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PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.
The first edition of this work was published in 1854, and, although a large one, has been long out of print. Many inquiries having been made for it since the recent lamented death of the translator, the publishers have determined to offer a second edition to the public, and have been advised to give it a place in their “English and Foreign Philosophical Library.” It is an exact reprint of the first edition, and they trust it will be received with equal favour. London , June 1881 . The clamour ex
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.1
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.1
Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendour of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity. Hence I do nothing more to religion—and to speculative philosophy and theology also—than to open its eyes, or rather to turn its gaze from the internal towards the external, i.e. , I change the object as it is
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§ 1. The Essential Nature of Man.
§ 1. The Essential Nature of Man.
Thus the Sun is the common object of the planets, but it is an object to Mercury, to Venus, to Saturn, to Uranus, under other conditions than to the Earth. Each planet has its own sun. The Sun which lights and warms Uranus has no physical (only an astronomical, scientific) existence for the Earth; and not only does the Sun appear different, but it really is another sun on Uranus than on the Earth. The relation of the Sun to the Earth is therefore at the same time a relation of the Earth to itsel
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§ 2. The Essence of Religion Considered Generally.
§ 2. The Essence of Religion Considered Generally.
That which is to man the self-existent, the highest being, to which he can conceive nothing higher—that is to him the Divine Being. How then should he inquire concerning this being, what he is in himself? If God were an object to the bird, he would be a winged being: the bird knows nothing higher, nothing more blissful, than the winged condition. How ludicrous would it be if this bird pronounced: To me God appears as a bird, but what he is in himself I know not. To the bird the highest nature is
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CHAPTER II. GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING.
CHAPTER II. GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING.
The understanding is to itself the criterion of all reality. That which is opposed to the understanding, that which is self-contradictory, is nothing; that which contradicts reason contradicts God. For example, it is a contradiction of reason to connect with the idea of the highest reality the limitations of definite time and place; and hence reason denies these of God as contradicting his nature. The reason can only believe in a God who is accordant with its own nature, in a God who is not bene
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CHAPTER III. GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW.
CHAPTER III. GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW.
Now, by what means does man deliver himself from this state of disunion between himself and the perfect being, from the painful consciousness of sin, from the distressing sense of his own nothingness? How does he blunt the fatal sting of sin? Only by this; that he is conscious of love as the highest, the absolute power and truth, that he regards the Divine Being not only as a law, as a moral being, as a being of the understanding; but also as a loving, tender, even subjective human being (that i
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CHAPTER IV. THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION; OR, GOD AS LOVE, AS A BEING OF THE HEART.
CHAPTER IV. THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION; OR, GOD AS LOVE, AS A BEING OF THE HEART.
While, however, we have laid open this nucleus of truth in the Incarnation, we have at the same time exhibited the dogma in its falsity; we have reduced the apparently supernatural and super-rational mystery to a simple truth inherent in human nature:—a truth which does not belong to the Christian religion alone, but which, implicitly at least, belongs more or less to every religion as such. For every religion which has any claim to the name presupposes that God is not indifferent to the beings
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CHAPTER V. THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD.
CHAPTER V. THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD.
Man has the consciousness not only of a spring of activity, but also of a spring of suffering in himself. I feel; and I feel feeling (not merely will and thought, which are only too often in opposition to me and my feelings), as belonging to my essential being, and, though the source of all sufferings and sorrows, as a glorious, divine power and perfection. What would man be without feeling? It is the musical power in man. But what would man be without music? Just as man has a musical faculty an
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CHAPTER VI. THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY AND THE MOTHER OF GOD.
CHAPTER VI. THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY AND THE MOTHER OF GOD.
But that there are in fact only two Persons in the Trinity, the third representing, as has been said, only love, is involved in this, that to the strict idea of love two suffice. With two we have the principle of multiplicity and all its essential results. Two is the principle of multiplicity, and can therefore stand as its complete substitute. If several Persons were posited, the force of love would only be weakened—it would be dispersed. But love and the heart are identical; the heart is no sp
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CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS AND DIVINE IMAGE.
CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS AND DIVINE IMAGE.
The affirming or making objective of the nature of the imagination is therefore directly connected with the affirming or making objective of the nature of speech, of the word. Man has not only an instinct, an internal necessity, which impels him to think, to perceive, to imagine; he has also the impulse to speak, to utter, impart his thoughts. A divine impulse this—a divine power, the power of words. The word is the imaged, revealed, radiating, lustrous, enlightening thought. The word is the lig
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CHAPTER VIII. THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE IN GOD.
CHAPTER VIII. THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE IN GOD.
Reduced to abstract logical categories, the creative principle in God expresses nothing further than the tautological proposition: the different can only proceed from a principle of difference, not from a simple being. However the Christian philosophers and theologians insisted on the creation of the world out of nothing, they were unable altogether to evade the old axiom—“Nothing comes from nothing,” because it expresses a law of thought. It is true that they supposed no real matter as the prin
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CHAPTER IX. THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM, OR OF NATURE IN GOD.
CHAPTER IX. THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM, OR OF NATURE IN GOD.
But what then is force and strength which is merely such, if not corporeal force and strength? Dost thou know any power which stands at thy command, in distinction from the power of kindness and reason, besides muscular power? If thou canst effect nothing through kindness and the arguments of reason, force is what thou must take refuge in. But canst thou “effect” anything without strong arms and fists? Is there known to thee, in distinction from the power of the moral order of the world, “anothe
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CHAPTER X. THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION OUT OF NOTHING.
CHAPTER X. THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION OUT OF NOTHING.
But where Providence is believed in, belief in God is made dependent on belief in Providence. He who denies that there is a Providence, denies that there is a God, or—what is the same thing—that God is God; for a God who is not the Providence of man, is a contemptible God, a God who is wanting in the divinest, most adorable attribute. Consequently, the belief in God is nothing but the belief in human dignity, 6 the belief in the absolute reality and significance of the human nature. But belief i
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CHAPTER XI. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION IN JUDAISM.
CHAPTER XI. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION IN JUDAISM.
The much-belied doctrine of the heathen philosophers concerning the eternity of matter, or the world, thus implies nothing more than that Nature was to them a theoretic reality. 6 The heathens were idolaters, that is, they contemplated Nature; they did nothing else than what the profoundly Christian nations do at this day when they make Nature an object of their admiration, of their indefatigable investigation. “But the heathens actually worshipped natural objects.” Certainly; for worship is onl
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CHAPTER XII. THE OMNIPOTENCE OF FEELING, OR THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER.
CHAPTER XII. THE OMNIPOTENCE OF FEELING, OR THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER.
It is an extremely superficial view of prayer to regard it as an expression of the sense of dependence. It certainly expresses such a sense, but the dependence is that of man on his own heart, on his own feeling. He who feels himself only dependent, does not open his mouth in prayer; the sense of dependence robs him of the desire, the courage for it, for the sense of dependence is the sense of need. Prayer has its root rather in the unconditional trust of the heart, untroubled by all thought of
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CHAPTER XIII. THE MYSTERY OF FAITH—THE MYSTERY OF MIRACLE.
CHAPTER XIII. THE MYSTERY OF FAITH—THE MYSTERY OF MIRACLE.
What suggests to man the notion that miracle is conceivable is that miracle is represented as an event perceptible by the senses, and hence man cheats his reason by material images which screen the contradiction. The miracle of the turning of water into wine, for example, implies in fact nothing else than that water is wine,—nothing else than that two absolutely contradictory predicates or subjects are identical; for in the hand of the miracle-worker there is no distinction between the two subst
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CHAPTER XIV. THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION AND OF THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.
CHAPTER XIV. THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION AND OF THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.
Even the arid Protestant orthodoxy, so arbitrary in its criticism, regarded the conception of the God-producing Virgin as a great, adorable, amazing, holy mystery of faith, transcending reason. 4 But with the Protestants, who confined the speciality of the Christian to the domain of faith, and with whom, in life, it was allowable to be a man, even this mystery had only a dogmatic, and no longer a practical significance; they did not allow it to interfere with their desire of marriage. With the C
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CHAPTER XV. THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST, OR THE PERSONAL GOD.
CHAPTER XV. THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST, OR THE PERSONAL GOD.
To see God is the highest wish, the highest triumph of the heart. Christ is this wish, this triumph, fulfilled. God, as an object of thought only, i.e. , God as God, is always a remote being; the relation to him is an abstract one, like that relation of friendship in which we stand to a man who is distant from us, and personally unknown to us. However his works, the proofs of love which he gives us, may make his nature present to us, there always remains an unfilled void,—the heart is unsatisfie
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CHAPTER XVI. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM.
CHAPTER XVI. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM.
But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the individual frees himself from it by the contemplation of the perfect Being; in this contemplation he possesses what otherwise is wanting to him. With the Christians God is nothing else than the immediate unity of species and individuality, of the universal and individual being. God is the idea of the species as an individual—the idea or essence of the species, which as a species, as universal being, as the totality of all perfections, of all
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CHAPTER XVII. THE CHRISTIAN SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLUNTARY CELIBACY AND MONACHISM.
CHAPTER XVII. THE CHRISTIAN SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLUNTARY CELIBACY AND MONACHISM.
The true Christian not only feels no need of culture, because this is a worldly principle and opposed to feeling; he has also no need of (natural) love. God supplies to him the want of culture, and in like manner God supplies to him the want of love, of a wife, of a family. The Christian immediately identifies the species with the individual; hence he strips off the difference of sex as a burdensome, accidental adjunct. 13 Man and woman together first constitute the true man; man and woman toget
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CHAPTER XVIII. THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN, OR PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN, OR PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.
The doctrine of immortality is the final doctrine of religion; its testament, in which it declares its last wishes. Here therefore it speaks out undisguisedly what it has hitherto suppressed. If elsewhere the religious soul concerns itself with the existence of another being, here it openly considers only its own existence; if elsewhere in religion man makes his existence dependent on the existence of God, he here makes the reality of God dependent on his own reality; and thus what elsewhere is
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CHAPTER XIX. THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION.
CHAPTER XIX. THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION.
Religion of itself, unadulterated by foreign elements, knows nothing of the existence of second causes; on the contrary, they are a stone of stumbling to it; for the realm of second causes, the sensible world, Nature, is precisely what separates man from God, although God as a real God, i.e. , an external being, is supposed himself to become in the other world a sensible existence. 6 Hence religion believes that one day this wall of separation will fall away. One day there will be no Nature, no
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CHAPTER XX. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
CHAPTER XX. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
The idea of sensational existence is indeed already involved in the characteristic expression “external to us.” It is true that a sophistical theology refuses to interpret the word “external” in its proper, natural sense, and substitutes the indefinite expression of independent, separate existence. But if the externality is only figurative, the existence also is figurative. And yet we are here only concerned with existence in the proper sense, and external existence is alone the definite, real,
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CHAPTER XXI. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD.
CHAPTER XXI. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD.
But as Nature “unconsciously produces results which look as if they were produced consciously,” so revelation generates moral actions, which do not, however, proceed from morality;—moral actions, but no moral dispositions. Moral rules are indeed observed, but they are severed from the inward disposition, the heart, by being represented as the commandments of an external lawgiver, by being placed in the category of arbitrary laws, police regulations. What is done is done not because it is good an
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CHAPTER XXII. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD IN GENERAL.
CHAPTER XXII. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD IN GENERAL.
The difference, however, between God and man, which is originally only quantitative, is by reflection developed into a qualitative difference; and thus what was originally only an emotional impression, an immediate expression of admiration, of rapture, an influence of the imagination on the feelings, has fixity given to it as an objective quality, as real incomprehensibility. The favourite expression of reflection in relation to this subject is, that we can indeed know concerning God that he has
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CHAPTER XXIII. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD.
1 “God can as little do without us as we without him.”— Predigten etzlicher Lehrer , &c., p. 16. See also on this subject—Strauss, Christl. Glaubensl. B. i. § 47, and the author’s work entitled, P. Bayle , pp. 104, 107. ↑ 2 “This temporal, transitory life in this world ( i.e. , natural life) we have through God, who is the almighty Creator of heaven and earth. But the eternal untransitory life we have through the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.... Jesus Christ a Lord
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CHAPTER XXIV. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY.
1 It is curious to observe how the speculative religious philosophy undertakes the defence of the Trinity against the godless understanding, and yet, by doing away with the personal substances, and explaining the relation of Father and Son as merely an inadequate image borrowed from organic life, robs the Trinity of its very heart and soul. Truly, if the cabalistic artifices which the speculative religious philosophy applies in the service of the absolute religion were admissible in favour of fi
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CHAPTER XXV. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS.
CHAPTER XXV. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS.
It is true that religion, even on the standpoint of its mystical materialism, always requires the co-operation of subjectivity, and therefore requires it in the sacraments; but herein is exhibited its contradiction with itself. And this contradiction is particularly glaring in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; for baptism is given to infants,—though even in them, as a condition of its efficacy, the co-operation of subjectivity is insisted on, but, singularly enough, is supplied in the faith of
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CHAPTER XXVI. THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE.
Faith is essentially determinate, specific. God according to the specific view taken of him by faith, is alone the true God. This Jesus, such as I conceive him, is the Christ, the true, sole prophet, the only-begotten Son of God. And this particular conception thou must believe, if thou wouldst not forfeit thy salvation. Faith is imperative. It is therefore necessary—it lies in the nature of faith—that it be fixed as dogma. Dogma only gives a formula to what faith had already on its tongue or in
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CHAPTER XXVII. CONCLUDING APPLICATION.
CHAPTER XXVII. CONCLUDING APPLICATION.
Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to religion is simply to destroy an illusion:—an illusion, however, which is by no means indifferent, but which, on the contrary, is profoundly injurious in its effect on mankind; which deprives man as well of the power of real life as of the genuine sense of truth and virtue; for even love, in itself the deepest, truest emotion, becomes by means of religiousness merely ostensible, illusory, since religious love gives itself to man only for
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§ 1.
§ 1.
Feeling alone is the object of feeling. Feeling is sympathy; feeling arises only in the love of man to man. Sensations man has in isolation; feelings only in community. Only in sympathy does sensation rise into feeling. Feeling is æsthetic, human sensation; only what is human is the object of feeling. In feeling man is related to his fellow-man as to himself; he is alive to the sorrows, the joys of another as his own. Thus only by communication does man rise above merely egoistic sensation into
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§ 2.
§ 2.
God is man’s highest feeling of self, freed from all contrarieties or disagreeables. God is the highest being; therefore, to feel God is the highest feeling. But is not the highest feeling also the highest feeling of self? So long as I have not had the feeling of the highest, so long I have not exhausted my capacity of feeling, so long I do not yet fully know the nature of feeling. What, then, is an object to me in my feeling of the highest being? Nothing else than the highest nature of my power
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§ 3.
§ 3.
The distinction between the “heathen,” or philosophic, and the Christian God—the non-human, or pantheistic, and the human, personal God—reduces itself only to the distinction between the understanding or reason and the heart or feelings. Reason is the self-consciousness of the species, as such; feeling is the self-consciousness of individuality; the reason has relation to existences, as things; the heart to existences, as persons. I am is an expression of the heart; I think , of the reason. Cogi
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§ 4.
§ 4.
Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation of his soul. “ A te incipiat cogitatio tua et in te finiatur, nec frustra in alia distendaris, te neglecto. Praeter salutem tuam nihil cogites. De inter. Domo. ( Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard. ) Si te vigilanter homo attendas, mirum est, si ad aliud unquam intendas .—Divus Bernardus. (Tract. de XII grad. humil. et sup.).... Orbe sit sol major, an pedis unius latitudine
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§ 5.
§ 5.
In religion man has in view himself alone, or, in regarding himself as the object of God, as the end of the divine activity, he is an object to himself, his own end and aim. The mystery of the incarnation is the mystery of the love of God to man, and the mystery of the love of God to man is the love of man to himself. God suffers—suffers for me—this is the highest self-enjoyment, the highest self-certainty of human feeling. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son.”— John iii.
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§ 6.
§ 6.
Because God suffers man must suffer. The Christian religion is the religion of suffering. “ Videlicet vestigia Salvatoris sequimur in theatris. Tale nobis scilicet Christus reliquit exemplum, quem flerisse legimus, risisse non legimus . ”—Salvianus (l. c. l. vi. § 181). “ Christianorum ergo est pressuram pati in hoc saeculo et lugere , quorum est aeterna vita . ”—Origenes ( Explan. in Ep. Pauli ad Rom. l. ii. c. ii. interp. Hieronymo ). “ Nemo vitam aeternam, incorruptibilem, immortalemque desid
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§ 7.
§ 7.
The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of participated, social life—the mystery of I and thou. “ Unum Deum esse confitemur. Non sic unum Deum, quasi solitarium , nec eundem, qui ipse sibi pater, sit ipse filius, sed patrem verum , qui genuit filium verum , i.e. Deum ex Deo ... non creatum, sed genitum . ”—Concil. Chalced. (Carranza Summa, 1559. p. 139). “ Si quis quod scriptum est: Faciamus hominem, non patrem ad filium dicere, sed ipsum ad semetipsum asserit dixisse Deum, anathema sit. ”—Con
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§ 8.
§ 8.
The distinctions in the Divine essence of the Trinity are natural, physical distinctions. “ Jam de proprietatibus personarum videamus.... Et est proprium solius patris , non quod non est natus ipse, sed quod unum filium genuerit , propriumque solius filii, non quod ipse non genuit, sed quod de patris essentia natus est . ”—Hylarius in l. iii. de Trinitate. “ Nos filii Dei sumus, sed non talis hic filius. Hic enim verus et proprius est filius origine , non adoptione, veritate, non nuncupatione, n
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§ 9.
§ 9.
The Creation in the Israelitish religion has only a particular, egoistic aim and purport. The Israelitish religion is the religion of the most narrow-hearted egoism. Even the later Israelites, scattered throughout the world, persecuted and oppressed, adhered with immovable firmness to the egoistic faith of their forefathers. “Every Israelitish soul by itself is, in the eyes of the blessed God, dearer and more precious than all the souls of a whole nation besides.” “The Israelites are among the n
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§ 10.
§ 10.
The idea of Providence is the religious consciousness of man’s distinction from the brutes, from Nature in general. “Doth God take care for oxen?” ( 1 Cor. ix. 9 .) “ Nunquid curae est Deo bobus? inquit Paulus. Ad nos ea cura dirigitur, non ad boves, equos, asinos , qui in usum nostrum sunt conditi . ”—J. L. Vivis Val. ( de Veritate Fidei Chr. Bas. 1544 , p. 108). “ Providentia Dei in omnibus aliis creaturis respicit ad hominem tanquam ad metam suam . Multis passeribus vos pluris estis. Matth. x
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§ 11.
§ 11.
The negation of providence is the negation of God. “ Qui ergo providentiam tollit, totum Dei substantiam tollit et quid dicit nisi Deum non esse?... Si non curat humana, sive nesciens, cessat omnis causa pietatis, cum sit spes nulla salutis . ”—Joa. Trithemius (Tract. de Provid. Dei). “ Nam qui nihil aspici a Deo affirmant prope est ut cui adspectum adimunt, etiam substantiam tollant. ”—Salvianus (l. c. l. iv.). “Aristotle almost falls into the opinion that God—though he does not expressly name
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§ 12.
§ 12.
The Resurrection of Christ is bodily , i.e., personal immortality, presented as a sensible indubitable fact . “ Resurrexit Christus, absoluta res est.—Ostendit se ipsum discipulis et fidelibus suis, contrectata est soliditas corporis.... Confirmata fides est non solum in cordibus, sed etiam in oculis hominum. ”—Augustinus ( Sermones ad Pop. S. 242, c. I. S. 361, c. S. See also on this subject Melancthon, Loci: de Resurr. Mort. ). “The philosophers ... held that by death the soul was released fro
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§ 13.
§ 13.
Christianity made man an extramundane, supernatural being. “We have here no abiding city, but we seek one to come.”— Heb. xiii. 14 . “Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.”— 2 Cor. v. 6 . “If in this body, which is properly our own, we are strangers, and our life in this body is nothing else than a pilgrimage; how much more then are the possessions which we have for the sake of the body, such as fields, houses, gold, &c., nothing else than idle, strange things,
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§ 14.
§ 14.
The celibate and monachism—of course only in their original, religious significance and form—are sensible manifestations, necessary consequences, of the supranaturalistic, extramundane character of Christianity. It is true that they also contradict Christianity; the reason of this is shown by implication in the present work; but only because Christianity is itself a contradiction. They contradict exoteric, practical, but not esoteric, theoretical Christianity; they contradict Christian love so f
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§ 15.
§ 15.
Unspotted Virginity is the principle of Salvation, the principle of the regenerate Christian world. “ Virgo genuit mundi salutem ; virgo peperit vitam universorum.... Virgo portavit, quem mundus iste capere aut sustinere non potest.... Per virum autem et mulierem caro ejecta de paradiso: per virginem juncta est Deo. ”—Ambrosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). “ Jure laudatur bona uxor, sed melius pia virgo praefertur, dicente Apostolo ( 1 Cor. vii .). Bonum conjugium, per quod est inventa posteritas success
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§ 16.
§ 16.
What faith denies on earth it affirms in heaven; what it renounces here it recovers a hundred-fold there. In this world, faith occupies itself with nullifying the body; in the other world, with establishing it. Here the main point is the separation of the soul from the body, there the main point is the reunion of the body with the soul. “I would live not only according to the soul, but according to the body also. I would have the corpus with me; I would that the body should return to the soul an
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§ 17.
§ 17.
The contradiction in the Sacraments is the contradiction of naturalism and supernaturalism. In the first place the natural qualities of water are pronounced essential to Baptism. “ Si quis dixerit aquam veram et naturalem non esse de necessitate Baptismi atque ideo verba illa domini nostri Jesu Christi: Nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu sancto, ad metamorpham aliquam detorserit, anathema sit. — Concil. Trident. (Sessio vii. Can. ii. de Bapt.) De substantia hujus sacramenti sunt verbum
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§ 18.
§ 18.
An instructive example of theological incomprehensibleness and supernaturalness is afforded by the distinction, in relation to the Eucharist ( Concordienb. Summ. Beg. art. 7 ), between partaking with the mouth and partaking in a fleshly or natural manner. “We believe, teach, and confess that the body of Christ is taken in the bread and wine, not alone spiritually by faith, but also with the mouth, yet not in a Capernaitic, but a supernatural heavenly manner, for the sake of sacramental union.” “
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§ 19.
§ 19.
The command to love enemies extends only to personal enemies, not to the enemies of God, the enemies of faith. “Does not the Lord Christ command that we should love even our enemies? How then does David here boast that he hates the assembly of the wicked, and sits not with the ungodly?... For the sake of the person I should love them; but for the sake of the doctrine I should hate them. And thus I must hate them or hate God, who commands and wills that we should cleave to his word alone.... What
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§ 20.
§ 20.
Faith has the significance of religion, love only that of morality. This has been declared very decidedly by Protestantism. The doctrine that love does not justify in the sight of God, but only faith, expresses nothing further than that love has no religious power and significance. (Apol. Augsb. Confess. art. 3. Of Love and the Fulfilment of the Law.) It is certainly here said: “What the scholastic writers teach concerning the love of God is a dream, and it is impossible to know and love God bef
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§ 21.
§ 21.
Nevertheless the Christians have celebrated the incarnation as a work of love, as a self-renunciation of God, an abnegation of his majesty— Amor triumphat de Deo ; for the love of God is an empty word if it is understood as a real abolition of the distinction between him and man. Thus we have, in the very central point of Christianity, the contradiction of Faith and Love developed in the close of the present work. Faith makes the suffering of God a mere appearance, love makes it a truth. Only on
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THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY.
THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY.
By Professor F. A. LANGE. Authorised Translation from the German by Ernest C. Thomas . “This is a work which has long and impatiently been expected by a large circle of readers. It has been well praised by two eminent scientists, and their words have created for it, as regards its appearance in our English tongue, a sort of ante-natal reputation. The reputation is in many respects well deserved. The book is marked throughout by singular ability, abounds in striking and suggestive reflections, su
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