-
vestments of eternal ideas, not at all essentially connected either
with the Person of Jesus, or with any other history — invest-
ments which the mind must remain at liberty to exchange ff>r
others entirely different, until it has been shown to be necessary
for it to cleave to these particular ones. The argument drawn
from the necessity of keeping up the connection with history is
far from sufficing here : such an argument implies that the free
manifestation of a new phenomenon in humanity, as, for example,
even of Christianity, is unjustifiable. But if this is to be de-
monstrated from the nature of the human mind, such a course
of reasoning might easily end in our being compelled, out of
regard to the original essential necessity we are under of repre-
senting to ourselves everything that is most glorious and great
under the image of the Person of Christ, in order that it may
live to our mind, to conceive Christ to be objectively such as
feeling requires us to think of Him, unless we should prefer
assuming the existence of a pre-established disharmony between
thought and feeling, between the objective and the subjective.
It is further clear that such a separation between the under-
standing and the soul as implies that the mode of consideration
of the latter begins where that of the former ceases, and as
makes it impossible for the two to interpenetrate and combine,
must also introduce a dualism into the objective world. If the
understanding, w^hen it arrived at the end of the causes, — and
this is its task, — would then be under the necessity of explain-
ing everything in a purely human manner, for example, it
would liave to seek to account for the Person of Christ entirely
by what is contained in human nature. At this point, accord-
\ng to De Wette, human thought would cease to regard what
nad been thus explained as an act of God's ; and the view taken
DE WETTE. '')7
by piety has only one ground of justification, to wit, tlie cir-
cumstance that the understanding is always landed in mysteries,
or, in other words, never arrives at its goal. In the manner
of Jacobi, ignorance is represented as the only basis of piety.
The connection of nature, when known, cannot, therefore, be re-
garded at the same time as a divine deed ; these conceptions do
not cover, they exclude each other. Here, therefore, we perceive
again the fault common to all one-sided subjective systems — that
of abstractly separating between God and the world. The same
defect manifests itself also especially in the Pelagian character
of this system. According to it, a rational, philosophical view
of things does, and indeed must, ascribe the good to man ; for,
regarded from the anthropological point of view, which is that of
philosophy, the spirit that works in man is nothing but the spirit
of reason. It is, on the contrary, a beautiful religious view, to
regard the enthusiasm for the good which glows in us as an out-
flow from God. Religiously considered, this is correct ; but if
it attempt to convert it into an anthropological truth, it is false.
From this it is clear that De Wette is unable to make any
scientific declaration regarding the divine essence of Christ ; for
of divine things the subjective feeling alone, not the understand-
ing, knows anything. Christ's person itself has no eternal worth,
for it is not an eternal idea : it keeps its place merely as a sym-
bol. To Christology, therefore, we cannot henceforth assign a
place in a system of doctrine ; for science is not to consist of
images. What remains, after allowing that Christ is the image
of an assthetical idea, is something purely human. This human
element, it is true, De Wette conceives to have been perfect ,
but without sufficient ground, for his system nowhere establishes
the necessity for such a " Son of God " having been an his-
torical reality ; indeed, its principles rather lead to the opposite
conclusion. In his view, science cannot acknowledge the
existence of an anthropological need for such a complete ap-
})earance ; and only in an anthropological aspect does he allow
that anything is to be known. The understanding, according
to him, is a born Pelagian : the sanctification, the atonement,
the salvation of man, is effected not by Christ's person, but
solely by the eternal idea brought to light in, though not bound
to. His person. His person and history awaken, for example,
the idea that onlv through the religious fecHuii of resignation,
58 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD El'OCH.
in that we bend before God, can rest return of itself to the
soul. This idea He suggests by doctrine and example. For
this purpose, however, there is no need of a sinless founder of
a religion, but merely of a founder co-ordinate with the founders
of other religions. Nay more, it is scarcely necessary that we
should distinctly believe in His sinlessness ; for He may serve
as the symbol of an eternal idea, even though He did not, as a
matter of history, carry it perfectly in Himself. (Note 6.)
With this view of De Wette's, that of Hase^ and of Colani''
is akin.
To true Christological knowledge, it is necessary above all
to sound the depths of the idea of deity and of the idea of
humanity in their relation to each other ; the possibility and
significance of their union in one person will then become
clear of themselves. Now, the essence of humanity, as we find
from self-consciousness, is infinitude to be created out of finitude
(§ 47). The human spirit has in itself the law of an infinite
development of itself : it is accordingly free, that is, it has a
determinate mode of being through itself ;^ and it participates
in the infinite, because it is without absolute limit. On the
other hand, freedom is limited ; it takes its start from nonentity,
from unconsciousness, and developes itself in obedience to laws
which it has not given to itself. This primal power of freedom,
manifesting itself in the feeling, the volition, the knowledge
of the infinite, of the beautiful, the good, the true, is nothing
else but the endeavour of the spirit to be itself infinite. In
itself, indeed, it is impossible that perfect being (Sein) should
ever be the issue of groioth (Werden), that the finite should
ever become infinite ; the one is the complete negation of the
other. This contradiction in the spirit itself would inevitably
be its ruin, did it not possess the power of appi'opriating a
foreign element ; without, however, so taking it up into itself,
as that it becomes to it the same as that which is originally its
^ Compare Hase's Gnosis iii. § 159-177 ; Leben Jesu, § 11-18 ; Evan-
pelische Dogmatik, Ed. i. § 141-1G9 ; Ed. ii. 1838, § 161-170, pp. 241-287 ;
Ed. iii. § 148-157, 169, pp. 191-227, 274 f. The dogmatical reeults in
relation to the Christology, as also the argumentation, have remained iu
pub.stance the same through the several editions. Compare in particular
VA. iii. §157.
"■ Revue de Th^ologie et de Philosophic chretienne. Strassbourg,
* " Durch sich selbst in bestimrater Art sciend."
EASE. 59
owu.^ Such a power would enable man to constitute liis own,
the infinitude which is to him unattainable and which is realized
in another object ; and to regard the foreign power which con-
tains the ground of his freedom as his own power : that power,
however, must needs be a free one ; for freedom can only be
maintained by itself. Such a capability of appropriating foreign
elements, without either taking them up into itself, or losing
its own independence, man possesses in his love to the infinite,
through which he participates in its perfection. This love of
man to the infinite arises out of his effort to attain unto it ; is
possible only through freedom ; is solely his natural develop-
ment. ^Vlioso denies the love to the infinite (God), that is, to
religion, falls into contradiction with himself. One must either
be God, or love God. In loving the infinite, we love the un-
attainable perfection of ourselves. Only so far as man becomes
divine through continued effort, does he love God and possess
religion. But because the infinite can never grow out of the
finite, man is realiter eternally separated from God ; ideally,
however, his love unites him with God in an unity possible only
on the ground of the difference of the subjects. This union is
a progress from finite to infinite in never-ending approximation.
The feeling of life freely progressing is happiness ; true blessed-
ness is godliness in love to God. For the only truly infinite
life of man is his love to the infinite (§ 48-55). Faith in God
has its ground in love to God ; out of love, therefore, it must be
possible completely to develop the idea of God. The love of
God, however, is the unity of freedom and dependence, neither
the latter alone nor the former alone ; for the one leads to
self-deification, the latter to annihilation in God. We thus
arrive at a conception of God, according to which we are de-
pendent on Him, because it is He who ensin-es our freedom,
and who, on the other hand, is the archetype of our relative
freedom, the unattainable perfection of itself. The idea of
humanity, raised above all limitation, is the idea of God, so far
as it was possible for it to be revealed to humanity (§ 105 f.).
Compared with Jacobi or De Wette, Hase's accomplished
mind has plainly taken up into itself many elements of modern
theology, which make it doubtful whether he ought not to be
' . . . ohne es doch so in sich aufzunehmcn, das ihr dasselbe wie
cin Eigcnns wiir de.
00 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
reckoned already to the Third Period, to wliich indeed lie un-
doubtedly does belong as respects the domain in which his real
strength lies, to wit, that of Church History. But if we do
not allow ourselves to be carried away by the seductive bewitch-
ment of striking and beautiful individual propositions, we can-
not deny that the kernel of his ideas, and the warp which,
notwithstanding weft of another character, determined every-
thing in his system, belong to the epoch now under review, so
far as its essential characteristic is a one-sided subjectivity,
which converts the immanence of God in the world into a mere
transcendence, and which constitutes the dualism between God,
from whom we are " realiter eternally separated," and ourselves,
an insurmountable partition-wall, notwithstanding the "infinite
approximation"' with which we are to console ourselves, and
the love which is to unite us " ideally " with Him. This dualism
brings a discord into our own destiny that can never be recon-
ciled ; for, on the one hand, in God is contained the perfection
of ourselves, and consequently the being God (Gottsein) is
to be regarded as our ideal ; on the other hand, we exist along-
side of God only through relative freedom, in other words,
through not being God. If, then, our destination to perfection
be taken in earnest, that cannot be our blessedness, to remain
ever at an infinite distance from it ; on the contrary, if we are
condemned to be subject to the dualism between obligation and
being as an eternal one, our lot will be discord and unblessedness.
But if we make light of the perfection of ourselves, which is
the law of our life ; nay more, if we cannot look forward to a
future completely free from sin, as appears elsewhere to be
hinted (§ 70) ; one cannot understand how this is reconcilable
with the at all events subjectively ethical spirit, wliich, in com-
parison with Pantheism and purely necessitarian systems, is
otherwise characteristic of Hase. For love is surely that which
ought to be ; as it is in us, therefore, it marks the gulf, but not
its filling up. Nay, even if he should speak of a love of God
to us, of a love which manifests itself to us ; for this alone is
love ! But he regards this love of God to us, if we except His
self-communication in creation, as entirely shut up in God ;
like as the " justificatio forensis" was frequently conceived to
1)0 a loving judgment, pronounced by God eternally or tem-
porarily in Himself alone. The cause hereof, in Hase's case,
HASE. 61
is plainly not any tendency to Deism, but merely a jealous
guarding of his conception of freedom, which prevented him
from seeing, in the act of receiving and in the willingness to allov/
ourselves to be determined, also an act of freedom, and from
understanding that the higher stage of freedom is essentially
the power of more fully submitting to be determined by, and to
receive from, God ; and which finally does not admit of the
firm faith that God, by the manifestion of His love, '• ensures
freedom," which, apart from Him, would wither away and
perish. Hase, it is true, refuses to allow that the essence of
God is absolutely strange to, and different from, that of man ;
on the contrary, he believes in a merely quantitative distinction
(§ 157). But precisely because the unity posited by him be-
tween the divine and the human is an immediate one, a true
unity is an impossibility. " Human nature is of the same kind
as the divine ; it is merely quantitatively different from it, in
that whilst man strives after, God is, the infinite." But pre-
cisely because, in his view, man is only God in contraction, and
God man in absolute expansion, they mutually exclude each
other. All this would have assumed a totally different form,
if Hase had sought the infinitude of man primarily in the in-
finitude of his susceptibility, instead of in an immediate posses-
sion and in the productive force which he terms freedom. For
then it would follow that the idea of man is not realized at all
without God and His indwelling ; then, instead of thobe loose
and uncertain ties which our efforts and our love are one-sidedly
supposed to establish between us and God, we should have a
bond more in harmony with the idea of God as omnipotence
and love than that which Hase set before us, and which he
represents as consisting in our lovingly " appropriating to,
without taking up into, ourselves foreign elements." The latter
reminds us involuntarily of the '• Communicatio idiomatum "
in the form in which it is set forth by later Lutheran dogma-
ticians, to wit, as an appropriation without /xe^e|t9.
How, with the premises of this idea of freedom, Christology
must fall out, is easy to divine. The divine nature of Christ
is His untroubled i)iety. The positive condition of the perfection
of Jusus, on God's side, was that He should be born with the
uninjured germ of a perfect humanity : the negative condition,
on Christ's side, was that He should prove His sinlessness also
G2 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
in conflict. The Church has always liad rather the will to
believe, and the notion that it did believe, in the divinity of
Christ, than the thing itself ; for in teaching that the Son was
" generated," we deny to Him absoluteness, and consequently
divinity. Humanity and deity are only quantitatively distin-
guished from each other : it would therefore be an uncondi-
tional contradiction to represent the Deity as taking up the
limited into itself ; or human nature, which must be personal,
in order to be truly human, as taking up the absolute into itself.
Each of the two natures being in all points like the other
(in allem gleich mit der andern), differs therefrom only in being
the negation of that which it is to take up into itself at its
union, and whose assumption, therefore, necessarily makes it a
different nature from what it would be out of union therewith.
In Christ the divine substance of human nature was revealed,
not through any miraculous entrance of the divine nature into
the human, but through the complete development of human
nature. By means of the misunderstood symbol of an incarnate
God, the Church has faithfully handed down the faith in the
divine nature and destiny of humanity, and in its perfection in
Christ. But it is now time to recognise it as the common pro-
perty of humanity, that, after Christ's example, every son of
man, so far as in him lies, is to grow to a son of God. In the
life of Jesus, glorified humanity was set historically before oui*
eyes ; the pure and eternal Ego finds its highest development
in surrender to (not worship of) Christ, as the one who com-
prised within Himself all the higher tendencies of human life.
By doctrine and life, Jesus became the founder of a community
animated by His spirit, intending thus to unite men for the
attainment of the highest religious development ; and the
existence of this community is a pledge to the Christian, in the
sphere of jjiety, for the dignity of Cln-ist. He was the begin-
ning of the new life, and possessed what He purposed to
establish for others (§ 158, 1(54). His death was an example
of the self-sacrifice of love, wherein is redemption. But God
needs no sacrifice ; He does not need to be propitiated by the
sacrifice of a righteous man. The guilt and the merit of an-
other are alike intransferable. Not the merit of a man, but
alone the grace of God, reconciles and blesses the sinner. In
relation also to supernatural o])erations of grace — in Hase's
EASE. G3
view, nothing has value for a free being save that which is
gained by freedom : everything else is esteemed only in God,
not in the creature. " To the activity of Jesus entire Christen-
dom owes religion and blessedness ; but whether they could
not be found also outside of Christ, is a question wliich science
has not settled."
Hase undoubtedly uses the word in its strict sense, when
he attributes to Jesus religious perfection, that is, perfect love.
But his other principles cannot be made to tally therewith. If
perfect love has actually found realization in Jesus, humanity
is glorified in Him, its idea is realized, and therefore, according
to Hase's premises, He is God ; for, in his view, God is the
idea of humanity. But how then can he distinguish God from
man, on the one hand, merely as infinite from finite, whilst at
the same time assuming that the two are realiter and eternally
separated ; on the other hand, attribute divine nature to man,
nay more, designate him a finite-infinite being ?
If God and man stand in the relation to each other described
by Hase ; if they are separated from each other by the eternally
impassable gulf between finite and infinite, the composite term,
"growing God," "perfect humanity," is a catachrestic expres-
sion, a sideroxylon. But in that case also the destination of
man to perfection is not taught in proper earnest ; for whilst,
on the one hand, his essence is said to demand perfection, on
the other hand, it is supposed to raise its voice against it. And
for this no compensation is offered by what Hase says regarding
the divine character or nature of man ; for this natural goodness
is compatible also with selfishness (§ 77). Precisely for this
reason, is Colani's view to be esteemed an improvement on that
of Hase. He does away with the shyness characteristic of
Hase's conception of freedom relatively to God — a shyness which
scarcely harmom'zes with the notion of a creation by means
of self-communicating love ; he refuses also to treat the divine
and human natures merely as infinite and finite, maintaining
that to the full idea both of humanity and of deity belongs
(-'thical infinitude or perfection. He considers Christ, therefore,
to be, in an ethical respect, the actual image of God ; he
regards Him, not as God-man, but as man-God, because the
ethical qualities of God are a reality in Him. But, he goes on
to say, we must carefully distinguisli between this and the
6-4 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD JiPOCH.
metaphysical essence of God, tlie determinations of which can-
not pertain to Christ. In this respect, Christ is and remaina
merely finite. After a similar manner, the old doctrine of the
" Communicatio idiomatum " also, and not the Reformed alone,
liad tried to discriminate the communicable from the incommu-
nicable divine attributes; had ascribed infinitude and immeasure-
ableness only indirectly to the humanity ; and, on the contrary
(passing the ethical attributes by unheeded), had treated omnisci-
ence, omnipotence, omnipresence, as objects of communication.
Like Hase, Colani denies the pre-existence of Christ, and
the duality of the natures. Christ to him is man ; a man,
however, who, on the basis of a pure nature, appropriated the
ethical divine attributes, and whom he therefore styles
" Homme-Dieu." But the next question must be, — Is the
ethical only an attribute, or is it also to be viewed ontologically 1
In the former case, we should have a communication of the divine
attributes without the communication of the divine essence ; in
other words, the same opinion of a separableness of essence
and attributes in God as that to which the old orthodoxy had
involuntarily inclined. On the other hand, if there is divine
essence in love, it must also include a substantial metaphysical
being ; and the participation of man in the divinely ethical is
not possible apart from the metaphysical. Colani's separation
of the ethical and metaphysical compels him, in order to avoid
allowing an incarnation of God in Christ, to introduce into
God Himself the dualism of an ethical and metaphysical essence,
which stand outside of, and are indifferent to, each other.
The giving prominence to the ethical aspect of Christology,
which, since the time of Kant, has been ever more completely
the case, is without doubt a step in advance, for which we
should be grateful. But the ethical itself is not thought in its
entire absoluteness, mitil it is recognised as the true reality, and
as the power over all reality. The realization of divine love
cannot, therefore, lack divine wisdom and power.
In (nder to overcome the fundamental error of the point of
view occupied by a one-sided subjectivity, the thing chiefly neces-
sary is to examine into the relation between the t's.sencc of God
and of man, and n(jt to limit our incjuiries merely to the attributes.
If the attributes alone needed to be subjected to consideration,
all that would be necessary would be to conceive morality, know-
nASE. COLANI. 65
ledge, love, expanded " in infinitum," and the divine and human
Avould be one. What we should then arrive at, however,
would be pure identity ; the perfected human would cease to
be human, and at the end there would be nothing but tht
divine. Against such a subjective or anthropological mono-
physitism reacts the true conception of God and of man. It
asserts itself, in the first instance, at all events negatively, in
opposition to those external modes of atonement which consist
solely in the annihilation of one aspect of the antagonism ; and
does not rest until it has arrived at the conviction, with regard
to the essence of God and of man, that they do not exclude
each other, either monophysitically or nestorianly, but that, on
the contrary, each points to, and has its goal in, the other;
and until, on the basis of the knowledge that the two natures
are connected with, through the very features which distinguish
them from, each other, a deeper conciliation between the divine
and human essences had been found.
At all its stages, one-sided subjectivity has been unavoidably
characterized by conceiving the divine and human as separated
from each other by an insurmountable gulf. These stages liaA'e
now been run through, xit no one of them, however, so far as
the task essentially was to show how the divine and the human
can constitute an unity, was it found possible to construct a
Christology. In every case, it was the human aspect of the
Person of Christ alone that was laid hold on : the divine aspect,
on the contrary, they were compelled to exclude ; thus forming
the most complete antagonism to the tendency of the early
Church, which had been to give prominence solely to the
divine. Three phases of philosophy have formed, as we have
seen, the groundwork for the history of Christology since it
began to give predominance to the human element in Christ —
to wit, the Wolfian, the Kantian, and that of Jacobi. One-
sided subjectivity, transferred in its diiferent forms to the
domain of Christology, forms, in general, the stage of subjec-
tive Kationalism. As each of these phases apjieared on the
scene, attempts were made to miite philosophy and theology ;
but the end of the matter invariably was, that justice was not
done to the objective, and consequently the subjective alone
remained.
The first stdfjr, to wit, that of Wolfiauism, with its offt'hoct'^,
P. 2. — VOL. 111. E
6i^ SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
Euilyemoiiism and tlie popular philosopliy, was occupied at the
outset with the tearing down of the old objectivity, and settled
the matter so happily, that the infinite wealth of Christianity
was reduced to empty Deism, and the Father of Jesus Christ
to the etre supreme. Christology sunk even below Ebionism :
the Son of God was a wise country Kabbi, a preacher of
Naturalism.
The second stage, that of Kantianism, put an end indeed
to this idealess, empty systematizing, and represented Christ as
the ideal of an humanity pleasing to God. But respecting the
nature of the historical God-man, and the relation of the divine
in Plim to the human, it had nothing whatever to say. To its
theoretical atony, the dogma of the God-man was something
transcendental ; to its practical autarchy, superfluous and dis-
agreeable.
The ildrd stage, the wsthetical, promised to do away with
the defect chargeable on the system of Kant, in refusing to
enter on a consideration of the relation between the divine
and the human, notwithstanding that this question was neces-
sarily the most important one for Christology, and to bring
the two into more essential connection. Not morality, but
religion, is represented as the highest, as the alone certain,
from which all other certainty proceeds ; and an union of the
divine spirit Avith the human, is assumed in religion. This
union with God, however, is a natural, immediate one : free-
dom, the innate nobility of human nature, involves of itself the
full possibility of realizing that union by itself. This religious
autarchy, therefore, no less than the moral, renders a redeemer
unnecessary. Moreover, the principles laid down at this stage
do not allow the possibility of a perfectly sinless, religious per-
sonality. If God be merely " the Better than I " (das Bessere,
als Ich), then, if the ideas " Man " and " God '"' are not to be
assumed to coincide, the Ego must be essentially marked by
imperfection, and Christ, were He such a sinless personality,
could no longer be man, but must be God alone : as, however,
He was certainly man, it is idolatry to believe in Him as the
Son of God, to bow the knee before Him.
But, however far these forms of Rationalism, tne negatively
rational, the practical, and the a.'sihetical, were from being able to
solve the problem, it must not be supposed altogether incapable
CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 07
of solution, and we must not conclude tlierefrom the unreality
of the union of the divine and human in Christ. For, on the
contrary, all these theories have shown themselves to be self-
contradictory. We have seen that, based as they all are on
an abstract antagonism between finite and infinite, no other
result could be arrived at than that at which they actually
arrived, to wit, an antagonism, which fails to satisfy even the
general relirjious feeling and even reason itself ; which is there-
to o o '
fore much less fitted to serve as the standard by which to judge
the Christian religion, which posits both as one in Christ.
But even positively, it may be shown that neither of these
systems has proved the problem to be insoluble. On the con-
trary, each of them, in its own manner, was compelled in
regular progress to prepare the way for a solution : — and this
is only the reverse aspect of the remark made above, to the
effect that no one of them was able to construct a Christology.
If the problem were to bring the Person of Christ nearer
to human thought, it was necessary, as we have seen above,
that justice should be done to the human aspect. In order
to complement the one-sidedly objective mode of consideration,
which started from above downwards, it was necessary that a
mode of consideration should be begun which starts from below
upwards, in order that Christian truth might find its expres-
sion in an unity of both, higher than that which had at first
been established.
In order that the matter, in this aspect, might freely take
its own course, it was necessary that one-sided objectivity should
be deprived of its predominance. Christianity consented even to
give up all claim to external authority, and to allow subjectivity
to have free play, confident that even the fiery test to which it
thus exposed itself, would only demonstrate the eternal, un-
avoidable, inner power of the spirit created for Christ.
The work of vanquishing that one-sided objectivity, which
was incapable of effecting the construction of a satisfactory
Christology, was plainly sufficiently accomplished by the first
form of Eationalism ; and this is the meritorious aspect of this
tendency. The ground was now cleared ; the mind of man was
delivered from the chains of external authority ; it had come
into the possession ot itself. Reflecting upon itself, and inves-
tigating in general the essence and dignity of iuunan nature, it
G8 SECOND PERIOD. THIRD EPOCH.
prepared the way for the perception of the fact, that human
nature is not foreign to the divine, that the two could hecome
one in Christ. At this point, the second form of Rationahsm,
that of Kant, came in and showed that the ethical was both
something essential to the liuman spirit, and an idea of absolute
value ; which, in Kant's own view, involved a certain unity of
the human and divine spirit. Finally, to the third form of
Rationalism, the a^sthetical, belongs the merit of having de-
scended more deeply into the essence of divine and human
nature, to the point where the divine and human life were
found to be immediately connected. Besides this, Fichte's
system rendered also similar positive services in relation to
knowledge ; for it vindicated to thought, to the reason of man,
an absolute value, to wit, the inner calling to arrive at absolute
certainty and truth.
Thus in three different directions — thought, volition, and
feeling — were points of departure secured for the attainment of
a knowledge of the unity of the divine and human in Christ.
It is true, as we have already observed, the problem was as yet
by no means solved ; the union arrived at did not leave to the
Person of Christ anything eternally distinctive. Still more
important, however, is it to remark, that the union limited itself
to xhQ faculties — to knowledge, volition, feeling; whilst a dual-
istic conception was formed of the unity and power which lie
at the basis of all these, and the divine and human were placed
in abstract antagonism to each other. Proceeding in this way,
it was impossible to form a conception of the Person of Christ
as essentially one {eva>(n<i (pvaLKi]) with God ; all that could be
d(!monstrated was an unity of faculties.
It must appear remarkable that subjectivity should thus
have arrived at the anthropological correlate to the last form
of the one-sidedly objective Christology, that is, the Lutheran
" Communicatio idiomatum," beyond which, as we have seen,
the development of the objective aspect of Christology actually
neither did nor could advance, until it was freed from its one-
sidedness. As the Old Lutheran dogmaticians, starting with the
divine aspect, had arrived at the point of recognising the two na-
tures in Christ to be united in the matter of attributes, so now,
starting with the human aspect, the unity had been recognised as
one of the faculties. Tiie anthropological mode of considering
CRITICAL RETROSPECT. G9
the Person of Jesus had now overtaken the theolojjical. But
as both were equal to each other in the matter of gain, so also
in that of defect. In both aspects, the reaction which took
place on the part of the unconciliated essence, has proved the
unity of mere attributes or faculties to be a false one. And
now one common task was devolved on both, to wit, that of
carrying on the union of faculties and qualities to an union of
essences. Oiir next duty will be to review the attempts to ac-
complish this object.
THIED PEETOD.
THE AGE OF ATTEMPTS TO SHOW THAT THE DIVINE
AND HUMAN ASPECTS OF CHRIST HOLD AX EQUALLY
JUSTIFIED POSITION, AND ARE ESSENTIALLY ONE.
INTRODUCTION.
l^jj^Y the end of the eighteenth century, the two main
one-sidednesses, wliich, even though in a manifold
variety of forms, had characterized Christology since
tlie Coimcil of Chalcedon, had found clear expression and
logical development. On the one hand, the pernicious effects
on the doctrine of the Person of Christ of alloAving the divine
to have the predominance which had been conceded to t from
A.D. 451 till 1700, with the sole exception of the age of the
Reformation, were now exhibited to all times ; and, on the
other hand, it Avas made no less clearly evident, that the sole
dominion of subjectivity, leavinj^ as it did to the divine in
Christ a merely accidental position alongside of Ilis personal
Immanity, involved the total loss of Christolog}'. This, then,
is the great lesson of the Second Period : either the Christo-
logical problem involves an impossibility ; or it must be possible
from the be<]i;innin<T so to conceive the two factors, deity and
humanity, that they shall stand in equilibrium, hold an equally
justified position in Christ, and instead of excluding or curtail-
ing, seek each other in their integrity and entirety.
Tlie Church, which believes itself to possess in Christ the
truth and the life, nay more, the central point in which are
united the highest antagonisms and mysteries, feels certain that
72 THIRD PERIOD.
tiie last result of science cannot be to convert Christ into a
grand contradiction. But this faith of the Church, which felt
that it was redeemed in Christ, permeated, like a golden and
never broken thread, all the shakings and critical labyrinths
through which the dogma, as a dogma, went. In it also, as in
a continuous, living tradition, lay the deepest impulse to new
scientific efforts. Individuals, indeed, may rescue their faith by
retreating before doubt into the citadel of the soul ; but the
Church has no right to pursue this course : so certainly as it is
its duty to seek to possess Christianity as a whole, so certainly
must it overcome the enemy in a true manner. It must not,
indeed, allow its faith to wait on scientific demonstration ; but
neither can it be willing to bear about discordant elements in
its existence. Were it to consent thereto, its faith would no
longer be accompanied by an honest and good conscience ; the
object of its faith would become to it an imagination of its
own invention. Doubts as deep as those which were produced
during the eighteenth century — by Germany with the greatest
clearness of consciousness — and the like of which are not dis-
coverable in the whole history of the Church, — doubts which
related to the entire system of thought, to the entire edifice
which had hitherto stood, — required to be inwardly overcome, if
they were not meant to hold their ground ; and they can only
be rightly and victoriously set aside when all the truth which
gave them importance, but of which a wrong estimate had
been formed by previous doctrinal systems, has been incorpo-
rated with the new formation which is aimed at. The truth
itself, therefore, through the medium of negation and position,
which are the two essentially connected momenta of its own
substance, accomplishes at once the destruction of the unsatis-
factory old, and the position of the new, by the reproduction
and richer self-unfolding of the old truth. A vanquishment of
doubt in this way is the worthiest deed of Protestant science ;
but It Is also the most difficult task that can be devolved on
it, and only to be accomplished on the condition, that the
two vital factors of the Protestant Church, the critical and
the positive, united in Incorruptibility and in readiness to sub-
mit to the truth, shall co-operate in a progressive produc-
tivity.
That, in oj)position not only to the destructive tendency of
LESSING. SEMLER. HERDER. 73
an age which was compelled to cease viewing Jesus as an object
of faith, because it deemed Him to be a mere man, but also to
the old doctrine of the Church, it had become necessary for
Christologv to assume a new form, was recognised, even during
the time of destruction, by many an one of deeper insight ; and,
at all events in the manner of presentiment, glimpses were
obtained of that higher unity of the divine and human, which
was fitted to raise the Christian mind above the antagonistic
view of the two that predominated both amongst Supernaturalists
and Rationalists, and thus also above the all-absorbing conflict
between Christianity and philosophy. Distinguished men of
freer and deeper mind, — as, in part, Lessing, Semler, Herder
^Note 7) ; further, Tersteegen, Claudius, Hamann, Lavater,
Stilling, Kleuker, Crusius, and in particular the Wiirtemberg
prelate Oetinger, — were unable either to feel at home in the old
orthodox system, or to overlook its inner unsoundness. Nor
w^ere they able to take part exclusively with either the one or
the other of the two parties, the rationalistic and the super-
naturalistic, which had now arisen in theology ; for they felt,
and in part also clearly saw, that these antagonisms occupy
essentially the same ground, to wit, that of a deistic conception
of God, and consequently, on the one hand, support and sus-
tain, and, on the other hand, overthrow, each other. Instead,
therefore, of accepting a Supernaturalism wdiich was driven to
ever new concessions, they endeavoured to take up their new
position even before one-sided subjectivity had been thoroughly
carried out, and applied their critical doubts to a rejuvenescence
of the dogma concerning which they were entertained.
Hamann's profound and rich mind was, on the one hand,
far removed from a dead, spiritless orthodoxy ; for which rea
son he remarked to Jacobi, — Every kind of clinging to words
and literal doctrines in religion is a Lama-service. On the other
hand, however, unlike Jacobi, he did not deem the reverence
paid to Christ to be idolatry. He clung strictly to the historical,
though not in the form of Supernaturalism ; for, to his energetic
mind, that which, in an historical point of view, was past, was
also something present and divine. Creation he held to be a
work of the divine humility : his favourite motto was, 'n-dvra dda
Kal dvOpcoTTiva irdvra. Language, reason, revelation, he sought
to understand in their simple, fundamental essence, and their
74 THIRD PERIOD.
essential connection. Reason is language, X0709, says he ; at
this marrow-bone do I gnaw. He tries to demonstrate that
reason and Scripture, as history, are at the bottom one, and the
language of God. But " the philosophers do not know what
reason is, as the Jews do not understand what law is." Both
point to Christ, the historical revelation of truth and grace, by
the knowledge of ignorance and sin. The speculators lack the
spirit to believe the fundamental doctrines of Christianity re-
garding the glorification of humanity in the deity, and of the
deity in humanity, by the Fatherhood and the Sonship, and to
say with the Lutheran Church — " In Him rises the fountain of
life, which descends from heaven on high out of His heart."
Christ he held to be the head of the bodv. His Church ; in
both together is the grand plan revealed by which, in the
manner most correspondent to the entire system of nature and
human society, to the laws of a sound understanding, and to
the conclusions of living experience, are made known the
mysteries of the most high majesty of God, which was most
pressingly desirous to communicate itself. " The mustard-seed
of anthropomorphosis and apotheosis, hidden in the heart and
mouth of all religions, appears here (in Christ and the Church)
in the magnitude of a tree of knowledge and of life in the
midst of the garden ; all the philosophical contradictions, and
the entire historical riddle of our existence, the impenetrable
night of their 'Termini a quo' and 'Termini ad quem,' are
resolved by the document which teaches us that the Word
became flesh." But the chaotic character of Hamann's being,
and his lack of thorough philosophical culture, prevented him
from combining the rays which flashed into his mind into a
calm and steadily shining light, and from arranging and
articulating the intuitions which were so richly vouchsafed to
him.^
Superior to him in learning and philosophical culture was
Oetinger, a man as pious as he was profound. (Note 8.) He
was exactly acquainted with, and had worked through for
himself, the various philosophical systems of his age. He
1 See Gelzer a. a. O. pp. 204-229 ; Auberlen's " Die Theosopbie Fr.
Chr. Oetinger's," pp. 78, 296, who makes it probable that Hamann knew
and made repeated use of Oetinger's works ; even as, on the other hand,
llerdcr gave shape and forra to man/ an idea of llamaun.
OETINGER. 75
classifies them as follows : — " The one aim to derive every-
thing from Idealism, as, for example, Malebranche, Leibnitz,
Wolf, Plouquet; the others, to derive everything from Ma-
terialism ; so, for example, most of the ^ledici, Mechanici, as
La Mettrie, Bagliv, Borhaave, and some who even introduce
" fibras intellectivas, sensitivas, volitivas," like Robinet ("der
irdischen and himmlischen Philosoph." 2ter Theil, pp. 246 ff.).
Others seek to avoid these two extremes, like Newton, Cluver,
and Swedenborg, to participate in both sides ; but Avithout suc-
cess. All these systems fail to do justice to logical thought
" propter hiatus." (Ibidem, and Lehrtafel, p. 209.) He pro-
nounces judgment on each of them (Lehrtafel, pp. 155-175),
and his result is : — As far as Materialism by itself is from
being sufficient, even so far is Idealism. The latter cives us only
a "principium cognoscendi," but not "essendi" (as Leibnitz
treats the monads merely as vis reprcesentativa sui, as repre-
sentative forces). Oetinger, on the contrary, insists that the
will, the motus, the self-movem.ent of life, above all, ought to
be taken into consideration,^ though not to the exclusion of the
intellectual faculties. He describes it as the power which
enters into itself for the purpose of revealing itself out of itself.
When the will enters into itself, it brings forth out of its own
hidden being the image of itself, it becomes a mirror to itself,
in which darkness vanishes. Self-knowledge thus gives birth
to a power to manifest itself to itself and to others, which is
not possible without the Logos. (Lehrtafel, pp. 222 f. ; Ird.
und himml. Philosophic ii. 249.)
In his view, therefore, the will is before the understanding.
Life and self-movement long precede the images of thought
(repraasentationes sui, pp. 210, 221). He shows how the will,
which is life in operation, is the centre of the physical creature ;
and how it comes into existence in consequence of God having,
out of the depths of His freedom, implanted in the creature two
opposed forces (one of which, after Newton, he terms the force
of attraction, the other the force of repulsion), which manifest
themselves in nature as impulse, in the soul as ivill, which
is always bringing something forth.
As he deemed Materialism, with the mechanical view of
^ Quite similarly Sclielling, in his " Einleitung in die Philosophie der
Mylhologie," pp. 4G0 ff. 1856.
7i) THIRD PERIOD.
tilings to which it leads, unsatisfactory ; and as Idealism also,
whose essence he describes, and whose consequences he has
made clear to himself (Note 9), seemed to him equally unsatis-
factory ; he sought to lay down a prime principle which should
embrace both, without being either the one or the other, to wit,
a matter which is not matter (" Ird. und himml. Philosophic "
ii. 249 : " Matter in God is no matter "), and also an ideal
which is not a mere product of thought — a something real
which is also ideal, and an ideal which is also real — something
which is neither composite nor simple, which is a multiplicity
of powers and yet only one power, one substance (Lehrtafel, p.
142). What he means was termed tincture by Bohm (p. 175).
It is the key of all science, the middle thing between matter
and spirit. " Is this middle thing to be a monster? " (p. 143).
" But if monsters are possible and actually exist, this middle
thing may be regarded as a monster too, if only it is a pos-
sible monster. — In the temple of philosophy there are priests
without vocation ; they are like young country fellows who
have never been away from their native village, and therefore
deem all that is narrated to them of the rarities which exist in
foreign countries, and which they have not seen where they have
lived, to be inventions, trying to cover the disgrace of their
ignorance by mockery and laughter." Such is the state of
things with corporeality. Without it, spirit is not perfect spirit,
but merely the beginning of spirit. On the other hand, how-
ever, it is also true that matter, as it exists before our eyes, is
coarse, and not spirit, nor will it become spirit : by itself, he
considers it to be darkness, chaos ; but spirit can be separated
out of it ; spirit, by working it, can give itself a body out of it ;
and as this corporeality can have more or fewer degrees, so
also can the actuality of spirit in it have more or fewer
degrees.
This ideal-real supreme principle he finds above all in God :
a nature or corporeality of a higher kind, free from the defects
of the earthly nature. This is spirituality as substantial reality,
lie usually designates it God's glory (llakia Uesso). Though
his doctrine of the Trinity is very far from being clear (he
objects to the word person. Note 10), he evidently assumes
the existence in God's one being of the antagonism of an active
principle, the Word or Logos, and a passive, determinable
OETINGER. 77
principle, of an expansum in God, which is capable of assuming
all the forms that the eternal Word gives it. This passive
element, or God's glory, although it is not God, is one with
God, and is the light in which He dwells. By its capability
of assuming different shapes (for it is the eternal nature of God
in constant motion), it forms, according to Oetinger, the transi-
tion from God to the world. Through it God communicates
Himself to the creature. In His glory, or " manifestatione
sui," God assumes creatural " modes " or limits, and His glory
is an union of the finite with the infinite. God, it is true, is
spirit, not elemental essence ; but through His " Glory," or
the manifestation of Himself, He gives Himself, in His un-
bounded freedom, by contracting and again expanding Him-
self, attributes which approximate more nearly to the creature,
with the design of being thus able to communicate Himself
to it, with His goodness, in spirit and life, according to the
spiritual-corporeal attributes of His glory. What this glory
is, reveals itself. In the creatures, it is the most noble spirit,
and that which causes plants to grow green, to flower, to
live, or the bond connecting the forces of life. It is the seat
of colours, of fruitfulness, and of love. This leads to the crea-
tion. God is not subject to necessity, as Spinoza teaches : out
of possibility He creates an actuality, and does not exhaust
Himself in the product. The product is not merely a limita-
tion or modification of God ; on the contrary, the finite receives
from God self-movement and life, without God's dividing
Himself. In particular, man has, in consequence of God's
self-communication, the centre of his freedom in himself. The
freely acting powers all have their root in the indissoluble bond
of the forces of the divine life ; and the forces of God are de-
rived into the creature, which, consequently, is not an absolutely
simple thing, as the Wolfians pretend regarding the soul. That
which outwardly is simple, bound together into a whole by the
eternal Word, is inwardly a myriad. But with this manifoldness
of powers every creature is dissoluble.^ God is not able to com-
municate indissolubility and exaltation above chaotic darkness
to the creature ; " for in Him alone is that bond of the powers
a necessary one." The divine life also, with its pleroma, may
1 The soul's iminortality also, iu his view, is not a natural one. but
entirely mwliated through Christ.
78 THIRD PERIOD.
indeed (after the example of Bohm) be represented as though
there were in God an eternal movement towards revelation for
Himself ; consequently, a birth out of concealment and dark-
ness. But, on the other hand, God is quite as eternally light
in Himself, and absolutely free. But now, seeing that that
which exists in God, in eternal indissolubility and simultaneity,
is only dissolubly united in the creature, consequently goes
relatively asunder, darkness and chaos are the first in the crea-
ture, and first need vanquishing — a thing which is impossible
without the participation of the creature's freedom, and the
gradual " derivatio" of the glory of God into it. Instead of
the principle of creation out of nothing, he says, — " God is the
Father of lights, ex essentia sua essentias generat, sed essentiae
modum creaturalem accipiunt in ipso fieri." He seeks, there-
fore, to derive the world both from the essence and from the
good pleasure of God. The world comes into existence, in that
God (the Word) displays His free power over His nature (" the
Glory") ; and in order to exhibit Himself as that which He
is, as the life, full of eternal self-motion, as love, the " Ens
manifestativum sui," which gives itself certain " Gradus" and
" Modi," in order that the world may come into existence. Out
of this fulness of His deity. He is able to communicate to the
creature, without discerption of Himself, whatever He wills,
for He is spirit (spirit is wherever each part is able again to
become a whole) ; ^ nay more, the creature comes into exist-
ence through the will, which posits " Gradus" and " Modi" in
itself; but, nevertheless, the distinction between the original
and the derivative glory remains. God is not the Universe, but
All in all, the " Universum" in Him; not however "physice,"
but through the medium of His will. God abides and dwells
in Himself, although He everywhere penetrates nature ; God
is independent, nature not.'^
The goal of the revelations of God in the world, particularly
in man, is that man may become perfect, and that the bond
uniting the forces may be firmly established in him also, through
the communication of that higher nature which is neither matter
' Compare Auberlen's " Theosophie Oetinger's," p. 187.
2 Oetinger here carries on the thoughta of the old Suabian theologians
of the sixteenth century. Only the independence, the aseity of God, ia
incommunicable : His fulness is communicable.
OETINGER. 79
nor a mere image of thought, but spirit, real and manifested la
corporeahty.^ To this point, however, it could only come tn-a-
dually. That which is included in God without imperfection,
in eternal simultaneity (to wit, contrary powers, which are eter-
nally united), can only gradually and through conflict be brought
to interpenetrate in man, and that in virtue of a self-communi-
cation of God, increasing as the measm-e of the susceptibility of
freedom increases.
How far he was from regarding finite and infinite as mutu-
ally exclusive magnitudes, is clear even from what has preceded.
But it is made especially evident by his Christologv.
So far is humanity from being foreign to God, that Oetino-er
rather speaks of a heavenly humanity, not as really and in the
form of an image eternally present in God (as the Praeformalists
say) ; but that which is without limits (the En Soph of the Cab-
balists) becomes the Adam Kadmon, by contraction in itself;^
not as though the result were something finite — for that would be
Arianism — but the infinitude remains preserved, notwithstand-
ing that finitude exists as a determination of Himself throuo-h
His Avill. According to Proverbs viii., Wisdom mirrored before
God the original forms of all things, which are created through,
and with a reference to, the AVord, wdiicli was destined to be-
come flesh. This Wisdom, however, in which the beginnincr of
creation was visible to the angels, is Adam Kadmon also in his
view. So high a position did he assign to the idea of man.
The necessity of the appearance of Christ he proves partly
from the necessity of redemption, partly from that of perfection,
which could not have existence at the beginning. Inasmuch,
namely, as the powers, which in God are aKaraXuroi., in man,
as a created life, are dissoluble from within by the misuse and
rising of freedom, the possibility of a fall is involved. The de-
rivation of evil from finitude is not sufficient ; it does not break
forth out of nothing or out of the empty void ; but lust is gene-
rated through the rising of one power over the other, whilst the
different powers ought to balance each other. Evil arises out
of a conflict of powers; and that is not simple finitude, but
' Everytliing, according to Oetinger, is plastic, and first attains perfec-
tion when it acquires a form.
- Lehrtiifcl, p. 128. Tlieol. ex idea vitae, p. 216 :— Nulla neque inani-
fcstatio neque creatio fieri potest sine attractioiie, quod Ebrseis est Ziinzum.
80 THIRD PERIOD.
" finitudo interna posltiva."^ Now in Christ, the dissoluble life
of the creature has become indissoluble, both physically and
spiritually, through the Word of God as an indissoluble bond.
Christ was able to be the Mediator, because it was given to Him
to have life in Himself. He was able to bring again glory and
immortality out of death, because He, the Prince of life, con-
quered death by death. But the same power which is able to
redeem is able also to perfect. For the power of Christ not
only kills and devours the impurity and death in us, but also
collects and combines our forces into harmonious penetration ;
He constitutes the multiplicity of our powers into a living, self
perfecting unity (Theol. ex idea vitse, p. 189).
Oetinger has more fully developed his Christological thoughts
particularly in his Dogmatics (" Theologia ex idea vitse de-
ducta"). Even the method which he proposes to adopt evinces
a superior mind. Wolf's mathematical or geometric method of
proof did not satisfy him ; it begins " ab una aliqua idea ab-
stracta," and therefore presupposes simple " principia," which
are incapable of a process or progress ; for that which is abso-
lutely simple cannot be brought to movement out of itself. He,
on the contrary, adopts the " ordo generativus," which, as may
be seen by the example of seed, begins with the whole, and de-
velopes this whole into the smallest details. The philosophy of
the age he designated an artificial philosophy ; it was too ab-
stractly formal and unreal for him ; it not merely tried to know
too much (as, for example, in the doctrine of atoms), but also
too little ; seeing that it did not penetrate into the inward part
of nature, and gave no intuitive knowledge. The generative
method, on the contrary, starts with the idea of life^^ This is
also a fundamental idea of the Scriptures. No less is it also
approachable in the way of presentiment by the " sensus com-
munis." He, however, views the idea of life concretely ; he
only sees life where there is an union of contraries, which work
^ Abhamllung liber die Siinde wider den heiligen Ceist, pp. 66 ff. Lehr-
tafel 366 f. 220. He appears even to assume a dominion of darkness, a
chaotic modification of the powers, as the first form of existence Avhich is
necessary in man, until the mutually repelling and resisting powers, which
really belong to each other, have interj)cnetrated and formed a " contra-
ri(?tas harmonica." On the other hand, however, he held the evil produced
by freedom to be in a more intensive sense evil.
^ This reminds ujs of Schleiermacher.
OETIXGER 81
m each other. The logical laws of the excluded third and of
coutradictories, iu particular, he felt to be unsatisfactory ; rather
preferring to oppose to the " either — or" a " neither — nor,"
which is at the same time equivalent to a " as well this as that."
We have remarked this already in the case of the conception of
glory, which he held to be the supreme unity of the spiritual
and physical, — the divine life in its revelation. He refuses,
therefore, with the Federal theologians, to take his start with
the idea of a covenant, because that idea makes it appear as
though the life of God came on account of the covenant, instead
of the covenant being established on account of the life. He
rather prefers starting with the principle, that Christ is " gei-
minatio novce vitce (Zemach), non tantum ut Architectus crea-
turge, sed ut germen et principium vegetans templi non manu
faciendi et totius n&vae creaturae." The goal of God has been
one and the same from the beginning ; every new revelation
increased in clearness ; but in Christ first " immortalitas et vita
]>lene patefacta est, et semper magis in Evangelio aeterno mani-
festatur."
AMioso contemplates the universe, says he (de grat. § 1, 2),
sees, on the one hand, that the earth is full of the goodness of
God ; but, on the other hand also, that misery has found its way
into it in a variety of forms. This awakens even in the natural
man the longing for a deliverer, for a Holy One, whose holiness
is so rich that it can flow over to others. The entire universe
suffers ; the entire universe, therefore, will contain in the form
of symbol harmonious foretokens of this deliverer. Whoso has
those yearnings can become acquainted with that Holy One,
both through history and through the emblematical language of
the entire universe. When such an one reads the Scriptures
with an unprejudiced mind, he discerns in very deed the truth
of his presentiments of a deliverer; he sees that this redeemer
bears in Himself the concentration of the entire universe corre-
sponding to all the emblems, and that He is the image of the
invisible Father in a visible form. In Him is to irav, the ful-
ness of the Father, who fills all in all.
In the Locros, in the first instance, were " orioinalcs rcnmi
antcquam existerunt format; onmla constitcrunt in ipso sive
Jirchetypice, sive actu." In Hini God as " actus purissimus'
had become manifest primarily to Himself; but through the
r. 2. — VOL. I'l. F
82 THIRD PERIOD.
medium of the "glory" or of the heavenly element, of thv
heavenly humanity, which the Word brought forth out of itself
He gave, and also still gives, actuality to the world of prima)
forms of things which is included in Himself, in that He strives
to inform the world ever more completely with His fulness. In
the flesh of Jesus Christ, this fulness and glory assumed a cor-
poreal shape. Oetinger, however, rends asunder the appearance
of Christ neither from the remainino; revelations nor from the
first creation. As Logos, Christ was, and is, Lord and Archi-
tect of nature, principle of life and all motion, working freely
and omnipresently in nature and history, l^he Word which was
given to all men from the very beginning to be the light of life,
and which was active as power through the Spirit, was but made
right essentially manifest through the movement of God in Mary.
He describes the nature and mode of the incarnation more
precisely as follows : — That its possibility was grounded in, and
its actuality brought about through, the medium of the pure
corporeality of God or His "glory." (Note 11.) "Because
Wisdom, before the incarnation, was the visible image of the
invisible God (Col. i. 15), therefore the Son, in comparison
with the Being of all beings, is something relatively corporeal
although He too is pure spirit. The heavenly humanity
which He had as the Lord from heaven, was invisibly present
even wdtli the Israelites ; they drank out of the rock. There-
fore, also, did He enter into Mary as the power of the Highest,
in order to become shadowed and corporeal in her womb ; in
order that He mi^ht be able to contract Himself into somethiuir
dark, agreeably to the law of birth. When the humanity
which He brought from heaven entered into Mary, God made
Him less than the angels. He subjected Him to the grossness
of the flesh. Hence it is said, ' The Word became flesh.' The
weak understanding of men, says he elsewhere, has given this
exj)ression a meaning which it supposes to be pui'er; to wit,
that divine and human nature so united themselves as to
constitute one person. This also is true, but it is not in ac-
cordance with the AV'ord of God. What is there to prevent
U3 from understanding by the word becmne — that which was
most subtle was comj)elled to allow itself to be resisted by that
wjiich is most coarse, until the latter was overcome by the
former? It is, therefore, not merely an union of natures, but
OETINGER. 83
a patience broken through by resistance. Behold iiow tlie
eternal Word has been compelled to assume and suffer creatural
modes!" Lehrtafel, pp. 273 ff.
The fundamental ideas of the Church doctrine of the
"Communicatio idiomatum," he considers to be incontrovert-
ible; but gives us to understand that, in the form in which it
has been carried out, it reaches far beyond the Holy Scriptures ;
and he himself gives it a sense modified by the doctrine of the
heavenly humanity in Christ. In this heavenly humanity the
union of the divine and human v/as constantlv a civen fact,
though in the first instance only potentially; in Christ it came
to light as an actuality. Not, however, magically ; it was not a
completed fact from the moment of the conception, but was
brought about by a series of successive steps. Potuit capacitas
naturas humanae per inhabitationem Xoyov successive au^eri ;
the "exaltatio" of Christ had "augmenta intrinseca." The
Logos ennobled the life of the human soul of Christ, which Uv,
like every other man, received in Mary in the fourth month,
partly from above and partly from below. His human nature
thus received more glorious qualities than were possessed by
the nature of Adam before the fall. Adam did not yet possess
the irpeufia ^(oottoiovv. — The first still remains imperfect ; the
l)owers have not yet so interpenetrated as to form a higher
unity (which he terms " essentiare") ; for which reason the fall
was so easy a possibility. Adamo per gradus fuisset eundum
ad perfectionem summam qualitatum spiritus vivifici, sed vix
inchoamenta servavit. Christus autem (who also at first statum
psychicum subire debuit) a prima conceptione cursu non inter-
rupto omnia permeans tandem iSo^dadrj et TeXeicodeU acorrjpiai'
conferre et vitam in aliis generare potuit." He was under the
necessity of beginning at the lowest stage, "ut psychicum in
spirituale elevetur;" He must needs " legibus resistentis mate-
ria^ tenebrosffi adstringi, omncs tentationes experiri, ut carnis
insita inimicitia aboleatur." (Tlieologia, pp. 193 ff. 217.) In
that thus, by being filled with the sevenfold Spirit without
measure, His body became spirit, spiritual, His soul, His spirit,
became at the same time body, perfectly real, vital substance.
Thus, in the glorified substance of the pneumatico-somatical
Lord, is won, as it were, the essence of immortality, of the
restoration and perfection of our nature, which bcconies our
84 THIRD PERIOD
property, in particular, through the medium of the Holy Supper.
The dispensing of this His Life, Oetinger assigns to the high-
priestly office of Christ, which he conceived not merely as sub-
stitutionary and satisfactory ; but Christ is also High Priest, in
his view High Priest, because He is the universal organ of
the divine revelations and communications of the divine life.
(Theologia, p. 216.) Because He has the independent divine
life in Himself, He is able " earn influxu septemplici in nos de-
rivare." He communicates the fulness of His pneumatico-
somatic essence or His body to humanity, in order that it may
become the body of which He is the head ; in order that in the
universal restoration it may become the Church, a continuation
of Himself. " Believers are Christ's flesh, which is as dear to
Him as ours is to us ; and His flesh is as truly ours as our own.
No one cherishes greater respect for His owai flesh than Christ
for His Church. The Church, says Tertullian, is nothing but
Christus explicatus, Christ spread out, unfolded."' He teaches
an union of Christ with us similar to that which existed, and still
exists, between Christ and the Logos; and, like Phil. Nicolai,
draws a close parallel between the incarnation and regenera-
tion and " unio mystica;" as regards which, he is not satisfied
with a mere divine " operatio," but, like the ancients, insists on
a " propinquitas essentige." In Christ the divine and human
natures are " personaliter" united ; in Christians, who likewise
have a Oeia (pvai'i in Him, " spiritualiter." In the one case a
" persona auvdeTO'i" is produced out of two natures ; in the
latter case, out of the same two natures, one " compositum
mysticum." The consequence of the " unio personalis" is in
Christ " communio naturarum ;" in like manner, a communio of
our nature and the divine results from the " unio spiritualis," for
Christ works both : nostram individuam naturam sibi adglutinat
et vicissim divinae naturae nos consortes facit, ita ut finitum capax
sit infiniti non per localem comprehensionem sed per arctissimam
consociationem.^ Traxit carnem nostram in plenitudinem Dei-
tatis," so that our race became participant of heavenly nature
in Him and in us, i.e., unione turn personali tum mystica.^
' Com])are Auborlcn, a. a. 0., p. 459.
2 Thcolof^'ia, pp. m0-'d02.
^ Thcoloj^ia, pp. 321, 3'22 : — Quodsi Christo nos tradimus, tum regcne-
ramur ad plciiitudinem illam druuo, ex qua nos Adainus excussit ; qua* sua
OETINGER. BOHM. 85
Oetinger carried within himself the living conviction that
the Reformation, after having given predominant attention to
the doctrines of salvation, had now arrived at a point, when
the so-called objective doctrines loudly demanded regeneration.
Now, after the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans have been
opened up, it is time for the Epistles to the Ephesians and
Colossians, as well as those of John, to be examined.'
How strange and unusual do such words sound in the
eighteenth century ; and yet how similar, on the other hand,
are they to the voices we have heard speaking to us from the
earliest age of Christianity, and from that of the Reformation I
He trod most directly in the steps of Jacob Bohm, and took
particular pains in many treatises to make that writer's ideas
plainer, and to reduce them to a distinctly Christian shape. It
is in general a characteristic feature of this new era, that it
longed to escape from the abstract regions in wdiich philosophy
had dwelt in Germany since the days of Wolf and Kant, and
to lay hold on the fulness and reality of life ; for which reason,
the most able amongst the men whose mission it was to in-
augurate the new age, plunged with affection into the study
of antiquity ; — in doing which they always gazed with special
reverence on the figure of the " Philosophus Teutonicus," who
seemed to have written his works properly for a later period,
and to have begun by it to be properly estimated. This cannot
excite surprise, when we consider that the task now lying before
the Church was to overcome one-sided subjectivity, without
sacrificing the fruits of the subjective tendency as a whole ;
and that Bohm, with whatever power the principle of person-
ality had asserted itself in him, was very far from moving about
in merely subjective and formal determinations of thought ; on
sunt, nostra fiunt ; anima Christi per mysticam unionem nostra est aninia,
caro Christi nostra caro, vivit ille in nobis, nos in illo. Ille nos in corpore
suo — imraaculatos sistet, quia in ipso sumus iinum corpus: nam ut Adamus
fuit commune corpus nostrum, sic jam Christus est commune corpus nos-
trum. Unde ecclesiae tanta vis, tanta fidei parrhesia, ex magnifico illo
potentiarura resurrectionis promptuario. Residet igitur vis potentiarum
Domini non in hoc vel illo tantum membro, sed in omnibus, at quani
maxime in ipso capitc, in plenitudine virum ipsius, ex qua sumiinus gra-
tiam pro gratia. — Ecce hi sunt rivuli j)arvi ex magno fonte et pleromate
Epistolae ad Ephesios.
' For further details, see Auberlen, a, a. 0., pp. 233, 293, 400, 48:i.
86 THIRD PERIOD.
the contrary, he strove to view and set fortli the rliythm of the
universal cosmic, and of tlie divine life. As men who stand
in a relation to Boiim and recent times similar to that of
Oetinger, we may mention in addition, Novalis and Franz von
Baader.
In his various treatises, which, though never discussing the
matter with completeness, are rich in deep thoughts, the latter
speaks on the subject under consideration to the following effect.^
Christ is the manifestation of the true nature of man, — a
manifestation previously withheld. The manifestation of the
archetypal form of man is the climax and centre, the vehicle
and perfecter of the cosmic ideas. We ought, therefore, to point
out also the cosmical momenta of the process of redemption.
This he attempts, taking for his point of departure the prin-
ciple,— that the normal relation of things would be for God to
be the principle, man the organ, nature man's instrument, and
God accordingly connected with nature through the human
spirit as His organ. Man, however, has apostatized; the organ
lias fallen away from the principle (compare Fermenta Cogni-
tionis i. § 7, pp. 14-16) : man, shifted away from the centre,
has become nature ; nay more, nature exerts its power against
him, has independence ; and, from being a mere instrument or
thing, has become in a sense personal. Man, on the contraiy,
has sunk down into the region of unpersonality and of impot-
ence ; for he has fallen away from the central soul, God, through
whom alone he has true personality. But, inasmuch as the
divine law had thus ceased to be human (that is, to have its
realization, or as it Avere incarnation, in man), help could not
be found save in a re-incarnation of the moral law, by which
tlie law of nature was brought under subjection. At the founda-
tion both of undoubting efforts after truth and of an upright
moral disposition, lies, either clearly or vaguely, the hope of a
future, or the conviction of an already accomplished, incarna-
tion of the truth and of the moral law. Accordingly, the incar-
' Compare " Fermenta Cognitionis," Heft i., and his Collected Writings,
vol. i. ii., especially i. 152 ff. : " Gedanken aus deni grossen Zusammenhange
des Lebens," and " Sur I'P^ucharistie," Bd. ii. pp. 427 ff. ; " Ueber Divina-
tion und Glaubciislcraft," pp. 38 ff. 58 ; " Ueber die Vcrnunftigkeitder drei
F'uiidamentaldoctriiien des Christenthunis," 1839, jip. 21 ff. On Baader,
Bee Ilambergcr, Hoffmann, and others.
6AADER. 87
nation is also the completion of moral and scientific conceptions,
it is the "punctum saliens" therein.
This necessity for the incarnation he expounds more pre-
cisely as follows (see Note 12). Fallen man alone stands in
need of a messenger of God outside and alongside of him ; for
him alone is it necessary that the divine or moral law should
be concentrated in one individual, in order that through a
Christ outside of us, each one might be reminded of the Christ
in us (Ferm. Cogn. i. 54). It is true, for the living, hfe flows
solely from within outwards ; in living creatures, God, because
He is central, the central soul, reveals Himself solely by rising
within us, never by entering us from without ; — in which sense
every man may be termed a born Christian. But still it is
no less certain, that if this life inwardly sickens, and if the
voice of God in the living is reduced to silence, it can only be
awakened from without : — poured in from without it never can
be. If the higher element which is to restore freedom is to
become apprehensible and tangible to the bondsman, it must
empty, depotentiate itself "per descensum." "Verbum Dei
caro factum." If the image of God in man has " actu" perished,
and merely exists "potentia;" and if, on the contrary, the
outside world lives in Him ; he can no more be helped by this
" potentia," so far as it is a mere capacity stnpped of all actual
power, than a sick man can be helped without means : the verv
remembrance of his healtli calls for the help of a God who pre-
sents Himself to him from without, who takes a shape, who
contracts Himself into an image, or of a divine form. As man,
having fallen from his seat, needs for his redemption a God
who places Himself on the same level with him, it is by no
means religious materialism, amorous folly, harmless idolatry-,
when the Christian, who through Christ sees the deity, and with
Him, as a Godsent, heavenly shape, soars aloft to the highest
ideas, believes, and believing knows, that he can only rise by, or
rather, in that divine form. By faith he touches this powerful
heavenly form ; faith opens, puts us en rapport, makes us par-
ticipators in another's personality.
In order to be able to exhibit Himself in this outward region,
this region of forms,^ where eveiything comes forth as an indi-
^ Ferment. Cogn. ii. § 1 ff. ; anO in the second vol. of his " Gc.'^ammclte
Schriften," xv. p. 427.
88 THIRD PERIOD.
viJual alongside of and in opposition to other individuals, the
et(n-nal Word Himself must appear in an individual shape, and
empty Himself first of all of His cosmic significance, in relation
to the actus. Accordingly, God, when taking to Himself the
entire nature common to men, appeared in an individual along-
side of others ; and this His individuality necessarily maintains
itself in the Church and through the sacraments ; this necessity
for the Universal One being made actively present by means
of an individual, w^ill continue until this common element shall
have penetrated to the centre of all single forms, and brought
everything inorganic belonging to them into subjection to itself,
and organically assimilated them from within outwards, or, in
other words, until God has become all in all. Even the death
of Christ has been raised above its previous limited, outward
presence, to a cosmical, even though hidden presence. — To the
elevation of man, again, there is necessary, not merely his own
self-exinanition (in faith), but also that of Christ, — both must
be conjoined. The latter consisted, therein, tli<at the principle
itself became also organ and instrument, spirit and nature.
Entering into both, both were brought in Him, by a victorious
conflict, into their true position. But the victory, which was
accomplished in Him as the primal person, or the "homme
general," must also become ours. For we must not rest content
merely with His incarnation. The birth of God is in general
a threefold one. (Bd. ii. ; see the Abh., p. 398) :— 1. The
eternal birth of the Son of God from the Father ; 2. the birth
in Mary ; 3. the birth in Christians. But Chi'ist is the centre
of all incarnation ; and as the Word began it in Christ by self-
exinanition, so is it continued in us. In the sacrament and for
faith that empties itself, the Word empties Himself to the ex-
tent of becoming nutriment, that is, power, in order to rise
again as a person in man. He gives Himself continually to
us, in order to be appropriated as the germ of a new personality
in man. (Note 13.) In this point also, as in so many others,
Baader connects himself with Bohm and the old German
Mystics.
Alongside of Baader, Novalis deserves mention. Like
Baader, he turned his love towards antiquity, with the rich
fulness of presentiment which characterized it, and which
especially is stored up in its mystical works ; like him, he
BAADER. NOVALIS. 89
eutertained reverence for Bohm.^ This noble soul Is to be
reckoned as truly as any amongst the forerunners of the new
age ; but he resembles the men hitherto mentioned in another
respect also, to -svit, that he did not work up the intuitions
which hovered before his mind, into an organic whole, but
remained standing at certain great, far-reaching ideas, which
we will endeavour at all events to group into an outline.
The position occupied by Xovalis is a very characteristic
one ; but, owing to the variety of elements of culture which
strove in him after union, it is a strange one and difficult to de-
scribe. For the understanding of the transition from the period
during which the subjective had the predominance, the study of
an intellectual form like his, is uncommonly instructive : indeed,
the Romantic School occupies altogether an important position
in this respect. On the one hand, namely, subjectivity mani-
fested itself in him in its extreme form ; but, on the other hand,
because his subjectivity was not merely that of thought, and
embraced the totality of man, it brought him into connection
with the objective. Still, the predominance of the subjecti^■e
did not allow of a true recognition and marriage with the ob-
jective : on the contrary, he continues vacillating ; now attempt-
ing to make out of the objective merely that which pleases the
subject, and not permitting it to be that which it really is in
itself ; and again, evincing the need of entering into connection
with a given object. He seems to have considered a concilia-
tion between the two to have been effected, when he refused to
allow of the object — for example, that of religion — being arbi-
trarily turned and twisted to please the subject in its momentary
moods, and when he maintained that a permanent significance
must be attributed to it. This significance, it is true, being
posited by, can only have validity for, the subject ; but still, for
the subject it is something fixed and abiding amidst the ever-
changing stream of thoughts or feelings, to which it can ever
again revert, in order to collect and elevate itself by its aid ; to
which, therefore, the spirit may in a certain sense surrender
itself, afterwards to rise again quickened and revived. In this
way he effected the transition to a kind of objectivity.
The energy of his subjectivity, in which may be traced the
' Compare in Novalis' Wcrke, Bd. ii. pp. 43 ff., the poem to Tieck, the
subject of which is Jacob Bohm.
Ol> THIRD PERIOD.
after influence of FIchtianism, manifests itself where he speaks
of the omnipotence of tlie will, which, as moral, is also at the
same time the will of God (ii. 256). Moral feeling, says he
(p. 254), is the feeling of an absolutely creative capacity; of
productive freedom ; of infinite personality ; of the microcosm ;
of the proper divinity in us. The true miracle is the moral
one ; for evil, which can only be healed by a miracle, heals the
power of will (p. 251). Conviction (p. 247) also cannot be
brought about by external miracles:^ true conviction is the
highest function of our soul and personality. Will, therefore,
he considers to be unlimited power in the sphere of action and
conviction. Understanding, however, as he did, by the power-
ful act of Avill, elevation into the divine essence, both seemed to
him to blend into one. God becomes perceptible to us in the
moral sense; the more moral, the more divine (p. 250). An
inv/ard moral conviction is to him a divine intuition. Such a
moral deed, which is at the same time inward conviction, he
then designates also faith. To faith he attributes such might,
that he says, if a man were truly to believe himself to be moral,
he would be so (p. 252). This faith presupposes suffering,
dying, death (p. 265). In that the heart, abstracted from all
individual actual objects, feels only itself, constitutes itself an
ideal object, religion arises. All the separate inclinations unite
in one, whose wonderful object is a higher being, a deity : for
which reason the genuine fear of God embraces all the feelings
and inclinations (p. 266). In offering up every individual
thing which lays claim to have a value by itself, as a sacrifice,
we become worthy of the highest being (p. 265), and it reveals
itself in us ; not, however, as something foreign, but as our own
proper essence. Now, though the interesting transition is here
made from the self-feeling of the noble soul, spoken of by
Jacobi, to the consciousness of our own divinity ; still the system
of Novalis treats this divinity at the same time as something ob-
jective. The strong, subjective will, faith, is as almighty and
^ How lie deemed the rationalistic and supcrnaturalistic modes of tliought
to be reconcilable is hinted, p. 247, compare 250 : — Elevation (Erhebunp)
is the best means I know of passing at once out of fatal collisions. So, for
example, the raising of all phsenomena to the rank of miracles, of matter
to the rank of spirit, of man to that of God, of all ages to that of tho
golden age.
NOVALIS. 91
miraculous as it is, because in it the universal, divine will rose
again out of the death of the merely individual will ; hence,
also, the act of will by which faith lays hold on the divine as
the true essence of man, is at the same time, and in one, both
surrender and reception. He leaves behind him mere subjec-
tivity still more decidedly in the position he assumes towards
religion ; for he does not remain content with the view of it as
a reflective action on ourselves, but looks round for organs and
mediums of the religious consciousness. Consequently, he does
not (as the passage adduced from p. 266 might be taken to
hint) arrive at the divine through the mere negation of every-
thing individual, but concedes to the individual also the positive
significance of being a vehicle of the divine. These organs he
terms mediators, and even says (p. 262), it is irreligion to re-
fuse altogether to accept a mediator.
Subjectivity, indeed, appears again to prevent him from
passing over to the Christian idea of Mediator. For, to the re-
ligious mind, every object may be a temple in the sense of the
Augurs ; every arbitraiy, accidental, individual thing may be-
come our Avorld-organ (p. 263), by which we discern the spirit
of this temple, the omnipresent high priest and monotheistic
mediator, who alone stands in an immediate relation with the
Deity. — On page 261 he says, indeed, — Nothing is more indis-
pensable to true religiosity than a middle-link which imites us
with the Deity ; man is absolutely unable to stand in immediate
relationship with the Deity ; — but then he goes on to say, — " In
the choice of this middle-link, man must be completely free;
the least constraint in this matter injures his religion. The
middle-links are Fetishes, Stars, Animals, Heroes, Gods, Idols,
a God-man. As these choices are plainly relative (that is, ajipro-
priate to the spiritual condition of some one particular people,
and the reflection thereof), one is involuntarily driven to tlie
idea, that the essence of religion depends, not on the nature of
the mediator, but solely on the view taken of him, on the rela-
tion we hold to him."
However one-sidedly idealistic this sounds, nothing more is
said, when we take into consideration his further remarks, than
is questionably true, to wit, that that alone can be a God to a
people, which can be apprehended and represented by it, in
harmony with its stage of culture. 13ut this does not render it
92 THIRD PERIOD.
impossible that humanity, for which an objective course of cul-
ture is marked out, should also carry within itself the necessity
of risincr above the incalculable accidentalness which charac-
terized its choice of a mediator, to the recognition of one in a
fixed eternal form. Novalis says also, — The choice is charac-
teristic : cultivated men, therefore, will pretty nearly coincide
in their choice of middle-links ; whereas, on the contrary, the
choice of the uncultivated will be determined by accident (p.
261). He remarks more precisely (p. 264), — We must seek
God amongst men ; in human events, in human thoughts and
feelings, the spirit of heaven reveals itself most clearly.
Here he stands at the point of transition to the Christian
]Mediator. There are not lacking passages such as, — Christ is
the new Adam (p. 272) : — He has brought a second creation ;
for the annihilation of sin, this old burden of humanity, and
of the belief in penances and propitiation, has properly been
effected by Christianity. Whoso understands sin, understands
virtue and Christianity, himself and the world: without this
understanding, we cannot make the merits of Christ our own ;
we have no part in the second, higher creation (pp. 259, 270).
But, on the other hand, he is unable to reconcile Christianity
perfectly with that which he terms Pantheism, and which in
his view is the highest : for which reason, he almost seems to be
on the point of regarding Pantheism as the end of the Chris-
tian religion. This is set forth more in detail in pp. 262, 263 ;
compare pp. 287, 298. How now does he reconcile the two
things ?
" It is idolatry in the wider sense," says he, " if 1 regard
this mediator really as God Himself ; even as it is irreligion
and unbelief to have no mediator. True religion is that ^vhich
accepts the mediator as mediator, holds him to be as it were the
organ of deity, its heavenly manifestation : accordingly, the
Jews had in their Messianic expectation a genuinely religious
tendency. But true religion appears to be again divided into
l*antheism and Monotheism ; and there appears to be an
antinomy between the two." By Pantheism, he understands
that everything can be an organ of the deity, a mediator, in
that it raises the Ego up to God ; by Monotheism, he means
that there exists only one such organ for us in the world, that
it alone answers to the idea of a mediator, that through it
KOVAI.IS. 93
alone God reveals Himself. He does not deny the name of
true religion to Monotheism. It deserves the name of religion,
if it teach that man is necessitated through himself to choose this
organ. Novalis himself, however, rather prefers the view, that
the organ is constituted an organ solely by ourselves ; at the
same time treating its objectivity as in itself a matter of in-
difference. Still, a solution of this antinomy is offered by the
remark made above, regarding the sameness and necessarily
growing unity in the choice of a mediator. And, in point of
fact, Novalis had also a presentiment thereof (p. 263). " How-
ever incompatible with eacii other the two may seem (to wit,
the view according to which evei-}i:hing has a right to be an
organ of God, and the view according to which Christ alone is
the divine organ), their combination may be effected, if we
make the monotheistic mediator (Christ) the mediator of the
middle world of Pantheism, and deem the latter to be as it
were concentred in Him ; so that both, though each in a dif-
ferent way, render each other necessary." He finds, therefore,
the reconciliation in the idea of Christ as the centre of the
world ; partly because in this way the world retains its signifi-
cance as an organ of religion ; and partly because it can, not-
withstanding, only hold this position through the medium of the
universal centre, of the perfect God-man ; so that the latter
remains the only ^lediator, even as He, on the other hand, is
communicable. This, however, he has not more particularly
expounded and established ; but, at the same time, he applied
liis attention with decided preference to the idea of the uni-
versal (if even only mediated by the atonement of sin) incarna-
tion of God. And to this point, in particular, were directed
his enthusiastic hopes for the new future.^
With these ideas is strongly akin what Schleiermacher says
in the " Weihnachtsfeier," and in the " Eeden iiber die Reli-
gion ;" and partly also what Fichte said in his later period.
It is time, however, to pass from the ])orch of the new era, and
^ P. 285 : — That the time of the resurrection of religion has come, and
that precisely the events which appeared to be directed against its revival,
and thrcateneil to complete its overthrow, have become the most favourable
omens of its regeneration — this cannot remain at all doubtful to an his-
torical soul. — Such is his language after taking a ])rofound survey of tho
history of unbelief, and of the destructive tendencies of the preceding cen-
94 THIRD PERIOD.
to consider liovv, in a dialectic and strictly scientific way, progress
was made, and the vanquishment effected of the extreme sub-
jective tendency at which we remained standing above. We
will only first show how the necessity thereof was negatively
displayed, particularly in Fichte.
The unsatisfactory and inwardly self-contradictory character
of subjectivity, carried to an extreme, we have already seen
above, where the criticism of the theology built on the prin-
ciples of Jacobi landed us in the conclusion, that his system
leaves, in the last instance, an essential and irreconcilable
contradiction between understanding and soul, a dualism de-
structive of the unity of the spirit. On the one side, the
understanding, a born Atheist, absolutely finite and devoted
to finitude ; on the other side, the soul and the emotions, per-
ceiving the infinite, nay more, therewith alone contented and
blessed. Of the divine, there still remained over here a small
remainder of objectivity, so far, namely, as the higher feelings
were held by Jacobi to be the work of something objective,
divine, which gives itself to be immediately perceived by the
spirit. So long as these feelings were not merely regarded
as a becoming conscious of man's own noble nature, as self-
feelings, a remainder, if only a diminished remainder, of ob-
jective significance was left to the divine. But even Jacobi
already was inclined to regard the divine perceived by us as the
perception of the Ego itself, and its innermost essence ; which
found specially distinct expression in the absolute plenipotence
which he allowed to the subject to determine what is good and
what is evil, to which attention was directed above. Although,
according to Jacobi, the understanding is throughout finite, and
finite alone, the soul is of a divine sort. Herewith was a be-
ginning already made of allowing the objectivity of the divine
to disappear in the subjective ; of so heightening the latter as
to exclude the former, what is robbed from the objective being
added to the subjective. This tendency was still further de-
tury : — "True anarchy is the generating clement of religion. Out of the
annihilation of all that is positive, it raises its glorious head as the founder
of a new world. Out of the universal dissolution step forth the higher
organs and powers as of their own accord, as the primal kernel of the
Christian formation. The Spirit of God moves over the waters, and an
beavenlv island becomes viaiblc above the biickward streaming waves."
FICHTK. JACOBI. SCHLEGEL. 05
veloped by Fr. Sclilegel. According to Jacobi/ we cannot
know anything of the objective divine ; on the contrary, our
own noble, divine nature is always near to us. A God of
whom we can know nothing, because He cannot exert any in-
fluence on our system of thought, must, for that very reason,
not merely be ignored, but, in the course of the progress
naturally made by reason searching after unity, be excluded
and denied ; because the only effect of assuming the existence
of such a being is to introduce a dualism into reason. What
absolutely cannot be thought, against which the understanding
is driven by its very nature, and not merely by the form in
which it may accidentally appear to raise its voice, can only be
predicated as impossible. And as in Deism the ignoring of
God leads by itself to Materialism and Atheism ; so the logical
and scientific carrying out of the ideas of Jacobi, which con-
nected an objective element with subjectivity merely by a
slender thread, could end in nothing but the total exclusion of
everything objective by the subjective ; or, otherwise expressed,
in the absolute, subjective idealism expounded by Fichte.
The doctrine of Fichte we can sum up in his one principle —
The Ego is one and all. It is the only primal principle ; it is
absolute. On the other hand, however, it is not absolute, in
so far as experience testifies of another, of an independent
world, by which, as by a non-Ego, the absoluteness of the Ego
is limited, that is, abolished. Thus, the objective constantly
followed like a shadow the very Ego by which it was to be
excluded ; and from it the Ego was unable to free itself. On
the one hand, in order to prove itself absolute, the Ego was
compelled to strive to vanquish all objectivity ; because all being
which was not Ego, which was not thought, stood over against
it as another, as something limiting its absoluteness ; whilst,
on the other hand, if it had completely succeeded herein,
thought would have lost its object and content. But a tliink-
in<i which lacks content is Nihilism ; and even should it think
itself, such a thinking of thought, which thinks nothing, is an
empty thinking, a thinking of nothing. Had subjectivity,
therefore, succeeded in its attempt to swallow up all being abso-
lutely in itself, the onniipotence at which it would thus ajw
^ Compare Jacobi's letter to Fichte, especially tlie passage — " Vea. I
Mu the atheist, the godless one, etc."
96 THIRD PERIOD.
parently liave arrived, would be converted into Nihilism, into
the downfall of thought.
Now, this content cannot be restored by the theoretical
reason. For, in the view of Kant and all the writers of
the stage of reflection, the sole office of reason is to reflect on
what is given ; it is receptive, not productive.^ If, conse-
quently, the theoretic reason by itself is unable to stir from the
spot, the practical reason, on the contrary, contains a productive
principle. In moral volition is a content posited by the will
itself, to wit, the moral end which is constituted such, not from
without, but by the subject itself. But in order that action
may take place, some individual thing must be posited, otherwise
the volition cannot be a determinate one ; and as before, a non-
thinking was made out of thinking, so here a non-volition w^ould
be made out of volition. The practical Ego, therefore, needs
a determinate something, a non-Ego, in order to its self-realiza-
tion ; but it brings this non-Ego forth out of itself by its own
productivity, to the end that it may realize its freedom. The
content of the reason as theoretical, posited by the Ego itself
as practical, is thus assigned a secondary position. Applied to
the domain of religion, this signifies : — the office of the will is
to give actuality to the order of the world, to God. God is
the task to be realized by the practical reason ; He is merely
secondarily or mediately au object of the theoretical reason.
But the unsatisfactory character of this point of view be-
comes evident at once, when we consider that, according to
Fichte, the realization of that end (or Shall — Sollen) is nothing
more than an overcominff of the limits of the non-Eso, which
the Ego, in order to be a practical Ego, must take upon itself.
The non-Ego, therefore, is quite as truly the thing to be nega-
tived as the thing which is indispensable ; for which reason
the practical Ego falls a prey to a " progressus in infinitum."
As now it is to act without purpose, to posit something which
is not meant to have being (das Nicht-sein-sollende), to the end,
n(jt that a higher form of being may be the result, but that
that which is not to have being may not ])e ; so, as long as the
])ra(;tical or moral point of view is one-sidedly adhered to, the
only result is an eternal unresting in(jbility, which strives as
^ This is summarily expressed by k^ch(;]liiig in the preface to the
"Zeitschrift fiirspekiil. riiysik," 1801, p. vi.
FICHTE. SCHLEGEL. JACOBl. 97
earnestly after being — to wit, freedom as the goal of the shall
(Sollens) — as it flees from it ; because the attainment of the
goal towards which it is continually approximating, would bring
stagnation and death to the practical reason. The separation
of the theoretical from the j)ractical Ego — which two, Fichte
was as far as Kant from perceiving to have a common centre
and root — that is, religion (not, indeed, the merely subjective
religion of Jacobi), is the separation of being from moral obliga-
tion ; for the cognitive faculty has being for its object, even as
the practical reason has the shall. Both, however, are in an
equally bad position : the shall without being, and being without
the shall. For bare being by itself is without motion ; it does not
come into flux ; it does not attain to organization : it is there-
fore indistinguishable from its contrary, the nothing. From
this it follows, that the true point of view is not arrived at until
the two sides hitherto separated by so wide a gulf, to wit, the
theoretical and the practical reason, mutually interpenetrate.
When that is accomplished, the knowing faculty is no longer
merely receptive, it is no longer mere reflection on something
given, but the practical reason, as an impulse, or motive power,
as the principle of a process, has married itself with thought ; and
thought also, although it takes its start with something already
existent, for it has being for its object, is then productive, or,
more precisely expressed, reproductive. And, on the other
hand, when the being wliich is the object of knowledge has
once incorporated itself with the practical reason, this latter no
longer goes on in endless unrest, but the reconciliation of spirit
with itself is then concluded, because it advances onward on
the eternal groundwork of being. The shall is then reduced,
or rather raised, to the position of the animating principle of
being; even as the practical impulse is then no longer a bhnd
doing, but something rational, to wit, the explication of reason.
Thus does the spirit advance onwards, in connected unity, both
speculatively and practically. And although it turns now to the
speculative, and now to the practical side, it is still always the
one entire spirit, reconciled in itself, wliieh acts theoretically in
tlie knowing of the truth, and practically in the moulding of
the world of morality. But this reconciliation rests on the
recognition of an objective reality ; though this objective reality
must no lon"(,'r be known as sometiiinii foreiiin, but as that
P. 2. — V(JL. III. G
\ib THIRD PERIOD.
which is essentially spiritual (and therefore capable of repro-
duction^.
The effect of Fichte's labours was to show, in a twofold
manner, that object and subject are connected with and belong
to each other ; this resulted from the opposed attempts to ex-
clude the one by the other. The Jirst manner was the one
just considered — the exclusion of the object by the subject. As
we have seen, the result was, that with the never-ending shall
impending over it, tlie subject loses itself in contradictions, un-
less it maintain itself, partly by presupposing, and partly by
finding or realizing, a non-Ego in itself, instead of annihilat-
ing it.
The second mode is the later form of the system of Fichte,
which we may designate the Spinozistic.^ Here the object, as
abstract being, stands in exactly the same absolutely exclusive
relation to the subjective as the subjective had previously held
towards the objective. The transition from the first point of
view to the second was easy enough to effect, whether regard
be had to the point of departure, or to the goal of the former.
For the goal is evidently being, the having attained as the end
of the shall. As the point of departure, Fichte was compelled
to assume the absolute, the unconditioned, which the will in
itself isj which only subjects itself to limits in order to be able
to act. This is the view taken of his system by Novalis, when
he says, — "Fichtianism is applied religion." The more dis-
tinctly the contradictions of a one-sidedly subjective activity
manifested themselves to him, the more natural was it for him
to throw himself on the other side, to wit, that of the objectivity
of the subject, to fix his eye on the per se or the divine essence.
But even thus he had not yet overcome the point of view of re-
^ The views laid down by Fichte in his " Anweisung zura seligen Leben "
(" Guide to the Blessed Life ") even yet are not unfrequently regarded as
indicative of an enfeeblement of the strong Ego, which had felt itself equal
to the entire sphere of the objective. But the history of the development
of men like Schleiermacher, Novalis, and Schelling, who were more power-
fully influenced by his system, alone forbids regarding the transition from
his own subjective idealism to the Spinozistic view as anything so accidental.
The last-mentioned in particular saw clearly the necessity for this transition
(see the " Vorrede zur Zeitsch. f. spek. Physik," Bd. ii. 2, 1801), and ex-
pre8.sed the hope that Fichte would take the step, ere he had actually taken
it. Daub's Thcologiunena also belong to this conuectiou.
nCHTE. 99
flexion, from "nhich both — namely, tlie subjective or human, and
the objective or divine — seem to contradict and exclude each
other, but only turned it in the opposite direction. As the divine
had appeared to him before to be a mere product of the subject,
so now, vice versa, the subject appeared to him to be but an
accident of the divine substance. In both its forms, his system
forms a complete conclusion to the old period, and as its re-
capitulation.is also its topstone ; thus proving that an untrue con-
ception is formed both of the subjective and objectiA-e, each in
turn, when the one is dissociated from the other ; that conse-
quently both are connected together and esseidiallij one. (Note
14.) For either of them rent asunder from its essential unity
with, and asserted by itself in antagonism to, the other, perishes,
— perishes, in fact, through the reaction of the opposite into
which it is converted. This demonstrates clearly that both,
when regarded in a proper light, have an equally justified exist-
ence, and belong essentially to each other ; and that the one
cannot be known, cannot be thought in its truth, save as united
with, or in the other. Things which are indifferent to, do not
fall into conflict with, each other : only those things which es-
sentially belong to and are one with each other, are able to pass
into life and actuality by means of conflict with the various
forms of one-sidedness, which as such are opposed to unity of
essence. And it was manifested here on a particularly grand
scale, that the conflict was simply an endeavour after unity on
the part of elements which, though separated from each other
by a false view, essentially belonged to each other ; which, in
fact, had been separate in order that, having mutually van-
quished each other, they might thus be delivered from untruth
and one-sldedness, and that the full truth, as their higher unity
might be brought to light.
I
100 THIBD PERIOD
SECTION I.
THE FOimDATIONS OF THE NEW CHRISTOLOGY LAID BY
SCHELLING, HEGEL, SCHLEIERMACHER.
I. SCHELLING.
To Schelling belongs the undying merit, not merely of having
discerned, but also of having taken an important step towards
the abolition of the dualism which cleaves in equal measure to
systems which take the objective, and those which take the sub-
jective, one-sidedly, for their point of departure (a one-sidedness
which was always reflected with peculiar distinctness in Christ-
olooy, and was, as we have seen, the ultimate cause of the failure
of the attempts hitherto made to construct a doctrine of the
Person of Christ). He saw that it is not right to conceive sub-
ject and object as mutually exclusive and merely opposed to each
other, but that the essential unity of the two must be taken as
the principle of all philosophy : this essential unity he terms
Subject-Object. (Note 15.)
This one proposition, clearly laid hold on, and both expressed
and carried out with great intellectual vigour, forms the turn-
ing-point not merely in philosophy, but also in theology, which,
as we have seen a!>ove, was dependent on philosophy for the
next step in advance which it was necessary for it to take.^
1 In his " Darlegung des wahren Verhaltnisses der Naturphilosophie
zu der verbesserten Fichte'schen Lehre," 1806, pp. 46, 47, Schelling says:
" In relation to that which has immediately gone before, there is stirring a
completely new age, and the old cannot comprehend it ; nor has it even a
distant presentiment how distinct and complete is the antagonism of the
new to itself. The age of yore hits again opened itself ; the eternal primal
sources of truth and of life are again approachable. Mind may again
exult, and play freely and boldly in the eternal stream of life and beauty.
Fichte is the philosophical blossom of tliis old era, and in so far its bound-
ary line."
SCHELLING. 101
This is not the place to enter into the details of his philo-
sophy ; so much, however, comes here into consideration, that
the old one-sidednesses were overcome, at all events as to
principle, by a new principle.
The characteristic feature of all recent Christologies is the
endeavour to point out the essential unity of the divine and
human ; but this unity, which stood already before Luther's
eyes when he spoke of the new higher humanity, might be
very differently viewed.
Schelling regarded it as absolute identity. The higher
unity of the human and divine, of the subject and the object,
he did not, it is true, regard as a mere abstract indifference of
the two, nor as an "abstractum" or "neither — nor" of the two,
arrived at by the negation of the antagonistic elements ; but
he allowed the antagonisms to remain, and sought to cognize
them as one, in living identity.^ The absolute, says he, may
not be conceived as a pure One or being, abiding absolutely in
its newness (Neuheit) ; as such, it would be without a revela-
tion of itself, nay more, without being. For revelation is self-
affirmation, and self-affirmation is being. But the absolute is
also in itself multiplicity. It is the unity or copula of the con-
tradictories, multiplicity and unity. Contradictories there must
be, because there must be life ; but the true identity, as it
posits the antagonism, so also does it keep it under its power.
In virtue hereof, it is the essentially mobile, willing, creative
unity. Actual, real being, is self-revelation ; but in order
that the absolute may have actuality, that is, reveal itself, it
must not merely be itself ; in itself there must be another, and
in this other it must be to itself the one. This other, or mani-
fold, does not exist as the manifold or the other ; nor must it
be supposed first to arrive at the one (having previously not
been one) ; it is rather simply the one itself, but as existing
(existirendes), as self-revealing, which is only possible in that
the one becomes to itself another, a manifold. The divine
unity is from eternity a living, an actually existing unity ; for
the divine is precisely that which cannot otherwise exist than
as actual. But in that God is thus nothing else but the living
unity of the many, the organic unity, that is, the unity which
' Compare his " Darlegung des wahren Verhiiltnisses der Natiirphilo-
sophie zur verbesserten Fichtc'schen Lehre," pp. 51 ff.
102 THIRD PERIOD.
is articulate in itself, and manifests itself in that articulation
He is on that very ground necessarily a growth (ein Werden),
like all life ; for (pure) being alone has no growth ; — all life re-
alizes itself through antagonism and the vanquishment thereof.
Accordingly, the divine life, in order that it might be life, has
subjected itself to suffering and growth, which are the fate of
all life, and has undertaken to undergo an historical process.
As, on the one hand, these principles are directly opposed
to the deistic conception of God as an abstractly simple unity,
and to the rigid conception of God laid down by Wolfianism,
even in its supranaturalistic form ; so, on the other hand, do
they take a direction again towards the foundations of the
Christian, Trinitarian conception of God, in that they show
that, without distinguishing Himself in Himself, without another
in which He, as it were, again possesses Himself, God could
not be the living One, or even the One who actually is (der
actuell Seiende). God, as pure being (as I'epresented by Deism
and substantial Pantheism), would be merely a possible, not an
actual God.
If God is conceived merely as pure being, no such thing as
a transition to the world, still less to Christology, can be found.
If, on the contrary, He is living and discriminated in Himself,
then new prospects in both respects are opened up. Let us
now dwell for a time on Schelling's treatment of Christology.
(Note 16.) First, a word on the earlier representation con-
tained in the "Methode des akademischen Studiums,"^ which
continued for a considerable period to give the tone to the
Christology laid down by the speculative philosophy in modern
times ; afterwards we will notice the later form, which evinces
a not unimportant step in advance.
The divine life in its manifestation runs through (as we
have seen above) a process. But finitude is the necessary form
of the divine revelation. The eternal, divine idea could not
become manifest in itself ; in order that it may become mani-
fest, it must subject itself to limitations. Because, however, it
is unable to set itself forth in any one finite, limited form, the
divine life sets itself forth in a number of individuals, in a rich
history, each moment of time of which is the revelation of a
particular aspect of the divine life, and in each of which God
^ Lectures viii. ix.
SCHELLING. 103
is present absolutely. For this reason, the finite is not merely-
finite ; on the contrary, it is rather that in which God Himself
has His historical life : the finite is tlie necessary form of re-
velation, of the manifested God. It is God in His growth, or
the Son of God. All history thus acquires a higher signifi-
cance. Tlie human does not exclude, but contains the divine
within itself ; the domain of history is the birth-place of spirit,
the scene of the theogony. Thus was the idea of the incarna-
tion of God raised to be the principle of the whole of philo-
sophy ; and as this idea is the essence of Cliristianity, philosophy
is reconciled with it. Everything is to be explained by this
idea of the incarnation of God : nature itself points to the Son
of God, and has in Him its final causes.
But with this positive, constructive aspect of the philosophy
of Schelling, is no less decidedly connected the critical and
negative aspect.
Theologians, says he, view Christ as a single person ; but in
this aspect it cannot be doubtful that He is an historical person,
capable of being comprehended, and without mystery. But seeing
that an eternal idea alone, and not an individual, can be stamped
a dogma, Christolog;v' as a dogma is untenable. Theologians un-
derstand it, like all doctrines, empirically, as a deed of God in
time. But to this no clear idea whatever can be attached, see-
ing that God is eternally outside of all time. The incarnation
of God, therefore, is an incarnation from eternity. Nothing,
however, is lost by looking upon Christ as an etemal idea. On
the contrary, the inmost essence of revelation then first comes
to consciousness. The spirit of modern times has clearly and
loudly testified that it cannot put up with a merely empirical
manifestation ; it advances onward with visible consequence to
the destruction of all merely finite forms, whose design is to
support the truth by external authority, by evidences from
miracles, and the like. At the same time, its intention is not to
annihilate the truth, but to bring it to light. Tlie divinitv of
Christianity cannot be demonstrated in an empirical manner
(which, because empirical, must at the same time stand in a
relation of exclusivcness to all other historical phrenomena), but
only by contemplating history on universal, speculative prin-
ciples ; in other words, its truth can only be demonstrated by
viewing the whole of history as a divine deed. Outwardly, it
104 THIRD PERIOD
can never be shown how the eternal idea subjects itself to time ;
the divine is by its very nature neither cognizable nor demon-
strable empirically. On the other hand, however, this entrance
of the eternal idea into time, this unity of the infinite and
finite, is the fundamental determination of Christianity. For
this reason, the unity, not being able to be outwardly intuited,
must be inwardly cognized. The beholding of this unity, of
the dissolution of the antagonism between finite and infinite,
falls into the subject. External things can only serve the pur-
pose of stirring up the subjective activity by which contradic-
tories are viewed as an unity, but not to give the intuition of
the unity by its own genuinely divine essence. The sacred
history must be to us merely a subjective, not an objective
symbolism, such as the Greeks had, who saw the infinite solely
in, and accordingly subordinated it to, the finite. On the con-
trary, as the Christian religion is the religion which relates to
the infinite immediately in itself, the finite in it is conceived not
as an objective symbol of the infinite, not, at the same time,
for its own sake, but merely as an allegory of, and in entire
subordination to, the infinite. Nay more, he goes still further :
When contemplating the sacred history, we ought to have the
distinct conviction, that the eternal idea can in no way be re-
stricted to a determinate form of revelation. In a religion
which relates immediately to the infinite, the forms are not
permanent, but phaenomenal, historical forms, in which the
divine reveals itself only transitorily.
For this reason, the spirit of the new age aims at viewing
that which the Church and its sacred documents (to which in
this point must be assigned a very low place) referred to a single,
empirical phsenomenon — wherein also contingency was involved
— in its universal and eternal necessity ; it desires the eternal
idea instead of the empirical, individual phsenomenon ; the view
hitherto taken of the Person of Christ as the only, individual
Son of God, it holds to be but an exoterical view, in which the
eternal, universal truth lies concealed, as under the husk of the
letter. In the day when the divme spirit first dawned on hu-
manity as its inmost centre, the great idea of the incarnation of
God, needed, says he, a mythological body and letter. But the
time is coming, and is now already here, when tlie esoterlcal,
beinf; set free from its veil, must come forth and shine for itself.
SCHELLING. 105
The fundamental idea of Christianity is an eternal, univer-
sal one ; it cannot therefore be historically constructed without
the religious construction of history. As eternal, the idea of the
incarnation had an existence even outside of Christianity. But
that Christianity thus existed already prior to and outside of it-
self is a proof of the necessity of its idea. That the highest ele-
ment in the religious faith and in the philosophy of the Hindoos
is summed up in the idea of the incarnation of God, and that a
similar tendency is traceable in Greek philosophy and poesy —
this does not lower Christianity, but is a prophecy of it in an
entirely strange and remote world, and shows that the Christian
doctrine of the incarnation of God contains not something
absolutely new, but an eternal truth. The man Christ is in
manifestation mex'ely the apex, and, in so far also, the be-
ginning of the incarnation ; for, starting with Him, it was
to be continued by all His followers being members of one
and the same body, of which He is the head. That in Christ
God became for the first time truly objective, is proved by
history ; for who before Him revealed the infinite in such a
manner ? The old world is the natural side of history, so fur
as its idea was the being of the infinite in the finite. The
close of the old and the boundary line of a new age, whose
ruling principle was the infinite, could only be effected by the
true infinite coming into the finite, not in order to deify it, but
in order to sacrifice it in His own person, and thus reconcile it
to God.
According to this theory, therefore, the significance of Christ
consists, not in His setting forth the concrete infinite, the abso-
lute unity of the real and the ideal, but in His sacrificing the
finite to God, or by representing, particularly through His
death, the finite as nothing, and the infinite as the only true
being and life. That such is his opinion, and that the dignity
of Christ is not found in the absolute identity of the real and
the ideal, is evident from the following. Christ also, the climax
and termination of the old woi'ld of gods, makes the divine
finite in Himself ; but He stands as a phaenomenon, which was
decreed indeed from eternity, but transitory in time, as the
boundary line between the two worlds. As to His working on
earth, He went back into the infinite, and promises instead of
Himself the Spirit, who leads back the finite into the infinite.
106 THIRD PERIOD.
Humanity alone is the eternal Son of God, born of the
essence of the Father of all things, the manifest God; appear-
ing as a suffering God, subjected to the fates of time, who, in
the climax of His manifestation, to wit, in Christ, brought the
world of finitude to a conclusion, and inaugurated that of infini-
tude or of the dominion of spirit. For this reason those mytho-
logical husks must fall away, which represent Christ as the only
God-man. The eternally living spirit of all culture will clothe
Christianity in new and more lasting forms ; speculation, by
showing that the determinations of Christianity are not limited
to the past, but extend to an unmeasured time, prepared the
way for the second birth of esoterical Christianity and the pro-
clamation of the absolute Gospel.
This exposition of Schelling's contains most distinctly fea-
tures which imply that Christ can only have been a finite phae-
nomenon, both intensively and extensively. In the Christian
religion, says he, the infinite is merely signified by the finite : the
idea was never embodied in the finite. This latter was rather the
manner of the Greek religion, in which, for this very reason,
the infinite was made finite, and set forth in an unworthy man-
ner. The Christian religion concerns the infinite immediately in
itself : for this cause, the whole, in which the ideas of such a
religion become objective, is itself necessarily infinite, and can-
not be a world complete and bounded on all sides, — the forms
not permanent, but phasnomenal, — not eternal natural beings
(Naturwesen), but historical forms, in which the divine manir
fests itself merely transitorily. The view taken of the infinite
is such, that it is impossible for it to reveal itself in its entire
fulness in an individual, seeing that it would otherwise be itself
made finite, or subordinated to the finite. And because it is
essential to the finite to be an inappropriate form of the infinite,
the infinite cannot take up its permanent abode in any finite
form : it must seek to set itself forth in some other way. This,
however, can again only take place in the finite, for the infinite
cannot become manifest in itself. The infinite, therefore, only
goes through the finite as through transitory husks, whose varie-
gated colours are intended to set forth its inner essence : but
because this inner essence cannot be set forth in any one finite
form, there is no alternative but to say, that tiie infinite finds its
adequate revelation in the totality of finite forms. At the same
SCHELLING. 107
time, however, it must be added,^ that this totality may not be
conceived as bounded and closed (for in order that it might be
perfectly represented in a bounded totality of finite beings, the
infinite must become finite no less than if it were to find an
adequate representation in a single individual) ; but the totality
of finite beings, in which the infinite is to be represented, must
be unbounded, that is, it must be no totality, but an unbounded
world of finite beings. It is clear, indeed, that the solution of
the question. How the infinite, if it cannot attain to represen
tation in any finite form, can ever reveal itself or truly set itself
forth at all (seeing that it can only reveal itself in finite objects,
and not as it is in itself), is merely referred to a progressus in
infinitum. An endless series of finite spirits is alone supposed
to be able to set forth the infinitude of God, to be its adequate
expression. It is quite as clear that an infinitude which is able
to set itself forth in a mathematical infinitude of finitude must
be still conceived as a mathematical, not yet purely as an inten-
sive, metaphysical infinitude. If the infinite is to be defined
mathematically, or, as it were, as absolute quantum, then is the
finite, the determinate, indeed, its contradiction ; determination
is then the opposite of the infinite ; then does the famous pro-
position of Spinoza hold good — " Omnis determinatio est ne-
gatio." On such a supposition the idea of the God-man is an
impossibihty. And where God is conceived as infinite in this
sense, the idea of personality is diametrically opposed to Him ;
for the idea of the divine personality is in the richest measure
concrete and determinate ; — which, from that point of view, can
only appear as an unworthy lowering of God.
The case is different, however, when once the idea of exten-
sive infinitude has been exchanged for the deeper one of an
intensive infinitude. It is then no longer necessary that the
finite should stand over against the infinite as non-infinite ; it
no longer needs then merely to appear in the finite, as in its
allegory, or to be signified by it ; but it is possible for an essential
union to be effected between the two, and for the infinite to
have its being and life in the finite. The finite, it is true, is not
infinite in the extensive meaning of the word ; but it by no
means contradicts its idea to be intensively infinite. In other
words, the true unity between finite and infinite can only b*<
^ Compare " Vorlesung iibcr die Metliode," etc., Ed. 2, p. 171
108 THIRD PERIOD.
brought to pass by rising out of the category of quantity to that
of quahty, from extensive to intensive infinitude ; which latter
may very well pertain also to a being that is finite in the exten-
sive sense/
If this transition be not effected, we must remain fixed in
dualism. Finite and infinite are then mutually exclusive con-
ceptions ; for if such an infinitude exist at all, there is no longer
room for the finite ; finitude would then be the limit and con-
tradiction of infinitude. And so, on the other hand, if such a
finitude exists, there is no room for an infinitude, but the infinite
is then made finite by the finite. For this reason, it is neces-
sary to rise from this quantitative conception of the infinite and
tlie finite, according to which they are only mutually contra-
dictory, to that higher conception in which both are truly con-
ciliated with each other.
It is not to be denied that Schelling had a presentiment of
that higher conception of the infinite and finite. But none the
less does the other and lower conception constantly force itself
forwards. He says, indeed, every form contains a particular
aspect of the divine revelation, in each of which God is present
absolutely ; but, on the other hand, he quite as truly says, the
infinite cannot be entirely present in any one form, but only in
the unbounded world of finite forms. Each single form is but a
transitory appearance of the infinite ; and if the infinite is not
to be supposed to be made finite, the finite can only signify the
infinite. We see, therefore, that no true union of the finite and
infinite is effected. — In this way, however, not only is the idea
of a God -man, in whom the fulness of the deity dwells aoy/xa-
Tt/c(u?, in concrete individuality, excluded, but the system is
itself marked by dualism. For it still vacillates between the
^ Intensive infinitude has its centre in the ethical, which alone is the in
itself infinitely valuable and true divine being ; for God is love. As Baur,
when protesting against the above distinction (Trinitiitslehre iii. 918),
ignores the entire ethical, that is, sensu eminente, divine world, he is com-
pelled to continue finding the distinction between God and the finite, in
the sphere of the quantitative, that is, in the quantum, — a point of view
which admits neither of a true distinction nor of a true unity. Even the
old Suabian theologians (see above) discoursed far more in the spirit of
speculation, when they taught that the distinction between God and the
world consisted in His aseity, and not in the quantum. Compare on this
bubject also Conradi's " Kritik der christlichen Dogmen," 1841, pp. 150 f-
SCHELLING 109
mathematical view of the infinite (from which is derived the
notion that the di\ane is unable to reveal itself truly in a finite
being, a notion which supposes indeed that the will to reveal
Himself is essential to the absolute Spirit, but also that it is
quite as necessary to this will to remain eternally resultless) and
the higher, metaphysical view.
And even if this higher view makes its appearance here and
there in a more distinct manner, — for example, when he desig-
nates Christ the climax, and again, the beginning of the incar-
nation, commencing with whom it must be continued till all
shall have become members of one and the same body, of which
He is the head (passages which may be taken to evince an
inclination to attach more than ephemeral worth to historical
forms) ; still, in general, it recedes to the background before a
view of the infinite more related to the principles of Spinoza
(which predominates in his writings), as compared with which
everything finite is mere show and seeming ; and it can only be
regarded as the forerunner of the higher form of philosophy set
forth in his " Freiheitslehre" (Doctrine of freedom), which it
will now be our business to consider.
So long as the finite is regarded as a mere series of fugitive
appearances, into no one of which the divine veritably enters to
abide, so long are all these phaenomena essentially equal to each
other ; they represent an uniform series. For this reason also,
Schelling, at the stage just under consideration, so completely uni-
versalized the Christian idea of the incarnation, as to treat even
the ante-Christian immediately as a representation of the divine
incarnation, and to speak of a Christianity before Christianity.
It is true h^ designates this Christianity again a mere prophecy
of Ciiristianity, and finds in Christ the beginning of the incar-
nation. But what the difference is between the first incarnation,
prior to Christ, and that which began with Him ; and whether
the former also deserves the name incarnation, — he does not
more precisely explain. Hence the qualitative distinction of the
Christian from the ante-Christian runs the risk of being over-
looked. This defect the " Freiheitslehre" seeks to remedy: its
aim is, more distinctly than the afore-mentioned work, to arrange
and organize history according to the measure in which the
divine sj)irit rises victorious in the consciousness of man. The
monotony of the forms, each of which is merely a fugitive and
110 THIRD PERIOD.
essentially unsatisfactory manifestation of the infinite, is thus
done away with ; the historical forms acquire a more concrete,
a firmer substance ; and thus the victory is secured for that
mode of viewing the infinite according to which, by entering
into the finite, it lent it ever more an absolute worth.
All life, — this is the starting-point of the present work also,
— all life is a growth, a process. Bare Being alone has no
growth ; but for that reason, it is dead, without revelation either
for itself or for others ; only simple, identical with itself. Now
all growth or birth must be preceded by a ground, which, whilst
on the one hand, the new is born out of it ; on the other hand,
is not the new, but holds a position of antagonism thereto,
and must be overcome and overthrown by it as an imperfect
mode of existence. This holds good both of the kingdom of
nature and of that of history. The goal of the former is the
birth of light ; and darkness must precede light as the ground.
The goal of the latter is the birth of spirit, free and universal.
But the birth of spirit must also be preceded by a ground, which
is not spirit, in order that the birth of spirit might be a possi-
bility. Now this ground of spirit is nature, or rather the prin-
ciple of nature, which must needs first work for itself in order
that there might be a selfhood, an individual Mali (a Natural or
Particular Will: — " Natur- oder Partikular-Wille "), with which
spirit might in due time enter into conflict, and through which
alone spirit could become actu, or in reality, the universal will
which it is potentid.
God also, so far as He is life and not mere being, must have
made Himself subject to growth. For this reason, there must
be a ground out of which God also rises to the reality, to the
absolute spirituality, which He is potentially at the beginning.
But this ground of spirit is nature ; and nature, as the ground of
the divine, is the necessary presupposition of the actu existing
God. God, however, realizes His existence as an actuality
thereby, that after the ground had worked in its independence
(independence, namely, of the spirit, which was still enclosed in
God), with the object of preparing a birth-place for spirit, the
principle of knowledge, the divine gaze at life, rises in the
depths of the divine essence. This takes place in man, who is
created to be the centre of (ins Centrum) nature ; that is, who is
on the one hand nature, but on the other hand also, is that
SCHELI.TNG. Ill
which nature encloses in its first centre or essence, to wit, spirit.
The highest summit of this revelation of God is, as in nature, man
generally ; so here, the archetypal and divine man (the -primal
man), He who in the beginning was with God (resting), and
in whom all other things and man himself were created, but
who also was destined to be brought forth actually (actuell).
But the birth of spirit can only be effected through the
medium of conflict. The ground must resist, in order that
there may be a development and a conflict, and that all the
powers may pass out of their condition of mere potentiality
and indeterminateness, may actu realize themselves. And, on
the other hand, the cognitive principle must rise more and
more, in order that there may be a separation, in order that the
first form of existence may be recognised as one that must be
overcome, as the merely natural form, whose particular will
(Partikular-Wille) has to give way to the universal will. Out
of this gradual birth of spirit, there thus grows the kingdom of
history, which is divided into the following periods : —
The first must be the period when the ground of spirit, of
the free universal will, of the true personality, is first laid. —
This is the time when God reveals Himself as to His nature
alone, — not, however, as to His heart, His love, or in general as
to His spirituality, — in order that spirit might be a possibilitv.
At this stage, man is merely the highest natural being ; spirit
has not yet dawned in him even as a principle of knowledge.
For this reason, although in the first instance the natural parti-
cular will alone held sway, this was a time of blessed indeter-
minateness and innocence, when there was neither good nor
evil — a time of unconsciousness of sin, when the spirit was
absorbed in nature. Within this (which we may call) natural
period of history, that golden age of ignorance of good and evil
was followed by the age of the omnipotence of nature (of the
rule of gods and heroes) ; then came the age when nature was
glorified in the highest degree, with all the brilHancc of art and
ingenious science, until the principle of selfhood, which was
still operating in the ground, came forth as a world-conquering
principle, to found a fixed and enduring ?t'orZt/-empire.
But as the essence of the ground can never by itself give
birth to the true unity, the time arrives when all this u\ov\ is
discjolved, when the beautiful body of the preceding world falia
Il2 THIRD PERIOD.
to pieces, as though visited by a terrible sickness, and chaos
finally begins its sway. This is the tragical period, the period
of fate. At this point, the element of consciousness came into
play ; spirit, as a power standing above its productions, mani-
fested itself, but recognised itself as in a state of impotence ;
for the incongruity of the natural life, in comparison with its
spiritual life, no longer escaped its eye. Innocence is done
away with, in that the union of spirit with nature is now recog-
nised as sin ; formal freedom is awakened, and begins the con-
test with that objecti\aty which had so long held the spirit in
bondage. But this old world of the mere ground does not give
way; it remains mighty, in order that the entire powers of the
spirit may be sharpened and heightened, in order that every-
thing good may become known by its antagonism. It was not
good that the duality of spirit and nature should be all at once
done away with ; spirit needs for its birth an opponent who
shall contmually solicit it, and shall j)reAent the spiritual life
from remaining hidden in the ground wnthout actualization.
For this reason also, evil manifests itself with ever increasing
violence; formal freedom cannot overcome it, and the only re-
sult attained is the ever more complete separation of spirit and
nature.
Now the moment when the separation is accomplished, or
the age of fate, when the earth becomes for the second time
formless and void, is at the same time that of the birth of the
higher light (of spirit), which was from the beginning in the
world, but was un comprehended by the darkness which worked
for itself, and was as yet revealed only in a closed, restricted
manner. After the Iliad of history comes the Odyssey, the
return of the spirit to the infinite out of its endless flight. The
j)eriod of fate is followed by that of providence;^ God reveals
Himself as to His heart, His love. Freedom, that had suc-
cumbed, raises its head more gloriously again : in yielding to
fate, it had but yielded to God ; and that dark natural necessity,
after having judged the natural aspect of the spirit, reveals
itself as divine love. The absolute universal will of this love,
when it lays hold on the particular will, effects the inmost re-
conciliation of the spirit with itself.
' " Philos. und Religion," p. 6-1 ; " Methode des akadem. Stud." p.
SCHELLING. 113
The redemption of the personal spirit is necessarily the
work of God; it cannot proceed forth from man ; man always
needs help for his transmutation (Freiheitslehre, pp. 473, 477).
The true good can only be effected by a species of divine magic,
by the immediate presence of Him who is (des Seienden) in the
consciousness and in knowledge. The more mightily evil had
come forth as a spiritual, personal power, in that, at that time,
it had assumed entire persons and possessed itself of their con-
sciousness, the more necessary was it that spirit likewise should
appear in a personal, human form as a mediator, in order to
restoi-e the connection of ci'eation with God at its highest stage;
for onit/ the personal can heal the personal, and God must be-
come man in order that man may come again to God. Li this
person, God took nature upon Himself, united Himself with it ;
it was thus loioered to the position of a mere poterice, of the \nn-
quished basis of the good. As such, it can never again have
the opportunity of working alone ; it can never attain to actuality
as mere nature ; it is not an independent power, but merely an
instrument, a means of the revelation of spirit. The I'estoration
of the relation between the ground (which had hitherto worked
independently of God as spirit) and God as spirit, first rendered
healing, redemption, possible ; for in the personality of Christ,
the particular will and the universal will, nature and spirit, be-
came one. With Him begins the kingdom of spirit, that is, the
time when the divine spirit is actualized, or is introduced to the
actuality of its existence ; and this kingdom endures as an age
of conflict between good and evil, till the end of the days (see
pp. 461, 495 ff.). Christ must rule, till all His enemies are
put under His feet. Those who are born out of darkness to
light, enter into connection with the ideal principle as members
of the body of Him in whom it has been jx^rfectly realized, and
in whom it is now a completely personal being. At last, the
ideal principle, and the real principle which has become one with
it, subordinate themselves in common to spi?it ; and spirit, as
the divine consciousness, lives in like manner in both principles,
as the Scriptures say : — When everything shall bo subject to
the Son, then will the Son also Himself be subject to Him,
who has sulijectod all things to Him, that God may be all
and all.
Here wc have certainlv a grand view of tlie universe as a
r. 2. VOL. III. 11
1 14- THIRD PERIOD.
well-ordered organism, and Schelling opens up profound
glimpses into the course of the history of the human mind.
The Christian religion is no longer considered coldly and
emptily as a doctrine, but as a continuous divine deed, as a
power, as an history : the history of Christ is no longer treated
as a mere empirical, single history, which itself becomes in
turn meagre doctrine, but, at the same time, as an eternal
history, so far as it finds its copy in humanity generally.
Christianity no longer stands as one religious institution amongst
others ; but as the religion, as the true mode of the existence
of spirit generally, as the divine soul of history, which has
incorporated itself with humanity to the end of organizing it
into a great body, of which Christ is the head. (Note 17.)
As compared also with what was set forth above, he takes a
step in advance ; for, in consequence of viewing history as an
organism, and drawing more precise boundary lines, Christianity
appears more in its qualitative distinction from everything that
is not Christian. The idea of the eternal incarnation of God
is now no longer applied to the ante-Christian, as though
there had been an incarnation of God at all times ; but in
Christianity God is for the first time actu God, and the incar-
nation of God was completed. Here, too, we find no longer
the above-mentioned vacillation between an external, merely
extensive, and the true, intensive infinitude. On the contrary,
Schelling has turned his back decidedly on the former, and
has given in his adhesion to the latter. For this reason, the
individual forms are no longer mere allegories, out of which
the infinite is reflected ; but substantial, significant personalities,
holding an articulate position in the history which constitutes
itself an organism. And as the infinite significance of per-
sonality is altogether more clearly laid down in this work, and
as, further, the exaltation of personality to true intensive infi-
nitude is represented as the goal of all history ; so is the above
noticed proyvessvs in ivjinitmn, which the divine revelation was
supposed to make in a boundless world of finite beings, im-
proved in the sense that the single ])ersonality is regarded as
capable, and destined, through taking up the universal into
the particular will, to attain absolute worth, and to be a repre-
sentation, instead of a mere transitory manifestation of the divine
hfe.
SCHELLING. 115
However truly all this is an essential step in advance---a
step, moreoverj as is self-evident, favourable to the construction
of a Christology, — Schelling's view of the relation between the
human and the divine, especially as expressed in his doctrine of
the universal incarnation of God, does not deserve approbation.
Many consider this idea altogether, apart from Schelling's
foundation, according to which the history of humanity is at
the same time the history of God, to be in itself thoroughly
condemn able, because it unduly exalts man. Unless, however,
we are prepared to rob science and Christian life of one of its
highest gains, we must not here proceed too hastily, but inquire
whether we have not to do with a deep, and perhaps long-
misunderstood, truth.
As we have frequently had occasion to remark above, the
chief defect of the entire early Christology was that of treating
Christ as an absolute miracle, as a being absolutely separated
from the rest of mankind, even when viewed in the light of its
divine idea, by His divine essence. We have seen also, that
there lay at the basis of this treatment, the notion that the
human and the divine are absolutely different ; and we have
found that justice was never done to the human in Christ by
the old Christology, because, according to the conceptions
formed beforehand, both of the divine and human, there was
no room for the latter alongside of the former. The new
subjective tendency had given prominence to the human, and
its result was the recognition of something God-related, divine
therein : — the way was thus evidently prepared for the per-
ception of the unity of the divine and the human in Christ.
Were we a priori to set our face against every view which
represents the divine and human as intimately and essentially
related, we should be wilfully throwing away the gains of
centuries, and returning to a soil on which a Christology is ai.
absolute impossibility.
Philosophical contemplation, it is true, delights to take its
flight beyond the ages which must still elapse ere God has
become all in all in humanity; jumping over the necessary
middle steps, fixing its eye on the inmost essence or capacity of
man, and recognising him therein to be most intimately related
to God, it speaks with pleasure of an immediate unity of God
and man, or of the divinity of the latter: — in doing whiclu
11 G THIRD PERIOD.
Pantlieism, on the one hand, and an improper slighting of the
person of the divine-human Mediator of that unity, on the
other, were unavoidable. No one, occupying the platform of
Christianity, has any right to raise objections to Christian philo-
sophers who maintain that the birth from God, from divine seed
(as taught by John), or the being one in the Son and in the
Father, of which the Lord Himself speaks in His high-priestly
prayer, and which He compares with the oneness of the Son
in the Father and of the Father in the Son, must be more than
a merely moral unity with God; unless he is prepared also to
regard the dwelling of the Son with the Father in believers as
a biblical, orientally exaggerated mode of speech : or, finally,
who take what is said regarding the participation in the divine
nature, attributed by Peter (see 2 Peter i. 4) to Christians,
for full truth and actuality ; knowing that, indescribable as is
the abasement of man through sin, even so indescribable is his
exaltation through Christ. This Christian idea, also, is not
merely a grand one ; but it is time it should be laid hold on,
in order that we may become clearly aware what we have in
Christianity, and to what dignity we are called ; in order that
Christ may no longer seem to occupy the position of a being
who is external and foreign to our essence, but that of a true
brother and companion of our humanity.
But these precious truths, — that we are to be truly the
brethren of Christ, in that He is born also in us ; and that,
consequently, the incarnation of God is to be multiplied in
infinitum, by the continuous birth of the Son of God in us,
to the end that the divine life may take to itself, sanctify,
penetrate, and appropriate the whole of humanity as its body,
of which the head, or as its temple, of which the corner-stone,
is Christ : — these high truths require to be handled by conse-
crated hands. If, on the contrary, they are roughly handled,
they become a caricature. As soon as the mediatory process
is left out of sight, and the natural man, just as he is, is
regarded as the son, as the child of God, in whom God is
supposed immediately to know Himself and to act, these truths
are perverted into unchristian, nay more, irreligious theologu-
mena. Such a physical, unethical conception of God-manhood,
leaves no room for a redemption, for a potentiation of the first
creation by the second, pneumatical one, for perfection of an
SCHELLIXG. 117
ethical kind ; — in one word, this view is still Pelagian in charac-
ter, nay more, it is lower than the common Pelagianism. For
that elevation of the natural man is an usurped dignity ; in one
word, a self-elevation and a lie. The natm-al consequence of
the fancy that our nature is immediately and truly divine, is
that man, with all his dreams of divinity, with all his assumed
dignity, cannot take a single step fonvards, even in a scientific
point of view ; that we are but beset by new riddles, vihilst the
old ones either remain unsolved, or are made still more in-
soluble ; — for example, the question of the origin of evil is
attended by infinitely greater difficulty, if w^e regard man as
immediately divine.
Now, in what relation does the philosophy of Schelling stand
to this matter ■? The idea of the eternal incarnation of God
is its leading feature ; and, in a certain sense, we can say, that
Schelling has sought to solve the problem of the world by con-
verting the whole of philosophy and theology into Christology ;
by treating the entire world as the Son of God ; by carrying
out the fundamental idea of Christianity into the consideration
of the entire world. At the same time, by dividing history into
essentially different periods, he endeavours to secure for Chris-
tianity and Christ a distinctive, not merely quantitative, but
(jualitative, superiority over all other religions and founders of
religion. Christianity appeared to him, on the one hand, as the
eternal idea of humanity, under which all things were created ;
and on the other, with regard to its manifestation in time, as
something entirely new, which was brought forth like a new
creation, when the eai'th had become for the second time
waste and void. The premature apotheosis of humanity is thus
avoided, in so far as the divine life is supposed to have first
dawned in humanity since Christ, and not to be an immediate
and original possession.
Nevertheless, deeply as many of these ideas of Schelling
have penetrated, and that justly, into German science, his
philosophy at this stage is in satisfactory accord neither with
Christianity nor with itself.
The progress made by Schelling consists in his having be-
gun to view personaliti/ (as the living unity of subject and
object, of single and universal) in its infinite worth. Accord-
ing to the " Frciheitslehre," the goal of the entire process of the
118 THIRD PEKIOD.
world is the birth of the perfect humanity, the reahzation of
tlie idea of the eternal, ori<^inal, divine man ; or, regarded from
above, the perfect actualization of the ideal principle, which will
one day have become entirely a personal being in the members
of His body (pp. 496, 457). But what place does the historical
Christ occupy in the midst of this process through which
humanity and God are supposed to pass ? It is not He who
appears as the actor, as the redeemer and perfecter ; on the
contrary, " the ideal principle" appears to be the soul of history,
and that without standing in any necessary relation to His
historical manifestation. It is true he gives utterance to the
striking principle — "the personal alone can heal the personal;"
but he neglects to establish it, and does not allow it a thorough
influence. Christ further, it is true, according to Schelling, in-
augurates a new period, the kingdom of spirit. But is He only
the ^rst-born, or also the operative and permanent principle of
the regeneration of the world ? Is He merely the beginning,
or is He also the climax of the new age of the world ? The
idea of the process to which the entire history of the world is
subject, appears to involve that the highest should come at the
end, rather than at the beginning, of the new period. Nay
more, if the fulness of the deity had been truly and completely
set forth, if God had actualized Himself in this man ; then, so
far as the goal of the entire world is simply the self-actualiza-
tion of God, there is no reason why the world's age should not
have already terminated with Christ.^ So that Schelling's
principles would appear to compel us to say that Christ, so far
as He inaugurated a new age, cannot have been the true and
perfect self-actualization of God.
The deeper reason why, notwithstanding his efforts to the
contrary, no necessary place can be found in his system for the
historical personality of Christ, lies in the circumstance of his
treating the history of humanity as fully identical with that of
God. In his " Freiheitslehre," it is true, Schelling plainly
' Strangely enough, these words, which were contained already in the
previous edition, have been misunderstood by Dr Baur (Trinitiitslehre iii.
pp. 9fi3 ff.), as though my view were, that if the highest had already ap-
peared in Christ, the further process would be superfluous and aimless. A
more careful examination of my words would have saved him from the io-
consistencies in which, thus viewed, they naturally involved hira.
SCHELLING. 119
endeavours to give greater power and independence than be-
fore to the distinctions along with the unity, and represents
personality as being born out of an antagonism which borders
on the dualistic. These antagonisms, however, are viewed in
such a way that they are at one and the same time antagonisms
in the divine life itself, as well as in the M'orld. As, however,
on this supposition, God Himself is not eternally actualized
in Himself, and does not superintend the process of the
world as absolute spirit, but seeks His actualization in the
world, the significance of finite spirits in general is reduced
to that of media, through which God endeavours to realize
His own existence as spirit. Because God Himself is not
absolutely clear and free actuality, He cannot allow the world
to hold the position of a free end to itself ; and all the power
of the philosophical intellect to constitute the idea of person-
ality the principle, applies itself solely to the problem of the
eternal personification of God ; — for which purpose the Avorld
and its personalities are made use of as means. Then, how-
ever, it is plain that no essential or central significance can be
ascribed to a single historical form, like that of the Person
of Christ; everything falls to the account of the impelling
" ideal principle." And even an organism of personal spirits,
who, in living interaction and common dependence on the per-
sonality which is the head of them all, should be the home and
vehicle of the divine life, could not receive a place there. So
long as the redemption and perfection of humanity is conceived
merely as an immanent evolution of God in the individual
forms or personalities of history, there is no room for an uni-
versal, personal mediatorship of Christ : He is but the be-
ginning of the new age ; not the head, but merely the brother
of humanity. In the place of the all-determining personal head
is then substituted the one universal spirit, the Spirit of God
actualizing itself in humanity, as it were as an ideal Christ. If,
further, God is the spirit of the world, and the growth of
humanity is His growth, then He cannot pour out His entire
fulness into one personality. For, so long as any growth is
going on, He is not master of that fulness ; only in the entirety
of humanity, including also the future, is He manifest and pre-
sent. A single person appears again too narrow and one-sided
for the fulness of God. Then also is an external extensive
120 THIRD PERIOD.
conception of the infiiiite again admitted, and the deeper, inten-
sive conception put aside ; the latter of which, as we have seen,
is the truth of the former. The concrete human personality
then forms a contradiction to the divine, which must necessarily-
work its ruin. In that Schelling, who, despite all his endea-
vours to view the absolute as a subject, as a person, nevei'theless
represents God merely as becoming a person, and that in the
world, which is supposed to owe its origin to the design He had
of becoming manifest for Himself, he posits in God also the
existence of absolute night as the presupposition of light ; he
lays down physical infinitude as the primal in God ; and is thus,
even against his will, entangled with the systems of substan-
tiality, which treat the infinitude of God primitively in the
quantitative sense. So long as that takes place, the inadequacy
between Him as substance and as person must remain abso-
lute ; and not till God's essence is conceived as absolute per-
sonality and love will the relation to the human personality,
which, as such, has an infinite susceptibility, assume a different
character also for the personal God.
Those aspects of this philosophy which are hostile to Christ-
ology take their start all together from a representation which
is in itself discordant — to wit, from the theory of a growing
God, who at the end of the world will be an actu existent God.
Not merely is God, on such a supposition, entirely given up to
time, which, according to many passages in Schel ling's own
writings, is opposed to His idea; but the theory contradicts itself,
especially in the way in which it accounts for and more precisely
defines the growth of God. In order that there may be life,
says it, on the one hand, there must be a growth ; life without
growth would be dead being ; but to life, to development, a
ground is necessary, which is not yet the divine life actu, though
out of it that life has first to arise. Yet, on the other hand, we
are told to look forward as to a goal, to the entire vanquishment
of the ground, to God's becoming entirely actu God. Being,
therefore, would seem, after all, to be the goal towards which
growth tends, and which will be its extinction : — we shall then
have again that being, which, because it is not growth, will
be destitute of life, rigid and undivine. We shall, therefore,
be compelled to assume the existence of a ground, which will
always remain to be overcome, in order that growth may not
SCHELLING. HEGEL. 121
cease. By adopting this supposition, however, we only fall out
of Charybdis into Scylla. For then the entire development of
the world, as also the evolution of God, is made aimless. The
goal indeed is, that the spirit obtain complete mastery over the
ground ; and the spirit works continuously, as though this were
its goal : on the other hand, however, this cannot be its goal ;
for it cannot dispense with its antagonist, lest its own living
beino- or growth sliould come to an end. The result we avvWe
at therefore is, that spirit, the divine no less than the human,
beholds itself subjected, in the last instance, to an aimless and
hopeless " progressus in infinitum."
Summing up what has preceded, Ave are warranted in say-
ing that the philosophy of Schelling, — not, indeed, in its actual
form, but in its intention or aim, which was to assert the true
conception of personality as one in which finite and infinite are
united, — leads us towards a higher form of Christology.^
II. THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE HEGELIAN
SCHOOL.
Our proceeding next to the discussion of this form of Christ-
ology, must be justified preliminarily by the well-known cir-
cumstance of the philosophy of Hegel having been developed
out of that of Schelling. As regards its influence on theology,
the Hegelian philosophy has taken about the same coui'se as
did that of Kant. We have seen previously that theologians
soon brought themselves to accept the philosophy of Kant
utiliter, and to apply it to theology in a way that, as the founder
of the Critical Philosophy himself gave to understand, in his
work entitled "Religion innerhalb der Griinzen der reinen Ver-
nunft" ("Rehgion within the limits of pure reason"), little
harmonized with the spirit of the master. Things took a
similar course in connection with Hegel ; and there is, in fact, a
notable difference between the doctrine of Hegel and that of
1 Whether Schelling subsequently reached this higher form or not, can-
not be definitely decided till the later phase of his system is presented to us
in an authentic state. Schelling's own declarations prevent me consiilering
myself warranted in sketching it from that portion which has hitherto beeu
laid before the public.
122 THIRD PERIOD
several of his disciples — a difference which was first perceived
at a later period/
Follo^ving, therefore, on tlie whole, the order of time, we
shall give a sketch, by way of introduction, of the Christological
essays of some of his followers, which appeared prior to Hegel's
own " Philosophy of Religion." They failed, indeed, to form
their Christology in the spirit of the entire system ; and, on the
contrary, in the (in itself) praiseworthy, but premature effort
to conciliate the interests of Christianity and of speculation,
arrived at an eclectic Christology which lacked self-consistency.
The system, as laid down by Hegel himself, in so far as essen-
tial aspects of it had not yet been worked into each other, had
not yet acquired a fixed and unambiguous form, was itself fitted
to give rise to such attempts.
The Christology of Marheineke here first claims our atten-
tion.^ His entire theology, as is well known, is built on the
Trinity. The eternal Son of God, says he, who is immanent in
God as the eternal Logos, does not bring any distinction to pass
until the uncreated Logos becomes the divine image, until the
Son of God becomes humanity. But if humanity in general is
the Son of God, how does he arrive at Christ, and what place
can he assign to Him ? Man, says he, is first of all in a state
of innocence; which, however, merely implies that the con-
sciousness of guilt has not yet been awakened, not that the
archetypal character, which, as the image of God, he was created
to bear, has become a reality (§ 252 ff.). In the first instance,
he has merely the capacity for that which he is one day to be-
come. Inasmuch as he is not yet that which he is destined to
become, the natural, first, or immediate existence of man is evil.
How is it to become better? How is it to be reconciled?
This can only take place through raising the soul into a
higher region, through the taking up of the human nature into
the divine, which is, on the part of God, an assumption of
human nature. The idea of God-manhood alone is the vehicle
of the restoration of the lost unity. That is its necessity.
But the actuality also of this idea is possible ; for spirit in
' In particular through the "Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der
Religion," 1832.
2 " Grundlinien der christlichen Doginatik als "Wissenschaft," § 295
till 340.
MARHEINEKE. ROSENKRANZ. 123
general is properly God-man ; its essence is to be the unity of
divine and human nature ; God is the truth of spirit, human
nature is the actuality of God. Nay more, this unity which
is God's essence is also an actuality, so certainly as truth and
morality are in the world. In reason and freedom, God has
been present in all ages to the world ; He has been in it, and it
in Him. The kingdom of the true and good is at all times
accessible to all men ; God, therefore, has been manifest and
actual in His humanity.
God must, therefore, have existed always actu, notwith-
standing that we are only to suppose Him actual in man, who
grows ; — that is. He has always been humanity, and that self-
conscious ! — But is there any need then of Christ ? The unity
of man with God, says he, is an historically progressive one:^
in Christ the revelation has become perfectly human : this
manifested man is God manifested in historical objectivity
(Grundlinien, § 327). With Him God is most completely one;
only on the ground of this man's unity with God can humanity
likewise be united with God.^ As to His derivation from nature
(the natural birth must not be called in question). He is merely
the Son of man ; Jesus Christ is the Son of God, as the man
who is individual in His universality and universal in His indi-
viduality; He is the human nature created by God in its full
integrity and illability, and for that reason as the second Adam,
the representative of humanity. He is the truth of the first
Adam. The necessity of this idea is no more established than
the necessity of the God-manhood being entirely realized in one
individual. From his deduction it would rather follow, that
God alone can deliver man by condescending to him and taking
him up into Himself ; and without pointing out the theological
steps by which he arrives at his conclusion, he substitutes in the
])lace of evidence, the empirical assertion, that this idea found
perfect realization in Christ.
Similarly Rosenkranz:^ on the one hand, he also holds sin
' Consequently again, after all, not always perfected; God, therefore,
•was not always actu God.
^ After sin had been asserted to be the necessary first form of the exist-
ence of all men, tliese declarations concerning Christ are capricious unci
illogical.
2 Encyclopajdie der theol. Wissensch. 1831, § 26 f. G9-73.
124 THIRD PERIOD.
to be the universal and necessary first form of human existence;
and yet, on the other hand, he terms Christ sinless. — " Another
Christ, as an individual phsenomenon, would be as superfluous
as another Adam in order to give rise to natural men." But
then he says again, — God is the essence of humanity, and this
essence has an ever during and not a merely momentary
manifestation ; it reveals itself absolutely, not in the single ap-
pearances by themselves, but in them as a totality, in which
the contingency and defects of the individual existence are
abolished.^ According to this, "the totality," and not the
individual, would be the adequate revelation of God or of the
essence. Alongside of this, however, peacefully stands the
assertion, that the unity of God and man has been, as a phseno-
menon, completely and uniquely realized in Jesus : though he
shows neither its necessity nor even its possibility.''^
Goschel presupposes a state of sin or of discord. Hu-
manity is abstract towards God ; the circulation of the univer-
sal life through the particular, stagnates, and man is therefore
miserable. How is the redemption to be effected? Neither
by the abstract self, nor by the divine essence, so far as it
separated itself abstractly from the world. What is required
is, that the abstractness characteristic of both sides should be
done away with, that the continuity of the life should be re-
stored. This restoration can only proceed forth from the uni-
versal, from the divine ; for man has not God through himself.
He can only be, or be set into God, through God, or by God's
putting Himself into him. How does this take place? By
Plis spirit, whicli works in men ? Goschel says (though with-
out satisfactorily establishing his position), by the §elf-exinani-
tion of God. God puts Himself into humanity in order that
lie may knoio it ; His living thought is deed. He puts Himself
not merely into humanity in general, but becomes flesh as a
single man, at a determinate time, and in a definite place, in
^ A representation derived from Schelling, and adopted in disregard of
the essence of the ethical and the religious, which was at a later period
appropriated by Strauss, and which rests on a confusion of the sphere of
esthetics with that of ethics. Such theories of the complementing of the
individual by the whole, are simply a relapse from the stage of Prot^istantism
and its energetic conception of personality, to that of Catholicism
* We shall have to speak again of Kosenkranz below.
ROSENKRANZ. GOSCHEL. 125
order that He may understand this fate of man to be isolated.
He thus put Himself into the midst of the entire distress of the
fallen creature, and bears its sin. His dwelling would have
been mere half work, Avould not have been a dwelling in the
individual man, if the fulness of the deity had not completely
and entirely emptied itself in the incarnation. Had the divine
essence retained anything for itself, it would still have been
abstract, and therefore incapable of delivering from abstract-
ness. By means of this veritable and actual self-exinanition,
God is recognised as the concretely universal, which is faithful :
only in this revelation, only in Jesus Christ, does man know
God ; and he has no name in which he can worship God save
that of the Son of man.^
Having here traced back the incarnation of God to His love,
which remained faithful to us in our unfaithfulness, Goschel
soon afterwards endeavoured to arrive at the same result from
a consideration of the divine righteousness.^ A punishing judge
must not withdraw his love from the criminal ; that he should
not do so, belongs to the establishment of the right order of
things, which must exist in the form of a moral community.
Even punishment itself is an act of fellowship, a communica-
tion. Righteousness requires not merely the punitive suffering
of the unrighteous one, the atonement and blotting out of the
wrong; but to its completeness belongs also that he who punishes
suffer with him who is punished, that he take the punishment
upon himself, by means of a fellowship of love, in order to
vanquish it and to re-establish the communion. For this reason
it was necessary for God to become man ; instead of refusing
to have fellowshij) with the guilty, He must needs suffer with
them as a man. In this way is justice, which demands the re-
establishment of fellowship with the organism of right, first
satisfied ; and thus, too, is the great act of grace wrought by
God in the plan of redemption an act of justice.
With all the praise that is due to the ability and Christian
spirit evinced in this attempt, tiiere is no mistaking that in its
second form it confounds justice and grace, law and Gospel.
Punishment is first considered one-sidedly as a kind of self-
' " Aphorisraen iiber Nichtwisseu unil absolutes Wissen," 1829.
' " Zerstreute Rlatter aiis den Hand- und Hiilfsacten eincs Jnristcu,"
1832.
126 THIRD PERIOD.
communication, — a view which Is Incompatible with the Pauline
doctrine of the wrath of God, especially against unbelievers.
Furthermore, the free grace of God is described as an act of
justice; which has a good sense enough on the biblical, but not
on the juridical conception of justice. According to the latter,
It would seem as though God were a debtor to accomplish the
work of the atonement. Goschel here passes over Into the
" justitia del rectoria," the principle of which is not the mere
righteousness, but also the ^CkavdpaTrla of God. It is a merit
to gather up and view In one the fundamental Ideas of juris-
prudence and theology ; but It Is not a merit to confuse them
together. That God desires to hold fellowship with sinners, is
derivable from Ills love ; His justice Is merely the negative
condition. It is further not clear, from Goschel's first line of
argument, that it was necessary for God to carry out His will
to hold fellowship with man by becoming incarnate in Christ ;
but merely that God must interest Himself In, must take fallen
man to Himself. Why God should not be content to testify
His love to men Inwardly, and why He should reveal It in
Christ, Is not satisfactorily demonstrated. For the attempt to
show that the love of God required Him by an inner necessity
to empty Himself to the point of feeling Himself Isolated, In
order that He might hnoio the fate of isolation to which man is
subject, separates Christ from God In an improper manner, espe-
cially If He Is to be regarded at the same time as the revelation
of God, — a featm'e which Is connected with the theopaschltic
character of the entire representation.^ Whether, lastly, the
ethical categories with which Goschel seeks to operate, harmonize
with the Hegelian foundation on which he wishes and supposes
himself to stand, we shall show afterwards.
The most Important attempt produced by the Hegelian
school prior to the appearance of Hegel's own work, was the
Chi'istology of Caspar Conradi."
It deserves special recognition, because, in a genuinely
scientific spirit. It treats the entire history of religion prior to
Christ as the still one-sided momenta of the absolute religion,
^ A word hereafter regarding his later and more important Christological
services.
2 " Selbstbewusstseiii und Offenbarung oder Entwickelung des reli-
giosen Bewiisstseins," Mainz 1831.
CONRADI. 127
and keeps hold on tlie personal unity of God and man, or the
God-man, as the goal of the entire development. History is, in
his view, merely the real articulation of the same conception
whose ideal, logical articulation is contained in philosophy;^ and
as this view of history is at the same time philosophy, if it be
completely carried out, Christianity is historically and philoso-
phically constructed. But the history of the religious consci-
ousness is at the same time a history of the revelation of God.
As nothing can be the content of revelation save He Himself, this
history is in reality the divine self-explication ; it is at the same
time the history of the divine spirit, of the soul of the process.
The true life of both, of God and man, is the mutual sur-
render of the one to the other. That which on the part of man
is surrender to God (Religion), that, says he, considered from
the side of God, who is the essence of man, is the explication of
the divine essence ; — the substance thus becomes subjective,
realizes itself in man. On the other hand, surrender to God,
which is a rising in the subjective consciousness, is, on the part
of the human subject, a sinking into its own substance (God),
to the end of being one with it. Accordingly, the idea of the
God-man is the only true form of existence of both. This act
of mutual self-surrender was accomplished in the most comj)lete
possible manner in the God-man. In the person of the God-
n)an, the human spirit surrendered itself for the first time ab-
solutely to God, and to that free subjectivity which lays hold on
His inner essence ; and for the first time in Him also, did God,
who is the per se (An sich) of human nature or the universal,
attain realization, and become manifest in a complete personality.
Now com])lete personality is the unity of two aspects, of the uni-
versal and the particular. Hence, in the religio-historical process,
of which such a perfect personality was the goal, we find forms
arising in both directions,— in the East, in the direction of the
universal ; in the West, in that of the j)articular. Both evinced
their iimer connection by the circumstance that, in the course of
their development, each passed over into the other ; showing
clearly that the truth lies solely in the unity of both, that is, in
' The rei)ute of luiving discovered tliis metliod of treating tlio liistory i.f
religion bolonfis, indeed, to Sclielling and Hegel ; but Couradi conducts the
I>roces3 more surely to the goal of complete personality, whereas in Hegera
•ytae confusion was iutroduced by his dislike to the Hebrew religion.
128 THIRD PERIOD.
tlie perfect personality wliich combines the divine and human
symmetrically in itself
The existence of this real personality, if it become a fact,
would be exempted from the general conditions of individual
activity ; it would be a free act of the absolute being Himself ;
nay more it would owe its rise to the primal ground of all
being, and would therefore be, not so much an individual spirit,
as spirit in general : it cannot bt merely a single finite person-
ality, but the universal, the absolute, must have a real existence
in it. It is an expression of the immediate divine life, the com-
ing forth of this primal ground : — 1. In the direction of the uni-
versal, it is birth out of spirit ; not out of a single, contingent
individual or spirit, — not out of the spirit of a single people, but
out of the spirit of humanity, which, as such, may be designated
the pure, holy Spirit of God. In this way is excluded all the
contingency, limitation, and isolation attendant on being gene-
rated : it has rather, on the one hand, a necessary, on the other,
an universal existence. The pure naturalness which we find
preserved in females who surrender themselves with pious sim-
])licity to the power of the spirit, and receive its activity, alone
forms the connecting link. The moment when pure univer-
sality and a pure natural subjectivity meet together, is the
moment of the birth of Christ ; it is the existence of pure spirit
as pure naturality (Xatiirlichkeit) ; — in connection Avith which
the question as to second causes is unnecessary-. Christ accord-
ingly was conceived and born pure, and without sin, in an inno-
cence, in the first instance, negative.
2. But, as we have seen, the momentum of particularity is
equally essential to personality. Spirit also is first posited as
the universal, although it is at the same time the particular,
althoufTh as the universal it at the same time has itself for itself
(sich fiir sich hat), or, in other words, is a subject. Not till
spirit becomes subject does it attain the actuality of its essence,
S])irit in Spirit, God in God, the Word. Christ is the incar-
nate Word.
In Ilis first form of existence, which was the unity of the
divine and human in pure naturality, Christ was not yet a sub-
ject; lie had first to become a subject. He is, in the first
instance, mere ]ier se (An sich) : it was necessary that substance
i>iH)uld reach the form of subjectivity ; for otherwise it would
CONRADI. 129
liav« remained a mere indeterminate, empt\-, general something;
and it was necessary that subjectivity should be filled with its
substance, for otherwise it likewise would be empty. The at
first immediate existence of Christ must, seeing that it is spirit
which in Him entered into naturality, acquire its content also
for itself; in other words, that Avhich He is already per se, He
must also become, through and for Himself. To this belongs
that the subjective spirit distinguish itself from itself in its im-
mediate form, that it negative this immediacy. Thus arises
conflict, the possibility of discord.
The sinlessness of Christ was not a mere natural innocence;
it would then have been without growth, without consciousness.
The possibility of the contrary must always be overcome.
Nevertheless, the possibility of discord always remains a matter
of mere thought ; the distinction never passes into antagonism ;
for, as to His other aspect, Christ is pure universality (pp. 126 ff.
134). The development of Christ was at every stage a symme-
trical one ; the distinctions were resolved into unity. In that
the subject distinguishes itself from its immediate essence, the
essence enters in equal measure and at once into the subject;
and at the same time, regarded from another point of view,
subjectivity enters into its essence, and its essence is raised in
it to subjectivity. (Note 18.)
The development of the personality of Christ, he goes on to
say, in the direction it takes towards itself, necessarily reaches
a point when, as to this direction, it must be regarded as having
completed its course. But His development does not cease with
the complete attaiinnent of subjectivity. It is the universal
self-consciousness that has separated itself in Him : this cannot
remain a separate and independent existence, for it would then
leave behind the antagonism (men) outside of itself. The per-
sonality of the individual must therefore expand itself into the
j)ersonality of the race. Consequently, the further progress of
Christ is, that He should know Himself as the whole, as tJie truth
and life of the whole. For in Him the entire essence altogether,
the genus taken together, arrives at an existence of its own.
His individuality remains in the form of a determinate conscious-
ness ; but, at the same time, it has and knows as the content of
its essence, the truth and the life of the whole. This personality
is, on the one hand, the idea of the whole, of the universal ; it
r. 'i — VOL. III. I
130 THIRD PERIOD.
is individual actuality; it is the ground and source of life to
the whole : and herein lies the necessity for every individual
man seeking in Ilim, by faith, his own reality and truth. The
whole, as an unity of faith, gathers itself around this one per-
sonality ; all its movements tend towards, and meet in, this
centre. But were this movement the only one, all life would
be extinguished in the centre, would be concentrated in the
head alone ; instead of being an organism, the Church would
grow torpid. For this reason, the opposed movement is quite
as necessary, — to wit, that the centre should be turned towards
the whole, in order that the individuals may not lose themselves
in Him, but may find themselves, and that as boi'u again in
Him ; indeed, all are contained in Him as to possibility. The
history of the Church, therefore, is the further history of His
personality. Its life has a twofold aspect, a physical and a spiri-
tual. Bcause He was the life, He bore witness by His deeds
(by the miracles, which are not to be understood mythically),
and gave life. As the personal representative and embodiment
of righteousness, Christ sets forth the universal life in a spiritual
manner. His righteousness is the righteousness of the race. In
virtue of this righteousness. His personality perfected itself in
the resurrection (which was necessary to the restoration of His
personality to its integrity ; because corporeality also forms part
thereof), and in the ascension, which declared that His corpore-
ality no longer existed in any form not filled and penetrated by
the inner essence of the personality. Personality has now also
attained to the actual possession of its freedom over against ex-
ternal nature. He is now the light which has collected in a
focus the all-life (Allleben) of the universe, and has again
poured it out into the same. He still has, we may assume, an
existence in space. But this existence is purely conditioned by
Him. The body follows the tendency of the spirit; for ihi
natural existence which He was, and which formed a limit, is
now taken up into and animated by His infinite personality.
Willing Him, man has and wills life and righteousness.
This theory contains several important points, which will
come again under consideration ; particularly gratifying is the
vigour with which he steers towards the completion of person-
ality in the God-man. Admirable points, also, are contained in
that which he says regarding the Person of Christ as the totality
CONRADI. HEGEL. 131
which has assumed an individual form, regarding its develop-
ment and its relation to humanity. But after what has been
observed in connection with Schelling, hold can be retained on
all this only by the adoption of a different philosophical basis.
He also views God as the ^^'orld-spirit ; the race as the univer-
sal, to wit, God ; the history of man as the self-actualization of
God (through which much obscurity and fancifulness was intro-
duced into his use of terms). The realization of the whole in
an individual can neither be maintained to be possible nor
necessary, from a point of view which allows the process of the
world to continue, solely because God is not yet perfectly actual-
ized.— In order not to be forced to represent the process as
ceasing after the highest point had been reached in Christ,
Conradi fixes his eye on humanity, which is intended to become
the Church, blessed and sanctified through faith. This, how-
ever, is only justifiable, if it be granted that humanity owes its
existence to another purpose besides that of aiding the rise of
the self-consciousness of God. For this purpose would have
been served already by Christ.
And now let us pass on to Hegel's own Christology. In its
exposition, the afore-mentioned " Vorlesungen iiber die Philo-
sophic der lieligion" ("Lectures on the Philosophy of Reli-
gion") come chiefly into consideration.^
As spirit, says he, God is triune ; as spirit, it is essential to
Him to manifest Himself, to posit Himself as something dis-
tinct frona Himself, or to objectify Himself. In saying this,
we say that God, in order to be spirit, must become to Himself
another. But in the divine idea this distinction is again as im-
mediately abolished as it is posited ; and therefore, according to
this immanent Trinity, the work of positing distinctions in God
is not ])ursued in real earnest. The distinctions made are a
mere play of love with itself : to the point of sejniration and dis-
cerption we never arrive. In order that the distinction may
come forth as a fixed one, and not be ever again the identical,
the Son, or the distinction in God, is sent forth out of God, to
* Compare Bd. ii. (Worke xii.), especially pp. 204-25G. Further, to
this connection belongs the section of the " Phaeuoraenologie " entitlcil.
•Die ofTenbare Keligion;" "Die Geschichte der Philosophic," iii. pp.
100-108 (Werke, Bd. y.v.) ; " Philosophie der Geschichte" (Werke ix.),
I'p. 328 ff.
132 THIRD I'KKIOD.
be a free being for Himself, a something actual outside of and
without God. That which is sent forth is the world in general,
which, because the free alone has an existence for the free,
God, who is free and sure of Himself, allows to be independent.
But precisely this being in independence, without God, is no
true actuality. It is, therefore, the being of the world to have
only a moment of being ; and then to abolish this separation,
this discerption from God, to return to its source. Herein are
contained all the momenta of the process, which consists in the
spirit's advancing first to discord, and then to atonement; in
God, as spirit, returning to Himself out of altereity. Now, the
world is nature and finite spirit. But the finite spirit feels the
need in itself of having the absolute truth. This of itself im-
plies that the subject stands in untruth ; yet, as spirit, it stands
at the same time above the untruth, inasmuch as the untruth is
that which it is to overcome. But, more carefully considered,
the untruth implies that the subject is not that which it ought
to be : — recognising this (and the subject is to recognise it), it
recognises itself as evil, and stands in discord with itself, with
God, and with the world. From this arise pain, because of sin,
and the consequence of sin, evils : and the need of reconciliation.
Or otherwise : The finite spirit, in its first, innnediate form,
is the natural spirit. But it is precisely the essence of spirit not
to be natural spirit : the being natural (NatUrlichsein) is evil,
for spirit must become actual as spirit ; naturality is its inap-
propriate form. Now, in order that it may become spirit, it is
necessary that it, the natural, the immediate, should pass into
separation, into dissonance with itself. It must become aware
that naturality is incongruous to its idea. Man thus recognises
himself as evil ; and the more the spirit dawns upon its own
consciousness as unity, as the absolute, the more is the contra-
diction to it, as to something infinite, an infinite contradiction.
Man needs atonement. How is he to attain it?
He must become that which he is according to his idea ;
but to this end he must pass through a training. To this
training, consciousness is necessary. It enhances the pain of
the separation, but it must also heal it.
In connection herewith, two points are of special importance.
1. The subject must arrive at the consciousness that the
antagonism between God and man established by evil, has no
HEGEL. 133
existence in itself (An sich, per se), but that the inner, or the
truth, is that this antagonism is abolished. .
2. But because the antagonism in itself is aboHshed, the
subject can and must attain its abolition, or the atonement, for
itself also.
The fact of the antagonism being in itself abolished, or that
God and man as to their essence are not to be regarded as
extremes standing absolutely and abstractly outside of each
other, constitutes the condition or possibility of the subject's
being able to abolish the antagonism also for itself. But that
the per se (An sich), or the possibility of the reconciliation, may
become an actuality, it is necessary that man become conscious
of this possibility ; otherwise God would remain a stranger to
man, outwardly in the extremest antagonism to his natui'ality,
which He recognises as evil.
But the great question now is : How can man arrive at the
consciousness that the antagonism to God is in itself, or as to
possibility, abolished? We must here bring under considera-
tion the point of view of the consciousness which is to gain
insight into this possibility. It is in general the point of view
of infinite pain, to which the antagonism to God has revealed
itself in all its harshness.
How is it to be stilled? Not by causing the spirit to lose
its consciousness of the incongruity of naturality. That would
be a retrograde movement, an annihilation of the antagonism
by annihilating the spirit as spirit. The spirit must bear the
discord ; but how, then, is it to attain reconciliation ?
The spirit at this stage is merely the finite spirit ; it is en-
tirely ignorant of the fact that in itself, or essentially, it is
infinite ; it is essential to it to conceive itself removed to an
infinite distance from God. How is it to become conscious that
God is nigh unto it ?
Through nature ? It cannot reveal God entirely ; it has no
soul, no spirit ; it does not know God, and cannot, therefore,
tell what it does not know. Only abstractly, as power and the
like, can it reveal God ; and this is not enough for the spiritual
sufferings in which the consciousness stands. At the stage of
conflict, man is already subjective spirit ; the revelation that
(lod is nigh unto, and one with the spirit, must therefore take
place through the Spirit.
134 THIRD PERIOD.
But can man's own spirit do this? Can it give him the
certainty that the divine and tlie human are in themselves, in
essence, one? It gives him rather only the consciousness of
separation. The finite spirit, at this stage, has neither the right
knowledge of God, to wit, that it is essential to Him to make
Himself finite ; nor of man, that it is essential to him to be per
se infinite : but its entire point of view compels him to believe
in an absolute separation of him, the isolated one, from God.
God Himself, therefore, must show Himself near to him. It is
not enough, however, that God should show Himself gracious
by words and signs, as, for example, in the burning bush : that
would merely be an external, isolated, fugitive connection of
God with man; it would by no means prove an essential and
eternal one. The certain assurance of an inner or essential
union betioeen God and man can only be given by God Himself
becoming man. Finite man cannot know himself to be recon-
ciled with God till he receives the consciousness of God in
the finite itself. Esteeming himself absolutely separated from
God, he can only be convinced that God is near to him, if God
appear over against him, as one like unto himself, in an objec-
tive, sensuous manner. The only way in which God can do
this, is by assuming the momentum of individuality, the form of
immediacy. But this immediacy cannot be immediacy of the
spiritual, save in the spiritual form, which the human form is.
The object to be accomplished is not to show to man the neces-
sity of the union of God and man ; the point in question is not
speculation, but the certain assurance^ in an immediate mannei
which may be brought about either by inner or outer intuition.
As has been already remarked, it is impossible for man by
himself in the state of conflict to acquire such a certain as-
surance by inner intuition ; the idea, therefore, must submit to
become a matter of external intuition, of sensation, in order that
man may liave immediate certainty.
For this reason, God constitutes the determination of sin-
gularity a part of Himself : and not merely that of indi-
viduality in general ; for this determination would again be
merely the universal one, tliat it is essential to God to in-
dividualize Himself. On the contrary, as what we have to
do with is the certainty springing from external intuition and
perception, the substantial unity of God and man — the per
HEGEL. 13^
se — must appear for others, in the form of a single, excluding
mau.
This other one is then, it is true, external to them; but
still the per se (An sich) in the form of individuality is thus
transfer! ed to the domain of certainty. This is the monstrous
feature, this is the hardest point in religion, and yet necessary, —
Godman, appearing in human form ! The appearing is for
another; that other is the Church}
Now, the appearance of God in the flesh took place at a
definite time, and in this particular individual, in order that a
point of departure might be furnished for the consciousness of
the unity of the divine and human.^ Because it is phgenomenal,
it passes by for itself, it becomes a past histoiy. This sensuous
mode must disappear and rise into the sphere of representation.
The sensuous form passes over into an intellectual element,
that is, into the insight that we have here to do Avith the uni-
versal human, the innermost essence of which comes to mani-
festation. The sensuous undergoes this purification through
the act of disappearing.
The death of Christ, accordingly, is the point at which it
will become evident whether we regard Him with eyes of faith
or not. Death is the test of His humanity; for to die is
essential to everything human : it is also the test of His
divinity ; for in this extremity it must be shown whether
Christ succumbs to death or not. Faith knows that His
death was no succumbing, but the death of death ; not by
His own personal resurrection, but by rising again in the
Church. From this point onwards His history acquires a
spiritual signi fiance.
In the accrediting of Christ, two methods may be pursued,
an external and an inner one. The former, when we appeal to
the history of His life, to His miracles, and so forth. But
miracles are completely unfitted to accredit spirit.^ Against
sensuous facts objections may always be raised ; because con-
sciousness and its object remain, in such a case, always outside
of each other ; because the object is not spirit. The sensuous con-
tent is not certain in itself, because it is not posited by the spirit,
by the idea (Begriff). The divine content is not sensuous ; how
' Compare xii. 275 fg. » Compare xii. 257 ff
» See xii. 25G, 263 ff.
136 THIRD PERIOD.
then can it be sensuously demonstrated ? According to an
outward, sensuous, but also, at the same time, irreligious mode
of consideration, Christ was a man, like Socrates ; a teacher,
who led a virtuous life, and brought that to the consciousness
of men, which is in general the true, which must lie at the
foundation of the consciousness of men. For this reason,
another mode of contemplation is first necessary, to wit, that of
faith. What th.e spirit is to take, is to believe as truth, must
not be something to be sensuously believed, but something
worthy of it, something spiritual ; and it is also a chief determi-
nation that its relation to the sensuous is at the same time a
negative one. What we are concerned about is not the faith
in this external history, but the faith that this man was the Son
of God. The sensuous content then becomes a totally different
one: the individual man is " converted " by the Church, is known
as God, whose proper essence it is to be God-man, His history as
the history of God ; the course of His life as the process and life-
course of God Plimself, as the Trinity, wherein the universal
places itself over against itself, and is therein identical with
itself : — that which is thus placed over against the universal is
humanity, which is accordingly recognised in its unity with God.
Thus understanding the history, the spirit passes over to the in-
finite, quits the soil of the finite ; the latter is reduced to a sub-
ordinate position, becomes a remote image, which still subsists in
the past alone, not in the spirit, which is absolutely present to
itself. Consequently, not the history, not the words of the Bible,
can bring forth the subject-matter of faith ; but the spiritual
view of faith, the testimony of the spirit (Note 19), whose first
form is feeling, which, after having become certainly assured,
through the manifestation of the unity of God and man, that the
atonement is in and for itself accomplished, is in a position to
])lace itself into this unity ; and further, by laying hold on the
atonement which is in and for itself accomplished, finds its infinite
pains relieved, its infinite discord with God abolished, and its
thirst for truth and reconciliation stilled (xii. 267). Now it is
the business of philosophy to raise this immediate inner testi-
mony into the element of thought, in order that the intellective
spirit may know it in its veritable necessity (p. 255).
The course, then, which Hegel pursues in the construction
of his Christology, is briefiy the following : — God must posit
HEGEL. 137
distinctions in Himself; it belongs to the idea of vitality,^ that
God should be a process, which advances from one momentum
to another. When the distinctions in God are taken seriously,
a finite world is posited ; in order that God also may have His
other, the return out of which to Himself as spirit constitutes
the content of the process or of His life. This return to Him-
self takes place in the human spirit, because God is able therein
to attain to the knowledge of Himself, to absolute knowledge.
In its first form, however, the human spirit is natural, finite ;
and the climax of finitude is evil.^ Man knows himself only
as separated from God ; he believes God to be far from, and
outside of, himself ; he does not know God as his own proper
essence. In order that the process may reach its goal, he must
become certainly assured that God is essentially near to him,
notwithstanding the disjunction. But as neither his own spirit
nor nature can afford him this assurance, — for neither the one
nor the other can declare anything with regard to the essential
unity existing between God and. man, — God must needs appear
in a finite form — natui'ally in tlie form of a man, as the onlv
one that is adequate to Him — in order that man may have in
the finite, which is the spirit's proper sphere of existence when
divided from God, the consciousness of God, and the sense of
His nearness. This has taken place in Christianity. Man now
knows that God is nigh unto him ; in Christ he sees the discord
done away with, he recognises that it is not essential. And as,
when he appropriates Christ by faith, he knows that God lives
and is near to humanity in Him ; so also is his gaze expanded
when, in intellectual progress, his faith rises to knowledge : he
sees that the unity of God and man is not an isolated fact once
accomplished in Jesus of Nazareth ; but that rather, in conse-
quence of the entrance of Christianity, the consciousness has been
awakened of the universal truth, that it is eternally and essen-
tially characteristic of God to be and to become man, that God's
true existence or actuality is in humanity, which is termed His
Church : and that, on the other hand, man is essentially one
with God, and not, as he fancied at the stage of separation,
that God is different from and strange to him ; in other words,
that God is the truth and essence of humanity.
• Compare " Religionsphilosophie " i. 35 f., Werke ix.
* Besides other passages, see 1 20 f .
138 THIRD PERIOD.
The first thing tliat must surprise us, in tliis deduction " of
the manifestation of God in the flesh at a definite time, and in
this particular individual," is, that Hegel there totally quits the
speculative path from above downwards, and adopts for the sole
starting-point of his Christology, the need felt by men of
knowing that God is nigh unto them. Beginning with the
Trinity, as he does, and with the distinctions posited by God in
Himself, he ought to have gone on to show that there was a
necessity, first, for God's becoming strange to, and separating
Himself from Himself; then, for his finding Himself by an
immanent process in humanity; and lastly, for its thus finding
itself in Him. Instead of this immanent process of God, who
moves Himself through the world, the matter takes suddenly
an external, empirical turn. No one will deny that the entire
part relating to the kingdom of the Son must have fallen out
in a very different manner, if, instead of suddenly springing
over to the humanity, everything here also had been considered
as the immanent dialectic of the process of the divine life pro-
gressively advancing in humanity. The difficulties of the
Hegelian doctrine of sin must then have come clearly to light.
Then, too, would have become more clear what position Christ-
ology can occupy in his system ; to wit, that it marks the
turning-point at which the self-consciousness was awakened,
both of God in humanity and of humanity in God. Then,
liowever, must have been more clearly declared than we now
find it declared, that only an unessential significance pertains to
the historical Person of Christ in this universal process ; that
Christ can merely denote the commencement of this true divine-
human self-consciousness, but not its completion ; or that He
stands indeed at the entrance of the new age of the world, but is
not, therefore, by any means necessarily its climax, being, on the
contrary, for that very reason, as we shall see more clearly
below, not its climax.
This course, the oidy one deserving the name of logical
progress, Hegel did not pursue ; and whatever may be the
character of his Christology in other respects, we are compelled,
a priori, to say that its introduction is unsatisfactory, because it
is one-sidedly anthropological. But let us j)ass on to its more
careful, critical examination. (Note 20.)
Above all, Hegel deserves perfect recognition for the ser-
HEGEL. 139
vices he rendered in vanquishing the Christolog}' of the common
Rationahsm. For, though his genial dialectics alone did not
accomplish this task ; and though we must allow that the revolu-
tion now effected in the entire mode of thought was, to a certain
extent, the result of the labours of all the notable men of recent
times, and that its fundamental idea, to wit, the essential unity
of the divine and human, had also other main representatives,
such as Schelling and Schleiermacher, the former of whom first
gave utterance to the idea with the full energy of a new^ly-born
enthusiasm, whilst the latter incorporated it with special success
into theology, and in particular carried it out in a masterly man-
ner in his Christology ; still, to Hegel belongs the epoch-making
and distinctive merit of having, by a more rigid method, taken
more fixed possession of the new land which Schelling had
conquered, as it were, by stoi'm ; whilst Schleiermacher began
to prepare the way for it especially in a theological direction.
Hegel showed, in particular, the untruth of the old determina-
tions of the antagonism between the finite and the infinite, be-
tween God and the world, in a manner appreciable by every
one who thinks ; and thus made the essential unity of the two
a matter of universal conviction. What a wealth lies in the
principle as thus distinctly laid down, is partly manifest even
now, and will become still more clear, the more the distinctions in
this essential unity are preserved, and both prove themselves
through each other. But the more intimately this philosophy has
soiight to ally itself even with theology (in distinction from the
older system of Schelling), the more severe a critical treatment
may it claim. As the philosophy of Hegel was for a consider-
able time regarded, and that without its originator raising his
voice in protest,^ as a pillar of Christian orthodoxy ; as, further,
even among his followers themselves, disputes have arisen as to
how it is to be viewed, and each of the parties into which they
are divided, particularly through Kichter and Strauss, main-
tained that it had inherited the true ring of the master ; we
wiil^rs^ investigate the question, — Whether Hegel has specu-
latively demonstrated the historical Christ to be the absolute
(«od-man? And as we shall be compelled to convince our-
selves that his principles, especially as taken in connection with
' Compare Marheinekc's " System der christlichen Dogmatik," 1847.
p. 312.
140 THIRD PERIOD.
the entire system, are essentially antichristological, we shall,
secondly^ have to test the foundations out of which this anta-
gonism to Christianity arises,
I. Several things which occur in the account given above
produce the impression that Hegel really meant to demonstrate,
and supposed himself by his principles to have demonstrated,
the historical Christ to be the absolute God-man. " The mani-
festation of God in the flesh took place at a determinate time,
and in this particular individual," in order that consciousness,
separated from God, might gain a consoling insight into the
essential unity of God and man, and in order that man might
have in the finite the consciousness of God, might have God as
an immediate object before himself. That sounds quite in
accordance with the teachings of the Church.
But why should not the subjective faith that that unity had
been absolutely realized in a person have sufficed for the end
in question ; so that — without a correspondent, absolute, ob-
jective fact — the consciousness of the God-manhood would have
had for its first form the mode of " representation " (Vorstel-
lung) I
Nay more, what can be the need of even this faith, which,
if no objectivity correspond to it, and if notwithstanding it
must be described as necessary, is marked by the repulsive and
unspeculative characteristic of a necessary deception ? If all
that we have to do with is the awakening of the consciousness
of the essential unity with God, which is already in itself a fact,
one cannot see why the spirit, in order to be able to come to
itself, should cling to such an objectivity, be it actual, or be it
imaginary. If the consciousness at which reason itself must
arrive in the course of its own immanent progress is sufficient,
one is unable to discover in this direction the need either for
such an object, or even for the faith in it. Nay more, suppos-
ing it were impossible for the separated man to arrive at that
consciousness in the way of a purely immanent process, and
that, on the contrary, according to the language of this school,
a miracle or a leap was absolutely necessary, one cannot see
why this leap could not be brought to pass by an inner miracle,
by a pure deed wrought by God in men's own inner being.
But Hegel otherwise posits no development of the spirit save
an immanent one; and such a development cannot stand in
HEGEL in
need of a particular objectivity. The awakening of the con
ficiousness of the essential unity of God and man, which is
represented as the only thing necessaiy, would come of itself in
the course of the regular development of the human mind.
Christianity could then, it is true, no longer be said to have
been brought about by the historical person of the historical
God-man, or even only something specifically new.
Judging from all this, Hegel's reasonings have not demon-
strated the necessity of the appearance of the absolute God-man.
He has not even shown it to be necessary for the self-conscious-
ness, in the course of its development, to take the form in
whicii the unity of the divine and human is believed to have
somewhere or other a sensuous existence ; but even suppos-
ing this faith Avere shown to be a necessary stage, we should
have arrived at no conclusion as to what was in Christ objec-
tively and apart from this faith. Whether Hegel's principles
would leave to Christ even a distinctive dignity, — as to this,
nothing is said. It does not even follow certainly that Christ
was, at all events, the first in whom the divine-human conscious-
ness awakened, or that He was the founder of Ciiristianity, by
which, as by a turning-point, the divine-human consciousness
was introduced into the world. For it is also possible that the
Apostles, after they had learnt to regard Him with the eyes of
faith, might have supplementarily discerned in, and declared
of. Him, that unity of the divine and human which He had
neither recognised in Himself nor given utterance to. Christ
might have been the accidental means — not necessarily com-
prehending Himself that to which He gave occasion — of pre-
j)aring the way for the knowledge of that in itself universal
iniity of the divine and human in His own followers.
Even in the account above given, however, there are scat-
tered hints enough to show us what sort of a significance pro-
perly remains to Christ.
Pie speaks of three modes of viewing Christ : — 1. The
external, sensuous mode, which takes Christ for a man, perhaps
like Socrates ; — this is the unbelieving view. 2. The external,
vsical history must undergo a conversion th rough /ca'^/i; it must
be viewed spiritually, ere Christ can be known as the God-man.
Tlie history of Jesus, remarks Hegel, is only described by those
on wiiom the Spirit had been poured out. Not till the sensuous
142 THIRD PERIOD.
substance is contemplated witli the eyes of faith, and is thus
spiritualized, is Clirist recognised as the God-man. 3. But we
must not even be content with this. The mode of consideration
which faith has, is still commingled with sensuous elements,
though it is in part spiritual : it is in the first instance the
mode of " representation " (Vorstellung). These sensuous ele-
ments must be swept away, in order that the pure content, the
pure truth, may rise in the consciousness of the Church. Now,
what is this still remaining sensuous element ? It is nothing
but the tendency to regard Christ as a particular person. In
order that the spiritual substance may become entirely free, it
must be raised into the element of thought, it unist be made
independent of that individual, of Christ, as a form that once
existed but has again disappeared : the history of this individual
will then be recognised as an universal histoiy, as the history
of God and of humanity, in their true essence, as to which
they are intimately allied.
Every kind of dependence on the individual, on a single
history, being thus thrown aside in the sphere of the spirit, the
faith in question shows itself to be merely the starting-point in
the development of the spirit w^inning its own reconciliation :
it believes in the unity of the divine and human in Christ, in
order subsequently to know that unity as realized in itself:
from which moment Christ becomes an indifferent person.
As regards the objective content of the faith fixed on the Person
of Christ, we may not, it is true, describe it as entirely and
solely false ; — for the unity of the divine and human that is seen
in Christ, is a true knowledge; seeing that this unity exists
per se in all men ; — but the mistaken notion is thrown aside, that
He was the only God-man, or that He was God-man in a quite
distinctive sense. The true insight is rather, that God-manhood
pertains to the whole of humanity.
We have seen above, in connection with Schelling, that the
element of truth in this idea is recognised also by Christianity ;
that it also promises to the whole of humanity, through Christ's
mediation, a God-manly (gottmenschliches), or rather a divine-
human (gottlichmenscldich(is), life. But what function is
there attributed to the mediation of Christ? We have already
said above, that strictly, according to the system, to take one's
stand alone on the idea mediating itself with itself, the entire
HEGEL. 143
process is to be regarded as a self-mediation of God, and con-
sequently no place remains for the operation of an historical
mediator. Even if we recognise — as one portion of the school
does — that it was not the faith of the Church that converted
Jesus into the Christ who knew Himself to be the God-man;
but that He Himself first possessed the divine-human conscious-
ness, and awakened it in humanity by His doctrine and life ;
we cannot assign to Christ any higher office than that of the
prophet: — a limitation of His activity, which has been justly
<;haracterized as a jjrincipal defect of the rationalistic Cliristo-
logy. Moreover, the prophetical office is then of necessity dif-
ferently yiewed than by Christianity : it would not then point
to Christ as the High Priest and King, but would itself accom-
plish the work of redemption by directing man to himself
and his own divine essence, the knowledge of which is supposed
to be the only thing necessary. Had Christ pointed to His own
person as the redeeming person, as He unquestionably did, if
such a thing as historical certainty is attainable, from this point
of view it must be treated as a remainder, if even unconscious
remainder, of limitation and sin ; and after having given the
impulse to the new development, like all other historical persons.
He would have had to retire from the scene. His individual
personality must in such a case be considered to be a completely
secondary matter; the idea continues its work by means of
ever different instruments.
But the deeper reason for Christ's not being represented
here as the one who brings regeneration and redemption, is
that the tendency of the entire character of the system is to
emasculate the conception of sin. ]Much is said in the system
of growth and process ; and yet also far too little, that is,'in an
ethical and religious respect. Tlie process is treated super-
ficially, as a matter of thought. The movement proceeds forth
from God, as well in the direction of separation as in that of
unity. But, on the one hand, the disunion by which man is
characterized is precisely the same as that in which God also
stands with Himself; luiy more, the latter is the absolute mode
of consideration, to which this disunion appears as a thing
eternally done away with. It is impossible, then, that au
earnest view should be taken of sin (Note 21) ; nay more, we
are then threatened with the conversion, not merely of sin, but
144 THIKD PERIOD.
also of the altereity of God (the world), wherein the disunion
is supposed to be involved into mere seeming ; and in this aspect
the system inclines back to Spinozism.' So far, on the con-
trary, as it aims to pass beyond Spinozism, i)y viewing " the
substance as subject," the system displays a Pelagian character
of the grandest style. For God is then not another than man,
but the word "God" denotes merely the essence of humanity ;
and every one is redeemed by bringing his essence to develop-
ment, or, more precisely expressed, by bringing it to conscious-
ness. This esscTice, it is true, is not merely that of the indi-
vidual, but the essence of all : still, it is his essence also hy
nature ; it is not a mere susceptibility to deliverance, but an
immanent power, in virtue of which man accomplishes his own
deliverance,^ which consists in casting aside the error, — an error
even morally injurious, — that his essence is foreign to him, and
not his own. For this reason the forgiveness of sin is affirmed
to be merely the religious expression for moral freedom. Kant's
doctrine of self-redemption is undoubtedly a different one : it
represents it as effected through the medium of the will ,
Hegel, through the medium of thought : Kant posits a sub-
jective freedom of choice between good and evil, which Hegel
denies. This, however, does not essentially alter the matter.
On the contrary, ethically considered, it wears a much more
unfavourable aspect in the system of Hegel. Not a word is
said of an alteration of life, of a development or regeneration of
the being ; the development relates solely to the theoretical
aspect, to that which is intellectual. The object of conscious
ness remains unalterably identical ; it is merely the mode of
viewing it that changes : for whereas in the beginning the p«r
se was conceived to be foreign to the divine, and evil, it is now
represented as essentially divine, and merely the notion of its
estrangement deemed to be evil : — therein, too, consists its re-
conciliation. That this is a flattening down of the Christian
idea of regeneration, is self-evident. Furthermore, even the
early Church considered the main feature of its controversy
M'ith Pelagianism to be simply, that that system mistook the
distinction between nature and grace. The Church does not
make the denial of human freedom altogether an essential
- This manifests itself more distinctly at a later period in Strauss.
* "Phfeiiometiologie,'' pp. G20 fT. ; " Keli<,Monsphilosophie " ii. 270-274.
HEGEL 146
point;' still less does it consent to allow such a denial tc stand
for a recoirnitloii of grace. Grace is discriminated from nature,
and characterized as Christian, by the circumstance, that what
it works IS accomplished through the medium of Christ.^ The
Pelagians also were willing to speak of grace ; but, on the one
hand, they did not get beyond the prophetic office of Christ,
which must by itself remain ever defenceless and without hold,
so far as it is meant to designate the specific essence of Christ ;
nor, on the other hand, beyond the " gratia creans," that is, the
innate powers for good ; — points, relatively to which this philo-
sophy is undoubtedly in a precisely similar position, notwith-
standing its putting humanity, the generic, in the place of the
individual as such. According to this system, therefore, all
men particijiate in God-manhood in such a manner that a
Christology is incompatible therewith. The universal God-
manhood, or incarnation of God taught by Hegel, is neither
derived nor derivable from Christ ; it necessarily robs Him of
His specific position, and puts all men on essentially the same
level with Him.
It is true, the doctrine laid down in the system, that the
idea must be conceived as an energy, that is, as a power capable
of realizing itself, might appear to leave a place for the entrance
of the God-man. And, in point of fact, Rosenkranz, in par-
ticular, has given the matter this turn. But the writers of the
school, whom we mentioned first (see above, pp. 122 ff.), made
use of that principle, either not at all, or merely in passing. The
ground thereof lies simply in the fact, that that principle has in
the svstem an hostile rather than a favourable significance
relatively to Christology. It is identical with the well-known
])roposition, that everything rational is actual ; which, however,
acquires its true sense only in connection with the opj)Osed
j)roposition, that the actual is the rational. There is no need,
therefore, of an objective, external reality, to enable the rational
^ In the Lutheran Church, the type of tloctrine was at first prede«-
tinariau : wlien it at a later period renounced this type, it did not retract
that to which it really attached prime importance. Compare on this
subject, Julius Muller's " Das Verhiiltniss zwischen der Wirksamkeit dea
heiligen Geistes und dom Gnadenniittel des gottlicheu Wortes," " Studien
und Kritiken," 185G, 2.
" Compare Schleiermacher's " Der christliche Claubo" i. § 11.
r. 2. — VOL. in. K
UG THIRD PERIOD.
to become actual, the idea to prove its power : the true being,
the true reaUty, lies in the ideal itself. This ideal, it is true,
realizes itself also objectively, outwardly ; but relatively to the
idea, the world is the accidental, the finite, and as such, eter-
nally inadequate to the infinitude of the idea : the idea has its
true reality in itself, and is neither able, nor is it necessary for
it, to manifest itself in all its fulness in any finite object what-
ever. But because every finite being is inadequate to the idea,
the latter always resumes the former back into itself ; and
finite objects are posited ever afresh, not because they are
capable of being filled with the absolute content, but simply
because God has His life alone in the motion of a process.
This is the rhythm, the pure eternal life of the spirit itself,
that it constantly enters into limitation or finitude, and as con-
stantly returns out of it again into itself, or restores itself to
identity of form. If God had not this movement. He would
be death itself. Finite spirits, accordingly, are only transient
forms or husks which the divine spirit throws around itself,
through which it passes in order to become self-conscious, in
order to become a subject.
But if, according to this, the very idea of the divine life
implies that God cannot find the adequate form or realization
of His essence in any finite being ; and if, on the contrary, it
be rather involved in the idea of the finite, that it should only
inadequately set forth the idea, and merely be that which has
momentary being ; it is clear of itself, that no place remains for
a God-man in whom the fulness of the idea should take up its
abode. Moreover, God would cease to be a living God if the
idea should in any way attain absolute realization, whether in an
individual or in the whole. For it is the inadequacy of the form
to its content that solicits the process ever afresh. With the
attainment of a perfect result, the process would cease, and with
the process the divine life.
No less is an archetypal historical Christ rendered impos
sible by another aspect of the system.^ Even as the finite
cannot be otherwise posited than as the inadequate realization
of the idea, so, according to the principles of the system, every
sj)iritual being must pass through the stage of disunion whilst
' We come here upon a ijoint apparently furthe<it removed from the
•yateni, to wit, its dualistic aspect.
I
HEGEL. 147
undergoing its development. The first form of tlie life of the
finite spirit is naturality, immediacy. In order to be or to
become living spirit, it must undergo a process of diremption,
of disunion, so as to make itself in reality the spirit which it
already is per se. All natures, says Hegel, must pass out of
their state of innocence ; a disunion must be brought about, in
which the per se (An sich) becomes another (ein Anderes),
becomes something strange to the subject ; and not till the sub •
ject has returned into its per se (An sich), into its vital ground,
not till this subjectivity has been reduced to nought or abolished,
can that reconciliation of the spirit with itself be effected, in
which the subjectivity finds itself in the objectivity, in the per se.
The idea of development being thus connected essentially
with fall and disunion, it is clear that there can be no word
even of a sinless God-man, much less of the uniqueness of
Christ. But if, by way of demonstrating the necessity of evil,
it is laid down as an universal law of the life of spirit, that its
path should lie through disunion, the master of the school may
certainly lay claim, above his disciples, to the honour of con-
sistency, in that he is more sparing of high predicates, and
rather gives intelligible hints enough, that Christ, who took
xipon Himself all finitude, could not escape from the climax of
finitude, to wit, discord with Himself and with God, towards
which, on his view, the idea, in manifesting itself and in seek-
ing to arrive at veritable distinctions, was essentially and neces-
sarily impelled ; although in faith, that is, in the representation
of the Church, sinlessness is to be ascribed to Him. The true
significance of this faith for thought is, that the spotless purity
and sinlessness of the eternal idea pertains to humanity, so far
as, in its totality, it represents the God-manhood.
Our final conclusion, therefore, is, that with the j)remises
referred to above, the Hegelian system neither did nor could
allow that the perfect unity of the divine and human had been
realized in Christ in an unique manner, and that His develop
ment was sinless.
The ultimate reason of this is, that Hegel conceives God,
not as absolute self-consciousness which is reflected in itself,
but merely allows Him to become a subject in the endless series
or totality of finite spirits; that he arbitrarily, and with an in-
troduction of empirical knowledge into speculation, regards the
148 THIRD PERIOD.
world as the other, througli and in which God can alone know
Himself ; that he desci'ibes the stages of its history as the stages
passed through by the divine self-consciousness in coming to
itself; that, in one word, he conceives God, not as an eternal,
absolute personality, nor as actually ethical, but as the spirit of
the world, for whom the world only exists that it may mediate
His own self-consciousness, — somewhat as the nature in and
outside of man mediates his self-consciousness.
Now it is evident at once that all the antichristological
principles given above are necessarily involved in this funda-
mental view. 1. In the first place, Christ, who appeared in the
midst of the ages, cannot occupy the highest place in this pro-
cess of the history of the world. For if the goal of the process
through which the history of the world passes, is that God may
have His self-consciousness in man ; and if the sole significance
and goal of history is that God may know Himself adequately in
man — for which object one individual accomplishes quite as much
as sevei'al ; — then, if Christ should be conceived as the perfect
God-man, history would come to a termination with Him. As,
however, it rather properly began, instead of terminating with
Christ, God cannot yet have known Himself in an absolutely
perfect manner in Christ, if the final and absolute meaning
and aim of the history of the world be, that He should acquire
by its means the full consciousness of Himself. At the very
utmost, Christ could only have formed the heginning of a higher
stage in the process of the divine self-consciousness, beyond
which, however, the following stages would be destined to ad-
vance. That on such a presupposition Christ cannot be God-
man, either in an unique or even perfect manner, is self-evident.
Still further consequences are deducible, when we examine the
process more carefully.
2. The pulse of the entire onward movement is found in
the fact, that the forms given in this world, because finite, are
inade(|uate to tiie entire idea ; for which reason they are resumed,
negatived, in harmony with the eternal righteousness of the idea,
which judges that which is inadecpiate by passing out beyond it.
In a single form, therefore, God cannot adequately rej)resent
Himself, but only, we are taught, in history as a whole.
3. As each succeeding stage of humanity is a refutation of
the earlier, and falls into ])ositive disharmony with it — by means
HEGEL. 149
of which conflict alone the higher momentum is able to gain
the mastery over the lower and to realize itself, — so do we find
the same relation reflected in the development of the individual
spirit ; for only through the medium of dissonance with his
first form of existence, consequently only through the conscious-
ness of sin and guilt, can an individual accomplish his own
development. If the first determination predicated of this pro-
cess implies most decidedly that no other significance can be
attributed to Christ than that which is essentially attributed to
every one, in that He, like them, is thus constituted a mere
momentum of the whole in which the idea sets itself forth, and
which requires to be supplemented to perfection by the infinite
totality of the others ; tlie second implies that it was necessaiy
for Christ also to undergo disunion, or a sinful development.
That these are, on the whole, the logical consequences of the
system of Hegel, notwithstanding that other elements may be
found in it, was for a considerable time denied by the leaders
of his school ; — most zealously by Goschel and Markeineke.
But the " Life of Jesus," by D. F. Strauss, gave rise to a crisis
in the school which broke their dominion. The unflinching
keenness with which Strauss deduced the consequences of the
system as a whole, gave rise to the principles which he laid as
axioms at the basis of his examination of the life of Jesus, and
which are hostile not merely to the foundations of Christianity,
but to religion in general. Of the above-mentioned writers,
Conradi and Rosenkranz allowed themselves to be partially
shaken in their views. Baur and his school passed over almost
completely to liis side. (Note 22.) Goschel, Julius Schaller,
Gabler, Daub, Marheineke, and others, rose in energetic opposi-
tion to Strauss, though not without eclectically breaking with
the above described premises and foundations of the system ; —
of whom more anon.
II. The less we can suppose ourselves in the preceding obser-
vations to have pronounced judgment on the scientific value of
this view of Christ, the more necessary is it now to test the foun-
dation on wiiich the described results regarding the Person of
Christ rest.
According to what has been advanced above (see page
147), that upon which it above all depends, is the concej)tioa
of God as the mere spirit of the world; with whicii are further
150 THIRD PERIOD.
connected the principles relating to the more precise nature
of the process He undergoes. We shall here see that the iden-
tity of the process of humanity and of the divine life, in the
form in which it is expounded by Hegel, is firstly unproved, and
secondly self-contradictory.
It is true, a proof thereof seems to be given in that which
is adduced above, to wit, that spirit, as spirit, must be manifest
to itself, must know itself; and that this is impossible, unless
it distinguish itself from itself, unless it set itself over against
itself as another. But that the spirit as the other of itself is
the world, or, what is the same thing, that spirit, in order to
become another to itself, and out of the abolition of this other,
to return again to itself, must first be converted into, must
empty itself to, nature, and at once begin the return out of
this altereity in man, — this is nowhere proved. This hiatus in
the system, to wit, that so little is done to point out the steps by
which the altereity of the idea is brought to pass, — in particular,
by which the passage is effected from logic to natural philo-
sophy,— has been already repeatedly blamed by others. Theo-
logically, it may be expressed as follows : — It is not shown
that this other of God (which belongs to the divine self-con-
sciousness) is the world and not something else, — for example,
not rather the eternal Son of God, through whom, in the opinion
of so many teachers, God knows Himself eternally, as in His
counterpart, the Holy Ghost. Or are we to regard it as a
proof, when we are told, — The trinitarian distinctions, which the
Church teaches are immanent in God, are merely a play of love
with itself : in order that these distinctions may have reality,
the world must be taken to be the other (das Andere) of the
Idea? It may be granted that the Church has still much to do
in defining more precisely the trinitarian distinctions ; but as
an empty play of love with itself the immanent Trinity cannot
be described, seeing that it alone, now as formerly, will be in a
position to secure the living, personal, ethical conception of God
against Pantheism and Deism (see Div. I., vol. ii., 291). But what
if it should be possible to show that the world cannot be this
other, through which God arrives at the absolute consciousness
of Himself ; that, in one word, lie must either know Himself
absolutely without needling the mediation of the finite world,
or Ho cannot know Himself at all ? How, if it could be shown,
HEGEL. 151
that if the immanent Trinity is a mere play of distinctions, the
world also becomes an empty play : and tliat the true, of course
also trinitarian, self-realization of God in the world is onlv
possible on the presupposition of a God who is not merely the
spirit of the world, but is also in Himself absolute personality ?
It rests, indeed, on a misunderstanding, when the charge is
brought against this theoiy, that according to it God is depen-
dent on the world, on the finite, because He needs its assistance
in order to become self-conscious personality. For in any case
it is God who determines Himself to be finite ; He alone is the
determining one; He is not determined by the world. This same
objection, however, returns again in another form. If, namely,
the world, and in particular the finite spirit, is necessary to God
as a medium for the attainment of self-consciousness, then, both
the self-knowledge of God in and through humanity, and the
self-knowledge of humanity in God, are so completely identical,
that the divine self-consciousness cannot attain any realization
beyond the knowledge which humanity has of God. But now
humanity is subjected to the law of gradualness; consequently,
God also is subjected to the same law of becoming gradually
conscious. And there is here no escape, save by supposing the
divine self-consciousness to be in some way freed from bond-
age to humanity and its stages of development.
To say that, according to the system, the divine self-consci-
ousness is not absolutely complete, but has at first gradually to
grow, may seem a heavy charge, especially in view of Hegel's
repeated assurance that God is as truly the idea in its eternal
return into itself, as in its discerption into finitude. But if the
system really do not intend to teach that God first arrives at
His realization as a subject through humanity (which of itself
would involve the realization being a gradual one), we must
ask, — Does it then recognise a God above and outside of this
process of humanity ? On the contrary, it considers it to be its
greatest honour to have overcome this view of the world. If
God were self-consciousness in eternal absoluteness, and if
consequently He Himself were eternally His own other (sein
Anderes), what ground would this system have for representing
(lod as opening Himself to a world in which distinctions are
taken seriously, and to a process of the world which is to over-
come this veritable distinction ? Into the path pursued bv
152 THIRD PERIOD.
Clirlstian theism, wliicli starts with the idea of the personality
of God as mediating itself in itself, and not as first mediated
through the world, this system refuses to strike : it regards it as
established, without further proof, that God arrives at the world
in seeking Himself, and not out of love ; that the process of the
world is identical with that of the divine life. For this very
reason, we must persist in maintaining that Hegel cannot avoid
representing the development of the self-consciousness of God
as a gradual one. Somewhat after Schelling's manner, he
posits epochs in history ; and as these epochs are divided from
each other by the momenta which gradually arrive at actuality
in the consciousness of humanity, so must we also assume that
the consciousness of the divine spirit advances from momentum
to momentum — a history whose result cannot be at the same
time also an eternally present actuality. To what purpose
otherwise the long and laborious process, if, in the proper and
primary sense of the word, God as its beginning was also at the
same time its result?
But if the development be gi'adual, then, like every history,
it must be subject to the conditions of time. Hegel, it is true,
tells us that the matter is not to be thus viewed ; to God, the
idea of time is not applicable. But how then is the conscious-
ness of God to be eternally complete ? If it be quite clear that
His consciousness cannot possess this completeness in the human
spirit from the beginning, seeing that it is essential to the hu-
man spirit to begin with subjection to nature, and only gradually
to attain to full self-consciousness or to the knowledge of the
unity of God and man, in whom alone God has an existence as
spirit ; then what mode of existence can that be, in which, so
long as the human spirit is still imperfect, God can know and
realize Himself as an absolute spirit?
Hereto the reply has been already given, that we are not to
restrict our look to the present world. It is possible that our
world may have been preceded by an infinite series of other
worlds ; or there may be other classes of beings, in which God
reveals, and has always revealed Himself as an absolute spirit.^
1 In the " Hiillische Jalirbucher," Nos. 283-289, 1838, Vatko, following
the example of others before him, has repeated this theory, which, regarded
from the point of view of the system, is doubly incongruous. Theories like
these, which destroy the unity of the system, may evince a praiseworthy
HEGEL. 153
In this way, the divine self-consciousness is supposed to be freed
from its bondage to humanity and to gradualness. This escape,
however, must be regarded as foreign to the system, and essen-
tially unsatisfactory. If the history of humanity is really the
history of God, there can only be a single history and a single
world, for God can only have one history. After God had
already attained His absolute realization as spirit in an earlier
world, there would be no reason whatever for the creation of a
new one, unless we should suppose that God had lost the result
of His earlier development, by as it were apostatizing from
Himself. If history be reason realiter, that is, the explication
of all the logical momenta, there can be only one history. If
a further history could be really a different one, that is, not a
mere empty repetition of entirely the same logical momenta,
then reason itself could not be one. But as reason is one, and
this unity manifests itself in a regular succession of momenta
in the history of humanity, we have no right to introduce other
worlds or classes of beings with a view to evading the necessity
of conceiving the consciousness of God as first growing. At all
events, if the process is marked by progress, God could only
have absolute self-consciousness in them as a result, not as a
beginning. By such appeals, therefore, the problem is put
backwards, and it is only in appearance that an advantage is
gained. But if there is no progress in its process, it is scarcely
allowable to speak of a process of the world, or even of a world
at all ; and the repetition of worlds, periods, or individuals, would
be something totally empty and aimless. We must therefore
abide by the position, that, according to Jlegefs system — in case
the process of history really has a substance and aim, and does
not merely seem to pertain to the divine life — the consciousness
of God is not complete, so long as that of humanity is still pro-
gressing. (Note 23.)
desire to attribute to God a consciousness which does not first grow to what
it is, but is eternally identical and absolute. But these efforts could not
avoid missing their goal, unless, in a manner quite similar to that in which
the theory above-mentioned assumes that the world of men will have a
rational future existence, without therefore supposing the present one to be
necessarily stripj)ed of divine life, the reluctance to accept a divine self-
consciousness altogether independent of the process of the world were given
up. At all events, we shall see immediately that the absoluteness of thia
Belf-consciousness cannot otherwise be maintained.
154 THIRD PERIOD.
If, then, even the principle just hiid clown is opposed to the
idea of God — for which reason, Hegel himself also tried, though
in vain, to escape from it ; if the system is thus involved in
self-contradictions, because, whilst its theory necessitates sub-
jecting God to the conditions of time, it itself treats this repre-
sentation as false : the inner conflict in the philosophical ground-
work of the above Christology manifests itself still more plainly,
when we further ask, whether (even apart from the gradualness
above referred to), on Hegelian principles, the world can in any
sense be a fitting medium for the attainment of that which
is the goal of the process, to wit, that God should become
absolute spirit or concrete (no longer merely abstract and sub-
stantial, but at the same time subjective, that is, existing as well
in as for itself) universality ? The question must be answered
in the negative.
This goal neither can nor may be completely reached. For
the process would halt and come to an end with the attainment
of perfection. The life of God w^ould die out in arriving at its
goal. In order that there may be life and consciousness, there
must alwaj's again be something finite, imperfect ; because the
divine can only know itself as infinite spirit in doing away with
the finite. Were the finite entirely abolished, contradiction and
antagonism, which are the parent of all life, would fail. The
process required by the idea of God as the mere spirit of the
world, is marked by the self-contradictory feature, that in order
to its having adequate actuality, it is compelled, on the one
hand, eternally to posit a non-adequate medium (the world) ;
and on the other hand, to do away with the same medium, on
the ground that it is impossible for God truly and permanently
to have His life and abode in any single form.
We thus come again upon the dualism which has so fre-
quently made its appearance in recent philosophical systems.
On the one hand, it lies in the essence of God to posit some-
thing finite, in order that by overcoming, by negativing it, He
may mediate and know Himself as infinite. But, on the other
hand, this overcoming can never be absolute ; in other words,
God's knowledge of Himself as infinite can never be absolute :
otherwise the divine life would stagnate. It lies in the essence
of God, to arrive at concrete universality, at actuality as absolute
spirit, by means of the finitude which He Himself posits. On
HEGEL 155
the other hand, however, it is essentially characteristic of the
individual to be merely an inadequate revelation of the divine
idea.
Consequently, in this aspect also, we have no alternative but
to say, either that the idea is eternally real in itself, and that God
does not need the adequate actuality of the world in order to the
attainment of absolute self-consciousness ; for if His self-con-
sciousness were bound in this way to the world, it would only be
eternally dimmed and imperfect : or, in case the opinion, that
God can only arrive at absolute self-consciousness through the
medium of the world, be persisted in, the principles of this
system compel us to describe this self-consciousness as eternally
seeking and never finding itself.
We are compelled, therefore, to abide by the unconciliated
contradiction, that God is eternally compelled to posit the finite,
in order that by it He may know Himself absolutely, and arrive
at God-manhood, in which alone spirit has its true existence ;
whilst, on the other hand. He is never able to arrive at this true
existence, because it is contradictory, firstly, of the idea of the
finite, that the entire fulness of the idea should become manifest
in it; and, secondly, of the idea of God, who is essentially pro-
cess, and only as such is life, to attain realization in the sense of
becoming absolutely real. For this reason, then, finite forms,
as being inadequate to the divine existence, are ever again re-
sumed, and the divine life is, and maintains itself solely as, an
eternal play between the position and the abolition of the finite.^
If now it should be attempted to silence us by saying that it
is not allowed to describe this as a vain and empty play, seeing
' From this we can see how the absolute personaUty of God, and the
infinite value of the personality of man, stand and fall with each other.
Apparently the one excludes the other ; but in truth the dualism between
finite and infinite cleaves to the representation of God as the spirit of the
world ; whilst, on the contrary, where a not merely extensive conception is
formed of God, that true unity of the infinite and finite is a possibility,
which allows God really to know Himself in an absolute way, in the com-
jiloted Son of man, who is the adequate manifestation of the eternal Son of
God. Not, indeed, so far as the Son remains by Himself is this the case?
but so far as He is also the Head, and so far as the life which concentrates
itfielf in Him expands itself in all the glory of the Church, of the body, in
whose menibers is repeated in a rolativ(> manner that unity of trie finite and
infinite which exists absolutely in the Head.
15G THIRD PERIOD.
that progress takes place in the process, and that wliat is posited,
although unable as an individual phsenomenon to escape the fate
of finitude, being on the contrary resumed, continues to exist as
a momentum in that which follows after ; tiie only result is to
add a new contradiction to the old ones. For, seeing that, on
the one hand, as we have above expounded, the idea of God and
of the finite laid down in the system, necessitates our assuming
the process to be endless, and the result never perfectly attained ,
whilst, on the other hand, a progress, an increase in the spiritual
life of the world and of the divine self-consciousness, is always to
be supposed to take place, what else do we then arrive at but the
very progressus in infinitum so abhorrent to the system, which
must always follow where the divine is placed under the category
of external infinitude? What have we but an eternal shall, which
is always to be realized, and never actually is realized ; nay more,
whose eternal non-realization is guaranteed by the contradiction,
that God can never cease to posit the finite, although it is also
essential that He should always do away with what He posits, as
being inadequate to His own manifestation ?
But if this progressus in infinitum, in which the divine con-
sciousness would be involved along with the world, is to be
repelled, the matter only becomes still more doubtful. The
progressus in infinitum can only be abolished on one of two sup-
positions,— either that it find its termination in completion ; or
that anything like real progress be denied, and the spirit be re-
garded as at once perfected in all its modes of existence. This
philosophy, as we have seen, cannot adopt the former alterna-
tive ; for it teaches that life would become extinct as soon as
the process had arrived at an absolute result. The latter, how-
ever, the denial of all progress, would have a sense in relation
to the divine self-consciousness, if it were conceived as eternally
complete. But as it is supposed to be arrived at through the
medium of the finite spirit and the momenta of its history, the
denial of progress acquires quite a different sense, and is to be
repudiated both in relation to the world and in relation to the
idea of God.
First, as regards the world. If we deny progress to humanity,
and the succession of stages in the epochs of its history, then one
generation, strictly estimated, is worth as much as the other ,
that wherein the worth of any generation properly consists, must
HEGEL. 157
be equally discoverable in all.^ But what is this? It is the
essential divinity of the race. But, according to Hegelianism,
this per se (An sich) is the universal, is that which is absolutely
ahke in all. If significance pertains alone and altogether to this
universal element, then the actuality, its way and manner, its
successive stages and manifoldness, has no value. The only true
substance of the world is the abstract, completely general deter-
mination, that God does in some way or other eternally individua-
lize Himself. How He does this, that is, the actual, for example,
the ethical substance of the individualities, is a matter of indiffe-
rence. If it were not so, the measure and mode of the actuality
of the per se must also be taken into consideration.
But the in itself (An sich) of the world is the divine essence.
If the world of actuality, as to its content, is a matter of indif-
ference for that essence ; if its expansion and manifoldness, and
its onward progi'ess, is a purely accidental thing for the spirit of
the world, because all that it is concerned about is the entirely
abstract determination of positing and again doing away with
itself, as finite, for the purpose of proving its infinitude by the
constant negation of the finite that was posited ; then the entire
essential content of the world and history is a mere empty play,
is an endless repetition : the world of actuality is a world of mar-
rowless forms, without sense or aim, of contingencies deserted by
God, because He has no content to set forth or realize in tliem,
His sole purpose being rather to maintain Himself as life, by the
alternate position and abolition of the finite.
Then, indeed, the great organism of spirits, of personalities,
each of which for itself is of infinite depth and significance,
known and brought into existence by Christianity, sinks down
to an innumerable variety of specimens of the race, no one of
which has a veritably distinctive, spiritual character.
The predicates which must here be denied to the Person of
Christ, on the ground that the very idea of the spirit of the world
renders it impossible for it ever to manifest itself in a single in-
dividual, but only in the whole, are represented indeed as per-
taining to humanity ; and thus humanity appears to be exalted,
even though at the cost of Christ, especially as the unity of the
^ Compare the Rechtsphilosophie of Hegel, § 345. Indeed, this idealistic
philosophy ha.s undeniably altogothcr an inclination to the mode of conaider-
atiou of which we are about to speak.
158 THIRD PERIOD.
divine and human nature is lauded as a reality, instead of being
treated, after Kant's manner, as an unrealized shall; nay more,
is lauded as real and true in an infinitely higher sense than that
which is limited to one individual. But, whereas in Christianity
the reverse of the degradation of man by sin is his elevation
through that one individual, the reverse aspect of the apotheosis
of humanity, proclaimed in particular by Strauss, is the neces-
sity of sin so long as there is life, — the reverse of the reality of
the unity of God and man is its eternal unreality, seeing that it
is held to be impossible for the archetype ever to appear in an
historical form. In themselves, all men are affirmed to be divine ;
actually, however, each for ever and essentially contradicts his
idea. For, according to this philosophy, the idea of each one is
not an individual, ideal personality, but the universal, or God,
to whom, as the infinite, the finite is essentially inadequate.
Instead of being an overcoming, it is an outbidding, of the
Kantian dualism between shall and he ; and to direct attention
away from it, and from actuality, to the per se, which remains
ever the same, even in the midst of sin and conflict, as the main
matter, is to sink below Kant, and to substitute a physics, or a
logic indifferent both to good and evil, in the place of ethics.
And as, firstly, we cannot find herein a higher view of the
essence of humanity, so, secondly, is the idea of God also com-
pletely unsatisfactory, because in the last instance it is unethical.
As the process of the world is represented as at the same time that
of the divine life and its manifestation ; and the content of that
which is posited as, on the contrary, totally destitute of signi-
ficance ; God can only be the purely formal life, the principial
unity of position and abolition. As the explication of the human
self-consciousness, in its advance to ever higher stages, would be
a matter of indifference to God ; so also must be the completion
of His own self-consciousness, which is only possible through the
medium of the finite. It would not belong to His idea that He
should know Himself in His inner, infinite wealth, as absolute
and also ethical spirit ; but merely that He be the eternal unity
of the position and negation of the finite. But when content is
thus kept outside of God, there, to speak in the style of the
Hegelian system, an abstract and untrue conception is formed
of the form, because it is not one with its substance.
Now, even absolute self-consciousness is not something
HEGEL. 159
winch could be attributed or denied to the absolute spirit at
pleasure ; He is not absolute spirit without knowing Himself
absolutely. If God were not absolute s«//-consciousness, He
might indeed, notwithstanding, be knowledge or consciousness,
but not absolute knowledge; for, though His consciousness would
be filled with the manifold, the objects included in this manifold
are not He Himself ; and His knowledge would consequently
lack essentiality, because He would not Himself be the object
and substance of Plis knowledge. And here it is of no use to
say that this other is essentially Himself, inasmuch as He has
constituted altereity a determination of Himself ; for, even sup-
posing this were so, and that the conversion of the idea into its
altereity were not so unproved as we have seen it to be, this
other would only be in itself (An sich) God : that He is the
other joer se, must also become matter of consciousness, in order
that it may attain absolute reality through this knowledge of
Himself in the otlier. Should this be lacking, the divine con-
sciousness would not be complete ; the unity of Himself and of
the other would then exist only per se, and would not be an
object of knowledge. There would then be a momentum of
truth unknown by God, existing merely in the form of imme-
diate being; and the consciousness of God, not having risen to
the completeness of self-consciousness, would itself not be abso-
lute. Similar results may be shown to follow from the ethical
determinations of the idea of God.
We by no means intend to assert that the above is the onlv
point of view from which the world and God are discussed in
this system. But when, again, the world, with its fulness of
individualities, is in other connections treated not as an unsub-
stantial, fleeting shadow, as an accident of the divine substance,
but the history of humanity as a real evolution of the divine life
which had entered into it, as a realization of the infinite fulness
of the divine idea ; it is only a proof that two completely con-
tradictory modes of regarding the matter stand unreconciled
alongside of each other in the system, and that the purely ideal-
istic view, which reduces the world to a kino;dom of shadows,
cannot be carried out, without the shadows ]on<rin(i ever afresh
for the life-blood of actuality. When, on the otiier hand, there
is a resolution to hold fast the absoluteness of the self-conscious-
ness of God, and yet we are not shown how the world can
160 THIRD PERIOD.
occupy the position of its medium without interfering with its
absoluteness ; this is merely a proof that the truth asserts itself
ever afresh, in so far as it never leaves the error alone, but by
means of portions of its own substance always involves it in
self-contradictions, and thus leads it out beyond itself.^
All that has preceded may serve to convince us that the
Hegelian system, not being yet complete in itself, and being
full of contradictions, particularly in relation to that which
forms the groundwork of its representation of Christology,
cannot be considered at all warranted to judge, or capable of
demonstrating the impossibility of, a Christology. For this im-
possibility cannot be maintained unless we deprive everything
actual of its significance, or without falling into the eternal
dualism involved in a progressiis in ii^jinitum. As we have seen,
Christianity stands far above it in the point which is of chief
importance, to wit, in its conception of the finite and infinite.
For whereas, as we have shown, the wrong conception of the
infinite is allowed ever again to slip into this philosophy, — a con-
ception which makes it inconceivable that finite should ever be
infinite, or infinite finite, in other words, that the idea of the
incarnation of God should ever be entirely and truly realized ; —
according to Christianity, it is not contradictory that true, in-
tensive infinitude should be in the finite : indeed, it proclaims
that the true reconciliation of the finite and infinite has taken
place in the Son of God, and is constantly taking place in those
who by faith become children of God and members of the head,
which is Christ. This leads us to the consideration of another
aspect of the matter.
If God be once defined as the essence of the world, it is a
transposition of subject and pi'edicate logically allowable, when
Feueibach, taking the idea seriously, counted the essence of
the world to be a part of the world, made the world the sub-
ject, and reduced God to a mere predicate of the world. The
transition was thus made to absolute Anthropologism, the fore-
^ With this criticism of the system harmonize, in essential points, the
admirable work of K. I'h. Fischer, "Die Idee der Gottheit," 1839; Bill-
roth's " Vorlesungen liber Relif^ionsj)hilosophie," Leipzig 1837; Fichte's
" Beitr'iige zur Charakteristik der neuercn Piiilosophie," A. 2, 1841 ; Chaly-
baens' " Philosophic und Christeiithum, Ein Beitrag zur Begriindung der
Keligionsphilosophie," Kiel 1853.
HEGEL. 161
runner of Materialism. Tliat portion of the school of Hegel
which regards the world solely from an idealistical point of
A'iew, to wit, as a mere appearance or selfless accident, is, of
course, far removed therefrom.^ But as they were unable, Avith
the means at their disposal, to prevent the conversion made by
Feuerbach, seeing that the only power capable of holding ground
against it lies in the ethical, and in religion and its logic ; for
religion alone gives to the conception of God an independence
that secures it from being regarded merely as world ; so, in order
to escape from the contradictions of their master's system, they
were compelled to return either to a somewhat modified Fichtean
idealism or to Spinozism. In taking this course, however, one
of the two aspects which Hegel had made it his chief object to
combine was allowed to fall. Strauss openly confessed his inten-
tion of returning to Spinoza in order to escape from the contra-
dictions which Hegel was unable to master. Baur also gives us
to understand that the system admits of being viewed in two
ways; he himself inclined more to the idealistic view. But
by thus falling back on earlier points of view, the problem of
overcoming Spinozism and subjective Fichtean idealism, the
problem of blending substance and subject, to which Hegel had
devoted his energies, was allowed to fall. For by this part of
the school the two are again conceived to be mutually exclusive.
In this respect, now, some other adherents of Hegel deserve
our attention, who, instead of throwing aside the germs of tlie
system which were capable of development, sought, by further
developing and carrying out, to preserve the thought of that
])roblem which marks the new element which was the object
of Hegel's efforts.-' In doing this, they were stirred partly
by a more energetic conception of the moral ; and in virtue
^ Compare Baur's " Trinitatslehre " iii. 959, note. And yet Baur is of
opinion that such a world estabhshes more serious and fixed distinctions
in God than the doctrine of the Trinity taught by the Church.
2 Julius Schaller's " Der historische Christus und die Philosophic ,
Kritik der dogmatischcu Grundidee des Lebens Jesu von Dr Strauss,"
1838; Gbschel's " licitrage zur spokulativen Philosophic von Gott und
dem Menschen und vom Gottmeiischen ; mit Iviicksicht auf D. F. Strauss's
C'hristologie." Berlin 18;{8 ; Conradi's " Christus in der Gegenwart. Ver-
gangenhoit und Zukunft," 1839; Ivosenkranz's " Theologische Encyclo})8e-
die," A. 2, p. 184 ; Marheineke's " System der christlichcn Dogmatik,"
licrausgcgoben von Matthies und Vatke, Bcrl. 1847.
V. 2. — VOL. III. L
Ii32 THIRD PERIOD.
thereof, and of the idea of personality therein involved, aimed
at passing beyond the first stage of modern times, that of the
immediate, abstract unity of the divine and human, which had
really remained identity, and at doing justice to distinction in
unity.
J. Schaller and Goschel occupy a truer position, and one
more conformable to Christianity, in consequence of paying
more serious attention to evil. Both deny the necessity for our
development passing through sin. For, says Schaller, both this
thesis and that of the unattainableness of man's destiny would
completely change the human ideal, would necessitate charac-
terizing the essence of the human spirit as fixed, unsurmountable
finitude. If we reckon evil, and absolutely limited knowledge,
to the essence of man, this must be his idea, his ideal ; and
sin miist constitute a part of the conception Ave form of him
(pp. 39, 86 f.). Goschel complains of the neglect of the doc-
trine of sin by premature speculation, and of judgments pro-
nounced thereon by Hegel, which, as he supposes, do not accord
with the rest of his system. The knowledge of sin has justly
been termed the /S and -^ of philosophy. As regards its pre-
tended necessity, the proofs thereof undermine themselves. It is
said, — Caprice, self-discrimination and separation from God,
are necessary to the realization of freedom and of self-con-
sciousness. On the contrary, merely the possibility of actual
caprice and not its actuality, merely discrimination, not separa-
tion from God, is necessary to freedom and self-consciousness :
it can rather be shown that the realization of caprice is dia-
metrically opposed to freedom, and that separation brings
darkness instead of knowledge. Speculation must regard evil
as contingent, and must leave room in itself for the contin-
gent.^ In this direction, accordingly, there is nothing to
prevent us from seeing in the Person of Christ the sinless
realization of the idea.
The system as a whole, in its immediate form, is still more
deeply affected by that which both advance in opposition to
' Beitriige, pp. 17-23. The proof of the non-necessity of evil is com-
pleted by Chalybseus, who directs attention to the essential distinction be-
tween sin and gradual development to perfection through imperfection •
"System der speculativen Ethik ' i. 143 ff. ; " Wissenschaftslehre," pp.
180 ff.
SCHALLEK. GOSCHKL. 163
the repi-esentation of God as tlie spirit of the world. It is
perfectly just, says Schaller,' " to maintain that the absolute
ceases to be absolute as soon as it is conceived to be mediated
by, and dependent on, the finite knowledge of man. Such a
mediation can only take place if God in Himself is impersonal,
and if He be supposed first to arrive at the consciousness of
Himself in man's knowledge of Him. And if we finally re-
gard not merely the consciousness man has of God in general,
but also his determinate knowledge — determinate both in point
of subsiance and form — of God, as the medium throuo-h which
God acquires His form, the progress made by man in his
knowledge of God must appear also as the progress of the
essence of God Himself. Consequently, when man represents
God merely as substance, God is merely substance : fix'st when
God is represented as the absolute subject does He pass out
of substantiality into subjectivity ; and not till He is viewed
by man as a person does He finally attain to actual per-
sonality. The conviction that God is thus conditioned by the
finite consciousness, must completely overthrow the faith in
(jod as substance, or subject, or person, and pass over into
the certainty that, not God, but human knowledge, is the verit-
ably absolute;^ for, on such a supposition, the absolute would
be completely a product of finite knowledge ; and this know-
ledge, as resting in itself, would not ha\e its presupposition in
another."
Such a subjective idealism, however, carried to its extreme
point, does away with itself. And, apart altogether from this,
the one-sidedness of the position that God is just that which
man thinks Him to be, becomes clear the moment we remember
that the representation of substance would vanish at once if
God were really the substance ; — for which reason, the faith in
God as the absolute substance, is the matter-of-fact refutation
of its own content. Substance, by its very idea, excludes re-
^ Ij.c. pp. iJ3 ff. Similarly also Billroth in his " Yorlesungen Uber die
Keligionsphilosophie," Leipzig 1837. Compare Frauenstadt's " Die Frei-
licit dcs Menselien uiid die Personlichkoit Gottes," 1838 ; " Die Mensch
werdung Gottes uach ilirei- Mciglichkeit, AVirklichkeit und Notluvendigkeit, '
I'.erlin 1839.
- Tliat is, the necessary consequence of tliis form of Pantheism is
Auliiropologism.
1G4 THIRD PERIOD.
presentation, — consequently, also, the representation of itself ;
and it sinks everything in an unity without distinctions. On
the contrary, as in the certain conviction of the truth, there lies
immediately the consciousness that the truth is not first made
and invented by the subject, that it is rather in and by itself
the presupposition for the subject that knows ; so also the faith
in the personal, triune God, contains within itself the certainty
that God has not first become personal and triune through man,
even though man may first in time have come to the knowledge
of the essence of God as a triune personality.
In a similar manner, Goschel laboured at the vanquishment
of the false conception of God as the mere spirit of the Avorld.^
To this end, he viewed the immanent Trinity not as a mere play
of the love of God with itself, but as veritable distinctions, in
which God has His eternal, absolute self-consciousness and
personality. At the same time, it deserves mention that he en-
deavours to avoid losing the bond between the immanent and
the oeconomic Trinity, between the divine personality, which is
eternally complete in itself, and the historical personification or
humanification (Personwerdung, Menschwerdung).^ He justly
insists on both extremes being avoided, both that of representing
the divine and human as standing in an abstract relation towards
each other, and that which slurs over and effaces the distinction.
This confusion, he complains, is made by the school in the
greatest variety of expressions ; distinction is regarded as set
aside by unity ; the doctrine is even laid down, that because
the immanence of God in, and His transcendence towards, the
world interpenetrate, therefore neither of the two elements has
validity and reality when absorbed, whereas the distinction is
made all the clearer by the conciliation. This confusion of the
distinction between the absolute and the finite spirit must be
condemned on all sides by philosophy, in opposition to the school
of Hegel. The causes of this obscuring of philosophy, it is as-
serted, are, partly, the lack of actual knowledge of sin ; partly,
the unreal, because not historical, representation of redemption ;
and partly, the misapprehension of the idea of annulment
^ Goschel thas brought himself, liowevcr, into a difficult position, be-
cause he wished to maintain that liis agreement with Hegel was full and
ex press.
* Compare, fur example, p. 264.
GOSCHEL. SCHALLER. 165
(Aufhebung)/ in other -words, the confounding of unity and
identity."
In fact, if the distinction is not preserved in the unity, the
only consequence will be, that either the essential feature of
subjectivity also will be found in the substance, and thus the
latter be absorbed in the former ; or, vice versa, the divine sub-
stance will disappear in a new form of Fichteanism.
Out of this rejection of the idea of God as the mere spirit
of the world, at once follow principles involving important con
sequences. For now, without interfering with the actual unity
between God and man, a fixed distinction can be drawn between
the two, and, whilst recognising the personality of God, the in-
finite worth of the personality of man can also be recognised.^
In relation to this latter aspect of the matter, Schaller and
Goschel have rendered essential services. The former shows,
in a convincing manner, that so long as infinitude has not
entered also into the form of individuality or subjectivity, and
both remain outside of each other, the atonement is not yet
effected. This atonement is justly considered to consist, not in
a moral, but an essential unity of God and man, that is, in the
idea of God-manhood. But if we attribute God-manhood to the
entire human race; if we say (pp. 64 ff.) that no single indivi-
dual can comprehend the fulness of divinity in itself ; and if,
accordingly, the human race is the real God-man ; this doctrine
of Christ, so far from being the annulment of the separation of
man from God, and of God from man, which essentially precedes
the Christian consciousness, really fixes it as irremoveable. The
' The word " Aufhebung" includes both the idea of abolition or annul-
ment and that of preserving, laying up. An element is " aufgehoben,"
when, though abolished for one stage, it is included under a higher form
at the next stage. — Tr.
2 Stress was laid also on the absolute independence of God on man,
which is involved in aseity, out of regard to His personality, by Frauen-
stiidt in his " die Freiheit des Menschen und die Personlichkeit Gottes,"
with a preface by Gabler, Berlin 1838 ; by Gabler in his " Do verse Philo-
sophise erga christ. relig. pietate," 183G ; by Hanne, " Rationalismus und
spekulative Pliilosophie in Braunschweig," 1838, and by others. Conradi
also clings to the eternal, absolute reflexion of God in Himself.
^ Comi^are Schaller I.e. pp. 50 ff. It must not be forgotten, however,
(hat only a preliminary, if oven a very important preliminary question of
Christology, is thus settled. The necessity of the God-manhood may bo re-
cognised, and yet the application to Christology turn out very differently.
166 TUIRD PERIOD.
participation of the individual, namely, in the race, is not jier-
sojial, but merely substantial ; and yet the very basis of the dis-
junction is, that man, as a self-knowing subject, does not know
himself to be in unity with God. The absolute substance reduces
not only every individual thing, but also the individual persons,
to mere transitory momenta of its essence. The absolute subject,
also, which, as one, is without actual distinction in itself, does
the same thing. The subject which feels itself to be divided
does not ask for unity with the race, which, in fact, it never
loses, but for unity with God ; and that not merely a substan-
tial, but a personal unity : man desires to know himself free in
God. This longing for atonement, necessarily immanent in
disunion, is not met by attributing God-manhood to the genus
humanity, but rather thrown back as incapable of being met,
and reduced to a substantial participation in divinity, of whose
insufficiency for the spirit the disunion itself has the strongest
consciousness. It remains, therefore, impugnably certain that
the merely substantial participation of the seJf-knoiving subject in
an impersonal God-manliood is not reconciliation, but disunion.
If, further, Strauss, operating with the categories, " race
and specimens of the race," had said, — In the entirety of its
mutually complementary individuals, and in it alone, the human
race has its perfection ; the individuals as such are merely
partial fragments of the whole, which has its existence in the
entire expanse of humanity ; — Schaller now triumphantly de-
monstrated, on the one hand, negatively, that the essence of spirit
is entirely ignored by such categories as these, which are not at
all appropriate to it ; and, on the other hand, positively, that it
is rather precisely the essence of spirit to be the universal in a
subjective form, or to constitute a totality. That the idea and
the reality shoidd lie asunder, is the essence precisely of nature.
This essence by itself is an unreconciled contradiction ; for in
nature the genus never attains a reality corresponding to its
idea, never arrives at itself in individuals, it points out beyond
itself. The solution of tiiis contradiction is spirit. By self-
consciousness and will it separates itself from nature, and re-
duces nature to a momentum of itself. Accordingly, the in-
individual is not merely this single individual ; but as an in-
dividual, is also at the same time Ego, simple imiversality. It
is solely in consequence of this infinite determinateness, which
SCHALLllR. 167
pertains to it, that the individual is at the same time person.
A single person has not the genus in itself as substance, but,
without needing another for its complement, knows itself as,
and is by itself, in its individuality, at the same time, the genus
in itself. (He means to say. Totality.) In this way the uni-
versal ceases to be merely substance and duplicates (that is,
multiples) itself. (Note 24.)
But if every spirit as such is a totality, and not a mere
fragment, like the single species in nature, Christ also must be
a totality, the unity of the universal and individual. The ques-
tion then arises, however, — What dignity remains for the Per-
son of Christ if all as persons arc a totality? At this point
Schaller is unsatisfactory. For, on the one hand, he pledges
himself to show that in Christ God reveals Himself divine-
humanly, in an unique manner (pp. 86 f.) ; and, on the other
hand, without reconciling the claim with his profession, requires
that, for the sake of the atonement, the entire fulness of the
divine be in every believer (p. 85). If, now, it were shown in
any way whatever, from the idea of God or the idea of man, that
we attain to participation in this fulness through Christ, there
would be some prospect of a conciliation of the two proposi-
tions : Christ would then be distinguished from all, not indeed
by His fulness, — which, on the contrary. He does not keep for
Himself, but communicates, — but by being the real source of all
the communications of divine blessing to humanity within it-
self. Instead of this, he deserts the speculative path, and enters
the purely historical one; failing, consequently, to reach the
goal he had fixed for himself. On the one hand, he reminds us
that men, as they are, cannot realize the idea of their person-
ality, inasmuch as they are rather involved in conflict, in sin,
and need an atonement such as can only be effected by the
presence and self-revelation of God ; on the other hand, that
Christ is to be regarded as the first personal presence of God in
the world ; for all spiritual progress proceeds forth from the
energy of individuality : the method of the idea is first to act
grudgingly, to appear only at a single point, and then from this
point to diffuse its inward fulness over many (pp. 96-99, 58).
But why the inner self-communication of God could not suffice
for reconciliation, and what need there was for an liistorical
mediator, is not clear ; nor is it at all more clear that the liisto-
168 THIRD TERIOD.
rical Christ did auytliing else than Oceanian the consciousuess
of unity with God in others : whidi would plainly be to assign
a scanty, almost accidental, and certainly transient, significance
to Hiui. (Note 25.) Schaller's merit consists, therefore, prin-
cipally in his having shown that God-manhood can only have
an adequate existence in a subject, in a personality, and not in
any other form.
At the point wdiere Schaller had let the problem fall,
Goschel took up the work.^ He endeavours to determine
more precisely the idea of God-manhood, Avhich Schaller in-
clined to apply in a profuse manner to all, by not resting satis-
fied with the mere idea of totality which every individual person
is destined to be, but by reaching further, and claiming that
the infinite multiplicity of these totalities should also be con-
ceived as an unity, and not as a mere diffuse plurality. (Note
26.) The worth of personality, as fixed by Schaller and others,
urgently called for this step to be taken, in order that the indi-
vidual personalities might not appear as empty repetitions of
each other, and either sink together into one uniform, indis-
tinguishable mass, or fall asunder. What was necessary here
was, to view huinanity itself again as a totality of a higher
order than the individual, as an organism with distinct members,
without detriment to the relative totality of the individuals.
Goschel's view now is the following: — The unity of hu-
manity is granted ; but it is supposed to consist in the uni-
versal, divine-human essence of the race. This, however, is
nominalistic ; the utmost that is thought of is a moral person-
ality of the race. This is not sufficient : moral personality lacks
kernel, individuality, subjective personality. The personality
then remains a mere name, by which the race is summed up in
one. The race must be personality and individuality in itself.
Whence otherwise would personality come ; for if the race
were itself impersonal, it plainly could not confer personality?
Or are we to suppose the multiplicity of individuals to take the
place of the individuality of the race itself? But what, then,
would become of the \aiity? The many individuals are not
one until they all come into existence ; but the many never will
become all or one, unless an individual stand at the head of the
race itself as subject. The unity of the race cannot become an
' Beitrage, u. s. w., 1838.
GOSCHEL. 169
actuality, unless it have an existence entirely in one individual,
and unless this one individual precede as a person by itself, the
personality of the race conditioned by it, and continue to exist
independently along with it.
No state, no community, has its reality merely through a
common spirit which remains in itself ; but is represented, and
that at the first by one. In the one is a relatively Universal
(in the individual is personality) ; and this is the head. Only
through a head can humanity pass realiter, and in its conscious-
ness, from plurality to unity of being. Plurality cannot become
totality without being collected in one. This one, however,
must needs be an individual by itself ; for at the basis of all
personality lies individuality — the indivisible, indepen.lent being
of the subject. The head, therefore, is not merely soul, but
also body ; personality is the universal ; individuality is the
singular: personality is the highest form of individuality, where it
cherishes the universal in itself, and yet remains by and for itself.
We may not say that the many are united substantially ;
for they must also be united as subjects, that is, as to their
highest determination ; nor is the element that unites them
merely their subjective thought. If the totality is merely sub-
jectively conceived, it lacks the best, to wit, the objective reality
of the person. It then has no existence save in the represen-
tation of individuals. Such a mere conceptional thing cannot
have real power to effect union between individuals. If the
whole had not a real existence as a personal power, above the
individuals, as a mere representation, it would owe its personality
to the individuals, who themselves are again what they are through
the whole. For this reason, we must rather assume the existence
of an actual, individual, or independent personality of the human
race, in order that we may not have to rest content with a mere
collective unity of a nominalistic kind. We must go on to the
idea of the 2)ri7nal man as the primal personality; this primal per-
sonality is all, or the whole of humanity in one (pp. 63, 72 ff.).
We may allow, indeed, that every individual be conceived as an
actual specimen of the race, as a microcosm which expresses and
nn'rrors the universal in its own way (individuis inesse universale
individualiter) ; not, however, that any individual can express
the whole in all its fulness, that is, " individuo inesse universale
et individualiter et universaliter." But the idea is not so iiiv-
170 THIRD PERIOD.
potent as not to be able actually to combine universal and
particular, infinite and finite ; and a false conception is formed
of individuality, if it is only to be supposed to be finitude calmly
resting in itself ; for it is rather infinitely elastic, the foundation
for the highest form of the actuality of spirit, to wit, personality.^
This primal humanity he represents more precisely as fol-
lows : — As every individual man stands over the whole of
nature, so the God-man over humanity and nature ; only that
the latter is, precisely for that reason, the absolute spirit, the
Logos. He represented humanity completely in Himself prior
to its receiving existence outside of, and being filled by Hira.
He is humanity ; w^e have it : He is it entii'ely ; we participate
therein. His personality precedes and lies at the basis of the
personality of the race and its individuals. As idea (and in so
far He is not a single individual), He is implanted in the whole
(rf humanity; He lies at the basis of every human conscious-
ness, without, however, attaining realization in an indi\ddual ;
for this is only possible in the entire race at the end of the
times. With the implantation of that eternal idea, therefore,
humanity is merely objectively and potentially, not actually,
redeemed. But this same idea which is to attain actuality in
us all, — for Christ is to be fonned in us all, — cannot set itself
forth in mere multiplicity ; but the many are one in consequence
of the eternal Word Himself becoming man. The idea lying
at the basis of the consciousness of all is, accordingly, the idea
of the Word becoming man in an individual personal form ; and
only as such can the idea redeem. In that this primal man be-
comes an historical person. He becomes a man ; the individual
appears as an individual : there thus arises the antinomy that
this primal man, as historical, becomes also a member of the
kind (the whole becomes a part). This is the humiliation, says
he, that the Creator should be also created and born, should be-
come Son of God of the Son of man, and take upon Him the
form of a servant. The God-man in and by Himself, as un-
created, is the perfect man ; but in the flesh also He is the per-
^ Compare Rosenkranz's Review of Schleiermacher's " Glaubonslehre,"
Vorrede, p. xii., where he insists on the idea being conceived energically ;
which establishes the possibility of its full actuality in Christ. F'ischer's
" Metaphy.sik," in particular, deserves praise for the manner in which it
speculatively establishes this conception.
GOSCHEL. CONRADI. 171
feet, created man. Primarily, however, the revehition in low-
liness is not the perfect manifestation of the perfect individual, or
of the primal mail. Thereto is further necessary the exaltation.
Against this position the objection has been raised, — To
postulate a personal individual for the race, is necessary indeed;
but God alone, not Christ, is this primal individual,^ and God
is not one of the race. To this, however, Goschel was able to
reply, — Without standing in an inner relation to humanity, even
God could not be its archetype : He is its archetype, because
as Logos He is also the primal man. On the other hand, and
approaching still nearer to the weak point, Conradi has further
objected,' — " The idea of personality is essentially a concrete
idea ; as the truth of the individual spirit, it necessarily presup-
poses nature and the world as the conditions of its mediation."
He himself, however, adds again, — A personality, one may
designate it as one will, divine or human, out of connection
with humanity and the conditions of its development, is a mere
abstraction. " God Plimself is not personal save in humanity."^
Conradi and Goschel, therefore, are agreed in considering in-
dividuality also to be a constituent of the idea of personality, as
well in God (as Logos) as in man. The distinction between them
is simply, that whereas Goschel sees in the Logos the eternal
primal humanity, or the primal man ; Conradi, on the con-
trary, lays stress on the mediatory process, and on the succes-
sion,— in his view, namely, God becomes personal in man by a
process ; a process, be it observed, which always presupposes its
result.^ Let us hear more carefully what he has to say, prior
to carrying out the critical comparison with Goschel to the end.
In the course of an infinitely long process, says he,
' Frauenstadt, " Die Menschwerdung Gottes," pp. 48-64, 53.
' " Christus in der Vergangenheit, u. s. w." Compare Vorrede, p. ix.
' Pp. 254 if. Deviating widely from his first work, in his later ones
he represents Christ as the product of a purely immanent process of
humanity ; but as he desired to show that the absolute God-manhood was
realized in Christ in an unique manner, in his endeavour to resolve every-
thing creative into an infinite number of middle links and stages, he
arrives at very monstrous propositions regarding an infinitely long series
of humanity backwards, of Pre-Adamitcs, and so forth. See the " Kritik
d. chr. Dogm." pp. 181 ff.
* See the " Kritik d. chr. Dogm." But what becomes then of tbo
reality of the process ?
172 THIRD PERIOD.
humanity brings fortli its inmost universal essence, or its idea,
in perfect, personal God-manhood, in Christ. The realization
given to humanity in the collective sum of men, of these per-
sonal, independent beings, is not enough ; firstly, because the
idea, according to its very conception, can only have its reality
in the unity of a self-consciousness, and cannot be compounded
out of a multiplicity of single self-consciousnesses ; secondly, the
question would be, whether, if the sum of these single beings
were taken together and weighed in a balance, the excess would
fall on the side of the realizations, or on that of the negations
of the idea. The realization of the idea would then be a very
problematical thing ;^ and yet it is that which is absolutely
necessary. Now as, on the one hand, the idea does not find
its realization in plurality, but requires the unity of a personal
self-consciousness, so, on the other hand, is it nevertheless true
that the idea of humanity is only realized in a plurality of
beings. Humanity consists in the totality of the various
human individuals ; it therefore sets forth its life solely in the
sum-total of these individuals. Were the idea of humanity
realized in one individual, this same one individual would be
the actuality of humanity ; in other words, we should have no
humanity, but instead of it, one man. How is this contradic-
tion resolved ? Only by supposing that whilst the idea is set
forth in a plurality, this plurality is conjoined again to the unity
of an individual, in which the many continue to exist in their
integrity and personality. The one is at the same time one
of the many, included as a single individual in the nature
and development of humanity : on the other hand, however,
humanity is included in Him as the result of its development
in the collective activity of its individuals. As I'egards the
unity of His individual consciousness. He is a brother among
many brothers ; as regai'ds His substance, He is the truth of
humanity itself in the result of its development ; He is the
universal personality, toward which all tend, out of the split up
and uncertain state into which humanity had fallen, as towards
a centre, in which they find their repose and truth. But this
reahzation of the idea in an individual does not consist in the
sum of all human powers and excellences ; it consists in the
negation of everything one-sided, of everything individual so
^ " Christus in der Vergangenheit, u. s. w.," pp. 258 f.
CONR^DI. GOSCHEL. 173
far as it is a quality existing and standing for something by
itself, through the position of the perfectly free spiritual per-
sonahty, so that all human virtues are contained in Him, both
as to gerrn and as to result. (Note 27.)
Great as is the similarity between the picture sketched of
the Person of Christ and the descriptions given of its actuality
by Conradi and Goschel, even so important is the distinction
between them referred to at the beginning. As regards the
latter point, however, we shall have to say that each of them
is partially justified in the position he takes up relatively to
the other, and that both start alike from the same false pre-
supposition. Goschel's "primal man," existing before all indi-
viduals, who is supposed to be at one and the same time both
Logos and individuality, evidently leads, as Conradi justly
hints, to a double humanity, an heavenly and an earthly;
requires a depotentiation of the Logos to incarnation ; and
nevertheless, inasmuch as the complete perfection of this primal
man eternally precedes the historical process, it makes the
human growth of Christ again Docetical. On the other hand,
to require, with Conradi, a process for the personality, not of
Christ only, but also of the Logos or God, through which it
first comes into existence ; and to say, God is personal in
humanity alone ; is equivalent either to denying eternal per-
sonality and absolute self- consciousness to God, which Conradi
certainly does not appear to intend ; or to postulating an infinite
historical series of human individuals backwards, in whom God
had personal self-consciousness : and with this view the position
would be incompatible which he wishes to preserve for Christ.
Both are involved in these contradictions by the common
fault of proceeding too directly to the combination of actual
humanity with the divine personality, as the form under which
the personality of God subsists. It is a pantheistic remainder
which suffers neither the idea of the personality of God nor
that of man to arrive at proper development. Their antagon-
ism may show us, that what is above all necessary is to construct
the personality of God in total inilependence of a real God-
manliood, even if not without assuming that there is a nature,
in God ; and to regard the ethical essence of God, which is
eternally complete in itself, as the ground of the participative
and communicative process of love in the world.
174 THIRD I'KRIOD.
III. THE CHRISTOLOGY OF SCHLEIEKMACHER.
In placing Schleiermacher alongside of Schelling and Hegel,
although he is well known never to have laid claim to stand in
any sort of inner relation to a determinate philosophy, or to
be the founder of a philosophical school, we are justified by two
considerations: — 1. That he unmistakeably takes the essential
unity of God and of man for his point of departure, without
giving in his adherence to that substantial Pantheism which
treats the subject as a mere accident ; for he, too, seeks rather
to maintain the unity of subject and substance whilst allowing
their distinction •} and 2. That he, the most determinately of
the three, took up his position with that principle at the centre
of Christian thought, and had the closest affinity with Chris-
tianity ; accordingly, his Christology not only bears most a
theological character, but also, of all recent essays in that direc-
tion, has had the strongest influence on the age. We will first
notice that in his system which stands in the closest relation
to speculation.
In his work entitled " Weihnaclitsfeier," the transition to
Christ is effected in the following manner : —
Maji in Idmself, says he, is the knowledge of the earth in
its eternal being, and in its ever changing growth ; or spirit,
which moulds itself to consciousness after the manner of our
earth. In this man per se there is no corruption, no apostasy,
and no need of redemption. The individual, however, as he
stands connected with the formations of the earth, is growth
alone, and not the unity of eternal being and growth ; he is in
apostasy and corruption. We may put ourselves as we will,
here is no escape : the life and joy of primeval nature, when
as yet the antagonisms between phsenomenon and substance,
between time and eternity, had not made their appearance, are
not ours. Man needs redemption. But he can only be re-
deemed when the man j^e?-- se, the unity of eternal being and
^ That these two aspects are equally essential to his system (how far he
succeeded in effecting their true union is anotlier question), is shown in an
external way by the circumstance, tluit one party reproaches him with being
predominantly subjective ; another, with Spinozism , and others, with botli
together.
SCHLEIERMACHER. 175
growth, dawns In liini. Humanity becomes eternally this man
per se ; but this man must dawn in man as his thought; man
must carry in himself the consciousness and the spirit of hu-
manity ; he must look upon and build up humanity as a living
community of individuals : thus alone can he have the higher
life and the peace of God in himself. This takes place in the
Church. In it man is and has been set forth as he is in himself.
Every one in whom that self-consciousness dawns, comes to the
Church. It is, as it were, the self-consciousness of humanity ,
whilst, on the contrary, all around it is unconsciousness.
Now, as a thing that is growing, this community is also a
thing that has already grown (als ein "Werdendes auch ein
Gewordenes) : and inasmuch as it is a community which has
come into existence through communication on the part of indi-
viduals, we seek for a point at which this communication com-
menced. He, however, who is regarded as the starting-point
of the Church, as its conception — even as one may designate
that first free and independent fellowship of feeling which
broke out at Pentecost, its birth — must have been already born as
the man per se, as the God-man. He must bear self-knowledge
in himself, and be the light of men from the beginning of
the Church. "We, indeed, are born again through the spirit of
the Church. The spirit itself, however, proceeds forth solely
from the Son, and He needs no regeneration, but is the Son of
man absolutely. In Christ, therefore, we see the spirit orioi-
nally mould itself to self-consciousness in an individual, after
the way and manner of our earth. The Father and the brethren
dwell symmetrically in Him, and are one in Him. For this
reason, Christ may be seen in eveiy child ; and, vice versa,
every one of us beholds his own birth in that of Christ.
As, even in this place, where Schleiermacher endeavours
most clearly to effect a conciliation between the Christian con-
sciousness and speculation, he does not give a properly philo-
sojDhical deduction, but takes his start with the empirical
consciousness of tiie antagonism between a fallen world, liviuir
in miseiy, and a blessed, reconciled world, on Avhose conscious-
ness the eternal has dawned ; so also does he ])roceed in his
" Glaubenslehre."^ The individual man knows that the con-
' Compare for the following account:— " Dor cliristlicke Glaube" vol.
Schleiermacher, A. 2 u. 3, ii. § 92-105 ; " Rodeu ubor die Rcligiou," 1831 ;
1 76 THIRD PERIOD.
ciliation of these two phases of life has been effected by the
spirit of the Church : which spirit, on its part, compels us to
assume an historical startintj-point, seeing that the natural origi-
nal condition in which individuals are still born, proves, by the
reed of redemption which characterizes it, that the spiritual life
which we now find in the Church cannot have existed in all ages,
but must have been first implanted in humanity in time. In the
above representation, which borders on speculation, there is only
one other feature to be remarked, to wit, the attempt to find for
Christianity, within a metaphysical view of the world, a place
Avhere it may stand in connection v/ith the whole.
Althougli, then, Schleiermacher agrees with the men whose
views we have just set forth in contemplating the divine and hu-
man in essential unity, the path peculiar to his mode of thought
is not that which leads from above downwards : it is altogether
not the speculative one. He starts with the experience of an
existence heightened by Christianity as something absolutely
settled, an existence which no philosophy can either give or
take away ; and then seeks, by reflection on these Christian
states of soul, and by deductions from them, to sketch as clear
an image as possible of Him who alone suffices for the expla-
nation of that higher existence.
The course which he pursues in his " Glaubenslehre " is
more precisely the following : —
Taking for his point of departure an inner, ineradicable, in
itself absolutely certain, experience of the power of Christianity,
he makes no pretence (§ 11, 5) whatever to prove it to be either
necessary or alone true ; and merely endeavours to exhibit the
physiognomy of the Christian consciousness, as an empirical
phajnomenon, both in distinction from other forms of piety and
as it is in itself.
I. Religions are distinguished from each other by their diffe-
rent strength, though also by differences in the character of their
pious emotions. The more perfect they are, the more must they
have a distinctly defined physiognomy, fixed inner and outer
])0undary lines : for which in particular a fixed point of depar-
ture, a founder, is necessary. A pious connnunity derives its out-
ward unity from an histoi-ical commencement : for this reason,
" Sendschreiben an Dr Lucke " in the " Studien und Kritikcn," edited by
Uilinann and Umbreit, 1829, Heft. 2, 3.
SCHLEIERMACHER. 177
the Christian religion (which does not lack this outward unity,
by which it is most distinctly separated from all others) must
also have an historical commencement. No one can venture to
maintain that the Jewish, Muhammedan, Christian fellowships
could have risen of themselves, altogether independently of the
impulse given by Moses, Muhammed, Christ. Only in the
lower forms of piety, as at the lower stages of nature, are the
genera less determinate : to the higher stages, on the contrary,
belongs a more symmetrically complete outward and inward
unity ; and, in the most complete form, the inner distinctive
characteristics will be most intimately allied with the external,
the historical ; — thus is historical unity established (§ 17).
Christianity, now, is a teleologicai form of piety : it is dis-
tinguished, however, from all possible forms of piety occupying
this stage by the circumstance, that every single feature in it
is referred to the consciousness of redemption through Jesus
of Nazareth (§ 18). Herein are involved two momenta ; to wit,
a consciousness of sin, together with the wretchedness attendant
thereon, and which is felt as punishment ; and the conscious
ness of the grace by which the consciousness of sin is overcome.
The consciousness of grace arises for us out of the collective
sum of Christian life ; it exists exclusively in this circle ; other
religions have it not (§ 12). Whosoever has it, and in having
it has approximated to a state of blessedness, is conscious of
deriving it, not from the collective natural life, which is a life
of sin and unblessedness, iDut from a collective new life, which
is shown to be divine, because it victoriously opposes the
natural. Every Christian has the conviction that in the col-
lective life of sin, in which he at first finds himself, he neither
cherishes nor propagates that higher life, but rather co-operates
in generating, as well as receives, sin : and that, even if the
best individuals were to combine to oppose sin, they would
merely combat single sins — nay more, they could not be any-
thing more tlian an organization within the limits of the collec-
tive life of sin. So that, apart from the intervention of a
new element in this collective life of sin, even the better
individuals would not be al)le to effect an approximation to
blessedness which should remove the misery.
II. This new, collective divine life, the Christian mind
refers back to Christ. And, in point of fact, it cannot avoiil
r. 2. — VOL. III. ii
178 THIKD PERIOD.
doing SO. It is true, it neither can nor wishes to prove tlie
truth of its utterances; lierein, however, its experitnce is but
a repetition of that which occurs everywhere in the sphere of
liistorj, to wit, that one may have a very firm conviction of
the correctness of an impression, without therefore being able
to demonstrate it. At the same time, the mode in which this
faith arises may and must be developed ; it must be shown how
at the first, and how even yet, the conviction could aiise that
Jesus possessed sinless perfection, and that this same perfection
is communicated in the fellowship established by Him.
It is not faith that first made Jesus the sinless One and tlie
lledeemer; but it is involved in the Christian consciousness
that He first implanted this faith in the Church by His sinless-
ness. But how far does the Church know of Him that He is a
sinless One? It knows this, because in the collective life
founded by Him, there is a communication of His sinless per-
fection. The collective life carries this communication in itself,
and not any one individual, save Christ. But how this ? Does
not the collective Christian life, as a mass, participate to a very
important degree in the universal sinfulness ? Faith replies, —
All this is merely the non-realization of the new collective life ;
it is merely the sinful in which the new element is hidden,
although capable of becoming matter of experience. This ex-
perience consists in the circumstance, that the image of Christ,
which exists as the collective act and collective possession of the
Church, still produces on believers the impression of sinless
perfection, — an impression which Jesus Himself nmst have ori-
ginally implanted in the Church, — which becomes, on the one
hand, a perfect consciousness of sin, and, on the other hand,
does away with unblessedness ; and this is in itself ah'eady a
communication of His perfection. The second, however, is, that
notwithstanding all those remains of sin, the perfection of Christ
has given the collective life a tendency, which, though imper-
fect indeed in point of manifestation, as an inward thing, or as
impulse, must be allowed to correspond to its source, and will
therefore work itself up to an ever purer phtenomenal form.
And this impulse of the liistorical life of the Church, which,
considered quite inwardly, is perfectly pure, is likewise a true
and efficient communication of the perfection of Christ.
It is further involved in the Christian consciousness that the
SCHLEIERMACHER. 179
community grows, not through the addition of any new power
from without, but through the continued susceptibihty to that
which is ah'eady given by Christianity. It is involved therein
that no new form of piety can await the consciousness of God
possessed by man, that, on the contrary, a new form, whatever
might be its nature, would be a step backwards ; seeing that
Christianity contains within itself the absolute reconciliation.
For this reason, it compels the conviction that all other forms
of religion, being lower, are destined to pass over into it.
But by what principle can the sinlessness and perfection of
Christ be deduced from what has been said above ? By the
conclusion from the effect to its sufficient cause.
According to what we have said above, Christianity points
back to a determinate founder, for the simple reason that it
belongs to the higher forms of religion ; and from the character
of His continued activity in the Church (for only through the
Church have we any information at all respecting Christ), we
may also draw a conclusion to the archetypal character of this
historical founder. His archetypal character does not need to
consist in His perfection and skill in single spheres of life, but
in the purity and vigour of His consciousness of God, in its
capability of giving an impulse to and determining all the mo-
menta of life. None but an archetypal consciousness of God,
which made its appearance in an historical shape, could found
a community like that in which believers stand.
It has been objected, indeed, that in order to comprehend
this imperfect result, the Church, it is not necessary to attribute
to the founder an archetypal character, such as would imply that
the idea itself had had being, — in other words, absolute perfec-
tion. To Christ belongs merely the dignity of our example ;
and it was originally an hyperbolical act of believers, when,
viewing Christ in the mirror of their own imperfection, they
regarded Him as an archetype ; — a course which they still, in
fact, continue to pursue, importing into Christ whatever arche-
typal elements they may in any case be able to apprehend.
To this objection, however, Schleiermacher had already fur-
nished a reply in what we have advanced above. If an image
of absolute perfection has been implanted in the Church, then
in his view, iiiiisinuch as this archetyjie does not lie in human
nature by itself, but is merely the collective possession of the
180 THIRD PERIOD
Church — to wit, as an image of Christ — we must go back to an
historical impression made by an archetypal historical founder.
Inasmuch, further, as the consciousness of God implanted in
the Church is endowed with unrestrained vigour, at all events
in the form of an impulse which gains an ever more complete
victory ; and as this same impulse does not exist outside the
Church, the power itself must have dwelt in the historical start-
ing-point of the Church, which, as an impulse given by it, still
continues its activity.
Further, such an impulse alone can furnish an explanation
of the phgenomenon, that it is an essential feature of the Chris-
tian consciousness to deem any new form of the consciousness
of God an impossibility, and to regard every new form as a
I'etrogression ; or, in other words, this is the only satisfactory
explanation of the consciousness common to all Christians, that
Christianity, as to its inmost essence — an essence referring back
to an adequate historical cause — is not perfectible, but perfect.
Further, the conviction is essential to believers, that any
given state of the collective life of the Church is merely an ap-
proximation to that which was posited in the Redeemer : the
image which they bear in themselves, communicated by His
historical activity, is an example, if we merely call it an ex-
ample, that is fitted to bring about every possible enhancement
in the totality. But such an example is no longer distinguish-
able from the idea of an archetype : — indeed productivity lies
solely in the idea of an archetype, not at all in that of an ex-
ample.
If we Avere to deny that the archetypal character of the
founder constitutes an essential elementof faith, we must acknow-
ledge it to be possible for Christendom to develop the hope that
the human race will one day grow out beyond Christ, if even only
in its noblest and most excellent members. Such a supposition,
however, would alone put an end to Christian faith. Not in-
deed so much, if all that were meant were that His absolutely
archetypal inner being was not able to reveal itself perfectly in
doctrine and deed, under His restricted finite relations. This
view, however, certainly lies outside Christianity, if it be meant
that Christ was no more as to His inner essence than as to out-
ward appearance ; and that through Him His Church has re-
ceived so happy an organization, that it easily allows itself to be
SCHLEIERMACHER.
181
transformed, conformably to the more perfect archetypes as they
successively make their appearance, without losing its historical
identity. For Christ would thus be characterized as non-essential
to the Church. Accordingly, Christianity is that form of reli-
gion whose inner, actual essence is contradicted when we attri-
bute to its founder any other than an archetypal dignity.^
Finally, as the faith of Christians assumes that the doctrines
and ordinances of Christ have eternal validity,— a thing which
is compatible with His archetypal character alone, not with His
beino- merely an example: so also in another respect does faith
point to His archetypal character, to wit, by its conviction that
He is an universal example ; for He could not be an universal
example, if He were an example to the one more, to the others
less, and if He did not stand in the like symmetrical relation to
all the original diversities of individuals.
But how is the archetype supposed to have become matter
of perception and experience, in an individual being, who has
had a veritable historical existence ? In works of art and in
the forms of nature, each is the complement of the other, and
each requires to be complemented by the other. To this must
be added the consideration, that the sinfulness of the collective
life of humanity, in the midst of which He existed, and out of
which He cannot be explained, renders it all the more incon-
prehensible that He should be historically an archetype.
Eelatively to the first difficulty, Schleiermacher replies: —
If we grant the possibility of the consciousness of God con-
stantly progressing in vigour, and yet deny that it has any-
where existed in perfection, we cannot maintain that the crea-
tion of man is or is being completed ; for in a continuous pro-
gress perfection is never posited, save as a possibility. In that
case, however, less is affirmed of man than of other beings ; for
concerning all those kinds of being which are more bound, we
can say, that their idea attains perfect actuality in the totality
of the individual beings, which complement each other. But
this does not hold good of a race of beings possessed of freedom
and capable of development ; because in that sphere the imper-
fect can never become perfect through being complemented.
For this reason, the perfection of this essential vital function,
' To other religions the persons of tbeir founders are a matter of indif-
ference; it forms an essential part of the substance of the Christian religion.
182 THIRD PERIOD.
which is posited in the idea, must also in some way or otlier
exist in an individual.
But if the other objection be advanced, to wit, that in view
of the sinfulness of tie collective life, it remains incomprehen-
sible how Christ could be historically an archetype ; and if the
shift should be resorted to of saying, the archetype exists only
in spirit, and has been simply transferred to Christ more or
less arbitrarily, we must reply, — Were we to concede to hu-
manity the power of generating in itself a pure, perfect arche-
type, it could not, by virtue of the connection between under-
standing and will, be in a state of universal sinfulness. Only
one answer, therefore, remains to the question, how it was pos-
sible for Christ to be the archetype, to wit; — the distinctive
substance of His spiritual life cannot be explained from the
historical circle within which His life moved ; but solely on the
supposition that it was brought forth out of the universal source
of spiritual life, by a creative, divine act, in which, as an ab-
solutely greatest, the idea of man as the subject of the consci-
ousness of God was completely realized.
HI. As accordingly the historical and archetypal must be
conceived to be intimately united in the Kedeemer, He is like
all men in virtue of the sameness of His human nature ; but
distinguished from all by the constant vigour of His conscious-
ness of God, which is to be defined as, in the strict sense, a
being of God in Him.
But as sinfulness and a development thi'ough sin are other-
wise common to all men, does not the sinlessness which is in-
volved in His character as an archetype, deprive Him of iden-
tity with human nature generally?^ By no means; for sin
belongs not to the essence of man, but is a disturbance of
nature;^ and the possibility of a sinless development is not
incompatible with the idea of human nature : nay more, the
recognition of this is involved in the consciousness of sin as
guilt.
The position that the consciousness of God, as one of ab-
solute vigour, ought to be conceived as a being of God in Him,
has the following meaning : — God, namely, is, it is true, omni-
present ; but as He is pure activity and not passivity, He cannot
aj such be perfectly there, where there is passivity cither along-
1 Comparo Striuss, a. a. 0., pp. 710-720. '^ § 68, p. 367, A. 3.
SCHLEIERMACHER. 183
side of or without activity. For this reason, He cannot truly
have His being either in the so-called inanimate, or in the non-
intelligent nature. Only so far as an individual being never
comes into purely passive states, and rather, by its active sus-
ceptibility, converts the passive into active, can we strictly say
that God is in him. This, consequently, can only be the case in
rational beings. Even in the case of these latter beings, however,
the consciousness of God has not asserted itself as pure activity
in all religions, but has always been overpowered by the sensuous
consciousness. God, therefore, was not truly in them. First in
Christianity has it become otherwise. Here has dawned the prin-
ciple of a consciousness of God which is constant in its activity,
and exclusively determines every momentum. But Christianity,
with this its deep impulse towards a constantly vigorous con-
sciousness of God, is to be reduced back to Christ; on this
ground we assume in Him that purely active consciousness of
God, which can be styled a pure being of God in man. He
is the only original place in which it is to be found: first
through Him does the human consciousness of God become a
being of God in human nature ; and as, further, through this
human nature the totality of finite powers becomes a being of
God in the world, Christ is in reality the sole mediator of God's
being in, and God's revelation through, the world, so far as He
is the vehicle and bearer of the entirely new creation which
contains and developes the consciousness of God in its full
viirour.
But as the collective life of sinfulness furnishes no explana-
tion of the rise of the founder of this new collective life, con-
sidered in relation to the archetypal character of His conscious-
ness of God ; and inasmuch as, on the contraiy, the natural
tendency of this same collective life is to propagate sin : it is
merely an identical proposition to say that, in the form in which
He manifested Himself, He can only have arisen outside of the
collective life of sin. For this reason, we cannot avoid believing
in Him as a being of supernatural growth. Still, it is only as
looked at in relation to what went before, that is, in relation to
the old collective life of sin, that Christ is something super-
natural ; looked at in the light of what is to come, the latter is
a moral naturalization of the supernatural.
But, it is urged, on this supposition, the origin, at all events,
184 THIRD PERIOD.
of this person is something supernatural, and thus an iiTepar-
able rent Is made in a healthy and connected view of the world.*
Put in this way, the objection is of a philosophical nature, and
foreign to the point of view of Schleiermacher's Dogmatics.
From another side, however, he meets this objection also, and
consequently does in substance make it matter of consideration.
Inasmuch, namely, as reflection on the states of the soul of pious
men leads him to the conclusion that God is an eternal, ab-
solutely simple being or life, and that time and change are to
be excluded from His activity, the assumption of a personality,
which first made its appearance in the midst of the times, and
which requires us to presuppose for its explanation, an immediate,
and new creative act, threatens to fall into conflict also with
this his conception of God ; and as precisely that reflection led
him also to the position (§ 51, 54), that the divine causality,
although, on the one hand, distinguished from that contained
within the complex of nature, and thus opposed to it, on the
other hand, as to its compass, is to be declared like it : a divine
causality appears to be assumed by Schleiermacher in the case
of Christ, to which, being supernatural, there is absolutely no
correspondent natural one; nay more, which is diametrically
opposed to causes operating within the sphere of nature.^
To this objection, Schleiermacher's Exposition contains
already the following reply. As the new collective life becomes
an historical, natural thing, it follows that the old collective
life of sin also in itself, to wit, as to susceptibility, stands in
connection with the new ; and if we look at history as a whole,
we must treat it as a natural course, in which the appearance
even of the Redeemer is no longer a supernatural thing, but
the coming forth of a new stage of development, conditioned
by that which went before. By nature, namely, we must not
understand merely that which has empirical actuality ; but we
must go back to that which we have above designated the uni-
versal source of life. If we were to refuse to do this, we should
always have precisely the same existences. Whereas the rise
of every individual is partly an act of the little circle with
which it is connected, and partly the act of human nature in
^ Compare Strauss, a. a. O., p. 71G.
* Compare in particular Braniss's " Kritisclicr Vorsuch iiber Schleier-
macher's Glaubenslehre," 1824, pp. 192 fif.
SCHLEIERMACHER. 185
general (that is, of the afore-mentioned source of life). Now,
the more completely a being bears in itself the weaknesses of that
circle, the more is the first mode of considering matters in the
right. But the more an individual, in the nature and degree
of his gifts, reaches out beyond that circle and brings forth
what is new, the more are we inclined to adopt the other mode
of consideration. Accordingly, in pursuance of the latter mode
of consideration, Christ nmst be termed an original deed of
human nature, that is, a deed of human nature as not affected
by sin.^ In so far. He is supernatural and an entirely new
phaenomenon not absolutely, but merely relatively ; that is, not
in relation to nature in itself, but merely in relation to the
nature which had had an actual existence prior to Him.
Now, though the communication of the spirit made in the
first Adam was insufficient, seeing that the spirit remained
buried in the sensuous, and scarcely looked out in its entirety
for a moment, even in the form of presentiment ; and though
the creative work first attained completion through the second
equally original communication to the second Adam ; still, both
momenta are reducible back to one undivided, eternal divine de-
cree, and in the higher sense, form also a natural complex, which,
though unattainable by us, is one and the same. But even if
this unity also lies solely in the divine thought, we can still form
a more precise representation of it in the following manner.
The decree of God may be considered in such a manner,
that Christ shall appear as the completion of the hitherto in-
complete creation, as the second Adam, tne beginner of the
higher life, of the completed creation, which could not be at-
tained through the natural complex, the development of which
began with and continued onwards from Adam. Tiie creation
of man is thus divided as it were into two momenta; for which,
however, analogies enough are presented by history and material
nature. This mode of consideration, too, is characteristic of
and natural to him, who is already redeemed. He feels and
knows that he has a new life in him. This is the one.
But, further, the idea of the new creation must undoubtedly
also be reduced back to that of sustainment ; because otherwise
' That is, to speak in the language of the " Weihnachtsfeicr," He is the
exhibition of man as he is in himself, who, as it were, et<?rnally, it not
really, pre-exists in the primal creative power of God.
186 THIRD PERIOD.
God would bfi brought under the conditions of time. This can
be done by rei^arding the manifestation of Christ Himself, as
the maintenance of that susceptibility to take up into itself a
consciousness of God of absolute \agour, which was implanted
in human nature from the beginning, and which has gone on
continually developing since. Human nature appeared, it is
true, at the first creation of the race, in an imperfect condition :
still, even then, the manifestation of the Redeemer was im-
planted in it, in an a-temporal manner. Accordingly, the divine
decree is one constantly engaged in being fulfilled, and that
which comes earlier is always ordered with a reference to the
later. The entire pre-Christian world thus bears a reference to
Christ, is ordered solely with a regard to Him.^
Viewing the matter thus, perfect justice can be done to all
historical requirements, if only this archetypal character of His
life be supposed to have undergone from the commencement a
development, consisting in a gradual unfolding of the powers,
such as is undergone by all others. If He had borne in Himself
the consciousness of God from the beginning in its complete-
ness, and not merely in the form of a germ. He would have had
no childhood. But to an historical character belongs not merely
that the development be gradual, but also that it be national.
He could only unfold Himself in a certain similarity to those
who surrounded Him, On the other hand, however, He can
only have joined on to the true and correct, not to the false
elements therein. This the national character of His develop-
ment, however, which was necessaiy to the completeness of His
humanity, cannot in any way have interfered with His character
as an archetype, and can, therefore, have affected merely His
organization, not the proper principle of His life. It did not form
part of Himself as a repelling principle, or as the type of His
self-activity, but merely of His susceptibility for this self-activity;
in that feeling and understanding were compelled to derive their
nutriment from the world by which He was surrounded.
^ This relation between creation and sustenance is excellently held
fast and carried out, in its apologetic connections, in the work of v. Drey,
entitled, " Die Apologetik als wissenschaftliche Nachweisung der Gottlich-
keit des Christenthums in seiner Erscheinung. Erster Band, Philosophie
der Offenbarung,*' Mainz 1838 ; — a solid work, both in point of manner
and substance.
SCHLEIERMACHEK. 187
The Church formulas which speak of a duality of natures,
a divine and an human, he examines more carefully, and en-
deavours to justify his procedure in substituting in their place a
declaration, that the Redeemer was archetypal and historical ;
he defends, in particular, his change of the expression, " di-
vine nature," into "absolutely perfect consciousness of God"
(which, precisely because of its perfect vigour and purity, is to
be described as a true being of God in Him), by the plea, that
his own formula includes everything that we need. The being
of God is the inmost and fundamental force in Him, from which
proceeds forth all activity, and which holds all the momenta
together : the human, on the contrary, is merely the organism of
this fundamental force, and stands to it in the relation of a system
by which it is appropriated and set forth, — in the relation in which
all other powers in us ought to stand to our intelligence. With
the former, everything is affirmed regarding Him which is ne-
cessary to Plis discharge of His office and to secure His dignity.
Whilst, on the other hand. He is so represented that we are able
to understand His person because of its likeness to us — a like-
ness only limited by His absolute sinlessness.
He nevertheless attempts to reconcile his view with the doc-
trine of the Church, and gives an exposition of his Christology
ill its individual momenta, — an exposition which bears, at the
same time, the character of a critical examination (§ 96-98).
In Jesus Christ, says he, the divine and human natures were
united into one person : in the accomplishment of this union the
divine nature alone was active, or self-communicative ; during
their union, however, each activity was common to both.
As regards the first pointy the act of union, he remarks by
way of preface, that it is to be assigned to the beginning of His
life as an individual. For, to suppose that Christ was at first
like us, in the sense of being a participator in sin, and that He
became at a subsequent period what He now is to us, does not
satisfy the Christian mind ; for then, surely, it would be possible
to discover the workings of sin afterwards. But he blames the
expression, — the Son of God constituted human nature a part of
the unity of His person. For then the personality of Christ is
made dependent on the personality of the second person in the
divine nature; in other words, on the orthodox doctrine of the
Trinity ; — a course wliich it is not allowable to take, over against
188 THIRD PERIOD.
the Sabellian view. The worst of the matter is, however, that
on this supposition the human nature can only become a person
in the sense in which the term is appHed to a person of the
Trinity ; so that, either the three persons of the Deity are to be
conceived hke the human personahty, that is, as individual,
independently subsisting beings ; or, we must suppose Christ to
have been an human personality merely in the sense in which
the term is applied to deity, and then the humanity is docetically
dissipated. This, then, is the way in which Schleiermacher
justifies his sundering of Christology from the Church doctrine
of the Trinity.
Docetical also, he goes on to say, it might appear, when the
Church teaches that human nature was entirely passive when it
was assumed. But all that is meant to be described thereby,
is the implantation of the divine nature into the human, and to
be declared, is that the human nature could not have taken an
active part in its appropriation by the divine, either in the sense
of its developing the divine out of itself, or of its drawing the
divine down to itself. By itself, it had nothing more than the
susceptibility or the possibility of being appropriated by the
divine. Otherwise we should verge on the quicksand of denying
Christ to be a new, immediate, divine deed.
But if the eternal is not by this act to be entangled with
time, the Redeemer must not be regarded as a production of
human nature ; — this would be Ebionitical. It is equally unal-
lowable also to say, with a view to escaping the afore-mentioned
and this latter Ebionitical danger, that the humanity of Christ
never had a beginning at all. That would verge on Docetism.
All vacillation between the two ceases, if we grant that the
divine activity which united them was an eternal activity ; that,
for God, there is no distinction between decree and activity. As
a decree, the union was identical with, and contained in, the
decree of the creation of man : temporal, however, is this de-
cree in the aspect in which, as activity, it is turned towards us ;
in other words, it was temporal as it manifested itself at the
actual beginning of the life of the Redeemer, through whom the
eternal decree of God realized itself both in a point of space and
a point of time. Accordingly, the personific activity of human
nature first attained completion at the moment when Christ ap-
peared ; — as an human person, we may say, Christ was already
SCHLi:iERMACHER. 189
always growing colncidently with time. Taking this view, time
relates solely and entirely to the human aspect ; and the relation
between it and the divine remained eternally the same.
This relation between the divine and hnman natures in the
act of union, is fui'ther marked by the Church's doctrine of
the impersonality and the supernatural generation of the human
nature of Jesus. As the sense of the first of these two posi-
tions, he holds the following. The personific force of human
nature, or of our kind, by itself, must necessarily have given to
this person also the germ of an obscured consciousness of God ;
for which reason, such a person as this could not have been
brought to pass without the aid of that uniting divine activity.
Not as though the human nature would have remained im-
personal without this addition ; but the personification in ques-
tion is simply the completion of the personific activity put forth
by human nature ; and, as thus completed, it is at the same
time the humanification of God in consciousness.^
As regards supernatural generation, Schleiermacher con-
siders the miracle of the Person of Christ to have consisted
solely in that supernatural activity, by which God warded off
all the injurious influences connected with His derivation, fully
saturated human nature with the consciousness of Himself,
and thus both completed it, and inti'oduced the divine activity
in the form of the being of God in Christ. All further deter-
minations he considers to be non-essential, destitute of dogma-
tical significance. Original sin is not removed from Christ by
the assumption, that His conception took place without the
aid of a man ; because, unless Mary was sinless, she also would
have contributed her share to His sinfulness. In the place of
this determination, therefore, must be substituted another, — to
wit, that natural generation by itself would not have sufficed
for the bringing forth of the Redeemer. Because He had to
brine somethinir into the race which was not in it before, it is
impossible to ex[)lain His rise by a reference to its reproductive
j)ower ; but we must add to the natural generation, that divine,
creative activity, by which sinful influences were warded off.
For tlie state of union of the two natures, Schleiermacher's
formula then is this, — that every activity put forth during it
• Compare on this latter mode of consideration, which seldom maki-a
its appearance in Schleiermacher's system, above, pp. 174 ff.
190 THIRD PERIOD.
was common to both ; in tlie sense, it is true, that the activity
always proceeded forth from the divine nature, and that the
human activity was taken up into the divine. But what are
we to think of the moments in wliich the Imman nature suf-
fered ? Surely they could not proceed forth from the divine !
Or had the human nature of Christ no such moments? In
that case it would not have been at all human. The proper
answer is rather, that Christ was constantly and necessarily
in a state of passivity, so that all His actions depended thereon,
— this state was that of sympathy with the condition of men.
But whence this sympathy ? As a passive thing, it could not
have taken its rise anywhere save in His human nature, which
perceived that condition. Did Christ, then, enter on the entire
work of redemption solely and only in consequence of this, as
it were, accidental perception of man's need of salvation ? No ;
for, on the contrary, during that perception His human nature
was not moved by itself, but was altogether led by the activity
of the divine in Him. This divine element in Christ was love,
which gave His human nature the tendency to consider the
condition of men. By means of that which was thus perceived,
were developed the impulses to the different helping acts ; so
that in every case the activity pertained to the divine, the pas-
sivity solely to the human nature.
The other passive states of His human nature, which were
the result of the connection of His human organization with
external nature, belonged, until they were taken up into the
inmost centre of His personal consciousness, alone to the human
nature, which by itself was impersonal, and remained strange
to His inmost consciousness. So soon, however, as they pene-
trated to the centre of His consciousness, they became pervaded
at the same time by a divine impulse. Every active state of
Christ's, therefore, was commenced by the being of God in
Him, and was completed by the human nature : every passive
state ended in an activity, and by this conversion was first con-
stituted a personal state.
But here also the idea of time threatens again to force its
way into the activity of the divine in Christ In order, there-
fore, to avoid attributing to the divine, activities that arise and
j)ass away in time, we must say, — the divine essence in Christ,
remaining constantly like itself, was only active in an a-tem-
SCHLE1ER5IACHER 191
poral manner. Merely the humanized, the manifested aspect
of this activity, is temporal. Only when we thus fix our eve
on this manifested aspect, can we attribute to Christ a true
human soul ; — a soul, however, which was inwardly impelled by
the special presence of God in Christ, — a presence which, con-
tinuing the same and unalterable, penetrated the soul in all
its various and manifold functions as they underwent ever
further development. Accordingly, that which is brought to
pass by the being of God in Christ, is all perfectly human, and
constitutes together the unity of a natural course of life.
Herein now is involved, that Christ was distinguished from
all other men principally by His essential sinlessness. He calls
it essential because it had its ground in His inner being, and
because it would have been the same under all outward circum-
stances ; and the formula, " potuit non peccare," exhausts that
which must be declared of Him, only when it is combined with
*.he other, " non potuit peccare." But how does this harmonize
with the truth of human nature, which is universally subject to
an alternation of pleasure and pain, and with the Scriptures,
which say, that He was tempted in all points like as we are,
yet without sin ?
It is impossible, says he, that where an inner conflict has
taken place, the traces thereof should ever completely disappear.
]5ut if this were the case with Christ, we should be compelled
to deny His archetypal character. He must therefore be con-
ceived free from everything that bears in any way the charac-
ter of a conflict. But in such a case, is it conceivable that He
should have undergone a development 1 It is possible enough,
answers he, on the one hand, that the sensuous consciousness
and the higher powers only gradually and progressively mani-
fested themselves, so that the higher powers could only cret the
mastery over the lower in the measure in which they were
developed ; and yet that, on the other hand, this mastery was
at each moment complete, in the sense of nothing being posited
in the sphere of the sensuous, without having first been at once
constituted an instrument of the spirit. We can rej)resent to
ourselves the growth of this personality from its first chiklhood
onwards to the full age of manhood, as a constant transition
from a condition of the j)urest innocence to one of pure and
full spiritual vigour, which is widely different from all that
192 THIRD PERIOD.
which we designate virtue. But as regards the other ])oint, to
wit, the alternation of pleasure and pain, it is possible that His
liuman nature may have participated therein also after a sin-
less fashion. We must conceive of this alternation as under-
taken by His own activity, not, however, as determining Him
or reducing Him to dependence.
His sinlessness, however, owing to the intimate connec-
tion between understanding and will, involves that Christ can
neither have produced errors Himself, nor appropriated the
errors of others with actual conviction, and under the impres-
sion of having thus acquired truth. Nor is His freedom from
error, in this sense, to be limited solely to His official life. Only,
we must keep hold of the distinction between the I'eception and
j)ropagation of ideas of which others are the determinate up-
holders, and the formation of a judgment, which always, in
some way or other, determines the mode of action. In regard
to the latter, Christ cannot have erred ; for that would have
implied either precipitancy or a darkened sense of truth.
It is not allowable to attribute to Him, as to His human
nature, any other special distinction, as, for example, natural
immortality, or excellence in science or art ;^ but His perfection
consisted precisely in His being the personal embodiment of the
perfect religion.
But touching the facts of His resurrection, ascension, and
second coming to judgment, no connection is discernible between
them and His redemptive activity ; and yet all tlie momenta of
our faith in Him are dependent for their character on this ac-
tivity. His continuous spiritual activity is necessary, it is true,
to the work of redemption ; but this activity is conceivable even
apart from resurrection and ascension, and they are not neces-
sarily its medium. So also the doctrine of His second coming
contains nothing essentially pertaining to His dignity as a Re-
deemer ; whatever it contributes to His dignity, we have with-
out it, and it is merely an accidental mode of expressing the
satisfaction of the yearning to be united with Christ.
' This is carried out more in detiiil in the essay (worth reading) by A.
Schweizer, '' Ueber di(! Dignitiit des Keligionsstifters," Stud. u. Kritiken,
1834. The fundamental idea of this essay, that to Ciirist must be ascribed
(jenvis in the matter of religion, has V)eeu adopted by Dr Strauss also in his
"Streitschriften."
SCHLEIERMACHER. 1^3
But although no one of these three points contains an essen-
tial momentum of faith, they are of importance relatively to the
authority of Christ (§ 99, 2), on the ground that His disciple?
so frequently appeal to them : — for example, if they have testi-
fied falsely respecting the resun'ection of Christ, either, we must
attribute to them a feebleness of mind which would not only
make their entire testimony regarding Christ unreliable, but
would force us to the conclusion that Christ Himself, who chose
them for His apostles, could not have known what was in man :
or, if Ha Himself arranged that they should regard an inward
as an outward thing, and confound His resurrection in man
with an objective external resurrection. He would Himself br
the originator of their error. The case, however, is a somewhat
different one with the ascension, because, as can be shown, we
possess no report concerning it by an eye-witness or an apostle
Still more outward is the relation in which the promise of His
second coming stands to the doctrine of the Person of Christ;
and it would only react upon it, on the supposition that tlie
second coming were described in some way or other, which we
could demonstrate to be false.
The Christology thus sketched, which is remarkable alike
for its art and its clearness, justly excited everywhere the live-
liest attention, and exerted a permanent influence. Even
though unsatisfactory in several essential features, so much we
can say, — that it is an attempt to establish an inner, organic, vital
relation between the divine and human, and to sketch a divine-
human course of life in a way that had never been attempted
before.
The critical review of preceding attempts given by Schleiei
raacher, so far as it extends, is, above all, deserving of honourable
mention. However keen are his dialectics, their result is by no
means merely negative ; on the contrary, he has furthered the
])roblem by a considerable step. Whoever notes carefully the
services rendered by Schleiermacher in connection with Christo-
logy, will not be disposed to regard the task of viewing the divine
and human in vital unity as one incapable of execution.
He has not, it is true, demonstrated the essential connection
of the divine and human : indeed, such a demonstration would
have been opposed to his princij)les; for he takes as his sole
point of departure the consciousness of the redeemed, who
P. 2. — VOL. III. N
194 THIRD PERIOD.
know that they have received reconciliation and an invljro
rated consciousness of God, solely in that fellowship which re-
fers the mind back to Jesus of Nazareth as its founder
Instead, therefore, of deducing the actuality of the God-man
from His necessity, he rather presupposes a history, the know-
ledge of one's own I'edemption, and of the existence of a re-
deemed society; and deduces therefrom the historical reality
of the God-man, without occupying himself with questions as
to the possibility or necessity of such a being.
His great merit, however, is, to have endeavoured to develop
this unity of the divine and human, which to him was solely
historical, — that is, which he had not yet understood in its inner
necessity, — so clearly, and in such a manner as to secure both
the uniqueness and specific dignity of Christ and His brother-
hood with men. He believed the perfect being of God to be in
Christ ; and for this reason regarded Him as the complete man.
And so, vice versa, because He is the complete man, the con-
sciousness of God has become a being of God in Him. In this
way he endeavours to conciliate and combine two modes of re-
garding Him, — that according to which He is an immediate act
of God, and that according to which He is the completion of
creation. He is, as it were, the eternal idea of humanity, as
such implanted in it after an a-temporal manner : and the whole
of history before Christ may be regarded as the growing reali-
zation of this idea. But, on the other hand. He is also a new,
divine deed, — so far, namely, as He cannot be explained out of
ihat complex of nature which had hitherto become an actuality,
but compels us to go back to the primal fount of all life.
We meet here once again with a Christology which bears
both a scientific and a Christian character. The antagonism
of sin and grace, — this foundation of his view of Christianity,
— preserved Schleiermacher from that Pelagian by-path which
gets rid of a Redeemer, because it conceives the unity of man
and God either as immediate, or as of such a nature that man
both is to, and can, realize it without a Mediator. Schleier-
macher does not deny the original or essential unity of God
and man : but he posits it merely as a capacity of our nature,
an the possibility of the entrance of Christ into our race. Dur-
ing the first period of their actual existence, on the contrary, he
held that all men participated only insufficiently in the spirit ,
SCHLEIERMACHER. 105
SO that a second creation was necessary to the full completion of
man. The new birth, of which Christ was the original and pure
realization, he conceived, on the one hand, to be a mere realization
of the eternal idea of man ; though, on the other hand, he deemed
the first form of his being to be still opposed to this idea. So
that the regenerated and the old man remain, on the one hand,
an identical personality; whilst, on the other hand, the process
of development by which man is brought to himself, or to his
idea, must pass through a turning-point; for he has to enter
into a collective life founded by God, in which the old person-
ality of sin dies and the new one arises — that new one which is
at the same time the primal and inmost element in man, though,
apart from Christ, in bondage.
This theoiy has been assailed fiercely, and from many direc-
tions. For the most part, however, unjustly, and from a point
of view which was either unestablished, or unchristian. We
will now proceed to test the value of the main attacks, and
then follow with our own critique.^
I. It has been said that " Schleiermacher posits %cith Ids new
creation an absolute miracle, which suddenly breaks up all natural
connection.'" Schleiermacher himself allows that, considered in
God's light, all things form a connected whole ; that also, as
regards the empirical connex of nature (that is, as abstracted
from that universal source of life), nothing can be conceived to
be absolutely new. The new creation, therefore, he represents
again as an a-temporal, eternal implanting of Christ into human
nature, and as the maintenance of this implantation in such a
way that it attained ever more complete realization.
But this reply, given beforehand to attacks that might well
be expected, has been little noticed by his critics. For this
there appear to be two reasons. The one ground, however fre-
quently it may have been advanced, rests on a view which is
foreign alike to Schleiermacher and to Christianity. Manv,
namely, were unable to conceive of a Christ at once archetypal
and historical, save on the supposition of humanity's having
gradually become rij)e enough to produce such an one.^ Thus
considered, Schleiermacher would, it is true, be completely un-
' Compare on the following, Dr Kern's article, entitled " DieHauptthat'
Bachen dcr cvnnpelischcn Geschichte," in the Tubing. Zeitschrift, 1836, 2.
^ So, at a subsequent period, also Conradi and others.
196 THIRD PERIOD.
justified in assigning to Christ such a position in the midst of
the ages.
But if this attack were of importance, Christianity would
have to be regarded as a mere quantitative enhancement of what
had preceded, not as something veritably new. The upholders
of this view, however, would need first to establish their own
thought, or even the proposition, that the Cliristian idea of re-
generation is an absolute impossibility, and that it must be
weakened down to that of mere improvement. But this will be
impossible so long as there exists, on the one hand, a living
sense of sin ; and, on the other hand, a living consciousness of
grace. For which reason, this attack, which aims at showing
the impossibility of the appearance of a Christ in the midst of
the times, who is at once archetypal and historical, may for the
present be left standing as a mere assertion.
But the same charge may be brought against Schleiermacher
in another way. On the one hand, namely, he wishes to have
the ante-Christian period considered as a period in which Christ
was growing into being, and the new creation to be accordingly
placed under the category of sustenance ; and yet, on the other
hand, he separates so strictly the spheres of sin and of grace,
that he designates the ante-Christian period one mass of sin,
incapable of producing Christ out of itself. — How are these
two things compatible with each other ?
It must be confessed that Schleiermacher does not more
precisely explain how far it is possible to conceive that Christ
was growing into being in the ante-Christian world, notwith-
standing that its life, as a totality, was a life of sin. Here-
with, however, his case is not yet lost. He might regard the
ante-Christian world as a growth of Christ, without in any way
obliterating the limit fixed between the old and the new world.
For the judgment executed on the old world, by which its
power and beauty fell to pieces, and its poverty and emptiness
were revealed, may be regarded as the growth of Christ. Even
as we now discern in the death and min of the old man the
form of the Christ who is to rise in us, striding on through this
world of sin requiring to be destroyed ; so also the old world,
which did not fall to pieces in consequence of the jioverty and
exhaustion of spirit in general, but merely of the exhaustion of
its spirit, may be regarded ns the power of God striving townrda
SCHLEIERMACHER. 197
a complete incarnation — a power -which stirred the mightier the
more entirely the world fell. Nowhere in the whole of history-
do we find a merely negative criticism on any historical 'form ;
nor does any historical form fall to pieces solely in consequence
of impotence of spirit, but it is brought about by a higher, posi-
tive power, which as it were exercised, prepared, and strove to-
wards itself by means of such negation. If, then, regarded from
a Christian point of view, we may recognise in the decay of the
old world an activity of the divine Spirit advancing onwards to
incarnation ; the same thing may also be shown from another
side — as, indeed, Schleiermacher also does.
The old world, although as compared with Christianity it
was in itself poor and empty, passed through a cycle of develop-
ment, in the course of which it enriched itself in various ways.
This enrichment, it is true, never brought reconciliation ; but
still the susceptibility and the longing for redemption were pre-
pared in a variety of ways. Longing implies, too, a partial
possession of that which is longed for, and consequently a kind
of presence thereof ; though, at the same time, one that is in the
first instance entirely ideal and that yearns for reality. Now, so
far as that longing and hoping created for itself ever more dis-
tinctly the form which was alone able to loosen all pain, the old
world was a preparation for Christ, a growth of His appearance
in another respect than by a mere judgment.^ This prepara-
tion, however, though it can in a sense be termed positive, by
no means involves humanity's having been able by a gradual
onward development to produce Christ ; for it did not bear the
character of a power to such productivity, but rather that of
aeed.
But is not creation thus divided, as Schleiermacher says
himself, into two momenta, of which the second is not the pro-
duct of the first ; is not the dualism of two momenta, that are
incapable of being united, transferred back to the mystery and
darkness of the divine decree? By no means ; for we can well
conceive the possibility of their being united, if we only suppose
the first to have been posited for the sake of the second, nay
more, through the second, as the means by which it mediates
itself with itself. Not that it itself, to wit, the second, is pro-
^ This is sought to be attained by the newer Old Testament theology
of a Baiinigarten, Hofmann, and in part also of Delitzsch.
198 THIRD PERIOD.
(luced by the first ; for, on the contrary, it rather realizes itseli
and acquires true existence by its vanquishment. But if the
matter is to be regarded thus, we must neither deem the first
form to be the true one, nor consider it vigorous enough by
itself to bring forth the true one ; but rather regard the first
form of humanity as the still imperfect one, by passing through
and overcoming which the second attains realization — the
second being both the properly impelling force of the process
and the judicatory power concealed within the first.
II. The second principal objection is, that " it is impossible
for the archetypal to he at the same time historical."^ The proof
of this position has, it is true, hitherto been given by no one.
And in point of fact, it can only be attempted by philosophers
who regard God as the merely extensive infinite, or as the spirit
of the world ; — as we have already shown more precisely above.
And as we know how little hold this point of \aew has in itself,
all we have to say regarding this attack, whose professed object
is to show the impossibility of a Christ of the nature of the one
who lives in the faith of the Church ; — it cannot affect Schleier
macher until the foundation on which it rests is properly estab-
lished.
III. "But all human development is a passage through con-
flict and disunion, which unavoidably manifest themselves in
consciousness as sin." We can here answer : — The method of
proof by induction is in general characterized by great uncer-
tainty, seeing that it can never lead to the goal ; but in this
case it is totally inadmissible ; for Christianity itself takes this
universal sinfulness for granted, and precisely on its account
teaches that one has come into the world who was without
sin. As we have likewise shown above, no one has yet proved
it to be a necessity that the course of human development should
in every case lie through sin. And when, for example, the
principle is laid down, that a development, the subject of which
^ So Baur, Strauss, and others. The latter advances two grounds : —
The case would be other with humanity than with nature, for in nature the
genus is set forth alone in the totality of its individuals. Further, if the
genus (that is, in his view, God) were perfectly realized in one individual,
it would no longer torture itself with splitting itself up into a multiplicity
of individuals. Both arguments are based on the substitution of a physical,
asthetical, for an ethical, view of the world.
SCHLEIEEMACHER. 190
does not distinguish itself from itself, is not possible, inasmuch
as spiritual development implies that we consciously become
other than we already are, we can very well suppose that as
soon as the distinction makes its appearance in consciousness,
and ere it has time to become a contradiction, it is immediately
done away with by the will which stands in unity with con-
sciousness ; so that each particular stage of consciousness in
undivided unity, becomes also, at the same time, that of the being
and the will, and no hesitation on the part of the will delays the
realization of that which the consciousness requires to be real-
ized, long enough to afford opportunity for the development of
sin or of a conviction of guilt.
Moreover, in point of fact, it would be proving too much
to show that the course of development necessarily lies through
sin.^ For, as all human life is development, on such a supposi-
tion, sin would be necessary to human life as such. Now, this
involves an inner contradiction. For what is sin, if it is not that
which either is being excluded, or is already excluded, by the
idea of the being to which it cleaves ? Sin, therefore, can only
be accidental, cannot be essential to man. For precisely then
would a dualism be introduced into the idea of a moral being,
if evil were represented, on the one hand, as something essential
to the finite, and on the other hand, as contradictory of its
idea.
If it be contradictory of the idea of man that his archetype
should ever become a reality, the idea of man is self-contradic-
tory. There then remains no alternative, but either miserably
to conceal the contradiction by a " progressus in infinitum," oi
to say that the idea of man bears its reality in itself, and has
no need to become an actuality ; — a view which would reduce
the whole of history, as well as the life of the individual
man, to a vain show. For all the forms of manifestation must
then be held to be completely alike, and all progress a matter of
indifference, inasmuch as the idea has its only true reality
equally in all, or rather in itself. For this reason also Schleier-
macher says, — to deny that the consciousness of God exists
anywhere in perfection, is equivalent to denying that the creation
of man will be perfected : and then less is declared of man than
' Ab indeed, according to tlie remarks raadc above, is acknowledged by
almost all writers of recent date.
200 THIRD PERIOD
of any other creature ; for, in the case of free Individual beings,
that which is imperfect cannot be rendered perfect by being
complemented ; whereas, on the contrary, in the case of other
creatures, the defects of individuals are supplemented by the
totality, so that the idea attains perfect realization.
But although it appears possible for Schleiermacher to be
justified in all these points, we shall have occasion to point
out defects in his Christology in the course of the following
inquiry.
1. The historical actuality of an archetypal Christ is not
satisfactorily cleducihle from the Christian consciousness. — The
consciousness of redeemed believers and of the Church is the
reflection, according to him, of a personal activity of the God-
man ; so that from the existence of a consciousness of a Chris-
tian mould, as the effect, a conclusion is drawn to the existence
of a perfect God-man as to the only sufficient cause of that
effect. Of the objection, that the Church, as a constantly im-
perfect result, does not require an archetypal cause for its ex-
planation, he has already taken notice, as we have seen above.
To this connection belongs, not so much his appeal to the
Christian consciousness, which is unable to regard the belief
that it is possible to advance beyond Chi'ist as deserving the
name of Christian ; — which belief must necessarily arise where
that cause is not supposed to have been archetypal. For if this
utterance of the Christian consciousness is not to appear acci-
dental, capricious, and non-essential even to Christianity itself,
we must inquire by what inner determination of its essence the
Christian consciousness arrives at its supposition that Christ is
the archetype. Otherwise we should be chargeable with assum-
ing an archetypal personality as the sufficient cause of the exist-
ing effects, in a merely external manner, by a sudden transition
to the history of the Church, and the testimony given by it in
its writings and through its existence. It will be necessary
to point out in the inner presence of the spirit, of the Christian
consciousness, the living traces and the seal of the activity of
an archetypal personality,^ instead of supplementing the argu-
ment that the new life, by the very fact of its existence, compels
' In the consciousness of atonement through His substitution. This,
liowever, Schleiermacher could not fix for himself, because he regarded it as
resulting solely from the principial participation in the holiness of Christ.
SCHLEIERMACHER. 201
the assumption of such a personality as its founder, in an ex-
ternal manner, by reflection on external testimonies.
Schleiermacher, however, is not content either with this
external method, or with merely appealing to the fact that the
Christian mind does not believe in the possibility of advancing
beyond Christ. He adds, on the contrary : — An archetypal
cause must be assumed for the existing result, and a merely
exemplary cause is not enough ; for the productive energy to
which the existence of the Church, after all, testifies, can only
have been exerted by an archetype, — not, however, by an ex-
ample, which always remained partially imperfect. And if
one should say, — The Church, as a non-sinless production, does
not necessarily presuppose a productive force entirely holy ; he
replies, — It is true, the manifestation of the new principle
always remains imperfect ; but still an essentially holy, pure life
has been implanted in humanity by Christianity, which asserts
itself ever more victoriously; further, every Christian knows
that the sin which still cleaves to him is to be ascribed, not
to the principle, as though it were itself an impure thing, but
solely to the fact of the activity of the principle being still
limited ; and finally, it is involved in the Christian conscious-
ness that there never can be a need of a new principle — that
the only thing required, is the coming forth of that which is
already implanted in humanity.
Now, however true this may be, and so certainly as it must
be allowed that if the principle of Christianity itself were im-
pure, the Christian consciousness would wear a totally different
aspect ; all that follows therefrom is, that some archetypal cause
or other must have been at work, but not that that cause pos-
sessed at the same time historical reality. — But what other
kind of cause can we conceive of? The idea. It is said, the
idea of an archetype, having dawned on the human mind, might
have produced these results, without there being any necessity
for concluding the existence of an arclietypal personality.
The only attempt Schleiermacher has made to meet this sup-
])Osition, is the observation, that because of the connection be-
tween the will and the understanding, we arc compelled also to
say that the idea of an archetype implanted by Christianity in
sinful humanity could not have been generated by humanity it-
self. This, howe\er, can scarcely suffice. Even a fallen natura
202 THIRD PERIOD.
lias still a knowledge of the idea of tlie archetypical ; but this
knowledge is merely a knowledge of the law, which stands over
against the Gospel, which accuses, but cannot make alive. The
idea of the archetypical by itself (this would be the proper
answer from Schleiermacher's point of view) has no productive
power, but first acquires it, as Schleiermacher himself elsc-
Avhere allows, by appearing really and personally in Christ:
herein, too, he otherwise deems the novelty and originality
of Christianity to consist. Its qualitative distinction from
everytliing non-Christian is, that the idea, which as idea ex-
presses in the first instance a mere shall, became actuality and
life in Christ, and through Him was constituted the vital prin-
ciple of the Church. But he does not explain how the arche-
type could only become such a productive causality, or " the
principle of life," by appearing in an historical form. The answer
will be, on the one hand, that humanity was willed, and from
the very beginning conceived, by God as an organism, whose
destiny it was first to attain to its higher pneumatic life through
the head which belonged to it ; on the other hand, that as
sinful, it can only know itself to be in vital and living fellowship
Avith God, if He Himself come towards it and reveal Himself in
a reconciliatory way : and for this purpose an historical Media-
tor is necessary.^ A still more complete answer would thus be
given to the objection, that, to conclude from the existence of
the new life that an archetypal personality must have existed
on earth in Christ, is unjustifiable, because this new life in the
soul of the Christian might have its ground in a similar im-
mediate deed of God — such a deed as Schleiermacher postulates
to account for the origin of the Person of Christ.^ In his own
reply hereto, Schleiermacher contents himself with going back
to the matter of fact, that the consciousness of redemption and
of the possession of a new and pure principle, of participating
in holiness and blessedness, becomes ours solely in connection
with the collective Christian life ; urging that this new collec-
tive life, which arose in the midst of a condition of sin and
misery, which still continues to prevail outside of Christendom,
must have had a founder who first bore this new element in
liimself as the result of immediate divine activity ; nay more,
that the person of this founder must have been endowed with
^ Sec Div. II. Vol. I. pp. 3-10. » Strauss a. a. 0. 719.
SCHLEIERMACHER. 203
the new principle from his very birth ; for to suppose the new
hfe to dawn suddenly and directly, without any correspond-
ing external influence, during the course of the life of an in-
dividual, would compel us to resort to a magical explanation ;
Avhereas, on the contrary, at bu-th every individual stands in
an immediate relation to the universal source of life, and it is
only during the course through which his life passes that he
needs interaction and incitement from without.
Schleiermacher does not show us why Christ ought to be
considered the archetypal embodiment of the new principle,
and not merely the first or initiatory embodiment, endowed
with power to implant the new principle in humanity. If we
should say, — it follows from the productive vigour of Christ,
tliat He was the archetype ; for the distinction between an
archetype and a mere example is precisely that the former alone
is able to act as a producing cause, whereas the latter, though
it can incite, cannot produce (and, in fact, according to
Schleiermacher also, the Church has the power of generatively
propagating the new principle, not because it is an example ;
not because its inmost essence is pure and holy, though the out-
Avard manifestation is imperfect ; but in the last instance, because
it propagates the historical image of Christ) ; the answer might
be given — that an example which approximated to the cha-
racter of an archetype, especially if faith should hold it to be
an archetype, would be sufficient, supposing the only thing
necessary to redemption to be a consciousness of the idea of
tlie archetypical; and that it can be pronounced insufficient only
on the supposition tliat we need something more than the pro-
phetical office of Christ. This, as is well known, Schleier-
macher also acknowledges ; but he has not clearly shown how
far an archetype has more influence than the awakening of the
idea of the archetypical ; or, vice versa, how far it is peculiar to
the reallter archetypical, and to it alone, to act not merely on
the intellect, but also as a real principle of life. This leads us
to notice a further point.
A mere man, however high may be hi? position, has not the
power to bestow the principle of holiness and blessedness, that
is, the Holy Spirit. But Schleiermacher, rightly interpreting
the Christian consciousness, attributes to Christ tlie bestowal of
this principle on His people. Consequently, a productivity of
204 THIRD PERIOD.
His archetypicallty lies in His royal plenipotence and deed.^
Herewith, however, it is necessary to advance to a higher view
of His person than that which is primarily expressed in tlie
terms " archetypal humanity," " perfection of the consciousness
of God," and the like. In attributing productive energy to this
His character as an archetype, Schleiermacher affirms of Him,
in fact, more than belongs to any other man, — more than will
belong to man even in the state of perfect holiness, when he
will be adequate to his archetype. In order to explain this
productive power of Christ's, we must go back to the peculiar
being of God in Him ; — this thought of Schleiermacher's must
be carried out in new directions. Christ is not merely a perfect
man in the general sense of the term, but the man with whom
God united Himself in such a manner that His person also
participates in the productive power of the new life.
Had he given this idea a more precise form, he would
necessarily have been led to treat the peculiar being of God in
Christ in such a manner that God Himself could no longer
continue to be represented as mere abstract unity, absolutely
without distinctions ; and it must have been acknowledged that
it was a peculiar mode of the divine being, different from
all the other modes of the being of the divine in the world,
that determined God to have His being in this man, and
through Him to communicate the Holy Spirit. For then, care
would also be more distinctly taken to avoid converting the
continuous action of the Person of Christ into a mere after-
influence of the image preserved of Him by the mind of the
Church, and into the act of the divine Spirit, united with and
acting through that image.^ He justly refuses to ascribe to the
Church by itself, or to the common spirit which animates it,
the power of communicating the Holy Spirit ; on the contrary,
he holds that this Spirit continues to be propagated in it solely
as the result of a constant recurrence to the image of Christ
which it preserves in itself. But the only reason why the con-
tinuance of productive power can be dependent on His image,
must be that when we bring His image to view, He Himself is
brought to view, and that then, through our susceptibility, we
^ " Folglich ligt eine Productivitat seiner Urbilcllichkeit in seiner kbnig-
liclien Vollmacht und That."
^ Connjare Ilassc, " Das Leben des verklarten ErlOsers." 185-i
SCHLEIERMACHER. 205
enter into fellowship with Ilim who, being the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever, still acts, lives, and communicates the
Spirit ; for we are not to suppose that He has assigned to the
common spirit of the Church, and to the image of Himself as one
who once did exist, a substitutionary office -which would exclude
His own continuous activity. — It is not quite accurate, indeed, to
say that, for Schleiermacher, Christ is merely a vital principle ;
that the Person of Christ does not occupy, in his view^, any
essential place. For he rather holds Him to be the communica-
tive principle of the holy and personal life, because He possesses
it ; and considers that, in the natui'e of the case, this life requires
a personal mode of existence. We ought, therefore, rather to
say, — because He is the archetypal, nay, divine-human person,
He has the power, through His love, which is constantly pre-
sented to view by His personal image, of constituting Himself
the principle of the same holy and blessed life also in others.
Schleiermacher's doctrine does nevertheless appear to imply that
the real Person of Christ is the principle of the new life in
humanity, only so far as He was the beginning of a movement
which, after His departure, continues itself of itself; in other
words, he appears to regard Him as a mere transition-point, and
as of only transient significance : — in which case, it would re-
main an enigma, both why he maintains so distinctly that His
personal image is indispensably necessary to the continued
generation of this life, and also why it should not be possible
to advance beyond Him.
He is also equally correct when he interprets the Christian
consciousness to forbid the supposition, that believers are destined
in the future to stand on absolutely the same level Nvith Christ.
But so far as it appears possible ever again to reduce his highest
teachiniis regardins; Christ back to the idea that in Him the
completion of the God-consciousness, in other words, perfect
holiness and blessedness, had become an actuality, he comes into
the difficult position of being unable consistently to assert for
Christ a permanent s{)ecific dignity, save at the price of denying
that the archetype of our personality can ever attain realization
in us. In opposition to his other teachings, we should then be
given up to a comfortless "progressus in infinitum," which would
involve both an essential contradiction in the idea of our nature,
and a just doubt as to the sufficiency' of the power of the
206 THIRD PERIOD.
redemption proceeding forth from Christ, on which he otherwise
lays such great stress. As Schleiermacher is far removed from
wishing to represent the God-consciousness of men as always
continuing feeble, in order thus to secure a specific dignity for
Christ, there is no alternative but to deny the proposition, from
which the contradiction between the power of the redemption
of Christ and the idea of our essence would result, to wit, that
the specific dignity of Christ is exhausted when we attribute
perfect vigour to His consciousness of God.
If, however, we endeavour to assert for Christ the specific
dignity which is demanded by the Christian consciousness, and
which Schleiermacher also aims at retaining, — a dignity which
is not secured by representing man as eternally imperfect,
seeing that by such a method the purpose of His saving love
and power would not be served, but which actually subsists,
however happy may be the growth of believers in vigour of
consciousness of God ; — it is clear that we cannot rest satisfied
with the anthropological point of view, from which Christ
appears merely as the completed man, as the embodiment of
the consciousness of God in its most perfect vigour ; but shall
be compelled either to declare less^ or more, concerning Christ
than Schleiermacher did. (Note 28.)
This defect, it is true, is connected with the point of view
of Schleiermacher's " Glaubenslehre," in so far as nothing com-
plete can be affirmed concerning the objective nature of Christ
if the sole aim of theology be the conversion of pious emotions
into doctrinal propositions.
The more is it deserving of consideration, when we find, on
the other hand, that Schleiermacher has nevertheless been led,
as it were naturally, in his system, to points which, because they
transcend the merely empirical, anthropological, supply a basis
and hold to that specific dignity Vvhich he attributes to Christ.
For if he holds Christ to be the only man who ever became the
organ of the communication of life to all ; if he views Him as
the archetype, which holds a completely universal relation,
which is related in the same way to all the original differences
of individuals ; if he regards Him as the second Adam, who
neither can nor is to be followed by a third ; if Christ, in His
^ As, for example, A. Schweizer J:es passim. See also bis " Geschichte
der ref. Dogmatik," 1847, 2, 275 ff.
SCHLEIERMACHER. 207
higli-priestly sympathy, bears the sin of the whole world ; if God
looks upon none as righteous save such as are in Him ; if every
petition, in order to its being acceptable, must be presented to
the Father in His name, and He, on His part, brings all the
petitions of His people before the Father ; — is the significance
of all these things, which Schleiermacher declares concernnig
Christ, exhausted, Avhen we say that He is the perfect man ?
Is there not rather involved herein an essential and universal
relation of Christ to the whole race, and of the whole race to
Christ, which beholds itself in Him in its perfection ? Or, if
he justly establishes it to be an utterance of the Christian con-
sciousness, that Christianity can never be transcended, and that
all progress has its roots in that which is already given with it;
that, therefore, all extra-Christian religions are destined to be
absorbed into the Christian, of which Christ is the personal
embodiment, — how can this position be justified, save on the
further supposition that Christianity contains the aiso^u^e truth;
so that, in case those utterances are to hold their ground, we
must pass over from the merely empirical to the objective point
of view?^ Nay more, does not this anthropological, empirical
method, which represents Christ merely as a Redeemer, as a
Mediator, consequently, merely as a means of which humanity
is the end, lead us out beyond itself, in so far as the end which
He was to accomplish, is attained in Him in an absolutely per-
fect way ; so that He is the personal representation of the
absolute end, or of the idea according to which God created
the world, and is to be considered to be no less the goal than
the principle of the whole of history? If God knows Him-
self in Him, so that His knowledge of God is at the same time
God's knowledge of Himself,^ can we then rest content with the
supposition that Christ was nothing more than the perfect,
adequate representation of humanity in general ? And, if hu-
manity is not to be conceived as altogether and essentially
inadequate to God, docs not this lead directly to that other
point, that God also knows Himself in an adequate way in the
' This is recognised and more carefully carried out by Dr Kern, I.e.
pp. 27, 33.
- This, a-s we have seen, is a mode of looking at matters wliich, thou<:h
not predominant, does occur in Schleiermacher's writings. Compare jp-
171 f., 188 f.
208 THIRD PERIOD.
Sou of man 1 But so soon as tliis latter is allowed, we shall
be compelled to conceive this perfect man (not in point of His
earthly development, but of His completion), not only as the
adequate representation of the idea of liumanify, but also im-
mediately as the adequate representation and revelation of God.
However far short Schleiermacher has come of developing
and giving a connected representation of all these points ; and
so certain as it is, on the contrary, that other elements are con-
tained in his system which do not well harmonize with those
just expounded ; still, taking a view of the whole, we must
allow that he also approximated nearly enough to the higher,
primitive, Christian view of Christ as the head of humanity,
and to the metaphysical significance of His person.^
This is the place to add another word concerning Schleier-
macher's doctrine of God. As is well known, he gave in his ad-
herence to Sabellianism : which, indeed, is true also of the systems
of Hegel and Schelling, so far as neither of them has an im-
manent Trinity. But whilst, as we have seen, Schelling, and
particularly Hegel, conceive God Himself as growing in the
world, and rejjresent Him as first arriving at self-consciousness
in the life of the world, through the medium of the finite —
which, it is true, is never absolutely attained ; Schleiermacher,
on the contrary, takes an essential step in advance, when he
maintains that such a process of growth, confounding as it does
God with the world, and abolishing His absoluteness, must be
kept far from the idea of God. In this respect, there is a
similar antagonism between Schleiermacher on the one hand,
and Hegel and Schelling, who convert God's absoluteness into
the passible and temporal, on the other hand, as that which
existed, though, it is true, on a more limited scale, between the
old Sabellianism and the so-called Patripassianism. At the
same time, he views God not merely as absolute substance, the
abstract nionas, but he maintains also that He ought to be con-
ceived as absolute, s[)iritual life, and in so far, as in eternal
motion ; for he frequently expresses himself in very unfavour-
' Mention is here ilcserved in arldition hy the above passage from the
" Weihnaclitsfeier ;" for tlie " man in himself " there spoken of is nothing
l)iit the archetypal spiritual man. lie is not merely the ideal Christ;
litit. according to the passage in question, man in himself was born in Jesua
Christ.
SCHLEIERMACHER. 209
able terms regarding both the deistic and the supernaturahstic
conception of God, charging it with being a dead thing. — On the
other hand, for the purpose of keeping hold on the distinction
between God and the world, which is marked by multiplicity and
distinctions, he supposes it to be necessary to represent God as
the absolute, undistinguished unity, and to controvert the doctrine
of an immanent Trinity. But in this way the world and its mul-
tiplicity is set over against the absolute unity, without the links
of connection between the two being pointed out ; and notwith-
standing his recognition of God as the absolute personality, he
brings forward no principle explaining the derivation of the
world. If we were to follow out the thought, how it comes that
the divine causality, which is eternally identical with itself,
manifests itself solely in the divisions of space and time, for
which, in it, as an absolute unity, no ground can be discovered,
we should, if consistent, be led, in a manner similar to that
which we have found in the case of the old Sabellianism,' to the
representation of an antagonistic eternal material standing over
against the unity of divine causality and divine life, which seeks
to inform the world : — which material can only be animated
and bespirited (beseelt i;nd begeistet) by a gi'adual process.
This, however, would be Monarchianism at the price of Dualism.
Now this Schleiermacher does not wish : rather does he conceive
God to be the eternal light which sends forth its rays everv-
where alike, so that the distinctions exist solely in the world,
which refracts the ravs diiferentlv, and has different decrees of
susceptibility. But if the distinctions of the world are not to
have their causality in God, but consequently in the world
itself (for he refuses to allow tliat they are mere subjective
seeming), this contradicts the idea of God as the supreme and
absolute cause. Precisely the great stress he lays on the ab-
solute, divine causality should compel him to postulate for the
distinctions in the world, which are after all real, a correspon-
dent distinction of principles in God, as the real basis of the
former, and should consequently exclude the supposition that
God is absolutely destitute of distinctions. — It is true, if his
system left a place for freedom as a moral faculty of choice,
that dualism, that power of resistance to God, might be ethically
^ See Div. I. Vol. II. pp. 1(50 ff.
^ Tiator writers tiiko tlii.s for tlieir point of departure.
I'. 2. — VOL. III. O
210 THIRD PERIOD.
explained, might be found to have its ground in God, and
would thus be seen to have been willed by the supreme unity.
But to his being able to strike into this path, before which his
determinism must have given way, it would have been necessary
for Schleiermacher to form a more distinctly ethical conception
of God than he actually did ; which, again, was impossible, un-
less he assumed the existence in God Himself, without regard
to the world, of an absolute personality with eternal reflection
in Himself ; consequently, unless he recognised self-distinctions
in God, in place of the unity without distinctions to which re-
ference has been made. It is a misapprehension, indeed, to
charge Schleiermacher with entertaining a Spinozistic concep-
tion of God : he regarded God not as mere substance, not as a
mere power of the m orld, not merely as the idea or the moral
order of the world ; but as the cause of all this, as the unity of
idea and being ;^ consequently, as self-cognitive being and ab-
solutely existent knowledge,'^ which as such does not know
merely what is other than itself, and not itself, but also em-
braces itself. When he hesitates to describe God as personal,
it is because he considered the word person to involve a limit,
finite subjectivity ;^ but we are not to suppose that he meant to
deny to God eternally complete, spiritual absoluteness, or that,
at all events, he aimed at representing it as first growing. But
as he in general does not pursue the speculative path from above
downwards, rather deeming an objective knowledge of God to
be an impossibility ; so, starting in his contemplation of matters
from below, and then advancing upwards, he assigns to God
merely the position of the postulate of a supreme unity, which
is not a mere summing up of the multiplicity of the existent
world, but a real causality ; though he does not further trouble
himself with the inquiry, what conception is to be formed of
this unity in order that it may be the principle of a multiplicity :
and as he is not willing that the term personality should be applied
to God (without, however, denying the thing), so also does he
refuse to allow distinctions to be imported into God (without
which no clear idea can be formed of personality). He rather
supposes it necessary, in order to the preservation of the distinction
• Comi.fire Dialektik, pp. 87 f., Ill f., 113 ff., 134 f.
- Das sich selbst wissende Sein und das absolut seiende Wissen.
^ As he has explaiiuid liitnself in the " Kedeii iiber die Religion.''
SCHLEIERMACHER. 211
between God and the world, to keep out of God everj species
of distinction as something mundane. But as life and move-
ment are inconceivable without distinctions, he must then
logically arrive at the dead idea of substance, which in its turn
would lead to Acosmism. From this also, as even his empirical
point of view shows, he was far removed. But because, on the
other hand, he sees in God merely the supreme causative
tmifi/ of the world, he fails precisely to arrive at a sufficient
distinction from the world, and is compelled to represent this
latter rather as the physically necessary revelation of His life.
In consequence of endeavouring completely to exclude distinc-
tions from the absolute unity, he is unable to allow that God
holds a relation to Himself, and maintains Himself, whilst com-
municating Himself to the world ; but he is compelled to re-
present God, so far as he posits a vital relation between Him
and the world, as life passing over into the world. He thus
falls actually into the very danger of Pantheism, from which he
had aimed at escaping, in denying all distinctions to God as
something mundane. We should thus have arrived at Schel-
ling's and Hegel's idea of a God who takes growth upon Him-
self, who actualizes Himself in the world.
According to what has been advanced above, this is diame-
trically opposed to the general outline of his thoughts. Instead
of allowing God Himself to pass over into growth and suffering,
into fiiiitude or altereity, he rather aims most distinctly at repre-
senting God as the eternally complete and absolute spiritual life
in its immutability over against the world. But then he ought
consistently to renounce the idea of a self-comnmnication of
God to the world, of a bei7ig and life of God in the world, and
pass over to the category of the mere action of God on the
world, of its being determined by Him; which, if strictly followed
out, would put an end to the intimate relation between God and
humanity, which he considers to be brought about by Chris-
tianity, and lead into the ways of Deism. We thus find it
])roved in his case also, that there is no escape from the alterna-
tive of Pantheism or Deism, save in a trinitarian conception of
God. As he does not, like the Church, secure tlie eternal
identity, perfection, and self-assertion of God, by assuming an
inner self-discrimination, even in the act of self-communication,
if he cling to the latter without at the same time assuming: an
212 THIRD PERIOD.
act of self-assertion, he is unavoidably landed in a commixture
of God with the world ; or, if his aim be to prevent God's being
confounded with, and losing Himself to the world, he would
be compelled, out of regard to the divine immutability, to limit
His self-communication to the world after a Judaistic manner,
and to convert the communication of His essence, which, as ab-
solute unity, cannot, strictly speaking, be communicated, into
actions, — a course which we have found pursued formerly by
Sabellianism.^ Not even for the distinction between the in-
communicable being and the communicable fulness of God,
can a place then be left, if He is merely the absolutely undis-
criminated unity. Were this point of view, to which Schleier-
macher often enough passes over, carried completely out, we
should arrive at a world essentially estranged from God, at the
dualism characteristic of a deistic view of the world. God would
then be merely the Almighty Ruler, determining all things by His
actions, but no longer self-communicative love ; and even Christ
would then be merely the man absolutely determined by God,
without having a share of His own in the divine life and sub-
stance. In this aspect, therefore, the end of Sabellianism would
be an Ebionism, ^ such as we must again pronounce to be foreign
to the Christology and piety of Schleiermacher.
The above exposition may serve to show, that though Schleier-
macher meant his conception of God to be neither pantheistic
nor deistic, it vacillates between the two ; and that he could
not free himself from this vacillation so long as he did not, on
the one hand, ensure the self-assertion of God in the act of
self-communication to the world, by asserting Him to be dis-
criminated in Himself; and as, on the other hand, he did not
])ut himself in opposition to Deism, and provide for the capa-
bihty of God's communicating Himself, by representing Him
as an unity discriminated in itself. And as, in the first cen-
tury, tliough Christianity was compelled to assert the eternal
absoluteness of the idea of God, in opposition to Gnostic
and Patrij)assian doctrines, according to which He under-
goes conversion and growtli, yet abstract Monarchianism
was unable to escape tlie vaciUation between deistic Arianism
and pantheistic Sabellianism (both which constantly passed over
again into, or sought to combine with, the other), until the
' See Div. I. Vol. II. pp. 281 ff. ^ Compare Div. I. Vol. II. pp. 281 ff
SCHLEIERM ACHER. 213
Church had established its doctrine of the trinitarian self-discri-
mination of God in Himself, in virtue whereof God can be com-
municative, without losing Himself to the world : — so also could
the step in advance taken by Schleiermacher beyond the theo-
paschitism of Zinzendorf, which was probably presented to his
mind in youth, and the processualism of Schelling and Hegel,
who represent the absoluteness of God as changing into altereity,
and Himself as undergoing conversion, on the one hand ; and
beyond the dead idea of God laid down by Kant, on the other
hand ; only he made sure by recognizing the existence of dis-
tinctions in the unity of the divine life, knowledge and love, in
one word, by the doctrine of an immanent Trinity. For, to
posit, with Hegel and Schelling, a distinction in God, which,
though real, involves the immediate recognition of the world as
the son of God, would leave room neither for a distinction of God
from the world, — inasmuch as, on this supposition, the world is
merely God converted into altereity, — nor, therefore, for a com-
nmnication of love ; seeing that love presupposes, on the one
hand, self-assertion in the communication, and, on the other
hand, a real distinction between the giver and the receiver.
Such a form of the idea of God, however, would not merely
harmonize with the general tendency of Schleiermacher to
transcend Deism and Pantheism, but would also tender most
important aid in the consistent carrying out of his Ohristologi-
cal sketch.
This requires, as we have seen in the last instance, that
Christ should be not merely the embodiment of the adequate
idea of humanity, but also be the adequate revelation of God ;
and that, not only in the form of an action continuing for a
longer or shorter pei'iod, but in the form of a specific and unique
presence, nay more, of a self-knowledge and self-volition of
God in this man.
214 TUIIiD PERIOD.
SECTION II.
MOST RECENT TIMES.
SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS OF THE PRECEDING
HISTORY OF CHRISTOLOGY.
Since the middle of the last century, Christology had owed its
form and character predominantly to the philosophical systems
successively in vogue; though efforts were always made by the
authors of the systems to reconcile them in some sort with the
churchly and biblical elements of Christology. An intellectual
productiveness, such as had not been witnessed since the days of
the Gnostics, displayed itself in a rapid succession of philoso-
phical systems ; and these found an almost too true reflection
in the history of Christology, which in consequence produces,
in the first instance, predominantly the impression of unsteadi-
ness and vacillation, or even of confusion. And, in point of
fact, such a state of things could not be permanent ; it could
only be a transition stage. Faith in the continuity of the
vital operation of Christianity in the Church, is identical with
the conviction, that the age when Christological theories made
their appearance in almost incalculable numbers will be suc-
ceeded by an age in which the Church will cherish one common
belief, at all events in regard to main points ; not through the
mere repristination of what has already had an existence ; — for
what would be the use of returninci; again to the sands which
had brought about the universal stagnation and confusion,
which would not permit of standing still and yet suffered no
advance, but only a partial retractation? (Div. IT. Vol. II.
p. 298). The indispensable condition of the formation of such
a common conviction (which, to judge from the example of
the first centuries, must be possible without Synods, in virtue
of the inner force of the truth itself), is, that the presup-
positions which had lod astray and ])roduced the confusion
STAGNATION OF SYSTEMS, 215
should be cast aside, and that, on the contrary, a step
should be taken onwards in positive knowledge, calculated
to afford satisfaction to the existing need. To this end, no
essentially new truths were necessary ; for in all ages the faith
of the Church has infolded within itself the essence and en-
tirety of Christian truth ; but merely that, undergoing a scien-
tific reconstruction, the Church should present those elements
which, whilst speaking to the heart as old acquaintances, are
also new, because they solve old difficulties and open up new-
paths.
That we have already entered on the stadium when the
Church calls for the fruit of a common, and, as to the main
features, harmonious and well-founded doctrine, and when
labourers are preparing to meet this need, is an unmistakeable
fact : the soil of Christendom has given us, as it were spon-
taneously, a rich crop of original systems, but there is no
longer a perceptible increase. By some this is regarded as a
sign of the weakness of recent theolog}-, both by those of a
neological and those of a pnlajological tendency ; not perceiv-
ing that it would be an indication of a diseased palate to ask
continually only to be tickled afresh. An historically culti-
vated, Christian judgment sees in this pause, not death, not a
privilege to despise science, and in despair to seek to restore
the old, but a summons to the labours which devolve on the
new stadium. The flowers have bloomed richly, and in part
splendidly ; a world of new thoughts has opened itself, in part
full of presentiment, and reaching into the most distant future.
But the work of the bee is not to look scornfullv on the in-
dustry of the trees and flowers. Its duty is skilfully to com-
plete its own house, and to fill it with treasures for the com-
mon benefit.
The Evangelical Church may venture to hope that it will
be privileged to construct a satisfactory common doctrine of
the Person of Christ. Such a hope is encoin-aged by the in-
tense and widespread return to the principle of tiie Keforma-
tion. For that principle, in the last instance, must be the
source of positive Christological advances (Div. IT. Vol. I.
58-72), It both will and nuist be the light aiul soul of this
theological labour also; without it, all that ]iliilosop1iy can
effect, iiowever valuable in itself, will be mon-ly jireliminary.
21G THIRD PERIOD.
If we take a survey of Christendom at the present time, for
the purpose of discovering precursors or commencements of a
common doctrine of the Person of Christ, which, instead of
repeating the contradictions of the okl form of Christology,
shall give satisfactory expression to the substance of faith, the
Greek Church, alas ! presents as yet no contribution ; the
Romish Church only a limited one ; but a so much the richer
and more hopeful contribution the Evangelical Church, so far
as it has consciously and energetically taken its stand on the
groundwork of the Reformation, and thus made its own again
an active principle of further union. With the greater readi-
ness, therefore, do we dwell in conclusion on this point ; be-
cause we shall thus be supplied by history itself with a
counterpoise to the unsatisfactory appearance presented by the
history of Christology, as though, especially in the Evangelical
Church, it were merely one continuous, restless movement.
Though in the course of this history we have had frequent
occasion to refer to the Christian faith hs the essentially identi-
cal and fixed in all these movements, still, the movement itself
was, in the very nature of the case, the principal subject of
consideration. The more necessary is it, therefore, now to
dwell upon the evidence that this great history, with its fulness
of movement, is not without a goal, but shows itself fruitful ;
in one word, that precisely the most violent storms, which ap-
peared to threaten the dogma with dissolution, were compelled
to serve the purpose of steering the vessel out of the quicksands
into safe waters.
We have seen that after the premature expulsion of Mono-
physitism, which had a certain not yet properly understood
right over against even the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon,
a perverse and one-sided tendency took possession of the Greek
Church. The curse of this deed weighed as a heavy burden on
the development of doctrine in its midst till the Council of the year
fi8l, and impelled it irresistibly, through a one-sided antagonism
to Monophysitism, to an ever more strict and logical adoption
of the dualism of two natures, which at last came to be repre-
sented as held together merely by the formal bond of the unity
of the Ego, and by which Christ was reduced to a simultaneous
double series of activities of knowledge and volition. The
confusion thus occasioned was heightened by the predominance
THE GREEK AND ROJIISH CHURCHES. 217
which still continued to be given, in an ever more one-sided
manner, to the divine nature or person, as compared with the
thesis of the duality of the natures. In this direction an
essentially monophysitic mode of thought lay concealed be-
hind Dualism in its most fully developed form. Indeed, we
have seen that the Council of 681, in consequence of positing
an impersonal humanity, fell into contradiction with its own
intent, and to a certain extent concluded with laying down that
as the doctrine of the Church, by which its ostensible main
purpose, to wit, the uprooting even of the offshoots of Mono-
physitism and the carrying out of pure Dyophysitism, was com-
bined with something directly opposed to it. This was well, it
is true, for the faith of the Church, which was able to feed on
the truth contained in the two modes of thought, the dyo-
physitic and the monophysitic. But it was not good for the
knowledge of the Church, that the last formula, in the framing
of which the Greek Church took part, should have contained
the requirement to cogitate contradictories at one and the same
time. Nor has it for many centuries, down to the present time,
expended any more labour on the problem, but merely tradi-
tionally handed down its formulas from one generation to
another. Nevertheless, to the Greek Church there still belongs
the merit of having maintained and carried out, during the
first period, on the one hand, the truth of the divine aspect of
Christ to the point of tracing it back to its ground in the
Trinity ; on the other hand, the truth of the human aspect in
general, as to body and soul.
Looking at its history as a whole, the Romish Church has
done least of all in furtherance of Christology ; its produc-
tivity lies in other directions. It was the means, however, of
bringing clearly to light the above-mentioned contradiction in
the traditional doctrine which it had inherited, in that Adop-
tianism and Nihilianism divided themselves between the opposed
principles of the Council of G81. We have seen how Scholas-
ticism unceasingly vacillated between these two systems ; how
the Christological formulae on both sides, being equally de-
structive of the idea of true God-manhood, partly called forth
the need of surrogates for Christology (so, for example, the
nihilianistic tendency), and jiartly invented or excited to the
invention of such surrogates. The hidden Monophysitism
218 THIRD PERIOD.
broke forth in the doctrine of transubstantiation : the adop-
tian tendency invited in particular to the placing alongside
of Christ a circle of saints, with whom to share His media-
torial office. The Christological confusion, and the scepticism
therewith connected, reached their climax before the Refor-
mation in Scholasticism ; and in consequence of turning its
back on the Reformation, the Catholic Church, which thus
became the Romish Church, was placed in such a position
that its theology, so far as it did not condemn itself to Christo-
logical inactivity, notwithstanding old and new attempts at
concealment, is unable to avoid falling back ever afresh into
those Middle Age antagonisms, whose common character is to
cherish within themselves, either in the form of identification
and absorption, or in that of separation, a dualism of the divine
and the human. (Note 29.)
In the Evangelical Church, particularly in the Lutheran
branch thereof, soteriologically, or, in other words, by means of
the principle of faith, mastery has been gained over that
dualism which exposes the two natures of Christ both to
identification and to separation. Luther, in particular, made
a beginning of fixing the unity of the Person of Christ as
mediated through distinction, or (not to mention here the
merely formal tie of the Ego) the living unity of the entire
personality of Christ. The old antagonistic elements in the
principle of the Reformation were thus vanquished ; out of the
confusion and dissolution of the old, a new, infinitely more
fruitful, commencing point had sprung forth. But in the
employment of this principle for the purposes of Christology,
theology was betrayed again into one-sided courses. Their
attention being directed predominantly to the doctrine of the
■way and means of salvation, the old Dogmaticians neglected
to transform, by the aid of the principle of the Reformation,
the traditional doctrine of the nature of God and man with its
partially Aristotelian character. To the doctrine of the Trinity
and of the Person of Christ, the formative impulse of the Re-
formation applied itself with merely the lesser portion of its
power ; and, professedly in the interest of his doctrine of the
Supper, Luther's Christological ideas were compelled, during
the scholastic period of the Lutheran Church, to give way
again to theories, which were in conflict with the inmost intent of
THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH 219
the Lutheran Church, and the old Dualism made its appearance
afresh in a somewhat more disguised shape. When at last the
form of doctrine produced by the Lutheran Scholasticism had
lost the confidence of the Church, and had entered on a pro-
cess of inner self-dissolution, there broke over the theology of
the Evangelical Church a period of confusion and perplexity,
which may be well compared with the condition of the Greek
Church in the seventh century, and of the Romish Churcli
])rior to the Reformation. There was, however, also a dif-
ference. That which furthered the dissolution, and which ap-
peared to be completely against the Church, was destined at this
crisis, in the hand of the Lord, to give rise to new life, instead
of passing into a dead traditionalism which forgets the tasks
devolved upon it. The most characteristic parallel to the
stadium at which the Evangelical Church now finds itself, we
may rather take to be the time which succeeded the fierce
struggles with the multiform Gnostic systems ; when, however,
be it observed, those Fathers alone cared best for the true
welfare of the Church, who, like an Irenaeus, Clemens Alex-
andrinus, TertuUian, Hippolytus, Origen, did not take up a
merely negative and exclusive position towards Gnosis, but
rather converted it into a fermenting principle, whose effect
was to further the development of the Church's doctrinal system.
In order that we may gain a view of the present state of
the Christology of the Evangelical Church, we will consider —
I. The divine aspect ;
II. The human aspect ;
III. The unio of the two.
I. As concerns the divine aspect. — The point of view just
given suggests by itself an appropriate grouping of the still
existing differences regarding the higher principle of the Person
of Christ. Evidently for the first time since the Church earned
for itself the title of 'EKKXrjaia deoXoyovaa (Div. I. Vol. I. p.
253 ff.), the scientific efforts of the presunt century are directed
with all energy to the so-called objective dogmas of God and
the Trinity. If wc look at the doctrines which have not
merely been inherited, but really, vitally appropriated, under-
stood, and made an mner possession by this age ; if we look to
that which is the food of its religion ; we are compelled to
220 THIRD PERIOD.
acknowledge that in the only two respects in which such a thing
is possible, there is still a perceptible disproportion between the
vitality of Christian piety and the recognition of an immanent
Trinity, such as is intended to be taught by the Church. The
common judgment of the Church in this respect has not yet
recovered the certainty of former ages ; it still remains to be
re-established in a higher manner. What is required in parti-
cular, is such a reproduction of the dogma as shall cause it to
appear to the evangelically pious mind impossible to retain its
hold on the truth of justification by faith in Christ, whilst the
doctrine of an immanent Trinity is rejected, or any sort of
purely monarchian view is adhered to. In this respect there is
still much to be done ere the Church and its theology, in pro-
nouncing judgment on the monarchian modes of thought pre-
valent in this age, can be dispensed from the serious consi-
deration of the common debt which has not yet been discharged,
and which would be only increased instead of being done away
with, were we to endeavour to throw the work required to be
performed by Christian thought in the spirit of evangelical
faith, on our memory, or on the labours of the Church
fifteen hundred years ago.^ Still it is also unmistakeable
that many antitrinitarian forms may already be regarded as
mastered, and that the Church as a whole, in the present phase
of its development, has a decided tendency to reproduce and
establish the doctrine of an immanent Trinity in a manner ade-
quate and homogeneous to the evangelical consciousness. Here
again we find that the principal impulse proceeds from the person
and work of Christ, as they are regarded by faith, under the
influence of the religious experience of redemption and reconci-
liation.
As the older Jewish Ebionism, with its empirical and deistic
mode of thought, which was unable to look upon deity and
humanity save as antagonistic to each other, disappeared before
Gnosis, so also Rationalism, with its deistic background, such as
it made its appearance in various forms in the age of one-sided
subjectivity, disappeared before the philosophy of Schelling.
But as we found that a new, higher form of Ebionism, which
' Compare in the Jahrbiichcr fiir deutsche Thcologie, 1856, 1, tny dis-
sertation, '• die deutsche Theologie und ihre Aufgabeu in der Gegenwart,"
pp. 24-35.
MODERN EBIONISM. 221
we designated the Hellenic, made its appearance at the end of
the second century, with the presupposition of an immediate
and universal unity of the essence of God and man ; so also, on
the basis of modern philosophy, an Ebionism of a higher sort
has arisen, which, like Carpocrates in old times, is inclined to
give Christ a place amongst the geniuses of humanity, but
without being either willing or able to assign to Him a specific
position in the midst of the circle of saints. In another respect
also does this mode of thought resemble those elder ones which
were interwoven with Gnosis, that whilst in one aspect it is
Ebionitical, in another aspect it is Docetical. For to it the main
matter is the ideal Christ, in relation to whom the historical
Jesus has merely an accidental significance, and. is by no means
His real actuality. The distinction between the Gnostic dupli-
city of the avm and Karw Xpiaro^ and this modern duplicity
consists mainly in the circumstance, that the latter gives its
avco XpucTTo^ more distinctly an anthropological character, re-
presents Him as the idea of humanity, whereas Gnosis assigned
Him rather a theological position. But so far as God is sup-
j)osed to be the universal essence of humanity, this modern
Ebionism also acquires at the same time a theological colouring,
even if man be not taken, with Feuerbach, as the proper essence
of God, and thus the fall into pure anthropologism be accom-
plished. Whether, then, anything more or less lofty be predicated
regarding Jesus, remains religiously a matter of indifference,
so louii as sin and atonement are not brought under considera-
tion, so long as redemption is represented as at the utmost an
intellectual process. Then the divine Spirit or the Logos, who
is also the true humanity, is the Redeemer ; and so little need
is there for the historical person of the God-man, that Christ is
not even removed from the circle of sinners, even though sin in
Him may have been reduced to a minimum. But whoso reckons
Christ amongst the number of those who need salvation, has
already renounced the Christian name.
We have already shown above, however, that this mode of
thought is overthrown v.hen we form an ethical conception of
(irod; so that we can affirm that the pantheistic no less than
the deistic contradiction to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity
lias been, as to principle, overcome for the Evangelical Church.
Forming an ethical conception of God, sin and atonement
222 THIRD PERIOD.
acquli'e their proper significance : the idea of an immediate
and universal God-manhood is excluded ; and yet, on the other
hand, the possibility of the ideal humanity not continuing in a
relation of eternal dualism to actuality, but acquiring also
reality in Christ, and through Him in the race, is shown to be
involved in the ethical essence of man.
Of this ethical aspect of the Person of Christ a more tho-
rough estimate has been formed in the present age than ever
before ; it is as though the living image of the Person of Christ
were about to be brought before tiie mind of the Church in so
much the clearer and more distinct colours, the more the new-
Gnosticism and its mythical theories threaten to envelope it in
an image of cloud. A rich, fruitful literature has begun to in-
terpret the " Life of Jesus" in its most different aspects, to the
blessing of the Church, and many a beautiful treasure has already
been brought to the light.^ With such works are further con-
nected vakiable treatises on the Sinlessness of Jesus.^ In these
fruitful labours, which, starting with the historical, tend towards
dogmatics as their goal, men have taken part with a pleasure and
love worthy of all recognition, who look upon sinlessness as the
highest predicate that can be attributed to Jesus, and resist
every attempt to give a metaphysical significance to His per-
son. So, for example, the North Americans, Channing and
Theodore Parker, in whom the older Socinianism has laid aside
its dualistic character, and, evidently under the influence of re-
cent German philosophy, has struck into a path on which it
must be possible for it to make real progress. As compared
with the legal, deistic nature of Socinianism, Parker in particular
evinces a mystical tendency ; though, it is true, not without
pantheistic i-epresentations and an undervaluing of sin. Stranger
as Parker is to the richer determinations of the doctrine of
the Church, his example ought to fill us with shame, when
^ We only need to refer to the " Life of Jesus," by Neander, Lange, Hoff-
mann, Osiander ; to the " Bibl. Theologie," vol. i., of my highly-revered
teacher, Schmid ; to Rothe, T. Beck, Hofmann (" Schriftbeweis"), Ulhiiann,
Tholuck, Lucke, Meyer, Wiesclcr, Ebrard, Stier, Ewald, Weissc, Hase, De
Wette, Baumgarten Crusius, I'riickner, Luthardt, and many others ; as
also to the beautiful book by the talented Edin. de Pressense, entitled " le
Kedempteur," I'ar. 1854.
2 Ulimann, " Histori.sch oder MytluKch?" — "Die Siindlosigkeit Jesu."
Ei. 6, 1803. (Eiigliah transiatiou iniblisheJ by the Messrs Clark.)
CIIANNING. PARKER. 223
W6 see the beautiful fruits that are produced, where the little is
used in a faithful manner. There we may hope one day, earlier
or later, to see the word fulfilled, " To him that hatli shall be
given."' For better is it livingly and freshly to possess tho
little we know of Christ, careless about enijaging in a polemic
against an inheritance which one is not yet able to appropriate
to oneself, than to fancy that we have much. The disciples of
the Lord also began by recognising in Him the righteous Ser-
vant of God, the holy Sou of David. But under the light that
streams forth from the image of Christ, the attentive and de-
vout observer, where the process takes a normal course, will
find himself growing in a self-knowledge which, as involving
the consciousness of his own poverty and high destiny, is so
niuch the more susceptible of the comprehension of the divine
fulness of wisdom and love, which is in Jesus, and which
streams forth quickeningly from Him. The more fully an in-
telligent faith becomes convinced of the unique moral dignity
of Christ, the more natural, nay, the more necessary, must it
become for the same faith, starting from this fixed point, to
follow Christ with understanding Into the sphere of His dis-
courses, where He alludes to His peculiar and unique relation
to the Father. The holiness and wisdom of Jesus, which give
Him an unique position amongst sinful, much-erring men, in-
asmuch as they neither can nor will be regarded as a purely
subjective human product, do therefore point to a supernatural
origin of His person. If we are to understand its appear-
ance in the midst of a world of sinners, we must trace it back
to a peculiar and miraculously creati\e deed of God ; nay more,
if God is not to be conceived as deistically separated from
the world, but as near to it in love, and as Himself essentially
love, Christ, looked at in connection with God, must be deemed
an incarnation of divine love, in other words, to be of divine
essence ; and this makes Him a[)pear to be the point in which
deity and humanity are uniquely and most intimately united.
^ In forming this hopeful judgmont, 1 refer to Parker's earlier writings,
as I am not acquainted with his later ones. May this thinker, whom liis
Miscellaneous Writings sliow to be truly noble, and to be destined for
something still better, not allow himself to be driven by contradiction into
1 path op]K)sed to his own inmost nature, nor suffer restraints to be placed
on the inner freedom of his further developmc'.t.
224 THIRD TERIOD.
It is true, many allow themselves in this article to be led astray
by an abstract, subjective moralism, which is unable to fathom
the depth of the ethical. But he who takes a deeper view of
things, and knows that the ethical has also an ontological and
metaphysical significance, to him the unique holiness and love
of Christ must appear to have their ground in an uniqueness of
His essence, and this latter its ground in the self-communicating,
revealing love of God. For it is this same divine love, in
whose light, when logically conceived, that fatalistic or natural-
istic view of nature disappears, which excludes the truly rational
miracles of love, and wliich causes it to appear natural that
sin and finitude should not prevent the attainment of the goal
necessarily willed by love, to wit, the perfect union of the world
with God through the self-communication of God.
It is not an arbitrary procedure, but simply tiie necessity of
the case, to see in Christ, so far as sinlessness is attributed to
Him, a divine revelation of God, which, by realizing, discloses
the archetype of holiness : — which revelation could only be
brought to pass through the medium of an unique distinctive
being of God in Him, by which the image of God attained to
actual representation in the world.
This point of view is taken up by men like Weisse, Ewald ; ^
as also by several of the school of Schleiermacher. They re-
cognise Christ as the perfect revelation of God, which bears
relation to the entire circle of creation with which humanity is
^ Weisse, " Philosophische Dogniatik" i.l855, § 455 ff., with the quota-
tions from earlier works of the author. " The incarnation is the expression
of the one character, or of the one image of the character, of God : " p. 500.
The Son is, in his view, the inward divine ideal world, destined to realiza-
tion in a real personality. Ewald, " Geschichte Christus und seiner Zeit,"
1855, pp. 4-47 f . : " Fulfilling the Old Testament, as the absolutely riglit-
eous one, by God's power. He became the Son of God, like no owe before
Him ; in a mortal body, and in fleeting time. He was the jmrest briglitness
and the most glorified image of the Eternal Himself, — the AVord of God
speaking out of God, both through His human word and through His
entire appearance and work, — the true Messiah, the eternal King of the
kingdom of God, which was first completed in Him." Regarding His
earthly life, see p. 445 : — " Even the highest, divine power, when it wraps
itself in a mortal body and appears in a determinate time, finds its limit in
this l)ody and in this time ; and never did Jesus, as the Son and the Word
of God, confound Himself, or presumptuously jmt Himself ou the saa't
level, with tlie Father and God."
vrErssE. EWALD. 225
connected, whose head He is. The pre-existence of the per-
sonific divine aspect, however, they do not recognise ; but take
their stand on a Monarchianisni which cannot admit of distinc-
tions in the Most High God Himself, merely allowing thf
manifoldness of the revelations which relate to the ^\orld (to the
real world, or even to its ideal archetype in God). Tliese dis-
tinctions, under the direction of history, of the Scriptures, and
of Christian experience, are then reduced back to a triplicity.
We are thus placed substantially on the point of view of
Sabellianism, which at the present has numerous representa-
tives in both the Evangelical Confessions.^
Witii special clearness has this point of view been set forth
recentlv, under appeal to Hippolytus, to the following effect.^
'' The personal God (the Father), removed away from all growth,
is the subject of the Logos, in somewhat the same manner as
the fulness of the thoughts of the human spirit has its fountain,
its central-point, its self-consciousness and Egoity in the Logos
(whereas it is through the Holy Ghost that the divine being
and life unites itself intimately with the world, which is the
result of the self-revelation of the Logos). The Father of the
All is the primal personality ; the Logos is the sum of the
totality of His revealings, which is equal to the eternal divine
fulness of the essence of the Father." This Logos, who is
therefore " the sum of all those divine thoughts and powers
that relate to the world, has, on the one hand, His conscious
Egoity or personality in the eternal, primal personality of tlie
Father; on the other hand, however, this thought-totality
(LotTus) is able also to express itself, to be taken up into anotlier
Ego, and thus to personify itself afresh, as it were, outside of
its first originator. Accordingly, the Logos became a person
in Christ also. That which was eternally present in the Father,
and lived in His consciousness as a spiritual actuality, to wit.
the archetype of humanity, arrived at actaal manifestation in
' Nevertheless, we must at once arrive at something of the nature
of essential distinctions in God, if the threefold revelation of God be re-
garded as lasting ; not as a mere act, but also as revealed being ; or as the
image or copy and manifestation of the inward divine nature. So Weisse,
Liicke, Bunsen. Weisse distinguishes in God, reason, soul of nature, will.
God-Son is the ideal world of images or nature in God.
2 Compare Redepenning's Protest. Kirohenzeitung, 1851, Nr. i*, pp-
200 f.
I'. 2. — vor,. III. P
226 rmnD period.
Chrlht ; and in Him is the revelation of God, the divine image
which sets itself forth in the world, perfected. Purposing to
impress itself on the world from its veiy beginning ; mfused
into it ever more fully, in the course of its developments
and of the stages of its existence, it found at last complete ex-
pression within the bounds of human nature. It is an human
person to which it communicated itself without restriction, to
the degree to which its communications were able to be received
at each of the stages through which the person passed (that is,
it was appropriated by the person's own free, truly human
deed) ; now, therefore, out from the Father, in whose eternal,
primal personality it rested, it has become for the Father a
second, and in the fullest sense, objective personality, which, at
the same time, veritably shares the fulness of the divine essence,
and completely embraces and reflects that essence as to its most
inward being. The divine Logos is now also a full human,
human-divine personality ; and the humanity of Christ has
become a fully deified being and life. It was possible for this
to take place, for there is nothing in God which His love did
not wish also to communicate to the workl : all that God has
and is. He also reveals entirely as He is ; for His revelation is
truth. It is His will to give Himself entirely and undividedly
to the w^orld. But the middle of this grand development
through which the world is becoming the perfection which God
eternally and completely is, the inmost focus of its gradual
deification, is the Lord, the first true man, who was entirely
that which humanity ought to have been from the beginning,
to wit, the untroubled image of the Deity, and who now gives
Himself to be the property of all, lends and stamps His image
on all, and is able to make all participators in His divine
nature."
According to this representation, Christ is the centre of the
divine ideal world (the Logos), so far as in Him have appeared
at once the archetype of humanity and the complete revelation
of God. Like Ilippolytus, it seeks to give the Son an objec-
tive position, as a real personality, over against the Father, in
whose primal personality He previously rested : only with the
distinction, that whereas Hippolytus represents this objectifica-
tion, or relative finification, as already accomplished at the crea-
tion, and the Son as the personal unity of the world, out of which
MODERN SABELLIANLSM. 227
it analytically arose ; here, on the contrary, the oh jectifi cation
first takes place in Jesus. It is also to be acknowledged that
this theory makes visible efforts to view the revelation in Christ
as a personal one — without detriment to the full truth of His
humanity ; nay more, Christ is termed an human-divine per-
sonality, capable of making all participators in His divine
nature. So certainly now as this corresponds to the Christian
consciousness, so certainly does the inconsistency, which we
have elsewhere remai'ked as characterizing Sabellianism, mani-
fest itself also here. For that which bestows the personality is,
after all, merely the humanity : how then can we say that the
revelation and self -communication of God is completed? If
God is not personally present in Jesus ; if He knows and wills
Himself as a person in Himself, but not in Jesus, He has not
yet entirely communicated and revealed Himself ; His revelation
has not advanced beyond the category of influence or of a com-
munication of poicer ; and this is opposed to the recognised
principle, that there is nothing in God in an eternal manner
which He was not also wilHng to communicate to the world.
In fact, also, one cannot see why a power, or, according to
the " thought-totality," the power of God could have been in
Jesus, and not also His personal self-volition and knowledge ;
and indeed in such a manner, that both the Logos should know
Himself as man, and this man should know God as one with his
person, and thus know himself as God.^ To term this impos-
sible, would be simply to push the dualism which this theoiy
justly rejects from the sphere of the natures, into the sphere of
the personality. And, finally, there can be no doubt, after the
observations made in connection with Schleicrmacher (pp. 20o—
213), that if God is not in Christ in a personal form, if the
personality of Christ is merely human, it cannot be consistently
said of Him that He has the power to make all participators in
His divine nature. From which it is also clear, that do what
it will to the contrary, the Sabellian mode of thought cannot
avoiil reeling backwards in the direction of Ebionism." It will
be compelled also to deny redemptive power, in the proper
' For further remarks on this subject, see below ; pp. 246 f.
" Why in general it is impossible to rest in Sabellianism, h;is been
Bhown in detjiil above (see pp. 1^08 flF.). Whenever the truth of the
bumJinity is seriously maintiiiueii, iis by Origen, Photinus, aud tlie fore-
228 THIRD PERIOD.
sense, and tlie power of communicating the Holy Spirit, to
Christ, if it should be in earnest in representing the humanity
as t'.iat which bestows the personality ; if, consequently, it
should treat the divine in Him as mere power. (Note 30.) The
Christian mind, however, persists so firmly in treating Christ
(particularly out of regard to the atonesnent) as the miracle of
love, by which God personally surrendered Himself to humanity,
that, religiously considered, even patripassian views must be far
more agreeable to it than Sabellian (Note 31) ; for, as we have
seen previously, and as histoiy has constantly shown, it neces-
sarily dissipates the being of God in Christ into a nirre working
upon or in Him. But as Patripassianism endangers the absolute-
ness of the idea of God, there remains no other way of retain-
ing the being of God in Christ, to which faith attache? prime
importance, because it is conscious of having fellowship with
God through Christ, than to say that God not merely is, but
knows and wills Himself in Christ, that He is personally and
indissolubly imited with Jesus as the man Jesus is with Him,
which points to an eternal rpoTro? vTrdp^eco'i of the divine in
Jesus distinct from the Father, however this rpoTro? may be
more precisely described. For this peculiar being of God in
Jesus is in transitory, distinguished from the being of God in
the world and in believers.
This is not the place to attempt a more precise delineation
of the more recent attempts to solve the triuitarian problem.
The one approach to Tritheism, or desire a species of more re-
fined Subordinatianism ;^ others view the Trinity as a mere
process of the divine love, or of the divine consciousness, or
runners of Socinianisni, Sabellianisni cherislies Subordinatianism withui
itself. In modern times, however, this Subordinatianism has usually taken
an anthropological, that is, Ebionitical form ; seldom an Arian form.
^ For example, Thomasius, " Christi Person und Werk " ii. 267-27i,
speaks as though the Trinity liad its proper existence in the essential unity
of the personal Monas, which he at the same time holds to be eternal will
to a trinitarian existence. By this will he regards the Trinity as secured
Accordingly, the persons stand over against the Monas in an almost tri-
theistic subordination : the one absolute personality wills three persons.
At the same time, however, the Father, to whom alone he concedes aseity,
that essentially divine predicate, occupies in his system the position of
Monas (compare i. 92 ff.) But even of aseity itself, we ought to form
rather a trinitarian conception.
THE TRINITY. 229
even onlj as a matter of attributes. Scarcely an attempt has
been made to bring it into inner connection with the funda-
mental fact of the evangeHcal consciousness, justification bv
faith. Many have almost forgotten at what point the old
Church left this dogma standing ; and because the main ques-
tion (Div. I. Vol. II. p. 332) is too indistinctly defined, the
answer also cannot turn out more advantageously. Still it is
becoming ever more universally discerned, that all the essential
determinations of the conception of God must be settled in the
light and under the influence of the doctrine of the Trinity.'
So also is the conviction becoming every day more general, that
for Christology, the matter of prime consequence is to conceive
the divine in Christ in the absolute, the highest, that is, in the
personal form ; and that the divine in Christ is to be distin-
guished both from the divine in the world and the divine in be-
lievers. As representatives of this conviction, we may adduce
Nitzsch, Twesten, J. Miiller, Liebner, Lange, Mehring, Merz,
Ebrard, Sartorius, Thomasius, and others. Though unanimity
is far from having been secured ; and though the relation both
of the one divine personality to the three divine persons and of
the immanent to the (Economic Trinity is very differently de-
termined ; the critical review of recent essays at a doctrine of
the Trinity given in the Christological work of Liebner, shows
convincingly that the theologians of the last decennia have not
laboured in vain at this great task, and that their tendency,
taken as a whole, after vanquishing deistic and pantheistic
Monarchianism, is necessarily to do battle with Sabellianism
and Subordinatianism in their modern anthropological form.
(Note 32.)
II. The human aspect. — A still more satisfactory unanimitv is
exhibited in the prominence universally given to the true hu-
manity/ of Christ, which had so long been misapprehended.
Scarcely a theologian of any repute ventures now to deny to it
* So, after tlic example of Nitzsch, Thomasius and Liebner. If this be
thoroughly thought out, it can form no contradiction that the one God
Bliould be constituted by three persons, and yet that the result should, not-
withstanding, be eternally realized, nay more, that this result should be
eternally constituted in and through them. For is there not a similar rela-
tion of recijjrocity in eFery organism, between unity and articulation?
230 THIRD PERIOD.
personality of its own, to characterize it as impersonal. All
see now, with Luther, that it is indispensably necessary, in par-
ticular, for the work of the atonement, to regard the sacrifice
of Christ as a work of His personal humanity, even though in
unity with the Logos, in order that His substitutionary satisfac-
tion may not be reduced to a dramatic show/ Some only
a])pear to put the person of the depotentiated Logos in the
place of a human soul: — in which way Christ would be re-
duced essentially to a mere theophany (see below). No less
clearly do all acknowledge that the truth of the humanity re-
quires that the growth be true, even in relation to intelligence
and will ; and when the Irvingites, with Menken, posit in Christ
an impure nature, derived from Mary, to overcome whose
rebellious will was His task — a task accomplished by Him in a
normal manner — their intention is by no means to withdraw
anything from the sinlessness of Jesus, but merely to assert the
truth of His humanity, and of His connection with us, in such
a manner as still more to exalt the merit of the fight of faith
which Pie fought. At the same time, however, their postulate,
that Christ in His conflict should occupy precisely the same posi-
tion as every believer, who is as certain of the help of the Holy
Spirit as it is certain that Jesus stood in need of His help, gives
to the Logos so unimportant a position, that the incarnation
becomes unnecessary, and believers are in a dangerous manner
put almost on a level with Christ. Unanimous as is the theo-
logy of the present time in regard to the sinlessness of Jesus; pre-
dominant as is the number of those who keep firm hold on the
truth of His moral development ; they are not unanimous as to
whether the temptation and conflicts of Christ do not require that
He should have attained to ethical perfection through choice and
free decision ; or whether, after a more physical manner, we
ought not to predicate of Him an immediate impossibility of
sinning. The answer to this question depends partly on the
clearness and determinateness of our knowledge of the relation
between the physical and ethical in general ; and partly on the
other question, whether the personal unity of the Logos and of
the humanity of Jesus is to be deemed a thing once for all com-
pleted by the act of incarnation, or a thing still subjected to
^ Compare Delitzsch, " die bibl. profet. Theelogie," pp. 30 f. ; Thomasiua
ii. 53, 117.
MAN'S SUSCEPTIBILITY TO GOD. 231
growth, on the basis of an Unio that, whilst growing, had a
veritable existence (einer seienden Unio).^
Though it is undeniable that the later Lutheran Christo-
logians have put true growth into the background, and in
general approximated too nearly to Docetism, whilst the Re-
formed theologians have always zealously laid stress on the full
actuality of the humanity ; we are justified in saying, that the
tendency of the Evangelical Church, taken as a whole, has been
to lay hold on this true momentum of the Reformed Christology
with a decision such as was scarcely evinced even by the old Re-
formed dogmaticians, particularly as relates to the personality
and ethical development of Christ. On the other hand, it is no
less pleasant to find that the truth of the Lutheran Shibboleth,
*' humana natura capax divinse," is finding universal recognition
in the Reformed Church. Scarcely a single representative of
the old Dualism can now be mentioned in the Reformed
Church ; and this phase of opinion may now therefore be fit-
tingly left over to the Compendiums of the History of Dogmas,
as something that has been cast completely aside.^ One result
of the whole of recent science has been a purer recognition of
the full reality of the humanity, and a higher conception of it ;
the knowledge of the true humanity, or of that true idea of it
of which Luther had a presentiment, and for the utterance of
which in new tongues he longed.^ Thus, even in the midst of
the confusions of an age apparently bent only on pulling down,
a wise and gracious hand has ruled and arranged that precisely
that end should be attained which it was of chief consequence
to attain. To the theology of the present day, the divine and
human are not mutually exclusive, but connected magnitudes,
having an inward relation to, and reciprocally confirming, each
other ; by which view both separation and identification are set
^ The proof of Christ's having a human calling is excellently given by
"/,he in his " Christliche Ethik " ii. pp. 284 ff. See below, pp. 256 ff.
'Compare, for example, Lange, " Pos. Dogmatik," p. 213; " Leben
o6U " ii. 79. Ebrard (with Gaupp) charges the Lutheran Church even with
Nestor ian ism, because of the proposition, " Christ is a persona cvv^eTo;,''^
which he speaks of as specifically Lutheran. See the " Cliristl. Dogmatik "
ii. 130-141.
^ Compare Ilundeshagen, who makes some admirable remarks on tho
theoccntric, ethical nature of man in his " Kede iibur die Uumanitiiteidee,"
l8o2, pp. 18 ff., 36 ff.
232 THIUD TERIOD
aside. The clearness of the insiglit into this truth, which is
(Hfferent in different men, depends essentially on the clearness
and distinctness with which God's essence is conceived as
ethical, and the ethical is conceived as ontological.^ The truth
itself, however, is now recognised by Reformed theologians,
both in and out of Germany. In England, by the genial
Coleridge, who had sympathy and affinity with Schelling, and
his talented, independent disciple, Maurice ; by Jul. Hare,
T iomas Arnold, Pusey, and others. In France, by Edm. de
Pressense, and the men of the Theological Faculty at Montau
ban, Sardinoux, and Jalaguier. In Holland, no less by Osterzee
and Chantepie de la Saussaye, than by Scholten in Leyden. In
Switzerland, by Hagenbach, Romang, Giider, and others. In
Germany, likewise, by all the Reformed theologians of note.^
Equally important is the great agreement and the more
penetrating insight, in regard to the truth that Christ, notwith-
standing His homoousia, differs fi'om all men through being
the head and representative of mankind. This truth, which has
not been derived from philosophy, but has lived eternally in
the faith of Christendom, we have seen making its appear-
ance in all the profounder works on Christology; but it first
began to reveal itself in its entire significance in the present
age. It is possible, indeed, so to understand it, as to make
Christ again a mere kind of middle being: that would be a
modern, that is, an anthropological species of Arianism without
pre-existence. But this scriptural idea is not to be blamed for
that. On the contrary, if it be thoroughly thought out, it
shows itself to be a middle conception, enabling us to under-
stand how the Son of God can dwell with all His fulness in a
Compare Div. II. Vol. II. pp. 218, 264.
2 The only exception (if it may be referred to this connection) is the
" Evang. Kirchenzeitung," which (compare the " Vorwort," 1856) appears
to wish to retain the old Reformed Dualism ; nay more, which in No. 23,
1845, speaks of a twofold Ego in Christ. To the Lutherans, on the con-
trary, what we have said above is applicable as a matter of course.
Delitzsch alone greeted Giinther with inconsiderate applause (" Bibl.
prophet. Theologie," pp. .30 f., 217) ; and yet, at the same time, unsuspect-
ingly blames the " Nestorianism of the Reformed Church as apostasy from
the old Catholic confession." His praise, however, he has now retracted.
The school of Erlangen also, in general, recognises the truth in questioo *
though it has not principially carried it out and established it.
THE HEADSHIP OF CHRIST. 233
man : even as, on the other hand, we must say that the being
which is destined to be the universal head of men and angels
can only really occupy such an all-detennining position, can only
be the universal source of reconciliation and atonement, of the
sanctification and perfection of spirits, nay more, even of nature,
on the supposition that He is the one place in the world where
God has personal being, on the supposition that He is the
Hving seat of the personal God, in His relation to the universe.
What light is shed by this truth on the doctrine of the atone-
ment, and particularly on that of substitution, we have already
hinted previously : the case is similar with the idea of the Holy
Supper. Only by taking this truth for our point of departure,
can we arrive at a full and living conception of the Church ;
apart from it, we shall be shut up to the dry idea of the Church
as an institute for pure doctrine, or for moral education, or for
the redemption of individual souls, or for the arrangement of a
common cultus. It, on the contrary, shows us that Christ, this
divine-human person with soul and body, appropriates to Him-
self a constantly frrowina body out of tlie material of humanity,
in that the natural individuals, which, though scattered, belong
to and ^^e destined for Him, by their divine idea, are animate>w
by the spirit that proceeds forth from Him, are born again, and
are incorporated with Him the Head. Through the idea of the
head alone is it possible (but it is also required) to form of
humanity, as it is before God, that conception according to
which it i'y not merely a mass, not merely an unity of redeemed
individuals, but, taken in conjunction with the world of higher
spirits and nature, whicli is to be glorified for and through it,
constitutes the unity of the perfect organism of the world.
Besides those who have been mentioned before, almost all the
more notable evangelical theologians of the present day have
accepted this truth : but it has been advocated with special
pleasure and penetrating insight by Martensen, Liebner, Rothe,
and Lange. (Note 33.) In a striking manner Lange and
Rothe apply it for the purpose of bringing the absolute novelty
tmd miraculous uniqueness of Christ into harmony with the
full actuality of His humanity, and its connection with the real
human race. (Note 34.) That expression of Irenanis, so rich
in presentiment, that Christ " longain hominum expositionem in
se recapitulatur," is applied as a light to historv, to that of the
234 THIRL PERIOD
Old Testament in particular, though also to the extra-biblical
history. The latter in particular, it appears, we may expect to
have been done by Schelling in the newest phase of his system.
The more this succeeds, the more will Christianity, for which
the Person of Christ is eternally essential, be recognised as the
centre of history, both backwards and forwards ; as the absolute
religion, or religion absolutely, Avhich not only brings redemp-
tion historically, but will remain in the perfection of all things ;
in one word, Christ is recognised to be the centre of the revela-
tions of God, and the eternal centre of the universe. This view
of the Person of Christ, as a being of not merely ethical, or
religious, or temporal-historical, but also of cosmic and meta-
physical significance, is alone able to lend to His humanity an
essential importance. At the same time, the distinction between
His humanity and that of all besides Him is determined ; and
the doctrine of His homoousia with us receives a further deve-
lopment. In this His humanity is contained the all-determining
centre, the real principle of the true humanity. By this doc-
trine of Christ, as the truly human head of creation, that which
the Lutheran Christology had wished, or at all events that of
which it had had a presentiment, as the fruit of its " Communi-
catio idiomatum," was brought to its truth, and to more adequate
and scriptural expression. Through the medium of this truth,
Christology stands in indissoluble connection with the idea of
the absolute revelation of God, and with the doctrine of the
Trinity. For only on one condition can Christ be regarded as
the seat of the central revelation of God, after the movement
of the divine heart, to wit, that He is not merely a limited, single
individuality, like others, but that He was the meeting point of
an universal and absolute susceptibility on the part of human
nature to God, and of the absolutely universal or central self-
communication of God. Because this man is the centre of the
world and absolutely susceptible to God, he is also susceptible to
the central, to wit, the personal revelation of God. But also
vice vers^ : the idea of the head shows that this man can be
God. For he can only be the head of creation, on the condition
that the self-revealing God dwell and be central in him ; — in-
deed, a man of such universal susceptibility cannot be under-
stfod, save on the supposition that the Logos prepared him as
aa: adequate place for His incarnation. Christ (tould not be the
HEADSHIP OF CHRIST. 235
head of the world if He were merely the summing up of its
multiplicity, or the sum of its powers ; that would be either a
monstrous or a merely nominalistic unity ; nay more, inasmuch
as the world by itself, as to its best being, is merely susceptibility
to God, that would not declare its completion, for completion
consists in the filling of such susceptibility. He does, however,
actually bind them together, because in Him is also a higher
princi])le than the world, a principle which has the power of
reaching out beyond, of determining, of animating and of
uniting all the beings of the world. Even the natural Avorld is
an unity, solely because there is indissolubly united with it a
principle which stands above and comprises it within itself, to
wit, the divine Logos as world-forming and world-sustaining,
who is the vehicle and representative of its eternal idea. Its
principle of unity is supramundane, that is, divine ; and yet
also actually mundane, belonging to the world in its present
shape (Col. i. 13 ff.). The world of humanity and spirits also
constitutes a real unity solely in virtue of the circumstance
that over its essence, which consists in free susceptibihty to
God, there stands the personal and universal divine principle,
and that this principle, whilst standing over, is also turned
towards, nay more, belongs to it, so far as it is the true Koa/no'i,
so that without it, it cannot at all be conceived as a com])leted
and filled unity. The cosmical seat of the central susceptibility
to God represents, therefore, the seat of the possibility of the
real unity and completion of the world ; but the actuality thereof
is derived from a higher than a merely cosmical principle, to
wit, from the central, that is, personal self-communication of
God. Owing, however, to the susceptibility to God imparted
to the world, and by which it appropriates these self-communi-
cations to itself, these communications do not remain a foreign
thing; they become, on the contrary, the constitutive factor,
which belongs to the world itself as to its divine idea. For the
idea of the world, as it stands eternally before God, is not ter-
minated and completed with susceptibility to God; but, according
to His unfathomable gracious will, includes also that this suscep-
tibility be absolutely filled in itself; and at the point where the
central fulfilment corresponding to this central susceptibility
takes place, the world too, which as merely susceptible to God,
or even sinful, was outside of God, entered into the circle of
236 THIRD PERIOD.
the divine life, into the life of the triune God Himself ; even
as the immanent divine life explicated itself here to a cosmical
life. But although, by the filling of the human susceptibility,
the divine is appropriated to humanity in such a manner that
this man also acquires " power over God," may, and does, count
the divine part of himself ; God does not lose Himself, but in
that He comes into absolute possession of this man, and reckons
Him part of Himself, He retains possession of, and power over,
Himself. The Son or Logos is not the world, but its divine
principle, which brought a world to pass, not by a necessity of
nature, but according to the inner law of love, which is at the
same time the law of freedom. He is also not the ideal world,
nor the image of the world in God, but primarily its principle.
Still, we are compelled to say that the world, both according to
its idea and according to the idea of the will of the Logos, in
other words, the divine idea relative to the completion of the
world, first arrives at perfection, at realization, through the
incarnation : that consequently, according to His self-communi-
cative will of grace. His humanification, the result of which is
the deification of man, is constituted part of the idea of human-
ity as viewed by the mind of God.
This leads to a further point, which is of decisive importance
both in itself and in a systematical respect — a point by which the
historical in Christ, as required in particular by the fundamental
thought of Lutheranism, is raised to absolute significance,
and is removed from the sphere of contingency. This is the
truth, that the incarnation of God in Christ had not its sole
ground in sin ; but, besides sin, had a deeper, to wit, an eternal
and abiding necessity in the wise and free love of God, so far
as this love willed, in general, the existence of a world which
should be the scene of its perfect revelation, and so far as, con-
sequently, the world is marj^ed by susceptibility to, and need of,
this revelation. All that is necessary to secure the recognition
of this truth by the simplest Christian consciousness, is the re-
membrance that Christianity is the perfect religion, the religion
absolutely, the eternal Gospel ; and that for this religion Christ
is the centre, without which it cannot be at all thought. Whoso
maintains that Adam might have become perfect even without
Christ, inasmuch as no one can deem it possible to conceive of
perfection without the perfect religion, maintains, either con-
GROUND OF INCARNATION. 287
sciously or unconsciously, the possibility of two absolute religions,
one v.-ithout and one with Christ ; — which is a bare contradiction.
For that it makes an essential difference whether Christ, or onl^
God in general (wliether we designate Him Logos or Holy
Ghost), is the central-point of a religion, no Christian will deny.
Undoubtedly this truth, which, rightly v'ewed, is of the most
thorough significance, is liable to be disfigured in a variety of
ways, as we have had repeated occasion to show in the course of
the previous history. But the arguments against its funda-
mental thought, which have been recently advanced by persons
deserving of consideration, rest either on misunderstanding or
prove the contrary : and only so much must be conceded, that
the necessity of the truth in question will less clearly appear to
theologians who are accustomed to proceed in a predominantly
empirical or anthropological manner, than it must, and actually
does, to those who recognise both the possibility and necessity
of a Christian speculation, that takes the conception of God
for its point of departure. Though it might be shown that
even the former only maintain the purity of the Christian dogma
in the most important points, by acting as though they did really
accept this truth.
In fact, besides the many above mentioned, as Steffens.
Goschel, Baader, the following thinkers also accept the truth .
Nitzsch, Martensen, Liebner, Lange, Rothe, Fischer, Chaly-
basus, Ehrenfeuchter, Schoberlein, Nagelsbach, Kling, A. Petei-
seu, Schmid (Note 35), Ebrard (ii. 95), and many others.
The arguments advanced against it by J. Miiller and Tho-
masius are the following: — Thomasius is of opinion that the in-,
carnation would, on such a supposition, cease to be a free act of
the divine love ; that it would become a necessity of the divine
essence ; nay more, that we should be led to an evolution of God,
by which the world and God would be commingled, and the
difference between the essence of man and God, and the creatural
character of the former, would be denied. No less, if the destin '
to incarnation should be reckoned to human nature from thib
beginning, instead of seeing in it merely a supplementary act of
])ure divine grace, would it be Pelagian. ^ It is difficult, however,
1 "Chriati Person nn<l Tcrk," Bd. i. 1853, pp. ir)9-173, 216 if
Compare Jlocholl, " Boitriigi' z. (J. tleutsch. Thcosopliie," 18f>6, pp
113 fT.
238 THIRD I'ERIOD.
to see why that assertion should put a greater restraint on the free
love of God than Thomasius' assumption of the necessity of the
incarnation after sin. Is the creation, then, not the work of free
divine love ? If so, the completion of creation must also remain
the work of free love, although we cannot conceive that God, in
willing the world, should not also have willed it for perfection.
It is true, an ethical theology will not be able to put a Scotistic
or Calvinistic " liberum arbitrium " in the supreme place ; be-
cause it considers that the highest should be classed, not under
the category of plenipotence, but of wise and holy love. — As
little has that truth anything to do with an identification of the
essence of God and man. It is able to allow of a distinction of
essence, without interfering with the circumstance that, in ac-
cordance with the law of free love, it is precisely the difference
that impels the divine fulness to communicate itself, where
there is susceptibility or need. Such a difference,^ which is the
presupposition of a vital unity, is opposed indeed to identity of
essence, but not to that connectedness of the divine and the
human which is in agreement with the principle of the divine love
and the essence of the human nature created by it. On the con-
trary, we both can and must, in this sense, recognise an essential
unity of God and man through their (distinct but not separate)
..ssence — a (f)vaiKr) eWo-t? ; not merely an unity through hypo-
stasis, will, idiomata, local indwelling, and the like, which is
further removed from identity than the dualistic view, which in
all ages, when it has not become antichnstological, has turned
into identification. So also is the fear of Pelagianism grounded
in pure misunderstanding ; for the opinion is not that humanity
became God-manhood through the immanent development of its
freedom ; nor even that it can at any time whatever have had
actual goodness as a natural advantage, independently of God's
communicating deed. In itself, humanity merely possesses
susceptibility to God, which the Logos found concentrated as
in a centre in the humanity of Christ. But when J. Miiller
supposes •^ that that assertion leads to the supposition of an head,
in which the whole idea of the body has already found realiza-
tion, this affects solely the coarse view of Christ as the unity
of huuiaiiity, according to which He is humanity itself in a col-
1 Div. II. Vol. II. pp. 218 f.
* "Deutsche Zeitschiif t f. chr. Wisseiischaft," etc., 1850, Nr. 40.
THOMASIUS. J. MULLER. 239
lective form, but not the scriptural doctrine above expounded
and when he demands that redemption be considered as th(
focus of the entire system, he cannot surely intend to maintair
that the Triune God also exists solely on account of sin, or that
the world, after the vanquishment of sin, exists solely for re-
demption ; but he, too, must acknowledge that Christianity
has other essential relations besides those to sin and redemption.
He also recognises a perfection which will endure eternally ;
whereas sin is a matter of history in time. Nor will it be neces-
sary to slight the necessity for the incarnation on the side of man,
which lies in the fact of sin, because we find its necessity also
in the need of perfection, or because we assume it to have
been a necessity for God, in so far as, if He willed a perfect
world, He could not omit to will the God-man who is its honour
and crown. The fear lest that assumption should conflict wi*^
Soteriology, and deprive the argument for the necessity of Christ
from the fact of sin of its force, it would seem very possible to
remove. If Christ were necessary in order that imperfection
might be raised to perfection, it follows that He is still more
necessary now that sin has entered the world. Are we not
compelled, in any case, to say that God, inasmuch as He admitted
the possibility of sin, willed also, in the plan of incarnation formed
from eternity, the possibility of redemption through the incarna-
tion, and accordingly arranged the world from the beginning
with a view to this incarnation, at all events as a possibility?
In no way does it follow, further (even if the doctrine in ques-
tion be united with the other, that Christ is the head of human-
ity, which, although defensible enough, is not in itself neces-
sary), that Christ is in the same sense the head of humanity and
of the angels, as He is the head of believers (the Church).
Still more difficult is it to see how, from both together, there
should result the danger, that Christ, as the head of humanity,
must necessarily be constantly pouring out the Holy Ghost on
humanity, thus rendering atonement unnecessary, and substi-
tuting a magical process in the place of faith. In general, we
may say that the idea of the Head, in our view, by no means
involves representations of a magical substitution of Christ for
us. We are of opinion, however, that this idea is the indispens-
nble support of a true and ethical conce])ti()n of substitution;^
' Kotlio, "Elhik" ii. i)i\ 280 f.
240 THIRD PERIOD.
that, without it, tlie work of atonement must wear tne appear*
ance of something external, or even arbitrary. Herein is by no
means involved a catholicizing doctrine of compensation ; for it
is very compatible therewith that every individual by himself
should be destined to become, ethically and religiously, a perfect
God-man, and that this should only be able to be attained in an
individual form ; in other words, that man can only attain his
true essence when he takes up the articulate position in the
totality of the true organism of humanity to which his indivi-
duality predetermined him.
This objection, however, leads us to consider those argu-
ments against the above doctrine, which, when more carefully
examined, turn into arguments in its favour. Thus Thomasius
says: — On such a view, the setting forth of pure humanity
would be the purpose of the incarnation. If he mean that this
must then be its exclusive aim, after the remarks made above,
he is clearly in error. But if his opinion be that this pur-
pose is to be excluded, and that it can only be excluded by
adopting the opposed assumption, this would be a proof against
the latter, and would show that such an assumption admits
merely of an organon of the deity, of a theophany, not of a
true and veritable humanity. J. Miiller advances the same
objection in a still more precise form, when he gives expression
to the fear that, in our view, Christ woidd be constituted an end
in Himself, and something epideictical, instead of being a mere
means. We answer, — if He were not also an end in Himself,
He could not have been the (ethical) means, which He is sup-
posed to be and is. Even supposing no man allowed himself
to be redeemed, it would be of value that in him a personality
capable of redeeming made His appearance. It is of value in
itself ; and for this reason its surrender is of value for the world,
and able to be substitutionary. But even J. Miiller also is
compelled to acknowledge that Christ is an end in Himself, like
every man, when he allows that He continues to exist after
having redeemed humanity ; whereas that which owes its exist-
ence solely to the circumstance that it is a means, has no right to
continue to exist when the end for which the means was devised
has been attained. If we do not attribute to Christ a signifi-
cance for humanity reaching out beyond the time of sin, Christ
would become superfluous after the accomplishment of the work
THOMASIUS. J. MULI.ER. 241
of i-edemption ; He would owe His existence entirely to the
circumstance that " intransitoriness belongs to the truth of hu-
man being ; " and in the age of perfection, we should enter
into an essentially different religion, a religion which is no more
constantly mediated through Him : unless, indeed, we were
to say that even now eternal life does not proceed forth from
Him, and that we merely owe to Him the negative element of
redemption, — which, however, cannot be separated from the
positive. When, further, botli J. Miiller and Thomasius hint
that, apart from the fall, there would have been no separation
into first and second creation, no antagonism whatever between
the commencing nature of man and the Uvevfia, it harmonizes
very badly with Paul's doctrine of the first Adam (1 Cor. xv.),
who is not yet Trvev/xariKo^i, but '^^oiKO'i and -^v^V ^taaa, Avhereas
the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, was for the first time
TTvevfiarLKO'; or the irvevfia. Paul distinguishes determinatelv
between the first and second creation by his important doctrine
of the two Adams ; and, indeed, also apart from sin ; for he
speaks of the imperfection and non-pneumatical nature of the
first Adam without reference to sin. But perhaps Adam would
have arrived at perfection, by an immanent development of his
freedom, and independently of an external revelation, if he had
not sinned ? According to Paul, Adam was imperfect, even if
he had not sinned ; and he does not say that he could have at-
tained to perfection without the Trvev^a. It will surely be con-
ceded, that if there was a need at all for a revelation apart
from sin, the revelation must needs advance on to the apex of
its perfection in the incarnation of God. But perhaps the need
of an external revelation is grounded solely in sin ? Perha})s
Adam would have become a participator in the Pneuma oi
the Logos without Christ, by a nonnal, inner development ;
nor would humanity in this way have come short, because Adam
(Thomasius i. 220), as its natural head, would then have been
the unity in which it is one, especially as the " Patriarch Adam"
would have been glorified by sanctity into spiritual life, and
would thus liave experienced a species of " comnmnicatio idio-
matum ? " Tliomasius ventures to give utterance to the latter
idea ; J. ^[uller assumes the former. But unless we assume,
with J. Miiller's jire-existentianism (which on its part involves
quite peculiar Christologicul diHiculties), that human nature
P. 2. — VOL. III. u
242 THIRD PERIOD.
had at the beginning an entirely different organization from
its present one, to wit, a purely spiritual one, we must abide by
the principle that revelation is communicated through objective
media, and not in a purely inward manner ; and that this arises
from the essence of man (even independently of sin), whose
development depends in general on stimulus from without.
Consequently, the denial of that truth from this side threatens
to land us in a spiritualistic view of the essence of man.
Thomasius, however, who fancies he sees a danger of Pela-
gianism, or of the commixture of things that do not belong to
each other, where no such danger exists, will have to take care,
with his view of Adam, not to overlook this danger where it
does actually exist. For, to suppose that Adam was properly
determined by God to supply Christ's place in humanity, and
to occupy the position which (apart from the work of re-
demption) Christ occupies, is to confound in a dangerous man-
ner the distinction between the first creation, with its Adam,
and the second. It is true Thomasius (similarly Hofmann)
urges further, that, apart from sin, the Logos would have been
the inner bond of unity, as the " Patriarch Adam " was the
external one. But in view of that which, even in his opinion,
is given to us in Christ, he cannot conceal from himself that
a great discrepancy would then have remained between the
inner unity through the Logos and the real unity through
Adam ; and that in Christ's person the unity exists in an in-
finitely more intensive and real form, because in Him the inner
and the reality are co-extensive.^ If now it must without
doubt be allowed to be a great good that the unity of humanity
manifests itself in the Person of Christ quite differently from
what it could ever have manifested itself in Adam (unless we
should make Adam the God-man, or regard the God-man as a
mere God-filled man), wdiat could hinder God from intending
for humanity from the beginning, and agreeably to its original
idea, this unity, which it is professed was first intended for it
afterwards ; especially as the susceptibility must have been
already included in that original conception of humanity?
How could God have formed the resolve, or willed, prior to sin,
that that full susceptibility of humanity to the Logos, which
He certainly must have given to it, should remain unfulfilled, if,
' Tliomasiiis sliows that he had an iiikhng of this in i. 220.
NECESSITY OF THE INCARNATION. 243
as even Tliomasius himself does not deny, other thuigs besides
redemption have been conferred on humanity through the God-
man 1 Why should His love not have willed the revelation of
itself as absolute, and have preferred that which was relatively
imperfect? On Tliomasius' view, it is impossible to escape
from all these difficulties, unless we are prepared for a still
further step. J. Miiller knows well that, if it be conceded that
humanity was originally willed by God as an organism, we
cannot any longer deny that it is willed with a perfect head,
that is, with the God-man ; but he adopts the logical course of
denying that original divine idea of humanity. Tliomasius, on
the contrary, tries ever again to conceive humanity as an or-
ganism ; nor is he disposed idealistically to undervalue the out-
ward realization and representation of the point of unity of
humanity : he conceives humanity as a kind, the Chui'ch as an
organism. But, as we have shown, his Christology, which re-
presents precisely the head as non-necessary, harmonizes badly
therewith. The only place for such a denial is in a system which
teaches that humanity originally existed in atomistic separation,
and that the individuals are perfectly independent of each other,
that is, in the system which J. Miiller consistently carries out to
the ])()int of pre-existentianism. If, on the contrary, as Thoma-
sius maintains, humanity is to be conceived as an organism whose
individualities remain permanently different, the perfection
Avhich accrues to the organism through an eternally abiding
head must also be allowed to have been contained in the eternal
idea of humanity as it stood before God. Yet even J. Miiller,
with his view, will not be able to escape the following alterna-
tive : — if in the thought of the creation of humanity all men
are thought, and Christ also is a true man, it follows that He
also was included in the thought of creation, and not merely first
in the thought of redemption ; which would be the concession
of that which we assert. To deny the former, would be either
to represent Christ, not as an actual man like others, but as a
theophany ; or to say, that the thought of creation did not in-
clude a fixed number of human personalities, which togetlur
were destined to form a whole; but that, by humanity as it
stood before God, we are to understand a diffuse and unlimited
multiplicity. The former, J. Miiller cannot intend ; the huter
would not liarnionizc with the strictly teleolon;ical tendency
244 THIRD PERIOD.
which otherwise diaracterizes all his thinking ; it would lower
the value of the individual personality, and leave the interest
of reason unsatisfied, which is directed towards a wise tele-
ological unity. — Further, even J. Midler will neither be able
nor willing to deny that the perfected continue eternally dif-
ferent from each other : their difference, however, will consist
in the difference of their individualities, and in their becom-
ing that which they were originally intended to be, accord-
ing to the divine conception and will ; — for what else can
the moral task be, than that every individuality morally repro-
duce itself in agreement with the divine Idea which posited
it, and thus by willing realize that idea ? On this supposi-
tion, however, J. Midler is laid under the necessity of thinking
humanity according to the divine idea of it, in order that
its unity may be preserved in the multiplicity, not as a mere
scattered multitude of men, but as an organism, whose mem-
bers complement each other and form an unity through a
real head. For it is impossible that the unity of men should
be their deed alone, the sole product of th.eir loving inter-
course, without the participation of the creating and perfected
God. They wish, indeed, to regard Christ as the all-suflScient
Mediator, but proceed as though His functions had become
unnecessary, and had passed away with the work of redemption.
This, however, would be nothing less than to say, — if we are
once reconciled, the positive life full of substance is ours of itself,
independently of a continuous act of Christ, the eternal High
Priest and King ; and thus everything that Christ gives, would
be merely an unloosing of powers present from the beginning,
and not a filling of the initiatory susceptibility. As, therefore,
in relation to humanity, the ultimate ground of the difference
reduces itself to the question : — Is humanity willed by God as
an organism, and therefore with a head in which the unity
is as realiter realized as the permanent difference of the indivi-
duals ? or, is humanity willed to be a mere diffuse mass of beings,
of indeterminate number and nature, whose duty it is, by
their own acts of love, to produce the real unity out of the same
spirit "? So also in regard to the individual, the difference re-
duces itself in the last instance to the question : — Is humanity,
as to its original essence, merely free 8uscei)tibility for the good,
for (iod and for His revelation : or is it t(» be conceived as
NECESSITY OF THE INCARNATION. 245
fieedom capable of producing the good out of itself ?- -Now, so
certainly as that this free susceptibility is destined to be filled
and to receive the good for its own, even so far is it from
corresponding to the position of a creature to suppose it possible
for the freedom of man to be perfected without divine self-
communication. The only conception we can form of the union
between God and humanity, which is the end of religion, is,
that the highest act of freedom, in relation to the divine, con-
sists in its allowing itself to be determined by God and His
revelation, to be filled with power and eternal life. — Only on
condition of recognising that truth, can the ethical character of
faith also be strictly maintained. For unless we acknowledge
that our nature, as willed by God, is destined for Christ, and
drawn towards Him by its very essence, we cannot speak of an
universal human duty to believe in Christ, that is, of a duty to
believe in this individual person, indicated by human nature
and by the human conscience (as distinguished from merely
believing His word, or, after a Nestorian manner, the divine in
Him ; but the duty to believe in Him as the God-man). He
is not merely a vehicle of the word of God, like jSIoses and the
prophets ; but in the unity and entirety of His person, conse-
quently also as man. He is the being to which attaches an
universal and metaphysical significance for all men, yea, for all
spirits. Only on this supposition, can we understand how that
which necessarily holds true of all sin, holds true also of unbelief
in Christ, that is, that it contradicts, not merely some positive
command, but our own essential nature : only thus is it possible,
that the faith which brings us into connection with this man
should be the performance of a moral duty of an universal
human kind; that, therefore, the law of nature should har-
monize inwardly with the 1/0/1.09 TriVrea)?, and that the act of
faith should be in the true sense a free deed, and not in the
last instance an arbitrary or a merely legal act. For this
reason also do we read, " Judgment is committed to the Son,
because He is the Son of man." Even our redemption dei)ends
on our believing, not merely in the Logos, but in Christ;^ and
this would be idolatry, if the humanity of Christ were not also
included in the metaphysical significance of this person. We
cannot, therefore, believe in Him as a redeeming person, with-
ScL' the passage quototl from Sclimiil in Note 35.
246 THIRD PEKIOD.
out also believing in Him as the perfecting person, nay more,
Avithout believing that the perfection of humanity was first set
forth in Him. This is at the same time the point at which it
may be clearly seen, that unless the truth in question be recog-
nised, it is impossible to advance beyond the antagonism between
Rationalism and Supernaturalism, between the first and second
creation. For the entrance of the God- man into the order of the
world and the sphere of religion retains otherwise the character
of a something positive which is external to, and accidental for,
the original plan of the world. The order of the world and the
religion based on Christ (if they are not to be regarded as
transitoiy in relation to the centre of Christianity, which lies in
the Person of Christ, and not merely in the work of redemption)
fall, apart from that truth, into so irreconcilable conflict with
the unity of the divine plan of the world which is required by
reason and the Christian consciousness, that Christianity must
give up the claim to be the absolute religion, and theology the
possibility of a connected systematic Christian view of the
Avorld.^ Only one way of escape would then remain for theo-
logy, and that would bring about a conflict with the moral
consciousness. This would be the way, with Schleiermacher, to
say, tliat in the original plan of the world sin was ordered to-
gether with redemption, and that in this sense the first creation
was necessarily sinful, though destined to be redeemed by the
second. When the Larger Lutheran Catechism, in a similar
manner (p. 503), says, — "ob id ipsum nos creavit ut nos re-
dimeret et sanctificaret ; — neque enim unquam eo propriis
viribus pervenire possemus, ut patris favorem ac gratiam cog-
noscerenius, nisi per Jesum Christum dominum nostrum, qui
patemi animi erga nos speculum est ;" it is an endeavour to
give utterance to the pure Christian consciousness, which cannot
suffer Christ to be regarded as a person of merely accidental
^ This is recognised even by Philippi, in his way (see his " Kirchl.
Glaubenslehre " i. p. 20) ; however much he may in other respects mis-
understand or incorrectly explain the thought with which we are concerned
in that truth. Philippi also, in his way, shows that we can only deny it
at the price either, after the example of Rationalism, of regarding the God-
manhood as essentially non-necessary for humanity, or, like the old Super-
naturalism, the God-manhood ; in other words, at the price either of
Ebionism or Docetism. Philippi's work on the active obedience of Christ
takes the latter side. (See Div. II. Vol. II. Isote 42.)
NECESSITY OF THE INCARNATION. 247
and momentary significance for piety. If, however, as is un-
avoidable, we give up the idea of the necessity of sin, it will be
impossible to find the satisfaction of our scientific and religious
interest save in that truth ; — a truth which A. Osiander rejected,
not for its own sake, but because of the faulty form in which it
was presented, as indeed we may see from the circumstance that
the " Formula Concordias " does not repudiate it itself. For
did not Brentz, among others, give in his adherence to it ? (See
Div. II. Vol. II. pp. 182 fe.)
Everything concentrates itself here, in the last instance, in
the question ; — Whether the sole point of importance in the
Cin'istian religion is the impersonal, the as it were thinglike
(dinglich) " meritum Christi;" or primarily and permanently the
person itself, — the " meritum," however, through the person, —
and that as a divine-human unity, not as a mere theophany,
not as a mere organ.^ The tendency of the Lutheran Christo-
logy is primarily to lay stress on the Person of Christ (see Div.
II. Vol. II. p. 121) : the very glorification of the body and of
nature, of which even Adam stood in need, it takes pleasure,
especially at the present day, in bringing into connection, not
merely with the Logos, but with Christ's person and divine-
luiman essence as bestowed on us in the Holy Supper. How
far from harmonizing therewith is an opinion which compels
those who entertain it to deny that from the very beginning
Christ Avas reckoned upon for the perfecting of our nature and
person ; which rather, on the contrary, supposes that the same
glorification would have been attained through the X0709
aaapKo<;, and by the immanent development of freedom ! But
this notion is also an ernpti/ abstraction. As Christians, we
know that we have and shall retain our perfection in Christ;
and that this is from eternity the decree of God. "\Miat interest
then can impel us to indulge in the arbitrary, abstract dream of
a perfection rent asunder from Christ, and brought about by
the mere Logos ; and to rob God of the oeconomically distinct
triuitarian revelation, without which it is as impossible to con-
^ The opposed view bears a Sabellian cliaracter, in so far as, rcgardinfr
Christ as a mere means, after the redemption of all who believe has been
accomplished, it retains a completely useless, dispensable person, which
Pabellianism then, with {greater consistency, allows entirely to disappear.
It is connected also with the la(;k of development of Christian cschatology.
248 THIRD rEHIOD.
ceive the good and system of the world as an unity, as to con-
ceive the loving self-revelation of God to the world to be com-
plete and perfect '^ But finally, by denying that truth, we
infringe also on the honour of Christ. When Paul, in Col. i,
15—17, says that all things were created for and by the love of
the Son of God, no one will be able to deny that he regards this
Son and His honour as the end of the completion of things even
in creation. But he must have deemed the Son of God's love
as He actually will be and is at the end, consequently as God-
man, to be this aim ; for if Paul did not speak of the purpose as
it will be actually realized at the end, and if the humanity which
Christ retains is not included in that picture of the final goal of
the world which hovered before Paul's mind, it would be not
merely abstract, but Nestorian. The Apostle held the Son of
God's love to be the end and aim in the form in which He exists
at the end, to wit, as God-man. He will not be the goal again
at the end merely as that which He was already in the beginning.
It is true, if we were to conceive of Christ as a mere act of God,
this act would be a mere means ; He is, however, the pei'sonal
unity of God and of man.
This leads us to the last point, which is at the same time the
most difficult.
III. How are we to conceive the personal unity of God and
man ? Or, inasmuch as neither the humanity nor the deity of
Christ may be conceived to be impersonal, because it would be
incompatible with the truth and completeness of either of the
two aspects, how do divine and human personality agree in
Christ ? Were the Ego something particular by itself, separate
from the essence or the nature, the problem would be insoluble,
especially if the natures must be held to differ essentially from, and
did not rather stand in an inward relation to, each other, through
the very features which discriminate them. The latter error has
been overcome. But even the E<to is nothino; else than the divine
and the human nature as self-knowing and self-willing. If now
these are inwardly related to each other even in themselves, they
will also be capable of combining to form an unity as self-knowing
and self-willing. It is therefore not merely possible, but neces-
sary, that the consequence of the indissoluble unio between God
;ind man should be, that this man, in knowing and willing him-
THE PERSONAL UNIO. 249
self, knows himself as the central susceptibility, who has become
absolutely filled with that for which he possessed the suscepti-
bility, and possesses that fulness as his own. Thus does the
man who is endowed with this susceptibility know, not only
himself, but also the Logos as pertaining to his own being, as a
determination of himself, as the " complementum" of the full
conception of himself, or as the other aspect of his idea, which
has become his own property. In precisely the same manner
does the Logos, in power of His love, know humanity as a deter-
mination of Himself, to give which to Himself there was in Him
the eternal possibility and will. Whether, therefore, we take
our start with the Logos or with man, we find that the self-con-
sciousness (and volition) of each includes the other momentum
in itself as a determination of itself. What, consequently, is
present on both sides, is nothing but the divine-human conscious-
ness, one and the same, which is neither a merely human con-
sciousness of the Logos, nor a merely divine consciousness of
man, but a divine-human consciousness of both, that is, as both
actually exist, to wit, as united ; consequently, divine-human
consciousness and volition.
That in the state of exaltation Christ is absolutely complete
God-man ; that God and man are absolutely united in Him (nay
more, that so long as there was self-consciousness in Jesus, there
was also a divine-human consciousness, and so forth), — on this
point the evangelical theologians of the present day are sub-
stantially agreed. The main point, to wit, the image of the
exalted God-man as an unity, as required by the needs of the in-
dividual believer and of the worshipping Church, is thus secured.
For both have to do with the living, exalted Lord. But even
the knowledge of the earthly God-man and His growth has not
merely scientific, but also religious interest. For the image of
the exalted Lord is based on that of the historical.
In relation also to the earthly God-manhood of Christ, as
we have observed, not merely is the principle that He must
have undergone a true growth universally recognised ; but theo-
logians also are pretty generally agreed in the opinion, that if
the unity of the divine-humaji life during the period of Christ's
earthly existence is to be maintained, the /ceWo-t? must be much
more completely carried out. (Note 36.) Seeing that, as all
allow, a man who is still undergoing development and growth
250 THIRD TERIOD.
cannot form a personal unity with the Logos as absolutely self-
conscious and actual, especially so long as the man has not even
arrived at self-consciousness ; and seeing that the idea of true
growth does not permit of the adoption of the old expedient of
constituting an unity by representing human natui'e as abso-
lutely raised above itself from the very beginning ; we have no
alternative but to assume, that in some way or other the Logos
limited Himself for His being and activity in this man, so long
as the same was still undergoing growth. The divine, there-
fore, which or so far as it was not yet fully appropriated, owing
to the fact of the humanity undergoing a true growth, especially
because of its embryonic beginning, did not become man from
the very commencement, and certainly did not form a constitu-
tive factor of the initiatory result. The Logos put a limit on
His self-communication till human susceptibility had attained
more complete development ; in such a manner, indeed, that
every stage of Christ s existence was divine-human, and that
there was never anything human in Christ which was not appro-
priated by the Logos, and which had not appropriated the Logos,
so far as the divine-human perfection at each stage required and
allowed of it.
Important diiferences, however, are still observable here.
The one maintain that this limitation of the Logos in Jesus is
to be conceived as a rooted self-depotentiation in love, as con-
sisting in a reduction of His being to the point of adequacy to
the embryonic life of a child of man, to the end that He might
gradually arise out of the self-given form of unconsciousness,
and in unity with man, or divine-humanly, again become con-
scious, again acquire His actuality in and outside of Himself.
(Note 37.) On the only other possible view, we can merely
speak of a limitation of the self-communication of the Logos to
humanity, not of a lessening or reduction of the Logos Himself.
According to this view, the being and actuality (the inner and
the cosmical) of the Logos remained unchanged ; and even this
man possessed the being and actuality of the Logos as his own
property in virtue of the indissoluble union established from the
beginning, merely so far as was compatible with the truth of
Imman growth. Fortius very reason, the eternal personality of
the Logos did not immediately, and ere there was an human con-
sciousness, become divmc-humcai (although the being and action
EXINANITION OF THE LOGOS. 251
of the Logos are and remain personal). The Logos, who, at tlie
beginning, qua person or self-consciousness did not yet commu-
nicate Himself, remained in and by Himself (that is, He rested
relativeli/,^ and restricted His self-communication) in so far as
humanity lacked the ability to receive Him. On this \'iew, the
object of the volition of the Logos is, in the first instance, solely
the production of a divnne-human nature, not a divine-human
person. (Nor, in fact, does the former view bring out anything
more for Christ at the beginning ; the only difference is, that it
supposes itself to be able to say that the Logos Himself also, for
Himself, ceased for a time to exist as a self-conscious person,
and was, consequently, merely divine nature.) According to the
second view, the Logos so determines His nature in the first
instance, as that through His union with an human nature, an
ayiov, a holy nature, which ci^n be called the Son of God, shall
be brought into existence;^ and, united with Jesus, the Logos
knows and wills henceforth all the determinations of this man
as pertaining also to Himself.
The first view represents as it were everj'thing superfluous,
everything that could not yet find room in humanity, as so long
either suppressed or renounced by the Logos,^ till humanity
became sufficiently susceptible, supposing that in this way
justice is done to the divine-human unity : — the second ^^ew,
on the other hand, represents the Logos in Christ as personal,
but the union as not completed accomplished until the person-
ality of the Logos also became div'me-human, through the
coming into existence of an human consciousness able to be
appropriated, and able also itself to appropriate.
^ See above, Div. I. Vol. I., p. 320.
2 Martensen's Dogmatik, pp. 315 f. The neuter uyiov, in Luke i. 35,
marks the impersonal: see Schmid's "Bibl. Theol.," Th. i, 40. Schb-
berlein's " Die Grundlehren des Ileils," p. 65 : — " His divine trinitarian
being and rule underwent no interruption, notwithstanding His self-exiu-
anition. Love remains elevated in all its humiliation. Whilst really par-
ticipating in the life of the object beloved, it preserves the specific and
distinctive character of its own nature."
^ Be it represented as a depositing thereof in the Father, or as a Con-
tractio of the Logos, or as a negation of actuality, as a self-reduction to
]K»tentiality, the Kivuaig must, on this view, be deemed to extend also to
the self-consciousness of tlic Logos ; for otherwise it Avould answer no pur-
poFC wliatcver, inasmuch as man is not self-conscious at first.
252 THIRD PERIOD.
Which of these two views is most in harmony with the
common doctrine of the Church, must be clear from the history
of the dogma.^ That the former is opposed to the aTjoeTrTO/?,
dvaWotcoTW'i, of the Symbol of Chalcedon, no artifices can
either conceal or change. For it is not very consistent, in the
doctrine of God, to describe self-consciousness and inner actu-
ality as pertaining to the essence of God, but to forget this
same thing in Christology, and to fancy that, without detri-
ment to or alteration of His essence, the Logos can be stripped
by Himself of self-consciousness. As respects the keeping pure
of the conception of God, Theopaschitism is not better; nay
more, as regards the divine essence, it is in no respect different
from the Patripassianism rejected by the Church because of its
ethnical savour. It is well known that both branches of the
Evangelical Church have repudiated this Theopaschitism in
their confessions, because they deemed it to involve an abolition
of the Trinity and Subordinatianism.^ We cannot say, therefore,
either that it is Reformed or that it is Lutheran. This view,
however, is still more completely contradictory of the Lutheran
doctrine as distinguished from the Reformed, in so far as the
Lutheran Christology has always attached prime importance to
the " Majestas " of the humanity of Christ ; whereas here, so far
is this point from being made one of importance, that the " Ma-
jestas" even of the Son of God, and His government of the world,
are supposed to have been suspended during the period of Christ's
earthly existence.^ The old Reformed Christology, on the con-
trary, wdiose main object was to avoid confounding God and
1 Div. I. Vol. II. 84, 85, 353 ff., 365 ff., 399 £f.; Div. II. Vol. I. 16, 17,
89-102, especially pp. 95 ff.
2 F. C. p. 612. Compare Athan. Symbol. § 33, i. 978, Anra. ; Can.
11, 12, of the Synod of Firmium.
2 From which the old Lutheran dogmaticians are so infinitely far re-
moved, that even where, out of regard to the reality of the " Exinauitio,"
they deny to the humanity "Majestas" on earth, they still persist in
maintaining that the Logos, who was united with such humanity, continued
unchanged in Himself, and governed the world omuipresently ; that, con-
sequently, the existence of a divine consciousness and volition which were
not yet the consciousness of the man, must be assumed during the period
of growth. Here, too, the " Exinauitio " is represented as the presupposi-
tion of the incarnation ; — a course commonly enough adopted by the Re-
formed theologians, whereas Lutherans represented the incarnation as
coming first. Compare ')ehler I. c. (see Note 37).
RECENT THEOPASCHiriSM. 253
the creature, and allowing the divine " Majestas " to be partici-
pated in by the latter, was more inclined than the Lutheran
rather to heighten the supreme " liberum arbitrium " or " bene-
l>lacitum " of God, in order that the possibility might lie in His
absolute power, not indeed of raising the creature to absolute
unity with Himself, but certainly of lowering Himself for a
time. Indeed, the Lutheran dogmaticians have not infre-
quently evinced a disposition to find theopaschitic thoughts in
the " inclinatio " of the Logos to humanity, taught by the Re-
formed Church.^
It will be difficult also to avoid saying, that like as the old
Patripassianism and Theopaschitism mth which the Fathers of
the third and fourth centuries, and especially Athanasius,^ had
to do battle, followed on the heels of Gnosticism, and were
inwardly connected with the ethnical and pantheistic shaking
of the absoluteness of the conception of God; so the favour
with which modern Theopaschitism is for the moment regarded
by some, is the direct fruit of the philosophical movements
which we have just left behind. It is sure, however, not to be
lasting; for it neitlier explains anything, nor is really concerned
about the Keva)a-i<; : on the contrary, it involves in greater and
more insoluble difficulties than those which were intended to be
avoided : — for which reason, many who adopt it do so in such a
way as at the same time to abolish it again.
The truth of the Kev(oai<; of the Logos Himself is the inner,
sympathetic and compassionate love which stirred in Him in
eternity, in virtue of which He condescends to the creatures,
who stand in need, and are susceptible of Him, to the end that
He may know and possess what they possess as His own; but
especially to the end that He may communicate His own
fulness. But precisely the Kev(oai<; of self-depotentiation fails to
2>erform that at xchich it aims. For if the Logos, professedly in
love, has given up His eternal, self-conscious being, where is
His love durinix that time? Love without self-consciousness is
an impossibilty. Nay more : M^hat necessity can there be for the
eternal Logos accomplishing this unethical sacrifice of Himself^
' Ebrard ii. 204 ff., 142 ff. Schneckciib., in his "Vergl. Darstellung.
etc.," ii. 263 f., speaks of finding the siiino in Turretine. See above, Div
I. Vol. II. pp. 281 fF., 292.
•' See Div. I. Vol. II., 49 ff., 149 ff., 354.
254 THIRD PERIOD.
Is anything effected in this way for humanity which could not
be effected without this sacrifice? Is it impossible for the
Logos to acquire power over the central susceptibility of
humanity which He finds in Jesus, and to belong to it in an
unique manner, save by ceasing to stand in any actual rela-
tion to others? or save by reducing Himself to a level of
equality with this man ? If the above is correct, the central
feature of His entire relation to other beings than man, is that
all these beings stand related to this man, who is destined to be
the personal, divine-human centre of the world. On the con-
trary, if we were to accept this depotentiation, then, so long as
the personality of the Logos was extinguished, the love of the
Logos would hold no personal relation, not even to Jesus, and
we should have none of His ever renewed condescending grace,
which posits and wills this human as its own, until, with the
development of the man to whom He united Plimself, His
personal self-consciousness was again re-established. Nay more,
on such a supposition the incarnation of the Logos is of no
advantage whatever to humanity. It does not allow of the Logos
communicating Himself in ever increasing measure, and in such
a manner as to direct the development of the man assumed.
For if the Logos were to be supposed, after His depotentiation,
to have still hovered over the God-man, in order to direct the
development of the man Jesus (or, perhaps, the restoration of
the Logos to Himself?), the theory would be renounced, and
that Kevcoai'i, which was to be an expression of the deepest love,
would never have taken place. On the contrary, the Logos
" over the line " (" iiber der Linie ") would have still kept
Himself back in His absolute being and self-consciousness ; —
indeed, if He were actually God, this could not be otherwise.
Consequently, the supposition of a self-depotentiation of the
liOgos, instead of allowing the growing humanity to derive
advantage from the incarnation of the Logos, and to receive an
actual communication of His fulness, renders it necessary to
look out for another principle than the Logos, to wit, the Holy
Ghost, to conduct the growth of the God-man (so, for example,
with Thomasius and Ilofmann). In consequence hereof, this
theory acquires a resemblance to the Christology of the Re-
formed Church, in that it supplies the place of the " Commuiii-
catio idiomatum" of the Logos, l)y the influence of the Holy
RECENT THEOPASCHITISM. 255
Gliost on this man. The Holy Ghost could not then any lonfer
be said to be sent by, and to proceed forth from, the Logos (as,
at ail events, the Christologiaus of the Reformed Church teach) ;
for otherwise His KevcoaL<; would be a mere seeming : but the
Holy Ghost worked on this unity apart from the Logos, worked
at the same time on the depotentiated Logos. But whether the
Spirit were supposed to work in, or merely on, Jesus, we should
in any case have a view bearing a surprising resemblance to
the Ebionitic doctrine of the growth of Christ ; and the more
so, as the gradual restoration of the Logos to Pliraself would
also then be dependent on the development of Jesus and the
influence of the Spirit.
What purpose then is to be served by all this machinery of
a self-iowering of the Logos to the rank of a potence, if, as we
have shown, in relation to that w^hich such participation is in-
tended to accomplish, — to wit, the self-communication of the
Logos in His fulness, which the Lutheran Christologians in
])articular deemed to be the principal matter, — the theory, so far
from explaining and rendering it intelligible, only excludes its
possibility for the entire period of growth? It does not even,
with its K6V(oat<i, help the question of the unity of the divine and
human, unless we should say that the depotentiation was in
itself incarnation, that is, conversion into an human existence.
This, the strongest form of Theopaschitism, would reduce the
God-man to a theophany, which must necessarily cease of itself
as soon as the human drama had been played out, and the
Logos had been reconverted to Himself. If, however, no con-
version be supposed to have taken place (as by Thomasius),
and yet the Kevcoai'i be assumed for the purpose of the Unio
Tout of regard to which, the assimilation of the two natures
through the Kevwai^ of the Logos is supposed to take place),
we should have nothing but two homogeneous magnitudes in or
alongside of each other : — in no sense could we say that the two
were in vital and intimate fellowship ; still less that they were
in essence related to each other. At first sight, indeed, it mav
appear as though such an adjustment or assimilation of the
natures by means of the self-exinanition of the Logos, fur-
thered to some extent the unity of the God-man ; but a specu-
lative, as well as an ethical and religious examination, shows us
at once that a living unity is as far as possible from being
256 THIRD PERIOD.
brought about by such an adjustment, and that, on the con-
trary, the result arrived at rather resembles a duplication of
one and the same, through which the one or the other is ren-
dered useless. If the essence of the human consists in its being
the form for the divine, and if the Logos emptied Himself to a
mere form, what advantage can accrue to the unity (supposing
the completeness of the humanity not to be denied in connec-
tion therewith) by form being conjoined to form? If, how-
ever, not mere susceptibility, but productive freedom, be con-
ceived as the kernel and essence of man, how can the Logos,
who even during His depotentiation is the principle of freedom,
become one with the human germ, by placing Himself as one
potence of freedom alongside of the other? We see that the
men who have adopted this theory have not sufficiently taken
into consideration that it is precisely the difference, and not the
likeness of the divine and human, that renders it possible for
them to constitute a true unity. If we are resolved to conceive
the human as form, then, in order to the constitution of a true
unity, we must posit the divine as its fulness. If, in accordance
with the scholastic usage of the word Form, we conceive the
human as the material (materia) which the Logos assumes, the
Logos must be described as the animating and formative prin-
ciple. Two modes of viewing the matter which are not at all
so different from each other as might at first sight appear ; for
that which the former represents from the point of view of the
good as being (des seienden Guten), the other regards from the
point of view of the good as actuality (des actuellen Guten),
thus complementing each other. But never can a living unity
be secured by putting the two together, either both as form, or
both as content.
That mythologizing theory of the Kevtoai's of the Logos
which perturbs the conception of God and suspends the Trinity,
is invented for the purpose of securing an unity of the divine-
human life, whicrh shall be absolutely immoveable and complete
from the very beginning. We have seen that, so far from fur-
thering this unity in any degree, it renders it im})ossible. It
leads either to the identification of the divine and the human (if
the former converts itself into the latter), or to giving the two a
jiurely external dead positicm alongside of each other, after the
iiKnincr of Nestoi'ianism. In order to pass out beyond both,
RHCENT THEOPASCHITISM. 257
all that is needful is to acknowledge that there is no ground
whatever why the divine-human unity, which begins with the
"Unio naturarum," and is, it is true, never again dissolved,^
should be conceived as absolutely complete and immoveable
from the beginning. All are agreed that the truth of the
human growth must be presei'ved ; but all movement, all de-
velopment, and all growth, is to be excluded from the unitv.
The one, however, is inseparable from the other. For inas-
much as not all the human organs exist and are fully developed
from the beginning, and the Unio, therefore, so long as thev do
not exist, cannot extend to them (for example, to the human
consciousness) ; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we must say,
that so soon as they do exist, the Unio extends also to them :
it is undeniable that the divine-human unity, and not merely
the humanity, is the subject of increase. Indeed, a more care-
ful consideration of the dea.th of Jesus ought to lead to a re-
cognition of this.^ A true and vital conception is not formed
of the unity in question till we conceive it as undergoing a
constant process, consequently as in motion ; which motion, so
far from being a dissolution of the unity, is rather its constant
and growing reproduction, in connection with which both the
divine and human factors have functions to discharo;e. For if
the union is to become ever more all-sided and complete, the
volition of man is as necessary a?s the will of the Logos. It is
clear, without further explanation, that room is thus for the
first time made for an ethico-religious development of this man,
on the basis of the divine-human unity which already lies in
his holy nature.^ Now, as, during the period of the severe
'JVinitarian struggles, a decisive step was taken in advance,
when Oritren tauijht the Church to conceive of the veneration
of the Son, not as a thing which was completed once for all,
but as perennial ; so also does light appear to have been for the
' We liave seen above that in the age of the Reformation attention
was directed, above all, to the union of the natures. So Luther ; so the
Suabians: see l)iv. II. Vol. II. pp. 79 ff., 178 f. Yvom that time onwards,
tlie hypostasis of the Son, as becoming the property of the man, is no
longer conceived as the orignal bond of unity, as was the ease in the old
Church, but as the rexult of the Unio.
^ See Div. IF. Vol. II. pp. 306 f.
•'' I coincide chiefly here with Martensen — see his " Dopniatik," pp. 322 f.,
331 f. ; and with Kothe— see his " Ethik," ii. 282 f., 2<I0 f.
r. 2. VOL. III. u
258 THIRD PERIOD.
first time thrown on the Christological problem, so far as affects
the earthly life of Christ, when we not merely teach that there
was in general a divine-human growth, but, in ])articular, also
acknowledge that the act of incarnation, or the Unio, and
therefore the unity, was one that went on constantly growing
and reproducing itself on the basis of the being (des Seins) ;
nay more, that will still continue growing so long as the God-
man is not yet completed. At the centre of his being, it is
true, this man is from the very beginning divine-human essence :
but, in the first place, many things are lacking to this person ;
other things in it are still dissolubly united, — for example, the
body is still mortal ; other things are still mutable, without
detriment to its identity. The divine-human articulation, the
bodily and the spiritual eternal organism, of the divine-human
person, needs first to be developed ; and this can only take
place through the continued act of the incarnation of the Logos.
This incarnation may be termed an increasing one, in so far as
through it, on the one hand, an ever higher and richer fulness
becomes actually the property of the man Jesus, and he, on
the other hand, becomes ever more completely the mundane
expression of the eternal Son, the image of God.
We are the more warranted in hoping that these theo^
])aschitic inclinations will be something transitory, as those who
cherish them do not remain true to themselves ; for, on the
contrary, they approximate almost involuntarily ever afresh to
the solution indicated by us, and are accustomed in this way
themselves to retract their doctrine of the Kevcoa-a of the Son.
(Note 38.) Still the theopaschitic Christology will never be
decisively overcome, till the Christian conception of God has
been more purely carried out : and this question thus acquires
much greater significance and breadth. There is no denying that
the Christology of which Zinzendorf may be regarded as the
forerunner, represents a truly religious trait, to wit, the desire
to conceive the divine love as having become as like to, and
intimately united with, us as possible. But it is very possible
for piety to assume too strong a colouring of intimacy with
God ; it then lacks the salt of reverence, and therefore a pure
•ithical character. We can only know the magnitude of the
iiumble love of Christ, in the measure in which we recognise
its exaltedness to be not merely past, but constantly present
CONCLUSION. 259
in it. On that \-iew, the childhood of Jesus must be regarded
as presenting the deepest proof of divine love ; for the conscious
life of the man Christ offered a more adequate form to the
Logos. Consistency would then require the pious mind tc
occupy itself predominantly with the childhood of Jesus, and
to put the ethical age of manhood into the backgi'ound : which
would be merely the evangelical form of that fundamental
tendency which we have so frequently seen characterizing
Koman Catholic Christology in recent times, and wliich threat-
ened to deprive us again of the serious, substantial blessing,
of the manifestation of Christ.^ But a true intermixture of
reverence and childlike confidence requires for its support and
ground, the doctrine, that there cannot be a self-communication
without, at the same time, a self-assertion of the divine ; that
is, that divine love must not be thought apart from divine
righteousness. Holy justice is in God the principle of self-
maintenance."^ On the knowledge and recognition of the divine
righteousness depends not only the conscious vanquishmeut of
the theopaschitic stage of Christology, but also the progress in
the understanding of the office of Christ, particularly of His
atoning work and sufferings. Now, however, as in the age of
the old Gnosis, this knowledge is to a large extent darkened.^
Not till these two factors, which represent, as it were, the
opposite poles of the ethical essence of God, to wit, righteous-
ness and love, have been properly interwoven and blended, can
Pantheism and Deism, the heathenish and Jewish principle in
the doctrine of God, be completely overcome, and a clear
theological basis be gained for a doctrine of justification and
of the atonement.
It is difficult, nay, impossible, to group the main Christolo-
gical differences which still remain at the present time, in
accordance with the antagonism between the Lutheran and
Reformed Churches. The principal questions with which this
age has to do, have grown beyond this antagonism, and cross
each other in a great variety of ways — on the basis, it is true,
1 Compare Div. II. Vol. II. Note 49.
2 Among recent writers, Chalybseus may lay claim to have rendered the
most important services in connection with vhe knowledge of this funda-
mental matter.
K Div I. Vol. I. 120, Note HII, 224, 22G-228, Sib, 31G ; Vol. II. 42.
260 THIRD PERIOD.
of a rich unity and complementing, which have already been
attained. But there is still much to be done. In agreement
with its characteristic essence, the old Reformed Confession
started by laying emphasis on holy righteousness as that which
guards distinctions ; the exaggeration, however, naturally led to
the opposite of that which was intended.^ The same thing holds
true of the Lutheran Confession, which turned its thoughts
more fully, from the very beginning, towards the love and
grace of God.^ Amongst the Lutherans, piety was more
characterized by childlike confidence ; among the Reformed, by
reverence and awe. But notwithstanding fresh attempts to
widen the confessionalistic antagonisms, the aim of all genuinely
theological efforts which are to have a future, must be to bring
about an ever more complete interpenetration of righteousness
and love in the conception of, and of reverence and childlike
confidence in our practical relation to, God.
1 Div. II. Vol. III. 252. ^ Div. II. Vol. II. p. 327 ff., 293-306.
NOTES.
Note 1, page 13.
Spinoza, in Epp. 21, 23, 25, expresses himself to the following
effect regarding Christ : — Christ's sufferings, death, burial, are
to be taken historically ; His resurrection, allegorically. The
element of fact in the latter is reducible, in his view, to the
resurrection of the image of Christ in the mind of the dis-
ciples, that is, to the knowledge of His holiness (veKpol, sinners).
Self-deceived, the disciples took for a truth of the material
world what was merely a spiritual event : a similar experience
fell to the lot of the prophets also, in their visions of a descent
of God, and the like. (Epist. 23, 25 ; Tract. Theol. polit. c.
1, 2.) In favour of this view, speak the appearances of Christ
to Paul, who also confesses to not knowing Clirist any longer
after the flesh ; no less too, that Christ appeared, not to the
people or Jewish senate, but to the believers. It is not neces-
sary to salvation to know Christ after the flesh. In favour
hereof speaks also Paul in Romans i. 20, says he, in Tract.
Theol. polit. c. 4, p. 123. " Sed de seterno illo filio Dei, hoc
est Dei aeterna sapientia quae sese in omnibus rebus et
maxime in mente humana et omnium maxime in Christo Jesu
manifestavit, longe aliter sentiendum. — Et quia liffic sapientia
per Jesum Christum maxime manifestata fuit, ideo ipsius
discipuli eandem, quatenus ab ipso ipsis fuit revelata, pra'-
dicaverunt seseque spiritu illo Christi supra reliquos gloriari
posse ostenderunt. Ceterum quod quoedam Ecclesias his
addunt, quod Deus naturam humanam assumpserit, monui
uxpresse, me quid dicant nescire : imo ut verum fatear, nou
minus absurde milii loqui videntur, quam si quis mihi diceret,
quod circulus naturam quadrati inducrit." Ep. 21. With
this harsh passage, however, must be further compared Tract.
262 NOTES.
Theol. polit. c. i. p. 94, and c. iv. pp. 122 f. There, he says
that God can communicate Himself, as mediately, so also
immediately, by means of statutory laws, the order of the
Avorld, and the like. Without the aid of corporeal media, He
communicates His essence immediately to our spirit (menti) ;
but ere a man can know anything that does not already lie in,
or is not deducible from, the elements of our knowledge, his
mind must be far more excellent than a human mind actually
is. *' Quare non credo, ullum alium ad tantam perfectionem
supra alios pervenisse, prseter Christum, cui Dei placita, quae
homines ad salutem ducunt, sine verbis aut visionibus, sed im
mediate revelata sunt, adeo ut Deus per mentem Christi sese
Apostolis manifestaverit, ut olini Mosi mediante voce aerea.
Et ideo vox Christi, sicut ilia, quam Moses audiebat, vox Dei
vocari potest. (Logos ?) Et hoc sensu etiam dicere possumus,
Sapientiam Dei h. e. Sapientiam, quae supra humanam est,
naturam humanam in Christo assumpsisse et Christum viam
salutis fuisse." The Holy Scriptures never say, — God ap-
peared to Christ, as happened to the prophets, and also to
Moses, to whom the law was given solely through the medium
of angels or corporeal beings : but " si Moses cum Deo de facie
ad faciem loquebatur, ut vir cum socio solet (h. e. mediantibus
duobus corporibus), Christus de mente ad mentem cum Deo
communicavit." Besides Christ, no one has received revelations,
save " imaginationis ope, videlicet, ope verborum aut imaginum."
This immediate " Communicatio cum Deo," which Jesus alone
had, regarded from another point of view, is a revelation of
God in the form of an human soul, whose excellence was so
unique that it possessed an adequate knowledge of God, nay
more, that it was itself the Word of God (Vox Dei) to the
world, which leads to life. Even the apostles had not such
knowledge as He had ; but, like the prophets, they in turn saw
a part of the inner through Him, though in the form of a
figure, that is, in such a manner that the inner appeared to
them to be something external ; so at the baptism of Christ,
so at His resurrection, so at His ascension. (P. 99.) That
tlie prophets, and even Moses, had merely a figurative, mediate
knowledge of God, arose from the legal point of view which
they occupied. What they give, they give as the revelation
and law of God, but without the knowledge of the inner
NOTES. 263
goodness and truth of that which they said. Christ alone, —
although even He gave laws because of the weakness of men, —
had a true and adequate knowledge of things, " nam Christus
non tam Propheta, quam os Dei fuit. Deus enim per mentem
Christi, sicuti ante per angelos nempe per vocem creatam,
visiones, etc., qusedam humano generi revelavit." In the case
of Jesus, no accommodation of the revelation to His sentiments
and mind took place, as in the case of the prophets ; but because
Jesus was destined not merely for the Jews, but for all peoples,
it was necessary that He should have a mind fitted not merely
to Jewish opinions, but to universal, that is, to true ideas. Be-
cause God revealed Himself to Christ or to His mind imme-
diately. He perceived that which was revealed " vere et ade-
quate." But this very fact raised Him above the law, and
gave Him divine freedom, although He in turn gave laws to
the people on account of its hardness of heart and ignorance.
We see from this, what a deep impression Christ's image made
even on the Jew Spinoza.
Note 2, page 21.
Doederlein, Instit. Ch. 1780, ii. § 253, tcikes the part of
Nestorius, so far as to attempt to prove his complete orthodoxy.
The awTToaTacria of human nature he takes to be, not imper-
sonality, but the moral influence of the Son of God on the Son
of man. The relation between Jesus and the Logos he desig-
nates a relation of friendship, and tiie " Communicatio idio-
matum " a newer " commentum." Similar opinions had been
advanced, even before his time, by Tollner, in Frankfort-on-the-
Oder, who, although belonging to the Reformed Church, must
be referred to in this connection. Compare Baur's " Die
christliche Lehre der Versohnung," pp. 479-502 : and Tollner's
principal work, " Vom tluitigen Gehorsam Christi," Breslau,
1768, which is directed against Ch. W. F. Walch's " Coram, de
obedientia Christi activa," Gott. 1754. Tollner accepts only a
substitutionary suffering obedience of Christ, though already also
with " acceptilatio," but not the active obedience ; among many
other reasons, urging also that, as a true man, He was under
obligation to obey. Precisely because He rendered obedience,
and was holy as a man, was His obedience meritorious. P. 361 :
— " If there remained to the luunan nature of Christ no inde-
264 NOTES.
pendent ground of free actions which it could call its own, then
all the actions which appear such to us were merely actions of
the divine nature. — It was mere seeming ; it was as though the
human nature performed them." He conceives the humanity of
Christ, therefore, as a complete, free, moral subject ; the divine
nature merely assisted or co-operated, especially to preserve Him
from errors; in general, indeed, to complement humanity in cases
where it might prove insufficient. Ernesti, who (like Quistorp
and others) controverts Tollner, concedes that it is impossible
to conceive of a man not under obligation to obey the law ; but
Christ was merely an instrument of the Son of God. As
though he had not thus allowed his opponent to be right, in
supposing that to give up the obligation to obedience was also
to deny the truth of the humanity. (Compare Ernesti's " Neue
theol. Biblioth. ix. 1768.) No wonder that Toll ner's view made
its way. Quite similarly Gruner. Even Sailer, who thought
himself orthodox, calls Christ a worthy, pure man, with whom
God connected Himself more closely. See his " Yon der Gott-
heit Christi," pp. Ill ff. Storr too gives such prominence to
the human aspect of Jesus, that (like Anselm) he does not
question His obligation as a man to fulfil the law, as a creature,
for himself ; and bases Christ's ability to atone on the reward
which He earned by His obedience, and which His intercessory
love, as He was unable to receive it Himself, led Him to apply
it for the benefit of His people. Even the so-called orthodox
view ceased to assume a necessity for the propitiation grounded
in the nature of the divine righteousness. Inclining towards a
doctrine of happiness, for which even the righteousness of God
is merely a means, they turned their attention to theories of
" Acceptilatio " (which did still retain some trace of the offer-
ing of a sacrifice), or of a punitive example ; even where the
death of Christ was not treated as a mere example of holy
patience in suffering, and of a holy disposition (as by Gruner). —
Even Keinhard, although he says that the two natures form one
person in Christ, teaches, relatively to the sinlessness of Jesus,
that it proceeded from His freedom (virtutem Christi e consilio
libero profectam esse, ideoque cum potuisse tentari, at ab ilia
descisceret) : as Doederlein also had taught, 1. c. ii. 205.
Against this position, Eckstein took up arms with the essay and
question, "Ob unser Erloser hat sundigen konnen'?" Meissen,
NOTKS. 265
1787. — Reinliard also converted the relation of the Logos to
Jesus into one of mere assistance. Compare Epit. Theol. Chr.
pp. 126, 127, 132, 136. Christ performed His miracles, not
by the divine nature, but by " dotes singulares." He there-
fore reduces the Logos in Christ, as it were, to inactivity. So
much the less need we be surprised, then, when we find men like
Gruner, Henke, and Griesbach arriving at similar views re-
specting the Person of Christ. Henke, in his " Lineam instit.
fidei chr. historico-criticarum," Helmst. 1793, 1795, § 97, says,
— " Sufficit nobis meminisse Jesum a se ipso et suis nobis
propositum esse ut hominem quidem nostri simillimum, ut
personam tamen, singulari, mirifico et unico cognationis quasi
et familiaritatis cum Deo vinculo copulatum, plenum Numine,
ut ipsum Numen prsesens et adspectabile Joh. i. 18, xiv. 9-
11, etc." Similarly Griesbach, in his " Populare Dogmatik,"
1789, p. 182. Abrah. Teller, in his " Lehrbuch des christ-
lichen Glaubens," blames those severely who talk much about
the " Communicatio idiomatum ;" — this doctrine belongs now
only to history. These men were more or less conscious of
entertaining Nestorian views, but tried to protect themselves
by taking the field against Eutychianism, and by calling the
opposed doctrine Eutychian. For example, Tollner, " Vom
thatigen Gehorsam Christi," p. 383 ; Schmid, in Jena, 1794.
Note 3, page 25.
To not a few others, the immeasurable extent of the edifice
of the universe seemed to stand in contradiction with an incar-
nation of God on our small planet : they held it to be incredible
that such a distinction should have been conferred on our little
earth, which disappears like a grain of sand in the universe.
The assumption that the stars are inhabited, recommended even
by such men as Newton, Burnet, Winston, Boyle, and especi-
ally Wolf, strengthened these doubts. Not to mention, that it
would be unworthy of the " most high being," of His great
ness, contradictory of His immeasurableness, to become man.
The latter difficulty could only disappear when philosopliy had
advanced to a higher stage. The former were discussed in a
clever, though only partially satisfactory manner, by Becker of
Rostock, in liis " Diss, de globo nostro terraque pnv omnibus
nuindi corporil)us totalibus Xicr}V(i)(T€L Fih'i Dei nobihtato,"
266 NOTES.
1751. Many things appear to favour the notion that the stars
are inhabited. For the greater the city of God is, the greater
appear His glory, His power, and His wisdom. For if those
inhabitants are mortal beings, and have fallen, then we may
ask, whether they have another atoner, or none at all, or Christ ;
and in the latter case, whether He assumed their nature, or
whether, with the assumption of humanity, the nature of all
was vlrtualiter assumed. In regard to the latter, we should
have to say, that as the microcosm, the essence of man bears
the whole of nature in itself, that the soul of Jesus is analogous
to the soul of angels. Thus Koch, in his " Rechtbeleuchtetes
Buch Hiob," teaches that all the inhabitants of the stars have a
nature like that of man ; accordingly, Christ is related to them
also, and can deliver them if they fall. But this tends towards
the doctrine of an aTroKarda-raaci of all things (which was
taught especially by Petersen, about 1700, in his " Geheimniss
des Erstgebornen aller Creaturen " ) ; it is not scriptural ; and,
according to the " principium indiscernibilium," every star with
its inhabitants must be so different from all others, that Christ
would have been compelled to assume the nature of the inhabit-
ants of each planet after the other, if His mission had been to
redeem them. Burnet (de statu mortuorum) allows that there
is this difference between the moral and rational beings of each
star. But therewith is connected an unjust depreciation of this
earth. According to Burnet, it is merely a ruin of the para-
disaical earth, its extent is lessened, its solar position clianged :
similarly also Winston and Heye. On the contrary, the earth
occupies a commanding position amongst the other worlds : it
is no "caput mortuum ;" it is no despicable ball on which a
handful of sinners roll in filth and vanity. Heye also (" Ge-
sammlete Briefe von Cometen," Brf. 6) forms too low a concep-
tion of human nature. He says, that it is either " vanity or
feebleness of understanding, to suppose that men are the most
distinguished kind of creatures in the city of God, and that
for their sake the heaven of heavens exists ; whereas no ground
is adducible for such a pretence, that an honest mole, beginning
to think in his dark passages, might not adduce in favour of him-
self and his species. All that the incarnation proves is, that men
are the most wretched and corrupt of all beings; and the notion,
' omnia propter hominem,' arose at the time when the stars
NOTES. 267
were thought to be golden nails." But Heye forgets the origi-
nal dignity of man, and his exaltation through Christ. Our
God looks down on the lowly. The eternal, substantial Wisdom
played on the circle of the earth, and its delights were with the
children of men. Our earth He has favoured with His most
special, most gracious presence : us He has taken to be His
brothers; here He has established His Church. Heaven and
earth m.oved at His amval. Not the nature of angels, but the
nature of men, did He assume, in order to be able to be our
representative. Accordingly, our only alternative is either to
say, with Leibnitz, that the stars are inhabited by blessed spirits
who have never fallen ; or to deny their being inhabited at all.
The former alternative is defended by Boldicke in his work,
" Abermaliger Versuch einer Theodicee." He arrives at the
result, " that the earth alone is the theatre for sinful beings,
inasmuch as God foresaw all the beings who would become evil,
and collected them on this earth ; God's counsel to permit of
evil was restricted to man ; the majority of them will be damned,
but they serve as a foil to the consciousness of blessedness pos-
sessed by the others, and form, consequently, one part of the
goodness of the w^orld." (This would form a Lutheran parallel
to Beza's doctrine of the Damned.) This, however, would be
to think meanly of man ; whereas, according to the Holy Scrip-
tures, besides the angels, there is no creature higher than man.
Those, the good angels, need no redemption : concerning the
evil angels, whom the Scriptures mention as rational beings, we
are told that grace is denied to them without injustice. Men,
therefore, are the only beings, as such, for whom the incarnation
can come into consideration. Concerning man, therefore, as
compared with the inhabitants of a thousand different kinds of
stars, we may use the same words as Moses used regarding the
people of Israel compared with the other nations : — " Where is
there a people, to which the gods have drawn nigh in such
a way?" And concerning our planet, as compared with a
thousand others, we must say that it is the Bethlehem amongst
the rest, the least city among the thousands in Judah, out of
which the Lord was destined to proceed. Within the last few
years, the question of the relation of astronomy to the incai-na-
tion of God has been repeatedly ventilated again. As astro-
nomy, however, has hitherto arrived at no decision whether the
268 NOTES.
fixed stars belong to an order of bodies higher than our earth,
or whether the earth is the most highly organized, the highest
of all bodies, that view of the world which represents the earth
as the scene of the highest events possible in the history of the
universe, and in particular theology, is not yet warranted in in-
clining either to the one or to the other of these hypotheses.
Whether the one or the other may be more favourable to it, it
is bound to wait till a fixed decision has been arrived at regard-
ing the inhabitants of the stars, their existence, and their moral
constitution. This, which alone is the scientific point of view, is
taken up in particular by Prof. Whewell, in his " Plurality of
Worlds," 1854. Compare also Brewster's " Life of Newton,"
against whom Whewell directs his arguments ; and " The Lite-
rary Gazette, Journal of Science and Art," Apr. 14, 1855, No.
1995, where his part is justly taken in opposition to Montagu
Lyon Phillip's " Worlds beyond the Earth." In the view of
Whewell, arguments in proof of the stars being inhabited,
capable of satisfying science, and of moving it to determinate
utterances on the subject, have, as yet, by no means been ad-
vanced. When we test the arguments drawn from the analogy
of the earth and the like, they resolve themselves into the old
principle, Why should it not be so ? — which is to demand from
others proofs, the obligation to bring which rests on our own
shoulders. Where science has no definite knowledge, its best
course is to assert nothing. Still less can theological certainty
and truth be burdened with empirical hypotheses, which them-
selves confess to having wandered without experience into a
sphere lying out beyond experience. Whewell warns against
confounding conjectures with settled facts ; against constituting
articles of philosophic belief and Christian hope out of prin-
ciples Avhich rest on mere analogy and vague speculation. He
himself is of opinion that the earth, ere it became habitable for
man, had to run through immensely long courses of develop-
ment ; that even if other stars were destined for similar organ-
isms, we have a right to doubt their having only even approxi-
mated to the stage of development at which the earth stands ;
that, consequently, there is no need for surprise that this highest
revelation of God in Christ should have taken place on earth
(which is the first star inhabited by moral beings). In the latter
result, he must also be allowed to be right. Amongst German
NOTES. 269
thinkers, Weisse assumes that God has been repeatedly incar-
nate, on eveiy star, according as were its needs : — which view,
as has been already observed, leads to a modern form of Arian-
ism without pre-existence, and involves the denial of the abso-
lute metaphysical significance of Christ. Steffens (Rel. Phil.
i. 205 ff.) and Hegel (Encyk. 3te Aufl. p. 263), like Whewell,
regard our planetaiy system as the most organized part of the
universe ; the earth, this consecrate spot, on which the Lord
appeared, as its absolute centre, which both Hegel and Becker
designate the Bethlehem of the worlds. In proof thereof, Hegel
urges that that which is immediately the most concrete is also
the most perfect. The understanding, indeed, prefers the ab-
stract (as the sun and fixed stars in relation to the planets) to
the concrete, but not reason. We are reminded by those who thus
reason, that we ought not to concede too much influence to an un-
fruitful astonishment at numbers and magnitudes, which stand
in no relation to the spiritual life of man (A. v. Humboldt,
Cosmos i. 156 f., German ed.) ; nor let the marvels of the tele-
scope cause us to forget the marvels of the microscope, the mar-
vels in little (Chalmers in Tholuck's "Yermischte Schriften,"
i. 209 f.). The outwardly subordinate and dependent position of
the earth is very compatible with its having a high inner signi-
ficance for the spiritual. According to the Ptolemaic system,
the world was even externally the centre of the universe, about
wdiich all things revolve. According to Steffens, however, pre-
cisely such an external position, if the supposition were true,
would contradict its significance as a spiritual centre. The true
centre can never come forth into manifestation. It belongs to
the ideal kingdom of dialectics, according to which the manifes-
tation itself has not absolute significance, but first acquires it
by an act of negation, which is rendered easier by the inade-
quacy characteristic of the manifestation in relation to the idea.
Others, on the contrary, like G. II. v. Schubert, Goschel, and
Ijange, regard the fixed stars and their lucific world as places
of a higher order, the dwelling of angels and blessed spirits
the planets, however, as still uninhabited bodies, the earth being
the most developed amongst them. They also cling to the idea
of Leibnitz, and hold that the incarnation took place on earth,
because the inhabitants of the earth alone stood in need of an
incarnation, and were capable of redemption. Kurtz ('*Die
270 NOTES.
Bibe] und die Astronomie," 3te Ausg. 1853) urges, in opposition
to the latter view (p. 378), that the incarnation includes some-
thing more and higher than a mere restoration of the human
race to the like niveau with the other not-fallen angels; for, as
God remains man to all eternity, man is thus exalted above all
creatures, and in equal measure is the earth exalted above all
other heavenly bodies, destined as it is to be the eternally abid-
ing tlirone of the divine presence in its most immediate form.
He decides, therefore, in favour of a middle view. The earth
now, since the fall (first of the angels, who inhabited it, then of
men), occupies a lower position than formerly, — lower also than
that of the fixed stars ; but, on the other hand, it is capable of,
and destined to, the highest form of existence; it is destined to
be the centre of the universe : — of which traces also are dis-
coverable. In this way, we can reconcile the distinction con-
ferred on the earth by the incarnation of God with its present
low and subordinate position.
Note 4, page 26.
From Semler's time onwards, a considerable literature arose
on the history of the doctrine of the Trinity and on Christology.
Besides Cotta's treatise added to Gerhard's " Loci Theol." T. iii.
324, Loffler ought to be mentioned, who prefaced his translation
of Souverain's work, Ziillich, 1792, by a " Kurze Darstellung
der Entstehungsart der Dreieinigkeitslehre von Jesu bis auf. d.
nic. Kirchenvers;" Martini, " Versuch einer pragmatischen
Geschichte des Dogmas von der Gottheit Christi in den vier
ersten Jahrhunderten nach Christo," Rost. n. Leipzig, 1800 ;
Stark, "Geschichte des Arianismus," Berl. 1783, 1784, 2 Th. ;
Eckermann, "Handbuch der christlichen Glaubenslehre" ii.
434 ff., 627 ff. Further, also. Essays by Keil, Planck, Schleus-
ner, Paulus, and others, in Hencke's Magazin, in Velthusen's
"Commentatt. Theol.," in Schmidt's "Bibliothek fur Kritik
und Exegese," and in Paulus' "Memorabilien." Ak)ngside of
these deserve mention, Semler's " Selecta capita ex hist, eccles.,"
and his " Vorbereitung auf d. K. Grossbr. Aufgabe von der
Gottheit Christi," Halle, 1787. His advice to those who strove
for the prize, was to lay down nothing definite as to the mode
in which we are to conceive the deity of Christ, — at all events,
iiothinir that can be laid hold on by the Church, or that would
NOTES. 271
bind the freedom of private religion. For the rest, Semler clung
to the miraculous character of Christ, and maintained His resur-
rection, in particular, to be an historical fact, in opposition to the
Deists. (Compare his " Beantwortung der Fragmente eines Un-
genannten, ins besondere vom Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jiinger,"
2te Aufl. Halle, 1780). Like Lessing, he asserts that the truth
of the Christian religion must be experienced, especially through
its moral effects. Christianity to him was the " infinite religion ;"
in Christ Himself he beheld an infinitude which has been only
imperfectly reached by all descriptions. The doctrine of the
Trinity belongs " non tam ad erudiendos animos, quam ad re-
creandos conscientias," and faith in it concerns the new, infinite
moral benefits conferred by God through Christianity. J. Fr.
Flati, in his " Commentatio de symbolica Eccl. nostras de dei-
tate Chr. sententia," 1788, which was crowned by the Faculty of
the University of Gottingen, urges in opposition thereto, that
the Holy Scriptures contain definite revelations regarding the
distinctions and unity of the Trinity, especially in regard to the
Son of God ; and that it is incumbent on theology to show its
thankfulness to God by ascertaining the true sense of Scripture,
which it will then be surely possible to defend against the attacks
of philosophers and of non-churchly parties. He allows that,
in the matter of doctrinal definition, theologians have gone too
far. Such as were counted among the orthodox have so defined
the idea of ofioovaia and personality, that, in order to accept
them, one must renounce altogether the use of reason. But the
doctrine of the S}'mbols contains merely so much : — The sub-
jects A and B stand in such a relation to each other, that though
they have one and the same C in common, they are distinguished
from each other by a character X (p. 91). It is scarcely pos-
sible to confess more clearly, that to this theology the Trinity it-
self had become an unknown quantity X. There is no affirma-
tive knowledge (sensu ajente) of the Trinity; but still a negative
one. Not even the Kantian doctrine of the categoi'ics, or any
other derived from the empirical sphere, can disprove the
Trinity ; for there may be categories other than those which
are aj)plicable to the world of sense.
272 NOTES.
Note 5, page 44.
We naturally proceetl here on the presumption, that Kant
had not yet distinctly gone so far as to deny the idea of a self-
conscious God, distinct from the world : this first took place
through Fichte ; though there is no doubt that he did but draw
the logical deductions from Kant's principles. For Kant, God
is not yet the mere moral order of the world : he made efforts
to find points d\tppid for the theistic conception of God. He
leaves the idea of God still standing ; and does not yet fully
carry out the thought, that the Ego of man alone is absolute.
There is no doubt, however, that for his purpose the being, if
not the idea of God, occupies a merely hypothetical, nay more,
useless place. To his system it is of importance, not so much
that God really exist, as that He be believed in, — not merely as
the already actualized order of the world, but as the power to
secure to the good the victory against evil in the world. Now, if
we ask why Kant leaves so unimportant a position to the idea
of the self-conscious, personal God, as has been already shown,
and will become still clearer, the only ground we can assign is,
that his idea of God and man was still such, that they appeared
to him as magnitudes which rather exclude than belong to each
other. The Deism of the last century took the ethical for its
starting-point; it did not as yet postulate, however, that God
should not exist at all, but merely that He should not exert any
influence, because His influence was held to be disturbing. Nor
could His influence be regarded as otherwise than disturbing so
long as production alone, and not also reception, was deemed to
constitute the essence of moral freedom ; nay more, so long as
the infinitude of man was not held to lie primarily in his infinite
susceptibility, but merely the dilemma kept in view — What is,
must either be infinite alone or finite alone. Consistency (Kant
is still very far from carrying out his ideas to their logical con-
sequences), then, requires the denial of an objective God, in
order to being able to attribute infinitude, or an infinite value,
to man. This exclusiveness or strangeness between the idea of
God and that of man, we have found making its appearance in
old time in the form of an absorption of the one by the other,
or in such a shape as to leave only a shadow of it l)ehind, in
that the one lays immediate claim to that which belong.-; to the
NOTES. 273
other. Kant's system forms the modem, that is, anthropolo-
gical, counterpart to the old Docetism. For it leaves to the
divine, as compared with the human, merely the semblance of
an existence. On this ground, notwithstanding Baur's objec-
tion (Trinitatslehre iii. 781), I have left the word ''strange,"
or foreign, standing in the text. It is not intended to denote
anything but what I elsewhere mean in using the word " exclu-
sive." Baur's exposition, however, seems to me to Fichtianize
Kant ; as is also the case with his representation of Hegel.
Note 6, page 58.
In his later publications, this noble-minded man, who never
relaxed his efforts to amve at the truth, and always retained an
open eye for it, approximated ever more closely to objective
Christianity. So particularly in his " Wesen des christlichen
Glaubens vom Standpunkte des Glaubens dargestellt," Basel,
1846. In this work, he assigns even to the idea of faith a more
objective significance relatively to knowledge. It is trae he
repudiates the doctrine of the Trinity, consequently also the
pre-existence of Christ and the doctrine of two natures : he
views the resurrection as an objective vision of the Apostles :
the miracles of Christ are to him relative workings of His
heightened spiritual power. But he tries to effect a reconcilia-
tion between the common-sense or natural view of the Sacred
History and the ideal or believing view taken by the Church,
by means of a more living conception of God, by the idea of
God's immanence in the world and His action in nature. Christ
was born a Saviour ; He did not first become one ; the " Word,"
that is, the »'evealing activity of God as directed towards the
world, was in the beginning with God, a determination or qua-
lity of His essence; and at the same time God's entire essence
was in this activity ; it was God, not different from Him, not a
mere outHow from Him. And this self-rcvealincp God revealed
Himself at last, in His entire unity and fulness, in Christ (p.
328). •' The new, blessed, joyous life, the restoration of the
true life of humanity, has for its beginning and centre the his-
torical person, which is its perfection, archetype, and example.
— In the Christian faith there is an ideal element, which has
universal validity, and a real element. The former consists of
the universal, eternal truths , ♦Jie latter, of that which is dis-
r. 2. — VOL. III. s
274 NOTES.
tiiictlve of Clirlstianity and alone sufficient for salvation. That
a man has lived, by whom all those truths were not merely
taught, but livingly revealed, accomplished, and realized ; that
in Him the unity of the deity and humanity was an actual fact ;
tnat He effected the atonement and founded the kingdom of
God — this gives to faith its completion. It is this realistic mo-
mentum of realization that distinguishes Christianity from all
other religions, and gives it the victory over every kind of
idealistic or rationalistic doctrine which aims to place itself
aoove it." P. o3
Note 7, page 73.
More important than Lessing's construction of the Trinity
(in his " Education of the Human Race") on the ground of the
necessity of the self-objectification of spirit, is his demand that
the truth be believed in for its own sake ; especially as he con-
ceives truth as a self-witnessing j^oirer, and not merely intellectu-
astically, and compares it with the sun, which gives information
of itself by the warmth it diffuses. Semler's " private religion "
is likewise a living trace of the knowledge that in Christianity
much, if not all, depends on the " testimonium Sp. S." Herder
also was stirred by a desire for a more living doctrine of God ;
but remains too much in the sphere of fancy and sesthetics to
be able to give utterance to anything more than deeper, inde-
terminate presentiments. — Schwarz's book on Lessing is written
to serve a particular purpose, and in consequence of the endea-
vour to represent him as the leader of lUuminatism, and of
undervaluing the positive germs in his writings, does him injus-
tice. He treats the mystical and speculative element in Lessing
almost as though it had no existence. A more correct estimate is
formed of Lessing by H. Kitter, Bohtz, Zimmermann, Schlosser
iii. 2, 173 ff. For all the men mentioned above, however, we
must refer to the admirable work of Gelzer, " Die deutsche
poetische Literatur, u. s. w." 2te Ausg. — In an exceedingly
striking manner, he calls our attention, with reference to the
less gratifying later period of these men (of Lessing and Herder
on the one hand, and Lavater, Hamann, and Claudius, on the
other), to the fact that, as regards religious things, they be-
longed to the class of intuitive natures, which find the (religious)
truth at a first immediate glance, and possess it more in the
NOTES. 275
form of feeling than in that of distinct knowledge. "When
speaking of Herder, and similarly also in reference to Hamann
and Claudius, he remarks, that everything necessarily depended
on whether this ingenuousness and simplicity of feeling, this
certainty of the inner sense, would a-emain uuassailed through
their entire life. Their own training, and the direction taken
by their efforts, rendered this impossible : they were compelled
to look about for a groundwork of conceptions and thoughts or.
which presentiment and inner intuition could securely rest ; the
duty was devolved on them of transforming feelings and intui-
tions into clear and logical thought. This conversion, which
was an effort to make the infinite in them finite and clearly
perceptible, involved, for them, as they themselves frequently
sorrowfully complained, the momentaiy or longer loss of inner
liold, especially as the age in Avhich they lived afforded them so
little support. This penetrating and true, but for this very
reason, humane and Christian judgment of these forerunners of
the present age, shows us, at the same time, the inner necessity
for a clear, logical systematization of the new ideas — a work
which they were unable to accomplish — and its importance to
the realization of an harmonious spiritual existence. For,
merely to return to the rigid formulae of the dogmas of the
Church, would be an impoverishing, because an ossification of
the mind ; like as when it falls ever more completely a prey to
mere negations.
Note 8, page 74.
As Ilamann is called ^' the Magician of the North," so (and
with still greater justice) is Oetinger designated " the Magician
of the South ;" for both gave utterance to higher truths than
their age was capable of comj)rehending, and were accordingly
regarded as a kind of mystery by their contemporaries, reaching
already forward into the future. We must not omit, however,
to mention that for many years Oetinger has numbered many
friends in South Germany. Any one who should closely ob-
serve the connection between the life and the science of the
Church would be able to discover in the peculiar form taken by
the religious life, especially in Wurtemberg, one main cause of
the various niovcmcnts in the domain of science, which have
proceeded forth from that country. Whilst the official Churcii,
27 C) NOTES.
with its theology, which was connected with the philosophy of
Wolf and with Eclecticism, was becoming ever more barren
and dry, Wiirtemberg had its great theologian, Joh. Albr.
Bengel, and his scholars and friends, Hiller, Steinhofer, Roos,
Reuss, Rieger, Ph. Burk, StoiT the elder, and many others,
whose life and vigour were sustained by the Scriptures, which
they heartily loved and faithfully searched, when, far and wide,
the salt had lost its savour. Owing to the services rendered by
these men, a stream of living theology ran like a brook of fresh
water, without pretence, it is true, and mostly unobserved,
through the land. For though their interest was, in the first
instance, exegetical and mainly practical, they preserved or even
prepared the soil for a more living and fruitful theology, whose
turn to be recognised by the public life of the Church was
destined in due season to arrive. They were by no means op-
posed to a more comprehensive regeneration of theology. On
"he contrary, the closest bonds united them, and especially
Bengel, with men of philosophical or theosophical mind, like
Oetinger, Phil. Matth. Hahn, and Fricker. Compare Auber-
len, pp. 2-37. The need of apprehending Christianity in its
universal and cosmical significance had found satisfaction, in
the case of Bengel and his successors, particularly in Eschato-
logy ; and Oetinger also participated in their predilection for
apocatalyptical studies. But his great mind passed from the
post -existence of Christianity, back to its pre-existence, to the
creation of nature and of man ; he establishes the most intimate
connection between the first and second creation by means of
the " sensus communis;" and iu direct antagonism to the pre-
vailing philosophy of the age, which was hostile to all realism,
and scarcely allowed Christianity a petitionary position along-
side of their enlightened philosophy, he strove to ])roduce a
" philosophia sacra," with Christ for its centre, whose task it is
to be the true })hilosophy. Oetinger lacked, it is true, the his-
torical eye in theology ; hence also the absence of a churchly
tone ; but still his theosophy is distinguished from that of Jacob
Bohme in this respect, that he sees in the world, not a process
arising out of tiie necessity of the divine nature, but one of will
and freedom.
From Svvedenborg, Oetinger apj)ropnated little more than a
few ideas relating to tiie condition of the soul after death, and
NOTES. 277
to the future world : for the rest, his system had quite different
roots from the mechanical, ghostly system of Swedenborg,
which emasculated the realism of the Bible. Oetinger's princi-
pal writings are, " Theologia ex idea vitae deducta in sex locos
redacta, quorum quilibet I. secundum sensum communem, II.
secundum mysteria scripturse. III. secundum formulas theticas
novo et experimentali modo petractatur, Auct. M. Fridr. Chris-
toph Oetinger," 1765 (translated into German by J. Hamber-
ger in 1852) ; " Oeffentliches Denkmal der Lehrtafel der weil.
Wiirtemb. Prinzessin Antonia," Tiib. 1763 ; " Irdische und
himmlische Philosophic Swedenborg's in A." 2 Th. 1765; " In-
quisitio in sensum communem," 1753 ; Oetinger's " Selbstbio-
graphie," published by Hamberger in 1845. The wish expressed
by me in the first edition of this work, that a comprehensive
exhibition might soon be given of Oetinger's views, has been
meanwhile satisfied in an excellent manner by Auberlen in his
" Theosophie Oetinger's nach ihren Grundziigen," 1848.
Note 9, page 76.
Compare Lehrtafel, p. 135. "■' But what is idealism ? A
horror of materialism, like the shyness of a horse. I will not
give a definition of it. But, he goes on to say, according tc
idealism, Christ is not come in water, blood, and spirit, but alone
in spirit. The right idealists will first come when the false pro-
phet shall work miracles out of the real idealism. The idealism
of the present day is merely the advanced guard of the future
idealism, and so forth. (Idealism is to him so akin to evil, be-
cause he regards the latter as a fantastic imagination, which
assumes to itself the semblance of being.) The idealist rephes
to me, — Ah, thou weak philosopher, how little thou under-
standest our secrets. That is not our meaning. — I, however,
say, — The fear of the coarse materialistic ideas of extension
makes you so scrupulous. I know how many years I have been
an idealist. Nothing but the words of Jesus have broken the
spell. I wish that they may see the intelligible beauties in
Christ, the Architectus of nature, which I see ; but they are
hidden from their eyes." In the " Irdische und himmlische
Philosophic" ii. 341, he says that Corporeality is a perfection,
that is, when it is purified from the defects which cleave to
earthly corporeality. These defects are impenetrability, resist-
278 NOTES.
ance, and coarse commixture. Elsewhere he characterizes the
ideahstic fleeing before corporeality in general as an after-effect
of the Platonic philosophy, beyond which Christian philosophy
ought to have advanced. Compare besides, his treatise, " Wie
man die heilige Schrift lesen soil," p. 31.
Note 10, page 76.
On the one hand, Oetinger adopts the cabbalistic notion of
the ten effluxes or brightnesses of God (Sephiroth), of which
the three first are held to denote the three persons of the
Trinity, and the remaining seven are identified with the seven
spirits of the Apocalypse. For further detaiU-, see Auberlen,
pp. 163 if. On the other hand, he says in the "Lehrtafel,"
p. 211: — "Independence, self-knowledge, and love, are three
principles ; a birth in the bosom of the Father ; one indeed, for
they are life in all things ; but still distinct in the sources of
self-motion:" in each other, they are only an intimate indis-
soluble bond of divine life : pp. 227 ff. These principia or
sources of self-movement, however, are not in his view persons ;
nay more, according to "Lehrtafel," p. 164, they are not in
God Himself, but in the " glory" (that is, in the nature of
God), out of which, through the Word which calls forth light
out of darkness, all things became and still become. In the
place of the Trinity of the Church, Oetinger would undoubtedly
put the distinction between the primal beginning or the un-
(jroimd (Ungrund) and the Word and nature (the "glory")
in God.
Note 11, page 82.
" Biblisches AVorterbuch," pp. 347 ff. Compare the aoove
theories (Div. II. Vol. II. 324 f.) of a heavenly humanity of
Christ. It was taught with special zeal by Joh. Wilh. Petersen
(compare " das Geheimniss des Erstgebornen aller Creaturen,"
Frankfort, 1711). " Jesus Christ," says he, " was God-man from
the beginning : in His image Adam was created." P. 2. The
Son of God is the only-begotten in the unutterable pra^- eternity,
begotten by the Father before the decree of creation ; but He
became the First-bom because of the creation determined on
by God, and proceeded forth from God. God then encompassed
Ilim, prior to time, with a tempered lucific garment (taber-
NOTES.
279
nacle), which is His dix-ine humanity, in order that in and
through Him, as a convenient means, He might both create
and unite the creature, which is otherwise distinct from the
Creator, at an infinite distance, and also that the creature might
be able to bear Him with a light thus moderated in the First-
bom ;— indeed, the Fathers, too, speak of such a " sese tempe-
rare et demittere" of the Logos for the good of the world. Such
a heavenly humanity is not a creation, but a generation or
emanation from God. He appeals at the same time to the book
of an English countess, " de principiis philosophise antiquissimse
et recentissimffi," in particular of God, Christ, and the creatures;
as also to Guil. Postellus Absonditorum — Clavis, who says : —
" Cum Deus infinitus condiderit omnia, ut a creaturis rationa-
bilibus comprehendi posset et laudari, sit autem impossibile
infinitum a finito comprehendi, opus fuit, ut ante omnia divina
bonitas ita se accommodaret capacitati tam angelica quam nos-
trae, ut finitum infinito uniret." Such a " temperamentum"'
Avas given in the pre-existent soul of Christ. Through it
Christ is the Creator of the world, the revealer in the Old
Testament, and so forth. P. 29 f. That English countess
says, — "Deus cum lux esset omnium intensissima et quidem
infinita, summa tamen etiam bonitas propter banc bonitatem
creaturas quidem condere voluit qnibus sese communicaret ;
hae tamen — ejus lucem neutiquam potuissent tolerare. — Di-
minuit ergo in creaturarum gratiam, ut locus ipsis esse posset,
summum ilium intensge lucis gradum, unde locus exoriebatur
quasi vacuus circularis, mundorum spatium. Hoc vacuum non
erat privatio vel non Ens, sed positio lucis diminutse realis, quce
erat anima Messice, Hebrgeis Adam Kadmon dicta, qua totum
ilkid spatium implebatur. Haec anima Messiae unita erat cum
tota iila luce divinitatis, quae intra vacuum illud gradu leniori
remanserat, unumque cum ilia constituebat subjectum. Hie
Messias (Logos et Primogenitus Dei) filius appellatus deinde
intra sese, facta nova etiam suae lucis diminutione pro creatura-
rum commoditate condebat omnium creaturarum seriem, quibus
divinitatis sujcque natural lumina ulterius communicabat. —
Trinitas ergo liic occurrit divina3 repraesentationis, primusque
conceptus est Deus ipse infinitus, extra et supra productionem
consideratus ; Sccundus est Deus idem, quatenus in ]^Iessia, et
Tertius idem Deus quatenus cum Messia in creaturis, grudu
280 NOTES.
luminis miiiiino ad perceptionem creaturarum accommodato.'"
P. 41 f. Ill this "Ens medium" is no "corruptio, mors, defec-
tus ;" it is " balsamum in quo omnia praeservari possunt a de-
crementis et morte quae ipsi unita sunt, adeoque hie omnia sunt
nova, vegeta et virescentia." According to Petersen, all divine
(Tv^KaTa^cun'i has taken place in this heavenly humanity, which
it was given to believers even in Old Testament times to enjoy.
P, 70. Light is thrown on a multitude of passages of Scripture
by this doctrine ; the conversion of the Jews is lightened by it ;
it may aid also in furthering an union with the Reformed, for
it accords well with the absoluteness of a divine decree (to wit,
according to Paul, of apocatastasis), and renders intelligible
both the real unitability of the divine and human, and the
Lutheran doctrine of the Supper.
Note 12, page 87,
" Gedanken aus dem grossen Zusammenhange des Lebens,"
p. 152, ferm. cognit. L. i. 54. Similarly St Martin, " Esprit
des Choses" ii. 301 ff., 341. "La Divinite se rendit Christ
dans cette meme image eternelle d'ou Adam avait ete cree. —
II s'est venu ensevelir dans notre matiere." The Word of
God " ici bas se trouve expatriee." As to his true essence,
man is nothing but a desire for God, destined to " faire un
avec la Divinite." But an alteration has taken place : we are
prisoners of nature, which we drew down when we fell our-
selves. A restoration requires that the Word unclothe itself,
and enter into the same elementary basis, which is our prison.
Thus are the divine, the spiritual, and the natural world united
in Christ, in order that He might be the means of salvation in
all directions, and come nigh unto the sick. In the view of
St Martin also, Christ is the key of all science, even of nature.
Through the Word, if we are united with Him, through Jesus,
we can understand the language of all things, that is, them
themselves.
Note 13, page 88.
In his work, " Ueber die drci Fundamental artikel," etc.,
1839, Baader endeavours to expound more precisely the nature
and mode of the incarnation of God in Christ ; but as he does
little more than repeat the ideas of Boinne in a pretty obscure
NOTES. 281
manner, we shall pass over details. His main thought is, that
for the explanation of the incarnation of the Word, it is neces-
sary to draw a distinction between the essence or the nature
of God and God Himself. Out of the divine nature or essence
was derived Adam's original body, a heavenly even though
created substance, wasted by sin, but continuing to exist
potentially in humanity. Now, the Word did not enter imme-
diately into this withered (heavenly) essence, which continued
to exist (as the seed of the woman) ; but the Word, the crea-
tive substance, awakened in !Mary this wasted substance, which
had undergone a silent death, and entered at once, as to His
nature or essence, into it. The doctrine of a nature in God,
and of an original, higher human essence, is meant to serve
the purpose of mediating between the Son of God and
humanity, of explaining both how the humanity (Mary) could
participate in this economy, and how the Son of God could
empty Himself to this humanity. According to Eckhart, the
creating divine nature was impersonal prior to this event (that
is, the creative divine nature first attained to a personal self-
representation in Christ). Akin hereto is the thought which is
advanced by other writers, — for example, Brentz and Andreai,
— that the divine nature, and not the person, is the assuming
agent, but that personality is the " terminus" of the assuming
nature. For the rest, Baader also teaches that the powers which
in Adam were dissoluble, were indissoluble in Christ.
Note 14, page 99.
We will here add a more careful characteristic of Fichte at
his second stadium ; the more so, as at this stage a conciliation
might be again attempted between theology and philosophy. In
his "Anweisung zum seligen Leben" (especially in the 6th
Lecture and Appendix) he speaks as follows : —
The only true being and life is the divine life, which freely
manifests itself in the life of the man who is devoted to God.
In this activity, it is not the man who acts, but God Himself,
who works his work through man. God has, firstly, an inner
hidden being. But then. He is also there (ist audi da), that is,
He appears in time and place, or has an ex-istence ; tiiis exist-
ence is at the same time a knowledce. But this existence is
again God Himself, His being, not different from Him ; and it
282 NOTES.
becomes conscious in man. God and man are thus absolutolv
one, and insight into this unity is the deepest knowledge that
can be attained. The ])hilosopher now, so far as he knows,
gains this insight independently of Christianity, and, in fact,
in a better form. Still it remains eternally time, that before
Christ this jewel of knowledge was nowhere possessed ; and,
indeed, all our knowledge has its roots in Christianity.
Consequent philosophical insight teaches us that the eternal
Word is born in the same manner as in Jesus Christ, becomes
flesh, that is, a personal, sensuous human existence, in all ages,
in every one who surrenders himself to the divine. But how
does this possibility of the birth of the Word in man, which is
conferred upon all, become an actuality ? Christianity teaches
— through Christ.
So much now is true, that Christ is distinguished from
thousands of generations before and after Him by the sole
possession of this truth, and that all who, since His day, have
attained to union with God, have done so alone through Him.
This uniqueness of Jesus, however, is not a metaphysical, but
an historical proposition. It is not certain that a man cannot
attain to that knowledge and to the blessed life, even without
Christ. For this reason also, it is by no means sure that Chris-
tianity, as a religion based on an historical person, will endure
eternally. If a man is really united with God, it is a matter of
indifference how he arrived at the union : it would be useless
and perverse, instead of living in the thing itself, to be always
repeating the remembrance of the way. If Jesus were to come
again, it is to be expected that He would be satisfied with the
dominion of Christianity in the heart, and would not ask whether
His merit were praised or passed over in connection therewith.
The metaphysical, eternal truth alone gives blessedness; the
historical, on the contrary, is a mere fact, standing purely by
itself ; in so far it is one-sided, and merely a transition-point in
this truth, which is concentrated on one point.
That the whole of humanity proceeded forth from the essence
of God, is the eternal, metaphysical truth. But in Christianity
the emphasis is laid not on this, but on the single fact of the
incarnation of God in Christ : — this is the temporal element in
(Jhristianity.
That God existed immediately, purely, and unmixedly, as
NOTES. 283
He is ill Himself, in Jesus of Nazareth, without any mixture of
darkness, obscurity, individual limitation, in a personal human
form, is merely an historical addition, it is not metaphysical.
The knowledge of the absolute identity of humanity with
deity as regards the properly real in the former, Christ without
doubt possessed. How did it arise in Pliin ? In us it arises,
not out of His history, but out of speculative philosophy ; nay
more, in order to our understanding merely the organ Ciirist,
it is necessary that we should have gained an insight into that
unity in another way. But Christ does not present Himself to
us as one who has attained this knowledge by speculative philo-
sophy, discursive thought, learning, or tradition, but absolutely
through His existence. This knowledge was to Him the first
and absolute thing, without any middle link whatever ; it did
not arise out of other states : not from the annihilation of the
particular personal Ego did it proceed, as it does in our case ;
but it was immediately identical with His self-consciousness.
He was the absolute reason, the absolute religion, which had
become an immediate self-consciousness. God was His own
self ; He had no self-consciousness. Not Jesus was G od to Him,
but God was Jesus, appeared as Jesus.
All this, however, He was not singly ; but metaphysical
knowledge shows that what He was, is the proper reality of all ;
nay more, that this is His reality, solely because it belongs in
general to the idea of humanity as a reality. If His eternity is
to be maintained, it can only be at the cost of the metaphysical
truth. The latter is only for universality ; it is only the pro-
cession of humanity in general that can be explained by going
back to God ; and it is a perverse undertaking to try to give a
metaphysical character to this His uniqueness, seeing that it
has, after all, merely an historical value. But as it is impos-
sible to attain to the knowledge of the incarnation of God in a
single individual in tlie way of metaphysical laws, and these
laws point merely to an universal incarnation of God, the gaps
in the chain of proof are filled out by inventions.
This theory, tlicrefore, takes the unity of the divine and
human for its point of departure, representing it, however,
immediately, as absolutely universal ; Christ has no special
])lace •, all men arc equal to Him in that which constitutes their
])r(»per a-ality. All have God entirely in themselves; only not
284 NOTES.
in an equally realized form. To Christ belongs the place of the
beginner, of the first as to time, in relation to insight into the
proper, that is, the divine, reality of man : but this insight is in
no respect dependent on His person.
Hei'ein is involved that Christianity contains nothing essen-
tially new. Each man per se is immediately, not through the
medium of Christ, but by nature, God. In this way, however,
the idea of regeneration is curtailed ; Christianity does not form
a turning-point, either in history as a whole, or in the life of the
individual. The reason hereof is, that God, as the only reality —
a reality non-mediated in itself — is supposed to have an imme-
diate existence in man ; that unity of essence is confounded with
identity.
Theories (the like of which we shall find further on) which,
whilst, it is true, representing God as the only reality, teach Him
also to be engaged in a process, and undergoing a mediation
through humanity, are able to regard history as an articulate
organism, and to hold fast a fixed distinction between Christi-
anity and all other religions. Fichte, however, though he also
holds God to be the only reality, represents Him not as under-
going a process, but as eternally identical with Himself : hence
his system does not allow of our retaining the idea of the re-
generation of humanity through and in Christ.
It is unable also to allow that God became man. God, who
is the One not mediated with Himself (der mit sich Unvermit-
telte), who is simple eternal being, is immediately in every one ;
He is the only reality in every one. Whatever, therefore, is in
or of them, besides this simple divine element, is not reality, is
mere accident. There is no distinction between individuals,
personalities, in relation to that which constitutes their proper
reality : the divine is the only reality in all. That which con-
stitutes them distinct, to wit, their personality, individuality,
must therefore be unreal. We are thus landed completely
again in the Spinozistic view.
Now, as Christ was individuality, personality, He also is not
entirely reality : remains of the unreal must cleave also to Him ;
as a person, we cannot conceive even Him without unclearness
and darkness. So far as He attains the true reality, or is the true
existence of God, He is no more an individual, but His person-
ality is annihilated. Accordingly, precisely the full, actual
NOTES. 285
existence of God would do away with His humanity. God did
not become man in Him.
We have thus the contradiction, that, on the one hand, God
is eternally destined to become man (for, according to Fichte,
this is to be seen by us to be metaphysical, consequently neces-
sary, although not shown by him to be such) ; and on the other
hand, this can never take place, because personality is conceived
as a limit of the divine, and it therefore must be done away with
precisely when God attained a complete existence in man. The
ground of this contradiction is plain. This ground is the error
which necessarily cleaves to the stage of reflection, that the in-
finite excludes the finite, so that any union formed by the former
with the latter must annihilate instead of raising it to true, in-
finite personality.
Note 15, page 100.
Compare particularly the " Zeitschrift fiir spekulative
Physik," 1801, ii. 2, § 1, 22. The summary view of his system
which it is there his intention to give, has still great affinity with
the principles of Spinoza. Compare in particular § 28, 30, 32,
according to which quantitative differences (he recognises no
other difference, § 23) are posited by no means in themselves, but
merely in appearance ; the process, therefore, which Schelling
endeavours notwithstanding; to set forth in the whole of his
work, is merely a subjective one. He does not here yet regard
the one as in itself that which moves itself ; but the process and
the movement fall into the subject. This is Spinozism which has
passed through the stage of Fichteanism. Here, therefore, Schel-
ling stands where Fichte also subsequently arrived. The process
recognised by him, however, even though primarily merely sub-
jective, contained within itself the principle of a further move-
ment. This showed itself partly already in the " Methode des
akadem. Studiums," 1803, and " Darlegung des wahren Verb."
1806. The development of the process, too, in Schelling's hands
related ever more and more to the volitional aspect ; whereas
Hegel treats the process as one of thought. Compare alsc
'• Einleitung in die Ph; osophie der Mythologie," 1856, pp.
460 ff.
286 NOTES.
XoTE 16, page 102.
That the " other," without which God cannot be conceived
as absolute life, becomes in his view at once " the many," the
world, concerning which at this stage it is impossible for him as
yet to lay claim to any knowledge (save such as is purely em-
pirical), is a leap involving very important consequences, but
not scientifically justified. It throws together into one, two
problems, that of the eternal theogony and that of cosmogony ;
and by this commixture he is driven, against his will, to convert
the essential unity of the divine and human into identity. The
unity with which Christology is particularly concerned, cannot
be understood, if the two members of the antagonism are not
thought out purely by themselves, according to their idea. In
other words, the unity is not the true one, if the members of
the antagonism are united merely by identity, and not rather by
that which distinguishes and opposes them. Compare above,
Div. II. Vol. II. pp. 217 f. An unity grounded in mere identity,
or in an identity actually existing prior to the distinction, is the
negation of the antagonism, instead of the conversion of its
members into momenta of a higher unity.
Note 17, page 114.
Akin to Schelling's view of nature and history, and their
mner relation to each other and to Christianity, are the ideas
of H. V. Schubert and Steffens. I will only quote a few words
of the latter in the present connection (compare his " Anthro-
pologic " ii. 353 ff., 455 ff., and " Wie ich wieder Lutheraner
ward ") : — " At the subhuman stages, the various kinds are rent
asunder, and their scattered forms point to the centre of all
genera, to wit, the human kind. But the human genus also is
not free from the beginning ; on the contrary, wild conflict and
animal desires set it on fire, till personality is formed. Freedom
first comes into existence when our own will is absorbed in, and
made a sacrifice to, the eternal law. Sacrificing our self-will,
we gain our most proper will. This is then our will, and 3'et at
the same time not our will ; it is the Saviour in us, the eternal
love, and confirms in each one the eternal personality.
The revelation of the eternal personality of God, the Son
from eternity, the true primal form and the inner fulness of all
NOTES. 287
law from the very beffiiining, was the Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. His veiled ])ersonality existed from the very beginniug,
and, as a hint of future blessedness, looks out of nature. De-
liverance cannot lie in anything that is earthlily perceived oi
heard. Every earthly form passes away ; but the Son appeared,
the perfect redemption of creation, the atoning centre of history,
even as earthly man is the atoning centre of nature. Only in
close union with this personality, does our eternal, never vanish-
ing primal form come forth, the heart, the redeemed abyss,
as the seat of love ; the glorified countenance, as the disclosed
heaven, the inner light, the essence of the soul, blessedness. —
The Saviour bore and overcame the secret pain, the inner woe
of the whole of creation, and by His death broke the hard crust
that encompassed it, so that the spring of unfathomable love,
and of the eternal, personal life, may bud forth in every heart.
Accordingly, in the organic epoch of history the Spirit of God
passes like a judge over the world, and prepares the time, when,
in the freedom of God, in the love of the Son, in the revelation
of the Spirit, that deep unity of all life shall be revealed by the
redeemed primal forms of a new heaven and a new earth. —
Elsewhere he says, — Whoso has understood that unity of nature
and spirit, that glory of the Son (who sets forth their unity, but
is not explicable from history, but only from Himself), he
alone has a faint idea of the profound significance of the Supper,
and of the blessedness of close union with it. — These thoughts
are more fully carried out in his " Eeligionsphilosophie " i. 410
if., with special reference to miracles, p. 440 ff. 'J'he sole aim
of all the developments in nature, up to the highest stage, is the
revelation of the divine love. But this can only reveal itself,
when that which alone is, to wit, the eternal personality, becomes,
or comes into existence, out of itself ; when the most hidden
task of creation is accomplished by the person itself. The
second Adam, the divine person of all personality, the centre of
history, as man was already in Adam the centre of nature, has
all power over creation. Himself a miracle, the person from
God, He brings the miracle to completion and substance by the
regeneration of the universe.
288 NOTES
Note 18, page 129.
At a later period, it is true, unconciliated herewith, the
opinion made its appearance — " One of the necessary conditions
of the personal Self, is that it itself will to be by itself ; out of
this flow consciousness of guilt, and pain, and suffering, because
of sin :" p. 265 ff. Among the pure results of the development
of humanity before Christ, must be mentioned also the con-
sciousness of guilt, repentance ; this must, therefore, have a
place in Him who is the pure perfection of the personal self.
His sinlessness was not the pure negation of sin, but sinfulness
done away with, sinfulness which had not aiTived at a state of
permanence, at objective reality. Accordingly, He suffered for
His own sin ; but this does not exclude suffering for the sake of
the sin of others. — In his " Kritik der Dogmen nach Anleitung
des apost. Symbol." 1841, pp. 132-153, he endeavours to
mediate more exactly between the two : — " Sinlessness pertains
to Christ, in virtue of the entrance of the totality of the idea of
humanity into His individuality : sinfulness pertains to Him, so
far as the reduction of this universal idea to a concrete human
individuality necessanly presupposes the antagonism between
the individual and the universal. A sinless birth out of the
true essence of humanity must be predicated for Him ; but this
does not necessarily involve a sinless development. On the
contrary, an human development was only possible in Him, on
the supposition that in Him also there were two tendencies, one
to individual independence of being, another to the universal, —
that He had a will of His own opposed to the universal, a will
which aimed at maintaining itself against the universal, and re-
sisted the sacrifice of the entire natural life to which it was
urged ; which will must first be really overcome. He had to
arrive at the personal resolve of will to sacrifice Himself through
vacillation ; and the natural will, which permitted a chain of
seductive thoughts to arise out of itself (Matt, iv.), also offered
resistance to the carrying out of the pure resolve. In relation
to this we must say, — We are no more justified in styling the
non-existence of the absolute perfection which is the final goal
sill, than the innocent conflict between the natural and the
sj)iritual aspect, which the vocation involves. The movements
of the natural life or natural will of Christ were not at all evil
NOTES. 289
in themselves, not even when they were reflected in the conscious-
ness and thoughts ; there is only sin in the spirit when it allows
itself to be determined, and determines itself, in opposition to its
nature and calling. So far is the natural aspect from being in
necessary contradiction to the spiritual or universal, that, on the
contrary, it also must be embraced by the universal and by the
will of the spirit, in such a manner, indeed, that the spirit posits
rule and order. Conradi's principles would lead us to assume
a necessary and eternal sinfulness, seeing that even in the state
of perfection, the universal is not permitted to destroy the
momentum of independence, of individual volition. — Sin is con-
tradiction to the ought, to the law of life, not the abstract ; for
otherwise, undoubtedly, imperfection and growth would also be
sin ; but against the law with those very requirements which it
makes of every stage of life.
Conradi has neither proved, nor indeed did he wish to prove,
that Christ ever stood in an abnormal relation to this law, be it
as to the personal or as to the natural aspect of His being.
Moreover, such a notion would contradict what he says else-
where regarding the immediate holy nature of Christ. In virtue
thereof, the tendency of Christ towards Himself necessarily
was also a tendency towards this holy nature, towards its pre-
servation and development.
Note 19, page 136.
Compare ix. 342: — "As the Greeks spiritualized their
heavenly gods, so Christians, on their ])art, endeavoured to
find a deeper meaning in the historical portions of their religion.
As Philo found that deeper things were hinted at in the Mosaic
narrative, and idealized the external portion of the narrative ;
so did tlie Christians do the same, partly for polemical reasons,
partly, and still more, out of regard to the thing itself." In the
further course of the work, he says, " Dogmas were introduced
into the Christian religion, it is true, by philosophy ; but they
are not therefore foreign to Christianity ; on the contrary, they
concern it closely. For it is a matter of perfect indifference
whence anything is come; the only question is — is it true, in
and by itself? and profoundly speculative elements are inter
woven with the manifestation of Christ itself." To wit, at all
events, in so far as there ferments In faith in Christ, the specu-
P. 2. — VOL. in. T
290 NOTES.
lative idea of the universal consubstantiality of God and man ,
and as the same substance is cherished, though, it is true, in the
form of representation, which philosophy, when it casts aside the
sensuous and empirical, recognises as universal truth, and as in
no sense bound to, or dependent on, any one individual. That
this is Hegel's meaning, is if possible still more clear from xv.
104 ("History of Philosophy" iii.). The fundamental idea
(of the essential unity of God and man) must needs become
universal consciousness, universal religion. For this reason, it
retains and receives shape for the presentative consciousness,
in the form of the outwai'd consciousness, not merely of uni-
versal thought.^ That would otherwise be a philosophy of the
Christian religion ; for the point of view of philosophy is the
idea in the form of thought. By what means this idea as re-
ligion is, belongs to the history of religion ; that is, its develop-
ment, its form. What he understood by the form which was
to be thrown aside, he shows by the example of the history of
the Fall, the truth in which is known when we see it to be the
history of all (pp. 105, 106). He draws a sharp distinction
between the metaphysical and the historical in the Person of
Christ, and by no means posits an essential connection between
the two. What is His historical dignity, is not more precisely
expounded, where we should have first expected it, to wit, in the
philosophy of religion : indeed, by itself, it is destitute of essen-
tial interest. He rather hastens on, in the present connection
also, to the death of Christ, not in order that we may contem-
plate Him as a glorified, perfected personality (in this sense
the Church also holds the historical appearance of Christ to
be marked by an inadequacy, which was first overcome after
His death) ; but that we may learn to look away from Him as
an individual, and rise from a merely religious to a speculative
view.
Note 20, page 138.
What Baur (Trinitiltslehre iii. 908 f., compare 974 f.)
advances against this blame amounts at last to this — that
Hegel neither was nor could in general have been concerned
" " Daher bclialt und erliiilt sic die Gcstalt flir das vorstellende Bewusst-
sein, in Form des aussciliclieii Bcwusstseins, uiclit des iiur allgoraeiueu
Go'l'Uikens."
NOTES. 291
about the construction of the historical Person of Christ, inas-
much as the historical indi\-idual is something contingent. We
are not yet here touching on the question, whether Christ is
contingent for the Christian consciousness, as !Moses -was for
the Jewish. But it is no less marked by contingency to sup-
pose the God-manhood to have been realized primarily in the
form of transference into another ; and an attempt is notwith-
standino; made to construct the accidental. Or was God under
the necessity of realizing the divine-human consciousness first
of all in this form ? This would be nothing less than to say that
the Church must have had a divine-human consciousness i^'^^or
to Christ. Baur himself afterwards says the opposite of this.
By this anthropological method, a relation is a'p'parently estab-
lished between Christ and the Church, and it has worked con-
fusion. For the rest, it contains also an element whose proper
place is where the world is regarded merely in the light of a
means for the actualization of the divine self-consciousness.
It involves further an ethical trait, which many of his followers
completely lost, instead of seeking to give it a foundation in
the idea of God.
Note 21, page 143.
Julius Miiller has justly directed attention to the amphiboly
in Hegel's idea of Evil in " The Christian Doctrine of Sin."
At one time, the immediate in genei'al appears as the evil, the
animal ; at another time, the awakening of man to conscious-
ness, the self-discrimination from this his immediacy (for ex-
ample, " the fall is the eternal myth of man, through which he
becomes man") ; and lastly, the self-fixation in opposition to the
universal divine spirit (" to remain at the point of view of sepa-
ration from the universal divine spirit, through which, it is true^
man first becomes man, is evil").
One might seek to unite all this by representing evil as, in
general, the non-correspondence to the idea of the spirit. But
even the first separation of the spirit, existing for itself, from its
own immediate state, he calls sin ; though only so far as this
separation, which, though necessary, is again to be done away
with, appears as sin in the co7tsciousness of man. In itself, it
is rather a stc]) in advance. For the rest, the self-establirliment
in this antag(Miism is not treated as a deed of the will, const'-
292 NOTES.
quently not as guilt, but simply as a defect of knowledge ; even
as the atonement is conceived, not as something embracing the
totality of the life, but as a process of consciousness.
Note 22, page 149.
With regard to Christ, Strauss says, in his "Leben Jesu"
ii. 734 and 715 (Ed. 1):— "That is not at all the mode in
which the idea realizes itself, to pour out its entire fulness into
one exemplar, and to be niggardly towards all others ; but it
loves to spread out its fulness in a variety of exemplars, which
reciprocally complement each other, in the change of individuals
which posit and again do away with themselves." — P. 717 : —
" Neither in general an individual, nor in particular an historical
commencing point, can be at the same time archetypal." In
vol. ii. 716-718, and 734, he says that Christ also was com-
pelled to experience the lot of the finite spirit, to wit, inner
conflict and vacillation between good and evil. In Himself, as
to His inner kernel, it is true, He was archetypal ; human
nature in general (that is, God) was this kernel ; but His his-
torical appearance cannot have been pure, and that alone which
appears of Him is an historical individual. This by no means
excludes the idea of the incarnation of God, or of the God-
man. On the contrary, that which was thought by the Church
as an history occurring once for all, must now be thought as
an universal actuality. The key of the whole of Christology
(pp. 734, 735) is, that we posit an idea, namely, a real idea,
instead of an individual, as the su'bject of the predicates which
the Church attaches to Christ. Conceived as in an individual,
a God-man, the qualities and functions attributed to Christ by
the doctrine of the Clnu'ch contradict each other ; conceived as
in the idea of the genus, they agree together. Humanity is
the en of the two natures, is the incarnate God, and so forth.
This universal and eternal incarnation is more real and true
than the assum))tion that it took place once. IlvunaJiity is that
which born of the Holy Ghost ; its spirit is the worker of
miracles, the sinless, the dying, the one that rises again, nay
more, even the one that ascends to heaven : — exj)]anations of
the Christian dogmas, exact rest'nibiances of which we have
already frequentlv met with in the course of our investigation.
Christologv falls herewith entirely back into anthropology ; the
NOTES. 293
one Christ of the Church is resolved into the idea, to wit, God,
who is the universal essence of humanity, and into Jesus of
Nazareth {av(o and Karoi Xpia-To^). Concerning the latter, he
says (p. 735) : — " This individual, by His personality and His
fates, became the occasion of raising the truth that humanity
is the God-man to universal consciousness." The shyness to-
wards Rationalism, which represented Christ as the teacher of
a pure, excellent religion (p. 710), plainly appears from this to
have little ground, although, philosophically considered, specu-
lative Rationalism alone deserves the praise of unflinching logical
consistency. At a later period, both in his " Streitschriften "
(see in particular iii. 69 ff.) and elsewhere in a still more
popular manner, he has expressed himself somewhat differently
regarding Christ. Christ is described as " a religious genius,
who, owing to the peculiarity of His constitution, or to His
moral vigour, may possibly have w^orked some of the miracles
of healing ; and although He is not in all respects the accom-
plished reality of the idea, but merely as regards religion, in
reHgious matters it is impossible to transcend Him. because He
has reached the highest goal thereof, to wit, that a man should
know himself in his immediate consciousness to be one with
God." Leben Jesu, Ed. 3, 1839, ii. 777, 778;— " Putting
aside the ideas of sinlessness and absolute perfection as incap-
able of accomplishment, we regard Christ as the one in whose
self-consciousness the unity of the divine and human made its
appearance for the first time, and that with such an energy as
to overcome and reduce to a vanishing minimum all the hin-
drances which lay within the entire compass of His heart and
life : — so far, therefore. He holds an unique and, save by Him,
unattained position in history. The commencement may be
conceived as also the greatest of a series, so far as an idea
is used to possess and display most vigour at its first appear-
ance, but not as the absolutely greatest ; for, on the contrary,
the religious consciousness which He gained for Himself and ex-
j)ressed, could not withdraw itself from the need of purification
and expansion." Similarly Baur (Trinitiitslehre iii. 9G9, 903)
says, — " If the negativity of the idea, which is the innnanent
principle of the history of the world, consists in the circumstance,
that in its living self-motion it passes out beyond every finite
form, and thus negatives and resumes it into itself, with what
294 NOTES.
right can the exception be established which, according to tlie
doctrine of the Church, must be made in the case of the one
individual ? The entire process (of God and humanity) must
then cease at once," and so forth. P. 964 ff., — " The case is a
similar one with absolute sinlessness (or archetypicality), so far
as it is to be attributed to one individual. That it appears as
an impossibility in the system, this only shows the impossibility
of the thing itself." It contradicts the essence of the finite
spirit. It can only be sinfulness done away with, sinfulness
that has not attained to permanence, says he, with' Conradi,
See above, pp. 129 ff.
Note 23, page 153.
The only way in which we could escape attributing to it a
gradual development, would be by supposing the self-conscious
God or the idea to have eternal reality in itself. This might be
understood in two ways ; to wit, either as denoting that God, in
freedom and independence of the world and its course of de-
velopment, is eternally and absolutely self-conscious in Himself ;
or that He is the spiritual substance, which, because it remains
ever like itself, has nothing either to seek or to find in the course
of the development of humanity, but, reaching out beyond in-
dividuals as its manifestations, unites in itself all essentiality,
all substantiality, so that outside of it there can only be that
which is unessential, accidental. The first explanation would
correspond to the Christian idea of God ; the second is adopted
by Baur (see the " Trinitiitslehre " iii. 925-928) :—" Spu'it
per se has eternally effected its return to itself, and is one with
itself : God is not merely the process, that is, the actuality of
the world, which in positing and abolishing runs on into the
infinite ; but, above all, the unity or the principle of the process
in which all the antagonisms of the world are merely ideally
contained." " That in general there is a finite world for the
realization of the idea, is the necessary condition of the concrete
divine self-consciousness ; but that which realizes itself in the
individual beings of the finite world is the non-essential rela-
tively to the essential being of the idea." Taking such a view,
we can say that God is not the spirit of the world, namely, so
far as the concrete content of the world is something unsub-
stantial, something which has only a semblance of being. But
NOTES. 295
in so far as the world has a moment of being, and God actu-
alizes Himself as spirit only through its mediation, He is also
the spirit of the world. Baur tries to conceive the mediatory
process, on the one hand, as eternally complete ; on the other
hand, as progressive. But he fails to combine the two, for it
is an inner impossibility. Complete it is (p. 924), so far os the
idea in its eternal essential being contains everything that is
realized in the actuality of the world. This perfection, how-
ever, which would lie in the per se (An Sich), would be a perfec-
tion Avithout that which is highest, to wit, concrete subjectivity,
which alongside of it would be a mere accident. On the prin-
ciples of the system, this would be a demand to think God as
eternally complete without absolute self-consciousness ; for this
latter it is supposed possible to realize solely in the world.
Note 24, page 166.
Page 36. Rosenkranz means the same thing (" Encyclo-
pajdie," Ed. 2, p. 64) when he describes it as the manner of the
idea, that is, as a necessity of reason, to posit the individual us
the unity of the particular and the universal, in other words,
as punctual totality (punktuelle Totalitiit). Only that he draws
too little distinction between nature and spirit. Nor can we,
with Rosenkranz, say, — " Every man is all men ; every spirit is
all spirits." For this formula posits and denies at the same
time the distinction between the individual spirits, Avliich is not
rendered impossible by their being, as spirits, totalities. Conradi
in particular (see his " Christus in der Vergangenheit, Gegen-
wart und Zukunft," 1839, p. 58), has directed attention to the
essence of personality. " It is precisely this, to be the realitv
of the conception in its infinitude." Pp. 257 ff. : " The indivi-
duals of the natural genus are merely transition-points, indica-
tions of the life of the genus, specimens, samples. But with
this natural relation between kind and individual, the conception
of Immanity is not attained : nor is it allowable then to say, that
the idea is realized in humanity ; for it is essential to the idea
to be conscious of itself, tiiat is, to be realized in a self-con-
sciousness. The realization of the idea must, therefore, un-
questionably be sought in the world of humanity, of j^ersomd
beings." To similar purpose Marhoincckc, in his " System der
Dogmatik" (p. 293), defines the conception of personaliti/ to
296 NOTES.
be that which solves the riddle of the apparent contradiction
between the universal and the particular. In it takes place the
transition of the absolute into egoity, and of the Ego into
absoluteness ; through it the incarnation of God is a possibility.
This part of the school of Hegel thus arrives, not without adding
the will to knowledge, at the very same point which we found
in Schelling's doctrine of freedom, to wit, at the personality as
the unity of the universal and the ])articular. Vatke also
(" Die menschliche Freiheit, etc.," 1841) endeavoured to de-
velop the system onwards in this direction ; besides him, in
greater independence of Hegel, Fischer, Fichte, Weisse.
Note 25, page 167.
According to the remarks made above in connection with
Hegel, the utmost that follows from this empirical derivation is
the necessity of faith in the perfect presence of God in Christ.
Nor did this defect entirely escape his own notice, p. 93. Nay
more, to judge from page 127, he also would seem to attribute
a merely transitory significance to Christ. " The participation
of all in the person and deed of Christ involves in itself un-
doubtedly a negation of the particular, individual Christ ;"
although he adds, it is never an actual and spiritual participation
unless it is accompanied by as true a recognition also of the
specific and distinctive character of Christ, unless His unique-
ness is retained hold of, as the foundation of the whole of our
Christian life. Still more distinctly does Conradi, in his
" Kritik der christlichen Dogmen" (pp. 280 ff.), resolve the
personality of Christ ultimately " into the infinitude of the per-
sonal spirit." Corporeality is merely in a relative sense the
end of the ways of God, to wit, to the point where spirituality
is born into the corporeality, into the finite individuality wliich is
posited by it. From that point on we may say, — Spirituality is
the end of the ways of God, and in spirituality the finite indi-
viduality is done away with.
Note 26, page 168.
I had already taken this course in the essay in the " Tubin-
gen Zeitschrift," which formed the basis of the present work
(1836, i. p. 239). The fundamental doctrinal thought is then
repeated verbatim in the concluding aissertation of the previous
NOTES. 297
edition (pp. 527 ff.). After observing, namely, tliat the entire
development of science shows that, be its will ever so good, it
cannot preserve for Christ a specific, distinctive, and unique
character, unless, continuing in the traces of the canonical
doctrine (1 Cor. x v. 45-47 ; Rom. v. 12 ff. ; Eph. i. 19-23,
iv. 10-16, V. 23 fe. ; Coh i. 13 ff. ; Heb. i. 2, 3 ; John i.
1-14), it concede to Him also a metaphysical significance, the
remark is repeated, — " As a deeper view of nature shows the
subordinate stages of existence to be the scattered, disjoined
momenta of one whole, of one idea, which is then summed up
in the noble, godlike form of man, who, as such, is the head and
crown of the natural creation ; so may humanity be regarded
as the discerpted plurality of a higher whole, of a higher idea, to
wit, of Christ. And as nature is collected into unity, not merely
in the idea of a man, but in actual man ; so also is humanitj'
summed up, not merely in an idea, in an ideal Christ, but in
the actual God-man, who personally sets forth its totality, and
collects in Himself the archetypes, or ideal personalities, of all
single individualities. And as the first summing up of scattered
momenta in Adam, although a summing up of nature, and itself
still participating in nature, itself still a natural being, yet
exhibits an infinitely higher form than any of the individual
natural beings ; so the second Adam also, although in Himself
a summing up of humanity, and Himself still a man, is an in-
finitely higher form of humanity than any single representative
of our kind. If Adam was the head of the natural creation,
and as such reached over with his essence into the kingdom of
spirit, and gi'asped over the natural world, Christ is the head of
the spiritual creation, and as such points out away from and
beyond humanity to a so to speak cosmical, or, as we have
termed it above, metaphysical significance of His person." This,
then, is the place at which Christology comes into connection
with the doctrine of the Trinity, through the medium of the
Logos-idea, and where we may apply the words of Scripture
concerning " the Word which w^as in the bemnninxj, Avhich was
with God, and was God : all things were made by it, and with-
out it was not anvtliinj; made that is made. In Him was life,
and the life was the light of men. And this same Word be-
came flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory, a
glory as of the only-bwgot^en of the Father, full of grace and
2y8 NOTES.
truth." In the previous edition of this work (see pp. 370-376),
I entered at the same time into a detailed justification of this
view, which I will not here repeat. I will refer in preference
to the works of K. Ph. Fischer, Liebner, Lange, Rotlie, which
recognise, establish, and carry out, in one respect or another, the
truth of the fundamental thought in question. So much, how-
ever, shall be verbatim repeated, even at the risk of having a view
again attributed to me by such men as K. Schwarz (" Zur Ge-
schichte der neuesten Theologie," 2 Ed. p. 261), the direct
contrary of that which I really entertain, — that neither the
opinion of the Church (which at all times, as is clear from the
whole of the present work, has cherished and preserved this
apostolic idea of the Person of Christ, and agitated it as often
as it ventured into the domain of speculation), nor of myself in
the above exposition, has been, that Christ is " the totality of
individuals as they live and move, or the collective unity thereof."
Against so glaring a misapprehension I ought to have been
protected, both by the express repudiation of this notion given
in connection with the above exposition (see Ed. i. p. 373), and
by v^hat is said regarding the first Adam. As regards the
matter itself, it may be remarked, that the multiplicity of the
descendants of Adam, each of which is a totality or microcosm
in his own way, is no argument against the permanent unique-
ness of Christ. All that we have to do is to pursue further the
path indicated to us by the Apostle (1 Cor. xv.) : — as the first
Adam became the progenitor of a multiplicity of beings like
himself, although he alone remained the first father ; so the
second Adam also has become the progenitor of a new race like
Himself, which through Him acquires a share in His divine-
human essence. The sole distinction is, that the process which
begins with the second Adam does not rise intensively any
higher, but goes back to the already existing race of men, who
all are born the children of Adam and not the children of God,
though, because they are ethical, historical beings, they are cap-
able, by their nature, of becoming the children of God. In
this way the process, instead of ascending in a straight line, or
advancing in a " progressus in infinitum," is closed, and forms
as it were a circle. The second Adam is at the same time the
last, the absolute apex of humanity, which becomes the centre
of the family of the children of God. But He becomes that
NOTES. 299
which He is, because the absolutely universal principle, the
Logos, the image of God, and the archetype of the world, has
given Himself in Him cosmical actualitj; also, in agreement with
His owm ethical nature, which from the very beginning was
directed to the production, not merely of a race of natural,
psychical men (1 Cor. xv. 46), but of a race of pneumatic beings,
nay more, to the establishment of the presence and life of God
in that race. This mode of existence was found by the divine
Logos in Christ ; in the most perfect, not merely substantial,
but personal form ; and for this reason, there rests in this person
the power or the "principle" of the regeneration of all out of
the spirit. The Person of Chnst, because it is the cosmical
expression of the divine archetype of the world or of the Logos
(2 Cor. iv.). His realization in an actual human form, has
become the transforming, all-sufficient archetype of all, the
personal power to realize also its ovrn archetypal individuality.
Nor does the fact that in Him is the point of the true life of
all, and that He in this sense, and precisely as a person, is
potentia their unity, involve the dissolution of His human per-
sonality, or, if we will, of His human individuality ; for, on the
contrary, the permanent peculiarity which distinguishes Him
from all others consists in His being alone the head, by virtue
of His, not one-sided, but absolute union with the Logos. The
expression — Christ is the unity of the human individual and of
the race, must undoubtedly be allowed to say either nothing at
all or something inappropriate, if we use the term hind in the
sense of the physically universal : but the essence of humanity
is to be spii'it ; and there is no contradiction between spirit in
its absolutely perfect form, that is, as absolutely united with
and adequately revealing God, and as realizing Him in the
world, on the one side, and the individuality and uniqueness of
the Son of man, on the other side ; for this distinct person,
Jesus Christ, has universal significance and an influence coiTe-
sponding to the unique character of the union between Himself
as the central individual and the IjOgos, not notwithstanding,
but in virtue of. His personality and uniqueness.
Note 27, page 172.
Pp. 200 f. Similarly Roscnkranz (see p. (^b). It is neces-
sary that central individuals also make their appearance ; the
300 NOTES.
I)readth of the culture must be summed up also into its depth.
P. 66. Christ is not an encyclopaedia of powers, talents, but
the true man. To speak of having genius for true humanity,
is an improper expression. His mission was to set forth the
necessity of freedom as the truth of spirit, and this alone, — this»
however, as His own self. Marheinecke, agreeing chiefly with
Couradi, says (see pp. 308 ff.), — We may allow to Strauss, that
without His universal life in humanity, God (the idea) could
not have attained to this concrete and separate being in Christ.
But the multiplicity that characterizes the form of the appear-
ance of the divine in humanity still leads strongly in the direc-
tion of heathenism ; for it is precisely this multiplicity of the
form that shows it at the same time to be finite. In giving
utterance to the thought " humanity," one supposes oneself to
be dealing with the infinite, because it is an abstraction from
multiplicity. But we must rather seek to understand person-
ality, individuality, as the truly infinite. A single personality
is the vehicle of a power and intensity that has no measure. In
Christ is the spiritual and moral ground, without which the
particular aspects of life (for example, talents and so forth) are
destitute of worth ; and this intensity is greater than everything
phgenomenal and extended. Accordingly, Christ, as the indi-
vidual, is the universal, man ; as a single individual, He is the
absolute individual : He is humanity, but humanity in particu-
larity : pp. 312 f. Page 310, he describes the Logos, after the
manner of Goschel, as the primal personality : — indeed, beholds
the significance of the doctrine of the anhypostasis of humanity
to be, that God is the essence of humanity.
Note 28, page 206.
On the other hand, by the way in which he conceives the
sinlessness of Christ, he renders a recognition of the full truth
of Plis humanity an impossibility ; though, at the same time,
we must mention to his great credit, that he was far removed
from treating evil, or even only imperfection, as something
postulated by the very idea of our nature. On this point,
there is an essential distinction between him and both Hegel
and Schelling and Kant ; and it is strange to find him charged
' " Es miissen audi Centralindividucn auftreteii, die Breite dor Bild-
ung muss auch in ihre Tiefe zusamiuengcfasst werdon."
NOTES. 301
by the school of Hegel with a relapse to the Kantian notion of
the dualism between the shall and being, between the finite and
the infinite : — a point of view which it itself occupies, if it have
not sunk back behind Kant in an ethical point of view.
Schleiermacher clung faithfully to the conviction, that the actu-
ality of the archetypal does not go beyond our nature ; but to
the truth of this our nature, a true moral process is also neces-
sary ; and a true moral process is impossible without passing
through opposed possibilities, without actual labour and moral
gain. And yet Schleiermacher describes the sinless life of
Christ as though it had flowed on without conflict, temptation,
or trial, like a smooth, unrippled stream ; which makes the im-
pression of a course that is physically necessary. Like Athana-
sius or Apollinaris, he held the existence of a remainder of
mobility (Beweglichkeit) in the will (rpeTrrov) to be connected
with sin (see Div. I. Vol. II. pp. 351, 360). Liebner has justly
drawn particular attention to this as a defect of his system.
XoTE 29, page 218.
Giinther and his school here come into consideration ; the
movement against which in the Catholic Church is so violent,
because the predominant tendency of that Church now is to
resorb the human into the divme aspect of the Person of Christ,
and to leave the former merely a semblance of reality. In
opposition to this tendency, Giinther and his school have justly
protested. He lays stress on the independence of the human
aspect ; appealing, as he justly can, in favour of his position, to
Leo and the Synods of the years 451 and 681. In the empha-
sis thus laid on the truth of the humanity, there lies but one of
the momenta which constitute the peculiar character of the
Churches of the Reformation, for they assert no less vigorously
the unity of the human and the divine ; for which reason,
Giinther is unable really to sympathize with them. Giinther's
opponents insist, with equal one-sidedness, though in an opposite
direction, on the unity, which they deem to lie in the divine ;
hence it happens that each, with equal justice and plausibility,
cliarges the other with inclining to Protestantism. But also
with equal injustice ; for neither Giinther's distinction of the
divine from the human, nor the unity maintninod by his anta-
gonists, is that asserted by the Reformation. On the contrary,
302 NOTES.
as this very double charge by itself indicates, the true Protes-
tant view unites two things which the antagonists of the Refor-
mation are compelled eternally to put asunder. The two
parties in question, to wit, that of Giinther and his opponents,
do but embody afresh the antagonisms of the Middle Ages, and,
though each may be well able to refute the other, neither of
them either aids itself or its opponent in the attainment of the
trutli. Giinther's fundamental thought is the dualism between
God and the world. " The universe is the contra-position of the
Triune God." Man is, in his view, an " union-being " (ein
Vereinwesen), or a " marriage " between spirit on the one side,
and body and soul on the other. The union between the two
sides he supposes to be merely formal. In every person, namely,
a distinction must be drawn between form and essence, or the
substantial principle. The form is the thinking of the essence,
through which being becomes subject. The thinking of the
essence (of the two substantial principles in man), or self-con-
sciousness, is the unity of man. But whereas the self-conscious-
ness of an absolute person is immediate, that of a creature is
arrived at alone through the discrimination of foreign existences
and co-operation from our own being. These principles must
be applied also to the Person of Christ. The eternal Son is an
independent self-conscious subject. But to His humanity also,
if it is to be such in truth, we must attribute a self-conscious-
ness of its own, growth of that self-consciousness and increase
of knowledge : no less too a free will, concerning which we are
warranted in saying " potuit peccare." It is not sufficient to
repudiate merely the doctrine of a Docetical body of Christ ; we
must reject Docetism also in relation to spiritual states ; we
must cast aside the Docetical will and knowledge, because other-
wise the homoousia is violated. Scholasticism, says Trebisch
(" Die christliche Weltanschauung," 1852, p. 148), vacillated
between Nestorius and Eutyches, when it, on the one hand,
assumed a " scientia inf usa " as habitual or actual, and with it
the presence of perfect wisdom in the soul of Christ from the
very beginning ; and yet, on the other hand, recognised a
" scientia acquisita ;" as also, when it pursued the same course
in relation to holiness. The one makes the other superfluous.
The humanity, therefore, must be described as personal in itself ;
as also the Logos, on the other hand. — But if there are two per-
NOTES. 303
sons in Cliiist, Avhich stand in no inner relation to each other, how
can the unity of His person be maintained ? Little importance
can be attached to what Giinther says, to the effect, that every
real union between an absolute and a created substance is an hy-
postatical one, in so far as " the absolute personality is the agent
in its accomplishment ;" for all that this denotes, is that the
Logos stands in the same relation to Jesus as He does to all.
The humanity itself derives no advantage from this union. Of
somewhat more weight is it, when he says that — " The Logos
watched over and furthered from the beginning the moulding
and the evolution of the soul of the holy child Jesus, which was
bound to Him" (Trebisch, p. 151). But the properly qualita-
tive momentum which pertains alone to Christ, and constituies
Him God-man, is supposed to lie in His self-consciousness ; a
point which strikingly reminds us of the Christology of Des-
cartes (ii. 899). This is the common type of the divine and
of the human substance, in that it is the essential form of its
essence. As a common element, it is fitted for beins the
medium of the union of the Logos with Jesus. The creature,
namely, is unable to lay hold of its own being, save as it appears
in its determinateness for thought. Now the divine principle,
which, on its part, united itself with human being, will therefore
appear to the human self-consciousness by means of some sort
of influence, by the communication of the thought of that union,
in that it gives the man to know that it is, or appears as, united
with him. Accordingly, this man now knows himself as the
God-man. But how can Giinther show it to be a determination
of the humanity itself, that it should thus be the property of
the Logos ? We say nothing more than holds good of all
beings, even of things without life, when we say that the Logos
is hypostatically active in connection therewith, as with that
which is His own. And how is the duplication of the like form
to bring about unity of the person ? — especially when the con-
tent of these forms is and remains absolutely different, and the
equality consists solely in both being the spiritual form of one
content ? A substantial union between God and the human sub-
stance, a total penetration of the human self-consciousness by the
content of the divine, must not be assumed, but merely a formal
unity. The manifestation by means of which Jesus knows Him-
self as the God-man may recede, without involving the reces-
304 NOTES.
sion of His self-consciousness, or the termination of the union.
All men are " union-beings " (Vereinwesen) through the formal
unity of consciousness : such is the case also with Christ, with
the sole difference, that His self-consciousness embraces in
addition the absolute principle. In this " union-being," with
its two permanently separate and distinct series of activities,
Giinther teaches that the divine and the divine-human spiri-
tual life operate, each having the predominance by turn ; only
that the hegemonical divine will determines which shall have
the predominance, the one or the other. Thus are the two
persons embraced under one common personality (compare
Div. n. Vol. I. Note 14). As a free debt can only be paid by
the free merit of a beino; who belongs to one and the same
organic Avhole, the satisfaction cannot be offered by any other
than the Son of man. Giinther asserts that this is rendered
possible by his doctrine, according to which Jesus is a new, pure
creation on the basis of the old, though His was a true humanity.
Trebisch, in particular, seeks to effect a reconciliation with the
doctrine of the Church, by representing it as churchly to draw
a distinction between hypostasis and Trpoacorrov, similar to that
between the quiescent and the actual. There are two hypo-
stases, but in their actuality they become one prosopon, one
formal divine-human person. The Nestorians were Monothe-
letes, and taught that the Son of man was a person from the
very outset ; whereas He first attained full self-consciousness
when He received the knowledge of the hypostatical union.
Compare Giinther, " Vorschule der speculativen Theologie,"
2 Bde. Ed. 2, 1848 ; "Lydia," 1849 ; " Peregrin's Gastmahl,"
AVien, 1850 ; Pabst's " Christus und Adam ; der Mensch und
seine Geschichte," Ed. 2, 1847 ; Merten's " Grundriss der
Metaphysik," 1848 ; Knoodt, " Kath. Viertelj. J. 2, H. 2, 1848 ;
Knoodt's " Giinther und Clemens, offene Briefe," 3 Bde. 1853,
1854, Bd. 2, pp. 239-482 ; Baltzer, " Neue theolog. Briefe an
A. Gunther," 2 Ser. 1853, pp. 145-216. The opponents of
this school are, in particular, Oischinger, " Die Giinther sche
Philosophic," Schaffh. 1852, pp. 352 ff.^ Clemens, « Die specu-
lative Theologie Giinther's und die Kath. Kirchenlehre," Coin,
1853 ; G. Liebcr, " Ueber das Wachsthum Jesu in der Weis-
heit, exeget. dogmengescli. Eriirterung d. Stelle Luc. ii.," 1850 ;
Volkmuth, and others. Against Giinther's doctrine is urged
NOTES. 305
its incompatibility with the Council of Ephesus, with the
€V(i)aL<i ^vaiKT], the 660t6ko<;, and the like. Christ's actions are
maintained by Giiiither in opposition to Leo's position, not to
be common ; but the one pertain to the divine, the others to
the human nature, according to the alternation of the predomi-
nance. Clemens, who appears to know nothing about the an-
tagonism between the Catholic, and specially the Jesuitical
dogmatics, and the Lutheran Christology, complains of the
absence of a real " Communicatio idiomatum," and maintains
that, subsequently to the " Unio," the distinction of the natures
was merely formal, whilst the unity was substantial ; which is
completely monophysitical (see Div. II. Vol. I. 133 ff.)i. Grati-
fying as are the efforts made by Giinther to lay stress on the
human and the ethical in Christ, still the unity of the person
remains a merely external determination ; for he represents the
essence of God and of man as mutually exclusive, and not
inwardly related to each other. For this reason, the humanity
of Christ has, in his system, on the one hand, a dualistic inde-
pendence ; and yet, on the other hand, when the unity is in
question, he represents this same humanity as ruled, and its
independence as momentarily suppressed, by the deity. This
is clear from his doctrine of the alternate predominance of the
one over the other ; in adopting which, he resorts again to the
mode of thought usually prevailing amongst his antagonists
Note 30, page 228.
The view on which judgment has just been pronounced, is
shared also by Bunsen in his " Hippolytus und seine Zeit,"
Leipzig, 1852 (see i. 114 f., 217 f., but especially pp. 279 ff.,
289 ff.), where, for the rest, he teaches also an immanent or
ontological Trinity (that of the eternal divine self-conscious-
ness), alongside of the oeconomical world-forming Trinity ; but
he does not express any distinct opinion respecting the relation
between the two. In consideration of the misrepresentations
which his view has had to encounter, let me add here, that (in
opposition to Ilegel) he teaches that there is an eternal, self-
conscious and infinite will in God, and in the world a finite
copy and reflection of the same (pp. 281-290). lie holds the
metaphysical or ontological triplicity (being, thought, and the
conscious unity (;f the two ; or, God as the absolute essence,
P. 2. — VOL. III. U
306 NOTES.
the Word as the eternal revelation in God, anJ the Spirit) to
be the necessary archetype of finite actuahty and the key to the
tripHcity of God in rehgion. In the world, man corresponds to
the Logos in God, humanity to the Spirit ; at the Christian stage
of revelation, the " Word" is the Son: Sonship, indeed, embraces
both Jesus Christ and those who become His brethren through
His Spirit ; but still Jesus alone is the incarnate Word (Logos).
The Spirit, however, relates always to believing humanity, to
the Church, which is not merely a collocation and succession of
individuals, but has a principle of development independent
of the individual. Indeed, the Spirit neither has nor is destined
to assume a finite and individual corporeal form, but manifests
Himself solely as the totality of believers, as the Church.
Note 31, page 228.
A recent advocate of Patripassianism is the North American
Horace Bushnell, author of " Christ in Theology," Hartford,
1851 (he has written also other Christological works, as " God
m Christ," and " The Person in Christ, the Ti'inity and the
Work of liedemption"), and acquainted with German theology.^
He regards Christ Apollinaristically as destitute of human soul,
as an union of God and man whose purpose is to humanify the
idea of God, and thus to express or communicate God. " His
humanity," says he, " has no end for me save that of bringing
God. Whether there be a soul more or less, a drop in the sea,
is a matter of indifference ; but it is not a matter of indifference
to have God, and to know Him as the one who is with us, and
who has approached so near to our sympathy as to put Himself
on our human level (pp. 92 ff.). Even supposing w^e had His
human soul, it would do us no service. If it works nothing
particular by itself, it is as though it were not ; and indeed it is
customary to speak of it as again absorbed into the divine nature.
Therefore it is better to transfer the human to God. He has
human feelings ; and it is not blasphemy (as Dr Symington, in
his work on "The Atonement," p. 154, pretends) to say that God
suffers. The truth is, that He is not a rock, that He does not
know all things and feel nothing, like a diamond, which receives
* I regret that I have not Bushnell's work at band ; otherwise, both to
my own and the reader's advantage, I should have quoted the ipsissina
verba, instead of translating a translation. — TuANSLATOK.
KOTES, 307
light without feeling ; but that He feels intensively, In the depth
of His own purity and tenderness, all the deeds and thoughts in
the universe ; that He Is displeased, He has real repugnance ;
that when He looks on evil. He abominates It, He is angry with
it, and so forth. As He Is capable, in His goodness, of feeling
so many evils, there Is perhaps a necessary law of self-compen-
sation In Him, of such a nature that infinite lessenings of His
joy are replaced by infinite increaslngs and by conscious growth
in joy, of which latter the former furnish the occasion. Perhaps
that which we term the Impassibility of God has its ground in
an Infinite capability of suffering, over against which the equili-
brium of joy is preserved by the compensations of an infinite
goodness, which ever more well up In Him as waters of eternal
life. In Christ, God reveals what He does not in nature and
history, to mt. His passive virtues, and forces and brings me
under their power : p. 104. Of course, such a person as Christ,
God with us. Is an abnormity. It Is His will to be and live In
the manner of an human brother, the eternal God Himself
under human limitations. The entire movement is undoubtedly
violent and abnorm (pp. 97, 98) ; but let us see to it tlint we do
not put a mere man between us and God, and thus deny tlK
incarnation. If we assume that Christ had an human soul, let
us allow it also Its personality, and let us consent to the double
personality of the Redeemer (pp. 96, 114). Theories which re-
present the sufferings as affecting the soul and body Instead of
the deity, and yet cling to the unity of the person, lead us into
doctrines which outbid chloroform in their effects. Like
Griffin, he refuses to divide the unity, and maintains that the
one person went through all the sufferings and performed all
the works. This qualifies Clnist for His mediatorship. The
genuine, long-forgotten doctrine of the Church does not attri-
bute a triplicity to the substance; but, in speaking of "generatio"
and " processus," merely intends to teach a Trinity of "actus"
(of will), in support of which he appeals to Calvin's relations In
God without a Trinity of essence, and to John Howe (see his
" Complete Works," Lect. xv. pp. 1096 ff.). He Is willing to
allow that the distinctions of revelation which make their ap-
pearance in time have eternal grounds in God, but demands that
we take the temporal and historical as our point of departure
(p. 185). "The triplicity is necessary without detrinient to the
308 NOTES.
unity. Its significance consists in its enabling us to think God
as transcendent and personal at the same time, p. 137. The
spirit of God is no dead level, no abyss or plateau, but personal.
For God, however, this triplicity has mei'ely an instrumental
significance ; it is to Him a mere means, not an end, p. 165.
As regards the Word (Xoyo^) in particular, it is a peculiar capa-
city of self-expression in God. In God is something Mdiich is
the source of all the forms of things, and M^hich gives outward
expression to the inner life of God, the mirror of His creative
imagination, into which God looks, and through which He brings
to pass an express image of His person : p. 131. His intention
is not to attempt a solution of the problem : he prefers to leave
it standing as an insoluble mystery ; for mystery is part of the
necessary dynamics of the infinite, which, as such, cannot be
defined : p. 117. As the immanent Trinity, also the logical and
the psychological, have become a matter of indifference to pious
interests, so is Sabellianism also too much a merely logical thing;
even Schleiermacher's modalism he cannot approve. Like
Twesten, Stuart requires that we go back from Schleiermacher's
tlireefold revelation to a threefold principle of revelation in God.
But, says Bushnell (in harmony with Monarchianism, as we have
become acquainted with it especially from the Philosophumena),
the Logos is alone the entire principle of revelation, although He
reveals different things. This Logos is, therefore. Father, Son,
and Spirit ; for He is God as it is His will to be revealed and
to be for the world. Hence, Christ declares Himself to be the
Father ; that is, the Father is virtually manifest in Him. Be-
tween God's inner essence and us there is no bridge. Nor does
Bushnell feel any desire to seek for one. The triplicity may be
a condescension to our weakness, instead of denoting a mode of
God's being in Himself. As an instrumental expression, it is
necessary for us ; without its being necessary that there should
be an ontological correspondent in God (pp. 147 ff., 1(54). In
Himself God may be fonnless, even though forms are necessary
for the expression of the forndess, p. 165. But there resides in
God an "originating power of form," which refers to the world.
This principle of form is the Logos : it is not a particular person,
but again the one God Himself, in whom resides this principle
of form as relating to the world, presents to God the eternally
self-conscious, as in a mirror, the thought of the cosmos. Christ,
NOTES. 2^^
however, sets God completely before us, as lie wishes us to con-
ceive of Him. If we rest satisfied with the persons as persons
of the drama of revelation, we can say also, inasmuch as God is
by nature eternally a self-revealing being, that He is to be re-
cognised from eternity to eternity as Father, Son, and Spu'it,
that is, through a trinity of eternal generation, through His
self-revealing activity. This theory is unmistakeably marked by
a deep hiatus, which separates it into two opposing parts. When
Bushnell speaks of the loving sympathy of God, no expression
is too strong to draw down God's being and life itself into fini-
tude and suffering; nay more, he then speaks of God as capable
of suffering in Himself, and as actually suffering. He cannot,
therefore, as did the old Patripassians, deem the incarnation
necessary for God, in order that He might become capable of
suffering. On the other hand, when he speaks of the revelation
of God, he does not represent God's essence as, properly speak-
ing, entering into it ; but He is merely virtually in the flesh
taken from Mary, which is deemed to be without soul. And
yet, lastly, God is said to have given expression to His person
in the face of Jesus ; nay more, he even goes so far as to say
that Christ is the incarnation of the divine nature for the ends
of revelation. The only way to reconcile these different repre-
sentations is to suppose that he deems Christ to be a living
symbol of God, presenting itself in a dramatical form as a person,
which reveals so much of God as He wills, but is not the reve-
lation of His essence. But, on this supposition, God keeps His
inmost being closed ; nay more. He is subject to the law of not
being able to disclose it ;— which might be true if the essence
of God were not love. We cannot term this theoiy Ebionitical ;
on the contrary, it may serve to show us what consequences
follow, when the humanity is treated merely as a means, and not
also as an end. The means becomes a matter of indifference, and
unnecessary, so soon as the end is gained. In fact, Bushnell is
just as incapable of ascribing an eternal humanity to Christ as
the old Patripassians ; He is to him a mere theophany. He
says only,— God who appeared in Christ dwells, in a certain
sense, eternally in an human body, so bright tliat it fills heaven
with its rays; the aTza\}^aG\ia about God is a sun-body; this is
His eternal body. (Into this body the flesh which Christ derived
from Mary appears to him to have resolved itself,— an idea
310 NOTES.
which may serve, perhaps, to throw hght on the old SabelHan
notion, that Christ deposited His body in the sun.) Nevertheless,
there is a sense in which Christ continues to exist for us as the
glorified man. For if Christ has wrought a perfect work in us
by His revelation — which it was both His will and vocation to
do — a character and a mould or retina of thought for God has
been formed in our mind, so that God, in all that we may know
concerning Him, is Christ for us, is humanized, is accessible to
us (p. 114). Buslmell cannot, however, regard Christ's (that
is, God's) endurance of suffering as an endurance of punish-
ment on our behalf ; for God cannot punish Himself, God ex-
presses in Christ what He would have expressed by punishment.
He thus substitutes His sufferings for the punitive sufferings of
men. His sufferings accordingly are justificatory (p. 217) ; not
a merely epideictical act, but operative. It deserves further
to be mentioned, that he suggests to the Unitarians, — who regard
Christ as a man, though differing from all others in being a pure
revelation of God, — to worship the child Jesus, and calls upon
them, in case they decline to worship God in the Son for fear
of anthropomorphism, to let the Father fall also because of the
same scruple. He is well able to do and demand this, so far
as the worship of the child is to him, strictly speaking, the wor-
ship of the God who revealed Himself in the child : Christ is to
him, as it were, the sacrament of humanity. The Unitarians
whom he has in view and hopes to win, are undoubtedly men
like Theodore Parker and others. They, however, in opposition
to him, justly lay stress on the truth of the humanity of Christ.
As Patripassianism is revived in this theory of Bushnell's,
we may here mention a view which, although decidedly meant
to be based on the foundation of the Trinity, shows us clearly
that Patripassianism inevitably follows in the train of the idea
of the self-depotentiation of the Logos, which now numbers so
many friends. We refer to the view expounded by Steinmeyer
in his "Beitrtige zum Schriftverstandniss in Predigten" (see i.
1854, Ed. 2, pp. 38 ff.). " Christmas is the festival of the sacri-
fice of the Father. In the work of creation there was no sacri-
fice ; in His works of blessing there is no loss. Communication
is a necessity of love's own nature, and, consequently, when He
(creatively) gave, He did not lose, but gained with those who
gaincfl. At the incarnation, however, He was called upon to
KOTES. 311
present the sacrifice of Abraham. It was necessary for Plim
to undergo deprivation, to make a sacrifice : compassion required
to outweigh love. God is not exahed above the deprivations in-
volved in the interruption of fellowship. God was bereaved ;
God was isolated ! John says, ' In the beginning the Word
was vnth God ;' but this relation underwent a change at the in-
carnation, for the directness, and consequently the blessedness,
of the fellowship ceased, ns soon as the Son had chosen the form
of a servant. The love of the incarnate one and the obedience
of the humbled one could not sufficiently compensate for that
which had been the Father's joy before the foundation of the
world." On the other hand, he holds the sacrifice of the Son to
have been the mere imitation of that which the Father Himself
had made for the world. Nay more, Steinmeyer adds (p. 41) :
" When would the Father ever have received back that which
He gave in this holy niglit V From which it would appear as
though the Son of God, when He quitted — as in his view He
did — the loving life of the Trinity and became man, had put
Himself into an eternal state of humiliation by the incarnation.
The further development of these thoughts would naturally
drag the Holy Ghost also, as well as the Father, into the same
sacrifice and the same isolation, supposing, as seems to be as-
sumed, the hypostases of the Father and the Spirit could con-
tinue, even though that of the Son, as such, should cease. It
is painful to contradict an opinion which is clearly the product
of so pious a feeling. But that is scarcely a correct description
of perfect love, to bring against its self-communication, because
it is followed by gain, as it were the charge of being a small
thing and not the purest love. If it were only allowable to see
love where to give involves a loss to the giver, then loss and pain
must be supposed to be eternalized as well for the blessed as for
God Himself, in order that the purest love may never fail. But
the good would then be an inner contradiction. The love also
which sympathizes with the sufferings of humanity, and which
Steinmeyer terms compassion, however deep and pure it may be
conceived to be (and who can explore its abysses with his
thought?), will always appear to be a loser, mcasui*cd b}' the
standard of the Egoist ; whereas, measured by the standard of
love itself, which is the only valid one in God's eyes, it will
always be a gain. In this respect, therefore, sympathetic has
312 NOTES.
no advantafTe over comnumicative love. Still less is it allowable
to give credit to sympathizing at tlie expense of communicative
love ; and least of all is it allowable to require of love an act
by which it would do away with itself, as active, sympathetic,
and communicative, — which would be the case if the divine self-
consciousness were to be surrendered. It is, perhaps, one of the
signs of the times, that a work which maintains that God must
be conceived as mutable and passible — we refer to the " Kritik
des Gottesbegriffs in den gegenwartigen Weltansichten," Nordl.
1856, 2d Ed. — has excited the attention it has.
Note 32, page 229.
" Die christliche Dogmatik aus dem christologischeu
Principe dargestellt," i. 1, pp. 65-269. At the basis of this
work lies a grand conception. The book is also rich in strik-
ing judgments and thoughts ; but I cannot consider its doc-
trine of the Trinity, so far as it has any distinctive features
(Mertz, Stud. d. wiirt. Geistlichkeit, 1843, 1, 2), to be a suc-
cess, and agree, on the contrary, with the judgment of Scho-
berlein (E,eut. Repert. 1850, xxx. 213 fT.). Liebner supposes
himself to have prepared the doctrine of the Trinity for his
doctrine of the KevcDO-i'i of the Son, by representing the Son as
making Himself dependent on the Father. But how if this
same KevcaaL'i were itself an untenable thought ? In that case,
this doctrine would become unnecessary. It would, moreover,
be as much, or as little, fitted to justify the incarnation of the
Father, unless the idea of the subordination of the Son should
be added thereto. It does not set forth the ethical process of
love in its entire purity ; for love never gives itself up, but
merely its property. Inasmuch as, further, according to Liebner,
the personality of God is not conceivable without that of the
Son, we cannot assume the Keva)ai<i of the Son without endanger-
ing the personality of God. Compare pp. 319 f.
Note 33, page 233.
Others who belong to this connection, are Ehrcnfeuchter,
Schoberlein, Ilamberger, Schmieder, R. Stier, Sartorius,
Gaupp, Niigclsbach, Ebrard ; as also the philosophers K. Ph.
Fischer and Chalybacus, Secretan. This idea is less vitally
presented by Thomasius and Tlofmann. Regarding the for-
NOTES. 313
mar, Liebner remarks (see Reut. Repert. 1850, p. 212) : — "He
appears (in his judgment of Liebner) entirely to lack insight
into the truth, which may be said to have already become the
property of the theology of the present day, that humanity is
not a contingent mass, but even in its very creation (that is,
agreeably to the original creative idea), a system, an articulated
totality." Compare p. 243. In a similar manner, Delitzsch
complains against Hofmann for maintaining the individualities
to be transitory ; without which an organism is not conceivable
(Bibl. prof. Theol. pp. 217 ff.). The ground lies in the circum-
stance that these men are accustomed, both in Christology and
in the doctrine of the Church, to direct their thoughts one-
sidedly to the divine aspect ; that is, the ground lies in the
lack of a fully developed ethical system, not in the denial of
the above truth.
Note 34, page 233.
They hold Christ to be an individual, not an " homo gene-
ralis," losing Himself in the undefined, nor a monstrous collec-
tive man. His individuality — the individuality which dis-
tinguishes Him from all others — rather consists in His beino;
the head, and in His having constituted His human individu-
ality the adequate organ of the true essence of the human
kind, as it stands before God, and includes within itself the
self-communication of God. Lange ("Leben Jesu" ii. 77)
and Rothe (Ethik" ii. 279 f., 298) strikingly remark, that
Christ, if Pie were intended to be the central individual, or the
principial (d. principielle) man, could not be the product of the
mixture of particular human individualities in natural genera-
tion ; the way was prepared for Him indeed, and His coming
was conditioned, by the history of humanity prior to Him, but
not caused (Rothe, ii. 264 if.). Rothe lays, besides, special
stress thereon, that Christ's principial position as the central
individual is based also, in a positive respect, on His own moral
deed. His individuality has that uniqueness (perfectly *?), not
as it is the innate one of His still material being, but as it is
the moral one of His spiritual being posited by Himself.^
* " Seino Individualitathat Jene Einzigkcit (vollkonimen ?) nicht schou
wie sie die ihm angeburne seines noch materiellcn Suins, soiidorn wie sie
die durch ilin selbst gesetzte sittliche seines gcistigcn Soiiis ist."
314 NOTES.
" His reli'gio-moral development, namely, was exclusively, and
with unbounded intensity, directed to the universal substance
of the religious-moral life purely as such, simply to the central-
point of the same as such, to wit, in virtue of the individual
mission devolving peculiarly ou Him : for which reason, this
limitation was in His case a thoroughly normal one" (p. 298).
With his well-known doctrine of matter, and of the universal
sinfulness conditioned by it, Eothe hopes to combine the free-
dom of Christ from original sin, in the following way (p. 280) :
— Not the material womb of the woman, as such, is the source
of the physical corruption of the human beings arising out of
it ; but only so far as it is excited by the material or sensuous
principle, which is active during the act of natural generation,
by the sensuous sensations and the sensuous impulse ; in other
words, so far as it works autonomically. Nevertheless, Ernesti
raises doubts (" Ueber den Ursprung der Siinde," 1855, pp.
179 ff.), which appear to me also not to be sufficiently set
aside by Kothe's doctrine of sin (i. pp. 304-312 ; ii. 180, 221),
inasmuch as he allows Christ's personality to participate in matter,
that anti-divine thing, and in growth. For the rest, Rothe sees
in Christ not merely a process which, without His participating
in original sin, and through the medium of His human freedom,
spiritualized Him, in the course of an absolutely normal develop-
ment,— that is, produced a good and holy spiritual, natural
organism, or animated body, for His personality, and thus poten-
tiated His being to absolutely good and holy Sjnrit ; but so far
as His being was actually developed as personal and holily spirit-
ualized, so far was it in each case absolutely filled by God and
realiter united with Him ; and thus His life, even in itself, was
an absolutely substantial revelation of God (ii. pp. 281-284).
The proper task of His life was to restore men to fellowship
with God despite sin, by entering into absolute fellowship and
unity with both. As such a Mediator, He had, on the one hand,
to bring His own fellowship with God to the completion of an
absolute unity, to allow an absolutely real incarnation of God
to come to pass in Him — and this is His religious task : on the
other hand. He had to unite Himself with humanity by a bond
of absolute fellowship, to surrender Himself for humanity with-
out reserve — and this is His moral task. His natural ripeness
(baptism) formed the turning-point from the first to the second.
NOTES. 315
Both were accomplished in absolute intensity solely through
love, which surrenders its property absolutely, entirely, conse-
quently also the sensuous life itself ; or in absolutely free self-
sacrifice for God and humanity (§ 218, 254). He must testify
God completely to the sinful world, and by unconditionally
punishing, negative its sin ; by both He stirred it up to full
resistance to Himself. He became involved with it in an abso-
lute conflict, which was at the same time essentially a conflict
with the kingdom of darkness. For He was placed also into the
midst of the kingdom of Satan in this world ; and only on His
showing Himself able to break through the hindrances laid in
the way of His religious and moral career by the assaults of the
devil, and to overcome this invisible enemy, could He be pro-
nounced qualified for the office of Redeemer. Accordingly,
the work of His life evidently was the deliverance of sinful
humanity, the ahsolufely great work of human life ; and Plis
fate (the course of His life) was the absolutely intensive and
tragical. The former must be recognised as the greatest,
deepest, richest, fullest, nay more, one may say, the immensest
conceivable : the course of His life as one that stirs, excites,
and claims the personality in the deepest and most inward
manner conceivable. This conflict, and the suffering and
death therein included, the second Adam underwent, not for
Himself or for His own sake — for He was completely free from
sin — but solely for the sake of humanity, that He might over-
come sin and its consequences on its behalf ; in other words,
because humanity was unable to conduct the conflict to victory.
He suffered for it in its place, or as its substitute (pp. 284-288)
and surety (p. 305). Thus undergoing development in abso-
lute unity with God and humanity. He receives an absolutely
central position, through His love to the whole of humanity,
and His individualistic tendency and activity, which were
foundation-laying, and exclusively directed to the substantial
in its new life out of the spirit.^ In the new humanity which
is born again through Him out of matter into spirit, He be-
^ " So schlechthin in Einheit mit Gott unci dor Menschheit sich ent-
wickolnd erhali. cr durch seine sie ganz ninfassendc Liebc und durch seino
grundlcgondc, ausschliesslich auf das Substantielle ihres nouen Lobens aus
dem Goiste gorichtete, individuelle Tendenz und Wirksamkcit eine schlecL-
thin cenlrale Slellung."
316 NOTES.
eomes the principial vital centre, tlic primal, fundamental in-
dividual, the inmost universal wellspring out of which alone
the individual life flows, and into which it returns ; He be-
comes the mighty heart in which the pulse of the whole beats,
and out of which life is diffused into the individual members ;
in a word, He is the head, the central individual, of the new
humanity (pp. 289 f.). As individual, indeed, He is not yet
by Himself alone the full, true man, but merely a particular
individual formation of man. The full number of individuals
which set forth the higher potence and the true conception of
humanity belongs further thereto. But He is the essential
principial individual, in which the genus in itself is already
posited, and which He therefore represents. He is an in-
dividual, not because, like others, He is a merely one-sided and
defective realization of human essence, but because He is a
realization thereof in complete union of all its particular
aspects. The relation of His individuality to the individuali-
ties of other men, who exhaust the idea of man, is similar to
that between the centre and the other points of a circle. His
is the primal and fundamental individuality, by virtue of their
relation to which all others unite amongst each other to form
an organism. Owing to its principial and potential all-sided-
ness, it includes for all the other individualities the place and
immediate point of connection suitable to each, and is therefore
the last, all-connecting ring, on which all the others hang. It
forms for all the rest the basis of a normal, moral being, and
unites them all organically together. For in the single indi-
viduality of the second Adam, the individualities of all the
single beings who constitute the spiritual human race which
descends from Him, are united to form the totality of one
great collective person ; and it is precisely in this totality,
which is absolutely centralized in Him, that the actual, the
true concrete man has his real existence. That which is con-
tained implicite in Him, though in a closed manner, to wit, the
entire fulness of the particular momenta or distinctions of
human religious morality, must be also explicite unfolded and
exhibited, and that in the full number of human individuals
(pp. 297 f.). From Rothe's view of the matter, it follows that
God cannot absolutely dwell in Christ till every material de-
termination, and therewith evei'y limit, is done away with, ia
NOTES. 317
virtic of His complete spirltualization. The moment of His
perfection is, as such, immaterialization (Entmaterialisirung),
death, because it is complete spirltualization, but also because
it is the completion of the indwelling of God. His death is at
the same time immediately His resurrection, His elevation into
heaven (into the divine state of His cosmical being). This
elevation is not removal to a distance from the earth, nor the
dissolution of His organic relation to the old natural humanity,
but freedom from all material limits ; and in His absolute
spirituality (which, according to what has been advanced above,
is real spiritualized corporeality). He is also absolutely present
on earth (pp. 293 ff.). From the moment of His perfection
onwards, also, the real union of God with Him, or the incarna-
tion of God, was absolutely completed in Him. The incarna-
tion of God in Him is both an incarnation of the divine per-
sonality in His, and an incarnation of the divine nature,
through the ever more complete indwelling of the divine
personality and nature in Him (p. 292). In the state of per-
fection, every separation between Him and God is absolutely
removed, and He is absolutely God. He is true God ; for He
who is in Him, and in whom He is, is God Himself, to wit, as
to His actual being, or as spirit ; and so He is entirely and
absolutely God, for His being is now extensively and intensively
complete — filled with God. But, on the other hand, God is
by no means entirely and absolutely the second Adam. For
not even as to His actual being, or His being as spirit, is God
absolutely absorbed in the second Adam (God has also an
actual being in the Church). But because of His absolute
unity of being with God, He is also absolutely one witli the
entire already complete world of spirits, and, indeed, imme-
diately with the central individuals of the already absolutely
spiritualized circles of creation. Accordingly, the completed
second Adam, as the head of humanity, is immediately at the
same time the organic head of the entire world of personal
spirits. Then for the first time is the form of His cosmical
being, notwithstanding its distinctivelv human character, an
absolutely unlimited and infinite one. And so, also, the
glorification of the second Adam then first finds its absolute
j)erfectii)n, — a jjorfection, however, wliich, though absolute,
nevertheless grows infinitely through infinite time (p. 296)
318 NOTES.
This entire Cliristology, which contains so much that is beauti-
ful both in thought and form, it is well known, Rothe supposes
himself to have built up independently of the doctrine of an
immanent Trinity. He also, it is true, has such a Trinity
(§ 26 : the divine essence, the divine nature, the divine per-
sonality) ; but he does not profess that his trinitarian concep-
tion of God is that of the Church ; and he supposes that the
biblical expressions. Father, Son, Holy Ghost, refer to entirely
different relations than to those of the immanent being of God.
liothe, seeing very well that in relation to Christ we cannot
rest in the mere thought of His being a man who lias God
pei'fectly, and that, on the contrary, Christ cannot be deemed
"".o be entirely united with God, unless He knows and wills
Him.self as God, has converted the Sabellian idea of the unique
actuality (Actualitat) of God in Christ into a being of God
(Sein Gottes) in Christ, and a knowledge of this being. But
if this divine being in Christ, which, on the part of God also, is
a self -knowing and a self-willing, and in so far personal, is, on
the one hand, different from the actuality of God in the Church
(which is also in a sense a being), and, on the other hand,
eternally abiding ; it would appear necessary, unless we as-
sume that the being of God has undergone change, to say that
the mode of existence which He has eternally in Christ (not
through any other being outside of Himself, but as a self-
determination through Himself) must also find place eternally
a parte ante. And thus the lofty image set up by Rothe of
the Person of Christ, and His cosmical significance, appears to
be the revelation of an eternal, and so uniquely universal, rela-
tion and thought ; nay more, through this thought as its reali-
zation, to stand in so intimate connection with the inner essence
of God, that this Christology also seems to demand being brought
to a corresponding conclusion in the Trinity. Further, if this be
correct, the immanent Trinity taught by Rothe ought not to be
represented as so foreign to that of the Church, especially if
we retain our hold on what he says regarding the distinctions in
God (i. 77). " Everywhere it is the same who exists, and
everywhere it is something different which this same one is."
(Compare § 28, 24. For if this thought be firmly held, though
the consequence therefrom is by no means a trithcistic unity of
three persons or subjects, we do but simply carry out what is
NOTES. 319
contained in it when we saj — The "essence of God" and His
"nature" are not impersonal, but the personality which llotlje
posits as a third something, is also eternally immanent in them
themselves. The one divine personality, without which no con-
ception can be formed of the essence of God, is reflected in the
TpoTTOt uTrapfeco?, and is immanent in them ; indeed, they are
the means by which it eternally arrives at and constitutes itself ;
it is not a merely abstract unity, but also the absolute organism,
which is eternally a result, and eternally produces itself. Only
that, from Rothe's point of view, the name personality, as expres-
sive of the eternal result of the process, ought further, also, to
be reserved for the totality of the deity ; in other words, merely
the pnnciple (not the result) of the union of that which is
Dppobcd ought to be spared for the third distinction. Compare
above, Div. I. Vol. II. p. 331, and Note. But then the Trinity of
Rothe would have essentially approximated to that of the Church.
According to Liebner also, the idea of spirit or of humanity
as an unity, is to be seen in Christ. In general, mere abstractly
personal, spiritually monadic being is an imperfect form of the
being of the created spirit. For development of the spirit and
a psychico-somatical natural being are essentially connected
and co-extensive with each other ; for the latter brings with it
natural growth, a succession of external, cosmical impulses to
ethical development, and is also the organ by Avhich the per-
sonality acts on the world. As, therefore, created spirit, or
spirit in the form of created existence, in general, is under the
necessity of entering into nature, that is, into soulical corpo-
reality ; so also Christ. The basis for the realization of the
work of the history of spirit (pp. 313 f.), to wit, the form of
existence in nature, Christ also must needs have. But whereas,
in us, spirit has become nature merely one-sidedly, the Logos,
on the contrary, having entered into the form of personality,
becomes all-sidedly nature, psychico-somatical, and brings it
into connection and accord with the divine life by llis holy
develoj)ment, constitutes it entirely the penetrated organ of t!ie
same. Relatively also to natural gifts, we, as individuals, are
one-sideil in comparison with the perfect nature of the God-man.
The natural basis, however, is not under the necessity of being
one-sided as a particular gift or talent ; it may also be all-sided.
The Adamitic humanity by itself consists, as to its psychico-
320 NOTES.
somatic aspect, In " membris disjectis ;'* no one is absolutely like
the other; all form part of a SjStem. The principle of the
system also, in its natural aspect, the organic centre, embraces,
as the realization of the perfect idea of humanity, all this in its
nature. He is a single individual ; but, at the same time, the in-
dividual in Avhom, even as to the natural aspect of His being, the
individual is the universal, and the universal the individual. In
this sense also. He is the ])rincipal or central individual (p. 315).
The distinction between this view and that of Rothe is, that
Rothe places that which gives Christ universal significance, or
constitutes Him the central individual, on the spiritual side, in
the substantial sphere of religion ; whereas Liebner asserts His
universality also in the natural aspect. But as, on the one
hand, Liebner also acknowledges the necessity of an ethical
development, and by no means understands by nature primarily
the material ; and, on the other hand, Rothe also is unable to
represent the ethical development of the God-man as beginning
with emptiness, and contrarywise is both compelled to, and
actually does, form a conception of the individuality of Jesus,
which was prepared beforehand from the beginning of hu-
manity, as it is by nature, of such a kind that a central
tendency, remote from eveiy species of one-sidedness, is seen to
belong to its normal development and task. As to this point,
therefore, no essential difference exists between the two ; and
the less, as Liebner also objects to this summing up of
nature in Christ, or this natural capacity for a principial exist-
ence, for the position of a central individuality being repre-
sented as a quantitative, external, and coarse summing up of
men in Himself. It is only the opponents of a deeper Christo-
logy who would like to substitute for this thought a mon-
strous composition. Rather, says Liebner, is Christ the organic
unity of all the potences scattered in humanity ; even as the
whole of external nature was summed up in the Adamitic
man. Furtlier, tliis organic unity was present in Christ merely
as to its real possibility. His vocation was to found the absolute
religion, nnd it did not require the all-sided, special actualization
of His all-sided nature. At the same time, the other momenta,
to wit, the principles of art, science, and so forth, were included
in that w^Mch entered info actuality, in the highest and central
element ; and in the holiness of Ciirist, all possible human gifts
NOTES. 321
are already realiter sanctified (p. 318). Similarly Schnecken-
burger's "Darstellung, etc.," ii. 220. Liebner makes the striking
remark, that we are led to a like antichristological result, whether
we retain an exclusive hold on the natural aspect alone, or on
the personal alone. If the ethical personality and its actuality
are wanting. His universal essence also lacks actuality ; and if
this latter remains a mere potence, the real power to sum up
into an unity fails, and Christ becomes again an individual man,
an holy man like others. On the contrary, wliere the chief stress
is laid, from the very outset, on the single personality of Christ,
He is nothing more than the normally developed Adam. But
Adam, no less than we, as to the natural aspect of his being, was
a one-sided member of humanity. Christ must therefore be dis-
tinguished from Adam, in the personal as well as the natural
aspect of His being. We need more than a mere normally de-
veloped Adam ; we need a deliverer of all, an universal and cen-
tral head, who sanctifies the whole of human nature in Himself ;
who not merely knows and diffuses, but is personally, the uni-
versal, religious truth. The all-deliverer must realiter be the
all-delivered, and must bear in Himself that which He com-
municates. Even the greatest Adamitic saints, the Apostles,
on the ground of the one-sidedness of their natural individuality,
were only able to work in limited circles, where they found a
kind of elective affinity. Christ, the holy principle of humanitv
itself, has affinity with all, and, attracting all, works upon all
(p. 31'.*; compare pp. 27-G4). !Martensen had already remarked,
in his work "De antonomia conscientitE sui humanjB," 1837, —
" The God-n)an is not merely unum ex multis individuis, sed
individuum absolutum, Monas centralis. Cum libertas absoluta,
cui subsunt non solum omnia universalia et abstracta verum
etiam omnes nionades finitee, sit ejus essentia, non solum prin-
cipium generis huniani manifestat,imo ipse est illud principium."
The true idea of God is that of the absolute personality; the
unio of Christ with God is an unio personalis : fortius reason the
historical individual, with which God entered into the unio
absoluta, must needs be omni subjectivitate particulari liberum ;
must reveal nothing save the absolute personality, and in
revealing it, reveal itself. Christ may not be subsumed uiuler
the idea of humanity, as though humanity were His cause;
but He, in whom and for whom all things were created, it is,
r. 2. — VOL. III. X.
322 NOTES.
under whom tlie human race is to be subsumed : and Ills history
has for its principle, not the causal nexus of the universe, or a
relative freedom, but absolute freedom ; and keeps not only a
relative necessity, but even the principle of causality itself sub-
jected to itself. Personality stands high above the idea of the
genus, above species and individual, outside of which the genus
lias no existence. It is, indeed, also in them, and embraces
them, for it is absolute ; but it is in itself, subjecting all things
to itself; and the human genus is subjected to the God-man,
that He may raise it to personality. More fully carrying out
the same thought, he says, in his " Christliche Dogmatik,"
1849, — Christ is the individual, which, as the centre of hu-
manity, is at the same time the revealed centre of deity, the point
at which God and God's kingdom are personally united, who
reveals in fulness what the kingdom of God reveals in distinct
and manifold forms. The second Adam is both the redeeming
and the world-completing principle. But the world-completing
principle cannot be different from the world-creative, to wit,
the Logos ; He is, therefore, also the self-revelation of the
Logos. But as the incarnate Logos, He is not merely the
centre of the world of men, but of the universe ; not merely
the head of the human race, but head of creation (Col. i. 15),
its First-born, for whom all things were created. For as man,
the centre of creation, is the point at which spirits and the
sensuous world are united, nobler than the angels ; so does this
hold true in the highest sense of the second Adam, in whom
the heavenly and the earthly, the invisible and visible, the
powers of creation, the angels, principalities, and powers, are
gathered together in one (§ 130, 131). One can say indeed, —
the new Adam is a creature of the Logos ; but the proposition
becomes false if we say nothing more. The creative activity
of God must here be unconditionally one with His self-revela-
tion. The tnith is, that at this point, creation has no indepen-
dence outside of the incarnation, but is originally deposited
therein ; and the second Adam does not move in created alter-
eity outside of the uncreated fulness, as may be affirmed of all
the peripherical individuals who look back with strong yearn-
ings to the fulness of eternity, and desire a mediator for it;
that, on the contrary, the fulness of the deity is originally
and itidissohibly introduced into created nature by this central
notp:s. 823
individual ; and that this indissoluble informing of the uncreated
image of God into creation is the fundamental determination of
His person (§ 132). According to Martensen's doctrine of the
Trinity, this image serves the purpose of the inner self-revelation
of the Father ; in such a manner, however, that as the divine
image of the world, it was the medium of the creation of this
actual world (§ 56). In forming an estimate of Lange's
Christologj, we must take particularly into consideration the
" Positive Dogmatik," 1851, pp. 208 ff., 591-795 ; " Philo-
sophische Dogmatik," 1841, § 33, 44, 56, 61-67; " Leben
Jesu," 1844, i. 11-78; ii. a. pp. 66 f., 189-339 ; ii. 6, 1845 ;
Vorrede vii.-xii. iii. 49 f., 228 f., 553, 714-760 ; " Worte der
Abwehr gegen Dr Fr. W. Krummacher," 1846 (against mono-
physitic views, that is, views which curtail the humanity).
His fundamental thought is, that though a distinction ought to
be drawn between the triune essence of God and the revela-
tion of His essence, it is not merely the eternal and essential
form of the Son of God that should be represented as neces-
sarv, whilst His revelation in time is regarded as an arbitrarv
alteration of Plis form of existence and as an accidental occur-
rence. For the Son of God does not throw aside the human
nature, as though it were the non-essential husk by which He
manifested Himself, but sets it in the light of His majesty,
glorified in eternal unity with His divine essence. The post-
temporal, eternal glory of the humanity of Christ points back
to its eternal, ideal existence in God. The eternal Son of God
cannot, in the course of His temporal existence, have saddled
Himself for ever with something accidental; or have assumed a
form which, as purely historical, does not correspond to His
eternal essence. We must, therefore, distinguish between in-
carnation and assumption of the form of a servant (as the
dogmaticians of the Lutheran Church always have done).
Whoso recognises the eternal issues of the humanity of Christ,
must also learn to understand its eternal bemnnings, in order
that the incarnation may not appear to be a fact unconnected
with, and unprepared by, the past. It must be brought into
inner and essential connection with the creation, with the age
of yore, and with the history of the Old Testament. The
human nature of Christ or the incarnation has been growing,
has been coming from the beginning. An immeasurably rich
324 NOTES.
series of steps prepared the way for the entrance of the Son
of God into time and humanity. From the foundation of
creation to the appearance of the God-man, the whole Une of
vital evolutions forms one uninterrupted chain. But in the
God-man the highest idea of life (1 John i. 1) is realized, and
the absolute self-determinateness of God has appeared. His
person is borne up, therefore, by the entire ante-Christian
development of the world and humanity, as the apex of a
pyramid is borne by its base. This base is not dead, but a
living movement towards the apex. Those middle steps lie
principally within the sacred history of the Old Testament.
A great hereditary blessing, opposed to the hereditary curse,
developed itself in the seed of Abraham, in the blessed series
of the Fathers. The history of the divine-human life com-
menced with the interaction between fallen man and the com-
passionate God; its primal individual beginnings manifested
themselves in the patriarchs after Adam ; it then acquired a
fixed form in the believing life of a man, who through it be-
came an historical power, and founded a genealogy of believers.
In Abraham, the promise of God became the hereditary blessing
of humanity ; and thus the truth was expressed in the form of
fact, that the divine-human life is not merely spirit without
nature, or even against nature, but spirit in consecrated nature.
The genealogy of the hereditary blessing began with faith in
the word of promise, by which the divine-human life was posited
in Abraham ; it developed itself through continuous consecra-
tions of human nature ; through the medium of constantly
heightened vital communications of the Spirit of God. It
completed itself in the believing vision and assumption of the
God-man ; in the birth through Mary. The Periods are : —
Promise, Law, Prophecy ; finally, the individual concentration
of the divine-human life. The husk is the Israelitish people ; the
bloomstalk is the Virgin ; the bursting; blossom is the Messias.
Lange's intention, however, in positing these preparatory
steps, is not in the least to exclude the absolute novelty and
iinmodiateness of the proper God-man ("Philosoph. Dogmatik"
468). Precisely in that He is the one, the way for whose
appearance was prepared by an infinite number of steps and
UHjans, does lie show Himself to be the absolutely imme-
diate one, the one who posited these preparatory means and
NOTES. 325
links for Himself. In point of appearance, the first grows out
of the last, the eternal out of the temporal, the infinite out of
the finite. But as the way of the first man, the youngest
child of creation, was prepared by a grand preliminary geologi-
cal history, and yet the pre-human creation does not supply a
full explanation of his rise ; for his life was original, new, and
rather earlier than the creation: even so is it with Christ.
Admirable as is Lange's fundamental thought, — a thought
which is carried out by Kothe, specially by Nagelsbach (" Der
Gottmensch," 1853 ; Bd. i. "Der Mensch der Natur," pp. 2 f.,
18-38), and in relation to the Old Testament as the preliminary
history of Christ, by Baumgarten and Hofmann, — we need here
a far more careful determination of the mode of the pre-existence
of Christ in history. Lange, in particular, does not show clearly
enough how far the incarnation of the nature of the Logos in
Jesus is to be distinguished from the incarnation of the natura of
God, professedly already really begun in the Fathers. Nagels-
bach represents even Adam as Elohim-Adam, on the ground
that his spiritual essence was of a divine nature : but only by
nature, and through the indwelling of divine nature. After he
had fallen, an artificial indwelling of the Elohim in man, an arti-
ficial realization of the idea of the God-manhood was attempted
(from the law onwards). But first when Elohim became man
personally in the Son, did the God-man become an actuality
on earth : in Him was first given the living principle of a new
humanity and a new nature (compare pp. 286 ff., 282 ff., 446
£f.). Moreover, those who thus attempt the revival of typology
in a more real and objective form, must be on their guard against
darkening the preparation for Christ, which consisted in awaken-
ing the knowledge of sin and the consciousness of guilt ; indeed,
in general, against becoming so absorbed in the typical, as to
overlook the historical life and struggles of the people of the
Old Testament. The preparation for Christ was, on the whole,
a preparation of susceptibility for Him ; and this, though un-
doubtedly worked and developed by representations given of
Him beforehand, can in no case be described as fulfilment.
Note 35, page 237.
Compare the Whitsuntide Programme (1831) of my late
highly revered teacher, Dr Schmid : — " Quati-nus ex cccl.
326 NOTES.
evangelicae principiis exsistere possit doctrinae chrls. Scientia?"
P. 11 : "Neque vero inde (that tlie work of redemption ren-
dered the God-ma7i necessary) concludenduni, OedvOpwirov non
exstiturum fuisse, nisi peccutura invasisset in genus humanum.
Ut enim redemtionem sine OeavOpwirw esse posse negamus, ita
Oeavdpwjrov sine rederatione quidni affinnemus ? Affirmandwm-
que eo libentius, quo quisque magis veretur, aiit incarnationem
Christi fortuitam aut peccatum necessarium judicare. Unde
eadem qusestio a multis velut otiosa reprobata, tamen non modo
ab aliis hand paucis sedula agitata est, sed videtur etiam idonea
qu» ad evavOpcaTTTjaLv rov \6jov plenius ac subtilius intelli-
gendam conferat." Pp. 12 f . : "Ac revera subest christianse
de deavOpcoTTw sententige, quamvis optimo jure a nobis ad tollen-
dum maxime humani generis pecmium referatur, tamen quaedam
notio generalior ac metaphysica, ut vel id negandum videatur
posse redimere a peccato tanquam fieaLrrjv moralem, qui non
metaphysica ratione sit inter Deum mundumque fMeaLrr}^."
Martensen, in his "Die christHche Dogmatik," 3 Ed. pp. 297
ff., says : — Only when we regard Christ not merely from the
point of view of the redemption of the world, but also from
that of the perfection of the world, can we rightly understand
His typical perfection in distinction from the antitypical union
of God and man. P. 298 : — Only when we view the Mediator
in this His metaphysical and cosmical significance, do we secure
a foundation whereon to build a doctrine of the Redeemer.
Liebner mentions two respects in which it is necessary for
Christology to take steps in advance. Firstly, we ought to
cease advancing merely the hamartologico-soteriological {ajiap-
ria, acoTrjpla) ground for the appearance of the God-man, and
should look for an universal theanthropological basis ; in other
words, we should advance on to the knowledge, that the incar-
nation of God stands in an original, essential, and necessary
relation to humanity, and therefore to creation as its perfection
(pp. 12 ff.). Secondly, we should try to arrive at such an unity
of the divine-human person as would render the sundering of
the two factors into a dualism an impossibility. He recognises
strikingly that all dogmas, even that relating to the creation,
must be determined by Christology ; that, without lessening the
distinction between them, the creation and incarnation ought
to be viewed in coni unction ; and that they are absolutely united
NOTES. 327
in the idea of the divine revelation, to wit, in the idea of the
world. Pp. 279 ff., 287 : — Although humanity is constituted
an unity even by the real Logos, the Logos is, in the first in-
stance, merely the transcendent or essential, not yet the histori-
cally objectire, actual unity of humanity. But humanity as
an historical organism cannot be without head or principle ; its
princi])le, too, must be not merely over, but also immanent in
itself, adequate to itself in its history ; and this ])rinciple can-
not be any other than that of the creation itself, and so forth.
On Rothe and Lange, compare Note 34. Nitzsch, in his
" System of Christian Doctrine," Ed. 6, p. 258, says :— The
Logos is, as in Himself, directed to the incarnation ; but as He
was the organ of the revelation of the Father in eternity, before
the world, so also was it His will and mission to be this same
organ in time and history, in other words, to become man.
AVhereof the end was, to realize in human life that image
which is merely the potence of divine life in the present nature
of the creature ; for since the fall the creature has borne this
same potence indeed within itself, but without the capability
of giving it realization. In this way He sought to carry out
religion, or the vocation of man to be a child of God. Niigels-
bach (sec p. 31) says : — The appearance of the God-man can
neither have been accidental nor sudden : He who is the unit-
ing middle of all the factors of the history of the world, must
liave ruled that history from the beginning, and have led it on
to the point at which His manifestation was a possibility. It
would, however, have been accidental, if it had first been ren-
dered necessary by the fall, and so forth. (Compare Kurtz's
"Bibel und Astronomie," 2 Ed. p. 233; subsequently, how-
ever, he altered his view.) Ehrenfeuchter, " Entwickelungs-
f^eschichte derMenschheit insbesondere in ethischerBeziehune,"
Heidelb. 1845, Abschn. xi. " Christus und die Weltgeschichte,"
pp. 114 ff. All depends on our not measuring Christ one-
sidedly, either by the standard of the idea of the genus, or by
that of the individual. The truth unites both in the idea of
the organism, which is set forth by humanity. Christ em-
braced the ends, to wit, genus and individual, in one: in Him
was contained the idea of the entire genus ; He was the Son
of man, and at the same time the most individual form. The
form of human existence yearns for the real, divine, vital
328 NOTES.
centre ; and vice versa. This form is the most exact into
which the divine creative Word can enter and live, in order to
bring all things to perfection. Humanity is the adequate body,
into which the eternal Logos is able to enter as into His pro-
perty. Within this humanity the single individuals are as the
points in the periphery, each of which possesses its own con-
sciousness and conscience ; but the periphery requires a centre,
in which also a determinate consciousness and conscience must
dwell : the centre must appear, therefore, as an historical, in-
dividual life. Through the God-man a full consciousness is
awakened regarding the organism of history, regarding the
unity of the speculative and the moral. Through Him also it
becomes clear what an individual is, what eternal powers lie in
the essence of the individual, which, as personality possessed
of and using the faculty of volition, is the middle link or unity
of the idea, and of the creative power. Inasmuch now as the
centre also has appeared in the form of an individual life, a
need is felt by all the single points of the periphery to inform
themselves with the life of the centre ; for the periphery subsists
through the centre. Fischer, " Die Idee der Gottheit," 1839 ;
" Grundziige des Systems der Philosophie oder Encyclopsedie,"
1851, ii. 2, pp. 432 ff. " The absolute religion teaches us, that
He who is both the fulfilment of prophecy and the absolute
truth at which heathenism aimed, is the principle and centre of
the divine kingdom. In speculative theology, the God-man
must represent the perfection of creation and of the revelation
of God, the apex and centre of unity, or the archetype and
head of humanity. Schoberlein, in his " Die Grundlehren des
Heils entwickelt aus dem Princip der Liebe," 1851, p. 42 if.,
says (with J. Hamberger's " Gott und seine Offenbarungen,"
1839, p. 220) : — In a certain sense the incarnation of God may
be termed eternal. The Son, he proceeds, taking upon Him-
self and accomplishing the Father's loving purpose to create,
sinks Himself from eternity with the whole power of His love,
into the idea of humanity, so that this idea has no subsistence
save in this loving union of the Son with it. The incarnation
of God is involved in the idea of humanity itself. (In the
Catholic Church also, this doctrine has found scattered de-
fenders, as, for example, in Staudenmeyer ; Oischinger, " Die
christ. riiilosophic," 1853, p. 88; Pabst; Molitor, and others.
NOTES. 329
G anther had at an earlier period the thought, that the incar-
nation would still have been carried out even if the second
Adam had fallen ; but he justly gave it up subsequently.)
Hof niann also, in his " Schriftbeweis," ii. a., teaches, that the
necessity for the incarnation did not lie solely in the fact of sin ;
but that the "self-completion of God as the archetypal goal
of the world " was had in view from the very beginning. He
seems to hold, however, that Adam was created to be the can-
didate of God-manhood. But he fell. For this reason, sin may
be said to have first rendered it necessary for Christ to come.
P. 18. A dearly purchased contradiction to the above truth.
To the same conclusion Thomasius also must be led. Compare
i. 211.
Note 36, page 249.
Compare Nitzsch a. a. 0. pp. 259 ff. At an earlier period,
stress was laid on the " Majestas." We may further mention
here, Liebner a. a. O. Even previously, Konig, " Die Mensch-
werdung Gottes," 1844, and Sartorius, Dorpat — " Beitrage i.
348 ; " Meditationen," 1855, pp. 41 ff. ; after earlier similar
declarations, Ebrard a. a. O. ii. 33 f., 199 f. ; Lange, " Posi-
tive Dogmatik," p. 780 ; Schoberlein, " Die Grundlehren des
Heils," a. a. O. pp. 58 ff. ; Martensen, " Dogmatik," pp. 300,
326-334. With various changes from the publication of his
" Beitrage zur kirchlichen Christologie," 1845, Thomasius ; K.
Ch. Hofmann, "Schriftbeweis" ii. a., pp. 1 ff. ; — to whose
number may now be added also Delitzsch, " Biblische Psycho-
logic," 1855, pp. 279-288 ; Gaupp, " Die Union," pp. 112 ff. ;
Kahnis, " Die Lehre von dem heiligen Geiste," 1847, i. p. 56.
Compare Besser's notice of this work in the " Zeitschrift fiir
lutherische Theologie," 1848, i. pp. 139 ff. Oehler, in Reuters
Repertorium, 1851, Ixxii. pp. 112 ff. ; Steinmeyer a. a. O. ;
Schmieder, " Das hohepriesterliche Gebet," 1848, pp. 36 ff. ;
Hahn, " N. Test. Theologie," 1855 ; Kahnis, " Die Lehre v. d.
heil. Geiste " i. 57 ff.
Note 37, page 250.
Most of the theologians whose names are mentioned in
Note 36 favour, if in different ways, the Christology of the
self-exinanition of the Loiios, of His self-humiliation to the
330 NOTES.
rank of a potence or form. Most openly, Konig, Gaupp,
Delitzsch, Steinmeyer ; whilst Sartorius is more cautious in his
expressions, though he also clearly believes in a self-lessening of
the eternal Logos. Nitzsch, although he appears to incline
towards the former form of /cei/tuo-ts, because then the unity of
the self-consciousness and activity of Christ is no longer
threatened with vacillation and changes of the point of view ;
because then the monophysitic and Nestorian tendencies, and
the doctrine of a double personality, appear to be overcome ;
adds, with tlie judiciousness characteristic of him as a dogma-
tician, — " It is true, the relation between eternity and time,
even for the sake of this doctrine (compare Schoberlein, " Die
Gundlehren des Heils," a. a. O. pp. 67 f.) ; between the
ethical and the physical ; between the incarnation and the
original man ; between the historical God-man and the preced-
ing temporal activity of tlie Logos : furthermore, the true and
the false elements in Apollinarism, the davy^^vrov of this
view, — must be made clearer and more intelligible than has
hitherto been tlie case, ere the entire scientific and practical
blessing of the recent and most recent Christological specula-
tions can be reaped. Much remains still to be done ; this
branch of theology is still young and tender." For the rest, the
theory of the self-lowering of the Logos makes its appearance
now in different forms, just as it did in the age of Gnosticism,
Apollinarism, and Theopaschitism : — now as a self-disguising
of the Logos in the human form of existence, as growth and
the like (so Ebrard a. a. O. § 364, 359, 374, pp. 35-47, 42 :
— " Divine nature is related to human, as essence is to the
form of existence." P. 40 : — " The Logos gave up t-he form
of eternity — even in an ethical respect — assumed the form of
existence of an human soul, and reduced Himself as it were to
the rank of an human soul " ) ; now as self-conversion or change of
the Logos into an human form of appearance : so, in particular,
Gaupp, p. 113 ; Konig, pp. 339 ff. Even Liebner, in his pro-
j)Osition, — " The entrance of the Logos, as such, into growth, is
eo ipso an incarnation," — inclines to this view (as far as the re-
sult is concerned ; for he regards the temporary suspension of
the process of the Trinity as preparing the way for this Kevcoat^).
The logical consequence of this would then be, that in Christ
there was no other soul but the divine Logos, who, as having
NOTES.
331
subjected Himself to succession and growth, is a man in time.
This also is acknowledged both by Gaupp and Hahn, and by
Konig. In his first Christological sketch, which was more fully
cast Tn one mould than his later work, Thomasius likewise
treated the Logos Apollinaristically as the soul of this man ; for
(as he had remarked with Hofmann), has not the Spirit of
God become the Spirit of life in us men also? This he subse-
quently retracted: Liebner also has endeavoured to do away
with the appearance of Apollinarism (pp. 320, 371 ff.). But
he omits all mention of the question as to whether Christ had a
true human soul or not. Apollinaris undoubtedly regarded
Christ as arpeTrro?; and it is a step in advance on the part of
Konig, Liebner, and also Martensen, to demand the recognition
of an^ actual ethical process in Christ, in opposition to a one-
sidedly theological Christology. In Liebner's case, however,
this step is taken at the expense of denying the arpeivTo^ to
the Logos also, which Apollinaris himself did not do, but only
his school, which was controverted by Athanasius (see Div. I.
Vol. 11. pp. 351 ff.)- According to the present doctrine laid
down by Thomasius, the immanent Trinity is not disturbed by
tlie Kevwai^ of the Logos, because the kenosis relates to the
oeconomical aspect; in opposition to which, both Oehler(a. a. O.
p. 112) and Schoberlein (p. 66) justly assert the inadmissible-
ness of such a separation of the immanent from the oeconomic
Trinity ; unless the Lutheran Christology is prepared to re-
nounce its own existence. Not even the Reformed doctrine goes
so far in distinguishing between the Logos in Himself and the
Logos in Christ, as not to put the immanent Logos into relation
to Jesus. But in regard to the oeconomical Logos, Thomasius
goes so far as to conceive Him subject to sleep, to divine deser-
tion, and so forth, in Christ. Hofmann, who, though not deny-
ing the immanent Trinity, says, in reference to the position,
" God is triune, in order to be the God of man " (i. 177),—
« It was God's will to be in the world, according to His love
(not merely to work upon it), as the ground of life within the
world itself (Holy Ghost), and as the archetypal goal, which is
to attain actualization in the world; in it too He is called Son.
To this end, he supposes that those two nameless principles of
the deity go forth out of God, pass over, prior to the creation
of the world (ii. a., p. 20), into a state of inequality with them-
332 Noi-ES.
selves, that is, with the relation which they bore within God,
and determined to complete themselves historically and gradu-
ally, as that which they are in themselves. In particular, he
represents that potence within the deity, which the Church desig-
nates Son, as entering into an inequality with itself, as entering
into a position of subordination, or emptying itself over against
the Father, even for the end of the creation of the world. Ac-
cording to Hofmann, then, to call to mind related doctrines
taught in recent times, the Logos passes over into altereity. as
the Spirit of God, for the sake of the world ; and though he
does not represent that Kevwcn^ as identical with the very be-
ginning of the world, the beginning of the world is the beginning
of the manifestation of Him who had become unequal to Himself;
the world is the product of His activity (i. 237). Still the arche-
typal goal of the world (the Son) remained for a time supramun-
dane, and possessed of power over the world ; consequently,
actual God over against the world, although, for the world. He
had passed out of the self-equality which He had within God.
But when sin came, a still deeper K6va)ai<i became necessary, a
new form of the inequality of the eternal relation within the
deity. He exchanged the divine form of being for the form of
a servant : " ii. a. p. 16. The relation of God, the archetypal
goal of the world, to God, the supramundane Creator, has become
a relation of the man Jesus to God His Father. He has ceased
to be God, in order to become man ; He has exchanged the
predicate God for the predicate man, or adp^. The archetypal,
self-emptied goal of the world, was formed in the womb of be-
lieving Mary, through the Holy Ghost (i. 112). Among the
friends of this theory of depotentiation, there is a difference of
opinion also, as to how far this self-exinanition of the Logos
extended ; and whether that which He renounced for the moment
was deposited in God, or ceased to be, or continued to have a
latent existence in the Logos (see Note 38, page 333). Mar-
tensen, llothe, and Schmid keep at the greatest distance from
this theory. Compare also Miinchmeyer's "Das Dogma von
der sichtbaren und unsichtbaren Kirche," 1854, p. 169. At
first inclined to favour the theory, he subsequently turned his
back on it.
NOTES. '"J-'O
Note 38, page 258.
The one (see Note 37) represent the Logos as subjected to
that /ceVtocrt? solely as far as the oeconomical Trinity was con-
cerned ; whilst the eternal Logos in the immanent Trinity re-
mained untouched ; — a view which leads to a duplication of the
Logos, consequently to a thought which is not only essentially
empty, but also antichristological, in so far as it does not allow
that the eternal Logos became man. At its basis, however,
even though in a clumsy shape, there lies the just conviction,
that the Logos can neither give up His absolute consciousness,
nor be appropriated by humanity, from the commencement, as
self-conscious. To the same result leads also '• the Logos over
the Line" (" der Logos iiber der Linie") of the growing God-
man, of which Thomasius spoke at a subsequent period : — to the
noticeable detriment of the consistency of his Christological
theory, which acquires in consequence an eclectical character.
We must at once add, however, to the words, " over the line,"
not merely, that the person of the Logos was in this man from
the beginning ; consequently at a time when he neither could,
nor ought to have appropriated the Logos ; but also, that the
will of the Logos to become incarnate, always remained the
same, and embraced the entirety of the union ; that He conse-
quently posited also the beginning as a beginning of the whole.
Yet, there is no doubt that Thomasius also meant this, when,
in order to supplement the formula, " over the line," he adds
other formulas, whose design is to keep hold of the Logos in His
indissoluble alliance with humanity. Only that this is unat-
tainable, unless we take our start with the Unio of the natures.
The same thing shows itself also, when, in reply to a well-founded
remark of Besser's (a. a. O. pp. 141 f.), Thomasius allows that
the Kevwaif; must not be considered as having taken place once
for all — for otherwise, the actual love, which alone lends it its
worth, would be extinguished — but as a continuous thing, as a
constant sacrifice. If it is continuous, and, what is more, an act
of the Logos (for potence is not actuality) ; then, plainly, the
Logos, who is not yet humbled, but rather humUlates, is con-
ceived as hovering over the humiliated Logos : — a notion which
must either destroy itself, or lead to the supposition of a double
Logos ; unless we say, as we rnt.hcr ought to do, that in gcneial
3,34 NOTES.
it is not allowable to speak of the Kevaa-is — leaving out of view
the language of edification, which itself furnishes a corrective
of the liberty it uses in this matter (see Gerh. Loci Theolog.
Tom. iii. p. 562) — in a way implying that the Logos Himself
was reduced to unconsciousness or non-actuulitv.
HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL REVIEW
THE CONTROVEESIES RESPECTING THE PERSON OF CHRIST,
WHICH HAVE BEEN AGITATED IN BRITAIN SINCE THE
MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUltY
TO THE PRESENT TIME.
KEY. PATRICK FAIRBAIRN, D.D.,
?aiNrir,\i, ok thk kiikk cmirch coli.kgk, gi.asqow. and author of
'■ I iPuLOGY or StRlPTUKK, " KTO.
APPENDIX.
HISTOEICAL AND CEITICAL REVIEW.
TuE work of Dorner on the Person of Christ is confessedlj, as
a whole, the most important and complete production extant in
this department of theological inquiry. Indeed, for breadth of
view and thoroughness of investigation, it stands comparatively
alone. And now that it has become accessible to English
readers, it may justly be expected to occupy a place here, in
some degree corresponding to that which, by general consent,
has been assigned it in the land of its birth. It cannot at least
fail, from the copiousness of its materials, combined with the
eminently fair, penetrating, and earnest spirit in which it
handles them, to be much referred to, and to exercise a power-
ful influence over the future study of its great theme. It were
consequently desirable, that the work should possess for the
English theological student a specific, as well as a general
character of completeness, and should furnish him with a com-
petent measure of information on those phases of the discussion,
which, from local associations, as well as from their intrinsic
importance, have naturally a more peculiar interest or value
for him.
It is precisely hero, however, that the work of Dorner is de-
ficient; though the deficiency has, perhaps, arisen more from
P. 2. — VOL. III. Y
338 APPENDIX.
the definite aim of the writer, tlian from imperfect acquaintance
with the productions of this country, or a disposition to under-
rate their merits. It was the development of the doctrine of
Christ's person which lie took for the subject of his historical
inquiry ; and however valuable some of the works in English
theological literature are, as expositions or defences of that doc-
trine, it can scarcely be said that the doctrine itself has received
from this quarter any fresh development, or even that the con-
troversies respecting it have taken any remarkable turn, or as-
sumed a form elsewhere unknown. There is substantial truth
in what our author has stated, after his brief notice of the dis-
cussions which broke out on the subject in England between
1690 and 1730, that while they gave indication of a widespread
agitation and unsettledness of belief concerning the doctrine of
the Trinity, there appeared in them a tendency to return to
bygone theories, and to serve themselves of existing materials,
rather than a disposition to contemplate the subject from any
new point of view. Hence, as it was virtually the old errors
that came forth on the one side, it was naturally the old weapons
b}' which they were chiefly met on the other. The defenders of
the Church's orthodoxy, for the most part, deemed it enough to
show how the faith had in former ages been maintained, and
on what solid grounds and weighty authorities it had come re-
commended to the belief of future times.
Yet, while so much may, and ought to be said in explanation,
it cannot be otherwise than disappointing to theological students
in this country — considering the amount of talent and learning
displayed in some of the greater controversies that have been
waged amongst us on this important subject — to find that three
pages only of so large a work comprise all that the author had
to say of what, since the period of the Reformation, has in this
department been accomplished in Britain. The learned treatises
of Bull are but seldom, and very briefly referred to. AVaterland
is only once named, in company, too, with persons of quite
inferior note, and as the author of a single performance on the
subject of Christ's divinity. Horsley receives no mention what-
ever, nor is any refei*ence made to the forms which the controversy
assumed here toward the close of the last, and the beginning of
the present century — while those which emerged in Germany
during the same periods have obtained full consirle' ation. \i
APPENDIX. 339
has, therefore, Oeen deemed advisable by the publishers of the
English translation of Domer's Work, acting on representations
that have been made to them by several friends, to have the work
supplemented, for the convenience of students in this country, bv
some account of the discussions which have arisen here during
the last two centuries, and of the relation in which they stood to
phases of opinion prevalent in other regions, or in earlier times.
It is with this view, and at the request of others, rather than
from any personal desire or sense of fitness, that the following
Review has been undertaken. That it will appear imperfect,
especially in such a connection, no one will be more ready to
admit than the writer himself. Let it be borne in mind, how-
ever, that the object here will be somewhat special and limited
in its nature ; in particular, that it is only the greater lines ot dis-
cussion which it is intended to survey, and that, from what has
been already indicated of the character of the discussions in
question, the survey will naturally take the form, not so much
of an examination of the ulterior grounds of the opinions venti-
lated respecting the Person of Christ, as of an account of the
opinions themselves, the causes that may have led to their venti-
lation at the particular time, and the manner in which they
were propounded on the one side, and opposed on the other.
The subject will scarcely admit of aiiy di\nsions, except such
as are furnished by the successive periods in which the several
controversies originated and were carried on. It is true, that in
the earlier stages, Arianism occupied a place in the anti-Trini-
tarian exhibitions of doctrine, which it does not in the later,
and occasionally appeared to be the chief assailant of the orthodox
faith ; but as Socinianism was also from the earliest time in the
field, and made common cause, on the more vital points, with
the advocates of Arianism, to designate one period as a struggle
with Arian, and another as a struggle with Socinian objections,
would be to give only a partial representation of each. While
on this account, however, we shall make our divisions simply
chronological, it is not unimportant to notice, as a sign of the
natural tendencies of things, that the opposition to Trini-
tarianism on the Arian hypothesis, has not, in recent, any more
than in ancient times, been able to maintain its ground. The
vigour and talent, which at one time it exhibited in this country,
'lave long since disaj)peared ; and if, lias become ')lain, that no
340 APPENDIX.
distinctive position can for any length of time be held between
the doctrine of the Trinity, in its strict and proper form, and
simple Humanitarianism, after the Socinian type, or this with
the Sabelllan modification of a higher potence, energizing in the
person and work of Christ, though without any personal con-
junction of the divine and human natures.
SECTION I.
FROM THE MIDDLE TO THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY, OR A LITTLE LATER.
Thp: discussions connected with this earliest stage naturally
recall, as the most distinguished actor in the drama, the name
of Bishop Bull. The controversy, however, did not strictly
commence with him ; nor, though Arianism was, perhaps, the
more distinctive form of anti-Trinitarian doctrine against which
his writings were directed, was this what more immediately
brought him into the arena of strife. It was to repel a charge
of Socinianism that he wrote his first treatise on the subject.
In the course of a somewhat bitter controversy, which arose out
of Bidl's work on justification (Harmonia Apostolica), in which
the Arminian view was strenuously maintained by the author,
he was charged by a certain class of his opponents with a leaning
to Socinianism, while another class thought they descried in his
work the leaven of Popery. And partly to vindicate himself
from the former of these charges, partly also in the hope of
deriving from his pen a valuable contribution to the truth of
our Lord's proper divinity, he was urged by his friends to throw
into proper form, and enlarge, some notes he was known to have
previously made on the views promulgated respecting the Person
of Christ by the ante-Nicene Fathers. He did so, and in a few
years accomplished his task ; but found it more easy to elaborate
the work of his brain than to find a bookseller willing to under-
take its publication. No fewer than three were successively
tried in vain ; but Bishop Fell having heard of his dilemma,
generously charged himself with the risk ; and under such aus-
pices there came forth in 1(585 the Defensio Fldci Niccence.
Bull, it may naturally be supposed, would not have been so
APPENDIX. 341
readily charged with a tendency to Socinianism, if there had not
been already some persons in England known to have espoused
the tenets of that party, or to be, at least, favourably inclined
toward them. Such persons, undoubtedly, did exist, but they
seem to have formed a very inconsiderable party. During the
times of the Commonwealth, the attention of Parliament was
drawn to certain efforts they were beginning to put forth for
the circulation of their errors ; and, as the greatest horror was
at the time entertained respecting these, a law was passed in
1648, declaring it to be a capital offence to publish anything
against the deity of the Son or the Spirit, as well as against the
being and perfections of God. Everything of that description
was held to be blasphemous, in whatever manner the opinions
in question might be expressed. So slender, however, as yet
were the sproutings of Socinianism, that the only things which
attracted notice were a few tracts by a Mr Biddle, who had
graduated at Oxford in 1641, and afterwards taught a school in
the city of Gloucester ; also, a catechism of his own composition,
and a reprint of the Kacovian Catechism, both issued in 1 652. In
the same year, too, appeared a translation of this catechism, which,
as wejl as the reprint itself, was understood to be the offspring
of Biddle's zeal in the Socinian interest. Biddle himself was
cast into prison; and, after being tried and banished to one of the
Scilly Isles for a time, was again imprisoned, shortly after the
Restoration, and died of some disease he caught in his confine-
ment (1662). But weapons of another and better sort, it is
proper to add, were also employed by the authorities of the
time. In particular, Dr Owen "was charged by the Council of
State with the task of replying to the catechisms of Biddle
and Racovia (1654), which he did in the course of the following
year, and, as usual with him, at no measured length. This work,
bearing the title of Vindicioe Evangelicce, forms the 12th volume
in the last edition of Owen's writings, and is still deserving of
perusal, both on account of the information it contains respecting
the early history of Socinianism, and the exposure it makes of
the distinctive tenets of the system, as at variance with the plain
teaching of Scripture. Other refutations appeared of the ob-
noxious pamphlets — among these, one by the annotntor Poole,
entitled a " Plea for the Godhead of the Holy Ghost;" but in
solid learning and fulness of matter they were not to be com-
.3-12 APPENDIX.
pared with the Vindicise of Owen. The few adherents of
Socinianism, if not convinced, were at least silenced bj the
stringent measures adopted against them, but they were not ex-
tinguished ; and with the greater freedom introduced by the
lie volution, they also began, as we shall see, to assume greater
boldness in the avowal of their opinions.
There was enough, however, in the state of matters at the
time to make Bull anxious to vindicate himself from the impu-
tation of being disposed to sympathize with Socinianism. And
he could not more effectually do it, than by carrying out the
purpose he had previously conceived, of defending the Nicene
faith against Arian glosses, and those who sought to impose upon
certain of the ante-Nicene Fathers, commonly reputed orthodox,
Ai'ian or even Unitarian sentiments. Tiie writers whose senti-
ments he controverts in this his most elaborate treatise, were
chiefly three, — Sandius, Petavius, and Zwicker. The first is
simply referred to by Dorner (Div. ii., vol. ii., p. 357) as standing
in a kind of exceptional position to the prevailing sentiments of
the time in Germany. There were properly two of the name,
father and son ; but it was a production of the son which called
forth the animadversions of Dr Bull, entitled Nucleus HistoricB
Ecclesiasticcp. The specific object of this treatise was to prove,
that the Fathers who lived before the Council of Nice were
chiefly of Arian sentiments, and that Athanasius was the real
author of the Church doctrine on the Trinity. It was published
in 1676, only four years before the author's death. Before this,
however, had appeared a work of much greater calibre and pro«
founder learning, yet to some extent espousing the same side.
It was from the pen of Petavius, a French Jesuit, one of the
most acute and accomplished theologians of his order. This
iearned writer, in the second volume of his great work on Theo-
logical Doctrines, where he comes to handle the subject of
the Trinity (pub. 1644), so expounds the views of the ante-
Nicene Fathers, as to establish concerning not a few of them
(in particular, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, Tertullian,
Lactantius, Origen), that they substantially coincided with
those of Arius, at least approached nearer to his than to the
doctrine of Athanasius. They held, indeed, according to him,
that "the Son, or Word, was of the substance or nature of the
Father," but that " in dignity and power He was inferior to the
APPENDIX 343
Father ; that He had a beginning equally with other creatures ;
and that He was produced by the supreme God and Father,
when He resolved to bring the universe into being, in order
that He might administer all through His agency." Petavius,
therefore, was of opinion, that when Bishop Alexander, and other
Fathers, who wrote against the Arian heresy, charged Arius
with being the inventor of a new and hitherto unheard-of
dogma, " they spoke in an oratorical and exaggerated style,
since ample testimonies have been produced from more ancient
writers, showing that they taught the same doctrine" (i. 5, § 7 ;
8, § 2). For maintaining these positions, the learned Jesuit
was judged by Sandius to have been himself secretly a convert
to Arianism, and was thought to have stood for the defence of
the orthodox faith only in the interest of his Church and his
order. Bull shrunk from accrediting this charge against Peta-
vius, but still was unwilling to acquit him of an improper bias ;
he deemed the evidence so clear against the conclusions arrived
at by Petavius, that the only explanation he could think of was,
that a desire to establish the necessity of an absolute submission
to the authority of the Church, as the final arbiter in controver-
sies, had led Petavius to exaggerate the differences among in-
dividual writers dui'ing the first centuries. The supposition,
however, has nothing properly to warrant it ; it is indignantly
repudiated by the editor of Petavius' writings (Zechariae), and
specially on the ground, that while the latter conceived Arius
could with reason appeal for support to certain of the Fathers,
he had at the same time, by solid arguments, confuted their
views, and had also shown that the majority of the Church's
leaders in those early times held opinions in conformity with the
Nicene faith. ^ One needs only to compare the more free and
thorough investigations of Dorner, to see how much the repre-
sentation of Petavius had to countenance it in the writini^s of
^ (Lib. i., Append.) Goode also, in his Rule of Faith, vol. i. p. 258,
dissents from the opinion of Bull: he holds, that there is " no foundation
for the insinuations of Bishop Bull ;" and adds, " It is evident, that the
Komish cause is as much injured by the proof of such a fact as that of our
opponents, for it utterly overthrows the hypothesis upon which their whole
system rests ; namely, that there was a development of the truth, as de-
livered in the oral teaching of the Apostles, and handed down by all the
Catholic Fathers from the time of the Apostles, fuller than what we find ia
the Scriptures."'
344 APPENDIX.
the Fathers in question ; while still, it must be admitted, justice
was scarcely done to them by his representation, and a fuller
exhibition of their sentiments, if it might have made them ap-
pear less consistent with themselves, would also have placed
them in a somewhat less intimate relation to the svstem of
Arius. — Zwicker, the only other opponent whose views are
frequently controverted in Bull's defence of the Nicene faith,
was a physician at Dantzic, where he was born in 1612. Though
bred in the Lutheran Church, he embraced Unitarian views ;
and, among other productions written in support of them, he
published in 1658 what he called Irenicum Irenicorum, which
was explained to mean, A threefold Rule of the Reconciler of
Modern Christians — the threefold rule being the sound sense
of mankind, sacred Scripture, and traditions. It was only in
respect to the last part of the work that it fell under the cog-
nizance of Bull, in his defence of the Nicene faith. In that
part, the author had the boldness to call the Nicene Fathers the
founders of a new faith (novae fidei conditores), and set forth
with the utmost confidence a view of the early history of Chris-
tianity which brought it into accordance with his own tenets.
The Nazarenes, with him, were the primitive Christians, and
they knew Jesus simply as the son of Joseph and Mary. But
the simplicity of their creed began to be corrupted by Simon
Magus and his followers, who taught the doctrine of another
Christ, that existed in a higher sphere before the birth of Jesus,
but coalesced with Him. In process of time, forged Orphic
verses and Sybilline oracles, together with the first verses of St
John's Gospel, all held to be the productions of the school of
Simon, wrought in the same direction ; and, along with a Plato-
nizing spirit derived from the study of philosophy, led some,
and in particular Justin Martyr, to complete the deification of
the Person of Jesus Christ. Not only His pre-existence, but
also His eternal generation and strictly divine nature, gradu-
ally obtained the place of received doctrines, and were at length
authoritatively confirmed, and anything contrary to them for-
bidden by solemn anathema, in the Nicene Symbol.
Such were the adversaries — all of them, beyond question,
men of ability and learning — whom Dr Bull set himself to op-
pose in his Defence of the Nicene Creed. With great patience
and assiduity, he brought together the leading testimonies to be
APPENDIX. 345
found in the ecclesiastical writings of the three first centuries
bearing on the subject of Christ's Person, and endeavoui'ed to
dispose of the false or hasty interpretations which had been put
upon many of them by his learned opponents. In doing this,
he distributed his proof passages into four main divisions : the
first having respect to the pre-existence of the Son, the second
to His con substantiality with the Father, the third to Ris co-
eternity, and the fourth to His subordination. The plan must
be viewed with reference to the aim of the writer, wdiich was
simply apologetical, and sought to make good its object by a
series of proofs on certain definite points of doctrine. For such
an object, the course adopted hns the advantage of a certain
categorical order and precision ; but it has also the very consi-
derable disadvantage of carrying the reader over the same
ground four times in succession, and keeping him but parti-
ally informed of the testimony of each witness till the whole
has been perused. This, it must be admitted, is apt to produce
a sense of tiresome iteration ; and in regard to the particular
authors examined, it can scarcely fail to leave a somev/hat
broken and fragmentary impression on the mind. Especially is
this felt to be the case when one comes to the last division of
the subject, and hears what those early Fathers thought on the
matter of the Son's subordination ; for often the nicest balanc-
ing of terms, and the most careful comparison of what is said
on this point with what had been said on the previous points of
inquiry, is necessary to give one an exact idea of the view actu-
ally entertained, and to perceive distinctly its relation to the
several forms of heresy. The embarrassment thus created by
the method of treatment, is not a little aggravated by the per-
petual references that are made in the text to the reasonings of
opponents, who were ever striving, we find, to make the testi-
monies produced under one point gainsay, or most materially
qualify those which had appeared under another. The conse-
quence is, that however often the work of Bull may have been
consulted on particular parts of the subject of inquiry, it has,
we fear, had a very limited circle of continuous readers. Espe-
cially since the publication of Dr Burton's Testimonies to the
Divinity of Christ — which travels over much the same gi'ound,
but without the iteration, and with creatlv less of the contro-
versial element referred to above; written, morcorer, not in
34() APPENDIX.
Latin, but in English — tlie Defensio fidei NicoencB has found
few even to consult it, and still fewer to make it tlie subject of
careful and prolonged study.
Viewed, however, in reference to the age that produced it,
*he work served an important purpose, and deservedly procured
for its author a high place in general estimation as an erudite
and able theologian. The highest honours flowed in upon him
as a present reward for his labours ; besides being created a
Doctor of Divinity, he received several preferments, and was
ultimately raised to the Episcopal bench. He did not, however,
remit his labours in this line, but published, in 1694, what was
intended to form the proper complement of the Defensio, —
namely, his Judicium Eccledce CathoUcce triurn primoi'um Secti-
lorum, etc.; in other words, the just censure and condemnation
pronounced by the early Church against those who denied the
proper divinity of Christ. The object was to show, that not
only did the Church of those times maintain by all her leading
authorities and public creeds the doctrine of our Lord's divinity,
but that she also refused to recognise as genuine Christians
those who disowned it, denounced them as heretics, and cast
them out of her communion. The person whom he took here
for his chief opponent was Episcopius, professor of divinity
among the Remonstrants at Amsterdam. In the Theological
Institutes of this divine, published after his death by his suc-
cessor Curcellgeus, in treating of the Person of Christ, four
grounds were adduced and specially urged for His being called
the Son of God,- — viz., His miraculous conception. His media-
torial function. His resurrection from the dead. His ascen-
sion to heaven ; after which a fifth was added, viz.. His divine
filiation. But the question was presently raised. Whether this
fifth mode of Christ's filiation was necessary to be known and
believed in order to obtain salvation, and whether anathema
should be pronounced upon those who deny it? (Inst. iv. 2, § 33,
34). The negative answer is given to this question ; and the
])osition is maintained (among other reasons) on this ground,
that " in the primitive churches, for at least three centuries
after the Apostles, the faith and profession of a special filiation
of this sort was not held necessary to salvation ; and, therefore,
there is no reason why it should now be judged necessary."
Ilorsley lias said, that " he believed this opinion of Episco-
APPENDIX.
347
phis had its rise in no worse principle than the chaiitable
temper of the man, and his just abhorrence of the spirit of per-
secution, with which Christians of every denomination were in
his time much infected. Episcopius wished, as eveiy good man
must wish, to see a general toleration established; which he
thought could not be more effectually recommended, than by
the example of the harmony which subsisted among Christians
in the early ages."^ That considerations of this sort may have
had some weight with Episcopius, is possible, though hardly,
one can suppose, to the extent here indicated ; for the view
maintained, if valid, would go, not to the establishment merely
of toleration by the State, but to the relaxation of all discipline
for matters of faith in the Church ; would introduce on points
of highest moment a practical indifferentism. The proba-
bility rather is, it arose in good measure from that Socinian
tincture which is known to have infected the party with which
Episcopius was connected ;^ which in Conrad Vorstius, almost at
the commencement, broke out in offensive manifestations, and
which brought some of its leading men (for example, Grotius,
Le Clerc, Wetstein) into such dangerous proximity to the
Racovian school on several important points, that they were
ever incurring the suspicion of actually belonging to it. Cer-
tainly, Episcopius, in adopting the position already mentioned,
took the ground which was first formally propounded by the
Kacovian divines, and which afterwards received its most elabo-
rate defence from the pen of an avowed Socinian, Dr Zwicker
of Dantzic. This necessarily brought Dr Bull again into con
flict with Zwicker ; and the more so, as the views exliibited in
his Irenicum respecting the early Church were now finding vent
in England through sundry publications of the Socinian party,
— in particular, one entitled the Naked Gospel, printed at
Oxford IGUO (the production, as was afterwards ascertained,
of Dr Bury, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford), and subse-
quently a Ilisioncal Vindication of it, of which Le Clerc was
supposed to have been the virtual author. The object of these
treatises, and several others of the same kind, was to identify
the original and simple Gospel with Unitarianism, and to charge
upon tlie Gnostic teachers and the philosophizing Christians of
the second century, especially Justin Martyr, the blame of
» Tracts, p. 8. " See Hagcnbach, Hist, of Doc. § l>35.
348 APPENDIX.
corrupting that simplicity by their notions respecting the p.*e-
existence and divinity of Christ; and other doctrines of a
kindred nature. They met with a soHd refutation in the work
of Bull, who brought out in a satisfactory manner the real
relation of the Gnostic teachers to the Christian Church, as of
an essentially antagonistic nature — proved the Ebionites, who
held the simple humanity of Christ, to be different from the
Nazarenes, and a mere sect, scarcely deserving the name of
Christian, in the estimation of the general body of believers — in
like manner, of the later Plumanitarians, Theodotus, Artemon,
Paul of Samosata, and such like, that their opinions were de-
nounced as soon as they were known — and, finally, he confirmed
his view by an examination of some of the rules of faith and creeds
that are known to have been in use dui'ing the first centuries.
A few years later still (1703), another production issued
from the pen of Dr Bull, which had for its special object the
refutation of some of Zwicker's positions, — those especially re-
specting the innovations of doctrine alleged to have been intro-
duced by Justin, and the character and influence of the Sibylline
oracles — the opinions of those who bore the name of Nazarenes,
and theirrelation to the Catholic Church — with some other things
of a collateral nature. This treatise he called Primitiva traditic
de Jesu Christi Divinitate ; and may be regarded as partly an
abridgment of his former publications, and partly also a more
minute and supplementary investigation of certain incidental
points connected with the controversy. It was more immedi-
ately occasioned by the persevering efforts put forth by the
English Unitarians to falsify the history of the early Church
after the fashion of Zwicker, particularly in a work called The
Judgment of the Fathers touching the Trinity. Dr Bull's expo-
sure was well fitted to serve as an antidote to such publications,
and, there can be no doubt, was much employed by an educated
clergy as a ready armoury from which to draw their weapons
of defence against the plausible statements of the anti-Trini-
tarians. But it was a great mistake, in regard to this, and the
treatise that preceded it, on the Judgment of the Catholic Church,
to address himself exclusively to men of learning, and shut up
the results of his labours in the Latin tongue. lie had now to
do with English still more directly than foreign adversaries,
who freely used the English language for the dissemination oi
APPENDIX. 349
their errors ; and to select only a learned medium for the diffu-
sion of the antidote, was virtually to leave the greater part of
the field to themselves. His writings, indeed, found easier
access abroad, on account of this very medium ; on the continent
of Europe, Latin still held its place as the common theological
language ; and not only did Bull in consequence soon become
favourably known to Protestant divines of reputation in other
countries, but he had the singular fortune of receiving in 1700,
through Bossuet, the congratulations of an assembly of the
French clergy for "his Judgment of the Catholic Church" —
qualified, however, with an expression of astonishment that so
learned a man, and one so capable of defending the doctrine and
authority of the Catholic Church, should himself remain in a
state of separation from her.^ The misfortune was, that such
foreign applause w^as purchased at the cost of circumscribed
influence at home. His writings were little heard of by those
among whom chiefly the new doctrines were spreading. And
this, probably, is the reason why Leslie, in his Dialogues on the
Socinian Controversy, which belong to nearly the same period,
and were written not only in the English language, but in the
popular form of dialogue, when discussing some of the same
points, made nothing more than a passing reference to one of
Bull's works.
Considered with respect to the subject itself of Christ's per-
son, and in relation to the style of thought which was beginning
to manifest itself on religious matters at the time, perhaps the
chief defect of Bull's treatises, was their too exclusively dog-
matical character. Taking for his sole aim the exposition and
defence of the orthodoxy of the early Fathers, on the point in
question, he seemed to feel as if nothing more was needed, than
to bring forth his doctrinal quotations, explain their meaning,
and guard them against apparent exceptions or hostile interpre-
tations— proceeding on the assumption that the views of those
Fathers were all fully formed from the first, and perfectly har-
monious both with themselves and with each other. This, how-,
ever, was not exactly the case ; within certain limits, there were
different currents and phases of opinion that succeeded each other
on the subject. While they might be said to be agreed in regard
' Nelson's Life of Bull, p. 329. The letter was addresseJ to Nelson,
who wiis personally acquainted with Bossuet.
350 APPENDIX.
to tlie essential divinity of Christ, tendencies so strong dis-
covered themselves, nov/ in the monarchian direction, and again
in favour of a marked Subordinatianism, that, until the circum-
stances are explained, and the genesis of the particular repre-
sentations accounted for, it must always be possible, by a careful
selection of passages, to extract from the writers of the earlier
centuries expressions that appear to indicate somewhat variable
and inconsistent views — positing either such a unity as admitted
of no hypostatical diversity, or such a diversity as might seem
incompatible with strict equality of nature. The root of the
matter could only be reached by an investigation like that pro-
secuted by Dorner; and the treatises of Dr Bull, however they
were fitted to confirm those who were already established in the
faith, could not satisfy the theological disputant, where there was a
disposition to search with sceptical inquisitiveness into the bottom
of things, nor prevent people from still making such use of the
patristic writings as might favour their preconceived opinions.
Such a disposition did exist among a considerable class of think-
ing men about the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of
the eighteenth centuries : the question with them was, not simply
what the Church believed, but how, or wherefore it believed,
and what was conformable in its belief to right reason. If they
were to be Christians at all, it must be as adherents of what
could be emphatically termed a rational Christianity ; and so,
the doctrine of the Trinity, which presents so many debateabh*
points to the merely speculative reason, was sure to be by some
entirely repudiated, and by others, either thrown into abeyance,
or received only in a qualified and secondary sense.
A variety of circumstances contributed to give this turn to
reliffious thousht in Enfjland. The reaction from Puritanism,
now that the tide of fortune had set in so powerfully against it,
and scope no longer existed for mental energy in that direction,
was alone almost sufficient to account for it. Religious fervour
was everywhere frowned upon, as inseparable from dangerous
excess ; and the religious teaching of the day naturally chose
such topics and modes of discussicni as were calculated to ex-
ercise the reason, or tame down the feelings to a cold sobriety.
Partly springing, too, from the same reaction, though prompted,
also, and inspired by other influences, a p]nlosoj)hy came into
vogue, herakled by Cudworth, but properly founded by I^ocke,
APPENDIX.
351
which in its oeanng on morals and religion was peculiarly cold
and rationalistic. In morals it gave birth to systems, which
were among the most notable examples of what Sir James Mac-
intosh has j'ustly designated " the abused extension of the term
reason to the moral faculties;'" and in the religious sphere, it
had its most exact representation in Locke's " Reasonableness of
Christianity,"— a work which seemed to emanate from the frigid
zone of Christianity, and embraced nothing in it which might
not be subscribed to by a bald and meagi^e Unitarianisni. The
Socinians, it is well known, claim it as a production of their
school ; and ascribe partly to it, and partly to the example set
by Locke "of a rational mode of studying and interpreting
Scripture, which explains upon Unitarian principles almost all
the passages that came in his way," a considerable influence in
the propagation of their views. (See Unitarianism in its Actual
Condition, p. 99.) Reason, with this school of philosophical
divines, was placed in a sort of antagonism to faith ; as the one
element rose, the other fell. Hence Socinianism took a fresh
start— Socinianism of the lowest type, standing at a very small
remove from Deism, and, indeed, disclaiming the name of So-
cinian as no longer suitable, since it refused to pay that homage
to Jesus, which "the Polonian brethren so strongly insisted on,
that they deposed from the ministry two of their party who
declined'to render it.'' Avowed or covert Deism also burst into
rapid efflorescence : Woolston, Morgan, Chubb, Tindal, all be
1 Works, vol. i. p. 89, Ed. 12th.
2 See Leslie's Second Letter on the Socinian Controversy in vol. u. of hie
Works, p. 44 (pub. 1697). In the preceding generation they were evidently
very few in number, but those that were, appear to have been much of the
same type ; as may be inferred from the productions of Biddle formerly
noticed, and also from the attempt made by some of the party to fraternize
with Mohammedanism. For this end they addressed Ameth Ben Ameth.
ambassador of the Emperor of Morocco to Charles IL, and made form;U
IToposals of mutual recognition and friendly counsel, as having substantially
the sjime belief. Horsley, in his controversy with Priestley, taunted his
opponent with this damaging fact. Priestley decried the letter as a forgery
of Leslie's; but Horslev got hold of the original epistle, which is preserved
in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. Priestley made no acknowleilg-
ment of his unjust suspicion. But the letter, it is right to add, purports
to be simply from " two philosophers," who took upon them to represent
the sentiments of the Unitiirians. There is no evidence that tlu-y were
aatl.'.,ize<I to do so by any organized kxly of profe.ssing worshippers, o.
352 APPENDIX.
long to the earlier part of the eighteenth century ; and Tindal's
" Christianity as old as the Creation," the ablest infidel produc-
tion of the period — the work of an Oxford LL.D. and Fellow of
All Souls — was little else than the fitting sequel and complement
of Locke's " Reasonableness of Christianity." So great was the
success of such publications, and so generally diffused was the
rationalistic spirit from which they sprung, that we find Bishop
Butler, in the advertisement to the first edition of his Analogy
(1736), uttering the mournful testimony, " It has come, I know
not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Chris-
tianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry ; but that it is now
at length discovered to be fictitious : and, accordingly, they treat
it as if, in the present age, this was an agreed point among all
people of discernment." With those, however, who still main-
tained a certain belief in Christianity, the prevailing spirit chiefly
operated in disposing them to rob it of its more distinctive fea-
tures, and, as regards the specific subject of our Lord's person,
led them either to reject altogether the doctrine of His divinity,
or, with the Arians, to hold it but a quasi-divinity — something
of an essentially subordinate nature to that of the Father.
The tendency in this direction, it would appear, displayed
itself simultaneously in the Establishment and among the Dis-
senters. Absolute Unitarianism, probably, did not make exten-
sive progress among either — though it is impossible to speak
with any certainty on this point, as, from the heavy penalties to
that they were themselves more than Deists. And, indeed, the Unitarian-
ism of England about that period, and to the close of the seventeenth cen-
tury, was scarcely, as we have said, distinguishable from Deism ; and hence,
in the Preservative cu/ainst Socinianism by Dr Jonathan Edwards, Principal
of Jesus College, Oxon, published in 1693, he treats Unitarians and
Socinians as virtually of one class with Deists and Libertines. And though,
in his preface, he speaks of " the nation being pestered with great num-
bers of Socinian books, swarming all of a sudden," yet, it would seem,
these were chiefly little anonymous publications, in so far as they were of
native growth, while the chief authorities on the anti-Trinitarian side were
the works and treatises of Socinus himself and his Polonian coadjutors.
The Preservative of Edwards is almost exclusively devoted to the refutation
of those foreign Unitarians. Bishop Stillingfleefs representation regard-
ing the Socinians of the time is much the same as that given by Dr Edwards ;
while he speaks of their j>Hmphlet8 as swarming of late years (Vindication,
Pref. p. 1), none of tlie writers are mentioned by name, and they are dis-
tinctly charged with being kindly affectioued only to Deists (p. 5G).
APPENDIX. 353
which persons exposed themselves by the promulgation of Uni-
tarian sentiments, some who embraced them naturally preferred
holding them in silence, and those who published, as a matter
of course, published anonymously. That there must have been
a considerable number of such publications even before the close
of the seventeenth century, may be inferred from the circum-
stance, incidentally noticed by Emlyn (in the Appendix to his
Narrative, § 4), that the Dissenters, who had especial reason
to be vigilant in the cause of religious liberty, became alarmed
at the state of things, and, through Dr Bates, presented in 1697
an address to the king, in which they prayed that a " restraint
might be put on the liberty of the press, in relation to the books
of Unitarians." The person who states this, Emlyn, refers to it
in connection witii his own case, and as a proof how the Dis-
senters had fallen away, in the matter of toleration, from their
own avowed principles. He was himself an adherent of the
Arian, rather than of the Unitarian creed. Unitarianism, in its
more extreme form, was still somewhat of an exotic in England —
a kind of reproduction of what under that name had established
itself in Poland, rather than a thing of spontaneous growth.
And standing as it did at but a small remove from Deism, and
without any distinctive worship of its own, the deistical party
would naturally serve themselves of the name for their particular
ends, and were probably in part the authors of those Unitarian
productions which caused so much concern. A scheme which
might approve itself to the natural reason, without being so
palpably dishonouring to Christ, and so entirely subversive of
pious feeling, was more likely to find acceptance at the time
among persons of a thoughtful spirit, and, we have reason to
believe, was greatly the more common form which defection
then took from the orthodox faith.
Besides, however, the rationalistic tendencies of the age,
which, as we have said, had so great an influence in bringing
about this result, there were manifestations of opinion exhibited
in defence of the Trinity, so unguarded in expression, and so ap-
parently indefensible in reason, as to work materially in the same
direction. Bull's elaborate performances had sought merely to
vindicate the doctrine of Christ's divinity, and therewith the doc-
trine of the Trinity, as a matter of belief in the Church from
tlie earHest times ; they did nothing, except quite incidentally, to
P. 2. — VOL. III. Z
354 APPENDIX.
explain and vindicate the doctrine itself. But now that men's
reason was stirred upon the subject of religion, and the articles
of their belief must be able to stand the questionings of their
philosophy, efforts were put forth in explanation of the nature
of the Trinity, as received in the Church, — on the one side,
maintaining it to be in itself reasonable and worthy of belief ;
on the other, assailing it as incapable of rational assent. Of
these productions on the orthodox side, issued about the close of
the seventeenth century, the work of Dean Sherlock ( A Vin-
dication of the Doctrine of the Holy and ever Blessed Trinity,
etc., 1690) was the one that made the greatest noise, and
called forth the severest animadversions. In this work, while
the divine unity was of com'se affirmed, it was maintained that,
with the exception of a mutual consciousness to each other,
which no created spirits can have, there was nearly as great a
difference between the three divine, as between three human
persons.^ Something similar had been said by Oudworth in
his Intellectual System, many years before, when endeavour-
ing to show, from the Platonic and early Christian -svritings,
that by the proper notion of the Trinity the three persons were
held to be possessed, indeed, of one common nature, yet not
numerically of a singular essence, as if somehow to the three
persons there corresponded so many distinct substances. So
1 The words of Sherlock were, — " It is plain the persons are perfectly-
distinct ; for they are three distinct and infinite minds, and therefore three
distinct persons — for a person is an intelligent being ; and to say they are
three divine persons, and not three distinct infinite minds, is both heresy
and nonsense. The Scripture, I am sure, represents Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost as three intelligent Beings, not as three powers or faculties of the
same Being, which is downright Sabellianism ; for faculties are not per-
sons, no more than memory, will, and understanding are three persons in one
man It would be very strange that we should own three persons,
each of which persons is truly and -jiroperly God, and not own three in-
finite minds, as if anything could be a God but an infinite mind " (Vindi-
cation, p. 66). Yet he says, " We do not divide the substance, but unite
these three persons in one numerical essence ; for we know nothing of the
unity of the mind but self-consciousness ; and therefore, as the self-con-
Rciousness of every person to itself makes them distinct persons, so the
mutual consciousness of all three divine persons to each other makes them
all but one infinite God ; as far as consciousness reaches, so far the unity of
a spirit extends, for we know no other unity of a mind or spirit, but con-
sciousness" (p. G8).
APPENDIX. 355
Cudworth was understood to mean ; but in his discoursino-s
upon this subject, there was so much of giving and takino-,
and such endless comparisons and adjustments between the
Platonic and the Christian representations, that his state-
ments had nothing hke the precision of Dr Sherlock's, nor
caused anything like the same agitation in the public mind.
Sherlock's Vindication was ere long met by a counter Vindica-
tion from South (1693), in which the view of the former was
vehemently assailed and denounced as Tritheism. Dr Wallis,
Savilian Professor at Oxford, followed on the same side, but
with more moderation of tone, in a series of letters to be after-
wards noticed. That the general feeling was on their side, and
that Sherlock's mode of representation was held to be offensive
and dangerous, is evident from the strong step taken regarding
it by the Vice-Chancellor and heads of Colleges at Oxford, who,
in a general meeting, 25th Nov. 1695, decreed it to be false,
impious, and heretical, contrary to the doctrine of the Catholic
Church, and especially of the Church of England, to say, that
" there are three infinite, distinct minds and substances in the
Trinity, or that the three persons are three distinct, infinite
minds or spirits." Yet Dr P. AUix, the French Protestant, who
had settled in England, and became a dignitary in the Established
Church, carried the matter fully as far as Sherlock had done,
in a treatise he published a few years later, entitled The Judg-
ment of the Ancient Jewish Church against the Unitarians in the
Controversy upon the Hohj Trinity. Here the Trinity was
broadly asserted to be "a Trinity of uncreated beings and
spirits," and of "creators and gods," It was to "uncreated
beings " that God said at the creation, " Let us make man in
our likeness;" and there, and elsewhere, Elohim, because it is
a plural Avord, is translated Gods : — " The Gods created the
heaven and the earth," and so on. Of commentating after this
fashion Calvin has justly said, that " readers should be admon-
ished to shun glosses of this sort ; since, while thus seeking for
a proof of the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit against
the Arians, they meamvhile fall into the heresy of Sal)ellius."
It is strange that a man of any pretension to Hebrew scholar-
ship should have taken up with such a style of exposition ; and
scarcely less strange, that, with evidence to the contrary so
abundant in New Testament Scripture itself, he should have
356 APPENDIX.
iindertaken to prove tliat the Jews, till a comparatively recent
period, believed a "Trinity of uncreated beings and spirits,"
and expected their Messias should be "God from heaven."
The work was solidly refuted, and its insufficient learning ex-
posed, in a series of letters by Mr Stephen Nye, Rector of
Hormead (with the title, The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, etc.,
1701), — a work which, indeed, runs too much upon the Platonic
method of working out a Trinity, but which better deserved
republication than that of Dr Allix, though it appears to have
been denied the honour, and has even failed often to find so
much as a place in the theological literature of its age.^
Considering the temper of the times, it is not to be wondered
at that Trinitarianlsm of the type of Sherlock and Allix pro-
duced in many minds a recoil ; their reason was shocked by it.
Wiiile some were led merely to reject the form of the represen-
tation, and contended not the less earnestly for the Scripture
doctrine of the Trinity, there were others who abandoned it as
no longer tenable, and fell off to a species of Arianism. This
tendency by and by found its proper development and ablest
representative in Dr Samuel Clarke. But there were earlier
examples of it, at which it may be well, in the first instance, to
glance, and also to notice the efforts made by men of sounder
' The good fortune of the rival work is somewhat extraordinary. Not
only did it very soon reach a new edition, but, notwithstanding its extra-
vagance and shallow scholarship, it was pointed to by Horsley with an air
of satisfaction, as having most convincingly established the Trinitarian be-
Hef of the ancient Jews (Tracts, p. 242). This is one of the indications —
of which a few more occur on incidental topics — that Horsley's learning was
scarcely in all respects equal to his task. The positions respecting Philo's
and the ancient Jewish belief generally, which are now all but universally
received, were those which Nye affirmed in opposition to Allix. It is with
regret we see, in a quite recent production ('' The Christian Verity Stated,"
by Walter Chamberlain, M.A., 1862), the views and quotations of Allix
substantially reproduced, under what is called Hebrew evidence for the
doctrine of the Trinity. Such extreme conservatism in regard to points of
learning, long since abandoned by the more thorough and impartial in-
quirers, is scarcely to be wondered at in one who can still cleave, and on
such arguments as are advanced at pp. 428-432, to the genuineness of 1 John
v. 7. It is not advocacy of this description that in the present day will
advance the cause which the author has evidently at heart, either with pro-
perly enlightened behevers, or with skilful adversaries ; and is the more to
be regretted, as many parts of the treatise are good.
APPENDIX. 357
faith and more mature judgments to prevent the defection from
proceeding. The case of Mr Emlyn, formerly referred to, de-
serves in this connection particular notice. Having been settled
for some time as a Nonconformist minister in Dublin, this person
is occasionally spoken of as a kind of pioneer of Irish Ariauism.
But he was a native of Stamford in Lincolnshire, where he was
born in 1663, of godly parents, who were not separatists, though
they are said to have been inclined to Puritanism. Their son
was educated partly at Cambridge, and partly in some Dissent-
ing academies ; and appears to have been a young man of good
promise, both as to general acquirements and pious character.
When residing in the family of Sir Kobert Kich, in Suffolk, he
contracted an acquaintance with a Mr Manning, a Noncon-
formist minister, who is said to have been of an inquisitive, or
speculative, temper like himself. Sherlock's work on the
Trinity coming out when he was there, set both of them a
thinking upon that mysterious subject, and created a prejudice
in their minds against it. Manning, we are told in Emlyn's
Memoirs, " took to the Socinian way, and strove hard to bring
Mr Emyln into the same way of thinking ; but Mr E. never
could be brought to doubt either the pre-existence of our Saviour
as the Logos, or that God created the material world by Him."
In 1691 he accepted a call from a congregation in Dublin to be
colleague to a Mr Boyse, who had been for a considerable
period one of its pastors ; and in this situation he seems to have
acquitted himself for about ten years in such a manner as to
acquire the esteem and affection of those who knew him, —
necessarily, however, maintaining a reserve upon some of the
more peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. Then came a declai'a-
tion of his essentially Arian views (in 1702), which was followed
not only by his deprivation as a minister, but shortly after by
his prosecution as a heretic and blasphemer. Indeed, a furious
storm rose against the man, in which the Dissenters were joined
by certain dignitaries of the Establishment; and the Bench,
participating in the general feeling, condemned him to a fine
of L.IOOO, and at least one year's imprisonment. This, un-
doubtedly, was scandalous treatment ; for while Emlyn's views
were heretical on the Person of Christ, there was nothing offen-
sive in the expression he gave to them : on the contrary, his
exposition of his views was decorous and schohirly. And he
358 APPENDIX.
naturally complained of it as a proof of gross partiality and
oppression in judgment, that he should have been thus treated
as a criminal, while many holding the same sentiments, and
perfectly known to hold them, were suffered to live at ease, and
even to enjoy the benefices of the Establishment.
It does not appear that any considerable number of the
Nonconformist ministers joined either Mr Emlyn or Mr Man-
ning in a formal repudiation of the doctrine of the Trinity.
The minds of several are said to have been unsettled, but we
hear as yet of few desertions to avowed anti-Trinitarianism. In
his latter days Emlyn stood comparatively alone, occasionall}^
meeting with Whiston and Clarke, but apparently without a
congregation to which he could minister, or find himself at home
in. Another generation was required to prepare the descendants
of the Puritans for so great a departure from the simplicity of
the Gospel. In Emlyn's writings a perfect sincerity discovers
itself in advocating the views he had embraced, and commonly
also a certain air of seriousness and gravity in his mode of con
tending for them — as if the mantle of a believing and pious
ancestry still hung about him. But he wanted that reach of
mind and plastic power of combination which had been needed
to constitute him the leader of a party, or the originator of a
general movement. It is not quite easy, indeed, to learn from
his writings what precisely were his views of Christ's person ;
for the most part, they are more negative than positive — most
distinctly disowning the essential divinity of Christ, and reject-
ing whatever was at variance with the absolute simplicity and
oneness of the Godhead, but leaving all besides in a certain
vagueness and uncertainty. In his scheme of doctrine, there is
nothing which rises beyond what is generally understood by
Socinianism : Christ is simply the great teacher, the faultless
example, the blessed martyr, the first-begotten from the dead ;
but He did nothing, He procured nothing for His people, which
human virtue might not accomplish in connection with the larger
measures of divine aid. Even His sufferings were but in a higher
degree what Paul's were in a lower : to atone for guilt, in the
sense of bearing the punishment due to it, belongs as little to
the one as to the other ; they were a sacrifice, indeed, of great
value, but so also is repentance, so is prayer, and the other
exercises of Christian grace. Yet, he speaks of the complete
APPENDIX. 359
Deity in its full conception, not a portion of God, or God only
partially considered, being united to, dwelling and operating in
Jesus ; whence His miraculous works are ascribed to the divine
nature of the Father in Him, or to the might of the Holy Spirit.
That is, there was a certain singular energizing of the divine
power and goodness in Jesus, for effecting the purposes of His
mission ; but whether from direct contact with a human soul,
or by means of a personal inhabitation of the Logos, is not ex-
plained. The Arian hypothesis scarcely seems to have been
needed for all that Emiyn associates with the agency of Christ ;
such an energizing from above as is compatible with simple Hu-
manitarianism, and has often been combined with it, might
have sufficed.^
Various attempts were made, amidst the contendings of
this period, to meet the allegations of Emlyn and his Unitarian
allies, as to the contrariety of the doctrine of the Trinity to sound
reason. The letters of Dr Wallis, already adverted to, were
published with this view ; but in this work the personal distinc-
tions in the Godhead were so attenuated as to render his
Trinity scarcely distinguishable from Sabellianism. Under-
standing hypostasis or persona much in the sense of character
or manifestation, he conceived that the one suppositurn or
essence of Godhead might exhibit itself in diverse capacities,
or modes of operation — as a man may sustain the parts of
magistrate, merchant, and general, and still be the same in
individual essence or nature. This, as justly objected by Howe,
in one or two letters he addressed to Dr Wallis, was too shadowy
a distinction to bear the superstructure raised on it in Scripture,
and also tended to disturb the received notion of hypostasis
among divines — since, apparently, one hypostasis might be all
that was needed, if this ex})lanation would stand — although
^ His views may be learned from the Memoirs of his life, with the ap-
pendices attached ; the Narrative of proceedings connected with his depri-
vation and trial ; his Humble Inquiry into the Scripture Account of Jesus
Christ ; his Remarks on Mr Boyse's Vindication of the True Deity of Christ,
and his Vindication of the Worshij^ of Jesus Christ on Unitarian principles.
His inquiry into tlie authority of 1 John v. 7, in opposition to Martin's
vindication of it, and his examination of Martin's reply, are creditable to
his scholarship. Here, where, .as may be supposed, he took the negative
side, his judgment has been sustained by the more mature results of biblical
leArning.
360 APPENDIX.
Howe admits the author to have intended by his scheme much
the same as was usually meant by modal distinctions in the God-
liead. Howe himself, in a subsequent and separate treatise
(1694), entitled A Calm and Sober Inquiry concerning the
Possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead, endeavoured to reason
men into the intelligent belief of the doctrine by a sort of inter-
mediate way between Sherlock and Wallis — reasoning upwards
from the possible in the human, to the possible or conceivable
in the divine, sphere — imagining the existence of three created
spirits or intelligences, here knit together into a unity, while
still retaining certain distinctive peculiarities ; a perfectly coi'i-
ceivable thing, he considers, especially as in the one compound
structure of our own natures we find a threefold element
actually co-existing, the vegetative, the sensitive, and the intel-
lective. And so, rising heavenwards, why should we doubt the
possibility of three distinct essences united in the one Godhead,
by a union inward and eternal, rooted in some necessity of
nature ? He guards himself against its being supposed that he
meant by three essences, three distinct substances, three infinite
minds or spirits ; and declares his sole object to be, to help out
the idea of such a trinal conception of God as is implied in the
revelation God has given of Himself by word and deed. What
he thus disclaimed, however, he soon found that people ascribed
to him ; he was understood to plead for a plurality or multi-
plicity of substances in the Godhead — as he himself notices in
a letter on the subject addressed to a friend (H. H.), and refers
jjarticularly to one who had done so. After his death, too, Mr
Emlyn, in the appendix to the narrative of his own case (p. 74),
without qualification or reserve, classes Mr Howe with those who
held Father, Son, and Spirit to be three infinite minds, each and
all of them supreme God. This was not dealing fairly with Howe
— though, it must be confessed, the illustrations he resorted to,
and the forms of expression he employed upon the subject, made
it but too natural to give that colour to the results of his inquiry.
Beyond all doubt, what was then, and had for long been
with divines, the common mode of explanation, is what has been
called Modal Trinitarianism. This, as already stated, was the
method adopted by Dr Wallis, though, with certain peculiarities
of his own, also by South, Stillingfleet, Nye, Boyse, and many
others : — the Trinity was held to be one essence, and three
APPENDIX. 361
modes of subsisting; or, as it is sometimes put, one divine
essence or substance, and three properties. " When we con-
sider a divine essence," says Stillingfleet (p. 16), to make him
speak for all, " there can be no distinction conceived in it, but
by different modes of subsisting ; or, what is the same, relative
properties in the same divine essence." Not a mer^e mode, how-
ever, as he expressly guards himself by saying ; " for there is a
common nature which must be joined with this manner of sub-
sistence, and we never conceive a person without the essence in
conjunction with it" (p. 73). This mode of representation is
quite true, if rightly understood ; but, unfortunately, that has
not always been the case, and the analogical explanations, which
have been attempted by Trinitarian writers, in order to make
distinct to the apprehension and satisfactory to the reason,
what, from its very nature, must remain an inscrutable mystery,
has helped not a little to produce misunderstanding respecting
it. The anti-Trinitarians asked, How can a mode with any
propriety be called a person ? Or, how can a mode become
incarnate ? And with the view of explaining matters, resort
was made at the period in question, as it had often been made
before, especially since the time of Augustine, to certain modal
distinctions, or characteristic properties in the human mind, as
imaging, in a measure, the divine — a line of investigation in
which, not the sacred penmen, but the school of Plato, set the
example. The matter has been turned over in all imaginable
forms : sometimes it is the understanding, the memory, and the
will in man, which have been taken as the earthly type ; or,
with a different view of the human, there is got simple, eternal
mind, reflex or generated wisdom, loving or willing self ; with
still another, there is found mind, self-knowledge, self-compla-
cence ; or still again, goodness, wisdom, power (and occasionally,
instead of power, love). But when these, and such like forms
of human things, were employed as an intelligible ground on
which to set forth the essential oneness, yet immanent distinc-
tions in the Godliead, it was replied (by Emlyn and others),
that no one, not even Arius or Socinus, ever denied that the
Most High God had life, wisdom and will, love and j)o\ver, self-
knowledge and complacency, or that He might be considered
under such various modes : but how can it be said that one of
these, apart from the rest, was incarnate in Christ ? or is now
362 APPENDIX.
operative in the Spirit ? Can such a thing be conceived with-
out only a part of deity being associated with the mission of
Christ and the agency of the Spirit ? Or, if all are under-
stood to have combined in the manifestation, wherein does the
scheme differ from the successive phases of character included
in Sabellianism ?
The whole of this style of reasoning upon the mystery of
tlie Trinity was so well met and exposed by Mosheim, in one of
his notes to Cudworth's Intellectual System, which gave fresh
vogue to such speculations, that we cannot do better than quote
the main part of it. Cudworth, we should state, was labouring
to establish a correspondence between the Platonic and the
Christian Trinity — infinite goodness being supposed to be the
characteristic of the first hypostasis, infinite wisdom of the
second, and infinite, active love and pov/er of the third ; and
these, as Dr C. adds, not as accidents and qualities, but as all
substantial. On which Mosheim remarks, " In my opinion, the
very thing added by Dr C, that these three names, goodness,
wisdom, love, are names, not of three virtues or qualities, but of
three persons, or really existing natures, entirely destroys the
force of his subtle argumentation. For, if these three words
were to imply three modes, or three notions or perfections, Dr
C.'s reasoning would have been intelligible, and we should have
no reason to complain of this dogma of a triune God being in-
volved in infinite darkness, since every one is aware that one
nature can be viewed in vaiious aspects, and be endowed with
many perfections. In that case, however, there would be an
end of all distinction, and there would be no more difference
between the three persons of the divine nature than between
three faculties of one soul, or three modes of action. The
Sabellians, therefore, would be right ; nor have I any doubt
that the Socinians themselves, and the Jews, would readily
adopt this Trinity. But if goodness, wisdom, love, are the names
of three persons, I am at a loss to understand what aid these
names can afford us towards a more clear conception of the
divine Trinity. For, the expressing an abstruse thing by
different names does not change its nature ; and, therefore, if
instead of the words Father, Son, and Iloli/ Ghost, men make
use of the names goodness, ivisdom, love in the same notion,
they do not thereby render it mora int<>lligible, how three in
APPENDIX. 363
God are one. The same may be said of all those who, after
the example of Augustine (De Trin. xiv. 8), fancied thev
discovered images of the Divine Trinity in our soul and its
facidties. If the words memory, intelligence, and love, which
Augustine and an infinity of others after him employed in this
matter, retain the same signification Avhich they possess when
applied to the human soul, we can better understand, indeed,
what is meant by a triune God, but at the same time we lose
the whole mystery. If these names, however, receive a new
meaning, and signify really existing natures, we come back
again to the old difficulties, and have gained nothing by this
image, inasmuch as the change of names can produce no change
in the thing itself. Such being the case, Dr C.'s Platonic
Christian will have a twofold risk to encoimter. Should he ac-
knowdedge the names goodness, loisdom, love, to be designations
of qualities and perfections, the Trinity of the Platonists will
differ entirely from the Christian Trinity. But if he declares
that persons are meant by these names, what have we gained
thereby towards removing the barriers that sepai'ate us from
the Platonists ? Will the subordination of persons in the Pla-
tonic Trinity disappear, because the names of things, in which
jio difference in dignity is discernible, are applied to persons ?
There is a vast difference and disparity between a king, the son
of a king, and the minister of both ; but let us discard these
names, and substitute in their stead lord, governor, magistrate,
will this change of names cause the persons themselves, who
before were so widely separated, to be equal to each other?"
(Vol. ii. p. 429, Tegg's Ed.).
It is impossible to evade the force of this reasoning ; and
one is disposed to wonder how men so acute should have failed to
see that the human analogies they pressed never fairly reached
the mark they aimed at, and so were rather fitted to give a
handle to adversaries, than minister help to sincere inquirers.
Calvin had justly expressed his disinclination to such a mode
of exhibiting the doctrine ;^ he was " doubtful if it was expedient
to fetch similitudes from human things to bring out the force
of the distinction (in the Godhead). The Fathers were some-
times in the habit of doing it ; but they, at the same time,
confessed that there was a vast difference between the things
» Inst. i. 13, § 18.
3G4 APPENDIX.
compared ; whence I shrink here from all boldness, lest by pro*
ducms something unsuitable, I should afford a handle either for
calumny to the malicious, or for absurdity to the unskilful"
He merely goes so far as to say, that as one's own mind
naturally inclines to think of God first, then of the wisdom
emanating from Him, and finally of the power by which He
carries into effect the counsels of His will ; so we readily accord
with the distinction which ascribes to the Father the causal
beginning, the primal source and fountain of things — to the
Son, wisdom, counsel, and the actual disposal and administra-
tion of them — to the Spirit, the power and efficacy of working,
which brings them to pass. It had been well if this reserve and
moderation had been always observed ; and especially, if the
order and relation of the several persons in the Godhead had
been thus contemplated more with reference to the overt acts
and outgoings of the divine nature, less to its internal and hidden
essence. For the Christian doctrine of one God in three
centres of manifestation, each for itself disclosing the whole
Deity, " is not to be reached in a purely metaphysical way,
but developes itself through the exercise of faith on the facts
of revelation " (Martensen). Through these alone can we rise
to some apprehension — though still but an obscure apprehen
siou — of the internal relations of the three in the Godhead,
taking the economical as the reflex of the essential distinctions.
And it is only when these facts, especially the great facts of
redemption, are either undervalued for speculative thought, or
by false interpretations thrust out of their proper place, that
the doctrine of the Trinity can either lose its importance, or
become a source of perplexity and metaphysical strife.^
1 It may be noted, that in the discussions of the earlier centuries the
analogy between the human and the divine was often pressed in another
form than that mentioned in the text, but with the same tendency to
heretical results. As Logos in the Greek bears the double sense of thought
internally conceived and outwardly spoken, — the one more fully expressed
being called /c/'yo? hliidizo;^ the other T^oyog '7rpo<popt>c6t;^ — so, it was ima-
gined there might be here also a parallel in the divine Logos : always
existing, indeed, as thought is inseparable from the mind of Deity, therefore
co-eternal with the P'ather, but, before creation, existing alone as silent
thought, and from the moment of creation, or the execution of the purpose
to create, as thought spoken ;— hence, in this respect, having a commence-
ment in time. This mode of representation is found in such writers Jis
APPENDIX.
365
Apart, however, from the wrong turn to the investigation
by the employment of those hiiman analogies, it is time that the
distinctions in the Godhead must be viewed with reference to
m.odes or properties, — only (as all sound writers qualify it,
though the opponents of the doctrine usually contrive to over-
look the qualification) with a due regard to the essential nature
of the subject in contemplation, and the mighty distance at
which it stands from what is material and finite. The terms
Father, Son, and Spirit, while indicating modal distinctions, do
not express mere modes or properties, mere powers or agencies •
for, to each alike belongs the fulness of the Godhead ; and all
essentially divine perfections or attributes may be predicated of
the Son and Spirit, as well as of the Father. " The Catholics,
indeed," to use the words of Dr Waterland,^— who has put this
matter in its proper light, as regards at least the better class of
tvriters, repelling the assertion of AVhitby, that from the fourth
century- a person in the Godhead had commonly been believed
to be a mode, — " the Catholics, indeed, down from the fourth (I
may say from the first) century, have believed that there is no
disparity of nature, no division of substance, no difference m
Tertullian, Origen, Dionysius Alex., Theophilus of Autioch ; as also in
later -ftTitcrs, who meant not in so speaking to gainsay, but only to illus-
trate, the doctrine of the Son's proper divinity. Yet the application to
strict Monarchianism was very natural, nor was it long in coining. The
Sabellian tendency, as exemplified by Praxeas, by Sabellius himself, by
Paul of Samosata, and still later by Photinus, made use of the ana-
logy to disprove the existence of any hypostatlcal distinctions in the God-
head. Silent or inward thought, they said, is nothing properly distinct
from the mind that conceived it ; it hj»s no independent, substantive exist-
ence ; nor is outward speech a real, a permanent thing, but gone as soon
as uttered ; so that, either way, the Logos of St John is no more distinct
from the Eternal One, than a man's thought or speech is distinct from him-
self. Dr Priestley and his school, though not correctly, yet with some show
of plausibility, represental the early Avriters above mentioned, who intro-
duced this appUcation of the *erm Logos, as really using Sabellian language ;
and to avoid such language, Arius ascribed a real, though temporal hypo-
Btatical existence to the Logos. By Le Clerc, who belongal, as before noticed,
to a school not far removed in some things from the Socinian party, the Sa-
bellian view was, with a slight difference, embodial in his translation of the
firat verses of St John's Gospel : " In the beginning was Reason, and Reason
was with God, and Reason was God Himself," etc. (Sec Dorner undei
Sabellius ; also AVaterland's Sermons ou Chrij=t's Divinity, Ser. I.)
1 Works, vol. ii. p. 20-1.
3G6 APPENDIX.
any perfection, between Father and Son ; but that they are
equally wise, equally infinite, equally perfect in all respects, —
differinfT only in this, that one is a Father and the other a Son,
one unhegotten and the other begotten, as a third is proceeding ;
and these three different manners or modes of existence distin-
guish the persons one from another, perfectly alike and equal
in all other respects. The phrase, therefore, of modes of exist-
ing, was not designed to denote the persons themselves, but their
distinguishing characters. This is what South's authorities
sufficiently prove, and all that they prove ; and, I presume, all
that he meant. For, though you are pleased to quote him
against me, he is expressly for me, where he utterly denies that
' the three divine persons are only three modes of the Deity.'
However, as to the ancients, I will be bound to answer for them,
that what you say of them from the fourth ceiitury is pure in-
vention and romance."^
SECTION II.
FROM THE CLOSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH TO NEAR THE
MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.
It has been remarked as a relative defect in Bull's writings,
that, in vindicating the orthodoxy of the Fathers on the subject
of our Lord's person (and by consequence on the doctrine of
the Trinity), he makes no allowance for imperfect or partially
erroneous representations : the ante-Nicene Fathers as a body
all held the truth, so far as appears, in its roundness and com-
pleteness ; and it scarcely matters from which of them we might
imbibe our impressions. This view, however, is a little one-sided ;
for, with a general soundness on the essential features of the
subject, there was also among the writers of the first cenLm^ies
a certain growth, or development, in the right direction, imply-
ing, of course, in some relative deficiencies, more or less con-
fused, biassed, perhaps inconsistent, statements on the points at
^ Some good remarks to the same effect, though not quite so tersely
put, may be seen in Stephen Nye's Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, 1st and
■Ith Letters.
APPENDIX. 367
issue. And in so far as such existed, it was inevitable that they
should be laid hold of to guide to other conclusions than those
of Bull's, whenever tendencies were astir, which disposed men
to take up with a somewhat different type of doctrine.
There was nothing in regard to which this was more likely
to take place, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, con-
sidering the rationalistic spirit then abroad among the learned,
and none in which it did more prominently show itself, than
that of the subordination of the Son to the Father, and of the
Spirit to both. The substance of the doctrine maintained upon
this point was correctly represented by Bull — so far as his re-
presentation went — to the effect, that God the Father is the
piHncipium, the head and fountain of divinity, from whom the
Son and the Holy Ghost are derived, but so derived as not to
be di\nded from the Father's being — they are of the same es-
sence— the Father in them, and they in the Father by a cer-
tain inhabitation {'ir€pL-)(oipr}aL^) : so that the Son, when viewed
simply in respect to His deity, might have, and had independent
existence and supreme authority ascribed to Him, but derived
and subordinate existence when viewed in relation to the Father.
Dorner, too, admits that those Fathers were at one in deriving
the essence of the Logos from the essence of the Father ; and
not only maintained, but gave decided prominence to the idea,
that the Son and Spirit are of one substance, like honour, like
glory, and co-eternal with the Father. He, therefore, regards
the equalization of the hypostases as the goal, to which the
collective efforts of the Church addressed themselves, and in
consideration of which they stedfastly rejected everything,
whether by way of consequence from their own positions, or
by the introduction of other views that pointed in the Arian
direction. But he justly discovers a defect in the representa-
tion sometimes made, as to the Father being the head and source
of deity absolutely considered, or to His being identified with
the Monas ; since this inevitably led to the conclusion, that the
Son and Spirit must have been evolved as parts from the primal
unity. The more cori'ect statement had been, as it came indeed
to be, when the consequences of the other representation began
to discover themselves, that the Father is not the source or root
of the entire deity, or of the deity absolutely considered, but
of the deity viewed with respect to its innnanent distinctions ;
368 APPENDIX.
the Son and Spirit having the same essence as the Father, only
deriving from Him their distinct hypostases. Not, therefore,
as apart from them, but as inclusive of them, was the Father
to be characterized as the fountainhead, or Monas. This was
seen by and by ; and it was also seen, as matters proceeded, with
growing distinctness, that the conception of the hypostases them-
selves, so far as it might have any positive element in it, must
be attained, not from the direct contemplation of the divine
nature in itself, but from its movements and manifestations ad
extra ; in short, that only through the parts severally sustained
by the three in the Godhead, in divine works generally, and
pre-eminently in the work of redemption, can any definite,
though even thus but obscure, apprehension be obtained of the
relations of Father, Son, and Spirit.
Bull was not well dead, till it began to appear Avhat advan-
tage was likely to be taken of the partially erroneous or defec-
tive representations of the early writers, connected with this
point of Subordinatianism. There were three persons in parti-
cular who came forward much about the same time, and took the
part now indicated — Whiston, Whitby, and Clarke, — the latter,
however, so much superior to the other two as a thinker and
theologian, that their names were soon comparatively lost in
his. Before the appearance of Dr Clarke's work on the Trinity
(which was in 171'?), Whiston had acquired some notoriety for
his tenets on the same subject, insomuch that the University of
Cambridge had, on account of them, deprived him of his Luca-
sian professorship, in which he succeeded Sir Isaac Newton.
This was in 1710 ; and dui'ing the next two years he brought
out his views at large in a succession of volumes, entitled
Primitive Christianity, etc. In this, and in various other trea-
tises which followed, he professed himself to be equally opposed
to Arianism and Athanasianism ; not these, but Eusebianism he
maintained to be the true faith of Scripture, as exhibited by
the great body of the ante-Nicene writers, and even by Athana-
sius himself in some of his earlier writings. His creed was
shortly to this effect : There is but one supreme, infinite, eternal,
and immutable God, who alone is to be primarily, and in the
proper sense, worshipped and adored ; and Jesus Christ is in
a peculiar sense the Son of this God, the only-begotten and
beloved Son, not begotten or made out of nothing, as Arius
APPENDIX. 369
hel<l, but voluntarily, and in a singular, altogether unsearch-
able manner, derived from the Father — neither, on the one
hand, of the essence of God, nor, on the other, possessed of a
mere creaturely existence ; — this wonderful, mysterious person,
having by the Father been constituted Lord, and having formed
the rational spirit in the son of INIary, has become our God,
oui' Lord, and our King, though still far inferior to the Father
in nature, attributes, and perfections. In like manner, the
Holy Spirit is a divine person, but only in the third degree, —
made, under the supreme God, by our Saviour, consequently
inferior to the Son as well as the Father, and not properly the
object of worship. Such, briefly, was Whiston's creed, — an
extraordinary medley in itself, and coupled also, in its elucida-
tion, with so many absurd notions and arbitrary interpretations,
with such Rationalism on some points, and weak credulity on
otliers, that his position was entirely unique ; and though one
of the most voluminous writers of his age, no party would
acknowledge him as a leader. — Whitby was a person of a con-
siderably different cast from Winston — greatly less of a knight-
errant in theology, and with much of that apparent shrewdness
or sagacity which instinctively turns from things that seem out
of place, or wear an aspect of extravagance — a man without
neither parts nor learning — acute, versatile, active, ready in the
application of his resources, whether natural or acquired, but
withal somewhat narrow in his ranee of vision, and so stronir
in his prejudices, that when once fairly engaged on a pai'ticular
side, he seemed incapable of distinctly apprehending, at least
of correctly stating, whatever stood opposed to it. His chief
art as a controversialist lay in exaggerating, or otherwise mis-
representing, the views he attacked ; and doing it with such an
air of confidence that one could scarcely doubt the candour
and fairness witli which he put them ; and those who were not
disposed to examine for themselves, were without difficulty led
to acquiesce in his findings. These qualities were strikingly
displayed in the part he took in the Trinitarian controversy.
In one of his earlier pubHcations lie had maintained the divinity
of Christ against the Arians and Socinians (Tractatus de vera
Christi deitate, IGOl); but in the course of time, though we
know not through what ])articuhn' influences, his mind received
a bias in the other direction, whicli was first distinctly shown
I'. 2 — V(»L. III. 2 A
370 APPENDIX.
in 1718, by the publication of a woriv which had been prepared
in reply to some of Bull's representations concerning the views
of the ante-Nicene Fathers (Disquisitiones Modestas in clarissimi
Bulli Defensionem Fidel Nicense). The specific object of the
work was to show, that Bull's quotations were not sufficient to
establish his conclusions, and that many of the ante-Nicene
writers had given expression to a degree and measure of subor-
dination in respect to Christ, quite inconsistent with their be-
lief in His essential divinity. The positions in this treatise
were attacked by Dr Waterland, rather by the way, than with
any design of giving them a formal refutation, in his Vindica-
tion of Chrisfs Divinity, the first production that came from
him on the subject. A reply was presently published by
Whitby to Waterland' s objections, which drew forth from the
latter a fuller, and even more conclusive establishment of the
objections previously advanced, in an answer to Dr Whitby's
reply (1720). This was again met by a rejoinder from Whitby,
in which considerable warmth was exhibited, and a reassertion
of his former grounds ; but with so little fresh matter, that Dr
Waterland thoug-ht it needless to take further notice of him.
Indeed, a weightier antagonist had entered the field even be-
fore Dr Whitby, and had not only been the occasion of first
drawing Dr Waterland into the contest, but still continued to
be personally, or through his abettors, the real head of the
opposition with which Dr Waterland had to contend, as here also
a wider and broader field of discussion had been opened up.
For Whitby professed only to argue in behalf of an Arian
or semi-Arian belief, as concerned the greater })art of the ante-
Nicene Fathers ; his own belief, or his view of the real doctrine
of Scriptui'e, was kept in the background. And only after his
death, wiien what was called his "Last Thoughts" came to
light, was his formal adoption of Arian views made known.
The work of Dr Samuel Clarke on the Trinity made its
appearance in 1712. He had i)reviously acquired a high repu-
tation, not only for his scholarship and attainments at the Uni-
versity, but also for his able performances in connection with
the Boyle Lectureship, which became extensively known under
the names of his " Demonstration of the Being and Attributes
of God," and his " Evidences of Natural and Revealed Reli-
gion." Reason had so strongly the ascendant in Clarke's com-
APPENDIX. 371
position, that everything in a manner must be subjected to its
rule and measure ; that only must stand in matters of rehgious
behef, which reason could distinctly grasp and make good by
a formal demonstration. In the work on the Trinity there is
the same effort perceptible, to rest the doctrine on a sort of
demonstrative evidence, as far as the nature of the case would
admit, and to show that it must be so-and-so, and cannot, con-
sistently with right reason and the nature of things, be other-
wise. For such a purpose the book was very artfully planned,
and the whole subject drawn out in a method that seemed fair,
natural, and conclusive. It is divided into three parts ; in the
first of which are set forth in regular succession all the pas-
sages in the New Testament bearing on the Father, then on
the Son, and lastly on the Spirit, — certain of the passages, and
particularly those relating to the Son, being accompanied, for
the sake merely of explanation, with brief comments, partly
furnished by the author himself, and partly taken from the
writinffs of the Fathers and later theologians. In the second
part, the sense and import of all those passages, as so explained,
is gathered out, and presented in a series of propositions con-
cernino- Father, Son, and Spirit respectively — each proposition
being accompanied, like the texts, with quotations from the
writings of the Fathers, and indeed much more copiously,
wherever the propositions bore upon the peculiar sentiments of
the author. The last part is occupied with selections from the
Liturgy of the Church of England, somewhat after the manner
of the selections from Scripture in the first part, for the pur-
pose of exhibiting the conformity of the propositions laid down
with the devotional utterances of the Church, or putting an
accordant sense upon them where they seemed to import some-
thing different.
It was impossible to deny that the method of inquiry
adopted in this work was good, and bespoke the logical acumen
and clear perception of the autlior s mind ; since, first to present
the testimony of Scripture, then to collect its sense, next to
embody that sense in a series of categorical propositions, and
finally to have all, as one proceeds, backed and confirmed by
the expositions and deliverances of the most ancient, the niost
venerable, and most approved divines of the Cinirch, is beyond
all question the most orderly and safest course to arrive at the
372 APPENDIX.
truth. But nil depended upon the simplicity of aim and uj)-
rightness of purpose with which the course might be prose-
cuted ; for, if there was any failure here, then both the sense
put upon the selected passages, and the quotations brought in
support of it from patristic and later theologians, would be
nothing more than partial evidence, sorted and arranged to
confirm a foregone conclusion. That such was to a large ex-
tent the case here, became manifest to discerning minds on a
very slight inspection. Even the collection of Scripture pas-
sages seemed to betray a purpose, these being taken exclusively
from New Testament Scripture ; while some of the most con-
vincing proofs against the peculiar positions of Dr Clarke, as
was shown by Waterland and others, were to be found in the
writings of the Old Testament, as compared Avith correlative
allusions and statements in the New. But in regard to the use
made by him of the Fathers, which again directly bore upon
'ais interpretation of Scripture, he has himself discovered the
partial spirit that guided him, in the caution which he deemed
it needful to indicate on the subject in his Introduction. He
there advertises his readers, that the testimonies produced from
ancient writers were to be regarded as illustrations rather than
proofs of his propositions, and to show " how easy and natural
that notion must be allowed, which so many writers could not
forbear expressing so clearly and distinctly, even, frequently,
when at the same time they were about to affirm, and endea-
vouring to prove, some things not very consistent with it." He
therefore requests that no one should wonder if " many pas-
sages not consistent with, nay, perhaps, contrary to, those
which are here cited, should by any be alleged out of the same
authors." For, he naively adds, in regard to many of them,
that " he did not cite places out of them, so much to show what
uas the opinion of the writers themselves, as to show how
naturally truth sometimes prevails by its own native clearness
and evidence even against the strongest and most settled pre-
judices, and how men are frequently compelled to acknowledge
such premises to be true, as necessarily infer a conclusion dif-
ferent from what they intend to establish."
The plain English of this is, that the testimonies adduced,
as intended to form a kind of authoritative exposition of the
truth of Scripture, were cullcfj sentences, reft from their con-
APPENDIX.
373
nection ; and, taken by themselves, speaking often a different,
sometimes even directly opposite, sentiment to what would have
been found to be the mind of the authors, if a full and im-
partial representation of their views were produced. What
may not be proved by such a process ? In no case is it fair —
not even in the case of modern writers, with whose circum-
stances, and language, and style of thought we are perfectly
familiar — to extract from their remains isolated passages, in
which they appear to have committed themselves to views, which
we have good reason to think they would have disowned, or,
perhaps, in other parts of their writings have expressly de-
nounced. And if we judge this concerning them, much more
should we do so in respect to those who lived in a remote age,
who in youth and in manhood were wrought upon by influences
extremely different from those now in operation, had modes of
expression peculiar to themselves, and were obliged to give
emphasis now to one, now to another aspect of the truth, in
order to meet successive waves of error. Such, in a very special
manner, were the Fathers who lived both before and a little
after the Council of Nice, in respect to the subject now under
consideration ; and nothing is more easy, than for one who
holds either Arian or SabelHan views on the Trinity, to garnish
his sentiments with a skilful array of quotations from their
writings, which will apparently speak his mind. But nothing,
at the same time, could be more unfair to them, or less fitted,
in the long run, to serve the interests of truth. It is a pecu-
liarly nice and intricate question, as formerly stated, to deter-
mine the precise import and bearing of the language used by
the early Fathers on certain of the points at issue ; and there
is, perhaps, no class of theological writers, that less readily ad-
mit of having their representations on these points exhibiteil
in fragments, and by means of them made to do the part of
umpires in regard to modern phases of the controversy. He
alone is capable of doing justice to their views, who with
])atient and persevering industry has made himself properly at
home with their productions, has imbibed the spirit that
breathes in them, and is in a condition to give its due weight,
and nothing more, to every element of thought, and every
phase of opinion, which entered into their cogitations, and has
left its impress on their pages. He, on the contrary, who con-
374 APPENDIX.
tents himself with such a knowledge of their writings as may
just enable him to glean from them enough to serve a specific
purpose, necessarily but skims the surface, and is as likely to
exhibit a mistaken as a correct result.
Dr Clarke and Dr Whitby were both men of the latter
description. They came to the study of the subject with a
foregone conclusion, which they had derived from their philo-
sophy ; and, when searching into the writings of the Fathers
for passages that seemed to express views and sentiments akin
to their own, they had no great difficulty in finding them. Dr
Waterland, who ere long became their chief opponent, was of
the other class. He had nothing about him of the partisan,
and, being of a somewhat phlegmatic temperament, was not
easily roused to contend even for the truth. Though thoroughly
persuaded of the vital importance of the doctrines which were
assailed in Clarke's book, and from the time of its appearance
generally regarded as the man most competent to deal with it,
yet several years elapsed before he took any active part in the
conflict ; and a whole host of combatants had already rushed
into the field — Mr Nelson in his Life of Bishop Bull, Dr
Wells, Dr Knight, Dr Gastrell, Dr Edwards, Mr Welchman,
Mr Eward Potter, Dr Bennett, Mr Kichard Mayo, in separate
treatises or letters. Several of these writers showed them-
selves perfectly qualified to handle particular parts of the con-
troversy ; and on the general question they so completely turned
the tide against Clarke, that his views were formally presented
as heretical before the Houses of Convocation in 1714, and were
held to be such without a dissentient voice. But still no evi-
dence had been given of such a mastery of the entire field of
controversy as the occasion demanded. The writings that had
appeared, though respectable, were only partial and ephemeral
productions ; nor was any of them fitted to take precisely that
place on the orthodox side of the question that Dr Clarke's did
on the heretical. Waterland, however, had all the qualifica-
tions requisite for supplying the deficiency — a singularly clear,
dry intellect, admirably fitted for detecting sophistries, and
threading its way through tangled meshes of obscure phraseo-
logy or subtle logic — a thoroughly honest, sincere, straight-
forward disposition, which instinctively abliorred all Jesuitical
disguises, or paltering in a double sense — an unsophisticated
APPENDIX. 375
desire to know the simple truth, and, as regards the real senti-
ments of the Fathers on the subject in dispute, the abihty to
know it, from his intimate acquaintance with the patristic
writings, — an acquaintance which was probably extended and
matured after the publication of Clarke's volume, and turned
more in this particular direction. How determined also he was
in his investigations here to abide by the unadulterated truth —
how resolute in withstanding any attempts to tamper, even in the
smallest particulars, with the actual testimony of the Fathers,
appears, we may say, from every page he has written on the
subject, in which we perceive the same spirit that drew forth
the following remarks, occasioned by one of Whitby's misquota-
tions : — " For my own part," says he, " I declare once for all,
I desire only to have things fairly represented, as they really
are : no evidence smothered or stifled on either side. Let every
reader see plainly what may be justly pleaded here or there,
and no more ; and then let it be left to his impartial judgment,
after a full view of the case. Misquotations and misrepresen-
tations will do a good cause harm, and will not long be of
service to a bad one."^ It may be added, that Waterland's
style, in accordance as well with his constitutional temperament
as his leading aim, was characterized by nothing almost but its
clear nervous simplicity, entirely devoid of ornament or elabo-
ration, conveying the impression of one who went straight to
his point, and cared only for the ]>lain and explicit utterance of
the thoughts he desired to express. If it had no grace to
attract, it was at least such that no one could be perplexed by
its ambiguity, or fail to mistake its meaning.
These high qualifications for doing important service in this
spiritual conflict, were unfortunately coupled with a considerable
defect, which tended materially to mar, not indeed his immedi-
ate success as a controversialist, but his ultimate position and
usefulness as a theologian. I refer to his comparative disre-
gard of method, arising, in part perhaps, from his imperfect
literary taste, and indifference to literary fame, but directly
occasioned by the incidental manner in which he allowed him-
self to be at first drawn into the arena, and afterwards kejit
actively engaged in it. Instead of forming, as, from his strong
intellect, and just appreciation of the important principles at
* Works, vol. i. p. 351
37(j APPENDIX.
stake, we might have ex])ectGd him to do, an orderly and com-
]>reheiisive plan, on which to ground the doctrine of the Trinity,
and vindicate it from the formidable objections with which it
was assailed, he oidy began to move, as he himself admits, when
he was in a manner forced to act ; and from first to last there
was the same jDliant surrender to the circumstances of the
moment. Time after time he sent forth productions, displaying
the highest powers of- thought, and pregnant with the results of
ample learning, but nearly all bearing the impress of their occa-
sional origin. While in reality most valuable treatises, they
carry the aspect of controversial pamphlets ; and naturally, in
such a case, following the track of the writers to whom he re-
plied, and having respect to the immediate purpose which had
stirred him into action, they conduct us with somewhat pro-
voking alternation from one branch of the argument to
another, and back again — from Scripture to the Fathers,
then from the Fathers to Scripture, and from both to meta-
physical considerations and personal charges of unfairness or
inconsistence. We thus necessarily have the argument presented
in an exceedingly broken and irregular manner, intermingled
also with much that was merely of passing interest. And the
annoyance is greatly increased by finding, when we pass from
one treatise to another, not only that the same sort of alterna-
tions prevail, but also that the same ground substantially is
travelled over again, only with occasional enlargements here, and
abbreviations there, to meet the fresh forms the opposition had
assumed ; so that one must first pass from one part of a treatise
to another, and then from treatise to treatise, in order to get the
whole learning or argumentation, which the author has to com-
municate on any specific point. This, undoubtedly, constitutes a
serious drawback on Waterland's productions, considered with
reference to a place in the permanent theological literature to
which they belong, and one that narrowed considerably the
sphere of their usefulness. Had he either, before entering into
the controversy, digested all his more important matter into a
regular and systematic ])lan, or, toward the close, gathered it
up again into a compact and orderly treatise, his labours would
have told, especially upon future times, with much more effect
than they actually did. How well he could have done so, had
lie set his mind to it, may be inferred from his Eight Lecture-
APPENDIX. 377
Sermons preached at the Lady Mover's Foundation, and a much
later work on the Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity,
in both of which the argument, as far as it goes, is conducted in
a remarkably lucid and consecutive manner. The last treatise,
in particular, forms a happy specimen of his powers, both as a
man of thought, and as a learned theologian ; and, though too
brief on certain points, too prolonged on others, might still
serve the purpose of a useful handbook on the subject of the
Trinity.
To glance briefly in detail at the part he actually took in the
controversy — it began in a private manner, and as an act of
kindness toward a clergyman in the country, who had imbibed
Dr Clarke's notions on the Trinity, and, to the concern of some
of his friends, was beginning to spread them abroad. This per-
son turned out to be, though at first Dr Waterland was igno-
rant of his name, Mr John Jackson, Eector of Rossington and
Vicar of Doncaster ; and with the view of leading him to a
serious reconsideration of the whole matter, Dr W. drew out a
list of queries (in all 31), suggested by Dr Clarke's scheme, and
designed, if thoroughly gone into, to lead to a conviction of
its unscriptural and heretical character. A correspondence
ensued, and was prolonged for some years, though with no
satisfactory result ; till at last Jackson, unexpectedly, and, as it
afterwards appeared, at the instigation of Clarke, committed
the queries to the press, with his own answers to them. This
obliged Waterland to enter the lists in the character of defender,
and formally assume a public part in the controversy : he did
so by publishing, in 1719, his Vindication of Christ's Diiinitii,
being a Defence of some Queues, etc. This work was immediately
recognised by all competent judges as a very masterly produc-
tion. The queries themselves, indeed, bespoke a clear appre-
hension of the great features of the subject, and indicated with
admirable precision the fatal objections, which lay against the
propositions of Dr Clarke. But when the principles involved
in them were wrought out and established, with such extensive
knowledge of Scripture and antiquity, such searching analysis,
accurate discriminations, and vigorous reasoning, as met to-
gether in this treatise, a veiy powerful impression could not fail
to be produced in behalf of the ancient doctrine of the Church,
and against the party that were now attempting to undermine
378 AFPKNDIX.
it. From this time Waterland was looked upon by all parties
as the real leader on the orthodox side of the controversy ; and
Clarke himself readily discovered the superior strength of his
new antagonist. Accordingly, in the following year (1720) he
came out" with a reply, under the name of the Modest Plea
continued; or, a Brief and Distinct Aixswer to Dr Waterland! s
Queries — the Modest Plea, which professed to be the work of a
country clergyman, being understood to have come from Dr
Clarke's hand, acting in conjunction with Dr Sykes. To this
Dr Waterland published no formal rejoinder ; but noticed and
refuted some of its leading statements in the Preface to his
Sermons, preached on the Lady Moyer's Foundation. He had
received the appointment to preach these sermons as a mark of
respect for the service he had rendered by his Defence of the
Queries ; and the sermons themselves, as already noticed, are a
luminous, succinct, and satisfactory exhibition of the doctrine of
the Trinity, and the main proofs by which it is established. He
designed them to form, as he intimates, a supplement to his
earlier Vindication of the Divinity of Christ; and being less
complicated in the matter, and in method less formally polemi-
cal, the work met with a more general acceptance. Presently,
however, appeared Dr Whitby's reply to the objections which
had been urged by Waterland against his Disquisitiones Mo-
destce, in the Defence of the Queries ; and this was met by a
vigorous, but not very lengthened answer from Dr Waterland,
in the form of a letter to his opponent. Whitby's rejoinder to
this, as previously mentioned, was left unnoticed by Waterland ;
but in 1722 appeared another reply — A Reply to Dr Water-
land^s Defence of his Queiies, by his original opponent Mr
Jackson, which obliged Dr W. to reconsider the whole matter
(for the work was written with very considerable ability), and
led to his publishing A Second Vindication of Christ's Divinity,
under the form of a Second Defence of some Queries, 1723.
This Second Defence follows precisely the track of the lii'st,
and again takes up the queries in their order ; so that there is
nothing strictly new in it. But it goes into some of the more
delicate and difficult points at greater length, and as a whole is
even a stronger proof than its predecessor of the varied powers
and resources which the author had at command. He per-
ceived, as he states in his preface, that the book he was now
APPENDIX. 379
called to examine had been got up with great care, that it " con-
tained, in a manner, the whole strengtli of the Arian cause, real
or artificial — all that can be of any force, either to convince
or to deceive a reader." He therefore resolved to put forth his
utmost energy to expose the hoUowness of the Arian views, and
establish the Catholic faith — the only regret being, that for
those who would know the whole, it necessitates a second jour-
ney over the course, which, as regards the subject of inquiry
itself, had been more agreeably and satisfactorily performed in
one.
The controversy would probably have ended here, so far as
the two disputants were concerned, each having exhausted his
best efforts on the main topics, had not Dr W., at the close of
his treatise, proposed a summary way of bringing the matter to
an issue. This was by singling out the principal points, on
which all might be said to hinge, and saying only what could
really be said upon them. The points were, — 1. What the
doctrine to be examined is ? 2. whether it be possible ? 3. whe-
ther it be true ? In stating, under the first of these, what the
doctrine is, he distributed it into three positions : first, " that
the Father is God (in the strict sense of necessarily existing,
as opposed to precarious existence), and the Son God, and
the Holy Ghost God, in the same sense of the word God;
second, that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father,
nor the Holy Ghost either Father or Son : they are distinct, so
that one is not the other — that is, as we now term it, they are
three distinct persons, and two of them eternally referred up to
one ; third, that these three, however distinct enough to be
three persons, are yet united enough to be one God." In respect
to the next question, whether the doctrine be possible, he also
had three points for consideration : first, whether there can be
three persons necessaribj existing? second, whether three such
persons can be one God, in the nature of the thing itself, or upon
the footing of mere natural reason ? third, whether they can
be one God, consistently with any data in Scri])ture — anything
])lainly laid down in sacred writ — such as subordination, mission,
generation ? He admits, that if one of these questions can be
determined negatively, with sufficient certainty, then the doc-
trine of the Trinity, as above stated, is not possible ; but if such
questions cannot bt; certainly determined in the negative, ther.
380 APPENDIX.
tlie doctrine must be allowed at least possible ; and a few con-
siderations under each were added, to show that the negative of
none of them could be certainly determined. In regard to the
last leading question, whether the doctrine be true, the appeal,
he said, must be made exclusively to Scripture and antiquity,
the possibility of the thing being in this branch of the subject
presupposed. But the strength of the adversaries plainly lay,
as he stated, in the question of the possibility ; for if they could
produce a single valid demonstration on that point, the whole
matter would be settled on their side ; while, if they could not.
Scripture and antiquity should be held conclusive on the other.
The country clergyman (Mr Jackson) thought he was quite
adequate to meet this challenge, and did so very much as
Whitby had done before him, in regard to the opinions of the
ante-Nicene Fathers (of which by and by), by shifting the real
question at issue, and assuming the necessary identity of person
and substance. In the face of Waterland's statements to the
contrary, he set out with the assertion, that a person is an acting
substance, an agent in the singular number ; hence there must
be three acting substances, or three agents ; and so he held Dr
W. to mean, by the Trinity, " three acting substances distinct,
though not separate or disunited." Putting the state of the
question thus, it was not difficult to prove that the thing con-
tended for was impossible ; but then the result was gained by
taking for granted what, so far from being conceded, was dis-
tinctly denied. And the same sort of shuffling was practised
in regard to the Son's subordination to the Father : this was
made to rest on a ground at variance with the supposition of
true equality of nature. Such being palpably the manner in
which Dr W.'s proposal had been met, he took no notice of the
production of Jackson. But the principal on that side of the
dispute (Dr Clarke) did not think good to let the matter so rest ;
and under the title of "Observations on DrW.'s Second Defence
of his Queries, by the author of the Reply to his First Defence,"
a pamphlet appeared which Dr W. felt himself obliged to attend
to. He expressed himself as doubtful whether it was Dr Clarke
or Mr Jackson that he was here called to meet, but seems to
have thought the former the real person. The paper, like the
Modest Plea formerly referred to, has been included in Dr
Clarke's works, doubtless on the ground that he had, if not the
APPENDIX. 381
sole, at least the main liaiid in its production. And in reply to
it, Dr W. issued, in 1724, " A further Vindication of Christ's
Divinity," which is short, in comparison of his two former
vindications, but is vigorously written, and restates some of the
points with remarkable clearness and ability. A feeble replv
was made to this treatise by Jackson, under the name of Phihi-
lethes Cantabrigienses ; with which finally closed tiie contro-
versy, as conducted between these respective parties.
Various other treatises, however, bearing upon the subject,
either had been, or were still produced by Dr Waterland ; in
particular, his "Critical History of the Athanasian Creed," 1723,
a very full and thorough investigation, Avliich contains all that
is yet known upon the subject ; his " Importance of the Doctrine
of the Holy Trinity asserted," a very excellent and comprehensive
treatise, already noticed, published in 1734, and having refer-
ence to statements in some recent pamphlets, as well as to the
views generally which were agitated about the time ; " The Case
of Arian Subscription considered;" after which came a prettv
long supplement to it, showing the incompatibility of Arian
views with an honest subscription of the Articles, and adherence
to the Liturgy of the Church of England. There were, besides,
a few letters and smaller treatises, but calling for no particular
notice.
I. But now, with the view of indicating some of the more
prominent points discussed in this controversy, and trying to
form some estimate of its results for the theology of our country,
we shall first look at what may be regarded as its historical
starting-point, and what with anti-Trinitarians has alwavs been
one of their most plausible grounds of opposition — the doctrine
of the Son's subordination. This, we have stated at the close
of last section and the beginning of this, was the point, in respect
to which the language of the early writers was the most variable,
most difficult to be reconciled with the Scripture doctrine, or even
sometimes with itself, and in certain cases not altogether free
from exception. Whiston had built largely upon this gi'ound;
and it is impossible for any one to look even cursorily over the
work of Clarke, without perceiving how nuich he set by the ad-
vantage, which his cause seemed to derive from the apparently
strong Subordinatianism of the Fathers, and how he turned their
occasional statements u])on this point into a kind of master-priu-
382 APPENDIX
ciple for adjusting all the relations of the subject, and overrid-
ing the testimony of Scripture itself. " I perceive," said Dr
Waterland, " the subordination is what you lay the main stress
upon, in order to overthrow the Church's doctrine of Christ's
real divinity" (Works ii. p. 508). No sooner, indeed, had
Clarke's work appeared, than people's attention was drawn to
this, and considerable uneasiness arose from it. Dr John
Edwards of Cambridge, one of the first respondents in the
opening controversy, while he charged Dr Clarke with having
made an improper use of the Fathers, at the same time dis-
sented from the views they had expressed on the subject of
subordination, and even blamed modern divines for going along
with them, and thereby giving a handle to those who were
opposed to the eternal being and essential divinity of the Sou.^
He believed that by pressing the idea of generation too far,
and holding it to imply that in the divine, as well as in the
human sphere, the begotten must be inferior to him that begat,
occasion was given by the early writers to the erroneous opinion
of the Son's being inferior to the Father. And he could not
but consider " those very learned and worthy prelates. Bishop
Pearson and Bishop Bull, with other modern divines, as having
hurt the doctrine of the Trinity by listening to those writers,
and by urging the inferiority of the Son to the Father, in re-
spect of His divinity. Mr Whiston and Dr Clarke," he added,
" have laid hold on these writings, and have made the Son of
God a mere dependent being, and not worthy to be styled a
God."
There is some want of discrimination in this statement,
especially in regard to the two English bishops, who guard
themselves against conceding such an inferiority as is here
spoken of, by representing the subordination they contended for
as one that had to do simply with relative place, or order, not
with substance — that is, with the hyj)OStatical distinctions, not
with the essential being or essence of Godiiead. But their
language, it must be admitted, is not always strictly correct ;
nor do they take any exception to tlie Fathers as sometimes
using incautious expressions, that necessarily conveyed inade-
quate ideas. Hence a series of isolated quotations from tlie
^ Some Animadversions on Dr Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity,
1712.
APPENDIX. 383
Fatliers, followed by others from such men as Peai'son and Bull,
which carried somewhat, at least, of the same aspect, could easily
be made to bear a formidable and dangerous appearance. So
it certainly is in some of Clarke's sections. Take, for example,
his management of Proposition xxxiv., which runs thus : " The
Son, whatever His metaphysical essence or substance might be,
and whatever divine greatness or dignity is ascribed to Him in
Scripture ; yet in this He is evidently subordinate to the Father,
that He derives His being, attributes, and powers from the
Father, the Father nothing from Him." Here he begins to
illustrate by stating, from himself, that on earth a son derives
his being from his father only as an instrumental, not as an
efficient cause ; but God, when He is styled Father, must
necessarily be understood to be a true and proper cause, really
and efficiently giving life — which disposes, as he adds, of the
argument usually drawn from the equality between a father and
a son on earth. Then follow confirmatory testimonies from the
Fathers ; — among others, from Justin, who says, " God alone is
unbegotten and iumiortal, and for that reason He is God;" —
from Clement Alex., " There is one unbegotten Being, even
God who ruleth over all ; and there is one first-begotten Being,
by whom all things were made;" — from Origen, " We affirm the
Son to be not more powerful, but less powerful {viroheiarepov,
inferior in resources) than the Father; and this we do in
obedience to His own word, 3Iy Father is greater than /;" —
Alexander of Alex., " There is an immense distance between
the self-existent Father and the things created by Him: a
middle nature between which is the only-begotten" (wi/ /xeac-
revovaa (f)vcn<; fiovo<yevrj<i) ; — from Eusebius, " The Father is per-
fect of Himself, and first as Father, and as the cause of the
Son's subsistence ; not receiving anything from the Son to the
completing of His own divinity. But the Son, as being derived
from a cause, is second to Him whose Son He is, having received
from the Father both His being, and His being such as He is ;" —
from Hilary, " Who will not confess that the Father is superior
(potiorem) ? He that is unbegotten, than He that is begotten I
The Father than the Son "? He that sent, than He that is sent
by Him? He that commands, than He that obeys ? Our Sa-
viour Himself testifies this to us, saying, J/j/ Father is qreater
than y," etc. Then come quotations from several modern di-
88* AITKNDIX.
vinos ; first and fullest from Bishop Pearsor.^ who, among other
things, says, " It is no diminution to the Son to say, He is from
another, for His very name imports as much ; but it were a
diminution to the Father, to speak so of Him ; and there must
lie some pre-eminence, where there is place for derogation.
What the Father is, He is from none ; what the Son is. He is
from Him ; what the first is, He giveth ; what the second is. He
receiveth. The first is a Father, indeed, by reason of His Son,
but He is not God by reason of Him : whereas the Son is not
only so (Son) in regard of the Father, but also God by reason of
the same." Again : " The Son has His being from the Father,
who only hath it of Himself, and is the original of all power and
essence in the Son. / can of Mine oivn self do nothing, saith
our Saviour, because He is not of Himself; and whosoever re-
ceives his being, must receive his power from another."
Now, it is scarcely possible to peruse such a list of passages —
those especially from the Fathers — without having the convic-
tion forced on one's mind, that however they may have suffered
by being severed from their connection, they are not strictly
defensible, and could scarcely have been expressed just as they
are, unless some partial error or confusion had still hung over
the minds of certain of the writers. It appears as if — supposing
them to have held the essential and proper divinity of the Son —
they had been struggling to give distinct form and consistence
to the truth, in the face of certain antagonistic principles, and
scarcely knew how to reach the mark on one side, without over-
reachincT it on another. How otherwise could the Son have
been designated inferioj* in resources to the Father, or less
powerful ? or represented as a middle, mediating nature between
the Creator and the things created? How, again, could He
have been spoken of as receiving His being as well as His Son-
ship from the Father ? It is not usual for orthodox writers to
express themselves after this fashion now ; and we can scarcely
understand, how it should have been done then, but from the
throes and struggles, as it were, amid which the truth, in its
entirety, was working itself into men's belief. Bishop Pearson,
indeed (who is followed by several later writers), from a too
great reverence of those ancient authorities, and a too close
copying of their style, has gone so far as to say, that the second
person is not only Son, but also God in regard of the Father,
APPENDIX. 385
and that from tlie Father lie receives His being and essence as
well as His power. To hold this, in any intelligible sense, seems
plainly to identify the Father, not as God, but simply as Father,
with the deity absolutely considered; and, by implication, to
deny necessary existence to the Son and Spirit, since deity in
the Father had existed complete without them. It is to ground
the distinctions in the Trinity, not, as should be done, in respect
to hypostases, but in respect to essence or substance.
Dr Waterland does not formally approve of this mode of
representation, but neither does he formally object to it. He
even occasionally slides into the same sort of language, and
speaks of tlie Son's essence being held of the Father, as well as
His dominion, and of the Father having communicated of His
essence to the Son. But such is not his usual style of speaking
on the subject ; and, on one occasion, he admits that Whitby
had some pretence for cavil at the word communicated (First
Defence, Qu. 26) ; and again, with reference to Whitby's objec-
tion, " that the communication of the Father's essence to a per-
son is inconceivable, because the person must be supposed to
have it, to be a person," he replies by saying, that this was
cavilling at what was but a popular way of expression, and that,
in strictness of speech, the ])orson of the Son was the very
thing that is derived, communicated, generated.^ ^lore com-
monly— as might be inferred from the quotation already given
at the close of Section First — he puts the matter thus, that in re-
spect to essence or substance, there is no difference between the
Eternal Three ; that the hypostatical distinctions have respect
to modes of subsistence, or distinguishing jliaracters . ani that,
consequently, the priority belonging to the Fatiiei is one of order,
office, or administration, ^//-existence, in the sense of neces
sary existence, he held to be common to all alike, viewed as
constituting the one eternal Godhead; only, that the Father,
considered as Father, being unbegotten and underived, may be
regarded as having self-existence in a manner peculiarly His
own. In that sense, it is, as he says, simply negative and rela-
tive." So also, in his First Defence of the Queries,^ he quotes
with approbntion the following sentence from Augustine's treatise
on the Trinity : '' All the Catholic interpreters of the Old or
New Testament, that I could read, who have written before nie
' Works ii. 1). 20S. ^ Works ii. uJ5. •"' AVorks i. .^)0l'.
P. 2 — vol.. III. 2 n
380 APPENDIX.
oil the Trliiitj, whicli is God, intend to teacli, conformable to
Scripture, that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost do, by the in*
separable equality of one and the same substance, make up the
unity divine." On which Dr W. remarks, " Here you may
observe the sum of the Catholic doctrine ; — the same homo-
geneous substance and inseparability. The first makes each
liypostasis res divina [in that respect, therefore, equally original,
self-existent] ; the last makes all to be una substantia, una summa
res, one undivided, or individual, or numerical substance — one
God" [hence affording ground for priority or subordination,
)nly in respect to hypostatical distinctions within that Individual
essence].
Indeed, had it been Dr W.'s object to bring out Augustine's
views upon this particular point fully, he might have adduced
his testimony, as still more explicitly delivered against speaking
of the personal distinctions in the Godhead, as implying deriva-
tion (in the ordinary sense) of essence or substance. Thus, in
his work on the Trinity, v. 4, he refers to the argunient of the
Arians : " Whatsoever is said or understood concerning God, is
said not according to accident, but to substance ; wherefore it
is in respect to substance that the Father is said to be unborn,
and in respect to substance that the Son is said to be born.
But there is a diversity between being unborn and born ; there-
fore the substance of Father and Son is diverse." And to this
he replies, " If anything is said concerning God, it is said con-
cerning substance ; therefore, when it is said, I and Mij Father
are one, it is said concerning substance : hence there is one sub-
stance of Father and Son." Pie introduces also the text. He
thought it not robbery to be equal with God; and after pressing
the Arians with the argumentum ad hominem in reference to
both passages, and noticing some of their subtilties, he says, § 7,
" Father and Son are not so named in respect to themselves,
no more than friends or neighbours. Relatively, one is called
friend with reference to a friend ; and if they equally love each
othei', there is the same friendship in both (so also, he adds,
with respect to neighl)ours). Now, because the Son is so called,
not with relation to the Son, but to the Father, the Son is equal
to the Father, not according to that which is said respecting the
Father ; whence it must be according to what is said respecting
Himself, that He is equal. But whatever is said in regard to
APPENDIX. 387
Himself, is said according to substance ; it follows, therefore,
that according to substance He is equal. The substance of both,
consequently, is the same. But when the Father is said to be
unborn, not what He is, but what He is not, is affirmed. But
since a relative thing is denied, the denial is not made in respect
to substance ; because that which is relative is, from its very
nature, not according to substance." Plainly, therefore, accord-
ing to Augustine, it is right to speak of the Son as derived,
simply qua Son (or in respect to His hypostatical existence),
but not qua God, or as participating in the essence of deity ;
the one only is a relative, the other is an absolute quality of
being.
It is rather to discourage the use of language which is not
strictly proper, and is fitted to lead to erroneous results, than
with the hope of imparting any positive information of an in-
telligible kind, respecting the divine nature in itself, that these
explanations have been given. When some, both among the
ancients and the moderns, have represented the very essence of
the Son as being derived from or communicated by the Fatlier,
the object undoubtedly was, as stated by Waterland, to guard
the divine unity : to give it to be understood, that the Sonship
was no mere official distinction, or property held apart from
the very being of Godhead, but one essentially connected witii
this. More correctly, however, the divine unity is made to
stand simply in the possession of the same nature, substance, or
essence, equally and without distinction, by the triune Godhead.
So it is, for exam])le, by Owen,^ who, after stating this, goes
on to say, in regard to wliat is relative, " The distinction which
the Scripture reveals between Father, Son, and Spirit, is that
whereby they are three hypostases or persons, distinctly subsist-
ing in the same divine essence or being. Now, a divine person
is nothing but tlte divine essence, upon the account of an especial
jiroperty, subsisting in an especial manner. As in the person of
the Father there is the divine essence and being, with its property
of begetting the Son, subsisting in an especial manner as the
Father; and because this person hath the whole divine nature,
all the essential properties of that nature are in that person.
The wisdom, the understanding of God, the will of God, the
immensity of God, is in that person, not as the person, but as
* The Doc':rinc of tbu Trinity viiuliaited. Works by Cloold, ii. p. -107.
388 APPENDIX.
the person is God. The like is to be said of the persons of the
Sou and of the Holy Ghost." Very similarly Martensen, in
his Dogmatik, a quite recent Avork, § 52: "Father, Son, and
Spirit are not properties, not powers or activities in the divine
nature (or essence, Wesen) : they are hypostases, that is, such
distinctions in the divine nature as are not merely particular
'sides,' particular 'rays,' of the nature; but each for itself
expresses the whole nature ; momenta they are in the divine
nature, wdiich, nevertheless, severally for themselves manifest
the entire God, the entire love, though in a different manner."
Closely connected with the mode of representation just
noticed is another, which Clarke and his associates made pro-
minent ; viz., that the Son was generated or produced, not by
mere necessity of nature, but by an act of the Father's incom-
prehensible power and will. This is the substance of the 17th
proposition in the "Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity;" and it
is supported by a plentiful array of patristic authorities, ex-
plicitly ascribing the Son's existence to the will as well as power
of the Father. But here he has no modern authorities to back
the old (for his single quotation from Dr Payne is as good as
none, since it purposely decides nothing on the subject) ; and
this alone seems to indicate, that in such a connection the
Fathers must have attached some peculiar sense to the word will.
So, we think, Dr W. has satisfactorily shown (both in his First
and Second Defence of the Queries, under Q. 8). They used
the expression, he contends, not as opposed to necessity of nature
in the modern sense of the term, but as opposed to external com-
pulsion ; " it denied only such a supposed necessity as might be
against, and a force upon the Father's will." He holds this to
be manifest from Clarke's own quotations, many of which are
from writers who held a generation both by power of will and
by necessary emanation ; so that power of will was by no means
synonymous with arbitrary will. And the Council of Sirmium
expressly took it so ; for, when condemning those who said,
" The Son was begotten, the Father not being willing," they
explained this by saying, " The Father did not beget the Son,
as being conatrained, or impelled by a physical necessity P One
cannot, however, justify the mode of expression, or vindicate
the Fathers, in using it, from intruding too rashly into what may
justly be termed the unknowable. Nor does Dr W.: he apolo-
APPENDIX. 389
gizes and explains, rather than defends, pointing out various
senses which the Fathers might put upon will, when so em-
ployed, and indicating that in which he took it to be chiefly-
meant. Jackson and Clarke flouted at these senses, and said
they could find no meaning in almost any of them. " But are
you," he justly replied (Second Defence), " to sit down in your
study, and make reports of the ancients out of your own head,
without looking into them, to see in what sense they used their
phrases ? I was not inquiring what you or I should now express
by the word will, but what ideas the ancients had sometimes
affixed to the word ; for by that rule we must go in judging of
the ancients. What think you of those that gave the name of
Will, or the Fathers Will, to the person of the Son ? They had
a meaning, though not such a meaning as you or I now under-
stand the word will in. They must, therefore, be interpreted by
the ideas which they, and not we, affixed to the phrase or name.
... It seems to be owing only to narrowness of mind, and want
of larger views, that you would confine all writers to your parti-
cular modes of speaking. The word loill had been used by
some of the ancients to signify any natural powers of God.
Will, in the sense of approbation or acquiescence, is very com-
mon with ancient writers ; nor was it thought absurd to say,
that God had willed thus or thus, from all eternity, and could
not will otherwise. Whether there be anything very edifying
in these notions or not, is not the question."
The chief defence, however, made by "Waterhmd, of the
essential orthodoxy of tlie Fathers, and of their including nothing
in the Son s subordination at variance with His proper divinity
(notwithstanding some of their peculiar modes of speech and
forms of rej)resentation), consists in the ample proof he has given
of their maintaining the strictly divine, uncreated, eternal being
of the Son. He admits, what, indeed, is too patent to be over-
looked or denied, that the Fathers did not understand filiation
always in the same sense as applied to the Son — that many of
them acknowledged no higher generation than an antemundane
one, when through the Son there was the projection of the
divine energies to create the world — that in respect to this, as
also in respect to His incarnation, which likewise with them
bore the name of generation, tliey sometimes speak of Him as
coming forth by the will, or becoming a Son by the apjioint-
390 APPENDIX.
raent of the Father. But with all tliis — while as a body they
affirmed, with more or less freedom, the Son's subordination —
while many held only a temporal generation (Justin, Athena-
goras, Theophilus, Tatian, TertuUian, Hippolytus) — while Ter-
tullian even went so far as to say, there was a time when the
Son was not, and God was not always Father (contra Hermog.
c. 3) — still there was a general agreement in the main points,
and a difference only in words. For, (1.) they all asserted the
co-eternity of the Logos, or Word, though not considered pre-
cisely under the formality of a Son. It was a maxim with
them, that the Father never could be aXoyo<;, wathout His
Wisdom, any more than that an eternal mind could be without
eternal thought. (2.) They did not, as is often alleged, mean by
the Logos, or Word, any mere attribute, power, virtue, or opera-
tion of the Father, but a real or subsisting person, whom they
believed to have been always in and with the Fatlier, and dis-
tinct from the Father, before the temporary generation they
speak of. (The proof of this is made to rest chiefly on tho
grounds, which had been previously urged by Bull, — -Jirst, that
before the procession or generation, they suppose the Father
not to have been alone, which could with no propriety have
been said, if they only meant that He w^as with His own attri-
butes, powers, or perfections ; second, that the Logos is repre-
sented as having been ever with Him, so as to converse with
Him, assisting in council, hence existing and acting as a distinct
person ; third, that the same I^ogos who after the procession
was undoubtedly recognised as a person, was also contemplated
as having existed before — proceeding from the Father then,
but only as passing from a previous immanent state to one of
active, outward manifestation, so that if a person after, neces-
sarily a person before, since the relative change from quiescence
to action cannot constitute personality ; finally, that with one
voice they held the Logos to be essentially different from the
creatures, and not, like them, made out of nothing (e| ovk
ovTcov) ; leaving it, of course, to be inferred that He was un-
made, co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father.)
In the parts of Waterland's writings devoted to the estab-
lishment of these positions, there is nothing properly new ; he
treads very closely, and avowedly so, in the footsteps of Bishop
Bull ; and, an with Bull, so also with him, the investigation is
APPENDIX. 391
conducted simply with a view to the maintenance and hereditary
behef of certain points of doctrine. Yet there is more of logical
acumen in his mode of doing this, as called forth by the subtle
explanations made and reasonings adopted by the adverse party ;
and more also of a spirit of discrimination evinced in respect to
the forms of representation and modes of speech employed con-
cerning it, at successive periods, by the Fathers. He owns,^ for
example, that the illustrations and similitudes, w^hich they so
frequently resorted to, such as of mind and thought, light and
shinincTj however well meant, were inadequate to the end in
view ; that they were greatly too low and coarse for such a sub-
ject; while still, with all their imperfection, they clearly enough
involved the element of the Son's co-eternity with the Father.
He virtually admits also,^ that the earlier statements concerning
the eternal existence of the Logos, and the temporal generation
of the same at the period of creation — even this, as some imagined,
requiring to be supplemented by the incarnation to constitute
complete and perfect filiation — could only be deemed true when
rightly explained, and was by some of the Fathers themselves
reckoned so liable to misconstruction and abuse, that it became
necessary to apply the terms generation and Son to the Second
Person in respect to His eternal existence as the Logos, and to
call His twofold procession, first to create, then to redeem, by
the name of manifestations, condescensions, or such like.
Especially after it was seen what account was made by Arius of
the doctrine of a temporal generation, was it found necessary to
connect generation with His eternal being, and, with the Nicene
Fathers, to denounce it as heretical to say that " the Son existed
not before He was begotten " — meaning thereby, that His gene-
ration in time formed the commencement of His being. But
with such concessions and explanations, Waterland successfully
vindicates the Fathers, against all the sophistries of his op-
ponents, from the two great positions of Arius — that there was
a time when the Son was not, and that w^hen He came into
being it was by the creative power and will of the Father; and,
on the other liand, charges these positions with conclusive force
upon his opponents, notwithstanding all their efforts to the con-
traiy. While they rejected the doctrine of Christ's consub-
Btantiality with the Father and supreme dominion, they still
» Second Defence, Qu. 8. ' First Defence, Qu. 8.
392 APPENDIX.
maiiitained His divinity, and took it niucli amiss to be classed
with Arians. Nothing can be better than some of Dr W.'s
exposures and castigations here. " They deny," said he^ — to
take but one specimen — "the necessary existence of God the
Son. Run them down to but the next immediate consequence,
pr'ecarious existence, and they are amazed and confounded ;
and instead of frankly admitting the consequence, they fall
to doubting, shifting, equivocating, in a most childish manner,
to disguise a difficulty which they cannot answer. Push them
a little further, as making a creature of God the Son ; and
they fall to blessing themselves upon it : thei/ make the Son a
creature ! No, not they ; God forbid. And they will run you
on whole pages to show how many quirks they can invent to
avoid giving Ilim the name of creature, and at the same time
assert the thing. Carry the consequence a little further, till
their whole scheme begins to show itself more and more repug-
nant to the tenor of Scripture, and all Catholic antiquity ; and
then what do these gentlemen do, but shut their eyes and stop
their ears? they do not understand a word you say; they will
not be answerable for consequences ; they never taught such
things, nor think them fit to be mentioned."^
II. The reasonableness of the doctrine of Christ's essential
and pi'oper divinity, or of the Trinity as a whole, was another
^ Works iii. p. 37.
2 There was but too much reason for this caustic tone on the method of
the adversaries. The real nature of Clarke's views on the Trinity was
acutely tested by an able Roman Catholic of the time, a Dr Hawarden, who
also wrote a treatise on the subject, entitled An Answer to Dr Clarke and
Mr Whiston. This gentleman was invited by Queen Caroline to a confer-
ence with Dr Clarke, which was held in her presence, along with several
Bthers. Clarke unfolded his scheme, endeavouring to vindicate its con-
formity to Scripture, and freedom from any just charge of heresy. Hawar-
den heard the wliole patiently, and said in reply, that he had just one
question to ask, and that when the answer to it should be given, it should
be expressed either by the affirmative or negative monosyllable. Clarke
having assented, " Then, I ask," said Ilawarden, " Can God the Father
annihilate the Son and the Holy Ghost ? Answer me, Yes or No." Dr C.
continued for some time in deep tiiought, and then said, it was a question
which he had never considered. Too plainly he could not answer it, with-
out either confessing Son and Spirit to be creatures, or admitting them to
be essentially and strictly divine. The anecdote is given by Van Mildert in his
account of Waterland'slife, prefixed to his works, from Mr Charles Butler'u
Historical Account of Confessions of Faith, and seems to be authentic.
APPENDIX. 393
point that came mucli into consideration in the controversies
connected with the names of Clarke and WateHand ; it was, in
fact, the primarily questioned and disputed point, out of which
arose all the efforts of the time to modify the sense of Scripture
and the testimonies of the Fathers on the subject. Perpetually,
as the course of discussion was stript of its ambiguities or ac-
cessories, and brought back to the one great theme, the rational-
istic spirit was ready with its sceptical interrogation, How can
it possibly be ■? One undivided substance, and yet three distinct
persons or agents? Each person God, and still but one God ?
It defies comprehension, and is as contrary to sound reason, as
the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Dr Whitby's summary way of managing the matter was to
cJiange the meaning of the terms — to hold, that as by one essence
or substance must be understood one numerical or individual
essence, and that this is all one with individual hypostasis or
real person ; so that to speak of one person and of one essence
was all one in his account, and three persons could be nothing
else than Tritheism. On this footing he quite easily disposed
of Bull's proof for the Trinitarlanism of the ante-Nicene Fathers,
and made out the majority of the early writers to hold the unity
in nothing but a Sabellian sense. In this he was not a little
aided by the form of expression noticed under the preceding
division, and there objected to, of the Father communicating
His essence to the Son. For he argued, with some show of
reason, "The essence of the Father, or of the self-existent
beinor, is certainly one and the same in number; and if this
essence be communicated, one and the same essence in number
must be communicated to them, who by the connnunication of
it become Son and Holy Ghost. I do not say that the same
numerical essence is a person, but only that the same numerical
intellectual essence is a person ; and, therefore, if it be neces-
sarily and essentially so, the communication of it must be the
communication of a personal essence."^ His object was to press
the meaninir of the woj-ds to what seemed their necessary con-
elusion, not considering that there were other forms of expres-
sion common with the Fathers, which if sinnMarly pressed might
liave led to precisely o})posite results. As Waterland justly re-
plied, •' A fair and candid adversar}- should make alK)wance for
* Reply, p. 5.
394 APPENDIX.
words, and attend to the thing." In respect to the meaning
Whitby himself put upon numerical essence, the most he could
prove was, that it was the only proper sense, not that it had
never been used in any other, which was the main point here.
But Dr W. denied he could prove that his was the only proper
sense ; because, said he,^ " you can never fix any certain prin-
ciple of individuation. It is for want of this that you can never
assure me, that three real persons may not be, or are not one
numerical or individual substance. In short, you do not know
precisely what it is that makes one being, or one essence, or one
substance. Here your metaphysics are plainly defective ; and
this it is that renders all your speculations upon that head vain
and fruitless. Tell me plainly, is the divine substance present
in every place, in whole or in part? Is the substance which is
present here upon earth, tliat very individual numerical sub-
stance which is present in heaven, or is it not? Your answer
to these questions may, perhaps, suggest something to you
which may help you out of your difficulties relating to the
Trinity ; or else the sense of your inability to answer either,
may teach you to be less confident in matters so much above
3'ou, and to confess your ignorance in things of this nature, as
I freely do mine."
Substantially the same misrepresentations were made by
Clarke and Jackson, and the same difficulties raised, which
derived all their plausibility from the tacit assumption, that the
analogy between human and divine things extends further than
we have any reason to suppose it can be carried. " Can the
same individual substance be derived and underived? Can
there be a communication and nothing communicated? Or, if
anything was generated, whatever might be the process of
generation, must not the product have been a distinct individual
substance?" It is easy to put such questions on this mysterious
subject ; but questions precisely similar might be put, as Dr W.
stated in reply, respecting the being of God and any one of His
infinite perfections, such as His omnipresence or His omnipotence.
These are matters which, from their very nature, lie beyond
hum.an comprehension ; we can attain to nothing more than
general and vague ideas of them ; and when we attempt to
bring them under the keen but shallow inspection of our limited
' Answer to Dr Whitby, AYorks ii. p. 20C.
APPENDIX. 395
reason, instead of getting into a clearer atmosphere, we only
involve ourselves in doubt and perj>lexity. By no possibility
can we know the particular mode or minute circumstances of
anything pertaining to God's eternal existence or essential
attributes ; and, on the supposition that there are three persons
in the Godhead, each God, and yet but one God, how should
we expect to be able to penetrate the rationale of their anion
and distinction? Of itself, "the notion is soon stated, and lies
in a little compass. All that words are good for after, is only
to fix and preserve that notion, which is not improvable (without
a further revelation) by any new idea. The most useful words
for fixing the notion of distinction, are persons, hypostasis, sub-
sistence, and the like ; for the divinity of each person, eternal,
uncreated, immutable, etc. ; for their union, irept'^wp'qais, interior
generation, procession, or the like. The design of these terms is
not to enlarge our views, or to add anything to our stock of
ideas ; but to secure the plain fundamental truth, that Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, are all strictly divine and uncreated ; and
yet are not three Gods, but one God. He that believes this
simply, and in the general, as laid down in Scripture, believes
enough, and need never trouble his head with nice questions.
Minute particulars about the modus may be left to the disputcrs
of this world, as a trial to their good sense, their piety, modesty,
and liumility."^
The most characteristic part, however, of Dr W.'s reasonings
upon this point, consists in the acute and vigorous manner in
which he carried the war into the enemy's camp, and showed
liow these philosophical divines, who in their pride of reason
were raising what they thought insuperable objections against
the doctrine of the Trinity, were, in a cognate line, laying
themselves open to objections not less, if not more irreconcil-
able with right reason. Not only was this done in regard to the
contrary scheme which they set up, and which Dr W. held to
be really, what the other was falsely called, one of Tritheism —
])resenting, as it did, three of different rank, yet each entitled to
the name and prerogatives of God, and two of them of such an
anomalous character, that they strictly belongeil neither to
Creator nor creature ; — not only this, however, but some of
Clarke's favourite positions on the subject of natural Theism
» Works i. 4G1.
396 APPENDIX.
were assailed, and his title to tlie credit of a profound thinker
most materially shaken. When speaking of the alleged intelligi-
bility of the doctrine of the Trinity, and seeking parallels for it
in other things, Waterland had instanced the point of self-exist-
ence, and had said, that the learned are hardly agreed, whether
it be a negative or positive idea — that is, whether aseity, a thing's
being a se, or of itself, have any positive meaning, or simply
conveys the notion, that it does not exist of another. This was
ridiculed by Jackson, in his reply to the First Defence of the
Queries, as something altogether absurd, and a proof that
^Vaterland was somewhat behind the age in such matters. But
this only furnished the latter with an o[)portunity to strike a
blow at Jackson's principal in the cause. " Dr Clarke," said he,^
" one of the latest writers, and from whom one might have ex-
pected something accurate, yet appears to be all over confused
upon this very head, in his famous demonstration of the ' Exist-
ence.' His professed design there is to prove the existence of
a first cause a priori; which has no sense without the supposition
of a cause prior to the first, which yet is nonsense. The Doc-
tor was too wise a man to say that God was the cause of Him
self ; and yet he says what amounts to it unawares. He speaks
of ' necessity of existence ' as being ' antecedently in order of
nature, the cause or ground of that existence;' which is, in
short, making a property or attribute antecedent, in order of
nature, to its subject, and the cause and ground of the subject.
And he talks in his letters of this necessity absolute and ante-
cedent (in order of nature) to the existence of the first cause,
operating everywhere alike. As if a property operates in caus-
ing the substance, or making it to be what it is ! All this
confusion seems to have been owing to the Doctor's not. distin-
guishing between modal and causal necessity ; and his not
considering that self-existence, or aseity, as the schools speak, is
negative, and does not mean, that the first cause is either
caused by anything ad extra, or by itself (much less by any
property of itself), but has no cause, is absolutely uncaused."
This was touching too vital a point to be overlooked by the
o})[)osite party ; and Dr W. was accordingly charged with not
so much as understanding what the meaning of a proof a priori
is. However, in his " Further Vindication," he took occasion to
' Second Defeuce, AVorks ii. {). 695.
APPENDIX. 397
show that he perfectly understood it; and indeed, ultimately,
he published a separate and closely reasoned examination of the
argument itself. With the latter, we have not properly at pre-
sent to do ; but the application made of the point in the former
of these treatises, is so creditable to Waterland's philosophical
acumen, and so sood an illustration of the insufficiency of
reason when soaring too high on such matters, that we cannot
refrain from quoting it. It shows how distinctly he anticipated
the verdict of posterity on the a 2:)riori argument itself, and how
he could extract from the failure of reason in this, one of its
highest efforts, a virtual homage to the truth. After again
characterizing the a priori argument as in its very nature con-
tradictious and impossible (Works iii. p. 42), he comes to notice
Dr Clarke's mode of working it out : " He laid hold of the ideas
of immensity and eternity as antecedently forcing themselves
upon the minds of all men , and his notion of the divine im-
mensity is, that it is infinite expansion, or infinite space, requii*-
ing an infinitely expanded substratum or subject — which sub-
ject is the very substance of God, so expanded. Upon this
hypothesis, there will be substance and substance, this substance
and that substance; and yet but one numerical, individual,
identical substance in the whole. This part will be one indivi-
dual identical substance with that part ; and a thousand several
j)arts will not be so many substances (though every one be sub-
stance), but all will be one substance. This is Dr Clarke's
avowed doctrine ; lie sees the consequence, he owns it, as may
appear from his own words (sixth Letter), in answer to the ob-
jection. And he must, of course, admit, that the one individual
substance is both one in kind, in regard to the distinct parts,
and one in number also, in regard to the union of these parts in
the whole. Upon these principles does the Doctor's famed de-
monstration of the Existence proceed ; and upon these does it
now stand." He then refers to Dr Clarke's work on the Trinity,
and to the leading argument maintained there against the doc-
trine, tliat " the three persons must be either specijjcalli/ one
(one substance in kind only, while three substances in niivibei'),
which is Tritheism ; or else they must be individual/i/ one sub-
stance, one in number, in the strictest sense, which is j)lain
Sabellianism. Which reasoning at length resolves into this
jii-inciple, tliat substance and substance, however united, must
398 APPENDIX.
always, and inevitably make substances ; and tliat there cannot
possibly be such a thing as one substance in number and in kind
too, at the same time. And now (Dr W. continues), it could
not but be pleasant enough to observe the Doctor and his
friends confuting the Atheists upon this principle, that substance
and substance united does not make substances, and at the
same time confuting the Trinitarians upon the contrary sup-
position. Against Atheists, there might be substance, one in
kind and number too ; but against the Trinitarians, it is down-
right nonsense and contradiction. Against Atheists, union shall
be sufficient to make sameness, and numerical substance shall
be understood with due latitude ; but against Trinitarians the
tables shall be turned : union shall not make sameness, and no
sense of numerical substance shall serve here, but what shall be
the very reverse of the other. In a word, the affirmative shall
serve the Doctor in one cause, and the negative in the other ;
and the selfsame principle shall be evidently true there, and
demonstrably false here, to support two several hypotheses."
Argumentation of this sort could, of course, only prove the
inconsistence of such persons as Dr Clarke, in reasoning as they
did against the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity ; but could not
establish the reasonableness of the doctrine itself. It was
something, however, to be able to show, that human reason,
when endeavouring to construct for itself a pathway through
the eternal and infinite, had been fain to take refuge in assump-
tions, which are certainly not less strange or staggering to the
common apprehension, than any that require to be made in con-
nection with the doctrine in question. It becomes fair and
warrantable to conclude, that the subject is one, rather for faith
to receive on the divine testimony, than for the natural reason
to attempt of itself to fathom ; and that it involves nothing,
when calmly and dispassionately considered, which is at variance
with aught that can be certainly known respecting the nature
of Godhead. Reason, in the hands of some of its most gifted
possessors, has at least failed to prove the doctrine impossible
in the nature of the thing, and thereby left it open for Scrip-
ture to furnish evidence of its reality and its truth.
III. £n recard to the mode of conductino- this evidence
from Scripture, in which stands the direct proof of our Lord's
divinity, there is no need for going into much detail, as it was
APPENDIX. 399
not cliaracterizeJ by any remarkable peculiarity. Clarke, as
previously noticed, had placed Scripture in the foreground, and
professed so much to be guided by a regard to this, as the ulti-
mate standard of appeal, that his book bore the name of the
Scriptiire Doctrine of the Trinity. But in reality it proved to
be Scripture only in a secondary respect, namely, as interpreted
by the supposed opinions of the Fathers, and sanctioned by the
light of reason. Hence, in the controversy that ensued, the
investigation of the import, and the production of the evidence
of Scripture, did not bulk by any means so largely as might
have been expected, from the ostensible character of the Avork
that gave rise to it. In the more peculiarly controversial part of
his writings, Dr Waterland's object, in so far as he referred to
the testimony of Scripture on the subject, was chiefly to press
those texts which seemed utterly incompatible M'ith that kind
of semi-divinity and inferior worship, which, according to Dr
Clarke's scheme, were all that could be attributed to Christ.
This he did in a very judicious and conclusive manner — first
presenting some of those passages from the Old Testament
(such as Isa. xliii. 10, xliv. 8, xlv. 5), which assert the exist-
ence of but one supreme God, the object of adoration and wor-
ship, and then placing over against them certain passages from
the NeAv, which represent Christ as possessing that character
(such as John i. 1 ; Heb. i. 8 ; Rom. ix. 5 ; Phil. ii. 6). The
plain and inevitable inference from the two was shown to be,
that Christ is in the strictest sense God, equal in power and
glory to the Father; otherwise, there must be two Gods, a
higher and a lower, one made and another unmade — rendering
Christian worship a sort of DifJwism, which, however, is directly
opposed to the express declarations and commands of one chiss
of the passages referred to. The same thing was done in re-
gard to the work of creation — certain passages being adduced,
which speak of this as the peculiar and distinctive work of God,
which He and no other could execute, and compared with
other passnges in which this same work is explicitly and unre-
.servcdly ascribed to Christ ; whence, unless the testimony of
one class runs counter to that of the other, Cinist must be, as
Creator, strictly and properly divine. The method of evading
tlie force of such testimonies, and the conclusions, l)y just and
natural inference, drawn from them, vas to make a distinction
400 APPENDIX.
between God the Father as supreme, the one original source of all
power and dominion, and God in a secondary or derivative sense,
the representative and agent of the Supreme, and, as such, in-
vested with certain attributes and prerogatives of Godhead.
Much time Avas necessarily spent in exposing this subterfuge,
showing its essential contrariety to the plain import of Scripture
— its contrariety also to the reason of things, since it implied the
communication of what, from its own nature, is incommunicable,
the formation of one, who should possess what can belong only
to Him who is eternal and infinite. There was room, it was
made to appear with resistless logic, but for one of two alterna-
tives— either that Christ is God, one essentially with the Father;
or that there is an equivocation in the language of Scripture on
the subject and that it does not necessarily exclude the belief
and worship of more gods than one. It is needless to say,
which of the alternatives must be embraced by enlightened and
consistent believers in the word of God.
Such, generally, was the line of proof and exposition adopted
by Waterland on this branch of the subject — not intended, by
any means, to give a complete view of the evidence, but to pre-
sent those portions of it which were best adapted for meeting,
in a somewhat brief and summaiy manner, the subtleties and
evasions practised on the part of his opponents. In his Lecture-
Sermons, however, preached at the Lady Moyer Foundation,
tiiere is a comparatively full exhibition of the entire testimony
of Scripture in behalf of the essential divinity of the Son and
tlie Holy Spirit — accompanied by expositions generally fair and
satisfactory, though not indicating any remarkable exegetical
talent, and not free from occasional defects. For the important
qualities of lucidness, integrity, and freedom from improper
bias, he stands iumieasurably superior to those who opposed him.
And in contradistinction to the manifold subterfuges resorted to
by them, and the mass of irrelevant matter they were continually
endeavouring to bring into the discussion, he gives, toward the
close of his First Defence of the Queries, a list of the points which
they would need to make good, if they expected to succeed in
their attempt. Tliese showed the clear perception and firm
grasp he had of the subject, aiid are as follows: (1.) "You are
to i)rove, either that the Sou is not Creator ; or that there are
two creators, and one of them a creature. (2.) You are to show.
APPENDIX 401
either that the Son is not to be worshipped at all ; or that there
are two objects of worship, and one of them a creature. (3.)
You are to prove, either that the Son is not God ; or that there
are two Gods, and one of them a creature. (4.) You are to
show that your hypothesis is high enough to take in all the high
titles and attributes ascribed to the Son in Holy Scripture ; and,
at the same time, low enough to account for His increasing in
wisdom and not knowing the day of judgment. His being exceed-
ing sorrowful and troubled, crying out in His agonies, and the
like. You are to make all to meet in the one Logos, or Word ;
or else to mend your scheme by borrowing from ours." These
alternative positions, it is needless to say, were never fairly met,
and the controversy ended, on the part of the Arians, as it began,
with unwarranted assumptions, clever shifts, and philosophical
refinements.
The controversy had no immediate results in the form of
ecclesiastical deliverances, or Chm'ch censure and deprivation.
There is reason to believe that Clarke's opinions were embraced
by not a few clergymen of the Church of England ; and Whitby,
as has been already stated, became latterly a decided Arian.
But a sinoular want of openness and proper Christian candour
seemed to have been the general characteristic of the party :
none of them manfully acted out their convictions, and with-
drew from a Church whose tenets, on an important point of
doctrine, they no longer held. When the Lower House of
Convocation, in 1714, sent a complaint to the Upper, represent-
in cr the book of Dr Clarke as containing opinions that were
contrary to the faith of the Church, and calling for annnadver-
sion, Clarke first presented an apology, in which he stood to his
explanations, and sought to maintain that some of the best
divines were on his side. But this proved to be too much, and
was withdrawn : and a sliort statement was substituted for it, in
which he declared it to be his belief, that " the Son was eter-
nally begotten, by the eternal incomprehensible power and will
of the Father ; also that the Holy Spirit was eternally derived
from the Father, by or through the Son, according to the eternal
incomprehensible power and will of the Father." He stated
further, that he purposed henceforth to abstain from writing
more on the subject of the Trinity (c^xcept in so far as might be
necessary to refute misr^'presentations or slanders concernnig
»• '2. — VOL. 111. 2 C
402 APPENDIX.
Ills views), and that he had never omittei the reading of the
Athanasian Creed at the eleven o'clock prayers, as had been
reported to his prejudice. This paper gave no satisfaction to
the Lower House, as they clearly enough perceived it contained
no proper recantation of the heretical opinions ; but the bishops,
catching at the word eternal, used in connection with the genera-
tion of the Son and the procession of the Spirit, and being
anxious, on account of Clarke's high position, and the favour in
which he was well known to be held at court, to get the matter
quietly disposed of, resolved to proceed no further. Probably,
they were afraid lest, if they did take further action, an injunc-
tion from high quarters might have laid a forcible arrest on
their proceedings. But, assuredly, as regards the matter of
dispute, the Lower House were right in the view they took of
Clarke's communication. For anything that the word eternal
implied, as coming from such a quarter, it bespoke nothing as
to the proper divinity of the Son and Spirit ; it merely indicated
that the divine acts referred to took place prior to the creation
of the material universe. And that Dr Clarke himself was
actually conscious of an essential disparity between his views
and those embodied in the constitution of the English Church,
there can be no doubt. Plis attempt to reconcile these views
with the worship of the Liturgy, scarcely professes to accomplish
more than a partial success, as he merely tries to make one
portion overrule the other. And Emlyn, who became ac-
quainted with Clarke after his own deprivation, and has left a
brief memoir of his interviews with him, mentions that on two
several occasions, when the discourse turned on the probability
of Clarke's elevation to some higher place in the Church, he
expressly stated, that " he would take nothing which required
his subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles." He was doubtful
even if he could conscientiously accept the offer of a bishopric,
since, though he should not be required himself to subscribe, he
should be obliged to insist on subscription from others at their
ordination. The question docs not seem to have occurred to
him — at least to have occasioned no qualms of conscience — how,
in the position he continued to occupy, he could discharge the
obligation virtually undertaken by his subscription in the past?
By that he had declared his belief in what he no longer held,
and became bound to teach what he was consciously labouring
APPENDIX. 403
to subvert. It may be added, that not a hint is dropt of such
things in Hoadly's memoir of Clarke, prefixed to the works of
the latter.
SECTION III.
FROM ABOUT 1750 TO 1800.
The controversial discussions which originated with the publi-
cation of Dr Clarke's Scripture Doctrine, and which ran on till
1730 or a little after, were succeeded by a period of remarkable
stagnation in theological literature, and general indifference to
the interests of religion. In both respects, it is one of the
bleakest portions of the religious history of this country. The
prevalence of spiritual unconcern, and even of infidel senti-
ments, with their invariable accompaniment, looseness of morals,
had unfortunately become fashionable in high places, and de-
scended with their petrifying influence through the different
grades of society. What was called " rational religion" grew
more and more into favour, where the name of religion still
existed — a thing more easily described by what it was not than
by what it was — outwardly respectful to the claims of Christi-
anity, and decorously observant of its rites, rather than sensibly
alive to any of its more vital and important truths — consequently
averse to intermeddling with what might tend to excite contro-
versy, or rouse to action spiritual thought, and spending its
energies, so far as it had any energies to spend, chiefly in such
things as the working of societies for " the reformation of
manners." There were, no doubt, exceptions : in the more
retired spheres of private life, not a few who knew the truth in
its purity, and exemplified it by the graces of a consistent life ;
men of God also, here and there, plying the labours of an
evangelical ministry with single-hearted zeal, and contending
earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. But the
general current of feeling and practice ran in another direction ;
and the style of preaching which was usually heard from the
pulpits of the Establishment, and which might be said to re-
present the spirit of the times, was characterized by nothing
404 APPENDIX.
more than by its careful elimination of whatever is most dis-
tinctive in the Gospel scheme. It proceeded, as Bishop Horsley
has graphically described it in his First Charge, upon two false
maxims : one, that it is more the office of the Christian teacher
to press the practice of religion upon the consciences of his
hearers, than to inculcate and assert its truths ; the other, that
moral duties constitute the whole, or by far the greater part, of
practical Christianity. The result was, he says, that as the
first " separates practice from the motives of practice, and the
second, adopting that separation, reduces practical Christianity
to heathen virtue," so the two taken together '"'have much
contributed to divest our sermons of the genuine spirit and
savour of Christianity, and to reduce them to mere moral essays.
We have lost sight of that which it is our proper office to pub-
lish— the word of reconciliation — to propound the terms of peace
and pardon to the penitent ; and we make no other use of the
high commission that we bear, than to come abroad one day in
the seven, dressed in solemn looks, and in the external garb of
holiness, to be the apes of Epictetus."
A reaction had begun by the time this was written, origi-
nated by the fervent preaching of Wesley and Whitfield, as
->f men crying in the wilderness ; so that Horsley could " flatter
himself they were at present in a state of recovery from the
delusion," which he speaks of as almost universal when he first
entered on the ministry (viz., about 1760). Nor does it seem
to have gone much better with the Nonconformist churches ;
at least, a very considerable number of their leading men,
especially among the section that still took the name of Pres-
byterian, became admirers of the so-called Rational Christi-
anity ;^ whence with them, as well as with the divines of the
Establishment, a twofold result discovered itself. First, there
^ Among the Dissenting ministers there were certainly marked and
honourable exceptions ; among whom it is proper to name Watts and
Dodridge, whose influence on the side of evangelical truth wiis both bene-
ficial and lasting. Dr Watts wrote a good deal on the Trinity ; and, ex-
cepting the notion of the pre-existence of Christ's human soul, which he
maintained, and tried without effect to render of some importance, his
views do not appear to have differed from the common faith of the Church.
The Socinian ])arty, however, have claimed him, as in his latter days a
convert to their views, on the ground of certain papers found among his
vritings by his executors, and by them destroyed as unfit for publicatiou.
APPENDIX. 405
appeared a prevailing disregard of evangelical doctrine. This, if
not altogether ignored, still did not awaken much interest, or call
forth any strenuous efforts in its behalf ; the evidences, rather
than the doctrines of religion, were what engaged attention, and
exercised the learning and talents of the Christian ministry.
Accordingly, the only great works of the period are devoted to
this branch of tlieological inquiry (those, mainly, of Butler,
Warburton, and Lardner) : and quite naturally so ; for the low
state of religion had brought all concerning it into jeopardy ;
there seemed little left but the foundations, which were now also
rudely assailed, and men had to fight for the very existence of
Christianity as a supernatural revelation from heaven.
But there was the further result, that, as the higher doc-
trines of the Gospel fell into abeyance, they became subject to
doubt, suspicion, or disbelief. The doctrine, in particular, of
the Trinity, in proportion as it was dissociated from the related
doctrines of the guilt of sin, atonement by the blood of Christ,
and regeneration by the Holy Ghost, necessarily lost its impor-
tance to men's view, and in great measure also was kept apart
from the intelligible forms, through which alone it could dis-
tinctly body itself forth to their apprehensions. For such a reli-
gion as ministers of the Gospel then taught and exemplified,
there was no proper need for a Trinity ; it hung around their
faith as a superfluous, or rather troublesome encumbrance,
enveloping it in mysteries which might be dispensed with, and
raising questions which it seemed alike needless and impossible
to answer. So it came to be seen that the true doctrine of
redemption and the doctrine of the Godhead must stand or fall
together. The simply moral preachers of the Establishment —
Ilorsley's apes of Epictetus — whatever they might be theore-
tically, were of necessity practical Unitarians : the doctrine of
Lardner speaks of having seen the papers, and affirms the doctrine advo-
cated in them to have been Unitarian ; but also admits that they were unlit
for pubUcation (Lindsay's Memoirs, p. 221). The materials arc wanting
for forming an independent judgment ; but the opinion alike of his ortho-
dox executors (Dodridge and Jennings) and of the Unitarian Lardner, that
the writings were unfit for publication, seems plainly enough to indicate
(as indeed is commonly believed), that they consisted of some crude and
incoherent speculations of a mind, which had already sunk into the feeble-
ness of dotage. They ought never to be named in comparison, or to the pre-
iudicc, of his matured productions.
406 APPENDIX.
the Trinity had no living place in their belief. They re-echoed
the sentiment of Pope, which Warburton, in one of his letters,
expressly quoted as applicable for the occasion, on the death of
Waterland —
" For modes of faith let senseless bigots fight ;
His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right."
Not a few of them also, there is reason to believe, were in
reality anti-Trinitarians, at least to the extent of favouring the
scheme of Dr Clarke. And among the Nonconformists, where
there was more of liberty of action, the traces of Clarke's influ-
ence soon became perceptible ; not, perhaps, of this influence
alone, but of that coupled with a corresponding foreign influence,
which they derived from those holding similar views among
tlie Remonstrants in Holland. For, as the universities of Eng-
land were shut against the Dissenters, it was very common for
the better educated portion of their students, during the first
half of the eighteenth century, to repair to Holland, in parti-
cular to Utrecht and Leyden, in order to obtain the advantage
of a proper collegiate training. This they got, and some of
them even became distinguished for their scholarly and theo-
logical acquirements ; but it was too commonly purchased at
the great sacrifice of a conniption from the purity of the faith.
Pierce and Hallet, of Exeter, both of them men of superior
intellect and learning, especially the former, belonged to the class
now mentioned ; so at a later period (for Pierce was obliged
to quit his place, and form a new congregation, on account of
his Arianism, so early as 1718^) was the still more eminent
^ Pierce, who is best known for his commentaries on St Paul's Epistles,
is supposed to have become first tinged with Arian notions from his inti-
macy with Whiston, with whom he had become acquainted at Cambridge.
In 171'5 he settled at Exeter, as colleague to Hallet, or rather as one of the
ministers of three united congregations. They called themselves Presby-
terians, though the accounts of the time say nothing of a presbytery in the
proper sense of the term. For when it began to be noised abroad, in 1717,
that Arian tenets were being disseminated by some of the ministers, the
only parties that appear to have taken any oversight or management of
the matter was a committee of thirteen persons — a body of managers be-
longing to the congregations, who, after some ineffectual efforts to ascer-
tain the faith of the ministers and stop the spread of Arianism in Exeter,
called to their aid some of the neighbouring ministers of Nonconformist
congregations, and also took counsel of certain divines in London. As the
APPENDIX.
407
Lardner. It is known, too, that many of the young men who
were educated at Dodridge's seminary in Northampton came
forth tinged with Arianism. And we have the testimony of
Dr Priestley^ to the fact, that the seminary, shortly after Dod-
ridge's death— now removed to Daventiy — was presided over
by two tutors (Dr Ashworth and Mr Clark), the one of whom
took the orthodox view of each question, and the other the
heretical ; in consequence of which, he, and many others, became
Arians, and nearly all left the Academy shaken in their belief
respecting the atonement. Priestley himself did not rest long in
Arianism ; and before the last quarter of the century had com-
menced, the Arian tendency had very commonly been super-
seded by the Socinian among the more learned class of Non-
conformist ministers. A general coldness and decay of piety
among them gave rise to an indifference respecting orthodoxy
of doctrine, and doctrinal distinctions became merged in a
common desire to promote good morals. Lardner thus acted as
afternoon preacher to Dr Harris, an avow^ed Calvinist, and
Benson, a Socinian, succeeded Harris. Many similar assort-
ments were made. And towards the latter part of the century,
a tide of learned Rationalism, in connection with the interpre-
tation of Scripture, the result of the Wolfian Philosophy, came
pouring in from the Continent, which was greatly aided among
the class now more particularly referred to by the extraordinary
development in France of infidel principles in religion, com-
bined with liberal views of constitutional government. Common
political and philosophical sympathies naturally led to certain
advances also in the religious direction.
Shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century, therefore,
result of their deliberations, a few resolutions were drawn up, asserting the
importance of the doctrine of Christ's essential divinity, and the indis-
pensable duty of ministers of the Gospel to preach it. Both Mr Pierce and
Mr Hallet refused to give any satisfaction on the subject ; and the com-
mittee above referred to, who held the property of the churches, excluded
them from officiating in the places of worship. Pierce, who acted
throughout as the leader of the Arian party, and who seems to have rivalled
Dr Clarke and Mr Jackson in the manoeuvres of a shifting and evasive
policy, complained loudly of the treatment he received, and called it per-
Becutioti. (See Bogue and Bennett's History of Dissenters, vol. ii. pp.
168-184.)
' Memoir, p. 20.
4.0S APPENDIX.
matters evidently began to ripen, especially among the Dis-
senters, for a new struggle against the fundamental principles
of the Gospel. In the Established Church the same tendency
was at work ; but it was checked by the steady refusal given in
high quarters to the attempts made, from time to time, by the
movement party to be relieved from subscription to the Thirty-
nine Articles. Theophilus Lindsey was the only person of any
note who espoused Unitarian principles with such strength of
conviction as to render actual secession necessary ; but neither
his example nor his writings seem to have produced much effect
within the pale of the Establishment. The example of Lardner,
who was nothing, indeed, as a preacher, and was otherwise little
qualified for becoming the head of a party, but had obtained
just celebrity for the great merit of his apologetical writings,
is likely to have exercised an influence of a proportionately
stronger kind among the Dissenting communities. What he
wrote, however, directly upon the subject of the Trinity, was
so tame in thought, and so arbitrary in its style of interpreta-
tion, that there was manifestly needed some bolder and fresher
spirit than his, to bring to a head the Unitarian tendencies which
were at work, and give them some distinctive shape and form.
Such a person was forthcoming in the well-known Joseph
Priestley, who was nearly half a century younger than Lardner
(the one having been born in 1684, the other in 1733), but,
being as remarkable for his precocious and hasty, as the other
for his slow and tardy development, took rank as a public man
at no great distance from the other. Of a quick, versatile,
inventive and restless cast of mind, more distinguished for
clearness of apprehension than for breadth of view or solidity
of judgment, Priestley, even when a youth, never seemed to
doubt his competency to understand and grapple with any ques-
tion that arose, and evinced a kind of instinctive dislike to
authority in matters of faith. At the Academy of Daventry, he
accordingly tells us, he invariably took the heretical side of the
debated subjects; and before he had left the Academy, and while
still, as he himself confesses, almost unread either in ecclesiastical
history or the critical study of the Scriptures, he drew up his
Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion. Shortly after-
wards we find him so far advanced in theological attainment, as
to undertake a lengthened treatise on the doctrine of the atone-
APPENDIX. 409-
ment, in which, of course, the Cathohc view was utterly dis-
carded ; and not only so, but the reasoning of the Apostle
Paul was shown " to be defective, and his conclusions ill sup-
ported." By the ad\dce of Dr Lardner, these sentiments did
not then see the light, but they were formally announced at a
later period. Hitherto, he had not gone further than Arianism
in the heretical direction, but it was impossible he should rest
long there ; and we are not, therefore, surprised to find, that
after beino- settled at Leeds in 1767, he saw cause, on readinsr
Lardner s Letter on the Logos, to embrace the Socinian view
of Christ's person. About the same time — amid an immense
variety of other publications, scientific, literary, and theological
— and apparently with nothing but the meagrest preparations
on the subject, he had formed his views upon what he called
the Early Corruptions of Christianity, and the history of which
he resolved to write. He speaks in his Memoirs of consulting
Dr Lardner regarding this, the year before Lardner's death,
which took place in 1768. Bat owing to his change of life,
by resigning his pastoral charge, and entering into connection
with Lord Shelbourne, his purpose was not carried into effect
till 1782, after he had withdrawn from the Shelbourne family,
and gone to settle, for the prosecution of his philosophical
studies, in Birmingham. He then published, in two octavo
volumes, his History of the Corruptions of Christianity.
As a contribution to theological literature, and one that was
destined to form the occasion of a considerable controversy, this
work now astonishes one for the poverty of its materials, and,
but for the circumstances of the time, it might have been
passed over in silent contempt. Compared with the works
which had appeared on similar topics, either in the immcdiatelv
preceding generation, or at the close of the previous century, it
scarcely deserves to be named, being at once palpably defective
in learning and extremely superficial in thought. But in pro-
portion to its marked inferiority in these respects was the calm
assurance of its tone — the writer apparently having no doubt
of the certainty of his conclusions, and seeming almost to think
it enough, if from his own plenitude of knowledge and ad-
vanced position he announced them to the world. By this,
greatly more than by any power of reasoning or show of re-
search, did the work produce its effect. As a specimen of it,
410 APPENDIX.
we may take the opening statements, in which he sets forth the
testimony of Scripture respecting the Person of Christ. " The
Jews," says he, "were taught by their prophets to expect a
Messiah, who was to be descended from the tribe of Judah
and the family of David, a person in whom themselves and all
the nations of the earth sliould be blessed ; but none of their
prophets gave them an idea of any other than a man like them-
selves in that illustrious character ; and no other did they ever
expect, or do they expect to this day. Jesus Christ, whose
history answers to the description of the Messiah by the pro-
phets, made no other pretensions, referring all His extraorr
dinary power to God, His Father, who, He expressly says,
spake and acted by Him, and who raised Him from the dead ;
and it is most evident that the Apostles, and all those who con-
versed with our Lord, before and after His resurrection, con-
sidered Him in no other light than simply as a man ' approved
of God, by signs and wonders which God did by Him.' Not
only do we find no trace of so prodigious a change in the ideas
which the Apostles entertained concerning Christ, as from that
of a man like themselves to that of the Most High God, or one
who was in any sense their Maker or Preserver, that when
their minds were most fully enlightened, after the descent of
the Holy Spirit, and to the latest period of their ministry, they
continued to speak of Him in the same style, even when it is
evident they must have intended to speak of Him in a manner
suited to His state of greatest exaltation and glory. Peter
uses the simple language above quoted, of a man approved of
God, immediately after the descent of the Spirit ; and the
Apostle Paul, giving what may be called the Christian creed,
says, ' There is one God, and one Mediator between God and
man, the man Christ Jesus ' (1 Tim. ii. 5). Pie does not say the
God, the God-man, or the super-angelic being, but simply, the
man Christ Jesus ; and nothing can be alleged from the New
Testament in favour of any higher nature of Christ, except a
few passages, interpreted without any regard to the context, or
the modes of speech and opinions of the times in which the
books were written, and in such a manner in other respects as
would authorize our proving any doctrine whatever from them."
Such is the easy and off-hand style in which this master of
theolog)' gathers out what he calls " the plain doctrine of the
APPENDIX. 411
Scriptures," and without more ado disposes of the cherished
belief of ages. He holds it for certain that Scripture neither
does, nor can teach otherwise ; and the only room for inquiry
is that which he proceeds to make — how what is so patent
there, came to be obscured, and at length supplanted, by the
unintelligible dogmas which have been so long enshrined in the
creeds of Christendom. Let the brief and meagre summary
thus jauntily sketched, and complacently presented as the senso
in Scripture about the Person of Christ, be compared with the
careful and searching examination of its testimony made by Dor-
ner in the Introduction to this great work, — what a difference
discloses itself, both in the spirit of the investigation and in the
results arrived at ! Now, when criticism and exegesis may be said
to have done their utmost — when every text, and every expres-
sion bearing on the subject, have been made to pass through all
the testing processes, which learning the most exact, and Ra-
tionalism the most inquisitive and suspecting, have been able
to apply — the " plain doctrine " which comes out from New
Testament Scripture, and even from every separate portion of
it, is not the simple Humanitarian ism of Priestley, but the com-
plex, mysterious truth of an essentially divine as well as human
Sonship, meeting together in the Word made flesh. The germs
of this doctrine, more or less developed, are found scattered,
when properly sought for, through all the volume which testi-
fies of Him ; they were, therefore, from the first recognised
and embodied in the faith of the Church, before that faith had
occasion to throw itself into distinct and formal propositions.
And it may justly be hailed as one gratifying result of the
thorough, even though not always reverent sifting, to which
the words of Scripture in these last times have been subjected,
that it has rendered such a bald and negative view of their
contents as Priestley's no longer possible.
The work of Priestley was by no means confined to the sub-
ject of our Lord's person, or the doctrine of the Trinity. This
only occupied about 150 pages of the first volume ; after which
he passes on to the doctrines of the atonement, of grace, of
saints and angels, the sacraments, ritual, and discipline of the
Church, and other related topics. The volumes are widely
printed, containing little more than the half of what is now
ordinarily put into the octavo sheet; so that 150 pages for a
412 APPENDIX.
historical exhibition of the way and manner in which the
originally simple faith of the Church grew first into the Arian
and then into the Trinitarian belief, was a comparatively
limited space for such a purpose, and seemed to indicate that
the writer felt as if he had no very difficult task to accomplish.
Indeed, so natural is the course of development made to ap-
pear in these pages, by means of a few properly selected pas-
sages— so gradual and consecutive the advance from one stage
to another, that if one had no other source of information than
that furnished by our author, it might be supposed that all was
perfectly plain sailing, and that there neither had been, nor could
be, any occasion almost for difference of opinion upon the subject.
It is one of the most extraordinary instances on record of col-
lecting and sorting a few scraps of history to serve a purpose,
and it seems difficult whether most to admire the audacity or the
ignorance that characterizes it. For those who have any ac-
quaintance with the original sources, the view that is given of
the tenets of particular writers will often take them with sur-
prise as a novelty ; and sometimes they will even light upon
statements which it seems impossible to account for, but by the
writer having rapidly run his eye over a page to catch up any
random expressions that might suit the object in view, however
absurd the application made of them, when considered with
reference to the known sentiments of the author, or the real
question at issue. Thus, to refer to but one example, and one
that did not come into notice during the controversy that ensued,
we meet at page 121 with the following piece of information
respecting Augustine. After having mentioned some things
in which he differed from preceding writers, it is added — " He
so far, however, adheres to the language of his predecessors as
to say, that the Father alone is God of God (ex Deo) ; but by
this he could not mean what the Nicene Fathers meant by it."
The place pointed to for this singular statement is Augustine's
work on the Trinity, B. xv. c. 17, where, undoubtedly, in
reasoning upon two expressions of the Apostle John, " God is
love" (Deus dilectio est), and "love is of God" (dilectio ex
Deo est), the phrase, God of God (Deus ex Deo), does occur ;
but it is without any special reference to the Father, and solely
with respect to the divine nature of love : " God, therefore, of
God is love." Nay, so far from using such an expression
APPENDIX 413
specifically of tlie Father, he distinctly declares it to be inap-
plicable ; for, says he, " The Father alone is in such a sense
God, that He is not of God; and on this account the love,
which is in such a sense God as to be of God, is either the Son
or the Holy Spirit." "We say nothing of Augustine's interpre-
tation of the language of the Apostle ; but that any one under-
takino- to w-rite on such matters should have gathered from the
passage referred to, that Augustine thought it right to call the
Father Deus ex Deo, or should have represented this as a mode
of speech common to him -with the earlier patristic -writers,
passes comprehension.
Deficient, however, as Priestley's work was in regard to the
higher qualities by which such a treatise ought to have been dis-
tinguished, it created a considerable sensation, for which, as
already stated, it was mainly indebted to mere audacity of
assertion, and apparent unconsciousness of the defects it be-
trayed. Immediately after its appearance, it was attacked with
sharpness in the " Monthly Eeview" (by Dr Badcock, as it
turned out) ; even Dr Price, who was of the Arian party,
entered the lists as an opponent ; but the great antagonist, and
the onlv one who, by the ser\'ices he rendered in the cause,
won for himself a permanent place of distinction, was Dr
Horsley. He was then Archdeacon of St Albans, and in the
full maturitv of his powers (being in his fiftieth year). In
1783, the year subsequent to the publication of the History
of Corruptions, he made it — that portion of it, at least, which
concerns the belief of the early Church in the doctrine of the
Trinity — the subject of his charge for that year to the clergy
of the archdeaconry of St Albans. He did so in a very care-
full v prepared and elaborate performance, — as a whole, per-
haps the most successful effort of the author, and the happiest
specimen of his peculiar gifts and acquirements. The ground
of assault, too, was well chosen ; for, perceiving the gross
blunders into which Priestley had fallen, and his palpably
superficial acquaintance with the whole subject, the Archdeacon
wisely disclaimed any pui-pose of disputing with him the
opinions themselves that were brought into consideration —
treated the matter, in this aspect of it, as altogether beneath his
regard — and confined himself to the specific point of proving
the utter incompetence of Dr Priestley for the task he had
4J4 APPENDIX.
undertaken. In this respect he was perfectly successful \nith
all intelligent and impartial inquirers, though, so far from being
so with Priestley himself, that after the most convincing, but
ineffectual demonstrations of presumptuous blundering, he felt
obliged to speak of " the effrontery of that incurable ignorance,
which is ignorant even of its own want of knowledge."^ At
an earlier period, he justly said of Priestley's work, and gave
ample proof of the characteristic, that " no work was perhaps
ever sent abroad, under the title of a history, containing less of
truth than his, in proportion to its volume."^ Incidentally,
however, both the scriptural argument for the essential divinity
of our Lord's person, and the evidence of the early Church's
orthodoxy on that point, were brought distinctly, though briefly,
into view ; but the main object, throughout, still was the in-
competence of the narrator ; and those instances only were
selected for animadversion, which served the double purpose of
at once vindicating the truth in some important particular, and
invalidating the authority of him who had so flagrantly misre-
presented and belied it.
It were out of place here to go into the details of this ex-
posure, as the aim of this historical survey is not so much to
show how certain controversialists were met and baffled, as to
indicate the bearing which the successive controversies had to
views contended for or held in other times, and to the conclu-
sions which may have formerly been arrived at. Passing over,
therefore, the charges brought and successfully established
against Priestley, of inaccurate translations, misquoting of
authorities, inconclusive reasonings, and ignorance of the pe-
culiar shades of thought and meaning prevalent among the
earlier Christian writers — things perfectly relevant, and of
great moment as regarded the issue of the personal conflict
between the parties concerned, but of no abiding interest —
passing over all this, and looking simply to what formed, in a
doctrinal respect, the main burden of the controversy, we find
ourselves brought back, after the lapse of a century, to the
precise point at whicli matters stood when Bishop Bull took up
the defence of the Nicene faith. The question now, as then,
was. What was the belief of the early Church, as expressed in
the extant writings of its leading authorities, regarding the
1 Tractft, p. 533. « P. 73.
APPENDIX. 415
Person of the Lord Jesus Christ ? And in what relation to
that Church did the Ebionites and Nazarenes stand ? Were
these the fair representatives of the primitive Church in the
matter under consideration ? or were they viewed and treated
as heretics ? It was especially on the ground of these points
having been fully discussed, and in the most judicious and
satisfactory manner decided by Bishop Bull, that Horsley ex-
cused himself from going at length into the investigation of
them, and thought it enough to refer his clerical hearers to
what had been already so well done. Bull's defence, it will be
remembered, on the specific points referred to, was in good part
maintained against the views propagated by Zwicker of Danzig,
afterwards espoused to some extent by Episcopius ; and the
Archdeacon of St Albans justly deemed it extraordinary, that
" any one should presume to revive the defeated arguments of
those men, without attempting to make them good against the
objections of a writer of Dr Bull's eminence." The only way
he could think of accounting for such an insult to the learning
and discernment of the age, was by supposing that Dr Priestley,
while abstaining from any direct reference to Bull's labours,
imagined he had virtually refuted his arguments by the new
light he had been able to throw upon the subject, and had
established the positions of Zwicker and Episcopius, in a way
that rendered superfluous any particular notice of the previous
discussion. The I'eply of Priestley to this, in his first series of
letters to Horsley, was singularly characteristic of the self-com-
placent spirit of the man, in the face of even discreditable
unfitness for the work he had in hand. " Whether it be to my
credit or not," he said, " I must observe, that you make my
reading to be more extensive than it is, when you suppose me
to have borrowed my principal arguments from Zwicker or
Episcopius. I do assure you, sir, I do not recollect that I ever
met with the name of Zwicker before I saw it in this publica-
tion of yours. For Episcopius I have the highest reverence ;
and I thank you for informing me, tliat though an Arian him-
self, he was convinced tliat the Christian Church was originally
what is now called Socinian."^ Blundering even in this brief
alhision to the past; for neither was Episcopius an Arian, nor
did he go further in regard to the early Church than to say,
^ Letters, p. 16.
4l6 APPENDIX.
that it tolerated in its communion tliose who did not believe in
the proper divinity of Christ's person. To such a confession,
Ilorsley very naturally rejoined : — " What is it but to confess
that you are indeed little read in the principal writers, either on
your own side of the question or the opposite ? But as no man,
I presume, is born with an intuitive knowledge of the facts or
opinions of past ages, the historian of Religious Corruptions,
confessing himself unread in the polemical divines, confesses
ignorance of his subject. You repel the imputation of pla-
giarism by the most disgraceful confession of ignorance to
which foiled polemic ever was reduced."
It was impossible, that with such an adversary, and with no
other end in view than to prove his incompetency for dealing
with such matters, any real advance could be made in respect
to the proper investigation and knowledge of the subject itself.
The controversy on Horsley's part has more the character of an
episode to that, which a century previous had been maintained
by Bishop Bull, than of a fresh and independent examination.
The same views are maintained throughout, the same passages
appealed to in proof of them, and much the same line of argu-
mentation employed in respect to them, though, as with more
brevity, so at times also with more vigour and energy of thought.
Occasionally, too, one meets with a freer judgment in Horsley
upon the partial or presumptuous representations of the Fathers
respecting the divine nature of Christ, and the dangers there-
with connected, than is to be found in Bull. Take the follow-
ing as an example, from his Charge :^ — " If anything be justly
reprehensible in the notions of the Platonic Christians, it is this
conceit, which seems to be common to Athenagoras with them
all, and is a key to the meaning of many obscure passages in
their writings, that the external display of the powers of the
Son, in the business of creation, is the thing intended in the
Scripture language under the figure of His generation. A
conceit which seems to have no certain foundation in holy writ,
and no authority in the oj)iiuons and doctrines of the preceding
age ; and it seems to have betrayed some of those, who were
the most wedded to it, into the use of a very improper lan-
guage— as if a new relation had taken place between the first
and the second person, when the creative powers were first
1 Tracts, p. 63.
APPENDIX. 417
exerted. The indiscretion of presuming to affix a determi-
nate meaning upon a figurative expression, of which no parti-
cular exposition can be safely drawn from holy writ, is in some
degree atoned by the object which these writers had in view.
It was evidently their intention to guard the expressions of
Scripture from misconstruction. They thought to lead men
away from the notion of a literal generation, by assigning to the
figure a particular meaning, which it might naturally bear, and
which, whether it was the sense of it or not, seemed not to clasli
with any explicit part of the revelation. The conversion of an
attribute into a substance (applying himself now to correct the
use made of the representation), whatever Dr Priestley may
imagine, is a notion to which they were entire strangers. They
held, indeed, that the existence of the Son necessarily and in-
separably attached to the attributes of the paternal mind : in-
somuch that the Father could no more be without the Son, than
without His own attributes. But that the Son had been a mere
attribute, before He became a person, or that the paternal
attributes were older than the Son's personal existence, is a
doctrine which they would have heard with horror and amaze-
ment— with horror as Christians, with amazement as philo-
sophers."
This was well said ; but there was scarcely the same cau-
tious discrimination in regard to the mode of explanation
adopted by the Platonizing Fathers, to account for the neces-
sary and eternal relation of the Logos to the paternal mind of
deity. The matter was referred to in a previous part of this
historical review, and some notice also taken of the use made of
the representation, both by the early impugners of our Lord's
proper divinity, and by Priestley (pp. 360-363) ; and need not
be noticed at any length here. The subject was introduced by
Plorsley, for the purpose of correcting some of the gross mis-
takes of Priestley respecting the import of certain patristic state-
ments, though with no effect of convincing him of error, or even
of getting him to apprehend distinctly the points about which
lie had erred. " The Logos has existed from eternity in union
with the Father, because God (so Athenagoras and othei's rea-
soned) being eternally rational, ever had the Logos in Himself
And the argument rests (Horsley added) ^ oti a principle,
^ Tracts, p. 61.
r. 2 —VOL. III. 2D
418 APPENDIX.
which was common to all the Platonic Fathers, and stems to
be founded in Scripture, that the existence of the Son flows
necessarily from the divine intellect exerted on itself ; from
the Father's contemplation of His own perfections. But as the
Father ever was, His perfections have ever been, and His intel-
lect hath been ever active. But perfections which have ever
been, the ever-active intellect must ever have contemplated ;
and the contemplation wdiich hath ever been, must ever have
been accompanied with its just effect, the personal existence of
the Son." Had this been given simply as an explanation of
the language employed by the Fathers in question, and for the
purpose of affording an insight into their mode of contemplat-
ing what may be called the interior relations of deity, it had
been unexceptionable — unless, perhaps, in the last part of the
conclusion, wdiere the influence is made to run in support of
" the personal existence of the Son." For, it could scarcely be
said, that either the argument itself, or the manner in which it
was pressed by the Platonizing Fathers, went further than to
establish the eternal existence of the Logos : the contemplation
of the Logos as Son was a different matter, and, as Horsley
himself has stated in the previous quotation, was too closely iden-
tified by them with the creation of the world. In this one point
he undoubtedly laid himself open to Priestley's rejoinder, that
not the Son as Son, but simply the Logos was regarded by the
Platonizing Fathers as existing in the Father prior to the crea-
tion. But when Priestley further affirmed,^ that according to
them this Logos was " the same thin 2; in Him that reason is in
man, which is certainly no proper person distinguishable from
the man himself," that " there was nothing in the Son origi-
nally but what was necessarily contained in what they express
by the term Father,^' he only furnished another proof of what
had been too often exhibited in earlier times — the inherent in-
sufficiency of such a mode of representation, and its extreme
liability to abuse. When, however, he challenged Horsley to
produce any authority for " the extraordinary opinion, that the
second person in the Trinity had His origin from the first con-
templating His own perfections," Priestley again betrayed his
own ignorance and presumption. And Horsley in one of his
Disquisitions has proved,^ that the representation was, in sub-
i Letters to Ur Horsley, p. 71. " Tracts, p. 513, 53, § 3.
APPENDIX. 419
Stance at least, quite commonly made by some of tlie Fathers,
that it was in express words taught in the Catechism issued bv
the Romanists after the Council of Trent (Art. Prim. s. 14, 15),
and by ^lelancthon in his Loci Theologici, who says, "The
Eternal Father, contemplating Himself, begets a thought of
Himself, which is an image of Himself never vanishing away,
but subsisting, the essence being communicated to the image.
. . . . He is called the Word, because He is generated by
thought : He is called the Image, because thought is an image
of the thing thought upon." Xor are there wanting other pas-
sages in Melancthon's works, where this form of representation
is again repeated ; he even seemed to have had a peculiar fond-
ness for it.
So far, therefore, as regarded some of the Platonizinfr
Fathers, and their successors in later times, there can be no
doubt that Horsley's statements were entirely correct : and
that Priestley should have continued to the last to affirm that
his challenge was not answered, can only be ascribed to that
stolid determination not to be convinced, or incapacity to esti-
mate properly what should have produced conAaction, of which
his writings in this controversy furnish so many proofs. But
as regards that Platonic mode of representation itself, to which
Horsley gave a qualified approval, when he said it " seemed to
be founded in Scripture," we stated formerly, that it proceeds
on an attempt to carry the analogy further between the human
and the divine than we have either rational ground or scrip-
tural warrant for doing, and that its almost inevitable tendency
is to give encouragement to views, which take another direction
than that of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. On the pre-
sent occasion, the only effect of even this partial acquiescence
was, to give a plausible handle to the adversary in his endea-
vours to expose the fancifulness of the Trinitarian scheme, and
the arbitrary methods employed to support it. Indeed, Horsley
himself, in the Disquisition referred to, virtually expressed his
regret at having gone so far as he did, in according a qualified
assent to the mode of representation in question. He spoke
strongly of the indiscretion of men attempting, on such a mys-
terious subject, to " mix their private opinions with the public
doctrine," and declared that " the human mind is groping in the
dark hero, eveiy step that she adventures beyond the point to
420 APPENDIX
which the clear light of revelation reaches. ' He therefore de-
clined all dispute upon the metaphysical difficulties of the sub-
ject, and would confine all he had to say to the single aim of
explaining and vindicating what he had said respectinsr the
manner in which the doctrine in question was understood by
the Platonizing Fathers.
As regards the points already referred to about the belief of
the early Christians on the Person of Christ, in particular the
belief of the Nazarenes and Ebionites, and the relation of these
parties to the Church at large — here, perhaps, if in anything, a
little advance was made ; it was the branch of the subject, on
which Horsley was obliged to make the most careful investi-
gation, in order to meet the palpable misrepresentations and
pertinacious assertions of his opponent. There is no longer any
diversity of opinion among the learned upon the matter worth
naming ; the results of the more free and unbiassed inquirers are
given by Dorner ; and they substantially agree with the views
exhibited by Bull and Horsley — so far, at least, as concerns the
leading positions of the Socinian party. They establish the
great point, that neither the Nazarenes nor the Ebionites were
ever understood in ancient times to constitute the body of
Jewish Christians about Jerusalem, or taken for the proper
representatives of the ancient Church : — they appear, from the
earliest to the latest accounts we have of them, merely Hebrew
sects ; but sects which were so variously reported of by the
writers of the three or four first centuries, that it is not quite
fasy to make out a very clear or consistent account of them.
Horsley, however, has done a little more toward it than had been
previously done by Bull or any other in this country, especially
in respect to the Nazarenes. He admits, that the notions he
had of this party at the commencement of the controversy were
not very distinct ;^ but that he came ultimately to obtain what
he deemed a pretty intimate and correct knowledge of them.
And after noticing in detail all the passages from Irengeus to
Eusebius bearing on both Nazarenes and Ebionites, he thus sums
up : — " From all this I seem to gather, that after the destruction
of Jerusalem, the Hebrew Church — if under that name we may
comprehend the sects which se])arated from it — were divided
into five different sets of people : — I. 8t Jerome's Hebrews
' Tracts, p. 42-4.
APPENDIX.
421
believing in Christ (in Isa. ix. 1-3). These were orthodox
Christians of Hebrew extraction, who had laid aside the use of
the Mosaic law; they were the same with the first set in Origen's
threefold division of the Hebrew Christians (Contra Cels. L.
ii. s. 3.).— II. Nazarenes of the better sort, orthodox in their
creed, though retaining the use of the Mosaic law (Jer. in Isa.
viii. 13, 14). As they were admirers of St Paul, they could
not esteem the law generally necessary to salvation. If these
people were at all heretical, I should guess it was in this simple
point, that they received the Gospel of the Nazarenes, instead
of the canonical Gospels.— HI. Nazarenes of a worse sort,
bigoted to the Jewish law, but still orthodox, for anything
that appears to the contrary in their creed. These were the
proper Nazarenes, described under that name by Epiphanius
(H«r. 29, 30), and by St Jerome in his Epistle to St Austin.
These two sects, the better and the worse sort of Nazarenes,
make the middle set in Origen's threefold division.— IV. Ebi-
onites denying our Lord's divinity, but admitting the fact of the
miraculous conception. — V. Ebionites of a worse sort, denying
the miraculous conception, but still maintaining an union of
Jesus with a divine being, which commenced upon His baptism
[Cerinthian Ebionites, as they are called by Dorner]. These
two sects, the better and the worse sort of Ebionites, make the
last set of Origen's threefold division."
That the passages founded on by Horsley contain materials for
this classification, cannot justly be doubted; only, it is not thence
to be inferred, that so many distinct classes of Hebrew sects
existed contemporaneously. The probability rather is, that the
phases of better and worse, both in the Nazarenes and Ebionites,
were successive, and arose out of a quite natural and progressive
development of the carnal Jewish element which they so deter-
minately clung to. This kept them apart from the great com-
munity of believers, and cut them off both from the sympathies
and the teaching, which would have tended, had they enjoyed
them, to carry them on to the higher degrees of Christian
knowledge. In the absence of this, they naturally shrivelled
more and more into their own narrow shell ; their distinctive
peculiarities took a firmer hold of them, and became relatively
more important. So that Christian Fathers Avriting of them,
some at one period, some at another, could scarcely fail to
422 APPENDIX.
give somewhat diverse representations of their tenets. But that
they all sustained a sectarian character — that the Nazarenes, pro-
bably as a body in their earlier history, and also a portion of them
in later times, approached, in their views of Christ's person, to the
orthodox belief — and that even a section of the Ebionites, if not
the whole of them for a time, had at least higher views of His
person than modern Unitarians, though none of them ever rose
to the orthodox belief, — on these points there is now a general
concurrence among the more learned and impartial historians,
and they may be regarded as conclusively settled.
It may not be improper to add, that on certain things inci-
dentally connected with this controversy, Horsley showed some
want of maturity. An instance was formerly referred to in a
note, having respect to his judgment on a work of Allix, and
the views therein maintained concerning Jewish opinions of
Clirist (p. 354). Another occurred in relation to the text 1 John
V. 7, respecting the heavenly witnesses, and the Letters of
Archdeacon Travis to Mr Gibbon on its genuineness. His
mode of accounting for the omission of this text in the contro-
versies of the first ages about the doctrine of the Trinity, that
it does not relate to the consubstantiality of the three persons in
the Godhead, will hardly be accepted by any impartial critic ;
especially when it is considered, that whenever similar contro-
veirsies have arisen in modern times, this has always been one of
the texts that most readily presented themselves in proof of the
orthodox view, and also that the Fathers were wont to press
into the argument texts that were far from bearing the same
apparent relation to the subject. Then, to appeal with a kind
of triumphant satisfaction to the proof adduced by Archdeacon
Travis in support of the text,^ can have no effect in the present
day, but to give one a low idea of the state to which the criti-
cism of the New Testament had then sunk, even among the
more learned theologians of this country. Yet such things
form comparatively trifling exceptions to the merit of Bishop
Horsley's writings in this controversy. Coming forth with the
energy, and relatively sufficient learning, which ho exhibited on
the occasion, he rendered invaluable service to the interests of
divine truth. And though no appreciable advance was made
upon the elucidation or establishment of our Lord's proper
1 Tracts, p. 389.
APPENDIX. 423
divinity, beyond what had been done in the previous discus-
sions, nor was the ground traversed in connection with it by any
means so extensive as that, which was taken up between Clarke
and Waterland, yet what had been ah'eady wrought was, on the
whole, valiantly maintained, and the hearts of the doubtful or
wavering were reassured and strengthened.
With Priestley, however, and the Socinian party in general,
nothing was effected ; they held fast to their convictions, and
even affected to believe that the victory was on their side.
Bel sham, the successor of Priestley as a leader, openly asserted
this, first in what he called his Calm Inquiry into the Scripture
Doctrine concerning the Person of Christ, and afterwards in a pre-
face to the Collected Letters of Priestley to Horsley. But they
had so fortified themselves upon the philosophy of the subject,
that their minds had become practically closed to any line of
argumentation, which had for its aim the establishment of Tri-
nitarian doctrine. The spirit of the party in this respect could
not be more strikingly exhibited, than it was by Priestley in one
of his letters to Price, as it showed that he would stick at no
shift or supposition, however arbitraiy and unreasonable, in
order to get rid of the necessity of believing in the essential
divinity of the Son. Referring to John vi. 62, where our Lord
is reported to have asked the Jews, " What and if ye shall see
the Son of man ascend up where He was before f Priestley ad-
mitted that he had not found satisfaction in any interpretation
of the words hitherto given; yet declares, that rather than believe
our Saviour to have existed in any other state, before the crea-
tion of the world, or to have left some state of great dignity and
happiness when He came hither, he would have recourse to the
old and exploded " idea of Christ's actual ascent into heaven, or
of His imagining that He had been carried up thither in a vision ;
which, like that of St Paul, He had not been able to distinguish
from reality : nay, he would not build an article of faith of such
magnitude on the correctness of John's recollection and repre-
sentation of our Lord's language ; and so strange and incredible
does the hypothesis of a pre-existent state appear, that sooner
than admit it, he would suppose the whole verse to be an inter-
polation, or that the old Apostle dictated one thing, and his
amanuensis wrote another." For persons in such a state of
mind, reasoning the most cogent, and evidence tiie most com-
424 APPENDIX.
plete, would necessarily be of no avail. And the great effort of
the party for some time after this was by a forced exegesis to
make void all the evidence of Scripture on the subject. On
the opinions of the early Church, which occupied the chief
place in the controversy with Priestley, the Socinian party have
never formally abandoned the ground that was maintained by
him against Horsley, neither can they any longer maintain it
as he did. Dr Burton, in his "Testimonies of the ante-Nicene
Fathers to the Divinity of Christ," not only produced a full ex-
hibition of the evidence of the subject in a convenient form,
but also, in his remarks and notes, met many of the misquota-
tions and perversions, which had appeared in the writings of
Priestley, Lindsey, and Belsham. It is, however, one of those
points, which are likely to prove always more or less a subject
of dispute ; and quite recently, we observe, a Dr Lawson, of
America, under the title of " The Church of the First Three
Centuries," has published a work, in which it is broadly asserted,
that " the modern doctrine of the Trinity is not found in any
document or relic belonging to the Church of the first three
centuries." But it is only the more rash or superficial of the
Unitarkn party, who would venture now on maintaining such
a thesis ; and the more cautious and learned will scarcely be
disposed to go farther than Dr Beard, who says, that " Unita-
rianism certainly had an existence in the earliest Christian
churches of which history has left any distinct record. This
leaven made itself manifest by clear and undeniable signs
during the three first centuries, when those who entertained
the highest form of Unitarlanism were called Monarchists,
because they asserted the monarchy, or sole deity of God the
Father."^ This is modestly put, and with some regard to the
results of modern research and impartial Inquiry. Such of the
party as have a due respect to themselves, or their cause, will
certainly not carry it further ; and if so, the controversy, in
that aspect of it, may be allowed to rest.
^ Cyclopedia of Religious Denominations, Art. Unitarianism.
APPENDIX. 425
SECTION IV.
FROM THE CLOSE OF LAST CENTURY TO THE PRESENT TIME.
Since the termination of the controversy discoursed of in the
preceding section, there has been no great or general movement
of any sort in reference to the subject of our Lord's person
— none, that is, apart from a growing regard to scriptural ex-
position, and the investigation of topics more or less directly
connected with the revealed character of God, and the person
and work of His Son. Whatever there may have been of pro-
gression in the establishing of orthodox views, or of retrogression
toward ancient errors, the change has taken place gradually,
and by the combined influence of a variety of causes, rather
than by any mighty impulse or sudden leap. There have cer-
tainly not been wanting, during the present century, publica-
tions on the subject of our Lord's person, or of the Trinity in
general ; for such have appeared in sufficient number, and
varied enough in sentiment to represent all the leading phases
of opinion on the disputed doctrines. Yet no work has appeared
that could be said to constitute an era, or even to form a very
prominent landmark in the course of theological inquiry. At
the same time, the tone and aspect of matters in this department
of theology have certainly undergone a material change. Uni-
tarianism, as represented by Priestley or Belsham, has scarcely
any longer a substantive existence amongst us ; the foundations
on which it leant have given way ; while still Unitarianism of
another and more subtle kind — Unitarianism of the Sabellian
type — has been, especially of late, making steady increase.
Before noticing, however, the circumstances which have led
to this result, and to render unnecessary any interruption of the
subsequent narrative by the introduction of what is not strictly
connected with them, we may refer to two phases of contro-
versy on the subject of our Lord's person, which arose out of
individual peculiarities rather than the general influences of the
time, and ran a brief course of their own. One of these had
respect to the eternal Sonship or filiation of our Lord : whether
this could be predicated of Ilim in any intelligible sense ? or
426 APPENDIX.
vrhether Sonsliip should not be understood simply of the rela-
tions held by Him, and the work accomplished in connection
with these in time ? Several respectable theologians, not doubt-
ing the article of our Lord's proper divinity, yet began to dis-
pute the fitness of the term " eternal Sonship," nay, argued
the incompatibility of the term with deity in the stricter sense,
and explained it, where it occurs in Scripture, of His incar-
nation, or what belonged to Plim as the divinely constituted
Mediator. Of this class were the commentator Adam Clarke,
Drew, Moses Stuart, and several others. The leading argu-
ment of all these writers (as, indeed, of the Arians and Soci-
nians before them) was, that generation necessarily implies
production, or a beginning in time ; father implies precedency
in time, or priority in being, with reference to son ; so that
eternity is excluded by the very form of the statement. Stuart,
however, who was certainly the most learned and ablest of the
writers who took this line of objection, did not go quite so far
as the others; but he disliked the mode of representation, partly
on account of what it seemed to imply, and of its apparent
un intelligibility ; but he did not absolutely reject it. " If the
phrase eternal generation (he said) is to be vindicated, it is only
on the ground that it is figuratively used to describe an indefin
able connection and discrimination between the Father and the
Son, which is from everlasting. It is not well chosen, however,
for this purpose ; because it necessarily, even in its figurative
use, carries along with it an idea which is at variance with
the self-existence and independence of Christ as divine; and,
of course, in so far as it does this, it seems to detract from His
real divinity."^
It is to such statements, which had a certain superficial
])lausibility about them, and appeared to be producing some
impression among orthodox believers, that we owe the excellent
treatise of Mr Treffry, on the " Eternal Sonship of our Lord
Jesus Christ." It was written specially to meet this phase of
incorrect representation, which would soon have glided into
actual error, and is the fullest and most satisfactoiy vindica-
tion that has come from an English theologian of the truth of
Christ's Sonship, not as Messiah merely, but as the second in
the adorable Godhead. AVith the exception of some imperfect
* " Letters to Channing," p. 32; also Com. on Rom. i. 4.
APPENDIX. 427
and partially mistaken representations concerning the views of
Philo, the learning exhibited in the work, though not profound,
was respectable, and adequate to the task which the author aimed
at establishing ; and as a controversial treatise the work is well
entitled to commendation, both for the sound judgment and
the Christian temper displayed in it. In regard to the specific
point under discussion, Mr Treffry shows that the exception
taken by Trinitarians to the Eternal Sonship arises partly from
pressing the human analogy too far, and partly from a want of
discrimination in respect to the senses in which self-existence is
predicable of the three in the Godhead. There is much, he
justly observes, in analogies derived from earthly relations, that
is wholly inapplicable to the divine character ; and priority of
being, and pre-agency, which are inseparable from human pa-
ternity, having their ground in men's animal natures, cannot
possibly have place with God. " The essential ideas here, are
generative production, identity of nature, inferiority of relation,
and tender endearment. These may all exist irrespective of
time. When generation has a beginning, it is either because
the generator is not eternal, or because he must exist previously
to generation. But if he has himself no beginning, and if
there is no evidence that a generative emanation may not be
essential to his nature, it is clear that generation does not neces-
sarily imply beginning. God is eternal ; and divine generation,
for aught that can be alleged to the contrary, may be essential
to the Deity." On the point of self-existence, Mr Treffry
showed how Stuart and others failed to discriminate between
self-existence as predicable of each person of the Godhead, and
the same as capable of being attributed only to the divine es-
sence and unity. " In the one case, the tenn is equivalent to
necessary existence, and is true in application to the divine
subsistences severally considered. In the other, it signifies
existence in absolute and separate independency, and is not
correct except as spoken of the entire Deity. For the Father
is not without the Son, nor the Son without the Spirit. The
attribution to each jierson [namely, as apart from the others!
of absolute independence and self-existence, is, in effect, the
denial of all necessary and eternal relation in the Deity."
Compare what has already been said on this point at p. 382 sq.
The other phase of partial error, which gave rise to a brief
428 APPENDIX.
controversy, and calls for some notice, has immediate respect
to the humanity rather than the divinity of Christ, and is
associated with the name of Edward Irving. In a volume of
discourses (published in 1828) on the Incarnation, he set forth,
and formally endeavoured to prove, in opposition to the prevail-
ing belief, that the Son, in taking upon Him our nature, took
it in its fallen, sinful state ; that the flesh of Christ was in its
proper nature mortal and corruptible ; that it was liable to sin,
nay, was " instinct with every form of sin " (p. 238), and had
the grace of sinlessness and incorruption imparted to it from the
indwelling of the Holy Ghost. In maintaining and illustrating
these positions, much unguarded and improper language was
used — such as almost inevitably conveyed the impression of a
conscious affinity to sin in Christ, of a natural leaning in His
bosom to its evil propensions, which it was scarcely possible
to reconcile with absolute purity. Yet the actual holiness of
Christ's nature was most earnestly asserted ; with endless itera-
tion He was declared to be without the least taint of corruption,
or stirring of impure affection ; and the grand aim of the
representation undoubtedly M^as to render perfectly patent to
the understanding, and palpable to the feelings of men, the
oneness of Christ's humanity with theirs, and the closeness of
sympathy and relationship to which believers were thence
admitted with Him. But it happened here, as so often pre-
viously in connection with this great theme, that the pushing
to excess of a particular aspect, the disproportionate elevation
of a single element, even though an element of truth, becomes,
in other, and perhaps more important respects, a disturbing
and perilous force. Drawing in such vivid colours the con-
test maintained with the innate tendencies of Christ's fleshly
nature, and the greatness of the victory achieved over them,
the work of our Lord in the flesh became not materially dif-
ferent from that of believers generally ; it appeared but a higher
form of the struggle with the powers of evil, and the suc-
cessful issue out of it, which finds a perpetual exemplification
in their experience and history ; and, as a necessary conse-
quence, the atoning death of Jesus fell into the background :
the death was made account of chiefly as the consummation
of the life ; and even the divine nature, except as some more
intense and energetic from of divme potency, seemed as if it
APPENDIX. 429
might have been dispensed with. Hence such extraordinary
and startHng representations as the following : that " all His life
long the will of the flesh was successfully withstood by the will
of the Spirit, yea, that the will of the Spirit enforced the flesh
to do it unwilling service ; " that " the humanity, sustained of
the Spirit, was able to receive and unite itself to the divinity
through all the perilous voyage from the nativity to the resur-
rection ; " that " the Holy Spirit, having accomplished this
momentous and perilous act of incarnate gi'ace, did descend
to the earth on the day of Pentecost, in order to do for the rest
of the elect that which He had done for the first-born of the
family, the first-begotten from the dead:" that the reconcilia-
tion between heaven and earth was not so properly wrought by
Christ, as " wrought in Him, while tabernacling in flesh, and
wrestling with its infirmities;" "it was begun in the Virgin's
womb, and perfected in the womb of the earth," and is simply
" the at-one-ment accomplished between God and man, in the
Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, through the union of the
Godhead to fallen humanity." So that, while satisfaction,
redemption, and substitution were by no means repudiated as
terms or similitudes indicative of the nature of Christ's work,
yet they were held to be "but poor helps for expressing the
largeness, fulness, and completeness of the thing which was
done by the Word's being made flesh, and which is exhibited as
done by placing the God-man on the right hand of the Majesty
on High." (Pp. 140, Ixvi., Ixxii., cxc, 224, etc.)
Had such representations stood alone, there could have been
no doubt amonjj orthodox Christians of the fundamental defec-
tiveness and essentially erroneous character of Mr Irving's
teaching. But there was, in ti'uth, no steadiness of aim in it,
or consistency of representation. Everything was denied and
affirmed in turns ; principles and statements, which apparently
involved the most heretical conclusions, were again qualified
by others, not less broadly asserted, which pointed in the oppo-
site direction ; and the whole being set forth in such a profusion
of verbiage and imagery, that it was extremely difficult, often,
to catch up any definite impression of what was meant, the
result naturally was a considerable diversity of opinion as to the
relation in which Irving's views stood to the Church doctrine
respecting the person and work of Christ. After full dis-
480 APPENDIX
cussions, however, had been liad upon the subject, little doubt
remained in the minds of intelligent and thoughtful believers,
of the rashness of many of his representations, and of the essen-
tial contrariety of what in these was peculiar to the orthodox
faith. And there exists, in proof of this — the only permanent
literary result, indeed, of the controversy — the treatise of Dods
on the Incarnation, — imperfect, certainly, as regards the entire
bearings and aspects of the subject, but perfectly conclusive in
respect to the main points of doctrine brought into consideration
by Mr Irving — and valuable, were it only for the singularly
clear and happy exposure it contains (in a discourse by the late
Dr Maclagan of Aberdeen) of the fallacy which lay at the root
of many of Mr Irving's aberrations, viz., that liability to tempta-
tion of necessity infers proclivity to evil in the tempted. There
is much solid thought and sound theologv in the volume.
The two waves of controversial discussion now referred to
may be said to have risen and fallen by themselves. They had
no very intimate connection with the prevailing current of
thought and speculation in theological literature. And to this
we now return, with the view of indicating the fresh direction
things took in the hands of the more rationalistic theologians
from near the commencement of the present century.
In accordance with the exegetical tendency which began to
develop itself vigorously in Germany toward the close of last
century, and from thence extended to this country, the minds
of theologians came now to be turned, in connection with this
subject, as well as others, more upon the text and interpretation
of Scripture, than upon the elaboration of systematic and doc-
trinal treatises. The Socinian party were among the first to
put forth efforts in this direction. They bent their strength
to show that Scripture, when textually settled, and rationally
interpreted, was really on their side, or, at least, contained no-
thing but what might be accommodated to their views. They
perceived that, if they could only succeed in this — whatever
min;ht become of the argument from the Church of the first
centuries — the great point was carried ; other things would
follow in due time, or fall out of sight as of inferior moment.
Accordingly, Priestley spent a considerable portion of his later
lifetime in the preparation of translations and comments of
Scripture, intended to expound and justify his views. Those
APPENDIX. 431
who succeeded him in the defence of the Unitarian cause, em
ployed themselves much in the same Hne, and, among other
things, brought out what they called A New and Improved Ver-
sion of the New Testament, in which the results of their biblical
learning were embodied. This remarkable production was ex-
amined (to say nothing of other productions now less known) at
considerable length by Archbishop Magee, in what ultimately
became a supplemental volume to his important work on the
Atonement ; and its more objectionable parts were also ably
exposed in the Scripture Testimony of Dr Pye Smith ; — works
that are still in general circulation. Here, it is unnecessary to
do more than indicate the vein of thought which characterized
the authors of that version, and the style of criticism by which
they endeavoured to support it.
The Socinians of this school were, in the strictest sense of
the term. Humanitarians in their views respecting the Person of
Christ : — they held Him to be simply a man, born like other
men, and entitled to no honour, possessing no right or preroga-
tive, but such as in kind at least, if not altogether in the same
degree, may fitly belong to any member of the human family
They did not, like the more extreme section of Rationalists on
the Continent, deny the facts of His earthly history, or dispute
the reality of at least the greater portion of His miracles ; but
they conceived Him to be constituted in all respects like other
men — subject also to the same infirmities and prejudices — and
though free from all charge of sin or shortcoming in His public
life, yet not necessarily impeccable, or even, perhaps, actually
without blemish in the more private parts of His behaviour. He
stood, in short, upon the same footing as the prophets of former
times, only at a more advanced stage of the divine dispensations ;
yet, like them, supernaturally endowed with gifts of knowledge
and power, so far as might be needed to qualify Him for the
execution of His mission to the world — so far, but no farther.
Apart from what immediately concerned this mission, neither
the opinions He expressed, nor the things He did, have any
binding authority on the belief and observance of His followers.
His work, too, was simply of a prophetical character ; it had
nothing to do with a vicarious atonement for «in ; and, indeed,
expiation for moral offences by the blood of Christ, or by sacri-
fices of an}' sort, is a doctrine unknown to Scripture. Conse-
432 APPENDIX.
quently, Jesus stood only a slight degree above His disciples ,
and of that quasi-divine supremacy and vi^orship, which the elder
Socinians ascribed to Him after His ascension to heaven, it vv^as
only to be reckoned among the shreds of superstition belonging
to a still imperfectly reformed faith. Such, briefly, were the
views maintained by the Unitarian party, as exhibited in the
writings of Priestley, the Calm Inquiry of Belsham, and in the
explanatory comments of the New and Improved Version.
In the interest of these views, every effort was made to un-
settle the received text of New Testament Scripture, wherever it
bore on the higher nature and divine glory of Christ. As a rule,
every reading was preferred, however slightly supported, which
seemed to make in the opposite direction ; and where no reading
woxdd serve the turn, attempts, often far from creditable to the
critical skill or even fairness of the writers, were made to bring
the acknowledged text into suspicion. This was done particu-
larly with the accounts of the miraculous conception, on no
other ground than the alleged circumstance, that " the Ebionite
Gospel of Matthew, and the Marcionite Gospel of Luke, did
not contain these accounts ;" and sometimes the Nazarenes were
joined with the Ebionites in respect to St Matthew, though
without any just foundation ; for the better portion of them, at
least, probably the entire body in its earlier stages, are known
to have held the doctrine of the miraculous conception. It was
admitted, too, by the earlier Socinians ; and in this country,
Lardner not only received the accounts in Matthew and Luke,
but ably vindicated their genuineness and authenticity. So, all
later critics of any note, in conformity with the perfectly unani-
mous evidence of manuscripts and versions; and in present times,
the matter may be said to have passed out of the region of
dispute altogether. For the first chapters of the two Gospels in
question we have the same evidence, and evidence of the same
amount, that exists for all the other chapters belonging to them.
On this point, therefore, the authors of the Improved Version
have been left behind by the more mature and exact criticism
of the present age : and if their learning and sagacity have there
proved to be at fault, not less so did their integrity and fairness
in others. Of this — to refer only to one instance — a notable
examj)le was given in their note on the word God (0eo9) in
Rom. ix. 5. Their comment here is, " The word God appears
APPENDIX. 433
to have been wanting in Chrysostom's, and some other ancient
copies : see Grotius and Griesbach." Belsham, who was pro-
bably the author of this comment, makes it somewhat more
specific in his Calm Inquiiy, and says, it was " wanting in the
copies of Cyprian, Hilary, Chrysostom, and others, and is there-
fore of doubtful authority ;" and he refers to Erasmus, Grotius,
and Dr Clarke as having all observed this. The statement in
either form is false, and could not have been made by any one
Avho was honestly desirous of giving a coiTect view of the
matter. So far from the word appearing to have had no place
in Chrysostom's text, the verse is quoted by Chrysostom pre-
cisely as it stands in our copies of the Testament ; only, he
does not, in his remarks on the passage, apply the term in proof
of the divinity of Christ. And that is the substance of what
Erasmus says on the subject — merely that the Commentary of
Chrysostom gave no distinct intimation that he had the word
in his copy, yet admitting that its being there might be inferred
from what he says on other parts of the verse. It is all, too,
that Grotius and Griesbach said regarding Chrysostom ; viz.,
that he did not in his comment apply the word God specifically
to Christ, not that he wanted it in his text. And if truth had
been the ]>rimary object of the authors of the Improved Version,
as it should have been, they might, by a little search into the
writings of that Father, have found that in other places he quotes
the jiassage for the very purpose of showing how the epithet
God is applied to Christ (see on 1 Cor. viii. 4, 35). In regard
to Hilary and Cyprian, also, none of the persons mentioned say
that the word was wanting in their co])ies, but merely, that the
jiassage is sometimes quoted without it, and yet in a mannei
that implied the word was in the eye of the Avriter, and should
have been there ; hence ])robab]y omitted by the carelessness of
scribes. But in other ])assages it is quoted by them, and the
word expressly ap])lied to Christ. So that the whole array of
authorities falls to the ground ; and the use made of them is in
a high degree discreditable to persons affecting peculiar exact-
ness and fidelity. The word God (it may be added) is so
certamly entitled to a ])lace in the text, that Tischendorf, in
liis last edition, deems it unnecessary to make a single note or
observation regarding it.
The ])oleniical bias, however, displayed itself mure in the
V. 2. — vol.. III. 2 E
434 APPENDIX.
interpretation of Xew Testament Sci-ij>ture, tlian in the adjust-
ment of the text ; for there it had more scope to exert its in-
genuity, and could resort to arbitrary renderings where the
plain import of the words seemed hollow against the Unitarian
doctrine. For example, the texts which speak so plainly of
Christ having created all things, or of His being the immediate
representative and agent of deity in the work of creation, —
such as John i. 3, Col. i. 17, Heb. i. 10, — are understood to mean
simply, that the great moral change connected with the new
state or disj)ensation of the Gospel, and especially as regards
the relation of Jews and Gentiles, was by His instrumentality
introduced and settled.-^ The statement in 2 Cor. viii. 9, whicli
affirms of Christ, that " though rich (or being rich), for your
sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be
made rich," is rendered in the Imp. Version, "While He was
rich, yet for your sakes He lived in poverty ; " and a note
explains that the construction requires us to understand the
words, " not of a passage from a preceding state of wealth to a
succeeding state of poverty, but of two contemporary states :
He was rich and poor at the same time," — L e., was rich in
miraculous powers, which it was at His option to employ for
His own benefit ; but He made no use of these for any selfish
purpose, He employed all for the good of those He came to
redeem. Again, when in John viii. 58, Jesus said to the Jews,
" Verily, verily, I say unto you. Before Abraham was, I am,"
the meaning, we are told, is, " Before that eminent patriarch
was brought into being. My existence and appearance under
the character of the Messiah at this period, and in these cir-
cumstances, was so completely arranged, and so irrevocably
fixed in the immutable counsels and purposes of God, that in
this sense I may be said even to have existed ; " so that, for
aught one can see, anything that is destined to be of more im-
portance than another might be said to be before that other ;
for example, the Christian dispensation before the Jewish, or
the end of the world before the beginning. Would one speak-
^ The comment on Col. i. 17 is worth quoting : " This great change
the Apostle here describes under the symbol of a revolution, introduced
among certain ranks and orders of beings, by whom, according to the
Jewish demonology, borrowed from the Oriental philosophy, the affairs of
states and individuals were superintended and governed."
APPENDIX. 435
ing so, speak as if he wished to he understood? In like man-
ner, all the texts which indicate our Lord's pre-existence, or
connection with a higher world thaii this, are got rid of by the
supposition of some ambiguity or figure in the terms : His
having been in heaven, or in the bosom of the Father, merely
announces, in a figurative way. His superior insight into the
plan and purposes of God ; His coming into the world, and again
leaving it that He might return to the Father, imports simply
that He appeared in public as a messenger from God, and that
He airain ceased to do so when His mission closed ; His beino;
affirmed to be of the seed of David after the flesh, but declared
to be the Son of God with power (Rom. i. 3, 4), " could not
mean to assert or countenance the strange and unintelligible
notion of two natures in Christ," — " the sense plainly is, that
Chrisi by natural descent was of the posterity of David, but
that in a figurative sense He was the Son of God, or the
promised Messiah." Sometimes even a bolder stroke is made,
"when the resort to figurative senses will not avail, as at 1 Cor.
XV. 47, where an arbitrary change from the Past to the Future
serves the turn : " The first man was from the ground, the
second man will be from heaven [heavenly]." Belsham, in his
Calm Inquiry, calls this expressly the rendering of the Vulgate
— adopting, apparently, the same license in his own language
that he commonly imputes to that of Scripture ; for while it
might justly be said to follow the reading of the Vulgate, it
certainly departs most materially from its rendering, — there
being no substantive verb at all in either of the clauses of the
verse as given by the Vulgate ; and if there had, no scholar
can doubt that the Past tense, in both clauses alike, would have
been employed.
These specimens may suffice : they give plain enough indi-
cation of the type of doctrine held by the Socinian party of this
country about the beginning of the present century, and also
of the style of criticism and interpretation by which they
endeavoured to vindicate it. It is impossible for any unbiassed
])erson to make himself acquainted with the class of writings
referred to, without feeling that they were themselves con-
scious of having the natural sense of Scripture against them on
the leading controverted passages, and that the grand aim of
tlieir critical and exegetical efforts was to find a sense, which,
43G APPENDIX.
however unnatural, might enable them still to maintain a cer-
tain belief in Scripture without foregoing the notions derived
from their philosophy. As Christ with them did not differ
from other servants of God, except in possessing superior de-
grees of knowledge and virtue, so the Christianity they ex-
tracted from the Bible was in no important respect different
from the Deism of Herbert, Shaftesbury, and Tindal ; and it
])lainly did not greatly matter, if persons believed in the ex-
istence and moral character of one God, whether they took the
name of Christians in the Unitarian sense or not. Hence it
soon appeared, after the flush of its first efforts was over, that
Unitarianism of such a type had no living warmth about it ;
and both from its own inherent meagreness, and the violence it
did to the sense of Scripture, was incapable of gi'owing into a
compact and orderly system — nay, was not long in exhibiting
svm})toms of feebleness and decay. Its history has been little
else than a struggle for existence, not a march to conquest over
the ignorance, superstition, and wickedness of mankind ; the
strictly religious annals of the country might be written with-
out so much as mentioning its name. And notwithstanding
the confident tone assumed by Priestley, Belsham, and the other
authors of the Improved Version, as to the sense of Scripture
being on their side, or, at least, being perfectly compatible with
their views of the Person and the mission of Christ, there have
never ceased to appear among the party strivings after a more
distinctive association of divinity with Christ, and a desire to
ascribe a really atoning and redemptive efficacy to His work,
somewhat commensurate to the stress evidently laid on it in
Scripture.^ As the more impartial and exact study of the text
and exposition of Scripture has proceeded, the criticism and
exegesis of the Socinian leaders have been left more and more
in the background ; their conjectural emendations of the text,
and their forced interpretations, have become antiquated ; and
when subjected to fair and scholarly treatment, Scripture has
])roved to be too determinate in its meaning, and decided in its
evangelical import, for any general acceptance being given to
the views they sought to impose on it.
Beside this tendency in the general course and direction of
^ See, for example, the quotations given from Socinian proiluctions in
Magee's Sujip Kemaiks, })j). tib-7i^
APPENDIX. 437
things, there have been in more recent times two special influ-
ences, which have told with considerable effect on the founda-
tions of the Unitarian cause — the one more of a philosophic,
the other more of a theological nature. The so-called Rational
Christianity, of which the Unitarianism of Priestley and his
school was the proper development, took its rise in the philo-
sophy of the last century — a philosophy, as formerly stated,
which in its whole tone was rationalistic and negative, ever
tending in its bearing on religion to depreciate faith in order to
extol reason. This phase of things had its culmination in tlie
extravagances and blasphemies of the French Revolution,
when reason, as the concentrated essence of human nature,
was formally deified and set up as the object of worship. But
a reaction came, and philosophy itself began to look a little
deeper, and to regard this exclusive exaltation of reason, and
especially its exaltation at the expense of faith, as shallow and
one-sided. It came to see, that however high the place which
belongs to reason as an element in the human constitution, it
still is but a part, not the whole ; and that there are other
powers and capacities which must be brought into exercise, in
order to give reason itself its proper play, and render it produc-
tive of safe and abidmg results. And that very principle of
faith, which it was the practice of the elder philosophic school
to ignore and decry, rose to a position of relative greatness and
potency. " Man accomplishes nothing great or good without
faith." So says Michelet, a French philosopher of this age,
virtually reversing the maxims of philosophy to which the sa-
vans of his country gave currency at the close of the preceding
age. The prevailing deficiency or want of faith has been one of
the standing laments of Carlyle, to which he would trace much
of the degeneracy and corruption of the times. It is in the re-
suscitation of faith, rather than in the cultivation of intellect, or
the sharpening of reason, that he would have us to look for the
power of doing great and heroic deeds — not faith, indeed, as
grounded in the revelation of God, but still faith exercised
about matters pertaining to the duties and interests of men.
Fichte — the forerunner ami master of Carlyle in this line of
thought — took it for his special aim (in his Lectures on tho
Destination of Man) to show how the mind, when it begins to
philosophize, passes from doubt to science, and from science tc
438 APPENDIX.
a faith, which unfolds the real, and thereby provides a solid
basis for our confidence in immortality and God. " All my
conviction," said he, " is but faith ; and it proceeds from the
will, and not from the understanding. ... I know that
every seeming truth, born of reason alone, and not ultimately
resting on faith, is false and spurious ; for knowledge, purely
and simply such, when carried to its utmost consequences, leads
to the conviction that we can know nothing. . . . We are
all born in faith."
In this new phase of philosophic thought there is un-
doubtedly an element of truth — however it also may have
sometimes been pushed to excess. It is founded on correcter
views of human nature than that which took account only of
reason ; and so far harmonizes with the spirit of the Bible, that
it assigns to faith in the human sphere the same relative place
which the Bible claims for it in the divine. " Faith," there-
fore, in the language of a true Christian philosophy, as uttered
by the accomplished Vinet, " faith, as the \'ision of the in-
visible, the absent brought nigh, is the energy of the soul, and
the energy of life. It is the source of everything in the ej'es
of man, wliich bears a character of dignity and force. Vulgar
souls wish to see, to touch, to grasp ; others have the eye of
faith, and they are great. It is always by having faith in
others, in themselves, in duty, or in the Divinity, that men
have done great things. Faith has been in all time the strength
of the feeble, and the salvation of the miserable ; and the
greatness of individuals or of nations may be measured pre-
cisely by the greatness of their faith." Or, as it is expressed
by Archdeacon Hare, in his Treatise on the subject, " Faith is
the root and foundation of whatever is noble and excellent in
man — of all that is mighty and admirable in his intellect — of
all that is amiable and praiseworthy in his affections — of all
that is stable and sound in his moral being. . . . When faith
dies away, the heart of a nation rots ; and then, though its
intellect may be acute and brilliant, it is the sharpness of a
weapon of death, and the brightness of a devouring fire." In
what may justly be regarded as the higher philosophy of our
time, the necessity of faith — of a faith rising above reason, and
accrediting what the intellect can neither ilistinctly conceive
nor conclusively demonstrate — has been argued with great
APPENDIX. 439
ability (whether always with sufficient caution or not), and
applied to things immediately connected with the nature and
attributes of deity. The philosophic reason is thus once more
avowedly stretching out the hand to faith, and owning its
authority. And now, the tendency of all this upon a creed,
which may be said to have been formed on the principle of
believing nothing, which cannot be distinctly conceived and
understood, could not be other than adverse. Philosophy her-
self has come to demand a sphere for faith, and a place even
for the mysterious and unknowable, which the elder Socinians
rejected alike from their philosophical tenets and their religious
belief. And the alternative has for the best part of a genera-
tion been facing them, of either approaching nearer to the
spirit of the Bible, by making more account of the principle and
the realities of faith, or of becoming antiquated at once as philo-
sophers and as religionists.
But the same alternative has been forcing itself upon them
from another side, and one more immediately connected with
the theological province. The Rationalism of last centuiy,
■which in the philosophical direction reached its apex in the
deification of reason during the madness of the French Revolu-
tion, found a corresponding ne plus ultra in the theological
direction, about half a century later, through the pantheistic
develoj)ment of Strauss. The co??structive part of Strauss's
theory — viz., his attempt to establish the mythical character of
the Gospel narratives, and to build up on them a kind of pan-
theistic religion — has been without fruit ; but not so the de-
structive part, or the bearing of his work on the existing
Rationalism. He had discernment enough to see the arbitrary
character of this, and the unsatisfactory nature of its attempts
to explain tlie original records of Scripture. The scheme
which he devised to supersede it, obliged him, in the first in-
stance, to come into direct collision with it, and to maintain,
what it had been labouring for near a century to disprove — the
plain sense of Scripture, and that as carrying along with it the
supernatural and mysterious elements commonly associated with
it. Ho\\ ever necessary he deemed it, in the other branch of his
undertaking, to repudiate the historical verity of the evangelical
accounts, as a preliminary to that, he could not dispense with
their miraculous aspect (which with him was all one with the
440 APPENDIX.
fabulous) ; for he found therein a key to his theory of their
origination. He must, therefoi'e, endeavour to drive the elder
Rationalism from the fiekl, which sought by forced criticisms
and evasive expedients to eliminate nearly all that was miracu-
lous, and reduce them as much as possible to the level of things
pertaining to ordinary life. This he suc<;essfully accomplished,
exposing in a most vigorous and trenchant manner the feeble-
ness and folly of the attempts that had been made to deprive
New Testament Scripture of its proper character. The writers,
he maintains, and justly maintains, intended to narrate wonders
in almost every page ; the whole form and aspect of their
accounts bears unmistakeable evidence of it ; and the only
question which he held to be open for discussion was, whether
what was related should be taken in its plain literality, or should
be viewed as the cover of a higher truth — an instruction in the
form of a myth. So far Strauss may be said to have done
good service. By his bold and effective vindication of the
natural sense of Scripture, he in a great measure drove the
common race of Eationalists from the field ; so that his work,
which w-as in one respect the consummation of Rationalism, gave
it, in another, its most deadly blow.
Nor did the work of Strauss tell merely in this general way
against the tone and style of interpretation, to which the Uni-
tarian writers in this country, as well as on the Continent, had
committed tliemselves ; but on the specific point of the incarna-
tion, or the union of the divine and human in Christ, and by
consequence on the doctrine of the Trinity, he held the mean-
ing of New Testament Scripture to be perfectly explicit. In-
stead of excepting this, he took it, as it undoubtedly ought to
be taken, for the very heart and centre of all that appears there
possessing a supernatural import. It is emphatically the wonder
of wonders — though, certainly, as explained by Strauss, the
wonder again dissolves ; but this so as merely to affect the con-
structive part of his own theory, or the use to which he turned
the evangelical narratives, and not so as to interfere with the
formal character of the narratives themselves. lie made no
(juestion, that the central idea of these was the revelation of a
God-man ; but the realization of the idea he would find, not in
a single individual, but in humanity as a whole. Humanity is
with him God's Son ; " it is the union of the two natures, of
APPENDIX. 441
the God become man, of the Infinite Spirit emptying itself
into the finite, and the finite spirit remembering its infinitude ;
it is the child of the invisible mother, and the invisible father,
of nature and spirit ;" and so on. To attempt to build a reli-
gious belief on such a basis, or to seek thereby to account for
the origin and grovvth of Christianity, was in the highest degi*ee
absurd ; but even in its extravagance it bore the aspect of a
keen satire against the elder rationalistic or Socinian hypothesis ;
for what was the object of special horror to this — namely, the
union of the divine and human natures — it assumed as in some
form essential to any scheme, which would meet the conditions
that lie upon the very face of the representations of Scripture.
Thus Rationalism, in its maturest development, came forth as a
witness against the arbitrary and superficial nature of a Chris-
tianity, which professed to be founded on the testimony of
Scripture, and yet rejected the most prominent feature of Scri[>-
ture as a revelation from its creed.
The combined effect of the influences now referred to has
been such as to shake the foundations of the Socinianism that
was prevalent in this country at the commencement of the
present century, and to render its forced interpretations and
meagre results no longer available. Its hermeneutics have
become in a manner antiquated ; and recent commentators, of
tlie highest standing as scholars, and even in some respects not
altogether free from a rationalistic spirit, eitlier pass entirely
over their evasive interpretations of important texts, or refer to
them merely for the purpose of stamping them as wholly un-
tenable. Fritzsche, for example, in his Commentary on the
Romans (ch. v.), shows the utter impossibility of giving their
plain grammatical sense to the Apostle's words, without finding
in them tlie doctrine of a vicarious atonement, made to expiate
the wrath of God on account of man's guilt. So, too, Meyer
eveiywhere rejects the more distinctive comments of the Uni-
tarian school, as contrary to the plain sense, and often passes
them by as unworthy of notice. Thus at 2 Cor. viii. 9 he
holds it for certain, that the being {'mv) rich there spoken of,
nmst be understood as t!ie imperfect, denoting what lie was
previously ; for, " according to the context, the discourse is not
of what Christ U, but of what He icas before tlie incarnation ;"
and the making rich, in like manner, he considers to have its
442 APPENDIX.
only legitimate reference to the reconciliation, justificationj etc.,
which are the fruits of Christ's obedience unto death. The
declaration of our Lord, at John viii. 58, " Before Abraham was,
I am," is explained as capable of only meaning, " Older than
Abraham's being is My existence," the Present (elfxl) designat-
ing the continuousness of Christ's being out of the past. In
like manner, the Socinian mode of applying texts, which ascribe
creative energy to Christ — such as John i. 3, Col. i. 16, 17 — of
the moral change or figurative creation that was to be the
result of His mission, is treated as quite opposed to the plain
meaning of the passages, and not deserving of any serious refu-
tation. And so in many similar cases. Men who in the pre-
sent day would stand up for the views given of texts bearing
on the pre-existence and the divinity of our Lord's person, or
the nature of His work of reconciliation for the world, which
are found in the writings of Lindsey, Priestley, or Belsham,
could only gain for themselves the distinction of being miser-
ably deficient or hopelessly prejudiced biblical scholars.
The general result in this country, as on the Continent, is
one that may justly be hailed with satisfaction by evangelical
Christians ; the Church doctrine regarding the Person of Christ,
and by consequence also of the Trinity, has become more exten-
sively acquiesced in. What Dorner has said more especially of
the continental aspect of matters, that the tendency of theo-
logical science now, more perhaps than at any former period,
is to fall back on that doctrine,' may be still more confidently
affirmed of English theology, whether at home or abroad.
Here, too, it holds, and holds more generally than in the regions
of German Protestantism, that many anti-Trinitarian forms may
now be regarded as having ceased to exist ; and that there is a
growing desire and disposition in the Church to hold fast by
the doctrine of an immanent Trinity in the Godhead, and to re-
produce this in a manner adapted to the conscience of evangeli-
cal Christians, especially in its bearing on the constitution of
Christ's person and the efficacy of His work, as the Redeemer
and High Priest of His people. Nor, speaking of the Church
generally in these lands — the Church as represented by those,
whether clerical or laic, who really interest themselves in religi-
ous truth and duty — is thei'e the same marked disproportion (of
* DIt. ii., Vol. iii. p. 21(), sq.
APPENDIX. 443
which Dorner takes notice) betAveen the recognition of such
doctrine, and the living energy of Christian piety. A certain
disproportion, no doubt, exists, inasmuch as there are many who
give a kind of dortrinai assent to Trinitarian views, which but
too plainly has little or no connection with spiritual activit}^ and
fruitfulness. But, for the most part, persons of this stamp are
only nominal believers in anything ; and while there may be,
and doubtless are not a few, who must be characterized as
sticklers for what is little more than a dead orthodox}^ on the
subject, there can, on the other hand, be no reasonable doubt,
that the number of such has been steadilv decreasincj, and the
doctrines connected with the divinity of Christ lie at the root
of, and give the chief impulse to, all that is most living and de-
voted in the Christianity of our age. This is a special ground
of thankfulness ; and the more so, as the ascertained practical
fruits of the doctrine so palpably correspond with the scriptural
evidence for it, and form, as it were, the response of enlightened
consciences to the truth uttered in the word of God.
But if we are entitled to represent this as the most general
result of the turn things have latterly taken in respect to the
Trinitarian doctrine, it would be an entire mistake to suppose
that it is the only one. Other and less salutary directions have
also been taken, though only by particular classes, and these
chiefly of a speculative and restless cast of mind. It is difficult
to arrange and classify, where there is so much that is the off-
spring of merely local influence and individual temperament ;
but there may, without difficulty, be discerned three distinctly
marked developments of doctrine on the subject under considera-
tion, each diverging from the form recognised by the Church
as orthodox, thougli in very different degrees.
(1.) The widest divergence is one so nearly akin in its lead-
ing features to that of Strauss, that it may be regarded as
substantially identical with it — it is a sort of Christianized
Pantheism. This is the direction which has been taken, under
the combined philosophy and exegesis of the age, by the lower
section of Unitarians both in this country and in America, who,
on finding themselves unable to maintain the old position of
a frigid, scriptural Deism, and shrinking from the spirit and
mysteries of an evangelical creed, have sought a resting-place
in a kind of spiritualistic or moral Pantheism. Theodore
444 APPENDIX.
Parker, of America, might be taken as the most conspicuouj
representative of this class in the pulpit, and one certainly not
Avithout respectable gifts, both natural and acquired. He is
mentioned by Dorner, along with Channing, and in terms of
commendation, which we should hardly have felt inclined to
apply to him, even in his earlier career.^ But in its last stage,
as is now generally known, the pantheistic direction of his
views became much stronger than before, and a philosophy
rather than a Christianity was what obtained his final assent.
The Westminster Review, in its theological articles, usually re-
presents and advocates the same phase of opinion ; and so also,
with certain minor shades of difference, do F. Newman, and
various writers of a kindred spirit. It is scarcely possible to
say how much of fact is admitted by this school in connection
with the origin of Chrastianity : for their statements in that re-
spect do not always harmonize ; but they ai'e agreed as to the
exclusion of every element strictly miraculous or supernatural,
which, according to their pantheistic philosophy, is a thing
simply impossible. And if Jesus Christ was really an historical
personage, he could by no possibihty be other than a man
among his fellow-men — a superior Jewish peasant, who had
somehow attained to better notions of truth and duty than his
countrymen ; but for anything further that is said concerning
him, it must be ascribed to tradition, or the mythical formations
of a later age. Plainly, this is but a species of infidelity ; and
it must be met, not on the territory of Scripture, but on that of
nature and reason ; for the view it assumes of God and the
world is what properly distinguishes it, and its relation to
Scripture is chiefly of a negative or antithetic description.
Dr Mill has said, in his work on the Mystical Interpretation of
the Gospels, p. 343, " The saci'ed and mysterious doctrine of the
Trinity in Unity has ever been the surest safeguard against
Pantheism in the Christian Church. When consubstantiality
with the divine Father of all is so restricted by the dogmatic
symbols to the Son, in whom, as His expressed image. He is ever
manifested externally, and the Spirit, by whom Pie is everywhere
vitally and internally present, it must always be impossible,
without conscious impiety and departure from the baptismal
faith, to think of any soul or personality beside that of the three
' Div. ii., Vol. iii. p. 223.
APPENDIX.
445
divine Persons, as constituting in any sense part of the Pleroma
of the Godhead." AYhenever such impiety, he adds, has been
practised within the Church's pale, or under a Christian garb,
it has arisen either from the heated imagination of individual
mystics, or from some infusion of Gentile philosophy leading
particular speculators astray. This, undoubtedly, is the case ;
and in the present age, it will readily be understood, it is the
philosophic influence, rather than the mystic temperament,
which has led some, if not properly within the pale of the
Christian Church, yet not willing to stand altogether dissociated
from the Christian name, to adopt the pantheistic scheme, aud^
of course, to allow of no Trinity but the merely nominal one
which is compatible with such a scheme. Indeed, they them-
selves leave us in no doubt as to the grounds which determine
their choice; it is, they allege, the imperative demands of
science. And yet instances are ever and anon occurring,
which show how prone the human mind is, in matters of this
nature, to relieve the cold and rigid deductions of science by a
little of the dreamy speculativeness and enthusiastic glow, which
are proper to the mystic temperament.^ But such cases can be
nothing more in our age than occasional and fitful ; they are
to be accounted for as recoils of natural feeling from the great
1 Of this, a curious exhibition was given, some years ago, in the letters of
Mr Atkinson to Miss Martineau— both Pantheists of the stamp now under
consideration— indicating the faith they reposed in the wonders of mesmer-
ism, and the satisfaction they derived from it. By these, it was declared,
the case of Christ (that is, the apparently supernatural in His case) had be-
come to the writer clear as day. His flannel waistcoat, through the potent
mesmeric influence, could give out sparks of light, which enabled him to
see what o'clock it was on his watch ; a lady dreamt a dream, which had
been breathed by him into a glove, and the glove sent to her ; and another
lady had been able to read a writing from the top of her head, or from any
part of her body. Of course, all these, and such like wonderful exploits,
were held to be the production of powers strictly natural and physical, yet
powers very different from the mechanical action of organized matter, and
bespeaking the mysterious and pervasive energy of the great soul of the
world. It is undoubtedly to be ascribed to the same tendency in human
nature— tlie felt craving after something more responsive to lumian sym-
pathies than natural laws— which led Comte in his latter days to invent
the worsliip of luunanity as a neccss;iry complenient to his positive philo-
sophy. Tlie thought, that obedience to law wiis the only piety, proved too
infrigidating.
446 APPENDIX.
gulf of silence and darkness, into which Pantheism plunges
its votaries. And the connection of these with Christianity
can in no case be more than nominal ; at heart, they are con-
sciously opposed to its teaching ; and it is impossible they can
feel otherwise, than that, so long as this teaching prevails in the
world, the interest with which they are associated must be de-
pressed. In short, the incarnation of the Bible, and the incar-
nation of Pantheism, so far from being homogeneous, are
irreconcilable opposites ; and in proportion as the one main-
tains its place, the other of necessity gives way.
(2.) A second class of persons, who have been led to adopt
views at variance with the orthodox faith concerning the Person
of Christ, though less directly and formally opposed to it than
the one just specified, consists of those, whoso notions appear to
be essentially Ebionitic : that is, they don't dispute that, accord-
ing to the plain sense of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, and
other collateral doctrines, are expressed; but they do not conceive
themselves bound thereby to believe more than that He was, as
to the constitution of His person, simply a human being, or that
Pie did, as to His work, more than a highly-gifted and en
lightened teacher was competent to perform. The ground of
this apparent inconsistency lies in the view held respecting
Scripture, as being only in a qualified sense a revelation of
God — a revelation, indeed, yet not without the prejudices and
partial errors natural to the time and place of its appearance ;
and, consequently, entitled to credence and belief now, only in
so far as its statements accord with the increased knowledge and
rational convictions of the age. So that, even when it is ascer-
tained what Scripture teaches respecting God or Christ, the
question is still competent, whether the doctrine appear to be
reasonable, and find a response in the conscience? And in the
present age there is a considerable class, who in this respect
do not rise above the position of the ancient Ebionites, especi-
ally of that better section of them, who admitted a certain
potence or energizing of the Godhead in Christ, to fit Plim for
His reforming agency. The Ebionites mutilated and corrupted
the Scriptures of the New Testament in order to vindicate their
doctrinal position : their modern representatives, with the same
view, assert their liberty to receive or modify at pleasure the
testimony which they acknowledgi; to be contained in the Scrip-
APPENDIX. 447
tures. That this is done by a portion of professed Unitarians,
needs no proof ; it flows so directly from the loose notions they
hold on the subject of inspiration.^ But it is no longer con-
fined to them. A tendency in the same direction has, for a
considerable time, been developing itself in the Church of
England, and lias latterly reached, though still only among a
limited circle, a startling consummation. In a treatise on " The
Letter and Spirit of Scripture," by the Eev. Thomas Wilson,
Cambridge, published a number of years ago as a preface to an
edition of the Bible (the Bampton Bible), the doctrine was dis-
tinctly set forth, that the teaching of Scripture could not, in the
nature of things, differ from the light of the natural reason, or
rise above it. " So far," it was said, " from the religion of the
Gospel being at variance with the religion of nature, they are
in reality one and the same. Were it otherwise, the religion of
the Gospel, as being unnatural, would be untrue." Then, in
regard to the specific doctrine of the Trinity, while its place in
Scripture is not denied, it is no further made account of than
as " shadowing forth a sublime truth." What that truth is, the
writer presently informs us ; for, after speaking of it as one of
those mysteries man should not meddle with, he tells us how
he also believes in a Trinity : " We also believe in the creating
1 The Uuitarian preacher, Mr Martiueau, may in this be allowed to speak
for his party ; although, in the preface to the edition of the work from
which we quote, he intimates that his views were not in all respects what
they had been when it was written. But he professes himself to be a
nationalist in the proper sense of the term, namely, as holding the prin-
ciple, that it is " the prerogative of reason to apply itself to the interior, as
well as to the exterior of revelation." And 'le applies this principle speci-
fically to the doctrines of the Trinity and atonenaent, which, without admit-
ting them to be taught in the Bible, he is yet '' prepared to maintain, that
if they were in the Bible, tlicy would still be incredible ; and that in every
case the natural improbability of a tenet is not to be set aside as a for-
bidden topic, but to be weighed as an essential part of the evidence which
nmst determine its acceptance or rejection." But withal he protests
against the anti-supernaturalism of many Rationalist interpreters, who
would reject everything miraculous as being intrinsically absurd and in-
creflible. This he regards iis an unwarranted and mischievous application
of the principle ; and therefore he holds those justly condemned, " who
have preferred, by convulsive efforts of interiirotation, to compress the
memoirs of Christ and His Apostles into the dimensions of ordinary life,
rather than admit the operation of miracle on the one hand, or avow thi:ii
448 APPENDIX.
Father, the redeeming Son, and the sanctifying Spirit. For
man (he adds by way of explanation), whose type is Christ, the
incarnate Son of the universal Father, redeems his race from
sin and sorrow through the sacred Spirit, that dwells in the
temple of an upright heart." Man does it all, first typically and
potentially in Christ, then in each believer personally, and by
reason of some sort of indefinite connection with the power of
the Highest, but with no essential difference, either as to per-
sonal constitution or active agency, between Jesus and His fol-
lowers. Hence also the doctrine of " a physical atonement (as
it is called) for mortal sin, by the shedding of the blood of the
Son of God and Son of man, on the cross of Calvary," is re-
jnidiated as a crude popular belief, the offspring of a scholastic
theology, building itself on the old fleshliness of the Levitical
letter. An Ebionitish Messiah is thus the only result aimed at !
and the spirit of Scripture is elicited by an arbitrary process to
establish the foregone conclusion.
Views of this description, however, were only beginning to
be mooted by English clergymen at the time the above treatise
was written ; and it is but recently that they have received a
formal exhibition, and have met with any considerable adhe-
abandonment of Christianity on the other." (Rationale of Religious In-
quiry, pp. 64, 70, 72, Third Ed. 1845.) Of Christ Himself, he says little ;
but speaks of Him as having a moral eminence above all others — " the
object of perfect moral approbation, the image of finished excellence, on
whose fair majesty even the eye of God cannot rest without delight" (p. 17).
And yet how far he has been from finding satisfaction in the intellec-
tual and spiritual results arising from such views, the following confession
but too clearly testifies. "■ Ebionites, Arians, Soeinians, all seem to me to
contrast unfavourably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of
thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of
Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner, in
aluiost every department, are to others than to writei's of my own creed.
In philosophy, I have liad to unlearn most that I had imbibed from my early
text-books, and the authors in chief favour with them. In biblical inter-
jn-etation, I derive from Calvin and Whitby the help that fails me in Crell
and Belshara. In devotional literature and religious thought, I find no-
thing of ours that does not pale before Augustine, Tauler, Pascal. And in
the poetry of the Church, it is the liatin or the German hymns, or the lines
of Charles AVesley, or of Keble, that fasten on my memory aud heart, and
makes all else seem poor and cold." In a word, lie feels that the system his
icasoti approves of is not favourable to profound thouglit, and fails to meet
the deeper wants and convictions of the soul.
APPENDIX, 449
rence. They are now the principles of a school, having its
ablest representation in the writings of Professor Jowett (more
particularly in the essays interspersed with his Commentaries on
St Paul's Epistles), and the well-known Oxford " Essays and
Reviews." The primary object of these, and of various kindi*ed
productions, appears to be the circumscription, not so much of
the sense of Scriptiire (which they are content to take in its
natural meaning), as of the character and bearing of Scripture
as a revelation. This, it is maintained, has only a relative,
not an absolute value : it was sufficient for the age that wit-
nessed its appearance; but partaking, as it did, of the imperfec-
tions and errors which inevitably cleave to all that is human,
there were inconsistencies that must be kept in \'iew, narrow
and prejudiced ideas that must be discarded, in order to adjust
it to tiie scientific conclusions and matured knowledge of modern
times. The teaching of Jesus Himself is declared to be "on a
level with the modes of thought of His age ;" and on certain
points His statements stand "in apparent contradiction both
with the course of events, and with other words attributed to Him
by the Evangelists."^ If such was the character of the Lord's
teaching, that of His disciples, of course, must have been at least
equally fitted to produce inadequate, or partially incoiTect im-
pressions. Hence, after throwing together many of their an-
nouncements regarding the kingdom and coming of Christ, it
is broadly affirmed, that they will not hold together ; " the fact
stares us in the face;" "the discrepancy is seen," and seen now
" more clearly than in former times, between the meaning of
Scripture and the order of events which history discloses to us."^
It is added, by way of corollary, that " most of the difficulties of
theology are self-made, and ready to vanish away when we con-
sider them naturally. They generally arise out of certain hypo-
theses which we vainly try to reconcile with obvious facts ; often
they are the opinions of a past day lingering on into the present : '
— in other words, they come from our giving too absolute a sway
to the statements of the sacred writers, and basing our theolog}*
too exclusively on their defective conceptions and conflicting
statements. The passage admits of no other meaning ; and in
the comment on Kom. xi. 32, we have it a])plied to a particular
point, the Apostle's expressed belief in the future conversion of
' Com. on St Paul's Epp. vol. i. pp. 1U9, 110 (2d Ed.). * P. 119.
V. 2. — VOL. III. 2 F
450 APPENDIX.
the Jews. This is affirmed to Le utterly irreconcilable with the
facts of the case ; and only to be explained by supposing the
Apostle to speak " as an Israelite of the Israelites, within the
circle of the Jewish dispensation, after the manner of the time ;
he could not but utter what he hoped and felt. There is no
irreverence (we are told) in supposing that St Paul, who after
the lapse of a few years looked, not for the coming of Christ,
but rather for his own departure to be with Christ, would have
changed his manner of speech when, after eighteen centuries,
he found all things remaining as they were from the beginning.
His spirit itself bids us read his writings not in the letter but in
the spirit. He who felt his views of God's purposes gradually
extending, who read the voice within him by the light of daily
experience, could never have found fault with us for not at-
tempting to reach beyond the horizon within which God has shut
us up." There is no misunderstanding this : it means that the
Apostle was himself partially mistaken ; his views of Christian
doctrine changed from one period to another ; at the first (as is
elsewhere stated) he preached a Christ after the flesh, and subse-
quently a Christ after the spirit; he was, therefore, no more infal-
lible than we are ; and we have the advantage of living at a more
advanced stage of the divine dispensations, and consequently
possess the means of seeing farther into the truth of things.
The same principle is applied also to other parts of the
Apostle's doctrinal statements — to his judgment, for example, on
the people and religions of the heathen world, concerning which,
we are told, we cannot say what it would have been if he had
known them as we do, but that it is impossible for us to regard
them in the single point of view, which they presented to the
first believers :^ — nay, it is applied even to his great principle of
righteousness by faith, which should never be supposed, it seems,
to stand in contrast to righteousness by works, for it was merely
uttered in certain circumstances, when he had to teach men
rather how to die than how to live, and they had to be led by
the nearest way to peace.'"^ So, indeed, generally ; nothing is
iiell to be definitely settled by the statements of Scripture ;
" niceties of doctrine are laid aside; controversies are dying
out ; the opinions respecting the inspiration of Scripture, which
are held in the present day by good and able men, are not those
J Vol. li. p. 436. 2 P. 532.
APPENDIX 451
of fifty years ago ; a change may be observed on many points,
a reserve on still more."^ And as regards the subject of our
Lord's person and work — with which we have the more im-
mediately to do — everything in the form of specific doctrinal
statement is shunned: "in theology," it is expressly said, "the
less we define the better. Definite statements respecting the
relation of Christ either to God or man are only figures of
speech ; they do not really pierce the clouds which 'round our
little life.'"^ Christ is spoken of frequently enough as our Lord ;
He is represented as higher than we, as God's Son, and as having
given Himself in free love for our sins. But whenever we turn
to the more precise explanations given, we find nothing to in-
dicate, that either as to His person or His mission Christ stood
essentially above the level of humanity. He is represented^ as
having, indeed, some sort of unity with the divine nature, but
then He is also represented as communicating the same to His
people. What is said both of Adam and of Christ in relation to
mankind, is said to be so involved in figure, that it is scarcely
possible to put either into a distinct doctrinal form ; but the
most that can be gathered from it respecting Christ is, that He
is "the natural head of the human race, the author of its spiritual
life,"* — the one as well as the other, and both, we are left to
infer, simply from the moral influence of His teaching, life and
death. That there was anything properly vicarious or propitia-
tory in His death, is repudiated in the most express and pointed
manner, as being contrary to all right views of God's character.
When called a sacrifice, it is only by way of accommodation to
old sacrificial notions, figuratively, and in a sense that is " the
negation of all sacrifice." As an objective act on God's part, "we
know nothing, and we seem to know, that we never can know
anything." Christ died for His people in no other sense than He
lived for them; the doctrine of the Reformers about His imputed
righteousness is " a fiction ;" His death was simply " the fulfil-
ment and consummation of His life, the greatest moral act ever
done in this world, the highest manifestation of perfect love ;"
and all that is said about the procuring and offering of pardon
through the death of Christ amounts only to this, that " God
has manifested Himself in Christ as the God of mercy, who has
forgiven us almost before we ask Him," and who warrants sin-
' P. 522. ■■' l\ 5\)l. 3 r. 24.J. * r. 187.
452 APPENDIX.
iiers "to look for forgiveness, not because Christ has satisfied
the wrath of God, but because God can show mercy without
satisfaction."^
With such moderate views respecting the work of Christ,
and its relation to the interests of men, it plainly mattered
nothing whether any higher nature than the human mingled in
His person ; He was substantially an Ebionitish Messiah, and
only in degree differed from what was accomplished by a Paul
or a John. And hence the future destinies both of individuals
and of the world are represented as standing in no necessary
connection with their views and feelings respecting Christ.
While it would be a happy thing for them to know and believe
in Him, this is by no means essential either to their present
well-being, or their final blessedness. There is no longer any
real distinction between the world and the Church, none but
what is artificial and ought to be abolished. " Thei-e are multi-
tudes of men and women everywhere, who have no peculiarly
Christian feelings, to whom, except for the indirect influence of
Christian institutions, the life and death of Christ would have
made no difference, and who have, nevertheless, the common
sense of truth and right almost equally with true Christians.
We cannot say of them, 'There is none righteous, no, not one.'"^
Such, therefore, are as likely to pass the final reckoning with
acceptance as if they had stood in the front rank of believers ;
in them may even be verified the saying, that many who are
first shall be last, and the last first. And so, as regards the
advance of truth and righteousness in the world — in India, for
example — the propagation of the Gospel of Christ is only recog-
nised as one of the means necessary : the mission is even said
" to be one of governments rather than of churches or indi-
viduals ; and in carrying it out, we must seem to lose sight of
some of the distinctive marks of Christianity."^ No one will,
of course, doubt, that Christian governments have a great
responsibility in such matters, and can do much either to retard
or advance the preparation of their heathen subjects for the
Messiah's kingdom. But no one, also, who stands upon the
foundation of apostles and prophets, and recognises the infinite
worth and sufficiency of Christ as the sole Saviour of a guilty
' See Essays on liighteousness of Faith and on Atonement.
» Pp. 490-91. ^ P. 448.
APPENDLV 453
world, could ever after this fashion throw the things of His great
salvation into a common stock with political expedients, and
place the ministers of His Gospel on a footing with the ad-
ministrators of civil justice. What need, in such a case, one
naturally asks, for the hypothesis of a really divine Sonship
or higher nature in Christ ? Plainly, it would hang as an in-
cumbrance about the idea entertained of His mission, rather
than form an element essential to its success.
In the " Essays and Reviews," the element in question is
altogether ignored. Professor Jowett regards Christ merely
as the world's great prophet, the teacher of a lesson. Dr Wil-
liams would seem to go a step further in the downward direc-
tion : " Though the true substance of deity took body in the
Son of man, they who know the divine substance to be spirit,
will conceive of such embodiment of the eternal mind very
differently from those who abstract all divine attributes, such
as consciousness, forethought, and love, and then imagine a
material residuum, on which they confer the holiest name.
The divine attributes are consubstantial with the divine essence.
He who abides in love, abides in God, and God in him."^ This
seems so extremely like Pantheism, that, perhaps, the writer of
it should have been assigned to the class who have gone off in
that direction. But we adopt the more favourable explanation
of the language, which would take it to be a somewhat
mystical representation of humanity, as a kind of reflex of
deity — embodying, sometimes in a lower, sometimes in a higher
degree, the intellectual and moral qualities, which in their
source and fountainhead belong only to God. But supposing
this to be the meaning, it unquestionably leaves no room for
any distinction as to nature or essence between Christ and
other men. According to it, all are related to the Godhead
in proportion as the moral perfections of Godhead are trans-
fused into their hearts and lives ; and Jesus rose above others
only in so far as He surpassed them in the possession and
exercise of that love which is the summation of moral excel-
lence. That Jesus mic;ht therefore be the best of human-kind
— that the divine attributes might aj)pear in their highest
potence in Him, as connected with an earthly frame — that He
might be, in short, the noblest rei)resentatit)n of deity in huniau
' ?. 368.
i54 APPENDIX.
form, and was such — is the whole tliat can be admitted as true,
or even conceived as possible. And this does not carry us
beyond the Ebionite idea of the Messiah.
It is manifest from the simple statement of these views, that
while they involve derogatory notions of our Lord's person
and work, and, at least, a virtual repudiation of the doctrine of
the Trinity, they are to be met otherwise than by asserting the
scriptural argument on these specific points ; the prior and
more fundamental position will require to be maintained, of the
proper inspiration and supreme authority of Scripture itself.
The real question between the defenders of the orthodox doc-
trine respecting Christ, and the school of which we speak, is
whether God's \\'ord or man's — whether the teaching of Scrip-
ture, or the teaching of human reason and philosophy, is to
prevail with us. It is not denied that, according to the plain
import of the words, the doctrines comprised in the orthodox
faitii are to be found in Scripture ; but it is alleged that, as
taught there, they are not imperatively binding upon our con-
sciences ; and that rather than admit them to a place in our
creed, we must resolve the language in which they are taught
into figure, or, should this fail, must hold the doctrines them-
selves to be associated with so much that is erroneous and
antiquated, as to warrant a perfectly free and independent
exercise of judgment concerning them — to take only what ap-
pears to be accordant with the reason and philosophy of our
age, to reject what is not. Persons who are bound by no
ecclesiastical avithority, and stand free from the trammels of
any accepted creed, have nothing to prevent them from adopt-
ing such a course ; and there can be little doubt that it is
adopted by a ])ortion of the professed Unitarians of the present
day — though to what extent, we have no proper data for ascer-
taining. But the views are so palpably at variance with the
Articles and acknowledged creeds of the Church of England,
that it is impossible they should find any general acceptance
with those who can with a good conscience minister or worship
within her pale. The existence even of a few occupying such
a position, has created astonishment in the public mind, and
shocked the moral sense of tne Christian community. And
whatever may be the issue of pending litigations respecting
them, it may be held as certain, that the \ iews in question can
APPENDIX. 455
never find a proper resting-place in a church which has so
deeply interwoven with her constitution and worship the higher
doctrines of the faith.
What has happened, however, must be regarded by all
thoughtful persons as a very remarkable sign of the times, and
an indication of tendencies being at work, which will require to
be met with a fresh examination of the foundations, and, per-
haps, also much earnest controversy. It is quite possible, as
has been said by an able writer,^ that "some questions have
been raised which are not likely to be settled in this genera-
tion. The elements which have thrown the mind of Europe
into a state of disturbance, have undoubtedly penetrated deep
into England. The progress of religious knowledge will in
future be more beset by speculative and intellectual difficulties
than has been the case in former years." Biit still, as the
same Aviiter adds, there is no ground for alarm as to the issue ;
as in the past, so in the future, Scripture will hold its ground.
" The close, microscopic examination of the Book of Life is
daily bringing its secret beauties into clearer light. The prcv
gress of historical research opens new fields of discovery, in
which the scriptural exegetist finds valuable materials. The
deep spiritual meaning of many an obscure passage or neglected
fact is discerned more distinctly by those who candidly, but
warily, scrutinize the objections of antagonists to the faith."
And these objections, it may be added, will become less pro-
minent— they will, if they do not totally disappear, at least ceas*^'
to disturb men of inquiring and earnest minds, in proportion as
they come to perceive the inner harmonies of Scripture, and the
adaptation of its great truths to meet, as nothing else can, the
profounder convictions of the soul, and the more fundamental
evils of society.
(3.) There still is another class, and probably a much larger
one than either of those already specified, or even than both
put together, whom the combined influence of recent theologi-
cal investigation and philosophical study have turned aside
from the ortiiodox faith concernino; the Person of Christ. We
refer to the Sabellian direction, which since the time of
Schleiermacher has undoubtedly won to its side some of the
higher minds of Germany, whose writings have not been
^ Aids to Faith, p. 185.
4:56 APPENDIX
without a perceptible influence on tlie theology of this country
Here, however, it is extremely difficult to produce ostensible
evidence of the result. It is the singular property of Sabel-
lianism, that while denying the real doctrine of the Trinity, it
can serve itself so adroitly of the Trinitarian phraseology, that
where concealment is aimed at, detection is nearly impracti-
cable ; the threefold form of the divine manifestations is clothed
in the aspect of a threefold personal distinction. And in this
country, where the doctrine of the Trinity holds so prominent
a place in the belief of the evangelical churches, and is so
jealously guarded by the faithful, there is a natural tendency
on the part of those whose leanings are in favour of Sabellian-
ism, to conceal their sentiments, or to employ terms Avhicli
seem orthodox, while they are susceptible of a Sabellian im-
port. In Germany there is not the same temptation to use
equivocal language ; and, accordingly, it is comparatively easy
to draw there the line of demarcation between those who hold
Sabellianian, and those who hold Trinitarian views. Dorner
appears to have found no difficulty in this respect. While he
vindicates Schleiermacher from certain imputations which have,
he thinks, erroneously been associated with his views, he is
perfectly explicit upon this point, as one about which there
could be no difference of opinion. Equally with Hegel and
Schelling,^ Schleiermacher denied the existence of an immanent
Trinity in the Godhead ; his doctrine was confessedly Sabel-
lianism. All that Dorner can here allege in his behalf, is that
he did not, with those two philosophers, so confound God with
the world as to consider Him losing His absoluteness by enter-
ing into the finite, and in the life of the world arriving at self-
consciousness. God still is, with him, an undivided, absolute
unity, inconsistent with any Trinitarian distinction. Nor is it
otherwise with Weisse, Ewald, and many of Schleiermacher's
school. " They recognise in Christ the perfect revelation of God,
which bears relation to the entire creation-circle of humanity,
whose head He is. But they recognise no pre-existent personal
form on the divine side ; (m the contrary, they continue to abide
by a Monarchianism, which in the supreme God Himself admits
of no distinction, but only a manifoldness of revelations, which
have respect to the world, and which, under the direction of
' Div. ii., vol. iii., {j. 208.
APPENDIX. 457
liistoiy, of Scripture, and of Christian experience, are then re-
duced to a Trinity."^
We are not aware, that any theological writer of the pre-
sent day, in this country or America, could be pointed to, whose
views admit of being so distinctly characterized as of a Sabel-
lian nature. Many works might readily enough be mentioned,
which in their general mode of representation might be said to
carry with them a Sabellian impress, and which exhibit unmis-
takeable traces of the influence of Schleiermacher and his school.
But if we should single out certain statements or expressions
as apparently embodying a Sabellian view of Christ's person,
we should probab'/ be met by others, wdiich seem cast in the
ortliodox mould ; a kind of vagueness or dubiety being purposely
allowed to hang around the subject. Bushnell, of America,
has spoken out perhaps more distinctly than any other person
we could name, belonging to an evangelical chui'ch ; and he is
the only English writer referred to by Dorner (whether of this
country or America) as giving forth in recent times a different
"^iew of Christ's person from the orthodox one. At the place
in question, Bushnell is represented as a Patripassian, or more
definitely an Apollinarian, holding, with Apollinaris, that there
was no human soul in Christ ; and that consequently, whatever
there was manifested of thought and feeling by Him, must be
ascribed directly to the Godhead. Yet Bushnell does not avow
himself an x\pollinarian ; nor does he admit that humanity
was imperfect in Christ, that He had no human soul. There
may have been such a soul ; it is only denied, that this " is to
be spoken of, or looked upon, as having a distinct subsistence "'
— meaning, we presume, that it is not to be isolated and viewed
apart in the actions and sufferings ascribed to Jesus. No one,
however, says that it should. But Dr Bushnell practically
ignores the existence of a human soul in our Lord ; he regards
as utterly insignificant, "the humanities of a mere human soul "
in Him. In one of his last and most elaborate productions,
" Nature and the Supernatural," he carefully avoids any specific
reference to the component parts of Christ's person, but re-
presents His being as superhuman : in His sufferings, he saySj
" we see the pathology of a superhuman anguish ; it is the
anguish of a mysteriously transcendent, or somehow divine,
^ Div. ii., vol. iii., p. 224. - Gocl in Christ, p. 1G8.
458 APPENUIX.
character."^ Yet the growth of Jesus from youth to manhood
is spoken of as a perfectly natural human development. Not
only so ; but on the divine side also we find a most important
departure from the Apollinarian hypothesis ; for the Trinity of
Bushnell is a Sabellian, not a Nicene one — a Trinity of historical
manifestations, not of distinct hypostases in the Godhead. The
latter is denounced by him as quite unintelligible, unless it is
understood as asserting three consciousnesses, intelligences, and
wills in the divine nature. Nothing but confusion, he affirms,
" is produced by attempting to assert a real and metaphysical
trinity of persons in the divine nature ;" for " any intermediate
doctrine between the absolute unity of God and a social unity
(that is, a unity made up of three distinct intelligences) is
impossible and incredible."
There can scarcely be a doubt as to the meaning of such state-
ments ; they plainly express a repudiation of the Church doctrine
of the Trinity as contrary, not to Scripture, but to sense and
reason. It is simply on rationalistic grounds, that this repudiation
is made. Dr B. admits that the language of Scripture conveys
distinctly enough the doctrine of a Trinity. ''If anything is
clear," says he,""^ " it is that the Three of Scripture do appear
under the grammatic forms which are appropriate to person, — I,
Thou, He, We, They; and if it be so, I really do not perceive
the very great license taken by our theology, when they are
called three persons. Besides, we practically need, for our own
sakes, to set them out as three persons before us, acting rela-
tively towards each other, in order to ascend into the liveliest,
fullest realization of God." What more, one might ask, could
be required to establish the doctrine of a real Trinity than these
two — the explicit language of Scripture, and the felt necessities
of our natures, requiring us so to conceive of God ? Yet the
assurance we thus win is again taken from us by our being
presently warned to "abstain from assigning to these divine
persons an interior, metaphysical nature, which we are nowise
able to investigate, and which we may positively know to con-
tradict the real unity of God." It would seem, then, after all,
that in speaking to us of a Trinity in the Godhead, Scripture
merely plays upon us an illusion, and gives to what is but a
Trinity of revelations the aspect of a Trinity of nature. It is,
' P. 297. * Gcd ill Christ, p. 174.
APPKNDIX. 45S
in short, as he calls it in his Nature and Sujyernaturalism (p.
392), no more than a sort of " intellectual machinery " for
setting forth to us a work of grace, or supernatural redemption,
and which cannot be found in a " close theoretic Monotheism."
Thus, what is said of the Son represents "what God may do,
acting on the lines of causes in nature coming into nature from
without, to be incarnate in it ;" while the Holy Spirit " is in-
augurated as a conception of the divine working, different from
that which is included in the laws of nature, and delivering
from the retributive action of those laws." But these, we are
expressly cautioned, are to be viewed merely as " instruments
of thought and feeling, and faith toward God," and in employing
them, we are to " suffer no foolish quibbles of speculative logic
to plague us, asking never how many Gods there are ? nor how
it is possible for one to send another, act before another, recon-
cile us to another? but assured that God is one eternally, how-
ever multiform our conceptions of His working." In reality,
however, it is not what the speculative logic may quibble at,
but what godly simplicity and common sense demand. For, if
Scripture is found practising such an abuse of language on the
highest of all themes, as to present diverse forms or conceptions
of working under terms that inevitably suggest distinctions of
being, how can we trust its representations on other things'?
Indeed, when we pass from the person to the work of Christ,
we have the same sort of paltering in a double sense ; for wdiat
is said in Scripture of Christ's death as a propitiation for sin,
a sacrifice for the atonement of human guilt, or the objective
ground of man's reconciliation with God, is to be understood,
we are told, not with reference to the truth of things, but to
the effect it is fitted to produce on the hearts of men : it is
" God's form of art for the presentation of Christ and His
work ; and if we refuse to let Him pass into this form, we have
no mould of thought which can fitly represent Him." All,
however, that is really involved in Christ's yielding up His own
sacred person to die, is that He thereby " produces in us a sense
of the eternal sanctity of God's law, which was needful to pre-
vent the growth of license, or of indifference and insensibility
to religious impressions."^ This internal feeling or impression
is the grand thing; in it the reconciliation properly consists ;
> P. 254.
460 APPENDIX.
only, " we must produce it outwardly, if possible, in some objec-
tive form, as if it had some effect on the law or on God." And
when Christ is thus represented, " we are to understand that
He is our sacrifice and atonement, that by His blood we have
remission, not in any speculative sense, but as in art."
In short, whether we look to Christ's person or work, the
whole, according to this system, is a kind of theophany —
a series of make-beliefs, or artificial contrivances reflectively
embodying the experiences of believers, but in themselves
destitute of any proper substance or reality. Christ, according
to it, is but a symbol of God (so Dorner justly characterizes
the view), coming forth dramatically as a person, and giving
such manifestations of God as He pleases, but making no reve-
lation of His essential nature. And how can such a dramatic
representation last ? When no longer needed for giving objec-
tivity to our thoughts and feelings, the whole must, or at least
ought, like a piece of art that has served its purpose, be made
to pass away ; and only in the renovated natures and holy lives
of the redeemed should the incarnation and the atonement
find their abiding memorial. This is the natural sequel ; and
the poetical fancies, in which Dr Bushnell indulges respecting
the state of things in the future world, cannot prevent its
being so regarded. Viewed complexly, as a scheme of doctrine,
Dr Bushnell's peculiar views have neither any solid foundation
in Scripture, nor any proper coherence between one part and
another. But the more distinctive feature in it is its Sabellian
striving to get rid of an immanent Trinity in the Godhead,
and yet preserve the form and advantage of a Trinitarian
exhibition of the nature and operations of God in connection
with the work of man's salvation : — and this with the avowed
design, not of giving a more natural interpretation to the words
of Scripture (the reverse, indeed, of that), but of obtaining a
mode of representing divine things more conformable to the
views of an enlightened reason, and in better accordance with
the feelings and affections of a spiritual mind. So far, it may
justly be regarded as a sign of the times — showing, as it does,
how the vein of thought, and the philosophic influences, which
in Germany have disposed Schleiermacher and his followers to
substitute a Sabellian for a scriptural Trinity, and to adopt a
merely subjective atonement and reconciliation, are finding con-
APPENDIX. 461
genial soil also in the Anglo-Saxon mind, and operating to the
same results. The attempt, however, in this case looks some-
what less natural ; the threads of the system seem less fitly
woven together ; and while in both alike there are great gaps
between the human theorizing and the plain statements of
Scripture, these become to some extent more palpable, when
reproduced in the less speculative, more realistic region of
AnMo-Saxon thouojht. Whatever modifications mav be intro-
duced into such views, so long as they retain an essentially
Sabellian character, they can never be made to wear an aspect
of truthfulness to Bible Christians in this country, unless it be
with a limited and exceptional class of minds ; nor will they
generally be regarded as possessing an advantage over the
orthodox faith in point of credibility, any more than in respect
to agreement with the teaching of Scripture. At the same
time, one must acknowledge a material difference between a
scheme of this sort, which gives such prominence to the per-
sonal Christ, which finds in Him a real manifestation of the
life of Godhead with special regard to the state and circum-
stances of mankind, and those more rationalistic schemes which
would make Christ only an idea, or would reduce all His work
to the teaching of some lessons. Whei'e Christ is so honoured,
and the connection between Him and the fidness of deity, on
the one hand, and, on the other, between His people and their
participation through Him in that fulness, there is undoubtedly
a certain approximation to the great centre of Gospel truth
and power. In apprehending particular aspects of Christ's
character and work, and in bringing these to bear on the hearts
and consciences of men, there may be — there actually is in
Bushnell, and writers of the same school — a good deal of living
warmth and freshness exhibited, which cannot but awaken a
response in Christian bosoms. And although, where there is
so much that is vague, luu'eal, unsatisfactory, as to the proper
nature of Christ's person, and the objective ground provided
in His salvation for the peace and comfort of men, it were vain
to expect any solid building up to the Christian life from such
quarters, either in individuals or in the Churcli, yet all that
])roceeds thence is by no means to be assigned to the Apostle's
category of wood, hay, and stubble, fit only for burning ; there
is an in term in ('line also of more substantial material, which
462 APPENDIX.
with proper caution may be turned to good account. Still, it
is a good accompanied with many unsafe elements, and, as a
whole, theology of this description is greatly more fitted to
unsettle, than to establish in the faith. ^
If respect be had to the mere form of doctrine, the views of
Mr Maurice concerning the Person of Christ must be distin-
guished from those of Bushnell ; and yet, considered in their
tendency and bearing on theological literature, it is scarcely
possible to assign them to any other class. No one can fail to
perceive marked traits of resemblance between the two writers.
They are alike dissatisfied with the prevailing theology of the
Church, and have undertaken to do for it the part of reformers.
In the execution of this task, they both reject the received Pro-
testant doctrines respecting the guilt of sin, the vicarious and
propitiatory character of the work of Christ, and the objective
ground of a sinner's justification in the removal of the curse of
sin through that work, and tbe laying open for him of a way of
access to God's favour ; and they assail these doctrines with the
objections which are commonly urged against them by Uni-
^ What has just been said may be applied particularly \o some of
Bushneirs vindications of the doctrine of the Trinity, which have no speci-
fic reference to his own defective views. Thus, in one place he says, " No
doctrine is more paradoxical in its terms. None can be more mercilessly
tortured by the application of a little logic, such as the weakest and smallest
wits are master of. None has been more often, or with a more peremptory
confidence, repudiated by sections of the Church and teachers of high dis-
tinction. . . . And yet for some reason the doctrine would not die. It
cannot die. Once thought, it cannot be expelled from the world. And
this for the reason, that its life is in men's hearts, not in their heads. Im-
pressing God in His true personality and magnitude — impressing and com-
municating God in that grand twofold economy, by which He is brought
nigh to our fallen state and accommodated to our wants as sinners, showing
us God inherently related both to our finite capacity and our evil necessity,
what can ever expel it from the world's thought ? As soon shall we part
with the daylight or the air, as lapse into the cold and feeble Monotheism,
in which some teachers of our time are ready to boast as the gospel of
reason and the unity of a personal fatherhood. No : this corner-stone is not
to be so easily removed. It was planted before the foundation of the world,
and it will remain. It is eternally woven into the practical economy of
(jod's kingdom, and must therefore stand firm." This is good, and much,
besides, in the same discourse on the " Christian Trinity as a Practical
Truth ;" but how long could it l)esaid, if Bushncll's own view were adopted
in place of the doctrine of the Church ?
APPENDIX. 463
tarians. They still further agree in exalting the person and
the life of Christ as the one and all, in a manner, of their the-
ology— what He was, what He did on earth, Avhat He still does
in the heavenly places and by living communion with the souls
of men, being with both of them alike the sum of all truth, and
the substitute for all dogmas. The English theologian, in these
respects, only differs from the American, that he signalizes
himself by a more frequent and sweeping denunciation of the
evangelical theologians of the day, by a more extreme and
offensive caricature of their doctrines, by a peculiarly dramatic
and intensive mode of exhibiting the subjective element in
religion, as sometimes superseding, sometimes determining the
objective, and by the remarkable facility with which he can
either set aside Scripture, or, by infusing an unusual sense into
its words, can make it appear to be on his side. Bushnell is
far outshone in these peculiarities by Mr Maurice ; and he is
also quite distanced in the all-embracing grasp which is given
to the redemption of Christ, or, we should rather say, in his
mode of identifying redemption with creation, grace with nature.
For, apparently, these coalesce in Mr INIaurice's scheme ; his
imiversalism leaves no room for the distinctions which are
maintained, in some form or another, by all evangelical theo-
logians ; and by reason of their relation to Christ — a relation
actually existing, natural, unalterable — all are alike children of
God. With him Christ is the archetype of all things, antece-
dently to creation the root of humanity, " in whom God from
the first looked upon His creature man." ^ " He actually is one
with every man. He is come to proclaim that He is, by His
incarnation and His death." ^ So that, as contemplated by
God, the created and the redeemed state of mankind are but
two names for the same thing, and cannot by possibility indicate
two diverse relations ; the fall, sin, grace, election, make no
essential difference. " What St Paul asserts [at the commence-
ment of his Epistle to the Ephesians], on behalf of himself and
the little band of those who had turned to God and believed in
Christ, was a slinre in the privileges of humanity, as that is
created, elected, known by God in Christ;" and " in Christ,
whether circumcised or uncircumcised, men are one, by the law
of their creation."^ Hence, Christian baptism is not the sign
1 Unity of New Testament, p ;iG7. ^ p. 220. » Pp. 526, 536
464 APPENDIX.
and seal of any distinction between one person and anotlier, but
" God's declaration of that which is true concerning men, of
the actual relation in which men stand to Him. It denotes the
true and eternal relation of man to God." And only in this
sense, we are told, was it submitted to by the Apostle Paul,
namely, " because it denoted that he would no more be the
member of any sect, or of any partial society whatever — that
he was claiming his relation to the Son of God, the Head of
the whole human race. It imported his belief, that this Son of
God, and not Adam, was the true root of humanity."^
If such be the proper reading of St Paul's Epistles, and of
New Testament Scripture generally, it is clear that not only
our theology, but our hermeneutics also, must be made new ;
we have yet to learn the language in which it is written. Or,
if this is not the case, then Mr Maurice is merely, by a kind of
legerdemain in terms and phrases, which he employs in another
sense than any simple reader would ever dream of, or than the
fair construction of language will admit, imposing on Scripture
a meaning which is utterly opposed to its whole spirit and design.
But the most singular thing (as it will, perhaps, appear to the
mass of readers) is, that, with the rejection of so much in the
orthodox faith as irrational and antiquated, he cleaves to what
has ever been the most obnoxious, the pre-eminently incredible
dogma to the so-called rational Christians — the doctrine of the
Trinity. This Mr Maurice holds, and, as far as the language
would indicate, in the plain sense of the terms : he maintains a
Trinity in God of three persons and one substance, and thinks^
it, so far from being irrational, necessary to the maintenance of
that universal charity or love in which he believes the whole
human race are bound to God, and in relationship and calling
united to one another. But, in his essay u])on this subject, all
is left in a sort of haze ; there is no grounding of the doctrine
on statements of Scripture, nay, the bearing and testimony of
texts is scouted as a tiling not fit for the occasion ; and nothing
is made account of but the aspect the doctrine carries toward
men, or the light it is fitted to throw on their natural relation
to God. By the doctrine of the Father, they are called to see
the common paternity of Godhead ; in Christ, the Word made
flesh, they have living proof of their filial relation, or sonship,
' J^bsays, pp. 202, 203.
APPENDIX. 465
borne witness to by all that He was and is, all that He has done
and is doing ; and the Spirit of light and love is ever coming
forth to convince them of the actual existence of this high
relation, and to dispose them to feel and act suitably to it. This
is the whole — as far as we can perceive, and, indeed, as far as
Mr Maurice's scheme admits of. But it is, after all, only a
Sabellian Trinity — a Trinity of historical agencies ; and if Mi-
Maurice himself believes more — if he holds that the names of
the Father, Son, and Spirit indicate distinctions immanent in the
Godhead (as he himself affirms) — this appears no way essential
to his Christian scheme ; a Trinity of operations, as contra-
distinguished from a Trinity of nature and economical functions,
IS all that is actually required. And so Schleiermacher felt and
ruled in regard to that part of his scheme, which almost exactly
corresponds to this. For, as Dorner has stated,^ it is not correct
to say, that with Schleiermacher Ciirist is only a principle of life,
and that His person has no necessary place. Christ is, indeed,
with him the communicating principle of holy and peri^onal life,
because He has this ; but then the life itself, from the very
nature of things, requires a personal mode of existence. We
ought rather, therefore, to say, " Because he is the archetypal, the
divine-human person. He has the power, through His love, which
by means of His personal form is rendered perpetually present,
of constituting himself also in others the principle of the same
holy and blessed life." AVhat more does Mr Maurice ascribe to
Christ in this respect with his Nicene, than Schleiermacher does
with his Sabellian incarnation t We can perceive no essential
difference ; and where so many points of faith are discarded, as
too hard for belief in our enlightened age, this one point, harder
than all, and seemingly so little necessary, is not likely to meet
with much acceptance from his followers, nor can it be expected
long to retain its place. — The apparent singularity, it may be
added, of this tenet having a place in the scheme of Mr Maurice,
finds its explanation in what also accounts for the peculiarity of
his confounding nature and grace, creation and redemption. In
both cases alike it is the reflex of his Platonic philosopiiy —
cleaving in the one to a Platonic Trinity, as in the other to a
Platonic realism. This has been very clearly exhibited by Mr
Kigg in his Modern AnrjUcan Theology, c. vii. ; and the \Ve^t~
' Div. ii., vol. iii. p. 206.
P. 2. — V )L. HI. 2 Q
466 APPKNDIX.
minster Review (Jan. 1862) does not scruple to characterize Mr
Maurice as " clearly unsound on the Trinity," because he has
" Alexandrian notions about the Son of God rather than
Anglican," though, among other inconsistencies, he still " de-
fends the Athanasian Creed." As this, however, is only matter
of inference, different opinions may be formed of it.
INDEX TO THE EIVE YOLUMES.
The letter A refers to Division I., the letter B to Division II., of this work.
Thus, A. 178, and A. ii. 170 = respective!)/, Div. I. Vol I. 178, and Div.
I. Vol. II. 170. Similarly with Div. II. or B. When several references
to pages of the same Division or Volume occMr together, the Division and
Volume are, of course, specified only with the first.
Abaelard, B. 300 f.
Abjrarus, B. 26.
Abstracts, the, B. ii. 146, 192, cf. 241,
416.
Abulpharagius, B. 132.
Abyssiniaiis, B. 419 f.
Acacius, A. ii. 269 ; B. 393.
Achamoth, A. 237.
Acta Pilati et Putri — Pauli et Theclre,
A. 422.
Actistes, B. 131.
Acyndinos, B. 238.
Adam, relation of the first, to the
second, B. 188, 212 f., 325-328, 360
f.; ii. 10 f., 76 f., 80 f., 110, 147, 189
f., 218 f.—See Bohm, Poiret, Oetin-
ger, Baader, Schleierniacher, etc. ;
and iii. 241.
Adam Kadnion, A. 42, ho, 135. The
Protophist in the Clementine Homi-
lies, 205 ff. Adam = Christ, 210,
212 ff., 216; ii. 401. Relation of
Adam to Clirist, in Irenajus, 315,
317; Tertullinn, ii. 6 ff. ; Athana-
sius, ii. 421, cf. 249 ff. ; Clirysostom,
ii. 515 ; Tlicodore of Mopsuestia, ii.
516 ; Apollinaris, ii. 362 ; B. ii. 333.
Adam Pastorls, B. li. 159.
Adajus, B. 26.
Adeodatus, B. 185.
Adoptianists, B. 251, 263. Compared
with the Nestorians, 253 f.
Adoptianism, B. 248, 268; ii. 339. 348.
After-influence in the Middle Arcs,
338, 342; iii. 301 if.
Aelia Capitolinn, A. 196.
Aetius, A. 263 tf., 495.
Apithon of Hume, B. 156, 185, 197,
201.
A}:e, the immediately post-apostolic.
Its charflctcristics, A. 93. Charac-
teristics of the second and third cen-
turies, 254; of the fourtii century,
prior to Arins, ii. 227 f.
Aghiens, B. 26.
Agnoetes, B. 142 ; ii. 214.
Agobard of Lyons, B. 248.
Alber, Erasmus, B. ii. 175.
Albertus Magnus, B. 298, 307, 355,
357 f., 365 f.
Alcuin, B. 143, 248, 263 f.
Alexandria, A. 17, 76 ff., 229, 432.
Synod of, ii. 396, 52.5, 542. School
of, its becoming antagonistic to Ori-
gen, B. 51.
Alexander of Hales, B. 365 ; ii. 446.
Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, A.
ii. 230, 448. Confutation of Arius.
ii. 244 ff.
Algazel, B. ii. 30.
Allinga, B. ii. 356.
Allix, Dr P., his judgment of ancient
Church, B. iii. App. 355.
Alogi, A. ii. 4 ff.
Alstedt, B. ii. 419, 436.
Alting, B. ii. 339, 348, 419, 43!.
Alvarez, Francis Didacns, B. ii. 447.
Amalrich of Bona, B. 301 ; ii. 1.
Ambrose, A. ii. 153; B. 77, 142, 197,
365, 397.
Amling, B. ii. 419.
Amnion, B. iii. 28.
Amphilochius, A. ii. 396; B. 95, 414.
Anabaptists, B. ii. 142, 1,52 ff., 326.
Anabaticon Jesai;^?, A. 418, 419. Chris-
tology, 446, compare 453.
Anastasins Sinaita, B. 414, 416, 417.
Anastasius Presbyter, B. 188, 193, 413.
Anastasius II., Pope, B. 206.
Anatoliu.s, B. 91, 98.
'.\va(p/>pa of Pilatus, A. 422.
Andrcic (Jac), B. ii. 177, 190 ff., 233.
2.59, 413, 417, 418, 430 f., 434 f.
Andrea;, Job. Valent, B. ii. 294.
Angels, Angelology, A. 15. Epistle
to the Hebrews, i90; Philo. Gnosis,
369 ; Clement of Rome, 96 ; Her-
mas, 133. Particii)ators in tiie
4fih
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
povernment of the world, Papias,
400. The form of the doctrine in
Book of Enoch, 153; Carpocrates,
186 ; Clementine Homilies, 212 ;
Apelles, 244 ; Justin Martyr, 269 ;
Irenaeus, 318 ; Patripassians, ii. 6.
Christ an angel according to some
Docetists, li. 50. Origen on their re-
lation to the Son of God and to men,
ii. 130 ff., compare 337 ; Lactantius,
ii. 211 ; Athanasius, ii. 344. Their
freedom of choice, ii. 362 ; B. 237.
Anicetus, A. 138, 186, 425.
Anointing of Christ, B. ii. 225 (re-
ferred to Christ's birth or baptism).
341,351,368,439.
Anselm, A. ii. 254 ; B. 279, 281,295 f.,
442 ff. ; ii. 4.
Anthropology, of Irensens, A. 314 flP. ;
of the Oriental Church, ii. 203 ; of
Arius, ii. 240 ; of Athanasius, ii.
249 ; of ApoUinaris, ii. 358-363,
390 ff. ; of Hilarv, ii. 401 ff. Com-
pare Freedom.— B. 4, 30, 36 f., 74,
182, 284 f., 287 f., 297, 340, 380.
Luther, ii. 81, 263 f. Formula
Concordise, ii. 209. The Reformed
Church, ii. 245-247. Socinians, ii.
252, 259 f., 262 Brentz, ii. 184,
281 ff., 286. In the eighteenth cen-
tury, ii. 365-369, 377 -381 ; iii. 2-5. —
See Goil, conception of.
Antichrist, Clementine Homilies, A.
208.
Antinomians, A. 72.
Antioch, A. 103, 365, 372 ; Synod of,
ii. 196, 436. Christological move-
ment starting from, ii. 347, compare
523. School of, ii. 424-488, 523.
Antitrinitarians, B. ii. 142, 157 ff.,
348 ff., 355 ; iii. 22 ff.
Apelles, A. 220. 453. Christologv,
243 ff. ; ii. 50, 449.
Aphthartodocetists, B. 130.
Apocalypse, A. 136.
Apocalyptics— Old and New Testa-
ment. Distinction from prophecy,
A. 407. — Compare Chiliasm and
Eschatology.
Apocryphal Books, A. 150, 407, 422.
'ATOKaraffraa-ii, A. ii. 281, 337 ff.,
463 ff.
ApoUinaris, A. 91. Relation to Jus-
tin, 277; ii. 438 f. Characteristics;
writings ; significance for Christo-
logy, ii. 352 ff. Controverted bj
Athanasius? ii. 524. Critique of
his system, ii. 390 ff. (Compared
with "Hilary, ii. 420 ; B. 29 f., 35, 78,
82, 192, 268; iii. 330 ff.
ApoUinaris, forerunners and school of,
A. ii. 352, compare ii. 424 ff.
Apollinarism, A. ii. 351. Repudiated
by Church teachers, ii. 39o ff., 542.
ApoUinaris of Hierapolis, A. 458.
Apoilonius, A. 458.
Apophatic Theology, B. 236.
Archelaus, B. 27.
Archetype, the Logos, A. ii. 374 ff.
The eternal Pneuma : ApoUinaris,
ii. 383 ff. The eternal Son : Hilary,
ii. 417 ; Athanasius, ii. 421 f . ; Ire-
najus, 317 ff., 322 ; Tertuliian, ii. 65;
Origen, u. 122, 145, 335 ff. — Com-
pare Head, Deity of Christ.
Arius, A. ii. 226 ff. His letter to
Eusebius of Nicomedia, ii. 496. Two
stages of his doctrine, ii. 230 ff.
Arianism, A. 217. Justin, is he
Arian?2"2; ii. 4. Distinction from
Sabellianism, ii. 154. Relation to
the development of the Church, ii.
199 f. Necessity for its rise, ii. 491.
Rise of the controversy, ii. 229.
Logical consequences of, ii. 260.
Defects, ii. 288 ff, compare 400.
Critique by the Church teachers of
the fourth century, and overthrow,
ii. 285 ff., 291, 295 ff. Arian school,
ii. 262, 271. Relation to Semi-
Arianism, ii. 321. Refutation by
Theodoret, ii. 515 f. The t^sttow
controverted by ApoUinaris, ii. 359,
compare 381 ; B. ii. 358, 360. — Com-
pare Subordinatianism.
Aristides, A. 120 ff., 138.
Aristion, A. 120, 136. Similarity to
the tendency of the Testament of
the Twelve Patr., 160.
Aristotle, influence of his philosophy
on the Arians, A. ii. 499.
Armasites, B. 433.
Arminianism, B. ii. 349, 353, 357, 359,
362.
Arndt, A. 364.
Arndt (John), B. ii. 60, 300.
Arnobius, A. ii. 190 ff.
Arnold (G.), B. ii. 400.
Arnold (Thomas), B. iii. 232.
Arrhian, A. 165.
Arriaga (Roder. de), B. ii. 447.
Artemon, doctrine of, A. ii. 8 ff., 47.
Artemonites, 170.
Ascension of Christ. Papias, A. 136;
Barnabas, 168-170; Justin, ii. 277 ;
Origen, ii. 510 ; Athanasius, ii.
518 ff. ; Eustathius, ii. 519 ff. Com-
pare Exaltation. B. ii. 88 f., 128 f.,
150 f., 185 ff. (taking place from His
birth onwards), 213, 214 f., 224 f.,
246 f., 256 f. — See Omnipresence.
Asceticism. In Hennas, A. 380; Apo-
cryphal Books, 423.
Asgil (J.), 13. ii. 311.
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
4ny
Asia Minor, A. 103, 118, 179, 190, 197
432.
Asterius, A. ii. 235 ff.
Athanasius, on the Sabellians, A. ii.
471, compare 477. Defence of Diony
sius, ii. 176 f. Judgment on Euse
bins of Csesarea, ii. 491. Theology
and Christology, ii. 246-259, com-
pare 298, 348-350, 420 ff. ; against
Semi-Arianism, ii. 269. Judgment
on Marcellus, ii. 270. Critique and
refutation of Arianism, ii. 291-297,
compare 348. Total image of Christ,
ii. 344 ff. Account of the Apolli-
narian sect at Corinth, ii. 353.
Direct attack on Apollinaris, ii.
524 ff., compare 396, 3P8, 420 ff. ;
B. 35, 51, 164, 364,385; iii. 253.
Athanasius of Nazarbe, A. ii. 496.
Athenagoras, A. 393. Doctrine of the
Logos, 283-285, 30.5.
Atonement, doctrine of. Philo, A.
33,34; Ophites, 451. Its influence
on the Liturgy, 167 ff. — Compare
Forgiveness of Sin ; Death and
Work of Christ ; High Priest.
Atticus, B. 97.
Attributes, divine, A. 79 ff., 88. In-
fluence of Christology on doctrine
of, 354. Ground of classification
for the Gnostic systems, 223 ff.
Their significance in the doctrine of
the Trinity, 125 ff. ; ii. 58, 288.
Irenaeus, 316. — Compare God.
Auberlen, B. iii. 74, 78, 84, 277.
Audius, B. 53.
Augusti, B. ii. 224.
Augustine, A. ii. 428, 524 ff. On the
Priscillianists, ii. 467 ft". ; on the
speaking of the Monns, ii. 154. —
Augustinianism, ii. 428 ; B. 3, 77,
202, 271, 279, 311, 369, 375, 396-
401 ; ii. 10.
Avicebron, B. ii. 30.
Avicenna, B. ii. 30.
Baader, B. iii. 86, 88, 237.
Babseus, B. 393 ff.
Bagiiv, B. iii. 75.
Bahrdt, B. iii. 27.
Baier, B. ii. 440.
Baitzer, B. iii. :504.
Baptism, A. 56 ff. Synoptics : — Peter.
70; Barnabas, lis'; Ilermas, 123 ff..
126, 135. Trii)le relation to, and
imj)ortaiice for, the person and work
of Christ, 168 ff. Magical eft'ects : —
Kecognit. Clemen. 445. Gregory of
Nyssa, iiis idea of, ii. 514.
Baptism of Christ, A. 86, 107. Signi-
ficance for tlie office of Ciirist, 395.
Aj>ocryphal embellishments in tlie
Sibylline Books, 150, 415 Points
to His sacrifice, Test. xii. Patr., 156.
Connection with Feast of Epiphany,
175. Significance and celebration
of, in the first centaries of the
Church, 176. Meaning with the
Nazarenes and Cerinthian Ebionites,
193 ff. , with the Ebionites of Justin,
200 ; according to Ebionism in gene-
ral, 218, compare 245 ; according to
Gnostics, 234, 236. Little import-
ance in the Pseudo-Clementines,
440 f. Justin's doctrine, 275 ff. ;
Irenjeus, 3-24; Theodotus, ii. 7;
Paul of Samosata, ii. 12. Signifi-
cance according to Lactantius, ii.
211 ; Athanasius, ii. 341 ; Theodore
of Mopsuc'stia, B. 44 ; Adoptians,
259 f. ; Socinus, ii. 255 ; the Armi-
nians. ii. 351. — See Anointing.
Baradai (Jac). B. 144.
Barbelians, A. 249.
Barclav, B. ii. 325.
Bar-Cochba, A. 167.
Bardanes (Philipp.), B. 206.
Bardesanes, A. 182, 221, 453; B. 384.
Barhebraeus, B. 132, 154, 395, 421.
Barlaam, B. 238.
Barnabas, his system, A. 113 ff. Op-
ponent of Judaism, and akin to
Peter, 123. Representative of Apo-
calyptics, 143. Affinity with Test,
xii. Patr. 160. Testimony to the
observance of Sunday, 424.
Baronius, A. ii. 217 ; B. 423.
Barsudaili, B. 132, 423.
Barsumas, B. 76, 394, 421.
Basedow, B. iii. 27.
Basilius the Great. Controversy with
Sabellianism, A. ii. 480 ; Arianism,
ii. 264. Doctrine of the Trinity, ii.
305 ft". Total image of Ciirist, ii.
514, 396; B. 51, 95.
Basilides, A. 120, 236 ff., 340 ff., 447 ff.
Basiiidians, 426.
Baumgarten Crusius, A. 223, 343 ; B.
132, 370, 373; iii. 222.
Baumgarten (M.), B. ii. 312; iii. 197,
325.
Baur, A. 93, 221, 232, 327 ff., 364 ff.,
383 f., 402, 42.5, 442, 4.54, 457, 463 ;
ii. 11, 3.5, compare 95, 111, 171,
264, 27.5, 302, 318, 386, 403, 448, 451,
4.59, 460, 46.5, 504 ft'., .509, 522, M:\.
539; B. 121, 126, 281, 344, 3.53,
370,379,444; ii. 80, IdS, 161, 320
(Gnosis); iii. 2.3, 149, 161, 198, 278,
290, 294.
Bayie, B. iii. 6, 13, 19, 265.
Beard, Dr, on Unitarianism of the
first centuries, B. iii. Ajip. 424.
Beat us, B. 2J8, 264.
470
INDKX TO THE IIVE VOLUMES.
Bechmaiin, B. ii. 231, 443.
Beck, Tob, B. iii. 222.
Becker, B. ii. 314; iii. 2G5.
Beda, B. 143.
Bellarniine, B. 369, 423 ; ii. 225, 418,
437, 449.
Belsham, his views respecting Christ,
B. iii. App. 432.
Ben David and Ben Joseph, A. 166,
409.
Bengel, B. ii. 314; iii. 276.
Bennet, B. ii. 359.
Berg, B. ii. 348, 439.
Beron, A. ii. 29. Doctrine of the
activity of God in Christ, and of the
two natures, ii. 30 ff. ; of the yAvojtri;,
ii. 30 If., compare 42. Idea of God,
ii. 250.
Berthold of Chiemsee, B. ii. 394 ff.
Beryll, A. ii. 35 ff., 150.
Besold, B. ii. 301.
Bessarion, B. 246.
Besser, B. iii. 329, 333.
Beza, B. ii. 224, 226, 245, 413, 417,
436: iii. 267.
Bickell, A. 366 ; B. 380.
Biddle, his Socinian publications, B. iii.
App. 341.
Bidenbach. B. ii. 187, 196.
Biel (G.), B. ii. 446.
Bingham, A. 179.
Binius, B. 423.
Birth of Christ, — supernatural, from
the Virgin, A. 52, 86. 108, 110, 155 ;
Test. xii. Patr. 392 ; Apocryph.
Writings, 422. Festival of, 174.
Doctrine of Nazarenes regarding,
192 ff. ; of Cerinthian Ebionites,
199 ff. ; of Clementine Homilies,
441 ff. ; of Gnostics, 234, compare
236 ; of Marcion and Apelles, 240,
compare ii. 50. Identity of Mar-
cion's and Gnostic view, 245 f. Jus-
tin's theory, 276 ; Clemens Alex..
296; Irenffius, 311 ff., 320, 322 f.;
Alogi, ii. 4 ; Theodotus and Theo-
dotians, ii. 6 ; Artemon, ii. 9 ;
Praxeas, ii. 21 ; Beron, ii. 32 f.
TertuUian against Docetical view,
ii. 53, compare 189. Hippolytus'
view, ii. 84, 90 ; Cyprian, ii. 100 ;
Origen, ii. 140 ; Priscillianists, ii.
467 ff.; Sabellius,ii. 463-465. Zeno's
double birth, ii. 188 ff. ; Lactantius,
ii. 192, compare 209 ff. ; Minucius
Felix, ii. 191; Eusebius, ii. 224;
Athanasius, ii. 254, compare 342 ;
Marcellus, ii. 276 ; Photinus, ii. 285;
Corinthian sects, ii. 553; Apolli-
naris. ii. 370 ff.. 374 ; Hilarius, ii.
403 ff., 410 ff. Threefold birth of
the Sou of God, ii. 4 1 5 ff. ; Ncstorius,
B. 54 f. Compare Mary. — Mystical
doctrine of Ciirist's birth in us, ii.
8 ff. ; Luther, ii. 61, 68; Servetus,
ii. 163; Schwenckfeld, ii. 148. Com-
pare Incarnation. — Virginal birth :
ileformed Church, ii. 452 ; Socini-
ans, ii. 254 ; Arniinians, ii. 351 ; V
Weigel, ii. 317 f . ; Bohm, ii. 320;
Oetinger, iii. 82. — See Heavenly
Humanity.
Bishop, time of institution, A. 118. —
Compare Episcopate.
Blandrata (G.), B. ii. 168, 197, 403.
Bhiurer, B. ii. 177.
Bleek, A. 100, 151.
Body of Christ, human, A. 86, 93,
127, 132. '^x.iZoi wivf/.aTos, 156 ; Cel-
sus. 163 ; Barnabas, 390, 395. Husk
of the indwelling God, or Spirit of
God ; — Nararenes, 194 ; Ebionites,
434 f . ; Clementine Homilies, 441.
Doctrine of individual Gnostics, 238,
453 ; Marcion, 239, compare ii. 50 ;
Apelles. 455. Derived from soul,
455. Necessity of an human body ;
— Justin, 267, "compare 275 ff. Wa-
vering view of Clemens Alex. 296 ff.
Necessity for sake of redemption,
488 ff. View of Praxeas, ii. 21 ff. ;
Beron, ii. 32 f. TertuUian's contro-
versy with the Docetic view, ii. 52 ff.
Doctrine of Hippolytus, ii. 95 ; of
Origen, ii. 136, 141 ;" of the Priscil-
lianists, ii. 467. Zeno, inclination
to a Docetical view, ii. 189. Neces-
sity of human body for a perfect
teacher of righteousness according
to Lactantius, ii. 207. Athanasius
against deniers and objectors, ii.
257, compare 250, 255, 340 ff. View
of Marcellus, ii. 277. Without
human soul, the body can only be
the organ of a temporary theophany,
— Arians, ii. 345 ff. Union with the
depotentiated Logos, ii. 355. Apol-
linaris' view apparently Valentinian,
ii. 373. Its heavenly origin, — Hilary,
ii. 402, compare 409 ff.. 540 ; Cyrill,
B. 62 f. ; Augustine, 396 ff. ; others,
89, 91, 129 f., 139, 188, 294 f . ; ii.
132 f., 148 f., 153 f., 165 f., 185 ff.,
214 f., 272 f. — See also Incarnation;
Heavenly Humanity ; Supper, Lord's;
Ascension ; Resurrection.
Boehm (Jacob), B. ii. 319 ff. ; iii. 8, 85.
Boehl, A. 375.
Bocldicke, B. iii. 267.
Boerhaave, B. iii. 75.
Boerner, B. ii. 364.
Boethius, B. 151, 163, 413.
Bogomils, A. ii. 467.
Bohtz, B. iii. 274.
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
471
Bonaventiira, E. 369; ii. 446.
Boaosus, B. 250.
Borborians, A. 249.
Bourignon, B. ii. 328.
Boyse, his opposition to Emlyn, B. iii.
App. 357.
Braniss, B. 305; iii. 184.
Braun, B. ii. 244, 356.
Breithau|)t, B. ii. 368.
Brentz. B. ii. 107, 146, 176, 180, 192,
200, 259, 314, 407, 418, 428, 434 ; iii.
247.
Brewster, B. iii. 268.
Bruckner, B. iii. 222.
Bruno, Giordano, B. 247 ; ii. 38, 48.
Bucanus, B. 366 ; ii. 340, 419.
Buddeus, B. ii. 356, 338, 365, 368, 445,
446, 447.
Buddhaisra, A. 9, 2.'50.
Bugenhageu (Joli.), B. ii. 118, 126,
147.
Bugenhaeen (Junior), B. ii. 36.
Bull, A. l70, 401 ; ii. 217 ; B. ii. 359 ;
his Defensio Fid. Niciense, B. iii. App.
340; the character, and aim of do.,
App. 345 ; his Judicium Eccl. Catho-
licae, App. 346 ; his Primitiva Tra-
ditio, App. 348 ; the honours con-
ferred on him, App. 349 ; certain
defects in liis works, App. 349 ; his
views onSuhordinatianism, App.367.
Bullinger, B. ii. 143, 177, 224, 417.
Bunsen, B. 379 ; iii. 305.
Burk, B. iii. 276.
Burmann, B. ii. 356.
Burnet, B. ii. 329 ; iii. 265.
Burton's Testimonies to divinity of
Christ, B. iii. App. 345, 424.
Busajus, B. ii. 225, 417.
Bushnell, B. iii. 306 ff. ; his Sabellian-
ism, B. iii. App. 458.
Bythos, A. 304.
Cabasilas. Nicolaus, B. 236, 238 ff.,
246 ; ii. 29.
Caius on the divinity of Christ, A. ii.
47.
Cainites, A. 249.
Cajetan, B. 448.
Calixt, B. ii. 303, 304, 438.
Calov, A. ii. 517 ; B. 238, 369 ; ii. 233,
295, 304, 348, 43.5, 437, 460.
Calvin, B. 238; ii. 114, 128, 136, 173.
220, 239, 314, 349, 414.
Calvinists, B. ii. 348. — See Reformed
Church.
Campanus, B. ii. 159.
Canon, formation of, A. 95, 158 ff.,
171 f., 258 f., 362 ff., 420.
(^inz, B. iii. 22.
Cnra(;oli (Hoh.) de Licio, B. 367.
Carlstadt, B. ii. M8.
Caroli, B. ii. 158.
Carpocrates, A. 396 ; his Christology,
186.
Carpov, B. iii. 20.
Carpzov, B. ii. 310.
Carterius, A. ii. 523.
Cartes, des, B. 376 ; ii. 355 ; iii. 6.
Cartesians, B. ii. 357.
Cartesianism, B. ii. 355.
Cassian, A. 297; B. 413.
Cataphatic theology, B. 236.
Cathari, A. ii. 467.
Cathedra Petri, A. 380 • Hermas,
442 f.
Causality, idea of, A. ii. 288, 297. —
See God.
Cave, A. ii. 217, 486.
Cecropius, B. 409.
Celsus, A. 121. On the Person ot
Christ, 162. Witness to the divine
worship of Christ in the primitive
Church, 433; ii. 115, 476.
Cerdo, A. 103, 118, 233, 352 f., 449.
Cerinthus, A. 103, 118, 146, 369, 4ri.
Doctrinal system, 197 ff., 220 ; ii. 4 ;
B. 331.
Chalcedon, Synod and Symbol, B. 81 -
119.
Chalmers, B. iii. 269.
Chalvbaeus, B. iii. 160, 162, 237, 259,
312.
Channing, B. iii. 222.
Chemnitz (M.), B. ii. 198, 212, 219, 233,
235, 245, 266, 314, 413, 417, 419, 438.
Cherubim, A. 154.
Chiliasm, A. 385, 397. Papias and
Irenaius, 137, 400. Characteristics
of, distinction between Jewish and
Christian, truth in, union of nature
and spirit, 408 ff. Cerinthian, 198,
compare ii. 384 f.
Chochmah, A. 16, 342, 403 L— Compare
Wisdom, cosp'ia..
Christus. — See Christology. Hesitation
whether each (pt>V/,- existed in Christ
as iiiKov, B. 149. The generic ami
individual in Christ, 148-150, 211.
The xpia-TOTr,;, 149, 152. Anselm,
442 f. Innocent, iii. 443.
Christianity, distinctive character and
essence of, A. 2, 45. Relation to
Heathenism and the ante-Christian
ages, 3-13, compare 221, 227.
Philo, 17-40, 327. Gnosticism, 223.
Conception of, amongst the Church
teachers of the first century, 258.
Justin, 265 ; Clemens Alex. 286 ;
ii. 287 ff.—See God.
Christmas, A. 178.
Christology, A. 75, 85 ; of the New
Testament, 48-72. Essential iden-
tity of the primitive with the latei
472
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Church, 171. Gnosis, 229.— Com-
pare Person of Christ.
Christologv, C/iurchli/, its chief stadia,
B. 102 ff., 201, 206 f., 252. 266. 314,
377 ; ii. 77 ff., 126 tf., 209 ff., 297 ff.,
378 f. ; iii. 100 ff.
Christoloixy, Ethical. Theodore of
Mopsuestia, Julian, and Leporius,
B, 36ff., 77, 395. Ethical momentum
in the jrnomic will of the Monothe-
letes, 193 f . ; in Adoptianism, 256,
262 ; in Duns Scotus, 339, 351 ;
Luther, ii. 89 ff. ; Zwingli, ii. 136 f. ;
Socinians, ii. 253 ff'. ; the Eeformed
Church, ii. 221 ff., 338 ff., 343 ff. ;
Lutheran Church, ii. 363-370 ;
Kant, iii. 32 ff. ; Hase and Colani, iii.
62-65.
Christologv, Mystical. Theodore of
Mopsuestia, B. 43 ; Cyrill, 59 f. ;
Augustine, 401 ; Chrysostom, Theo-
doret, 104, 108, 401 ; Dionysius
Areopagita, 157 ; John of Damascus,
212, 230 f., 243 f. ; Scotus Erigena,
292 ; Thomas Aquinas, 337, 356 ;
Richard de St Victor, .327 ; the
Germanic Mvsticism, ii. 13, 17 ff.,
26 ; Nicolas' of Cusa, ii. 37 ff. ;
Luther, ii. 72 ff., 81, 86, 393 ; Bishop
Berthold and Theophrastus Para-
celsus, ii. 394-402 ; A. Osiander,
ii. 108 f. ; Schwenckfeld, ii. 147 ;
Ph. Nicolai, ii. 274 ; V. Weigel, ii.
316; Bohm, ii. 319 f . ; Quakers, ii.
325 f. ; Poiret, ii. 326 f. ; Goodwin
and Watts, ii. 329 ff ; Swedenborg,
ii. 334 ; Zinzendorf, ii. 370 •, Urls-
perger, ii. 374 ; Oetinger, iii. 75 ff. ;
St Martin, iii. 280 ; Baader, iii. 86 ;
Novalis, iii. 89-91. Antagonism of
the Council of Chalcedon to mystical
Christologv, B. 118 f., 150; compare
iii. 127, 165, 174, 231 ff., 286, 29? ff.
Christology, Pantheistic, in Monophy-
sitism, B. 111-113. Remainder of, in
Augustine, 114 ff. ; in the doctrine of
the impersonality of the human
nature, 117, 119 ; in Scotus Erigena,
290 f. (.see Maximus and Dionysius).
Amalrich, 302 ; ii, 1 ; Eckhardt, ii.
3 f. ; Servetus, ii. 1 59 f . ; Spinoza,
iii. 12. In recent times, iii. 101 f.,
121 ff.
Christology, Theophanical, B. 9 ; in
Dionvsius Areopagita, 160; Maxi-
mus, "233 f. ; Erigena, 284 f. ; Peter
Lombard, 314 f. ; Thomas Aquinas,
336.
Christopher, Duke of Wiirtemberg, B.
ii. 413.
(Chrysostom, his total image of Christ,
A. ii. 515.
Church, the Primitive, witnessing to the
union of the divine and human in
Christ, A. 95 ff., 183 f. Constitution
of (see Episcopate). Cultus, 104.
Its true idea, 350. Ignatius' idea,
104 ; Hermas, 123 f., 380 ff. Repre-
sented as paradise by Papias, 399.
The virginity of, according to Hege-
sippus, 401.
Church, the Romish. Changes in its
Christological views : For the doc-
trine of one nature, Julius, Coelestin
with Cyrill, B. 75, 84, 107. For the
doctrine of two natures, Leo, 84 ff.
Leo opposed to a " Commun. idiom,
realis," 88, 112. Gelasius, 135.
Honorius monotheletic, 165 f., 176.
Position of, in the Middle Ages,
269 ff. ; relatively to the Reforma-
tion, ii. 192, 314, 394.
Church, the Evangelical, of the present,
B. iii. 218 f.
Chytrjeus, B. iii. 199, 266.
City of God. — See Jerusalem.
Clarke, Dr Adam, on the divine son-
ship, B. iii. App. 426.
Clarke, Dr Samuel, B. ii. 358 ; iii. 22 ;
his Scripture doctrine of the Trinity,
App. 370 ; its partial character,
App. 372 ; his views condemned
by Convocation, App. 401 ; his con-
scious opposition to the doctrine of
the Thirty-nine Articles, App. 402.
Claudius, B. ii. 458 ; iii. 73.
Claudius of Savoy, B. ii. 161.
Clausing, B. ii. 364.
Clemens Alexandr. A. 182, 276, .395.
His theology, Logology, Christology,
286, 288, compare 294-303. Rela-
tion to Sabellianism, 288-324 ; ii. 6,
17. Relation to the doctrine of the
Trinity, and of the Logos, of the other
Church teachers, ii. 58, 104, 109,
147, 473 ; B. 213, 232.
Clemens Romanus, — Pauline type, A.
12.3, compare 100. Doctrinal sys-
tem ; slighting of the person as
compared with the work of Christ,
96 ff. Genuineness of the First
Epist. ad Corinth. 96. Relation to
the Epistle to the Hebrews, 356 f.,
177, 189, 364. Second Epist. ad
Corinth. 101. Commencement of
Episcopacy, 254 f. Reading of New
Test. 259.
Clementine Homilies, A. 361. Relation
to Catholic Episcopacy, 367. Age
of, 368, 441 f. Formal and material
principle. Doctrine, 204 ff., 212,
compare 240. Confused mixture of
Sabellianism and Arianism, 216 f.
Marcioii's inlluence on, 449 f.
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
473
aeniens (Dr F. J.> B. ii. 355 ; iii. 304.
Cleomenes, A. ii. 26.
Clericus (J.), A. ii. 217 ; B. 355 f., 360.
Clotz (Steph.), B. ii. 314.
Cluver, B. iii. 75.
Coccejus, B. ii. 338. 341.
Coccejans, B. ii. 357.
Coccejan school, B. li. 355.
Cocceius, B. ii. 147.
Coddians, A. 249.
Ccelestine, B. 112.
Colani, B. iii. 58, 63 fF.
Coleridge, B. iii. 23-.J.
Colorbasians, A. 231.
Communicatio personse (filii dei), B.
ii. 100, 434, 435. Calixtus, 445 ;
Loscher, 364; iii. 21.
Communicatio naturarum, in Luther,
B. ii. 86 f. ; Brentz and Andrea, ii.
179 f., 190; Calov and others, ii.
436 ff.
Communicatio idiomatum ;— imperfect
in John of Damascus, B. 216; in
Scholasticism, 338 f. ; ii. 102 f.
Real according to Luther, ii. 102,
126 ; differently Melanchthon and
the Wittenbergers, ii. 134, 173 ff.,
195 ; Zwingli, ii. 135 ; Calvin, ii. 220.
Receding from view with the elder
Suabians as compared with the
unity of the natures, ii. 178 ff. ;
Chemnitz, ii. 201 ; the Formula
Concordia, ii. 209, 232. Restriction
of the Comm. idd. to the active attri-
butes, but the ethical attributes re-
cede from view, in the seventeenth
century, ii. 349, 440. Extension of
the Comm. to the ethical attributes,
ii. 460. Predominance of the latter,
ii. 365. Decay of the doctrine of the
Comm. idd. ii. 365, 368; iii. 20.
Subjective counterpart to the Comm.
idd. iii. 61 f., 63. Schwenckfeld's
opposition thereto, ii. 146.
Conception, distinction from birth,
Tertullian, A. ii. 53 f.— See Birth.
Conradi, B. iii. 127, 161, 164, 171, 173,
195, 295.
Constantinus Pogonatus, B. 18.5, 197.
Conversion of God, in the incarnation,
A. ii. 83, 354 ff., 365, 399 ff.
Copernicus, B. iii. 25.
Corduba, B. ii. 447.
Corinth, A. 119. Doctrine there at
the time of Appollinaris, A. ii. 353.
Cornelius, B. ii. 155.
Cornelius Agrippa v. Nettesheim, B.
ii. 48, 401.
Corrodi, A. 143, 408 ff.
Corvinus, B. ii. 149.
Cotelerius, H. l.-i(i.
Cotia, B. in. 270.
Cramer, A. ii. 97.
Cratander, B. 128.
Crato, B. ii. 419.
Creation of man, — Hilary. A. ii. 401 ;
of the world ; compare World, crea-
tion of.
Credner, A. 431.
Crell, B. ii. 255, 256. 418, 420.
Cross, sign of, A. 179 f.
Crusius, B. iii. 73.
Crypticists, B. ii. 303.
Crypto- Calvinists. B. ii. 17.5, 436.
Cudworth, B. ii. 360 ; his speculations
on the Trinitv, iii. App. 354.
Cuffler, B. iii. 13.
Cultus of Christians in the first cen-
turies, Plinj-, A. 165 ff.
Curcellaus. B. ii. 349, 351, 355.
Cureton, B. 379.
Curtius (Seb.), B. ii. 348.
Cusa, Nicholas of, B. 24, 247, 376;
ii. 447, 485, 489, 501.
Cyprian, A. 135. Representative of
the Christology of his age. ii. 83.
Doctrinal system, ii. 101 ; B. 95.
Cyprus, A. 432.
Cyrill of Alexandria, A. ii. 515; B.
51, 55-70, 76, 80, 95, 186 ff., 210,
217; ii. 194. Antagonism to false
Ktvuffii and the Theopaschltes, 64 ;
to Nestorius, 55. His physical
union leads to insubstantiation, not
merely enhypostatization, B. 65-67.
He teaches a limitation of the actu-
ality of the Logos in favour of the
humanity ; chemical images of the
Unio, 73. Defects in an ethical
aspect ; connection of the Anti-
ochean and Cyrill's Christology, 84.
Cyrill of Jerusalem. Theology and
"Christologv, A. ii. 269.
Cvrus, B. 394.
Cvrus of Alexandria, B. 156, 164, 165,
"174.
Daehne, a. 327.
Damasus, A. ii. 396.
Damianus, B. 131, 144, 414.
Damnation, eternal, A. 144. — See
Judgment.
DaniEus, B. ii. 204, 226, 242, 437.
Danasi, B. 433.
Daniel. A. 281.
Dannhauer, B. ii. 447.
Danov, B ii. 364.
David Joris, B. ii. I."i9.
Davidis, Franz, B. ii. i97. 257. 420.
David de Dinanto, B. 301 ; ii. 29.
Death of Clirist. Synoptics, A. 58 ff. ;
James, ti5 ; Peter, 70. Principle of
repentance :— Clement of Rome, 98.
Principle of love iu the world, 107
474
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
compare Ignatius, 113. Jewish
Christians, 115. Higher significance
first seen in the light of the dignity
of His person: — Barnahas, 115;
Polj'carp, 117; Papias, 136; Sibyl-
line Books, 151 ; Test. xii. Patr. 156
f. ; Ceisus, 162 f. Significance
thereof for the liturgical elements of
the Church, 168; for the festivals,
172 fF., 175. Lack of doctrinal
significance in the Pseudo-Clemen-
tines, 212; with the Ebionitic Mon-
archians, ii. 18. Importance to
Marcion, 230, compare 240 and
245. Epistle to Diognetus, 262.
Justin, 266 ff. Clemens Alex. 299.
Irenajus, 317. Praxeas, ii. 22. Special
prominence given to it by Tertullian,
in opposition to Docetisra, ii. 57 ff. ;
Hippolytus, ii. 93 ; Cyprian, ii. 101
ff. ; Origen, ii. 141, compare 145,
333. Special effects of, according to
Arnobius, ii. 190 ff. Relation to
Christ's appearance as a teacher of
virtue ; — Lactantius, ii. 204, View
of, as a sacrifice ; — Eusebius of
Caesarea, ii. 225. Universal signi-
ficance ; — Athanasius, ii. 251, com-
pare 342. Its natural necessity (?)
in Athanasius, ii. 411 ; Apollinaris,
ii. 386 f. Hilary — the death of
Christ a deed, ii. 410 ; ethically ne-
cessary, ii. 412. Nicholas of Cusa and
Liitkemann, B. 42 f. ; ii. 394, 446.
Luther, ii. 85 ff.— 5eeThe Tubingen
Divines, Suffering, Satisfaction.
Deism, A. 88, 345. In the fourth cen-
tury, ii. 287 ; B. ii. 357 ff.
Deity of Christ. James, A. 65 ; Ep.
of Jude, 71. — 115 ff. Significance
thereof for Christian faith in general;
■ — ^Clemens Romanus, 98 ; Test. xii.
Patr. 156. Arrived at by Jewish
Christians, until a.d. 150, in two
ways, both starting from eschatology,
161. As general belief of Christians
in first epoch, witnessed by Ceisus,
162 ; bv Montanism, 397 ; by letters
of HadVian and Pliny, 165 f. Pre-
supposed by the liturgical elements
of Christianity, 167 ff. ; accepted by
the Nazurenes, 193, compare 434
f. ; assailed by the Clementine
Homilies, 212 ff. Testimony in the
Ep. ad Diognetnm, 261, compare
263. Proof in Justin, 265, compare
273 f. View of Clemens Alex. 295,
compare 300. More distinct fixation
thereof in Irenreus, 305 ; with in-
clination to a kind of Patrij)assian-
ism, 309 ff. Not desired by the
Alogi, ii, 4. Lowering thereof by
the Christological heresies in favour
of the monarchy of God ; — Theodo-
tians, ii. 7. Artemon, the divinity of
Christ, His virtue, ii. 9. Paul of
Samosata ; — The deity of Christ, the
indwelling divine power, ii. 10 ; im-
personal, ii. 12. Christian-religious
interest in the doctrine of the deity
of Christ amongst Patripassians, ii.
2, 15 ff. Praxeas, ii. 21 ff. Her-
mogenes, ii. 25. Noetus, ii. 26 ff.
Beron, exinanition of God, a^ra^ocDi,
ii. 29-35. Further development by
Beryll : God's existence in Christ
already a ■nfnypaiph in God. Fore-
runner of Sabellius, ii, 45. Testi-
mony of Caius, ii. 47. Tertullian,
ii. 48 ; against the Patripassians,
ii. 59 ff. ; distinct fixing of the deity
of Christ by the application of the
term, Son of God, ii. 58-79. Flatten-
ing of his view by Novatian, ii.
80 ff. Abstract separation of the
divine and human aspects of Christ
by Hippolytus, ii. 85, 99, 107.
Cyprian's practical view, ii. 101.
Origen's further development by his
doctrine of the eternal generation,
ii. 109. Sabellius' doctrine of a tem-
porary manifestation of the power of
God, ii. 167. School of Origen ; —
Pierius, ii. 171. Gregory Thauma-
turgus, ii. 171. Theognostus, ii.
174. Vagueness and obscurity of
Dionysius of Alexandria, ii. 178.
Disregard or flattening down of the
complete deitj' of Christ by the
Latins, Arnobius and Miuucius
Felix, ii. 190-192 ; Lactantius, ii.
192, compare 205, 210. Decrees of
Antioch, ii. 198. Eusebius of
Ctesarea, ii. 226. JMarcellus, ii. 278
ff. Arius, ii. 235. Athanasius, ii.
257, 294. Apollinaris, ii. 364, 376,
383. Hilary, ii. 408 ft'. Has the
predominance from the Council of
Chalcedon to the Reformation in the
Greek and Romish Church, B. 4 ff.
Reason thereof, 8. Consequence
thereof, impersonality of the hu-
manity, a new form of Docetism,
268. Equilibrium of the divine and
human in Christ at the Reformation,
9 ; ii. 78 ff. Attacks on it by the
Antitrinitarians in the sixteenth
century-, ii. 158, 250 f. ; in the seven-
teenth and eighteentn centuries, ii.
349 ff., 358 ; iii. 20 f.—2'i.— Compare
Logos, Son, Person of Christ.
Dclitzsch, B. ii. 312, 314 ; iii. 197, 230,
232, 329, 330.
Demiurge, A. 79, 236, 437 £.
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
475
Determinism. B. ii. 240 ff., 355 if.
Deurliotf, B. iii. 13.
Devil, A. 117, 266, 314 ; compare 437,
447. 463 ; ii. 250, 255, 276, 388, 501.
Diaconate, A. 359 ff.
Didacus Stella. B. 365.
Didvmus, B. 51.
Dietlein, A. 444.
Disrnity of Christ, Artemon, A. ii. 9 ;
Paul of Samosata, ii. 12 ; Beron ii.
30 ; Zeno, ii. 189 ; Arius, ii. 239 ff.
Diodorus of Tarsus, A. ii. 387, 523 ;
B. 25, 30.
Diognetum, Epistola ad; — Age and
authorship, A. 374 ff. ; characteris-
tics and doctrine, 260 ff., 314.
Dionysius of Alexandria ; — polemic
against Sabellius, A. ii. 170. Doc-
trine, ii. 176 ff., 194 ff.
Dionysius Areopagita, A. 119; B.
132, 138, 144, 157, 163, 236, 244,
279 ; ii. 23.
Dionysius Bar Salabi, B. 422.
Dionysius of Corinth, A. 119,457.
Dionysius of Rome, A. ii. 181 ff., 194.
Dioscurus, B.80. 96. 122.
Dippel, B. ii. 310, 376 ; iii. 16.
Docetism, A. 17, 61, 69, 86, 111 f., 113,
366. Combated by Ignatius, 110 f. ;
Hermas, 132 f. Necessary conver-
sion into Ebionism, 147, compare
251. Distinction from Ebionism,
188. In the New Testament Apo-
cryphal writings, 422. Influence on
the festivals, 177. In the writing
of history, 82. Of the Gnostics, 229 ;
of Marcion, 240. The truth in it,
and its justification in the develop-
ment of the doctrine of the Church,
252. Overthrow by the Church doc-
trine of the Logos, 253 ff. Com-
bated by Justin, 275 ; IreiiiEUS, 320
f . ; Clemens Alexandr. (?) 296;
Monarchians, ii. 4. Refutation by
Tertullian, ii. 50 ff. In the Christo-
logy of Origen, ii. 337 ; of the Ari-
ans", ii. 346. In the doctrine of the
conversion of the Logos, ii. 357 ;
Apollinaris, ii. 391 ff.'; Hilary (?),
ii. 402, 415 ff. Unintentional Do-
cetism of several Church teachers,
ii. 373, compare 423 ff. Remainders
thereof during the whole period of
the predominance of the divine as-
pect, B. 8, 13, 267. i'eter Lombard,
314 f.; Thomas Aquinas and Scotus,
353. Compare ii. 126 ff., 185 f.,
215 f.; B. iii. 255 f., 306 f.
Duds, on the incarnation, B. iii. Ajij).
430.
Dodwell, A. 419.
Dwdcrlein, B. iii. '264.
Dogma, relation of, to the religious
consciousness, A. 74. — Compare He-
resy.
Dogrnas, history of; its task, A. 48, 82,
94 f. ; distinction from the history of
philosophy, 74 f.
Domnus of Rome, B. 185.
Dorotheus, B. 27.
Dorscheus, B. 369.
Dositheus, A. 102.
Doxology, A. 172.
Dreier, B. ii. 304.
Druses, B. 433.
Dualism, of the oriental religions, A. 11
ff. ; of Heathendom. 78 ff., 186 f., com-
pare 224; ofPhilo, 28, 186; of Gno-
sticism and Montanism, 148 ff. Neo-
Platonic of Celsus, 164. Sabellius
and Herraogenes, ii. 472 ; Arius, ii.
238 ft'., compare 288. Of the Fathers
at the Council of Chalcedon, B. 113.
Duality of natures in Christ, A. 699 f.,
83 f."; ii. 97, 364, 383, .399, 421 ft'.,
438. Controverted by Monophysites,
Schwenckfeld, Socinians, Theopa-
schites ; Am.alrich of Bena ; Serve-
tus ; which see. Modern philosophy,
B. iii. 100 ff. The diflereut modes
of their union ; see Unio. The du-
ality of the natures within the Unio,
not'a doctrine of the Church prior to
the Council of Chalcedon, B. 108.—
See Natures.
Duality of wills in Christ, A. ii. 421.-^
See Dyotheletism, Monotheletism.
Duesterdieck, A. 364.
Duncker, A. 307 ft'.
Duns Scotus, B. 281, 306, 339, 373 ; ii.
33, 260.
Durandus, de S. Portiano, B. 371.
Dyophysitism, A. ii. 425. Cyrill's op-
position to, B. 58. Decision in its
favour at Chalcedon against Euty-
ches, 101. Opposed by Menno Simo-
nis, ii. 152 ft". Servetus, 161 ft'.;
Schwenckfeld, 144 ff. ; Socinians,
250 ff. ; the Christ61ogy of recent
philosojihical systems.
Dyotheletism, B. 164 ff., 184 ft'., i93 ff.,
228. The Lutheran Christology not
favourable thereto at first ; compare
ii. 179, 193.
Easter, festival of, A. 173.
Ehcd Jesus, B. 395.
Eher, Paul, B. ii. 418.
Ebionitcs, A. 187 ff.
Ebioiiitish views of Chritit presently
circulated in England, B. iii. App.
446.
Ebionitism, A. 18. 61. 94 ff., 345, 357,
368, 3S4. In the writing of the his-
476
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
tory of the (Jop;nia, 82 ; in Rome, 1 1 8
ff. Conception of God and the
Holy Spirit, 396. Relation of Hege-
sippus to, 137 ff. The hypothesis
of the Ebionitism of the primitive
Church tested in the witnesses ad-
duced in its favour; Hegesippus,
Eschatology, 230 If., compare 61,
65,69,86. Testimony of Celsus and
Judaism against the hypothesis, 164,
167. Ground of its rise, 146. In the
New Testament Apocryphal writ-
ings, 422. Its relation in general to
Christology, 188 f . ; to Baptism and
Lord's Supper, 167 ; to the festivals,
177 fiF. Of the Nazarenes, 192 ; of
Cerinthus, 195-202. Gnosticizing
Ebionitism of the Clementine Homi-
lies, 203 ff. Its truth and significance
in the doctrinal development of the
Church, 218, compare 252. Over-
throw thereof by the Church doc-
trine of the Logos, 253 ff. Position
at the time of Justin, 275. Anta-
gonism of Irenffius, 312, compare
322. Revival by Monarchians TTheo-
dotus and his school, Artemon, Paul
of Samosata), ii. 6 ff. ; conflict of
Church therewith, ii. 47. Ebionitic
assonances in Origen, ii. 143, com-
pare 135. Sabellius, ii. 165, com-
pare 149 ff. Marcellus, ii. 283 ff.
Photinus, ii. 285. In the doctrine of
the conversion of the Logos, ii. 357,
compare Beron, ii. 29 ff., 34. — See
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Adoptian-
ism, Scotus, B. 351 ; Socinus, ii. 250
ff.— iii. 27, 29-69.
Ebrard, B. ii. 78 ; iii. 222, 229, 231, 237,
253, 312, 329, 330.
Eckermann, B. iii. 270.
Eckhart, B. ii. 3.
Edelmann. B. ii. 376, 378; iii. 13, 16.
Edwards, B. ii. 359.
Edwards, Dr Jon., of Cambridge, on
Socinianism, B. iii. App. 352.
Eglin, Raph. S., B. ii. 419.
Ehrenfeuchter, B. iii. 247, 312, 327.
Ehrlich, A. ii. 10, 488.
Elias, B. 154.
Eiipantus of Toledo, B. 248, 250, 262.
p:ikesaites, A. 186, 190, 203, 396.
Emanatism, A. 16, 26. Philo, 41 ;
Cerinthus, 198 f. ; Gnosis, 230 ff. ;
Manichajism, ii. 466 ff.
Emlyii, his Arian views and publica-
tions, B. iii. App. 357.
Engelhardt, B. 236, 422.
P^nhuber, B. 39.5.
Enocl), Book of. — See Henoch.
Ephesijs, Council of; uncertainty as
to its dogmatical import, B. 75.
Ephraem, A. ii. 514 ; B. 28
Epigonus, A. ii. 26.
Epiphanius. A. 178, 191, 202, 344, 442.
On Marcion's Codex, 453. Note on
the Gnostics in general and their
writings, 249 ff. — ii.4; compare Note
1. — ii. 28, 154, 474. Judgment on
Marcellus, ii. 502; Fhotinus, ii. ."jOa;
the Arians, ii. 347. ApoUinaris, ii.
351, 365, 387, 412; B. 58.
Epiphany, feast of, A. 175. Gregory
Thaumaturgus' discourse at the feast
of, ii. 479.
Episcopate, A. 356. Catholic idea of,
367. Position in Ignatius, 104 If.,
compare 359 ff . ; Polycarp, 371 ff.
Hermas' polemic against, 380 ff.
Divine institution in Clementine
Homilies, 208. Position and charac-
teristics in relation to Gnosticism
and Montanism, 254 f. Influence on
the formation of the canon, 259 f.
Episcopius, Sim., B. ii. 349.
Episcopius, his views on the early
Church. B. iii. App. 346.
Erbkam, B. ii. 144
Erigena, B. 281, S09.
Ernesti, B. iii. 25.
Ernesti (L.), B. iii. 314.
Eschatology, its significance for the
Person of Christ in the Synoptics, A.
58 If. ; general significance for His
person and work, 146 ft'., compare
161. Clement, 101 f. ; Barnabas,
114; Hermas, 385; Gregory Nazi-
anzen, ii. 344, 512. The Christian
hope in Him who was to come grew
out of faith in Him who had already
come, 145.
Esing, A. 434.
Esra, Fourth Book of, A. 418.
" Essays and Reviews," doctrine of,
respecting Christ, B. iii. App. 453.
Essenism, A. 190, 401.
Etherius, B. 248, 264.
Ethics. — See Theodore of Mopsuestia,
Adoptians, Duns Scotus ; further
B. ii. 249, 342, 351 f., 365 f., 368 f.,
381 ; iii. 20, 30 ff., 64 f.
Eudaemonism, B. ii. 353. — See Wolfs
age.
Eudoxians, A. ii. 263.
Eugenius, B. 184.
Eulogius of Alexandria, B. 171, 414,
415.
Eunomius, A. ii. 263, 282, 517.
Euscbius of Ca;sarea, A. 135 ; on
Hegesippus, 138, 378, 408 ; on
Agrippa, 457. — ii. 171. His theo-
logy and Christology, a middle thing
between Arius and Athanasius, ii.
216 fl'., compare 269, 319. Ground
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUSrES.
477
of his wavering between the two, ii.
270. Tritheist or Arian ? ii. 222
compare 490 ff. Ditference from
Origen, ii. 223. Controverted by
Marcellus, ii. 270. — B. ii. .349.
Eusebius of DoryliEum, B. 83.
Eusebius of Nicomedia, A. ii. 246.
Eustathius, A. ii. 242. Attack on the
Arian doctrine of the soulless body
of Christ, ii. 347. Doctrine and
writings, ii. 372, .518 ff., 522 ff.— B.
387, 416.
Euthyraius Zigabenus. B. 160, 228.
Eutyches, B. 83, 432 ; ii. 100, 102, 235.
Eutychians, B. 133.
Eutychianism, B. 443.
Evagrius, B. 122.
Evil ;— Philo, A. 36 f. ; Clementines,
437 ; Irenaaus, 314 ft'. — Compare Gno-
sis.
Ewald, H., B. iii. 222, 224.
Exaltation of Christ, A. 59 ff., 125,
131. Hegesippus, 141 ft"., 147 f.,
compare 406 ; Sibylline Books, 150,
compare 415 f . ; Test. xii. Patr. 156
f. ; Celsus, 164 ; Apelles, 244, com-
pare ii. 51 ; Justin, 277 ; Marcion,
325, 430 ; Origen, ii. 141, 225 ; Eu-
sebius of Cajsarea, ii. 224 ; Marcellus,
ii. 281. Influence on the humanity
of Christ; — Athanasius, ii. 509 ft'.;
Gregory of Nyssa, ii. 345; Apolii-
iiaris, ii. 370-372; Hilary, ii. 407,
414 ft'. — Co7«pare States, doctrine of;
Omnipresence ; Majesty.
Exinanition ; — See States, doctrine of,
and Theopaschitisra ; — distinction
from the incarnation, B. ii. 97, 302.
Brought about by means of a relative
resting or retractio on the part of the
Logos ; — Scotus, B. 345 ; Luther, ii.
91, 97 ; Melanchthon, ii. 173 f., 195 f. ;
Chemnitz, ii. 204 f. ; J. Gerhard and
most of the Lutheran dogmaticians,
with the theologians of Giessen,
ii. 303, 431 S.— Compare Reinhard,
iii. 265. lleccnt Tlieologians, iii.
249 f.
Facundus of Hermiane, A. ii. 519, 520.
Faith ; — James, A. 62. Relation to
love; — Polycarp, 117. The leading
force in the historical process of the
Church, 61, 157, 348. Distinction
from dogma, 74 f. Substance in the
Clementine Homilies, 209. Princi-
ple of divine-iuiman life; — Apolli-
naris, ii. 388 ft". Unity with Christ
by faith ;— Hilary, ii. 417.— B. ii. 58
ft"., 116 ft".
Faith, tiie different place given to it in
thiu, as compared with lust century,
B. iii. App. 437 ; effect of the re-
vived doctrine of, on Socinianism,
App. 439.
Faith, rule of. — See Regula FJdei,
Symbolum Apostolicum.
Fasting; — Hermas, A. 129. On Sun-
day, 174.
Father, determination of, by Praxeas
and Noetus, A. ii. 28, compare 438 ;
TertuUian, ii. 74 f. ; Origen, ii. 130.
The Father stands to him for the
incommunicable in God, ii. 126.
Sabellius, relation of the Monas to
the Father, ii. 157. Arius, ii. 239.
According to Arius, identical with
the ayivinTov. avapx'^t with the first
cause in relation to the world, ii. 234,
295. The Nicene Fathers, on the
contrary, conceive God as eternally
positing Himself; God as positing =
the Father, who eternally begets the
Son, ii.295 ff. Marcellus,'ii. 270, 275,
In what sense the Father is the foun-
tain of Godhead, B. iii. App. 367. —
See God, Trinity, Logos, Son, Spirit.
Fatum, A. 77.
Fecht, B. ii. 308, 310.
Federal theology, B. ii. 343, 357.
Felgenhauer, B. ii. 313.
Felix, B. 95.
Felix of Urgellis, B. 248, 254.
Fend, B. ii. 376.
Festival of the Birth and Baptism of
Christ, A. 175 ff.
Feuerborn, B. ii. 447.
Fichte, B. iii. 31, 95, 98 ff., 100, 272.
Fichte (junior), B. iii. 160.
Firmilian. A. ii. 435.
Fischer (K. Ph.), B. iii. 160, 170, 237,
298, 312, 328.
Flacius lUyricus, B. ii. 147.
Flaeians, B. ii. 196.
Flatt, B. iii. 24, 2.'), 28.
Flavian, B. 83, 84.
Fleming, Robert, B. ii. 329.
Flemmer, A. 378.
Florinum, Epist. ad. A. 117. 371, 378.
Foek, A. ii. 39 ft'. ; B. ii. 420.
Fiirster, B. ii. 314.
Fowler, B. ii. 315, 329.
Franck, Seb., B. ii. 147, 161.
Francke, B. ii. 367.
Franken, Christian, B. ii. 257, 420.
Franz, Davidis, 1>. ii. 197.
Frauenstiidt, B. iii. 163, 164, 171.
Freeh t, B. ii. 146.
Freedom, of Ciiristians; — James, A.
64. Idea of, in the Clementine Homi-
lies, 207 ff. ; Irenaius, 315; Origen, ii.
140; Athanasius, ii. 3.')0 ; Apolli-
naris, ii. 359, 363, 393 ff. ; Hilary, ii.
413, 427. Whether Christ had tree-
478
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
dom, B. 33, 35. Maximus and Ana-
stasius defend the freedom of Christ
as absolute power of spirit, 195 f.
Gnomic will of Christ, according to
tlip. Monotheletes, 193 f. John of
Damascus leaves only an human de-
velopment of the body, 218 ; his
doctrine of freedom, 208 f., 220.
Augustine allows no freedom oi'
choice in Christ, 78. Socinians, ii.
254 f.; the Reformed Church, ii. 342 ;
the Arminians, ii. 351. — See Will of
Christ, and Anthropology.
Fricker, B. iii. 276.
Gabler, B. iii. 164.
Gajanus, B. 142.
Gajanites, B. 130.
Galatinus (P.), B. iii. 311.
Gallus (N.), B. ii. 147, 175.
Gass, A. ii. 508.
Gastrell, Francis, B. ii. 329.
Gaunilo, A. 215.
Gaupp, B. ii. 348 ; iii. 231, 312, 329, 330.
Gelasius, A. ii. 217, 449, 519; B. 135.
Gellius, Faber, B. ii. 152.
Gelzer, B. iii. 74, 274.
Generation of God. Transference
thereof to the relation of the Logos
to the Father ; — Justin, A. 274. Fur-
ther development by the succeeding
teachers of the Church, especially by
Origen, ii. 109. Reaction of Asterius
and the Semi-Arians in the fourth
century, ii. 270 ff.
Gentile (V.), B. ii. 168 f.
George of Arbela, B. 395.
Georgii, A. 327.
Georgius Gemistius (Pletho), B. 246.
Gerhard (J.), B. 369 ; ii. 314, 418, 433,
435, 440, 447 ; iii. 270.
Gersou, B. 376 ; ii. 201.
Gesner, B. ii. 314.
Gfrorer, A. 2, 327, 341, 416.
Gieseler, A. 133, 297, 364, 369, 373,
386, 398, 416, 467 ; B. 120, 130, 135.
Giessen, theologians of ; compared
with those of liibingen, B. ii 293 if.
Gilbert de la Porret, B. 443 f.
Giordano, Bruno, B. 247 ; li. 38.
Glanville, B. ii.315.
Glass, B. ii. 314.
Glory of Christ ; — liegesippus, A. 141 ;
Origen, ii. 141 ; Marceilus, ii. 277 ;
Eustathius, ii. 519 ; Apollinaris and
Gregory of Nyssa, ii. 372.— Conijjare
Exaltation, Majesty.
Gnosis, Gnosticism, A. 41, compare
340,63, 77, 89,354; Barnabas, 113;
James, 63 ; 2d Epistle of Peter, 72 ;
Epist. ad Diognctum, 260, 376. Fun-
damental intention in common witli
Montanism, 149. Relation to Chi*
liasm, 198, 397. General charac-
teristics, 220 flF. Christology, 228 ff.
Consequence thereof, 246. Influence
on the doctrine of the Logos, 257 f.
Explanation of the Fall, 260. Con-
nection with Sabellianism, ii. 17.
Affinity with Arianism, ii. 346. — See
Dionysius, Erigena, and Theosophy,
God, and Conception of God. Necessity
to conceive Him as revealing Him-
self, A. 2. Essence of, in Hebraism,
15 ff. Philo's conception of, 20, 30
(compare 338), 38. Love, first in
Christianity, 79, compare 354. Om-
nipotence, wisdom, righteousness,
87. Monarchianism, Patripassian-
ism, Sabellianism, 87 ff. Father
Creator revealing Himself through
the Son in the Old and New Testa-
ments; — Clement, 96 f . ; Ignatius,
112; Epistle to Diognetus, 376. Cog-
nizahleness of God, according to
Justin, 379. Hypostatic distinctions
in Hermas, 124 ff., 394 ff". Influ-
ence of Christological defects on the
Ebionitic conception of God, 195 f.
Identity of God and the Holy Spirit,
with the Nazarenes and PLbionites,
434 ff., compare 388 ff. Conceived
as a person, but decomposed by
dualistic and emanatistic ideas,
mainly represented as righteous-
ness, in theClementine Homilies, 203,
compare 226. View in the Recogni-
tions, 444 ff'. Gnostics, 225 ff., com-
pare 304 ; physical conception of
God of their heathenish monism and
dualism, 224. God as Love ; — Mar-
cion, 227 ; Epist. ad Diognetum,
261 ff. Justin ; — distinction from
Philo, 4 58, compare 270 ff. Athe-
nagoras, 284 ff. ; Irenreus, 304 ff.,
314 ff. Influence of the Christology
of the second and third centuries on
the transformation of the conception
of God, ii. 2 ff. ; i. 124. Monarchians,
ii. 3, 26 ff". TertuUian against Mo-
narchians, ii. 74 ff. Passibility of God
with the Patripassians ; — Praxeas,
ii. 22 ff. ; Noetus, ii. 26 ff., 150 ff. ;
Beron, ii. 31 ; Beryll, ii. 38 ff. De-
velopment of the doctrine of God
in Sabellianism, ii. 149, cf. 165. Im-
mutability of God with the Church
teachers of the third century, ii. 455.
Partially physical view ofTertulliau
and Novatian, and its defects, ii. 78,
compare i. 450, ii. 83. Approxima-
tion of IIi])polytus to Pantheism, ii.
84 ff., cf. 72. Further development
through Origen, ii. 108 11". Com
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
470
municable and incommnnicable ele-
ments in God, ii. 126 ff., 464. Ab-
solute simplieity ; — Laetamius, ii.
209, compare 214. Eusebius of
Ctesarea, his conception, ii. 217
ff. ; Ariiis, ii. 233 ; the Arians,
ii. 267; Semi-Arians, ii. 269 ; Aca-
cius, ii. 269 ; Cyvill, ii. 269. Further
development by the Church teachers
of fourth century, ii. 290. 291 ff., 322
ff. ; Athanasius, ii. 248 ff., 304;
Marcellus, ii. 282 ff., cf. 273 ; Gre-
gory Nazianzen, ii. 297, 304 ; Gre-
gory of Nyssa, ii. 311 ff. God as
substance in Patripassianism and
Sabellianism, ii. 17. God as the
highest causality (of the world) in
Arianism, ii. 294. God as absolute
self-positing causality in the Nicene
doctrine of the Trinity, B. 3 f., 39 f.,
68 f. ; Augustine, 396"ff. ; Council of
Chalcedon, 112, 114-116, 412; see
Barsudaili. Fseudo-Dionysius, l.')7
ff. ; see Mysticism, 235 f., 238 ff.,
243, 245. Scotus Erigena, Anselm,
and Thomas Aquinas, 278-288, 295
ff. ; Thomas and Scotus, 304 ff. The-
ologia Germanica, ii. 21 ; Luther, ii.
77 ; Zwingli and Calvin, ii. 136 ff. ;
Schwenckfeld, ii. 147. View of the
Confessions, ii. 262 ff. God the hy-
postasis of all believers, 427 ff. ; ii. 1
ff. His intensive infinitude, accord-
ing to Augustine, 396 ff. ; Luther, ii.
128 f.; Brenz,ii. 181; Nicolai, ii. 274
f. Incommunicable, according to the
Scholastics, 306. Communicable,
190 ; according to Luther, ii. 77 ff.,
87 ff. ; Socinus, ii. 259 f. — See Trinity,
Father, Son, Spirit, Logos.
Goebel (M.), B. ii. 155.
Goelicke, B. ii. 461.
Goeschel, B.iii.l24, 161, 164, 168,237,
269. Estimate of, iii. 171.
Goodwin, B. ii. 330.
Grabe, A. 170, 236,415, 419, 429, 433;
ii. 16; B. ii. 358.
Grant, B. 393.
Grapius, B. ii. 309, 314, 356, 357.
Grauer, All)ert, B. ii. 446.
Gregorius, A. ii. 495.
Gregory Nazianzen, on Arianism, A.
ii. 262. Confutation thereof, ii. 296.
Further development of the doctrine
of the Trinity, ii. 304. Total image
of Christ, ii. 343 ff. Against tiie
ineiiuality of the Logos with Him-
self in the doctrine of A])ollinaris,
ii. 383. Christology, ii. 383, 424 ff. ;
B. 95, 9fi, 216.
Gregory of Nyssa, on Sabellianism,
A. ii. 158, 264, 268, 309. Doctrine
of the Trinity, ii. 310 ff. Total
image of Christ, ii. 512 ff. Reproach
against ApoUinaris, ii. 367, 384 ff.,
529: B. 36, 175, 391.
Gregory Thaumaturgus, A. ii. 34, 435,
450, 475. Doctrine and writings,
ii. 171, 479.
Gregory of Tours, B. 143.
Gregory of Valentia, B. 368 ; ii. 4 8.
449. "
Gretser, B. 423.
Gribaldo, B. ii. 168 f.
Griesbach, B. iii. 265.
Grossmann, A. 327.
Grotius, Hugo, B. ii. 353.
Growth, true, of the humanity, B. 4.^
Scotus, 343 f. ; Luther, ii. 89 f . •
Zwingli and Calvin, ii. 125, 220 f.
This progress subsequently obscured
in the case of Luther, ii. 125, 139.
Doctrine of the Suabians, ii. 214.
Chemnitz represents growth as
mediated through the resting or
retractio of the Logos, ii 204, 213.
So also J. Gerhard and tlie most, ii.
432 ff. The Tubingers through the
xivuiris of the humanity as exalted in
the Unio, ii. 281 f. ^ The Giessen
theologians also have no divine-
human growth, ii. 285, 287. Grow-
ing independence of the humanity,
ii. 365 f., 368 ; iii. 18. 20. Growth also
of the Unio itself, iii. 256 ff. Kant,
iii. 30 f. Denial of true growth,
127 f., 147. The better older doc-
trine obscured, 141 f.
Gruner, B. iii. 23 26. 264.
Gueder, B. ii. 370, 453 ; iii. 232.
Giinther, B. iii. 232, 301 ff., 329,
Guericke, B. ii. 345.
Guldenschaf, B. ii. 29.
Habersack, B. ii, 367.
Hadrian, A. 121, 191, 197, 275, 426.
Epist. ad Servian. 165.
Ilaenek, A. ii. 87, 217, 439, 448, 487,
Haienreffer, B. ii. 421, 434,
Haferung, B. ii. 366, 461.
Hagenbach, B. 92 ; iii. 232.
liahn (U.), A. 453; ii. 10, 481. 487
488 ; B. 302 f.
Hahn (G. L), B. ii. 144.
Hahn (Ph. Matth.), B. iii. 276.
Ilahn (L.), B. iii. 329, 331.
Hamann, B. iii. 73 ff.
Ilamberger, B. iii. 277. 312, 328.
Hanne, A. 62; B. iii. 164.
Ilardenbcrg (Alb.). B. ii. 412.
Hare (Julius Ch.), B. iii. 232.
Harinasius, B. 433.
Ilarinoniiis, A. 453.
llartknoch, B. ii. 108, 417.
480
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Ilasc, B iii. 59, 63, 222.
llasse, B. 441, 444 ; iii. 204.
Hawarden, Dr, his modf. of silencing
Clarke, B. iii. App. 392.
Head. Christ, head of humanity ; — Ig-
natius, A. 105; Test. xii. Fatr. 155;
Ju.^tin, 267 ; Epist. ad Diognetum,
262 ; Irenasus, 465 f. ; Clemens Alex.
299; TertuUian, ii. 65 ff. ; Hippo-
lytus, ii. 97 ff. ; Origen, ii. 333 ff. ;
Cyprian, ii. 100 f. ; Eusebius of
Cajsarea, ii. 225; Athanasius, ii.
339 ; Gregory of Nyssa, ii. 512 ff. ;
Ciirysostora, Theodoret, and others,
ii. 515 ff. ; Apollinaris, ii. 363 ff. ;
Hilarius, ii. 417 ff. B. iii. 233.—
Compare King, High Priest, Adam,
Person of Christ, Mystical Christo-
logy.
Heart. Cultus of the Most Holy
Heart, B. ii. 450.
Heathenism, its general character,
Oriental and Occidental, A. 4, 11 f.,
78.
Heavenly humanity, B. ii. 152 ff.,
297, 325.
Hebenstreit, B. 4 ; ii. 460.
Heberle, B. ii. 76, 161, 164, 168, 403.
Hebraism, A. 13 ff.
Hebrews, Epistle to the. Relation to
Clemens Rom. A. 356 f. ; to the
Test, xii, Patr. 159; to the Jewish
Christian sects, 189.
Hebrews, Gospel of the, A. 139, 200
(compare 434), 428 • of the Naza-
renes, 395 ; of Eve, 249 ; of the
Manichaaans and Judas Iscariot,
250; Nicodemi et Infantiae, 422 ; of
Philip, 2.50 ; of the Fulfilling, 249 ;
of the Egyptians, ii. 16 f. The
Eternal Gospel of the Gnostics.
Heerbrand, B. ii. 418.
Hefele, A. 364, 375.
Hegel, B. iii. 208, 269, 273, 300. Hegel
and his school, iii. 121 ff., 211, 217,
300.
Hegelmaier, B. iii. 24.
Hegesippus, A. 137 ff. Unjustly
charged with Ebionism, 138 ff.
Christologv, 140 ff.
Heidegger, B. ii. 338, 341, 343, 346,
348, 360.
Heilmann, B. ii. 364, 366.
Heinichen, A. ii. 11, 435.
Heiuius (J.), B. ii. 348.
Hell, Christ's descent into ; — Marcion,
A. 241 ; Justin, 277. Significance
for the human soul of Christ in the
Symbolum Apostolicum, 278. Cle-
mens Alex. 302. Irenseus, 321.
Hippolytus, ii. 93. Cyprian, ii. 101.
£ustathiu8, ii. 518 ff. Luther. B.
ii. 388 f. Calvin, ii. 221. Whether
Christ was man during this period,
ii. 307 f. Reformed doctrine, ii. 342.
The Arniinians, ii. 350 f.
Hellenism, A. 6 ff. ; ii. 4. Influence
on the free development of Christo-
logy, 186 ff. Hellenic doctrine of
the Logos, 120.
Helvidius, B. ii. 312.
Henke, B. iii. 265, 270.
Henoch, Book of, A. 150,409. Chnsto-
logy ; — the Son of man merely ab-
stract personality apart from deity,
417.
Henry, B. Ii. 175.
Heracleon, A. 236, 237, 238, 448, 452.
Heraclius, B. 125, 155, 164, 174, 177,
196.
Herder, B. iii. 51, 73, 74.
Heresy, idea of, and relation to ortho-
doxy, A. 61, 344 ff. Ebionitic, 188.
Distinction of Christological and
Trinitarian, ii. 4.
Hermas, A. 122. Date of the com-
position of the Shepherd, 380 ff.
Characteristics; — forerunner of Mon-
tanism, 384. Christology, 389, 403 f.
Doctrine of the Trinity, 125 ff.,
324 ff.
Hermes, Trisraegistus (of Bessarion),
B. 246.
Hermias, A. ii. 25.
Hermogenes, system of. A. ii. 25 ; iii.
472.
Herrnhuters, A. 94 ; B. ii. 378 ; iii. 1.
Herxheiraer, B. ii. 313.
Hesshus, Tilemann, B. ii. 175, 192,
267, 419.
Hesychasts, B. 236.
Hetzer, B. ii. 159.
Heye, B. iii. 266.
Hierakas, A. ii. 171, 232, 320, 495.
Hieronymus, A. 192, 429, 430; B. 51,
78, 142, 311, 384.
Hieronymus of Dungersheim,B. ii. 391.
Hierotheus, B. 132, 423.
High Priest. Designation of the Logos
in Philo, A. 29, 335. Representa-
tive of the universe, 33. Christ, the
High Priest; — James, 66; Clemens
Rom. 98 ; Ignatius, 359 ; Barnabas,
115; Polycarp, 117. High-priestly
office of Christ : relation to His
office as King and Prophet ; — signifi-
cance for the total work of Christ,
159 f., compare 161. Misunder-
stood by the Jews, 166. Repre-
sented by the forgiveness of sins at
baptism in the Recognitions, 446.
Clemens Alex. 299. Athanasius,
ii. 253.— See Head, Work of Christ,
Substitution.
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
481
Hilary, A. 394 ; ii. 300, 470, 483, 502.
Relation to ApoUinaris, ii. 419 ff.,
523 (compare 356), 515. Character-
istics and Christology, ii. 398 ff. ; B.
35, 129, 311 ; ii. 409.
Hildebrand (Joli.), B. ii. 438.
Hiller, B. iii. 276.
Hippolytns, A. ii. 438, 443. Against
Noetus, ii. 26 ff. Genuineness of the
work against Beron, ii. 438 ff. Con-
ception of God, ii. 72, 83 f. Life,
doctrine and genuineness of his
writings, ii. 448 ff. Distinction from
Tertullian, ii. 85, 88 ; from Sabel-
lianism and Arianism, ii. 88, 90 ;
from Patripassianism, ii. 88 ; from
Origen, ii. 147 f. ; from Methodius.
ii. 174.
Historical significance and manifesta-
tion of Christ ;— Synoptics, A. 57 ;
Peter, 70; Ignatius, 107-110; Bar-
nabas, 113 f. Jewish Christian ten-
dency, 121. Relation to eschato-
logy until a.d. 1.50, 161. How re-
garded amongst Jews : signs of the
second coming of the Messiah, 166.
Valentinus, 229, 231. Justin, 270
ff.— See History of Christ.
History of Christ. Type of the history
of the Church, A. 144. History of
humanity in its principle ;— IrenJEUS,
318. Its momenta are active po-
tences in the production of the same
history in man ; — Hilary, ii. 419.—
See Historic Significance, etc.
Ilobbes, B. ii. 358.
Hoe von Hojnegg, B. ii. 314, 447.
Hofling, A. 167, 359.
Hoffmann, A. 152.
Hoffmann (Daniel), B. ii. 191, 268,
419.
Ilofmann (Melch.), B. ii. 149, 15.5.
Hofmann (C. G.), B. ii. 370.
Hofmann (Von), B. ii. 312, iii. 197,
222, 312, 325, 329, .331.
Hohburg (Chr.), B. ii. .331.
Holiness of God ;— Philo, A. 20 ; ii. 2.
Of Christ, 57, 79.— -See God, Deity
of Christ.
HoUaz, B. ii. .304, 304, 436, 440, 446,
460.
Homoiousia, A. ii. 269.
Homoousia, A. 47, 91. — Compare Atha-
nasius, and Nicenc Synod.
Honorius of Rome, B. 156, 165, 184,
186, 226.
Hoornheck, B. ii. 419, 420.
Hormisdas, B. 126.
Horsley, Bishoj), his remarks on the
prevalent preaching of seventeenth
century, B. iii. App. 404 ; his writings
in opposition to I'ricstlcy, Apji. 413 ;
P. 2. — VO«.. III.
his views respecting the Platonizing
Fathers, App. 417 ; his views re-
specting Ebionites and Nazarenes,
App. 420 ; occasional errors in his
writings, App. 356, 422.
Hospinian (R.), B. ii. 176, 414.
Howe, his Calm and Sober Inquiry
respecting the Trinity, B. iii. App.
360.
Hulsemann, B. ii. 304.
Hugo, Cavellus, B. 339.
Hugo de St Victor, B. 298, 447 ; ii.
329.
Hulsius, ii. 419.
Humanity of Christ, A. 69, 80. Estab-
lished by Ignatius as to the mo-
menta of birth, suffering, and resur-
rection, 110. Hegesippus, 142.
Test. xii. Patr. 422. Adoptianism
of Hermas, 387. Celsus, 163. Na-
zarenes, 194. Cerinthian Ebionites,
201. Clementines, 440 f. The
symbolic presentation of the truth
in Gnosticism, 234. Marcion, 239,
compare ii. 50. Apelles, 244. Doc-
trine of Justin, 275 f., 460. Epist.
ad Diognetum, 263. Clemens Alex.
296 ff. IrenjEus, 319ff. Alogi, ii. 4.
Theodotians, ii. 6 ff. Paul of Samo-
sata, ii. 10, 14. Praxeas, ii. 21 ff.
Hermogenes, ii. 25. Eternal con-
tinuance and dignity of; — Beron, ii.
30. Hippolytus and the Church of
his day, ii. 42, compare ii. 94. Ori-
gen, ii. 142 ff., cf. 335. Sabellius,
ii. 162 ff. Methodius, ii. 175. Zeno,
ii. 189. Arnobius, Docetism, ii. 191.
Decrees of Antioch, ii. 197. Lac-
tantius, ii. 207 ff. Eusebius of
Coesarea, ii. 224. Athanasius, Gre-
gory Nazianzen and of Nyssa,
Basilius, ii. 338-345. Doctrine of
the Arians, ii. 345 ff. Heavenly
humanity of the Corinthian sects,
ii. 352, cf. 362. ApoUinaris' doctrine
of the humanity without voy;, ii. 360 ,
of the heavenlv and eternal human-
ity, ii. 371 ff. Hilary, ii. 414 ff., 419.
The Adamitic not the true humanity,
B. 221 ; ii. 81, 218.— See Body and
Soul.
Humboldt, B. iii. 269.
Humiliation, Christ's state of, as to
His humanity or deity, A. 5t',
131, 156, 164. Hippolytus, ii. 91
Cyprian, ii. 102. Origen, ii. 1.34.
Ethical view of Lactantius, ii. 205.
Arianism, ii. 294. Athanasius, ii
339 ff. Gregory Nazianzen, ii. 343
Chrysostom, ii. 515. Gregory of
Nvssii and ApoUinaris, ii. 369 ff..
374 ff., 378. llilarius ;— eviuniatio
2 H
4:82
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
and assQtntio forma; servilis, ii.
405 ff., 410, 414, 426 f.— Compare.
States, doctiine of; Exinanition.
Hundeshajren, B. iii. 231.
Hunniiis, B. ii. 192,211,270, 314, 419,
435, 438.
Hussev, B ii. 329.
Iluther, A. 364.
Hutter, B. ii. 270, 418.
Hymnology, Psalms, etc., A. 181, 219.
Hypostasis. The pre-existent Son of
God conceived as an hypostasis by
Ilermas, A. 385 f. (see Pre-existence).
Was the Holy Spirit an hypostasis in
the primitive Church ? 389 ff. The
divine in Christ, an hypostasis; —
Gnosticism, 230, compare 451. The
pre-existent Logos ;— Justin, 271 ff.
Theophilus and Tatian, 279 ff.
Hypostatic distinctions in God
slighted in favour of the deity of
Christ during second century ; —
Athenagoras, Clemens Alex., Ire-
naaus, 293. Consequence thereof, ii.
17 ff. Denial of the pre-existence,
and of hypostatical distinctions in
God ; — Paul of Samosata and Sabel-
lius, ii. 12, compare 167. Beryll of
Bostra, ii. 40 ff. Praxeas, ii. 20.
Position of the Church teachers
during the third century, ii. 437.
Their task, to guard the distinction
by fixing the hypostasis of the higher
nature of Christ in God ; — Tertul-
lian, ii. 58, 78 ff. ; Novatian, ii.
81 f . ; Hippolytus, ii. 89; Origen,
ii. 108. Lactantius, essential equa-
lity of the pre-existent hypostasis of
the Son with the Father, ii. 193,
compare 210. Difference of the two
hypostases according to Eusebius of
Caesarea, ii. 221. Result of the one-
sidedness of the Church's doctrine
during the third century ; the sub-
ordinatianism of the fourth century —
Ariu** ; taslc of the fourth century,
ii. 227, compare 397. Insignificance
of the pre-existent hypostasis in the
system of Arius, ii. 241, of. 261.
Marcellui!, ii. 273, 278. Necessity
of the connection of tire hypostasis
with the deity, ii. 261. Determi-
nation of this idea in the divine
essence in distinction from tlie
human personality, 289 ; ii. 40.
Basil, ii. 310. Athanasius, ii 422.
Distinction from ouricc, Gregory of
Nyssa, ii. 312 ff. ; compare ou(ria.
More precise definition of tliis word
by the Ciiurch teachers of tlie fourth
century, ii. 325, compare 329, 508.
Aiioilinaris, ii. 359.
Hypsistarians, B. 383.
Idas, B. 76.
Ignatius, A. 102, 220, 415. His ten-
dency predominantly practical ; doc-
trine, 103 ff., 358. Genuineness of
the shorter recension of his Epistles,
364, 372. Joiiannine and Pauline
type, 123. Expression regarding the
sufferings of Christ, 456 f. Reading
of the New Testament, 259. Testi-
mony concerning the observance of
Sundav, 172 f. Christian hymns,
181 ; B. 53.
Ignorance of Christ. Gregory Nazian-
zen, Athanasius, A. ii. 511; Eusta-
thius, ii. 520 ; Ceriuthian Ebionites,
430 f.
Illgen, B. 236.
Image of God, A. 38, 96, 101. Christ
the image of God ; doctrine of the
Arians, ii. 271. Athanasius, ii. 299.
Gregory Nazianzen, ii. 343. Theo-
dore of Mopsuestia, ii. 516.
Impersonality of the human nature, a
consequence of the Symbol of Chal-
cedon, unless it pass over into
Adoptianism, and make the Unio
hypostatica an Unio humanse hypo-
staseos et divina;, B. 116-119, 152 f.,
201 ff., 206. Decision in favour of
the impersonality of the human
nature, 266 f., 319 f., compare 337,
340 ff. ; ii. 201 (Gerson). Occam,
374 ; ii. 50 f. Mystical form of this
doctrine, ii. 2 f., 8 f., 18 f., 24 f.
(note). Luther's conception of the
humanity not impersonal, ii. 80.
Christology of the Lutheran Church,
ii. 432 ft'. Calixt, ii. 304. The
Reformed Church, ii. 306, 340, 341 f.,
347, 434. Curcellseus, ii. 350. Car-
tesians, ii. 335 f. Whilst the genuine
Lutheran doctrine represents the
humanity as constituted personal in
itself through the Logos (an opinion
entertained also by some of the
ReformedtheologianSjii. 341,435 ff.),
the Reformed Christology vacillates
between an Adoptian view and a
view of the humanity as an imper-
sonal organ, ii. 306, 347. Pfaff lets
fall the personification of the hu-
manity, and represents it also as
impersonal in itself, ii. 366 ; it is
therefore a mere organon of the
Logos, a garment, and so forth ,
compare Niliilianism. Hereupon, in
tiie Lutheran Church, a dualistic
view is again taken of the human
and divine essence, and the human-
ity being regarded as complete, is
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
483
posited as personal (as previously by
the Armiiiians, ii. 350). This is
soon followed by a repression of the
divine aspect of Christ, in a Nes-
torian manner; which, because the
loose nature of its connection with
the humanity does not seem to ren-
der it necessary, now takes place in
an antitrinitarian, instead of a
trinitarian form (Sabordinatianism,
Sabellianism, Socinianism, and Ebi-
onism), ii. 250 ff., 379 ; iii. 20 ff.
Incarnation. Idea of the incarnation
of the actual divine contained in no
theologumenon before Christ, A. 42.
The humanification of God, 45, 80,
343 Hellenism, 6. The Triniurti
of the Hindoos, 6 f. Buddhaism, 8.
'J'he idea of the humanification of
God in Christ not derivable from
Heathenism and Judaism ; Polycarp,
117. Barnabas (not an element
of independent significance), 116.
Philo, 35. Hermas, 128. Book of
Henoch, 153. Test. xii. Patr. 156.
Clementine Homilies, 210. Gnostic
point of view, 232, compare 234.
Possibility and necessity thereof,
according to Justin, 264 ; to Ire-
nteus, 313; to Tertullian, ii. 66 ff. ;
Hippolytus, ii. 83 ff., 92 ; Origen, ii.
131 ff. ; Lactantius, ii. 204 ff. ;
Athanasius, ii. 250-253 ; Hilary, ii.
416 ff. Ilelation to the creation of
tlie world, 271. Act of will of the
Father and the Logos ; Justin, 276 ff.
Patripasf^ian inclination of Tatian,
282. Purpose thereof; — Clemens
Alex. 295; Theodoret, ii. 515.
Irenseus : — Act of the Father and
the Son, 311 ; religious and ethical
significance, 312. Mere theophany ;
Praxeas, ii. 21, 24. Noetus, ii. 28 f.
Self-circumscription of God; — Beron,
ii. 33. Doctrine of Tertullian, ii.
65 ff., 71 ff. ; of Hyppolytus, ii. 83 ff.,
89 ff., compare 451 if. Origcn's
triple incarnation, ii. 131-140 ff.
Relation to creation ; — Sabellius, ii.
1.59, cf. 162 ff. Thcognostus, ii. 173.
Relation to the Old Covenant ; —
Victorinus, ii. 486. Attempted
ethical view as incarnation of law ; —
Lactantius, ii. 204 ff. Eusebius of
Caesarea, ii. 224 ff. Connection with
creation according to Athanasius, ii.
250-253. Ground thereof ;—Cyrill
of Jerusalem, ii. 269. Marccllus,
ii. 276 ff. Basilius, ii. 514. Arian-
isni, ii. 346 ff. Eustailiius, ii. 518 ft'.
A result of the dciioicntiaiiou of the
Logo^, ii. 355. Construction of
ApoUinaris, ii. 359 ff., 379. Theory
of Hilarius, ii. 404. Universal sig-
nificance, ii. 417 ff. Necessity there-
of, independently of sin, according
to Theodore of Mopsuestia, B. 45,
388; many others, 360-369; B. iii.
237 ff. ; compare Luther, ii. 76. For
Luther, the God-man, and not mere-
ly God, is the centre of piety, ii. 121.
Nicolas of Cusa, ii. 414 ff. Berthold,
ii. 394 ff. A. Osiander, ii. 109 f.
]Melanchthon,449 f. Calvin, ii. 220.
Brentz, ii. 182. Incarnation of the
person without the nature, with the
emptying of the latter ; — the Anthro-
pornorphites, 63. Leporius, 77, 395 ff.
Similarly the Scholastics, many Re-
formed theologians, and so forth. —
See Head, Person, Unio, Communi-
catio, Christology,
Incommunicableness of the divine at-
tributes, and so forth. — See Concep-
tion of God, Lateran Council, B.
183 f. — Compare John of Damascus,
Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas,
Richard de St Victor. The Jesuits,
333; ii. 193 f.
Innocent III., B. 440, 443, 447.
Inspiration, act of the Logos ; — Theo-
philus, A. 279.
Invisibility of Christ. Ignatius, A,
112. — Compare Tertullian.
IrensEus, A. 303, 355, 373, 378, 393,
406 ; ii. 331. Relation to the organ-
ization of the Church, 362 ff. ; to
Gnosticism, 229, 303. View of
Chiliasm, 409 ff. P:schatology, 408.
Testimony to the faith and the spread
of Christianity, 170. Distinction of
the Ebionites, 192, 428. Judgment
on Cerinthus, 197 ; Marcion, 4.50.
Conception of God, 454. Episcopate,
254 ft". Relation to Montanism.
303; to Monarchianism and Sabel-
lianism, 308 ff. ; to Docetism, 313.
Doctrine of the atonement, 313 ft'.,
318. Identity of Christ's humanitv
with ours,319"ft'. ; thedift'erence, 322 fi.
Lord's Supper, 467. Difference from
Hippolytus on the incarnation, ii. 92 ;
from Tertullian and Origen, ii. 146 ft'.
Resemblance to Victorinus, ii. 48.5.
Distinction from, and rescniidance to
v\l)ollinaris, ii. 375, 392. Hilarv, ii
400. Athanasius, ii. 422.— B. 45.215,
361 ; ii. 134.
Irving, B. iii. 230 ; his views on Christ's
human nature, App. 428.
Lidorus, A. ii. 171.
Jackson, Rev. John, his Arian writ-
ings, B. iii. App. 377.
484
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Jacohi, B. iii. 50.
Jacobites, B. 133, 420; Syrian and
Egyptian, 421.
James. Christology, A. f>2 ff. Not
the representative of the faith of the
whole of primitive Christendom, 161.
Delineation of, by Hegesippus, 138 ;
according to the Clementine Ho-
milies, 442.
James of Edessa, B. 422.
James of Sarug, B. 422.
James of Nisibis, B. 28.
Jekara, A. 269.
Jerusalem, A. 103, 190; heavenly, 151.
Kingdom or city of God, 137, 409.—
B. iii. 28.
Jesuits, their Christology, B. ii. 192,
447.
Jesus Christ. In Him divine and hu-
man have appeared in personal
union, A. 3 ; uniformly testified in
the New Testament, 4, 184 ; and in
the post-apostolic period. In the
Synoptics : the personal good, 58.
James : the bearer of the truth, 65.
Peter : fulfilment of prophecy, 67.
Atoner, 66, 70. Clemens Rom.
100 ff. Ignatius : the personal, crea-
tive principle of Christianity, 103;
unity of -xyi-vij.a. and <ra^|, 104. Bar-
nabas ; sacrifice for our sins, 115.
Polycarp : pledge of our righteous-
ness. Hermas, 123. (Spirit of Christ
in the form of the Church. Relation
of Christ to it, 124 f., 132.) How
viewed by the Prophetesses, 397.
Papias : allegorical view ; principally
described as King and bringer of
blessedness, 137. Hegesippus: Christ
not merely Teacher and King, but
also High Priest, 141. Book of
Enoch: Messiah, 152. Test. xii.
Patr. : Lamb of God, Mediator,
Atoner, Lion (King), 154 If., 156. —
Attacks on Christ's God-manhood.
Celsus : mere man, 162. Carpo-
crates: religious genius, 186. Ebion-
ites: man of virtuous walk, full of
the righteousness of God, 195. Cle-
mentines : the last incarnation of the
eternal prophet of truth, 206. Dif-
ferent view in the Recognitions, 2 1 6 f.,
444 ff. Gnostics ; a lucific nature. —
.See Person of Christ.
Jewish Christianity, Judaism, A. 113.
Relation to Gnosticism, 220. Ju-
daism, Heathenism — idealistic and
realistic tendency, 121 ff.
Joachim von Floris, B. 301, 320.
John (Apostle), A. 48, 50. Relation
to the Synoptics, 60 f., 114. First
E])istle, 118, 371. Apocalypse, 51,
136. Testimony to the Gospel, 136.
compare ii. 436.
John Presbyter, A. 136.
John of Damascus, A. ii. 516; B. 21,
194, 228, 261. 313, 416. Christology,
207-227. Two complete spiritual
vital systems in Christ : the human
aspect dominated by the divine, 209,
214. Inclination to the impersonality
of the humanity, 210 f. The rfo-Kot
avritlxnui merely nominal, 216, 219 ;
the Tif>ix,^fn(n; merely local Unio,
215. No real communicatio idio-
matum, 219. Contradiction with
him, 218.
Johannes Askusnages, B. 148, 414.
Cassianus, B 127.
Climacus, B. 437.
of Cornwall, B. 319.
of Dara, B. 422.
of Germanicia, B. 99.
Catholicos, B. 421.
von Lasky, B. ii. 156, 163.
Maxentius, B. 126.
de Mercuria, B. 373.
Philoponus, B. 148, 414.
Scotus Erigena, B. 281-309.
Johrenius, B. ii. 461.
Joris, David, B. ii. 159.
Jovinian, B. 78.
Jowett's views of the person and work
of Christ, B. iii. App. 449.
Judaism. Philo, A. 33, 77. Opposition
of the Church, 384. Relation to
Christians, 166 f. — 5ee Hebraism.
Jude, Epistle of. Christology, A. 71 ff.,
417.
Judgment, Last, A. 59 f., 115 f., 11 7,
127, 144, 152, 157, 262 ff., 387, 413 ff.
— Compare Second Coming, Escha-
tology.
Julian, A. ii. 367.
Julianists, B. 128.
Julianus of Eclan, B. 77.
of Halicarnassus, B. 122, 128.
Saba, B. 28.
Julius of Rome, A. 502 ; B. 95, 107.—
»See Romish Church.
Jurieu, B. ii. 360.
Justin Martyr, A. 362 ff. Doctrine of
the Logos, 120, compare 269 ff. — 90,
378, 395, 408 ff., 427. Theology and
Christology, 264-277. Difference
from the writer of the Epistle to
Diognetus, 264 ; from Philo, 274.
Lord's Supper, 461, 309 ; ii. 78 ; B.
388.
Justinian, B. 125, 154, 394, 416.
Kahnis. B. iii. 329.
Kalpa, A. 7.
Kiint, B. iii. 32, 44, 4", 49.
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
485
Karg (Parsimonius), B. ii. 77.
Keckermanii, B. ii. 419.
Keil, B. iii. 270.
Kenoticists, B. ii. 303.
Kivaffi;. Its import, according to Beron,
A. ii. 29-31 fF. Beryll, ii. 42 If. Con-
futation by Hippolytus, ii. 42, 83. —
Compare Humiliation, State of.
Kern, B. iii. 195, 207.
Kesselring, B. ii. 308, 313, 314.
Kriiivyi/.ii il'trpov, A. 201, 369, 431.
Kingdom of Ciirist. Its perfection, ac-
cording to Hegesippus, A. 405. —
Compare Chiliasm, Second Coming,
Kingship, Exaltation.
Kingship of Christ, A. 65, 86, 100, 135.
Influence of eschatology in the post-
apostolic period on the doctrine of
Christ's kingly ofiice, 145. Sibyllines,
151 ; Book of Enoch, 152 ; Test, xii,
Patr. 155, 158, 419. Relation to
the high-priesthood in the Church of
the first century, 145 IF., 159 ff. In-
fluence on the development of the
doctrine of the Person of Christ, 161.
Object of hope to the Jews, 166.
Connection with prophecy in Ceriu-
thus, 197 f. — Compare Oflice, Majesty,
States.
Kinkel, B. ii. 358.
Kirchner (T.), B. ii. 240, 419.
Kleuker, B. iii. 73.
Kling, B. iii. 237.
Klose, A. ii. 264, 275, 502, 504 ; B. 433 ;
ii. 37«
Knapp, B. iii. 25.
Knoodt, B. iii. 304.
Knowledge of Christ. Arius, A. ii. 238.
ApoUinaris, ii. 386. — Compare Ignor-
ance, Soul, and Omniscience.
Knutzen, B. iii. 13, 16.
Koch, B. iii. 266.
Kocher, B. ii. 365; iii. 21.
Konig, B. ii. 432, 440.
Kiinig, Lie, B. iii. 329.
Korner, B. ii. 267,417.
Koluthos, B. 142.
Krakewitz, B. ii. 310.
Kramer, B. ii. 367.
Kiiiger, B. ii. 458.
Kurtz, B. iii. 269, 327.
Labyrinth, The Little, A. 458.
Lactantius : on the birth of Christ, A.
396 ; on the higher nature of Christ,
ii. 192 ff. Ethical view of Christo-
logy, ii. 204 ff. ; clashes with the
doctrine of the Church, ii. 210. De-
fects of his Christolog}', ii. 214. Dif-
ference from Eunomius, ii. 268.
Resemblance to Arius, ii. 240 ; B.
34, 363.
Lange, Joachim, B. ii. 369, 376.
Lange(J. P.), A. 364; ii. 263; B. ii
312; iii. 222, 229, 231, 237, 298, 3ia
323, 329.
Lardner's Socinianism, B. iii. App. 407.
Lavater, B. iii. 73.
Law, A. 63, 78, 158. Validity to the
Ebionites, 189.
Lawrence, A. 416.
Lechler, B. 393.
Lee, A. ii. 217.
Leenhoff, B. iii. 13.
Leibnitz, B. iii. 18 f., 22, 75, 267.
Leo the Great, B. 96, 138, 405.
Leo Judge, B. ii. 135.
Leo (M.), B. ii. 239.
Leontius, B. 130, 142, 153, 216, 413.
416.
Leopold, A. ii. 25, 472.
Leporius, B. 52, 77, 395, 396, 412.
Leslie's Dialogues on Socinianism,
B. iii. App. 349.
Less, B. iii. 25, 28.
Lessing, B. iii. 73.
Leuckfeld, B. ii. 417.
Liberius, B. ii. 356.
Lieber, B. iii. 304.
Liebner, B. iii. 229, 237, 298, 301, 313,
319, 329, 331.
Life of Christ, earthly, A. 86. — Com-
pare Person, Humiliation, Humanity,
History of Christ.
Limborch (Ph. a.), B. ii. 349, 350.
Locke, B. ii. 358; iii. 15. Religious
tendency of bis philosophy, App.
351.
Loffler, B. iii. 26.
Loscher, B. ii. 56, 72, 364, 366.
Logos. Doctrine of the Logos. Old
Testament, A. 17. Pliilo : the Logos
not hypostatical, 17, 328 ff. New
Testament: John, 60, 69, 352; James,
64; Peter, 351. Ignatius: the nyii
presupposes the beginnings of a doc-
trine of the Logos, 369. The ici^pvy/nii
of Peter, 3G9. Elements in Aristo,
121 f. Quadratus, Aristides, 119 f.
Epist. ad Diognetura, 374, compare
263. Hermas, Papias, Hegesippus,
122, 136. The Jewish Christian ten-
dency arrives at the doctrine of the
Logos, by starting from the Word
and advancing onwards to Wisdom :
the Hellenic pursues an opposite
course, 403 f. Justin's employment
and development thereof, 120. Hy-
postasis in God, pre-exisient, 396,
compare 395 ; compare 275 ft". Mon-
tanistic conception, 397. Sibylline
Books, 415. Test. xii. Patr. 157.
Polemic against the idea of the
Logos : Cclsus, 163. Idea of th«
486
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Logos in hymns, 181. History of
the doctrine of the Logos till a.d.
150, 257. Influence of Gnosis on
the further development thereof, 257.
Justin, 264 ff. Theophilusof Antioch,
279 ff. Tatian, 282. Task and be-
ginnings of a modified doctrine of
the Logos amongst the Church
teachers at the end of the second
century, by separating the Logos
from the world : Athenagoras, 283 ;
Clemens Alexandr. 285, comjjare
294 f. ; Irenaeus, 306 ff. Heretical
consequence of the distinction of the
Logos in God threatened by the
Church teachers about the year 200 :
Monarchians, Patripassians, Sabel-
lians, 293. Alogi, ii. 4 ff. Theo-
dotus, ii. 6 ff. Paul of Samosata,
ii. lOff. Praxeas, ii. 22 ff. Noetus,
ii. 28, compare 438. Beron, ii. 33 ff.
Sabellius, ii. 154ff. lleaction of the
doctrine of the Logos of the third
century through the hypostatization
of the Logos. Self-diremption of
God ? Tertullian, ii. 63 ff. Hippo-
lytus, ii. 86 ff., 94 ff. Origen, ii.
120 ff., compare 338. School of
Origen. Gregory Thaumaturgus, ii.
172. Heretical consequence of the
subordination of the hypostasis of
the Logos in the fourth century :
Arianism, ii. 230 ff. Eusebius of
Caesarea, ii. 217. Task and reaction
of the Church teachers of the fourth
century, ii. 227. Athanasius, ii. 258,
compare 341 ff. Gregory of Nyssa,
ii. 311 ff. Marcellus of Ancyra, ii.
272 ff. Conversion of the Logos in
the Corinthian sect, ii. 353. Iden-
tity of the Logos and the inner man
in Christ; — ApoUinaris, ii. 363.
Self-exinanition of the Logos, ac-
cording to Hilarius, ii. 406.
Lohmann, Hartw., B. ii. 313.
Lorimer, B. ii. 359.
Love of God. Relation of righteous-
ness thereto, A. 376. Love of Christ
in Hermas, Simil. V. 130. — Compare
God.
Lucian, A. 165; ii. 170, .347, 488.
Liibkert, A. ii. 467.
Liicke, A. 328, 407, 418 ; B. iii. 222.
Liitkemann, B. ii. 308.
Luthardt, B. iii. 222.
Luther, B. ii. 212, 218, 227, 239, 240,
246, 309, 314. His Cliristologv, ii.
53 ff., 157, 203 f. ; iii. 257.
Lutheran Cliristologv, B. ii. 266 ff.
Lyser, Polycarp, B. li. 267, 269.
Maanes, B. 394. I
Macarius, A. ii. 495.
Macarius, B. 27.
Macarius, B. 168, 187, 437.
Maccovius, B. ii. 436.
Macrocosm, microcosm, A. 7.
Majesty of Christ. Synoptics, A. ;i4.
James, 65. Clemens Komanus, 100.
Barnabas, 116. Polycarp, 116 f.; B.
62, 127 ff., 210 ff., 217, 258 f. ; ii. 77-
81, 86, 126 f. Brentz and Andrese,
177, 273. — Compare Kingship, Exal-
tation, Glory, Omniscience, Omni-
presence, Omnipotence, States of
Christ.
Major, B. ii. 418.
Maleach Jehovah, A. 13, 269. Nun-
cius in Hermas, 133.
Malchion, B. 27.
Mallebranche, B. iii. 75.
Man : Philo, A. 32 f., 38 f. Creation
of, 64. Son of man, 44, 55 ff. Mes-
siah, Book of Enoch, 153. — Compare
Anthropology.
Manichaeism, A. 345, 448 ; ii. 445.
Connection with Marcionitism, Pa-
tripassianism, and Sabellianism, ii.
465.
Manichasism of ApoUinaris, A. ii. 395.
Manning, first avowed Socinian among
Nonconformists, B.iii. A pp. 357-366.
Mansi, A. ii. 384, 396, 529.
Maran, A. ii. 120.
Marcellus, A. ii. 258, 270. Life, doc-
trine, and writings, ii. 270, 502. De-
fects of his theology and Christology,
ii. 281, 3C1. Relation to the doctrine
of the Church, ii. 321 ff.
Marcellina, A. 186.
Marcian, B. 97.
Marcion, A. 103, 220, 297, 352,366;
ii. 445. Distinction from Gnostics,
227 ff. Idea of God and Christology,
227 ff., compare 231. 238 ff. Chris-
tian, religious, and philosophical basis
of his system (Baur), 457, compare
ii. 21. Denial of the birth of Christ,
ii. 50, compare 55.
Marcionitism, A. 118. Connection
with Manichaeism, ii. 466.
Marcius, B. ii. 420.
Marcosians, A. 231.
Marcus, A. 447.
Marcus Eremita, B. 437.
Marcus Eugenikos, B. 238.
Mardaites, B. 433.
Maresius, B. ii. 244. 338, 341, 343, 345,
436, 460.
Marheineke, B. ii. 24; iii. 122, 161,
295, 300.
Maris, B. 26, 76.
Marius Mercator, B. 45, 54,
Marouites, B. 432.
INDEX TO THE ITVE VOLUMFS
487
Marriage, Celibacy, A. 119, 380 f., 423 ;
ii. 200. .. „^ ^ ,
Marsilius Ficinus, B. 247 ; u. 38, 42,
170.
Martensen, A. ii. 464 ; B. iii. 237, 251,
257,321,329,331. ...
Martineau, his Rationalism, B. ni.
App. 447 ; higher views of Christ s
person, App. 448. 1
Martini (Rud.), B. ii. 159.
Martini, B. ii. 419.
Martini, B. iii. 270.
St Martin, B. iii. 280.
Martinus I., B. 167.
Martvrologiuni Bedffi, A. 375.
Marun, B. 433.
Martyrs, reverence paid to, A. Ill, 3*4,
380. Desire of martyrdom: Ignatius,
113, 373.
ISlary. VirgiTiitv, A. 109.— Compare
Birth of Christ. Eternity (Apol-
linaris), ii. 371. Participation in
the body of Christ ;— Hilary, u 402 ;
B. 118.— 5ee Nestorius and Cyrill ;
as also 125, 273, 345; ii. 247, 314.
Luther, ii. 90 ff.
Mastricht, B. 244, 338, 340, 341, 345,
346, 420, 458.
Matter. Philo, A. 26 f. Clementine
Homilies, 204. Gnosticism, 224.
Matv. B. 329, 331, 360.
Maurice, B. iii. 232 ; his views respect-
ing the person and the work of
Christ, App. 467.
Maxentius, B. 126.
iMiiximus Confessor. B. 21, 156, 16<,
177, 184, 193, 194, 203, 205, 220, 225,
228, 236, 279. 281 ; ii. 4.
Mayer, B. iii. 310. , „^ rr .
Mediator. Rhilo, A. 23, 28 f., 70. Test,
xii. Patr. 156. Clemens Alex. 299.
Theodotus, ii. 433. Cyprian, n- JOl.
Arnobius(?), ii. 190.— Compare \N ork
of Christ.
Mehring, B. iii. 229.
Meier, A. 328, 364, 386.
Meisner, B. 29.5, 4,%, 446.
Mclanchthon, B. 449 ; ii. 108, 146, 15-,
207 Kxinanition of the Logos Him-
self, ii. 134. Another Christology
(Retractio, ri<r<;x'a?"v of the Logos),
ii. 174, 195 ft'., 206.
Mclchizedekians, A. 45.3.
IMclito, A. 4,58; ii. 17,47.
Mcmra, A. 48, .391.
Mcnander, A. 102.
Mendoza, H. ii. 447.
Menken, H. iii- 230.
Meniio, Simonis, B. ii. 152.
Montzcr (I).), B. ii. 243, 419, 422, 435,
447.
Merit of Christ, A. 315 ff. — Cdmiuire
Work of Christ, B. 4-6. According
to Theodore of Mopsuestia, 47 f . ;
Cvrill, 57, 60 if., 74 ; Augustine, 398;
Jiilian, 77 ; Leo, 86; Theopaschitism,
125 f. : Erigena, 292 f. ; P. Lombard,
316; Ruprecht of Deutz, 322 f . ;
Richard de St Victor, 328 ; Duns
Scotus, 351 ; Thomas, 356. The
mystical Scholasticism, 354.. ff. On
the Middle Ages in g-eneral, 273.
Luther: stress laid on the atone-
ment, ii. 56-72. Zwingli, ii. 136 f.
Calvin, ii. 220. The Reformed
Church, ii. 342 f. The Formula
Concordia?, ii. 210. Recent Patri-
passianism, B. iii. 307.— See Office ol
Christ.
Merten, B. iii. 304.
Merz (H.), B. iii. 229.
Messalians, B. 28.
Messiah, idea of. Old Testament,
A. 19. Philo, 34 ff., 409. Book of
Henoch, 153 ff. Ebionites, 187 f.
Nazarenes, 193 f. Cerinthian Ebion-
ites, 197.
Metatron, A. 42, 391.
Metempsvchosis, A. ii. 530.
Methodiiis, A. ii. 171, 338; B. 32.
Mettrie, La, B. iii. 75.
Meyer, A. ii. 265.
Mever ^H. A. W.), B. iii. 222.
Migetius, B. 250.
Miller, B. iii. 28.
Miltiades, A. ii. 47.
Minwans, A. 192.
Minucius Felix, A. ii. 192.
Miracles of Christ, A. 56, 116 ff., 120
(Arnobius); ii. 190, 208, 255, 367,
386, 388.
I Minis, B. ii. 314
Modal Trinitarianism, what meant by,
B. iii. App. 360.
I Modcstus, A. 457.
Mdlilcr, A. 375; ii. 217. 386.
MuHin (Joach.), B. ii. 176, 416.
Molitor, B. iii. 328.
Monarciiianism. See Patripassianism
andSabellianism ; Ebionism.— Iden-
tity of the principle in its two forms,
A. ii. 1 ff.—See God.
Monas.— See God ; Father ; Sabellius,
A. ii. 153 ff., 157.
Monophvsites, B. 79, 121. The Arme-
nian 155 421. Essential similarity
between the doctrine of the Church
and Monophysitism, 153 t.
Monojihysitism, A. ii. 419.
Monotheletisni, B. 156.
Moiitaciitius, A. ii. 217.
Moiitanisin. Reaction against tiie
character of tlie existing Cburch, A.
103, 118, 3.53, 363 ff. Helatiou to
488
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Hermas, 382. Distinction of earlier
and later, 396 fF. Relation to the
doctrine of the Church, 363, 397 ; to
Gnosticism, 227, 255 f. ; to Chiliasm,
il5. Phrygian, 186. Point of view
Jn eschatology, 146. Dangers of,
ii. 20.
Montfaucon, A. ii. 217.
More (H.), B. ii. 315, 329 ; iii. 25.
Morgenstern, B. ii. 416.
Mosheim, A. ii. 36 ; B. ii. 360, 364 ;
on the application of human analo-
gies to the Trinity, iii. App. 362.
MuUer (Ad.), B. iii. 16.
Miiller (Julius), B. 324 ; ii. 165 ; iii.
145, 229, 237-246.
Miinchmeyer, B. iii. 322.
Munter, A. 180 ff.
Muhammedanism, A. 19.
Musonus, A. 457.
Mycronius (Mart.), B. ii. 156.
Mylius (H.), B. ii. 269.
Mysticism, A. 41. Four divisions :
(1.) Greek Mysticism, in Egypt and
Syria, B. 25 f., 52 f., 235. Pseudo-
Dionysius, 162. Maximus, 228.
The Hesychasts and Nicolas Ca-
basilas, 236 ff. The hierarchical-
churchly Mysticism of the Areo-
pagite, 234 f. That of subjective
ascetical piety, 234 f.
(2.) Romanic, 296 f., 354 f.
(3.) Germanic, ii. 2 f. Nicolas of
Cusa, ii. 29 ff.
(4.) Post-Reformational, ii. 273 ff.,
316 f.; iii. 73 ff.
Nagelsbach, a. ii. 443 ; B. iii. 237,
312, 325, 327.
Naked Gospel, the, B. iii. App. 347.
Narses, B. 394.
Nativitas Marise, A. 422.
Nature of Christ, A. ii. 31, 514 f. ;
ivuiffi; (puffixri, ii. 421.
Natures of Christ, A. ii. 352, 353.
Cyrill teaches an 'Ivoktis (puffmri, B. 66
ff. The Symbol of Chalcedon de-
cides for Dyophysitism, 101 f. The
distinction carried forward to the
point of assuming two complete life-
systems in Dyotheletism, 198 ff. Re-
action in Nihilianism at the cost of
the humanity, 318 f. Luther and
the Suabians represent the unity of
the person as the result of tlie union
of the two natures, ii. 79, 179 ff.
Identity of the Nestorian and Mono-
physitic conception of nature and
person, 147 f. — See Duality and Unio.
Nazarenes, A. 192 ff.
Neander. A. 16.5, 191 ff., 201, 277,328,
362, 369, 373, 422, 426, 454; ii. 17,
3.5, 181, 431, 434, 459, 469; B. 381,
392, 433 ; iii. 222.
Neraesius, A. ii. 363.
Neo-Platonists, A. 9 ; ii. 16, 218, 363.
Neo-Platonism, B. 279.
Neo-l-'latonic Theosophy, B. 247.
Nestorius, B. 25, 52-60, 249, 426 ; ii.
100, 197.
Nestorians, the first party which the
Church showed itself unequal to the
task of overcoming, B. 76. Later
Nestorians, ii. 356.
Nestorianism, B. 248, 413.
Neumann, A. 454.
Newton, B. iii. 75, 265.
Nicaea, Council of, A. 170; ii. 246 ff.
Symbol of Nici3ea, ii. 260 ff.
Nicephorus, B. 121, 416.
Nicephoras, Gregoras, B. 233 ff,
Nicetas of Chone, B. 227.
Nicolai (Phil.), B. ii. 274, 304.
Nicolaitanes, A. 249.
Nicolas of Clemanges, B. 377.
Nicolas of Methone, B. 227.
Niehenck, B. ii. 357.
Niemeyer, A. 454.
Nihilianism, B. 309, 339, 354 ; ii. 348.
Nitzsch(Im.), A. 43, 419,421 ; ii. 290;
B. iii. 229, 237, 327, 329, 330.
Noetus, A. ii. 26 ff., 37, 46, 150.
Nossairites, B. 433.
Novalis, B. iii. 86, 88 ff.
Novatian, A. ii. 81.
Nye, Stephen, his doctrine of the Tri-
nity, B. iii. App. 356.
Obedience, active, according to Parsi-
monius, B. ii. 459 ; Piscator, ii. 345.
Reformed doctrine, ii. 344 ; Hafe-
rung and others, ii. 366 f. ; ToUner,
iii. 263 f.
Occam, B. 373, 375 ; ii. 128.
Occidental Church, A. 96 ff., 119.
Theology, ii. 185, 203, 428.— Co7«-
pare Rome.
Ochino (Bernh.), B. ii. 170.
Oecolampadius, B. ii. 118, 128.
Oehler, B. iii. 252, 329, 331.
Oelrichs, B. iii. 27.
Oetinger, B. iii. 74-85.
Office of Christ. Significance in the
development of Christology, A. 161,
comjjare 166, 175 f. Relation of the
tiiree offices to the three great con-
fessions, B. 4 f , 269 f. Doctrine of
the Arminians, B. ii. 351. — Compare
Prophet, High Priest, Kingship.
1. Prophetical office. Christ the
revealer of wisdom in the Greek
Church, B. 5.
2. nigh-prieatly office. The oh-
jective centre of the Church of
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
489
the Reformation is the sacred
passion, B. 7 f., 354, compare ii.
10 f., 27, 54 f. A sure position
was thus for the first time as-
signed to the humanity of
Christ, 8.
3. Kingly office. Had the predo-
minance in the Romish Church,
B. 5, 269 ff.
Oischinger, B. iii. 304, 328.
Olevian fCasp.), B. ii. 224,
Olshausen, A. 165; B. ii. 312.
Omnipotence, of the humanity of
Christ, according to Cyrill, B. 62,
218 ff., 333 f. Luther, ii. 91 ff. The
Suabians, ii. 176 f., 191. The Tu-
bingen divines, ii. 290, 436 ff.
Omnipresence of Christ. Ignatius, A.
105 f. Recognitions of Clement,
445. Origen, ii. 132. Athanasius,
ii. 253 ff. Pseudo-Justin, B. 388 f.
Denied by Augustine, 399 ff. Also
by Cyrill, 68 f., 71. John of Damas-
cus, 218. Occam, 451 ff. Luther's
doctrine, ii. 121 f., 126 f. Zwingli,
ii. 124 f. Brentz, Andrea;, and
others, ii. 178 f., 190 f. Chemnitz,
ii. 203 ff. The Formula of Concord,
ii. 209 ff. Controversy as to the
sense of the Formula Concordia;, ii.
269 ff. Hutter, ^gidius Hunnius,
Ph. Nicolai, on the omnipresence of
Christ, ii. 270-280. The Giessen
theologians, ii. 282. Those of Tu-
bingen, ii. 284, 289 f. Calov and
others, ii. 442 ff. Mosheim and
others, ii. 363, 368, 380.
Omniscience of Christ, A. 56 f., 431 f.,
440; ii. 118-125, 383. The omni-
science of the man Jesus denied by
the Agnoetes and Leontius, B. 142.
Hieronymus, Ambrosius, Fulgentius,
Beda, Alcuin, on the contrary, teach
the omniscience of the humanity,
142 ff. So also John of Damascus,
217. Scholasticism, 338, 342. Other-
wise Luther, ii. 91, compare ii. 290,
380, 440. — See Knowledge, and Ig-
norance, of Christ.
Onuphrius, B. 423.
Ophanim, A. 154.
Ophites, A. 186, 221, 451.
Ordination, estimate of, in the first pe-
riod. Ignatius, A. 135, 255, 361, 446.
— See Episcopate.
Organization of the Church, A. 355,
362 f.
Oriental Church, A. 102, 1 18 ff. Theo-
logy of, ii. 184, 202, 428.
Origen, A. 90. 121, 188, 294, 419. Re-
futation of Bcryll, ii. 42 ff. His Lo-
gology, Christology, and doctrine of
the Trinity, ii. 103-142. Defects of
his system, ii. 142 ff., 152. Relation
to the doctrine of the Church before
his day, ii. 108 ff. Charges against
him, according to Pamphilus, ii. 196
ff. Total image of Christ, ii. 335 ff".,
350-531. School of Origen, ii. 171
ff. ; B. 30, 35, 50, 51 ; ii. 349.
Orosius, A. ii. 468.
Orthodoxy, A. 344. — See Heresy.
Osiander (Andr.), A. ii. 391 ; B". ii. 76,
107, 108, 144, 222 ; iii. 247.
Osiander (Job. And.), B. ii. 295, 309,
314, 434, 458, 460.
Osiander (Lucas), B. ii. 177, 206, 300,
434.
Osterwald (D. T.), B. ii. 355.
Osterzee, B. iii. 232.
Osterod, B. ii. 420.
Otto, A. 375 f.
OuiTioc. Gradual determination of this
conception in its distinction from
u-riffrairi;, A. ii. 7, 12, 40, 124, 197,
312, 422.
Owen, his Vindiciae Evangelicse, B. iii.
App. 341.
Pabst, B. iii. 304, 328.
Palamas, B. 237.
Pamphilus, A. ii. 171, 195.
Pantajnus, A. 136.
Pantheism, Jewish, A. 14 ff. Passes
into Dualism, 224. In Gnosticism,
250. In Sabellianism, ii. 156, 473,
compare 288.
Pantheistic tendency among Socinians,
B. iii. App. 443.
Papias, A. 117, 122, 135. His Christ-
ology related to the Gospel of Mark,
136. Representative of Apocalyp-
tics, 408.
Parens (D.), B. ii. 242, 419.
Parker (Theodore), B. iii. 222. His
later views, App. 444.
Parsimonius or Karg, B. ii. 459.
u.a.fovaia of Christ, three forms of, ac-
cording to Hippolytus, A. ii. 91. —
Compare Second Coming, Eschato-
logy.
Parsism, A. ii. 448.
Paschasius, Diaconus, B. 440.
Paschasius, Radbertus, B. 268 ; ii. 312.
Passion. — See Sufferings of Christ.
Passover, A. 138. Controversies, 424.
Paschal Lamb, 174. — See Easter.
Patripassianism, A. 89, 194, 263, 452;
ii. 15. Ethnic and pantheistic ele-
ments therein, ii. 45, 73, compare ii.
152. Influence on it of Neo-Pla-
tonism and Gnosticism, ii. 16. Af-
finity with Docetism. ii. 24. Im-
proved by Noctus, ii. 26, and Bcryll,
490
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
44. Struggle of the Cliurcli with it,
ii. *9 ff., 149. — See Sabellianism.
Paul, A. 47, 50, 443.
Va\\\ of Samosata, A. 6 ; ii. 10 ff. Si-
milarity and difference from Sabel-
lianism and Patripassianism, ii. 13,
167. liesemblance to Beron, ii. 33 f. ;
and Marcellus, ii. 502. — ii. 361, 350;
B. 27, 387 ; iii. 27.
Paul of Eitzen, B. ii. 175.
Paulinus, A. ii. 270, 495.
I'auliiiiis of Aquiloja, B. 248.
Paulas of Constantinople, B. 182; ii.
194.
Paulus, Dr, B. iii. 270.
Pelagius, B. 112, 363.
Pelagianism, A. 147, 345; ii. 154,428.
Of ApoUinaris, ii. 387.
Pella, A. 190.
UifccrtKo), A. 432.
Perkins, B. ii. 314. 345.
Perrone, B. 449 ; ii. 449.
Personality. Idea in the second and
third centuries, A. 290; ii. 443; in
the fourth century, ii. 509, 522. Gre-
gory of Nyssa, ii. 316. — Personality
of the human nature of Christ, ii.
351 ff. — Compare Hypostasis, olffla.
Person of Christ. Total image thereof
as the unity of the real and ideal, of
the divine and human, in the New
Testament, A. 58 ff. Ignatius, 107
ff. (Unity of o-apl and ■n-^iiuf/.a). Test,
xii. Patr. 154 f. Apostles' Creed,
169 ff. Epistle to Diognetus, 262.
Justin Martyr, 265 ff. Clemens
Alexandr. 299 ff. Irenseus, 317 ff.,
320. Tertullian, ii. 66 f. Hippoly-
tus, ii. 96 f. Cyprian, ii. 100. Ori-
gen, ii. 333 ff. Eusebius of Cajsarea,
ii. 490. Athanasius, ii. 338 ff. Gre-
gory Nazianzen, ii. 343. Gregory of
Nyssa, ii. 345. Basilius, ii. 514.
Ephraem, Chrysostom, Cyrill of
Alexandria, Theodoret, ii. 515.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, ii. 516.
('I'heodorns Abukara, Piiotius, ii.
516 f.) ApoUinaris, ii. 363 ff. Hi-
larius, ii. 417.
1. IJesult of the struggle with Do-
cetism and Ebionism was that
the Chnrch l)ecame clearly con-
vinced of the necessity of attri-
buting true divinity and huma-
nity in fjcneral to the Redeemer,
251, 252.
2. The individual momenta :
A. On the side of the divine. —
a. The second century partly
j)r(jpagates the apostolic doc-
trine of the divinity of the
essence of Christ, — see Cle-
mens IvDin., Ignatius, Barna-
bas, etc.; — partly advances
from the ^>j^a or Suva^/f to
e-oip/a, 141; partly from the vdi/f ,
as equivalent to <ro(f>iet, to the
world-creative principle in a
particular hypostasis. — See
Justin. The union of these
tendencies formed the doc-
trine of the Logos laid down
by the Apologists. — See Doc-
trine of the Logos; its defects.
Interweaving of the Logos
with the world ; at a later pe-
riod (Athenagoras, IrenjEus,
Clemens Alex.), the hyposta-
sis of the Logos threatened
by His equality of essence
with the Fa,ther, 290 f.— 6. In
the third ceiltury, not merely
Ebionitic Monarchianisni,
but also the Patripassianism
which advanced onwards to
Sabellianism, sought to reduce
the divine in Christ to the ca-
tegorv of a mere ])Ower, ii. 1-
14, 149ff., 165ff., 168ff. Op
position was raised by Tertul-
lian, ii. 79, and Hippolytus,
ii. 85 ff., with their doctrine of
Sonship, that is, of an hypo-
stasis pre-existent before the
world ; and by Origen, with
the doctrine of the eternal ge-
neration of the Son, but with-
out overcoming sul)ordina-
tion, ii. 108, 198. — Compare
Subordinatianism. — c. In the
fourth century (after the pre-
lude of the struggle between
the two Dionysiuses, ii. 181
ff.), Athanasius and the Ni-
cenes entered the lists against
the heretical heightening of
Subordinatianism in Arian-
ism, ii. 228.
B. On the side of the human. —
«. The corporeality of Christ
established by Tertullian
against the Docetism of the
second century, ii. 50 ff., etc.
— b. Christ's feeling soul ;
compare Patrijjassianism, Ori-
gen, ApoUinaris, Athanasius,
Hilarius. — c. Christ's human
mind (voSs) ; compare Gregory
Nazianzen, Athanasius, and
others.
3. Attempts to grasp both aspects
in unity ; compare Irena;us, Ter-
tullian, llijipolytus, Origen,
Paul of Samosata, Sabellius,
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
491
Lactantius, Eusebius of Ctesa-
rea, Athanasius, Greporv Nazi-
anzen, Apollinaris, Ililarius.—
Compare Personality, Union of
Divine and Human, Divinity
and Humanity of Christ, Incar-
nation, Jesus Christ, Hypostasis,
Son. Disfigurement of the Per-
son of Christ in the New Testa-
ment, Apocryphal Books, IGO,
422.
Person of the Logos became incarnate
without the nature, B. 311, 398. An-
selm, 443 f., compare 330 ; ii. 242,
306, 340, 436, 445. God the person
of all believers, 191. Person at one
time the totality of Christ, at another
time the Ego, B. 201 ff., 225 f. Per-
son now conceived as an accident,
now as substance, 152 f. — -See Unio,
Impersonality, Natures.
Petavius, A. ii. 217 ; B. 368; ii. 449.
His views on the orthodoxy of the
Fathers, iii. App. 342.
Peter (Apostle), Christology, A. 63, 66
ff. Second Epistle, spurious, 353.
First Epi.stle, 37 f., 442.
Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, A. ii. 229,
320; B. 95.
Peter d'Aillv, B. 377.
. de Albano, B. ii. 401.
Fullo, B. 125.
Junior, of Kalliniko, B. 144.
the Lomliard, B. 207, 310, 322.
iMartvr, B. ii. 175, 224, 245, 417.
Molinajus, B. ii. 309.
Peter, JVIonophysite Patriarch of Antl-
och, B. 144.
Petersen, B. iii. 266, 278.
Petersen (Aug.), B. iii. 237.
Pezel (Christ.), B. ii. 245, 418.
Pfaff, B. ii., 116, 177, 348, 365, 441,
446.
Pfaff (Senior), B. ii. 295.
Pfeiffer(F.), B. ii. 11.
Phibionitcs, A. 249.
Philippi, city of, A. 372.
Philippi, B."ii. 435; iii. 246.
Phiiippus in Gortyna, A. 457.
Phillips (Montagu Lyon), B. iii. 268.
Philo, A. 17, 19 ir., 79, 204. His influ-
ence on the Church doctrine of the
Logos, 274,458; B. 158, 280.
Pliilogonius, A. ii. 495.
Philoponus (J.), B. 224 ; ii. 357.
I'hiloxenus of Uierapolis or Mabug, B.
122, 130.
Photinus, A. ii. 286, 361, 502.
Photius, A. ii. 517. Cliargo of Ebion-
ism against Clemens Alex. 461. On
Fierius, ii. 171.
Picus of Aliraudula, B. 247 ; ii. 170.
Pierce, his views on the Trinity, an J
shuffling conduct, B. iii. App. 40().
Pierius, A. ii. 171 ff.
Pilati Epist. ad Claud, et Tiber. A.
422.
Pincier, B. ii. 243.
Pinytus, A. 119.
Pirstinger. — See Berthold.
Piscator, B. ii. 244, 345, 419, 436, 459.
Pius Sixth, B. ii. 450.
Plancius (Petr.), B. ii. 274.
Planck, B. ii. 108, 175 ; iii. 270.
Pliny, Epist. ad Traj. A. 165.
Plotinus, A. 330. — See Neo-Platonism.
Plonquet, B. iii. 75.
Uyiufi.a. in the early Church, A. 388 ff. ;
Apollinaris, ii. 370. — Compare Spirit.
Poiret, B. 311, 315, 326.
Polanus V. Polansdorf, B. 366; ii. 419.
436.
Polemo, A. ii. 3.54, 367.
Polycarp, Christology, A. 116 ff, 371.
Genuineness of the Epistle, 372.
Age, 373 f. Reading of the New
Testament, 259.
Polvcrates, A. 118.
Porphyry, A. 187; B. 79.
Possession and Use. — See Giessen,
Theologians of.
Post-existence of Christ, A. 86, 389.
— Compare Judgment, Eschatologj',
Exaltation, ii. 372.
Postellus, B. iii. 279.
Pothinus, A. ii. 374, compare 379.
Power, according to Philo, A. 35. 7&,
338.— 5ee God ; Attributes of God.
Power of Christ, 56 ff. 115, 131.
Praxeas, A. ii. 15 ff. Relation to ]\Iar-
cionitism and Montanism, ii. 17 ff.
Identity of the Father with the
Monas — distinction between God
and Christ, ii. 21. Inconsequence
of his view of the incarnation, ii. i5.
Pre-existence of Christ, A. 61, 112.
114, 121, 126, 153, 157, 187, 193,
198, 264. 305, 310, 356, 369, 388,
406; ii. 5, 13. Point of departure
in the Jewish Christian Christology,
121. New speculative turn given
to the Churcn doctrine thereof b\
Justin, 268. Beryll's denial, ii. 39 ff.
Marcellus, ii. 28o".
Pre-existence of the humanity of
Christ a logical consequence of the
Suabian doctrine, B. ii. 297, 432 f.
In Adarn, ii. 308 ff. Scminalis or
realis? ii. 314. Schncckenburger's
doctrine, ii. 432 f.
Prc-cxistencc of the soul, A. ii. 138
(Origcn).
Presbytery, A. 3.59, 372.
Presscnse, Edui. de, B. iii. 222, 'J23.
492
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Priestley, his early proiieness to
heresy, B. iii. App. 407 ; his writings
in the cause, App. 409 ; character
of his History of the Corruptions of
Christianity, App. 411.
Primal man, A. 76, 153, 231 f., 441.
The Logos the primal or archetypal
man, Apollinaris, ii. 371, 374.
Primal Prophet, A. 76.
Priscilla, A. 399.
Priscillianists, A. ii. 468.
Probus, B. 144.
Proclus, B. 403, 422.
Prophecy, — distinction from Apoca-
lyptics, A. 407 ff., 408.— 160.
Prophethood. Prophetical office of
Christ, A. 66, 86, 112, 115, 156.
Relation to Kingship and Priest-
hood, 157 f. Importance among
Jews, 166. Cerinthus, 198. Com-
mon property of all who are ani-
mated by the Spirit of Christ, ac-
cording to the Pseudo-Clementines,
208.
Progressus in infinitum in the treat-
ment of history, A. 347. In Hegel's
treatment of Christology, B. iii. 160.
npia-ai'^rov, A. ii. 45, 86, 317, 364 f., 475.
Protevangelium Jacobi, A. 422.
Pseudo-Clementines, A. 203, 217.
Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, B. 157 f.
— See Dionysius.
Ptolemaeus, A. 447, 449.
Ptolemgeus, 447, 449.
Puccius (Franz), B. ii. 48, 401.
Pusey, B. iii. 232.
Quakers, B. ii. 325, 329, 332.
Quadratus, A. 119 ff., 138, 374.
Quenstedt, B. ii. 243, 304, 36.5, 369,
432, 443, 447, 460.
Quintilla, A. 399.
Quistorp, B. iii. 264.
Rabulas, B. 394.
llambach (J.), B. ii. 314, 376.
Rational Christianity, causes of its
prevalence in seventeenth century,
B. iii. App. 403.
Rationalism, A. ii. 286.
Ratramnus, B. ii. 312.
Raymond de Sabondc, B. 376 ; ii. 50.
Raymundus Lullus, B. 350, 448.
Recapitulatio, B. 465.
Recognitiones dementis, A. 216, 444 flf.
Redepenning, B. iii. 225.
Reformation, significance of, for Chris-
tology, A. 84 ; B. 7, 24, 276 ; ii. 56.
The Old and the New Wisdom, ii.
76 f. The Old and the New Speech,
ii. 81.
Reformed Church. Its Christology,
B. ii. 220, 125. Compared with that
of the Lutheran Church, ii. 135, 241-
248. Recent forms of its Christology,
iii. 231, 259.— See Zwingli, Oecolam-
padius, Calvin, ii. 1 17 f., 136 ff., 220-
248.
Regeneration, A. 63 f , 66, 69 ; ii. 363,
387, 390, 530.
Regula Pidei, A. 169. Irenaeus, Ter-
tullian, and Origen, 170 ; ii. 106 ff.
Reinboth, B. ii. 446.
Reinhard, B. ii. 366; iii. 25, 29, 264.
Reithmaier, B. ii. 394.
Religion, its essence. Relation of the
Christian to the extra-Christian re-
ligions, A. 3 f. The Christian, the
absolute religion, 65. The truth of
all others, 77. The Roman, 9.
Remonstrants, B. ii. 355. — See Armi-
nianism. Their leaning towards
Socinianism, iii. App. 347, 406.
Repentance, its significance in Her-
mas, A. 123; Clemens Romanus,
98, 357. Relation to the Sabbath,
173.
Resting of the Logos. — See Exinani-
tion, Melanchthon, Chemnitz.
Resurrection of Christ. Synoptics, A,
59 ; Peter, 70 ; Clement, 99 ; Bar-
nabas, 116; Iguatius, 110. Relation
to Sunday, 173. Retention thereof
by the Nazarenes, 194. Denial by
Cerinthus, 198, compare 147 ; by
Priscillianists, ii. 469. Its doctrinal
significance not recognised by the
Pseudo-Clementines, 212. Special
importance in connection with death ;
Justin, 267, compare 277. View
of Noetus, ii. 141, compare 334 f.
Proof of the higher life in Christ,
Athanasius, ii. 251, 510; Gregory
of Nyssa, ii. 345. Influence on our
resurrection, ii. 513; Apollinaris, ii.
390; Hilary, ii. 416, 418, 427.
Resurrection of the dead, A. ii. 192.
Resurrection from the dead, B. 46,
385 fi". ; Cyrill, 61 f., 128 ; Leo, 91 f.,
compare 128, 258 f. ; ii. 69 f., 255,
393, 408.— See Judgment.
Rettberg, B. 370.
Reuchlin, B. ii. 170.
Reusch, B. ii. 460 ; iii. 20, 22 f.
Reuss, B. iii. 276.
Keuter, A. 129; ii. 448.
Revelation, historical, A. 17. Exter-
nal and inner ; Clementine Homilies,
208 ff.
Rheinwald, A. 167, 181.
Richard de St Victor, B. 296, 308, 327,
36.5, 446.
Rieger, B. iii. 276.
Righteousness of God, A. 20, 22-i,
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
493
226 f., 314, 362. Consequence of
the rigid fixing of righteousness,
226 ff. By grace and by faith, 98 f.,
117 ; ii. 388, 390. Not of the law ;
Test. xii. Patr, 158. Of Christ,
109, 132, 154.
Kitschl, B. 379.
Ritter, A. 327 ; ii. 459 ; B. 279, 296,
307, 370, 375 ; iii. 274.
Rixner, B. ii. 438.
Robinet, B. iii. 75.
Rocholl, B. iii. 237.
Roderich de Arriaga, B. ii. 447.
Rodolph, B. ii. 339.
Rohr, B. iii. 48 f.
Roell (Herm. Alex.), B. ii. 350, 357.
Romang, B. iii. 232.
Rome, A. 432 ; ii. 8, 19.
Roos, B. iii. 276.
Roscellin, B. 301, 442.
Rosenkranz, B. iii. 123, 169, 295, 299.
Rossel, A. 386 ; ii. 35.
Rothe, A. 3; B. iii. 222, 257, 298,
313 ff., 325, 332.
Routh, ReliquisK, A. 136, 374, 383, etc.
Rudelbach, A. 170 ; B. 34.5, 349,
Rupp, A. ii. 312, 513.
Ruprecht of Deutz. B, 322, 366, 422, 446.
Rusticus, B. 41.5, 418.
Ruysbroch, B. ii. 4, 6.
Sabellianism, a. 89 fF. Elements
and beginnings in Justin, 272-274 ;
Clemens Alex. 288 ff. Cause of its
rise, 293 ff. Was the real opinion
of the Church Sabellian at the time
of Irenaeus? 308 ff. Connection
with Patripassianism and Gnosti-
cism, ii. 15 f. Relation of Origen
thereto, ii. 152 f. Possible forms
of, ii. 150 ff. Influence on the de-
velopment of the doctrine of the
Church, ii. 227. Distinction from,
and coincidence with, Arianism, ii.
4, compare 154 and 233. Com-
bated by Athanasius, ii. 304, 477.
Apparent Sabellianism of the Nicene
Council, ii. 270; of Apollinaris, ii.
530. Revival by Marcellus, ii. 270 ff.,
399. — See Patripassianism. Revival
of, in the eleventh century, B. 300 f.
In the age of the Reformation, ii.
160 f. Swedcnborg, ii. 333; Urls-
perger, ii. 374 ; Whitby, ii. 359 ; iii.
21. Forms thereof, in most recent
times, iii. 208-21.3, 225 ff.
ynbellius. Life and doctrine, A. ii.
152 ff. Pantheism and Dualism, ii.
156 ft"., 160. Distinction from I'aul
of Samosftta, ii. 163, compare 168.
Defects and consequences of his
system, ii. 165, compare 169 f., 273.
Sacrifice, A. 113, 156.— Compare Death,
Forgiveness of Sin, Substitution.
Sadducees, A. 79.
Sadeel, B. ii. 226, 2.30, 232, 242, 245,
314, 436 f.
Sailer, B. iii. 23.
Sand, B. ii. 357.
Sandius, his Nucleus Hist. Eccl., B. iii.
i\pp. 342.
Sardinoux, B. iii. 232.
Sartorius, B. ii. 365, 461.
Sartorius (Ernst), B. iii. 229, 312, .329,
330.
2«^5; Ignatius, A. 104, 159.
Satisfaction of Christ, A. ii. 251 ; ac-
cording to Anselm, B. 6, 8. The
Scholastics, 351, 354. The Evange-
lical Church, ii. 7. Luther, ii. 56 60.
The Reformed theologians, ii. 341 ff
— Compare Substitution, Work.
Sattler (Bas.), B. 267.
Saturninus, A. 102, 120, 221.
Savonarola (Hier.), B. 337 ; ii. 50.
Saussaye (De la, Chantepie'), B. iii
232.
Schaller (Julius), B. iii. 161 ff., 167.
Scharpius, B. ii. 436.
Schegck, B. ii. 177.
Schelling, B. iii. 100-121, 124, 208,
211, 213, 300.
Schenkel, B. ii. 78, 338.
Scherzer, B. 369 ; ii. 440.
Schlegel (G.), B. iii. 23.
Schleiermacher, A. 253, 344 ; ii. 13,
22, 27, 35 ff., 467, 483 ; B. iii. 145,
174-213, 308.
Schleusner, B. iii. 270.
Schliemann, A. 201, 369, ci71, 386,
405, 423, 427 f., 429.
Schlosser, B. iii. 274.
Schliisselburg, B. ii. 161, 416.
Schmedlin, Jacob (Andrea;), B. ii. 177.
Schmid (Luth. Dogm.), B. ii. 433.
Schmid (in Jena), B. iii. 222, 245, 251,
265, 325 ff.
Schmidt, B. iii. 270.
Schmieder, B. iii. 312.
Schneckenburger, A. 357 ; B. ii. 247,
292, 339, 342, 345, 347, 348, 349,
366, 426, 431 ; iii. 253, 321.
Schnepf, B. ii. 175, 177.
Schoberlein, B. iii. 237, 312, 328, 329,
331.
Scholten, B. ii. 406 ; iii. 232.
Scholasticism, B. 269 f., 294 ff., 3(t9 ff.,
329 ff. Indian summer of Scholasti-
cism in Spain, ii. 315, 447 ff.
Schomcr, B. ii. 458.
Schorcht, B. ii. 368.
Schott, B. 423.
Schubert (G. II. v.), B. iii. 260. 286.
Schwarz (Carl), B. iii. 274, 298.
494
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Schwepler, A. 357, 397, 423.
Schweizer, B. ii. 343 ; iii. 192, 206.
Schwenckfeld, A. ii. 438 ; B. ii. 107,
143, 161, 177, 198, 235, 319, 402.
Schwenckfeldians, B. ii. 142.
Schyn, B. ii. 155, 411.
Scotus Ei-igena, B. 230, 235, 246, 279 ;
ii. 9.
Scotists, B. ii. 447.
Scotistic School, B. 364, 373; ii. 447.
Scripture, holy; Ignatius, A. 106. —
Compare Canon.
Scripture, new and improved version
of, by Socinians, B. iii. App. 432.
Seasons, holy. Significance for Chris-
tology, A. 172, 175.
Second Coming of Christ. Synoptics,
A. 59 ; James, 65 ; Peter, 68, 70 ;
Jude, 72. Speedy expectation : Ig-
natius, 113. Special importance to
Barnabas, 114. Significance for the
faith in the atoner during the first
century, 86, compare 144 ff. In-
fluence on the person and work of
Christ, 157. General doctrine of,
in the second century, 325 f. ; ii. 1 fF.
— See Judgment, Eschatology.
Secretan, B. iii. 312.
Secundians, A. 221.
Seller, B. ii. 365.
Seleucus, A. ii. 25.
Selnekker, B. ii. 199, 240, 266, 417,
418, 419.
Semi-Arians, A. ii. 263. Relation to
Arianism, to the doctrine of the
Church and to Sabellianism, ii. 269,
compare 321. Combated by Mar-
cellus, ii. 270 ff. — See Eusebius of
Cesarea.
Semisch, A. 270, 327, 375, 378, 408,
458, 461, 466.
Semler, B. iii. 26, 73.
Seniores, A. 383.
Serapion, A. 458 ; B. 27.
Sergius, B. 136, 156, 165, 171-174,
186, 220.
Servant of God, A. 43, 67, 130.
Servetus, A. ii. 438; B. ii. 147, 159,
197, 222, 333, 407.
Severus, Sulpicius, A. 191.
Severus of Pisidia, B. 122, 131, 133.
Severians, B. 142.
Shechinah, A. 18, 42, 269, 391 , ii. 15.
Sherlock, B. ii. 360.
Siierlock, Dean, his Trinitarian views,
B. iii. App. 354 ; decree concerning,
by colleges of Oxford, App. 355.
Sibylline Books, A. 409 fir". Ciiris-
tology and composition, 150 ff.
Ilvnins, 181 ff.
Sieffert, B. 28.
2/y») in Ignatius, A. 370.
Simon Magus, A. 102 ; in the Clemen-
tines, 213. Simonians, 186.
Simson, A. 327.
Sin, forgiveness of. Synoptics, A. 56;
James, 66 ; Peter, 70 f. ; Clemens
Ilomanus, 98 ; Barnabas, 115; Iler-
mas, 134; Hegesippus, 141; Test,
xii. Patr. 156, 168. Connected
with the baptism of Christ by the
Ebionites, 201, 204. Pseudo-Clemen-
tines, 212; Recognitions, 446; Jus-
tin, 266 f. ; Irenajus, 313, compare
305 ; Origen, ii. 336 ; Arians, li.
2^Z.— Compare Work.
Sin, against the Holy Ghost, A. 58.
Pall ; — Pseudo- Clementines, 207.
Diognetus, 260.
Sinlessness of Christ. Peter, A. 70;
Clemens Ilomanus, 98 f . ; Test. xii.
Patr. 156; Justin, 200 f., compare
276; Nazarenes, 430 f. ; Cerinthian
Ebionites, 195, 201, 440 ff. ; Pseudo-
Clementines, 212; Gnostics — Basi-
lides, etc., 235 ff. ; Justin, 276 ;
Clemens Alexand. 302 ; Irenajus,
323; Artemon, ii. 9 ; Hippolytus, ii.
92-96; Cyprian, ii. 102; Origen, ii.
134 f., compare ii. 333; Lactantius,
ii. 207 ; Arius, ii. 241 ff. Fear of a
free human soul of Christ because
of the sinlessness ; in Athanasius,
and others, ii. 349 ff., 423. Apol-
linaris, ii. 386, 395. Hilarius, ii. 413,
427. Controversy between the Alex-
andrians and the Antiochians, B.
69 f. ; between Augustine and
Julian, 77-79. — Compare, further,
192 f., 255 f., 258, 344 f., 428.— Ana-
baptists, ii. 152 ff . ; Socinians, ii.
254 ; Fend, Dippel, ii. 376 ; Conradi,
iii. 128; Baur, iii. 293.— See Free-
dom.
Sirach, A. 18.
Sirmium, Synod of, A. ii. 356, 504.
liKri'TTfov, ^ca^ixuffx-tiTTpov, explained, A.
100.
Smalcius, B. ii. 252, 420.
Smyrna, Epistle, A. 373.
Socinus, B. ii. 249, 256, 261.
Socinians, B. 363; ii. 249, 350.
Socinianism, A. 401; ii. 287 ; ii. 348,
354 ; iii. 27, 222 f.
Sohar, A. 417.
Sohnius, B. ii. 243, 348, 419, 436.
Son, how sometimes said to be besrot-
ten of tlie Father's will, B. iii. App.
388.
Son of God. The Logos in Philo, A.
23. In the Old Testament (Servant
of God), 43. The Synoptics, 52.
Designation of the divine in Christ
i with Paul, John, Epistle to the
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
495
Hebrews, and in the post-apostolic
age, 392. Inner momenta (^f this
idea (Pre-cxistence, Word of Power,
Wisdom), 403 f. Designation of
the world in Celsus, 164; Pseudo-
Clementines, 210. Varying usage
of the word in tlie second century,
and increasing dissipation of the
personality of the Son, ii. 58, com-
pare i. 307. Hernias, 124 ; Papist, ad
Diognetum, 263, Justin, 268 ff. ;
Athenagoras, 283 f. ; Clemens Alex.
287 f. ; Irenieus, 306 ff. Determi-
nate apidication of the idea to the
higher nature of Christ, in the third
century, by Tertullian, ii. 78 ff.,
compare i. 294. TertuUian's doc-
trine of tlie Son, ii. 62 ff. ; Nova-
tian, ii. 80 ; Hipptdytus, ii. 86 ft'. ;
Cyprian, ii. 100. Further develop-
ment of this doctrine by Origen's
"eternal, continuous generation of
the Son," ii. 108-135. Sabellius, ii.
153 ff., compare 163 and 167. Pie-
rius' eternal generation of the Son,
ii. 171. Varying representations of
Methodius, ii. 174 ff. Suhordina-
tianism in Dionysius of Alexandria,
ii. 176. Equality with the Father,
ii. 185; L;ictantius, ii. 213. Pro-
cession of the Son i'rom tlie heart
of the Father; — Zeno, ii. 188; com-
pare Lactantius, 192 ft". Decrees
of the Synod of Antioch, ii. 196.
Eusel)ius of CtEsarea, ii. 221. Double
doctrine of Arius, ii. 236 ff. Deter-
mination of the Council of Nicfea,
ii. 246, 261. Eunomius and Aetius,
ii. 263 ff. ; Cyrill of Jerusalem, ii.
.501 ; Marcelltis, ii. 272 ff. Import-
ance of this idea, and common de-
velopment by the Church teachers
of the fourth century, ii. 271 ; com-
pare 295, 323. — See. Atiianasius, ii.
297. Basiiius the Great, ii. 306;
Gregory of Nyssa, ii. 310 ft'.; Gre-
gory Nazianzen, ii. 304, 384 ; Apul-
linaris, ii. 384 ; Ililarius, ii. 400. —
SELF-niREMITION IN THE SoN, in
several Apologists, 290 ff. ; Ter-
tullian, ii. 68, 73; i\Iarccllus, ii.278;
Apoliinaris, ii. 384 f. ; Ililarius, ii.
407 ff., 415. — See Person of C'iirist,
Jesus Clirist, Trinity. — In Christ
tlie world has become tiie alter dcus,
the cosmical God or Son of God
in unity with the eternal Son, ac-
cording to Theodore, B. 43, 48 f.
Adoptians, 256 ff. Adoptive Son,
258, compare ii. 125, 147. Son of
(kid with the Mystics, ii. 8, 18;
Lutiier, ii. 60, 8»> • Theophiastus, ii
107, 400 ft'.; A. Osiandcr, ii. 107,
109 ff. Schwenckfeld equalizes the
humanity with the Son of God, ii,
145 f. Sociiiian doctrine of the
Son of God, ii. 250 L—See Trinity,
Subordiuatianism, Sabellianisiii,
Heavenly Humanity. — The world
the Son of God, according to modern
philosophy, iii. 105, 122.
Sonship, divine, of Christ in a three-
fold respect, A. 81, 195. — Compare
Son.
Sophia, A. 16 ff., 44, 392, 403.— Com-
pare Wisdom.
Sophronius of Jerusalem, B. 156, 169,
171, 184.
Sosiosh, A. 12.
Soul of Christ, A. 69. Human : Course
of the development of the doctrine
— Peter, 69; Clemens Romanus, 99;
I Ilermas, 127; Carpocrates, 186;
I Pseudo- Clementines (?), 440 f. ; Mar-
cion, 455 f. ; ii. 51. Gnostic deriva-
tion of the body from the soul, 456,
compare 320. Justin : relation of
the soul to the Logos, 268, compare
277. Clemens Alexandrinus, 301,
compare 297 ; Irenieus, 320 ft". ; Paul
of Samosata, ii. 13, compare 170 and
350. Doctrine of the Church in the
second century, ii. IS; Praxeas(?), ii.
2 1 f. ; Hermogenes, ii. 25 ; Noetus (?),
ii. 28 ; Beron (?), ii. 33 ; Beryll
of Bostra (?), ii. 38-40; Apelles, ii,
50. Definite settlement thereof by
Tertullian, ii. 51 ff. ; Hippolytus, ii.
93; Origen, ii. 135-140, compare
170, and denial by the Priscillianists,
ii. 468. Uncertain view of Sabel-
lius, ii. 162 f. Why Atiianasius does
not express])' mention it, ii. 258, cf.
349, 511. Denial bv the Arians, ii.
345 ft'.; and by Ma'rcelius, ii. 348;
combated by Eustathius, ii. 519;
and the Church teachers of the
fourth century, ii. 520. Apoliinaris'
tlieory, ii. 363 ft'., 385, 390, 423.
Ililarius, ii. 409, 419; B. 33, MO,
380 f.: Monotheletes, 170 f . ; Anas-
tasius Presb. 188 f . ; Maximus, 180;
(composite and gnomic will) 212;
ii. 221, 276, 280; (Prayer) ii. 458,
460. Pecent writers, iii. 249 f., 255 f.
— See I'erson, Iniper>onality, Free-
dom, Omniscience, Omnipotence,
Siniessness.
Soul, surt'erings of Christ's. Calvin.
B. ii 221, 224. Keformed Cb'))"h,
ii. 342.
South, B. ii. 360.
Souverain, l^. iii. 270
Spalding, B. iii. ii»
406
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Spangenherg, B. ii. 373.
Spee (Fr.), B. ii. 387.
Spener, B. ii. 348, 363.
Spinoza, B. ill. 6 ff.
Spirit, holy. Doctrine of the Synop-
tics, A. 59 ; Peter, 69 ; Clemens Ro-
manus, 97; Justin, 379. Hernias:
relation to the Son of God, and to
the Church, 124; to Christ, 131.
Identification of the divine in Christ
with the Holy Spirit in the early
Church, 389. Examination of Baur's
assertion of the hypostatization of
the Holy Ghost by the early Church
prior to attributing hypostatic pre-
existence to the Logos, 388. Dis-
tinction of the Holy Spirit at the
birth and baptism of Christ. Bap-
tismal formula, 394. Existence of
the doctrine at the time of Montan-
ism, 397. Nazarenes, 193 ff.; Cerin-
thian Ebionites, 201 f., 434; Cle-
mentine Homilies, 2 1 1. Significance
to the Gnostics, 238. Slight refer-
ence to, in the Epist. ad Diognetum,
263. Justin's pretended identifica-
tion of the Holy Ghost with the
Logos, 274. Significance in the
system of Tatian, 283 ; Irenseus,
30.5, f., 462. His work in the incar-
nation, 324, 394. The Holy Spirit
mediates in the Eucharist (Semisch),
466. Relation to the Logos in Ire-
rSBiis, 323. TertuUian's doctrine, ii.
76 ; Hippolytus, ii. 86, 92. Perfect
indwelling of the Holy Ghost in
Christ : Novatian, ii. 80 ; Origen, ii.
123. Further development through
Sabellius, ii. 153, 156. Subordina-
tianism of Pierius, ii. 171. "Manns
sinistra Dei," Lactantius, ii. 215.
Doctrine of the Church Fathers in
the fourth century, ii. 323. The
significance of the Holy Spirit in the
Christology of the Reformed Church,
B. ii. 341 ; Arminians, ii. 351 f ;
Tliomasius, Hofmann, iii. 254 — See
Anointing.
Stancarus, B. 316 ; ii. 222, 404.
Stark, B. iii. 270.
States of Christ. Preludes of the doc
trine of the states ; — truth of the
human growth, B. 36 fi"., 69 f., 256,
401 ; compare, on the other hand,
217, 332 f., 344. Luther, ii. 87 f.,
89 flP., 96, 126, 139, 1.50. Lutheran
theology, ii. 284, 287, 366 ff., 377 ff.
The two evangelical Confessions, ii.
3u3. More precise distinction of the
two states since the Reformation, ii.
186 ff., 204, 212 f. The Giessen and
Tiibingcn divines, ii. 281-298.
Staudenmeyer, B. iii. 328.
Steffens, B. iii. 237, 269, 286.
Steinbart, B. iii, 27.
Steinhofer, B. ii. 314; iii. 276.
Steinmeyer, B. iii. 310, 330.
Stephanus, disciple of Sophronius, B
167, 182, 193.
Stephanus Barsudaili, B. 132, 422.
Stephanus Niobes, B. 122, 144.
Stier, B. iii, 222, 312.
Stilling, B. iii. 73.
Stillingfleet, B. ii. 360; on Modal Triiii-
tarianism, B. iii. 361.
Storr, B. ii. 314 ; iii. 25, 28, 264, 276.
Stratiotes, A. 249.
Strauss, A. 328 ; B. iii. 124, 144, 149 ff.,
166, 182, 192, 198, 202. Effect ol
his views on Socinianism, App. 439.
Stuart, B. iii. 308.
Stuart, Moses, on the divine Sonshij)j
B. iii. App. 426.
Stuhr, A. 7, 12.
Suarez, B. 369 ; ii. 437, 447.
Subordination of the Son, B. iii. App.
367, 382.
Subordinatianism. Justin, A. 274.
Reaction of Sabellianism against
the subordinatian element in the
doctrine of the Church in the third
century, ii. 17 f., compare ii. 228.
Inclination of TertuUian thereto, ii.
77 ff. ; Novatian, ii. 80; Hippolytus,
ii. 87; Origen, ii. 117 ff., 144;'Me-
thodius, ii. 175. Adopted by the
Church merely as an auxiliary doc-
trine, ii. 109 f. Modalism passes
into Subordinatianism, ii. 146. Dio-
nysius of Alexandria, ii. 176 ff. ;
Lactantius, ii. 194. — See Arianism,
Semi-Arianism, B. 300; ii. 160 ff.,
349 f., 357; iii. 21.
Substance. — .See oiia-la, Pantheism,
God.
Substitution of Christ. Peter, A.
70 ; Clemens Romanus (subjective
and objective), 98; Ignatius, 108;
Barnabas, 115; Pseudo-Clemen-
tines (?), 439 ; Justin, 267. Arianism :
unethical, ii. 338 f. Athanasius and
Gregory Nazianzen, ii. 344 ; Theo-
doret, ii. 516; Hilarius, ii. 418; B.
iii. 232 ff.—See Work of Christ,
Head, Death of Christ, Mystical
Christology.
Suetonius, A. 416.
Sufferings of Christ, A. 110, 113, 11.5,
1.34 ff. Typical of the history of the
Church, 144. Typical representa-
tion in Joseph;— Test. xii. Patr. 155.
Significance in the other apocry-
phal writings, 423 ; Cerinthus, 197.
ClenieiUine Iloniilics, — pattern of
IKDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
497
patience, 208. rosition in Gnosti-
cism, 235 f. Marcion, 240, compare
•i. 50; Justin, 275; Clemens Alex.
299 f. ; Irenaeus, 316 ; Patripassian-
ism, ii. 20 ; Fraxeas, ii. 22 f. ; Noetus,
ii. 26. TerluUian against Patripas-
sianism, ii. 49 and 56 ff. Defect of
his view, ii. 73. Cyprian, ii. 100 ff. ;
Origen, ii. 134 ff., compare 144 and
334. Ethical view of Lactantius, ii.
205, compare 209. Docetism of the
Priscillianists, ii. 469 Slight import-
ance to Sabellius, ii. 1G7. Universal
significance to Athanasius, ii. 254,
342 ff. Gregory of Nyssa, ii. 513 ff.,
cf. 369. An act ; — Chrvsostom, 514 ;
Apollinaris, ii. 367, cf. 378, 382;
Hilarius, ii. 410. Importance in
establishing the necessity of the in-
carnation, B. 6-8, 390. Criticism of
Anselm by Scotus, 352. Middle Age
treatment of the passion of Christ
and of Mary, 274. The Theologia
Germanica, li. 21 ff. Luther, ii. 84 ff.
Formula of Concord, ii. 209. The
divines of Tiibingen, ii. 284 f., 425,
434. The predominance given to
the majesty of Christ draws the
Lutheran Christology again away
from the true sufferings, ii. 139.
Sufferings of God, ii. 398 ; iii. 307.—
See Theupaschitism. Sunday obser-
vance, significance for Christology,
A. 172.
Supper, Lord's, or Eucharist, A. 60,
362. Doctrine of Ignatius, lOG, 107.
Jewish Christian tendency. 124. In-
fluence on the doctrine of the Person
of Christ, 167 ff. Justin, 436 ; Cle-
mens Alcxand. 299 ; Ireneeus, 467 ;
Cyprian, ii. 102 ; Gregory of Nyssa,
ii. 345, 514; Chrvsostom, ii. 515;
Hilarius, ii. 411, 4"l8 ; Cyrill B. 62;
Nestorians, 395; Leo, 91 ; Gelasius,
135; the Monopliysites, 422; Anas-
tasius Rinaita, and Rupert of Deutz,
422 ; Cubasilas, 242 ; the Middle
Ages, 253, 268. The Romish doctrine,
;i76 f. The St Victors, 298 f. ; Luther,
ii. 121, 390; Calvin, ii. 138, 414;
Theo])hrastus, ii. 402 ; Schwenckfcld,
ii. 143, 151 f. ; later Roman Catholic
writers, ii. 449.
Supralapsariaiis, B. ii. 340.
Surius (L.), B. ii. 3.
Susceptibility of the humanity to God
Scotus, B. 340. The German Mys-
ticism, ii. 3 f. ; positive princiiilcs,
ii. 218. Luther, ii. 79, 81 ff. Humana
natura capax divinae, according to
tlie Sual)ians, ii. 184. ff. Formula
Concordiic, ii. 211. Chemuita's view
P. 2. — VUL. III.
somewhat different, ii. 201. Re-
formed doctrine, ii. 244. The capa-
citas and communicatio idiomatum
deprived of their force and explained
away, ii. 303, 304-306. — See Socini-
ans. Compare iii. 231.
Suso, B. ii. 4, 11.
Swedenborg. B. ii. 333, 376.
Sylburg, A. 375.
Symbol. Significance for Christology,
A. 180. Symbolum Apostolicum,
169.
Symmachus. Symmachians, A. 432.
Symbolics, Church, A. 74.
Synesius, A. 181.
Synoptics, A. 52 ff.
Synusiasts, A. ii. 365 ; B. 81.
Syrian schools, the two, B. 26.
Syzygia, A. 207.
Tacitus, A. 416.
Tanner, B. ii. 418, 437.
Tatian, A. 279. Doctrine of the Logos,
281 ; ii. 47.
Tauler, B. ii. 3 f., 399.
Tebuthis, A. 190, 196, 402.
Teller, B. iii. 265.
Temptation of Christ, A. 321, 325.—
Compare Freedom.
Tersteegen, B. iii. 73.
Tertullian, A. 90, 355, 391, 393, 395,
compare ii. 58, 184 ff'., 332. 356;
(Montanism and Chiliasm) 409, 170,
compare 450 ; (Gnosticism) ii. 50 ff.
Combating of the pneumatic body
of Christ, 239. Doctrine of the true
humanity of Christ, ii. 50 ff. Agree-
ment with Irenajus, 313, compare
321. Refutation of Praxeas, ii. 20 ff.
Testimony to the unquestioned re-
cognition of the divinity of Christ
in his day, ii. 48. Theology and
Christology, ii. 50-80. Relation to
Origen, ii. 107 ff., 138, 147 ; Hip-
polytus, ii. 88 ; Sabellius, ii. 160 ff.;
Methodius, ii. 175. Resemblance to
llilarv, ii. 400 ; Athanasius, ii. 422;
B. 34", 112, 364.
Testament, New. Difference in its tes-
timonies to the faith in the divinity
of Christ, A. 4. Old Testament, 112,
114.
Testament of the xii. Patriarchs, A.
122, 154 If., 392.
Tetinge(Nic.), B. 313.
Tetradium, B. 414.
Thalia (Arius), A. ii. 237, 495.
Thamcr (Theob.), B. ii. 161.
TiK'mistius, B. 141.
Theodore Abukara, A. ii. 516; B. 228,
418, 437.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, A. ii 51fi,
2 I
498
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
520. His svstem, B. 31-51, 54, 80,
364; ii. 178'
Theodore of Pharan, B. 156, 165, 169,
174-186, 345.
Theodoret. On Noetus, A. ii. 27. Re-
lation of Father and Son, ii. 516.
Ajiainst ApoUinaris, ii. 365, 377, 384,
397, 528. Report on the Gnostics,
i. 453; B. 30, 76, 81, 157, 433.
Theodosius, A. ii. 495; B. 122.
Theodosians, B. 141.
Theodotus, A. 289 ; ii. 4, 5. Theodo-
tians, 453; ii. 6 ft'., 47, 85.
Theodotus the Syrian, B. 27.
Theognostus, A. ii. 171. Doctrine and
writings, ii. 172 ff.
Theopaschitism. Opposed to the suffer-
ing, the depoteutiation of the Logos,
Cyrill, B. 63 f., compare 71. In
favour thereof: The ApoUinarists
and Monophysites, P. Fuilo, B. 125,
and others, 15.5, 419. Menno, ii.
153 ; Petavius, ii. 449 ; Zinzendorf,
ii 370 ff. ; recent writers, iii. 208 ff.,
213, 306 tf., 330 ff.
Theophany. The incarnation a theo-
phanv, A. ii. 21, compare ii. 16, 96,
365 ff., 372, 417.
Theophilus of Alexandria, B. 51, 95.
Theophilus of Antioch, A. 279, 393.
Theophrastus Paracelsus, B. ii. 107.
Theosophy. — See Theophrastus, Bohm,
Weigel, Oetinger, etc., B. ii. 107 ;
compare 394 ff., 315 ff., 325-337 ; iii.
73 ff.
Thilo, A. 422.
Thirlby, B. ii. 358.
Tholuck, B. iii. 222, 269.
Thomas Aquinas, B. 237, 239, 279,
303, 329, 356, 369, 440 ; ii. 437, 446.
Thomas of Bradwardine, B. 373.
Ihomasius, B. ii. 108, 273, 423, 424 ;
iii. 228, 243-246, 312, 331, 333.
Thomists, B. 369 ; ii. 447. Thomistic
Nominalism, 371.
Thousand years' kingdom, ApoUina-
ris, A. ii. 385. — See Chiliasm, Escha-
tology.
Thumni, B. ii. 422, 42.3, 434, 444, 460.
Tieftrunk, B. iii. 31.
Timann, B. 175.
'lirnotheus, Nestorian Catholiko.s, B.
394.
Timotheus Ailuros, B. 122, 130.
Titus of Bostra, A. ii. 174.
Tiillner, B. ii. 459 ; iii. 23, 263 ff.
Tradition, A. 171, 259.
Traducianisra, B. 398 ; ii. 308.
Trcffry, his work on the eternal Son-
ship, B. iii. App. 426.
Trautermann, B. 368.
Trcbisch, B. iii. 302.
Trech.sel, B. ii. 161, 168, 170, 411,
Trelcatius, B. ii. 436, 437.
Trinity, doctrine of, A. 69, 86 ff. Why
a doctrine of the Trinity could not
be formed at the beginning of the
Church's history, 354, compare 90 f.
Gradual rise and history, 395 ff,
Papias warrants us in concluding
its existence, 400. Influence of the
baptismal formula on its develop-
ment, 396, compare 168, 169. Begin-
nings in Hermas, 124 f. ; in the Dyad
of the Pseudo-Clementines, 205. Its
existence in substance at the time
of Montanism, ii. 149. Church doc-
trine at the time of the Monarchians,
ii. 18, compare i. 294. Beryll's view :
transition to Sabellius, ii. 45 f.
Tertullian's trinitarian conception
of God, ii. 58 ff"., 74, 147. Presenti-
ment in TertuUian of the Trinity as
the eternal process of the divine
self-consciousness, ii. 63. Origen,
ii. Ill, 114; Zeno, ii. 186; Athana-
sius, ii. 298 f. ; Hilarius, ii. 300. The
attempt of Hippolytus to construct
the Trinity as a multiplicity of attri-
butes, ii. 87 ff. Origen's advance
through his doctrine of the un-
changeable livingness of God, ii,
112, 114. Subordination of the Son,
ii. 114 ff. Advance of Sabellius be-
yond Patripassianism, from a reli-
gious and scientilic interest, with
more determinate consideration of
the Holy Spirit, ii. 153. Zeno of
Verona, i. 186 ff. Lack of the
Trinity in Arnobius and Minucius
Felix, ii. 192. Character of the
trinitarian convictions of the
Church prior to the Council of
Mictea, ii. 181 ff., compare ii. 195 ff.
Construction and necessity of the
Trinity by Eusebius of Casarea, ii,
218. Form in Lucian's (Confession
of Faith, ii. 488 ; at Nicsea, ii. 262.
Necessary separation of the doctrine
of the Trinity from Christology after
the Council of Nicaea, ii. 262. Mar-
cellus, ii. 275 ff. Vanquishment of
Pantheism and Deism, ii. 289. Fur-
ther development by Athanasius, ii.
298; by Gregory Nazianzen, ii. 304,
compare 383 ; by Basilius, ii. 305 ;
Gregory of Nyssa, ii. 310-325
Defects and critique of the Nicene
Fathers, ii. 323-330. Dialectic pro-
cedure of ApoUinaris, Note 70; B,
50, 126, 194, 272, 311. The Anti-
trinitariaiis, ii. 157, 250 f. Sweden-
borg, ii. 334, 350, 356-362 ; Zinzen-
dorf ii. 372 ; Dippel, Kdelmanu, ii
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
499
876-378 ; later writers, iii. 21 ff.,
2G-28. — See God, Father, Son, Lo-
gos, Spirit, Sabellianism, Subordi-
Tiatianism.
Triphysites, B. 250.
Tritheism, A. ii. 182; of the Church
teachers in the fourth century
(Baur), ii. 507 ; B. 147, 301.
Trithemius, B. ii. 401.
Tiibingen, theologians of, B. ii. 281.
Compared with those of Giessen, ii.
293 f. Their inconsistency, and the
heterodox consequences of their
doctrine, ibid.
Turretine, B. ii. 348, 355.
Turrianus, B. ii. 225.
Twesten, B. iii. 229, 308.
Uhlhorn, B. 379.
"TX>), A. 438, 455, 458 ; ii. 472.
UUmann, A. 442 ; ii. 36, 425, 447 ; B.
228, 367; ii. 11 ; iii. 228.
Unitarianism. Circumstances favour-
able to it in seventeenth century,
B. iii. App. 351; its fraternizing
with Mohammedanism, App. 351; its
spread in England, App. 353.
Unity of Godhead, wherein it properly
stands, B. iii. App. 387.
Unity of the divine and human — Philo,
A. 38. Unity in Christ — Ignatius,
104. Gnostics", 238 ; Marcion, 239 ff. ;
IreuiTjus, 318, 465, 323 ; Tertnllian,
ii. 59 ft'. ; Hippolytus, ii. 96 ; Origen,
ii. 135 ff. ; Sabeliius, ii. 165, 168.
Polemic and task of the Ciuirch
in the third century, ii. 169 ; in
the fourth century, ii. 421 ft'. De-
crees of Antioch, ii. 197 ft". Deriva-
tion from the prophetical office of
Christ : Lactantius, ii. 207. Aboli-
tion of the unity bv Arius and the
Arians, ii. 240, cf" 294 ft"., 345 ff.
Marcellus, ii. 280, cf. 348 ; Nicenc
Fathers, ii. 328 ft".; Athanasius, ii.
339, cf. 422 ; Gregory Nazianzen,
ii. 425 ft".; Eustathius, ii. 520. De-
crees of Alexandria, ii. 525. Apol-
linaris, ii. 360 ; Hilary, ii. 404 ff.,
cf. 416 ft".
Unio, of the two natures. Its ))ossible
forms, B. 16 ft".
1. The unio at the cost of the in-
tegrity of the one or the other
nature.
1. By the conversion of the di-
vine into the human nature.
So in Apollinnrism and Theo-
I)a8chitism, 63 f., 71 ; ii. 355,
425 ; iii. 248 tf., 251 ft". Reject-
<'d by Cyril), 64 ; and by the
Formula Concordia-, ii. 215 If.
2. By the conversion of the hu-
man into the divine nature.
So in Monophysitism, 129 ft".;
Schwenckfeld, ii. 150 ; J. An-
dre£e, ii. 190 ft"., 431.
3. By a reciprocal tempering,
chemical or temperative unio,
73, 83, 104 ft"., 344 fi"., 393.
In recent times.
1\ Unio through a third principle
lying outside of the two na-
tures.
1. Unio by local conjunction,
202, 203." Similes employed:
The humanity a temple, the
garment of the deity ; by
God's will of power, which is
able to conjoin things which
are absolutely heterogeneous,
52, 71. The result is then a
mechanical union.
2. The unio of relation, unio
relativa, 'ivutn; irx.i'rtxri. Either
in virtue of the divine iI^okix
(Theodore of Mopsuestia,40),
or of the divine judgment on
the special worth of the hu-
manity of Jesus, the omni-
present Logos enters into a
peculiarly near relation to
Jesus. Unio forensis of
Adoptianism, 254. In Scho-
lasticism, 337, 339, 353.
3. Unio through the sameness
of the objects of thought
(Cartesians, ii. 356 ; Ant.
Giinther, iii. 302), and of the
objects willed; and the for-
mal similarity of the volitions
and sentiments. Moral unio;
so Antiocheians, Adoptians,
Arniinians, Socinians, and
others, iii. 20 ft".
III. The unio through an inner
principle in the entire person
itself.
1. With the presupposition of
the essential antagonism of
the two natures (Diiali>m). —
a. Unio through the one di-
vine hypostasis. This may be
viewed as the result of the
process of the two natures,
411 ; as the common place of
the two Jiatures, the ring in-
cluding them in itself, 201 ft".;
and, at the same time, as tiie
power over their difference
(see ii. 1). Herewith nothing
was done for the knowledge
of the unio unless the divine
hyj)ostasis were ailded to the
500
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
human nature — and this was
not posited before the Refor-
mation.— Compare Brentz on
the Unio hypostatica, ii. 178 ff.
On the other side, Chemnitz,
ii. 203 ff. — b. Union of the
natures in tlie unity of the
faculty of will, of volitions, of
works (Monotheletes), 1.56 f.
— c. Attempt to unite the two
dyotheletic vital systems and
natures by John of Damascus
through the ■7rtpix,^fri<ni (com-
pare ii. 1), through the ex-
change of predicates, Antido-
sis, which remained nominal,
and through the enhance-
ment of the human powers to
likeness to God (^iairi;'), which
became a participation in di-
vine predicates, 210 ff.
The Chalcedonian Unio hy-
postatica falls into two forms.
— a. That of Adoptianism, 256
f., which conceived the hu-
manity as well as the deity to
be personal, but posited the
two as united in the abstract
and empty point of unity of
the Ego ; compare ii. 2, 3. —
/3. That of Nihilianism, 314,
which regarded the humanity
as an impersonal organ or
garment of the deity (com-
pare ii. 1).
2. Presupposing the two natures
to be inwardly connected,
and to strive towards union,
Luther and the Suabians laid
down a real communicatio
personaa, natural, idiomatum,
ii. 76 ff., 103, 178 ff. On the
unsatisfactory carrying out
of this doctrine, ii. 214 ff. ; on
the early falling away from
the original thought of the
Lutheran Church ; the re-
striction, controverting, and
decay thereof. — See Commu-
nicatio. Return in modern
times to the Reformatory
knowledge of the connection
of the divine and human — on
the part of philosophy, iii.
2 ff., 68, 100 ff.; on the part
of recent theology, iii. 230 ff.
Unchangeableness of God, A. ii. 55,
70 ff., 84 ff.
Universalisni of the Hellenic doctrine
of the Logos, A. 17 ; of the Pseudo-
Clementines, 442.
Urlsperger, B. ii. 374.
Ursacius, A. ii. 400.
Ursinus, B. ii. 224, 226.
Vadian, B. ii. 14.% 409.
Valens, Bishop, A. 372.
Valens of Mursa, A. ii. 400.
Valentinus, A. 182, 229, 297, 805, 341
447, 453 ; ii. 52, 59, 76, 448; B. 404.
Valesius, A. ii. 217.
Vasquez, B. ii. 314, 448.
Vatke, A. 402 ; B. iii. 152, 296.
Velthusen, B. iii. 270.
Venturini, B. iii. 29.
Vernet, B. iii. 24.
Victor, A. 425 ; ii. 8.
Victors, the St, B. 281, 296.
Victorinus, life, doctrines, and writings,
A. ii. 484 ff.
Vigilius, B. 413.
Vinet, B. ii. 373.
Virgil, A. 416.
Vitalian, B. 184.
Vitalis, A. ii. 387, 525.
Vitringa, B. ii. 456.
Vorstius (Conr.), B ii. 355.
Wagner (J. F.), B. ii. 458.
Walseus, B. ii. 436.
Walch, A. ii. 481, 488; B. 126 ; ii. 108,
301, 365, 368, 376, 411.
Waldenses, A. 94.
Wallis, his Trinitarian views, B. iii.
App. 359.
Waterland, B. ii. 359 ; on Modal Trini-
tarianism, iii. App. 365 ; his general
character as a controversialist, App.
374 ; his works on the Trinity, App.
377 ; his views on the a priori argu-
ment, App. 397.
Watts (Isaac), B. ii. 329 ; his alleged
later Socinianism, iii. App. 404.
Wegner, B. ii. 310.
Wegscheider, B. iii. 48.
Weickhmann, B. ii. 314.
Weigel (Valentine), B. ii. 316, 402.
Weiss, B. 379.
Weisse, B. ii. 101, 392 ; iii. 222, 224,
269, 296.
Wendelin, B. ii. 244, 345, 419, 436.
Werenfels, B. ii. 35.5.
Wessel (Joh.), B. 377.
Westphal (Joach.), B. ii. 175.
Wetstein, B. ii. 355.
Wette, De, B. iii. 51-58, 222.
Wheweli, B. iii. i;68.
Whiston (William), B. ii. 3.')8 ; iii. 265 ;
his Arian views, App. 368.
Whitby, B. ii. 3.59 ; his general cha-
racter, and views respecting the
Trinity, iii. A])p. 3G9.
Wliitsuntidc, A. 175.
Wickelhaus, B 26.
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
501
Wickliffe, B. ii. 130.
Widebram, B. ii. 418.
Wieseler, B. iii. 222.
Wigand, B. 369 ; ii. 144, 176, 192.
Wilken, B. ii. 108.
Will of God : Noetns, A. ii. 27 ; Origen.
ii. 128 ff. Will of Christ : Arias, ii.
238 ; Apollinaris, ii. 367, 394, cf.
419; Hilarius and Athanasius, ii.
420 ff. ; Gregory of Nyssa, ii. 423.—
Compare Sinlessness.
Will of Christ.— 5ee Soul, Freedom.
Windischmann, B. ii. 394.
Wisdom. Proverbs, A. 16. Identified
with the Son of God by Aristo, 121 ;
Hermas, 125, 134. Relation to Christ
and the creation of the world in
Hegesippus, 141. Wisdom of Mes-
siah in the Book of Enoch, 152 f.
Transformation of this theologu-
menon by the Church during the
first century, 161 ; the Clementines,
213. Epis'tle to Diognetus, 261.
Point of departure for the Logology
of Justin, 269 f. Special importance
in the Logology of Clemens Alex.
285 f., compare 2S8. Position in
TertuUian's doctrine of the Trinity,
ii. 66 ff. Hippolytus, ii. 87 ff. ; Mar-
cellus, ii. 271 ff. — Compare Sophia,
Logos, Word, Spirit.
Wisdom of God in Christ. Distinc-
tion from human : Apollinaris, A. ii.
Note 66.
Wisdom. — See Omniscience, Agnoetes.
Witsius, B. ii. 338, 343, 454.
Wittich, B. ii. 244, 356.
Woken, B. ii. 307.
Wolf (Christian), B. iii. 19, 75, 265.
Wolfenbiittler Fragmentist, B. iii. 29.
Wolff(Phil.), B. 433.
"Wolzogen, B. ii. 255, 420.
Word of God. In the Old Testament
and in New Testament apocry-
phal writings, A. 16 ff., compare
890. Application thereof in the
New Testament to Christ, 70, com-
pare 161. Articulation of the doc-
trine of the Word with that of the
Logos and the Son of God in the
post-apostolic age, 403. Absence
thereof from the Book of Enoch,
152. Distinction between the speak-
ing and the spoken Word in the
second centurv ; Clemens Alex.
288 ff. Unity of Word and Reason :
Irenaeus, 305, 462. New phase in
the third century with Tertullian :
diremption of the Reason in God and
of the Word as its ohjectification.
Sclf-conscionsness of the World-
idea? ii. 62 ff. Hippolytus' union J
P. v(.— VOL. III.
of the theologumena Word and
Wisdom, ii. 87 ff. Origen ; compare
Son of God. Position in Sabellius'
doctrine of the Trinity, ii. 476.
Significance to Victorinus, ii. 485.
— ii. 273.
Works, good. Hermas, A. 123.
Work of Christ. Synoptics, A- 58 ;
James, 65 ff. ; Peter, 68 ; Clemens
Romanus, 98 ; Ignatius (special pro-
minence given to His death), 108 ;
Barnabas, 114. Relation of the
realistic and idealistic tendency of
the first and second centuries
thereto, 120 ff. Papias, 135. Hege-
sippus, 140 ff. Ebionitic, Docetical,
Montanistic view, 147. Impulse to
a progressive knowledge of His per-
son, 176. Main feature — doctrine:
Cerinthus, 197 f . ; Pseudo-Clemen-
tines, 212; Gnostics, 230, compare
237 f. Marcion, 450. Deeper and
fuller view of the Church teachers of
the second century : Epist. ad Diog-
netum, 261 ff. Justin, 265-267.
Irenaeus, 318 f. Slight estimate of
Monarchians, ii. 19. Hippolytus'
view, ii. 97 ff. Cyprian, ii. 'loi.
Superficial view of Sabellius, ii,
166 ff. Arnobms, ii. 190 ff. Ethical
view of Lactantius, ii. 208 ff. Uni-
versalistic prevalence : Athanasius,
ii. 251 ; cf. 340 ff. Position of the
Semi-Arians, ii. 321. Doctrine of
Origen, ii. 333 ff. Gregory Nazianzen,
ii. 344. Gregory of Nyssa, ii. 345.
Chrysostom, ii. 515. Theodoret, ii.
515 f. Apollinaris, ii. 395. Hilarius,
ii. 419, 447.— Co7?ma?e Merit and
Office.
Vorld. Relation to God in Hebraism,
A. 16 ff. Gnosticism, 247. Philo,
21 ff. Alexandrians and the later
Judaism, 78 ff. Pseudo-Clcmemines,
211. Athanasius, ii. 248 ff. Rela-
tion to the Logos in the doctrine of
the Church during the second and
third centuries, 292 ff. In the doc-
trine of the Logos of the Apologists,
and in the successive Trinity of Ter-
tullian and Hippolytus, the idea of
God not yet set free from the w^rld ;
compare 290 ff. ; ii. 57 ff. The
physical interweaving of God and
the world first ceases with Origen's
doctrine of the eternal generation of
the Son, ii. 127 ff. Relative inde-
pendence of the world in Origen, ii.
130.
World, creation of. Share of the Son
of God : Aristo, A. 121 ; Hernias,
125, 134. Ilypostatizution of tha
i* I 1
502
INDEX TO THE FIVE VOLUMES.
Logos for the creation of the world :
Epist. ad Diognetum, 263 ; Athena-
goras, 289 ff. Identitication with
the generation of the Son of God
in Gnosticism, 452, compare 263.
Simultaneity of the creation with
the generation of the Logos :
Justin, 270 fF. Act of the Logos :
Theophilus of Antioch, 279. Fur-
ther development of the view of
Athenagoras : Irenjeus, 305. Co-
operation of Christ : TertuUian, ii.
67 ff., eternal creation in distinction
from eternal generation ; Origen, ii.
1 10. Origen's doctrine of successive
worlds, ii. 463 ft'. Act of the Monas,
or of the Father or Logos ? Sabel-
lius, ii. 157; cf. 161. Theognostus
and the school of Origen, ii. 173.
Zeno, ii. 188. The Son of God, the
principle of the creation of the world :
Eusebius of Caesarea, ii. 221. Christ
the means : Arius, ii. 235. Out of
nothing, out of the will of God :
Arians, Eunomius, ii. 267. Union
oi the Sabellian and Arian view in
the doctrine of Marccllu?, ii. 273
ff.
World, end of. Conflagration ; perfec-
tion, A. 32, 69 f., 144, 151 ; ii. 192,
384, 463.
World, Sabbath of, A. 116, 412.
Worship of Christ, A. ii. 369.
Wullen, B. ii. 320.
Xenaias, B. 395.
Zachari^e, B. ii. 364 ff.
Zacchfeans, A. 249.
Zanchius, B. 366 ; ii. 244, 309, 419,
436, 437.
Zeller, A. 93, 120.
Zeno, life, doctrine, writings, A. ii.
186 ff.
Zeno's (Emperor) Henoticon, B. 123.
Ziegler, B. iii. 27.
Zimmermann in Ziirich, B. ii. 355.
Zimmermann in Prague, B. iii. 274.
Zinzendorf, B. ii. 370, 373.
Zwic'Kcr, his Irenicum Irenicorum, B.
iii. App. 344.
Zwingli, B. ii. 80, 116 ff.
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T. and T. ClarJS s Publications.
LOTZE'S MICROCOSMUS.
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MICROCOSMUS:
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CTtansIatrt from tfje fficrman
By ELIZABETH HAMILTON and E. E. CONSTANCE JONES.
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in Germany by the generation just past. The translation comes at an opportune time,
for the circumstances of English thought, just at the present moment, are peculiarly
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of a century ago. . . . Few philosophic books of the century are so attractive both in
style and matter.' — Athenceum.
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Just published, in demy ivo, price 7s. 6d.,
ELEMENTS OF LOGIC
AS A SCIENCE OF PROPOSITIONS.
By E. E. CONSTANCE JONES,
LECTURER IN MORAL SCIENCES, GIRTON COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ;
JOINT-TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR OF LOTZE's ^ MicrOCOSmuS.'
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Just published, in demy 8vo, price 9s.,
KANT, LOTZE, AND RITSCHL.
^ ffi^riti'cal damination.
By LEONHARD STAHLIN, Bayreuth.
Translated by Pkincipal SIMON, Edinbukoh.
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THE LORD'S SUPPER:
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Contents: — Introduction. — Chap. I. TLe Passover. — II. The Lord's Last Passover.
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BEYOND THE STARS;
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THE HEREAFTER :
8HE0L, HADES, AND HELL, THE WORLD TO COME, AND THE SCRIPTURE
DOCTRINE OF RETRIBUTION ACCORDING TO LAW.
By JAMES FYFPl
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T. and T. Clark's Publications.
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IRIS:
STUDIES IN COLOUR AND TALKS ABOUT FLOWERS.
By Professor FRANZ DELITZSCH, D.D.
Translated by Rev. ALEXANDER CUSIN, M.A., Edinburgh.
CONTENTS :— Chap. I. The Blue of the Sky.— II. Black and White.— III. Purple
and Scarlet. — IV. Academic Official Robes and their Colours. — V. The Talmud
and Colours. — VI. Gossip about Flowers and their Perfume. — VII. A Doubtful
Nosegay.— Vlll. The Flower- Riddle of the Queen of Sheba.— IX. The Bible
and Wine. — X. Dancing and Criticism of the Pentateuch as mutually related.
— XL Love and Beauty. — XII. Eternal Life : Eternal Youth.
EXTRACT FROM THE PREFACE.
' The subjects of the following papers are old pet children, which have grown up with
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matical name of Iris. The prismatic colours of the rainbow, the brilliant sword-lily,
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Just published, Second Edition, crown Svo, price 6s. {Revised throughout),
STUDIES IN THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.
By Rev. ALEXANDER MAIR, D.D.
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THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF
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By LAURA M. LANE.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE VEN. ARCHDEACON FARRAR
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of a sincere and brilliant thinker. . . . The publication of this book will be a pure gain,
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NATURE AND THE BIBLE:
LECTURES ON THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF CREATION IN ITS
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Br Dr. FR. H. REUSCH.
KEVISED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR.
TRANSLATED from the Fourth Edition by KATHLEEN LYTTELTON.
' Other champions much more competent and learned than myself might have been
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to English literature.' — Whitehall Review.
' Wo owe to Dr. Reusch, a Catholic theologian, one of the most valuable treatises on
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DOGMATIC THEOLOGY.
By WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D.,
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AUTHOR OF 'a history OP CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE,' ' BERM0N3 TO THE NATURAL MAN,'
* SERMONS TO THE SPIRITUAL MAN,' ETC. ETC.
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Tlie old is bettor than the new, and its virtue has not yet boon exhausted. The result
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The Record.
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iiiid not from his literary executors. . . . Dr. Shedd's stylo is such as to. render it
reasonably cortiiin that his books will bo roati by more than one gononitiou of theological
readers after his personal labours have boon closed.' — Presbyterian Review.
T. and T. Claris Publications.
WORKS BY PROFESSOR C. A. BRIGG8, P.P.
Jmt -puhlished, Third Edition, in post 8fo, price 7s. Qd.,
WHITHER?
A THEOLOGICAL QUESTION FOR THE TIMES.
By Professor C. A. BRIGGS, D.D.,
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK.
CONTENTS :-Chap. I. Drifting.— II. Orthodoxy.— III. Changes.— IV. Shifting.
— V. Excesses.— VI. Failures.— VII. Departures.- VIII. Perplexities. — IX.
Barriers. — X. Thither.
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MESSIANIC PROPHECY.
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The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone writes: — 'On the pervading and multiform
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text-book on the subject of Messianic Prophecy which a modern teacher can use.'—
The Academy. __^
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BIBLICAL STUDY:
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AMERICAN PRESBYTERIANISM:
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TOGETIIKIi WITH AN APPENDIX OF LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS,
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THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF
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By Professor ALEX. V. G. ALLEN, D.D., Cambridge, Mass.
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THE WAY: THE NATURE, AND MEANS
OF REVELATION.
By JOHN F. WEIR, M.A.,
DEAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF FINE AKTS, YALE UNIVERSITY.
CONTENTS :— Chap. I. The Beginning and the Ending.— II. The Seers and
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Son of Man.— V. The Risen Christ.— VI. The Holy Ghost.— VII. Manifesta-
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ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THEOLOGY.
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STranslateli from tfje ffierman,
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British Quarterly linntw.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Recently published, in demy ?>vo, price 16«.,
HISTORY OF THE
CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION,
FROM THE REFORMATION TO KANT.
By BEKNHARD PUNJER.
Translated from the German by \V. HASTIE, B.D.
With a Preface by Professor FLINT, D.D., LL.D.
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In Two Vols., demv 8fo, price 21s., 5
HANDBOOK OF BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
By GAEL FEIEDKICH KEIL,
DOCTOK AND PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY.
Translated from the Third Improved and Corrected Edition.
Note. — This third edition is virtually a new book, for the learned Author has made
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' This work is the standard scientific treatise on Biblical Archaeology. It is a verj-
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direct homiletic usefulness.' — Literary World.
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treasm-es.' — The Bock.
In demy %vo, price 10s. Qd.,
A HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS
BEFORE THE REFORMATION.
By Professor C. E. LUTHAEDT, D.D., Leipzig.
Translated By W. HASTIK, B.D.,
EXAMINER IN THEOLOGY, KDINIiURGH UNIVERSITY.
' Charmingly written and adequately covers the ground.' — Presbyterian Review.
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T. and T. Clark's Ptiblications.
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KEIL AND DELITZSCH'S
COMMENTARIES ON AND INTRODUCTION
TO THE OLD TESTAMENT.
INTRODUCTION, 2 Vols. . (Keil).
PENTATEUCH, 3 Vols. . (Keil).
JOSHUA, JUDGES, Am) RUTH,
IVoL (KeW).
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CLES, 1 Vol. . . . (Keil).
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(^Delitzscli).
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OP SOLOMON . . CDeUtzsch).
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TIONS, 2 Vols. .
EZEKIEL, 2 Vols. .
DANIEL, 1 Vol. .
MINOR PROPHETS, 2 Vols.
(Keil).
(Keil).
(^Keil).
QKeil).
THE above Series (published in Clark's Foreign Theological Library) is now
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' Very high merif, for thorough Hebrew scholarship, and for keen critical sagacity,
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In One Volume, 8vo, price 12s.,
A SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY.
By F. delitzsch, D.D.
By the same Author.
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COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE
TO THE HEBREWS.
By the same Author.
In the I'rcss,
MESSIANIC PROPHECIES
IN THEIR HISTORICAL SUCCESSION.
TRANSLATED, WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTICE
By Professor S. I. CURTISS, D.D., Chicago.
In crown 8vo, price Ss.,
THE LEVITICAL PRIESTS.
A Contribution to the Criticism of the Pentateuch.
By Professou S. I. CUKTISS.
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of tho Pcntjitouclu' — Literari/ Churchman.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
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HISTORY OF THE
PASSION AND RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD,
CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN CRITICISM.
By Dr. F. L. STEINMEYER,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, BERLIN.
' Our readers will find this work a most, valuable and suggestive help for their thoughts
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By the same Author.
In demy ?>vo, price Is. 6c?.,
THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD,
IN RELATION TO MODERN CRITICISM.
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modem theological controversy.' — Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.
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THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE,
IN CONNECTION WITH REVELATION, INSPIRATION, AND THE
CANON.
Br JOHN JAMES GIVEN, Ph.D.
In One Volume Svo, price 10s. &d.,
THE DOCTRINE OF THE APOCALYPSE,
AND ITS RELA TION TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE GOSPEL AND
EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN.
By Pastor HERMANN GEBHARDT.
Recently published, in demy Svo, Tenth Edition, price Is. 6d.,
AN INTRODUCTORY HEBREW GRAMMAR;
IVITH PROGRESSIVE EXERCISES IN READING AND WRITING.
By a. B. DAVIDSON, M.A., LL.D.,
Professor of Hebrew, etc., in the New College, Edinburgh.
By the same Author.
Jti preparation,
A SYNTAX OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In Three Volumes, demy 8vo, price 12s. eachy
A HISTORY OF THE COUNCILS OF the CHURCH
TO A.D. 451,
FROM THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF
C. J. HEFELE, D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg.
' This careful translation of Hefele's Councils.' — Dr. Pusey.
' The most learned historian of the Councils.' — P^re Gratrt.
In Two Volumes, demy 8yo, price 21s.,
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY,
TO THE DAWN OF THE LUTHERAN ERA.
By the Rev. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D.
' Fresh, vigorous, learned, and eminently thoughtful.' — Contemporary Review.
' The work of a very able and pious and cultured thinker.' — Church Quarterly Review.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In crown Si'O, Third Edition, price 4s. 66?.,
AIDS TO THE STUDY OF GERMAN THEOLOGY.
' A work of much labour and learning, giving in a small compass an intelligent review
of a very large subject.' — Spectator.
In One Volume, 8vo, price 7s. 6d.,
HIPPOLYTUS AND CALLISTUS;
OR, THE CHURCH OF ROME IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE
THIRD CENTURY.
By JOHN J. IGN. YON DOLLINGER.
TRANSLATED, WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND APPENDICES,
By ALFRED PLUMMER,
MiVSTER OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DURHAM.
' We are impressed with profound respect for the learning and inurenuity displayed in
this work. The book deserves perusal by all students of ecclesiastical history. It clears
up many points hitherto obscure, and reveals features in the Komaa Church at the be-
ginning of the third century which are highly instructive.' — Athensni'm,.
Just published, in croicn 8ro, icith Portrait, price 4.s'.,
HYMNS AND THOUGHTS ON RELIGION.
By NOVALIS.
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Translated and Edited by W. HASTIE, B.D.
'As a poet, Novalis is no less idealistic than as a philosopher. His poems are
breathings of a high, devout soul. . . . These two qualities — liis pure religious temper,
and heart-felt love of Nature — bring him into true poetic relation both with the spiritual
and the material world.' — Carlyle.
In Two Volumes, Svo, price lO.v. Qd.,
MODERN PANTHEISM.
ESSAY ON RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF
M. EMILE SAISSET.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In demy Svo, i)rice 7.s\ 6</.,
SERMONS TO THE SPIRITUAL MAN.
Br WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D.
' A uniform excellence pervades the tone, style, and thought of this volume. . . . We
express our gratitude to the author for his able and helpful book.' — Methodist Recorder.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In demy 8i)o, price 7s. 6c?.,
SERMONS TO THE NATURAL MAN.
' Characterized by profound knowledge of divine truth, and presenting the truth in a
chaste and attractive style, the sermons carry in their tone the accents of the solemn
feeling of responsibility to which they owe their origin.' — Weekly Review.
In crown 8vo, price 2s.,
CHRISTMAS EVE:
A DIALOGUE ON THE CELEBRATION OF CHRISTMAS.
By SCHLEIEEMACHEE.
Translated by W. HASTIE, B.D.
' A genuine Christmas book, an exquisite prose-poem, and deals tenderly and grace-
fully with the central truth of the Christmas festival, ... its interest is abiding, and
its perusal can never be untimely.' — Baptist Magazine.
In crown 8fO, price 6s.,
THE INCARNATE SAVIOUR.
A LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
By Eev. W. E. NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
' It commands my warm sympathy and admiration. I rejoice in the circulation of
such a book, which I trust will be the widest possible.' — Canon Liddon.
' There was quite room for such a volume. It contains a great deal of thought, often
penetrating and always delicate, and pleasingly expressed. The subject has been very
carefully studied, and the treatment will, I believe, furnish much suggestive mutter both
to readers and preachers.' — Rev. Principal Sanday.
In crown d>vo, Eighth Edition^ price 6«.,
THE SUFFERING SAVIO'UR;
OR, MEDITATIONS ON THE LAST DAYS OF THE
SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST.
By F. W. KEUMMACHER, D.D.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In crown 8i'o, Second Edition, price 6s.,
DAVID, THE KING OF ISRAEL
A PORTRAIT DRAWN FROM BIBLE HISTORY AND THE BOOK
OF PSALMS.
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CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
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