The Essence of Christianity 30 – Eliot · Library Across
Freethought · Atheism
The Essence of Christianity 30Part 2 · Concluding Application (part 3)
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Freethought · Atheism
The Essence of Christianity 30
Part 2 · Concluding Application (part 3)
EliotEnglish
Eat nunc aliquis et singulas comploret animas. Quis tam superbae impotentisque arrogantiae est, ut in hac naturae necessitate, omnia ad eundem finem revocantis, se unum ac suos seponi velit."--Seneca (Cons. ad Polyb. cc. 20, 21). "Ergo quandoque erit terminus rebus humanis.... Non muri quenquam, non turres tuebuntur. Non proderunt templa supplicibus."--(Nat. Qu. L. iii. c. 29.) Thus here we have again the characteristic distinction between heathenism and Christianity. The heathen forgot himself in the world, the Christian forgot the world in himself. And as the heathen identified his destruction with the destruction of the world, so he identified his immortality with the immortality of the world. To the heathen, man was a common, to the Christian, a select being; to the latter immortality was a privilege of man, to the former a common good which he vindicated to himself only because, and in so far as, he assigned to other beings a share in it also. The Christians expected the destruction of the world immediately, because the Christian religion has in it no cosmical principle of development:--all which developed itself in Christendom developed itself only in contradiction with the original nature of Christianity;--because by the existence of God in the flesh, i.e., by the immediate identity of the species with the individual, everything was attained, the thread of history was cut short, no other thought of the future remained than the thought of a repetition of the second coming of the Lord. The heathens, on the contrary, placed the destruction of the world in the distant future, because, living in the contemplation of the universe, they did not set heaven and earth in motion on their own account,--because they extended and freed their self-consciousness by the consciousness of the species, placed immortality only in the perpetuation of the species, and thus did not reserve the future to themselves, but left it to the coming generations. "Veniet tempus quo posteri nostri tam aperta nos nescisse mirentur."--Seneca (Nat. Qu. l. vii. c. 25). He who places immortality in himself abolishes the principle of historical development.
The Christians did indeed, according to Peter, expect a new heaven and a new earth. But with this Christian, i.e., superterrestrial earth, the theatre of history is for ever closed, the end of the actual world is come. The heathens, on the contrary, set no limits to the development of the cosmos; they supposed the world to be destroyed only to arise again renovated as a real world; they granted it eternal life. The Christian destruction of the world was a matter of feeling, an object of fear and longing; the heathen, a matter of reason, an inference from the contemplation of nature.
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 successionis humanae; sed melius virginitas, per quam regni coelestis haereditas acquisita et coelestium meritorum reperta successio. Per mulierem cura successit: per virginem salus evenit."--(Id. Ep. 81.) "Castitas jungit hominem coelo.... Bona est castitas conjugalis, sed melior est continentia vidualis. Optima vero integritas virginalis."--De modo bene vivendi, Sermo 22. (Among the spurious writings of Bernard.) "Pulchritudinem hominis non concupiscas."--(Ibid. S. 23.) "Fornicatio major est omnibus peccatis.... Audi beati Isidori verba: Fornicatione coinquinari deterius est omni peccato."--(Ibid.) "Virginitas cui gloriae merito non praefertur? Angelicae? Angelus habet virginitatem, sed non carnem, sane felicior, quam fortior in hac parte."--Bernardus (Ep. 113, ad Sophiam Virginem). "Memento semper, quod paradisi colonum de possessione sua mulier ejecerit."--Hieronymus (Ep. Nepotiano). "In paradiso virginitas conversabatur.... Ipse Christus virginitatis gloria non modo ex patre sine initio et sine duorum concursu genitus, sed et homo secundum nos factus, super nos ex virgine sine alieno consortio incarnatus est. Et ipse virginitatem veram et perfectam esse, in se ipso demonstravit. Unde hanc nobis legem non statuit (non enim omnes capiunt verbum hoc, ut ipse dixit) sed opere nos erudivit."--Joan. Damasc. (Orthod. Fidei, l. iv. c. 25).
Now if abstinence from the satisfaction of the sensual impulse, the negation of difference of sex and consequently of sexual love,--for what is this without the other?--is the principle of the Christian heaven and salvation; then necessarily the satisfaction of the sexual impulse, sexual love, on which marriage is founded, is the source of sin and evil. And so it is held. The mystery of original sin is the mystery of sexual desire. All men are conceived in sin because they were conceived with sensual, i.e., natural pleasure. The act of generation, as an act of sensual enjoyment, is sinful. Sin is propagated from Adam down to us, simply because its propagation is the natural act of generation. This is the mystery of Christian original sin. "Atque hic quam alienus a vero sit, etiam hic reprehenditur, quod voluptatem in homine Deo authore creatam asserit principaliter. Sed hoc divinae scriptura redarguit, quae serpentis insidiis atque illecebris infusam Adae atque Evae voluptatem docet, siquidem ipse serpens voluptas sit.... Quomodo igitur voluptas ad paradisum revocare nos potest, quae sola nos paradiso exuit?"--Ambrosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). "Voluptas ipsa sine culpa nullatenus esse potest."--Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 31, c. 5). "Omnes in peccatis nati sumus, et ex carnis delectatione concepti culpam originalem nobiscum traximus."--Gregorius (Petrus L. l. ii. dist. 30, c. 2). "Firmissime tene et nullatenus dubites, omnem hominem, qui per concubitum viri et mulieris concipitur, cum originali peccato nasci.... Ex his datur intelligi, quid sit originale peccatum, scl. vitium concupiscentiae, quod in omnes concupiscentialiter natos per Adam intravit."--(Ibid. c. 3, see also dist. 31, c. 1.) "Peccati causa ex carne est."--Ambrosius (ibid.) "Christus peccatum non habet, nec originale traxit, nec suum addidit: extra voluptatem carnalis libidinis venit, non ibi fuit complexus maritalis.... Omnis generatus, damnatus."--Augustinus (Serm. ad Pop. S. 294, cc. 10, 16). "Homo natus de muliere et ob hoc cum reatu."--Bernardus (de Consid. l. ii.). "Peccatum quomodo non fuit, ubi libido non defuit?... Quo pacto, inquam, aut sanctus asseretur conceptus, qui de spiritus non est, ne dicam de peccato est?"--Id. (Epist. 174, edit. cit.). "All that is born into the world of man and woman is sinful, under God's anger and curse, condemned to death." "All men born of a father and mother are children of wrath by nature, as St. Paul testifies, Ephes. ii." "We have by nature a tainted, sinful conception and birth."--Luther (Th. xvi. 246, 573). It is clear from these examples, that "carnal intercourse"--even a kiss is carnal intercourse--is the radical sin, the radical evil of mankind; and consequently the basis of marriage, the sexual impulse, honestly outspoken, is a product of the devil. It is true that the creature as the work of God is good, but it has long ceased to exist as it was created. The devil has alienated the creature from God and corrupted it to the very foundation. "Cursed be the ground for thy sake." The fall of the creature, however, is only an hypothesis by which faith drives from its mind the burdensome, disquieting contradiction, that Nature is a product of God, and yet, as it actually is, does not harmonise with God, i.e., with the Christian sentiment.
Christianity certainly did not pronounce the flesh as flesh, matter as matter, to be something sinful, impure; on the contrary, it contended vehemently against the heretics who held this opinion and rejected marriage. (See for example Augustin. contra Faustum, l. 29, c. 4, l. 30, c. 6. Clemens Alex. Stromata, lib. iii. and Bernard. Super Cantica, Sermo 66.) But quite apart from the hatred to heretics which so inspired the holy Christian Church and made it so politic, this protest rested on grounds which by no means involved the recognition of Nature as such, and under limitations, i.e., negations, which make the recognition of Nature merely apparent and illusory. The distinction between the heretics and the orthodox is only this, that the latter said indirectly, covertly, secretly, what the former declared plainly, directly, but for that very reason offensively. Pleasure is not separable from matter. Material pleasure is nothing further, so to speak, than the joy of matter in itself, matter proving itself by activity. Every joy is self-activity, every pleasure a manifestation of force, energy. Every organic function is, in a normal condition, united with enjoyment; even breathing is a pleasurable act, which is not perceived as such only because it is an uninterrupted process. He therefore who declares generation, fleshly intercourse, as such, to be pure, but fleshly intercourse united with sensual pleasure to be a consequence of original sin and consequently itself a sin, acknowledges only the dead, not the living flesh--he raises a mist before us, he condemns, rejects the act of generation, and matter in general, though under the appearance of not rejecting it, of acknowledging it. The unhypocritical, honest acknowledgment of sensual life is the acknowledgment of sensual pleasure. In brief, he who, like the Bible, like the Church, does not acknowledge fleshly pleasure--that, be it understood, which is natural, normal, inseparable from life--does not acknowledge the flesh. That which is not recognised as an end in itself (it by no means follows that it should be the ultimate end) is in truth not recognised at all. Thus he who allows me wine only as medicine forbids me the enjoyment of wine. Let not the liberal supply of wine at the wedding at Cana be urged. For that scene transports us, by the metamorphosis of water into wine, beyond Nature into the region of supernaturalism. Where, as in Christianity, a supernatural, spiritual body is regarded as the true, eternal body, i.e., a body from which all objective, sensual impulses, all flesh, all nature, is removed, there real, i.e., sensual fleshly matter is denied, is regarded as worthless, nothing.
Certainly Christianity did not make celibacy a law (save at a later period for the priests). But for the very reason that chastity, or rather privation of marriage, of sex, is the highest, the most transcendent, supernaturalistic, heavenly virtue, it cannot and must not be lowered into a common object of duty; it stands above the law, it is the virtue of Christian grace and freedom. "Christus hortatur idoneos ad coelibatum, ut donum recte tueantur; idem Christus iis, qui puritatem extra conjugium non, retinent, praecipit, ut pure in conjugio vivant."--Melancthon. (Responsio ad Colonienses. Declam. T. iii.) "Virginitas non est jussa, sed admonita, quia nimis est excelsa."--De modo bene viv. (Sermo 21). "Et qui matrimonio jungit virginem suam, benefacit, et qui non jungit, melius facit. Quod igitur bonum est, non vitandum est, et quod est melius eligendum est. Itaque non imponitur, sed proponitur. Et ideo bene Apostolus dixit: De virginibus autem praeceptum non habeo, consilium autem do. Ubi praeceptum est, ibi lex est, ubi consilium, ibi gratia est.... Praeceptum enim castitatis est, consilium integritatis.... Sed nec vidua praeceptum accipit, sed consilium. Consilium autem non semel datum, sed saepe repetitum."--Ambrosius (Liber. de viduis). That is to say: celibacy, abstinence from marriage, is no law in the common or Jewish sense, but a law in the Christian sense, or for the Christian sentiment, which takes Christian virtue and perfection as the rule of conscience, as the ideal of feeling,--no despotic but a friendly law, no public but a secret, esoteric law--a mere counsel, i.e., a law which does not venture to express itself as a law, a law for those of finer feelings, not for the great mass. Thou mayst marry; yes indeed! without any fear of committing a sin, i.e., a public, express, plebeian sin; but thou dost all the better if thou dost not marry; meanwhile this is only my undictatorial, friendly advice. Omnia licent, sed omnia non expediunt. What is allowed in the first member of the sentence is retracted in the second. Licet, says the man; non expedit, says the Christian.
But only that which is good for the Christian is for the man, so far as he desires to be a Christian, the standard of doing and abstaining. "Quae non expediunt, nec licent," such is the conclusion arrived at by the sentiment of Christian nobility. Marriage is therefore only an indulgence to the weakness, or rather the strength of the flesh, a taint of nature in Christianity, a falling short of the genuine, perfect Christian sentiment; being, however, nevertheless good, laudable, even holy, in so far as it is the best antidote to fornication. For its own sake, as the self-enjoyment of sexual love, it is not acknowledged, not consecrated; thus the holiness of marriage in Christianity is only an ostensible holiness, only illusion, for that which is not acknowledged for its own sake is not acknowledged at all, while yet there is a deceitful show of acknowledgment. Marriage is sanctioned not in order to hallow and satisfy the flesh, but to restrict the flesh, to repress it, to kill it--to drive Beelzebub out by Beelzebub. "Quae res et viris et feminis omnibus adest ad matrimonium et stuprum? Commixtio carnis scilicet, cujus concupiscentiam Dominus stupro adaequavit.... Ideo virginis principalis sanctitas, quia caret stupri affinitati."--Tertullianus (de Exhort. Cast. c. 9). "Et de ipso conjugis melius aliquid, quam concessisti, monuisti."--Augustinus (Confess. x. c. 30). "It is better to marry than to burn."--I Cor. vii. 9. But how much better is it, says Tertullian, developing this text, neither to marry nor to burn.... "Possum dicere, quod permittitur bonum non est."--(Ad Uxorem, l. i. c. 3.) "De minoribus bonis est conjugiam, quod non meretur palmam, sed est in remedium.... Prima institutio habuit praeceptum, secunda indulgentiam. Didicimus enim ab Apostolo, humano generi propter vitandam fornicationem indultum esse conjugium."--Petrus Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 26, c. 2). "The Master of the Sentences says rightly, that in Paradise marriage was ordained as service, but after sin as medicine."--Luther (Th. i. p. 349). "Where marriage and virginity are compared, certainly chastity is a nobler gift than marriage."--Id. (Th. i. p. 319).
"Those whom the weakness of nature does not compel to marriage, but who are such that they can dispense with marriage, these do rightly to abstain from marriage."--Id. (Th. v. p. 538). Christian sophistry will reply to this, that only marriage which is not Christian, only that which is not consecrated by the spirit of Christianity, i.e., in which Nature is not veiled in pious images, is unholy. But if marriage, if Nature is first made holy by relation to Christ, it is not the holiness of marriage which is declared, but of Christianity; and marriage, Nature, in and by itself, is unholy. And what is the semblance of holiness with which Christianity invests marriage, in order to becloud the understanding, but a pious illusion? Can the Christian fulfil his marriage duties without surrendering himself, willingly or not, to the passion of love? Yes indeed. The Christian has for his object the replenishing of the Christian Church, not the satisfaction of love. The end is holy, but the means in itself unholy. And the end sanctifies, exculpates the means. "Conjugalis concubitus generandi gratia non habet culpam." Thus the Christian, at least the true Christian, denies, or at least is bound to deny Nature, while he satisfies it; he does not wish for, he rather contemns the means in itself; he seeks only the end in abstracto; he does with religious, supranaturalistic horror what he does, though against his will, with natural, sensual pleasure. The Christian does not candidly confess his sensuality, he denies Nature before his faith, and his faith before Nature, i.e., he publicly disavows what he privately does. Oh, how much better, truer, purer-hearted in this respect were the heathens, who made no secret of their sensuality, than the Christians, who, while gratifying the flesh, at the same time deny that they gratify it!
To this day the Christians adhere theoretically to their heavenly origin and destination; to this day, out of supranaturalistic affectation, they deny their sex, and turn away with mock modesty from every sensuous picture, every naked statue, as if they were angels; to this day they repress, even by legal force, every open-hearted, ingenuous self-confession even of the most uncorrupt sensuality, only stimulating by this public prohibition the secret enjoyment of sensuality. What then, speaking briefly and plainly, is the distinction between Christians and heathens in this matter? The heathens confirmed, the Christians contradicted their faith by their lives. The heathens do what they mean to do, the Christians what they do not mean: the former, where they sin, sin with their conscience, the latter against their conscience; the former sin simply, the latter doubly; the former from hypertrophy, the latter from atrophy of the flesh. The specific crime of the heathens is the ponderable, palpable crime of licentiousness, that of the Christians is the imponderable, theological crime of hypocrisy,--that hypocrisy of which Jesuitism is indeed the most striking, world-historical, but nevertheless only a particular manifestation. "Theology makes sinners," says Luther--Luther, whose positive qualities, his heart and understanding, so far as they applied themselves to natural things, were not perverted by theology. And Montesquieu gives the best commentary on this saying of Luther's when he says: "La dévotion trouve, pour faire de mauvaises actions, des raisons, qu'un simple honnête homme ne saurait trouver."--(Pensées Diverses.)
§ 16.
The Christian heaven is Christian truth. That which its excluded from heaven is excluded from true Christianity. In heaven the Christian is free from that which he wishes to be free from here--free from the sexual impulse, free from matter, free from Nature in general. "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven."--Matt. xxii. 30. "Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy (katargesei, make useless) both it and them."--1 Cor. vi. 13. "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption."--Ib. xv. 50. "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat."--Rev. vii. 16. "And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun."--Ib. xxii. 5. "Comedere, bibere, vigilare, dormire, quiescere, laborare et caeteris necessitatibus naturae subjacere, vere magna miseria est et afflictio homini devoto, qui libenter esset absolutus et liber ab omni peccato. Utinam non essent istae necessitates, sed solum spirituales animae refectiones, quas heu! satis raro degustamus."--Thomas à K. (de Imit. 1. i. cc. 22, 25). See also on this subject S. Gregorii Nyss. de Anima et Resurr., Lipsiae, 1837, pp. 98, 144, 153). It is true that the Christian immortality, in distinction from the heathen, is not the immortality of the soul, but that of the flesh, that is, of the whole man. "Scientia immortalis visa est res illis (the heathen philosophers) atque incorruptibilis. Nos autem, quibus divina revelatio illuxit ... novimus, non solum mentem, sed affectus perpurgatos, neque animam tantum, sed etiam corpus ad immortalitatem assumptum iri suo tempore."--Baco de Verul. (de Augm. Scien. 1. i.). On this account Celsus reproached the Christians with a desiderium corporis. But this immortal body is, as has been already remarked, an immaterial, i.e., a thoroughly fanciful, subjective body--a body which is the direct negation of the real, natural body. The ideal on which this faith hinges is not the recognition or glorification of nature, of matter as such, but rather the reality of the emotive imagination, the satisfaction of the unlimited, supranaturalistic desire of happiness, to which the actual, objective body is a limitation.
As to what the angels strictly are, whom heavenly souls will be like, the Bible is as far from giving us any definite information as on other weighty subjects; it only calls them pneumata, spirits, and declares them to be higher than men. The later Christians expressed themselves more definitely on this subject; more definitely, but variously. Some assigned bodies to the angels, others not; a difference which, however, is only apparent, since the angelic body is only a phantasmal one. But concerning the human body of the resurrection, they had not only different, but even opposite, conceptions; indeed, these contradictions lay in the nature of the case, necessarily resulted from the fundamental contradiction of the religious consciousness which, as we have shown, exhibits itself in the incompatible propositions that the body which is raised is the same individual body which we had before the resurrection, and that nevertheless it is another. It is the same body even to the hair, "cum nec periturus sit capillus, ut ait Dominus: Capillus de capite vestro non peribit."--Augustinus und Petrus, L. l. iv. dist. 44, c. 1. Nevertheless it is the same in such a way that everything burdensome, everything contradictory to transcendental feeling, is removed. "Immo sicut dicit Augustinus: Detrahentur vitia et remanebit natura. Superexcrescentia autem capillorum et unguium est de superfluitate et vitio naturae. Si enim non peccasset homo, crescerent ungues et capilli ejus usque ad determinatam quantitatem, sicut in leonibus et avibus."--(Addit. Henrici ab Vurimaria, ibid. edit. Basiliae, 1513.) What a specific, naïve, ingenuous, confident, harmonious faith! The risen body, as the same and yet another, a new body, has hair and nails, otherwise it would be a maimed body, deprived of an essential ornament, and consequently the resurrection would not be a restitutio in integrum; moreover they are the same hair and nails as before, but yet so modified that they are in accordance with the body. Why do not the believing theologians of modern times enter into such specialities as occupied the older theologians? Because their faith is itself only general, indefinite, i.e., a faith which they only suppose themselves to possess; because, from fear of their understanding, which has long been at issue with their faith, from fear of risking their feeble faith by bringing it to the light, that is, considering it in detail, they suppress the consequences, the necessary determinations of their faith, and conceal them from their understanding.
§ 17.
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 and be united with it."--Luther (Th. vii. p. 90). In that which is sensuous, Christ is supersensuous; but for that reason, in the supersensuous he is sensuous. Heavenly bliss is therefore by no means merely spiritual, it is equally corporeal, sensuous--a state in which all wishes are fulfilled. "Whatever thy heart seeks joy and pleasure in, that shall be there in abundance. For it is said, God shall be all in all. And where God is, there must be all good things that can ever be desired." "Dost thou desire to see acutely, and to hear through walls, and to be so light that thou mayst be wherever thou wilt in a moment, whether here below on the earth, or above in the clouds, that shall all be, and what more thou canst conceive, which thou couldst have in body and soul, thou shalt have abundantly if thou hast him."--Luther (Th. x. pp. 380, 381). Certainly eating, drinking, and marriage find no place in the Christian heaven, as they do in the Mohammedan; but only because with these enjoyments want is associated, and with want matter, i.e., passion, dependence, unhappiness. "Illic ipsa indigentia morietur. Tunc vere dives eris, quando nullius indigens eris."--Augustin. (Serm. ad Pop. p. 77, c. 9). The pleasures of this earth are only medicines, says the same writer; true health exists only in immortal life--"vera sanitas, nisi quando vera immortalitas." The heavenly life, the heavenly body, is as free and unlimited as wishes, as omnipotent as imagination. "Futurae ergo resurrectionis corpus imperfectae felicitatis erit, si cibos sumere non potuerit, imperfectae felicitatis, si cibus eguerit."--Augustin. (Epist. 102, § 6, edit. cit). Nevertheless, existence in a body without fatigue, without heaviness, without disagreeables, without disease, without mortality, is associated with the highest corporeal well-being. Even the knowledge of God in heaven is free from any effort of thought or faith, is sensational, immediate knowledge--intuition. The Christians are indeed not agreed whether God, as God, the essentia Dei, will be visible to bodily eyes. (See, for example, Augustin. Serm. ad Pop. p. 277, and Buddeus, Comp. Inst. Th. l. ii. c. 3, § 4.) But in this difference we again have only the contradiction between the abstract and the real God; the former is certainly not an object of vision, but the latter is so. "Flesh and blood is the wall between me and Christ, which will be torn away.... There everything will be certain. For in that life the eyes will see, the mouth taste, and the nose smell it; the treasure will shine into the soul and life.... Faith will cease, and I shall behold with my eyes."--Luther (Th. ix. p. 595). It is clear from this again, that God, as he is an object of religious sentiment, is nothing else than a product of the imagination. The heavenly beings are supersensuous sensuous, immaterial material beings, i.e., beings of the imagination; but they are like God, nay, identical with God, consequently God also is a supersensuous sensuous, an immaterial material being.
§ 18.
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 et elementum.... Non ergo in alio liquore potest consecrari baptismus nisi in aqua.--Petrus Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 3, c. l. c. 5). Ad certitudinem baptismi requiritur major quam unius guttae quantitas.... Necesse est ad valorem baptismi fieri contactum physicum inter aquam et corpus baptizati, ita ut non sufficiat, vestes tantum ipsius aqua tingi.... Ad certitudinem baptismi requiritur, ut saltem talis pars corporis abluatur, ratione cujus homo solet dici vere ablutus, v. 6, collum, humeri, pectus et praesertim caput.--Theolog. Schol. (P. Mezger. Aug. Vind. 1695, Th. iv. pp. 230, 231). Aquam, eamque veram ac naturalem in baptismo adhibendam esse, exemplo Joannis ... non minus vero et Apostolorum Act. viii. 36, x. 47, patet.--F. Buddeus (Com. Inst. Th. dog. l. iv. c. i. § 5)." Thus water is essential. But now comes the negation of the natural qualities of water. The significance of Baptism is not the natural power of water, but the supernatural, almighty power of the Word of God, who instituted the use of water as a sacrament, and now by means of this element imparts himself to man in a supernatural, miraculous manner, but who could just as well have chosen any other element in order to produce the same effect. So Luther, for example, says: "Understand the distinction, that Baptism is quite another thing than all other water, not on account of its natural quality, but because here something more noble is added. For God himself brings hither his glory, power, and might ... as St. Augustine also hath taught: 'accedat verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum.'" "Baptize them in the name of the Father, &c. Water without these words is mere water.... Who will call the baptism of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost mere water? Do we not see what sort of spice God puts into this water? When sugar is thrown into water it is no longer water, but a costly claret or other beverage. Why then do we here separate the word from the water and say, it is mere water; as if the word of God, yea, God himself, were not with and in the water.... Therefore, the water of Baptism is such a water as takes away sin, death, and unhappiness, helps us in heaven and to everlasting life. It is become a precious sugared water, aromaticum, and restorative, since God has mingled himself therewith."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 105).
As with the water in Baptism, which sacrament is nothing without water, though this water is nevertheless in itself indifferent, so is it with the wine and bread in the Eucharist, even in Catholicism, where the substance of bread and wine is destroyed by the power of the Almighty. "Accidentia eucharistica tamdiu continent Christum, quamdiu retinent illud temperamentum, cum quo connaturaliter panis et vini substantia permaneret: ut econtra, quando tanta fit temperamenti dissolutio, illorumque corruptio, ut sub iis substantia panis et vini naturaliter remanere non posset, desinunt continere Christum."--Theol. Schol. (Mezger. l. c. p. 292). That is to say: so long as the bread remains bread, so long does the bread remain flesh; when the bread is gone, the flesh is gone. Therefore a due portion of bread, at least enough to render bread recognisable as such, must be present, for consecration to be possible.--(Ib. p. 284.) For the rest, Catholic transubstantiation, the conversio realis et physica totius panis in corpus Christi, is only a consistent continuation of the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. By the transformation of water into wine, of a staff into a serpent, of stones into brooks (Ps. cxiv.) by these biblical transubstantiations the Catholics explained and proved the turning of bread into flesh. He who does not stumble at those transformations, has no right, no reason to hesitate at accepting this. The Protestant doctrine of the Lord's Supper is not less in contradiction with reason than the Catholic. "The body of Christ cannot be partaken otherwise than in two ways, spiritually or bodily. Again, this bodily partaking cannot be visible or perceptible," i.e., is not bodily, "else no bread would remain. Again, it cannot be mere bread; otherwise it would not be a bodily communion of the body of Christ, but of bread. Therefore the bread broken must also be truly and corporeally the body of Christ, although invisibly" (i.e., incorporeally).--Luther (Th. xix. p. 203). The difference is, that the Protestant gives no explanation concerning the mode in which bread can be flesh and wine blood. "Thereupon we stand, believe, and teach, that the body of Christ is truly and corporeally taken and eaten in the Lord's Supper. But how this takes place, or how he is in the bread, we know not, and are not bound to know."--Id. (ut sup. p. 393). "He who will be a Christian must not ask, as our fanatics and factionaries do, how it can be that bread is the body of Christ and wine the blood of Christ."--Id. (Th. xvi. p. 220). "Cum retineamus doctrinam de praesentia corporis Christi, quid opus est quaerere de modo?"--Melancthon (Vita Mel. Camerarius, ed. Strobel, Halae, 1777, p. 446). Hence the Protestants as well as the Catholics took refuge in Omnipotence, the grand source of ideas contradictory to reason.--(Concord. Summ. Beg. Art. 7, Aff. 3, Negat. 13. See also Luther, e.g., Th. xix. p. 400.)
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." "Probe namque discrimen inter manducationem oralem et naturalem tenendum est. Etsi enim oralem manducationem adseramus atque propugnemus, naturalem tamen non admittimus.... Omnis equidem manducatio naturalis etiam oralis est, sed non vicissim oralis manducatio statim est naturalis.... Unicus itaque licet sit actus, unicumque organum, quo panem et corpus Christi, itemque vinum et sanguinem Christi accipimus, modus (yes, truly, the mode) nihilominus maximopere differt, cum panem et vinum modo naturali et sensibili, corpus et sanguinem Christi simul equidem cum pane et vino, at modo supernaturali et insensibili, qui adeo etiam a nemine mortalium (nor, assuredly, by any God) explicare potest, revera interim et ore corporis accipiamus."--Jo. Fr. Buddeus (l. c. Lib. v. c. i. § 15).
§ 19.
Dogma and Morality, Faith and Love, contradict each other in Christianity. It is true that God, the object of faith, is in himself the idea of the species in a mystical garb--the common Father of men--and so far love to God is mystical love to man. But God is not only the universal being; he is also a peculiar, personal being, distinguished from love. Where the being is distinguished from love arises arbitrariness. Love acts from necessity, personality from will. Personality proves itself as such only by arbitrariness; personality seeks dominion, is greedy of glory; it desires only to assert itself, to enforce its own authority. The highest worship of God as a personal being is therefore the worship of God as an absolutely unlimited, arbitrary being. Personality, as such, is indifferent to all substantial determinations which lie in the nature of things; inherent necessity, the coercion of natural qualities, appears to it a constraint. Here we have the mystery of Christian love. The love of God, as the predicate of a personal being, has here the significance of grace, favour: God is a gracious master, as in Judaism he was a severe master. Grace is arbitrary love,--love which does not act from an inward necessity of the nature, but which is equally capable of not doing what it does, which could, if it would, condemn its object; thus it is a groundless, unessential, arbitrary, absolutely subjective, merely personal love. "He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth (Rom. ix. 18).... The king does what he will. So is it with the will of God. He has perfect right and full power to do with us and all creatures as he will. And no wrong is done to us. If his will had a measure or rule, a law, ground, or cause, it would not be the divine will. For what he wills is right, because he wills it. Where there is faith and the Holy Spirit ... it is believed that God would be good and kind even if he consigned all men to damnation. 'Is not Esau Jacob's brother? said the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob and hated Esau.'"--Luther (Th. xix. pp. 83, 87, 90, 91, 97).
Where love is understood in this sense, jealous watch is kept that man attribute nothing to himself as merit, that the merit may lie with the divine personality alone; there every idea of necessity is carefully dismissed, in order, through the feeling of obligation and gratitude, to be able to adore and glorify the personality exclusively. The Jews deified the pride of ancestry; the Christians, on the other hand, interpreted and transformed the Jewish aristocratic principle of hereditary nobility into the democratic principle of nobility of merit. The Jew makes salvation depend on birth, the Catholic on the merit of works, the Protestant on the merit of faith. But the idea of obligation and meritoriousness allies itself only with a deed, a work, which cannot be demanded of me, or which does not necessarily proceed from my nature. The works of the poet, of the philosopher, can be regarded in the light of merit only as considered externally. They are works of genius--inevitable products: the poet must bring forth poetry, the philosopher must philosophise. They have the highest satisfaction in the activity of creation, apart from any collateral or ulterior purpose. And it is just so with a truly noble moral action. To the man of noble feeling, the noble action is natural: he does not hesitate whether he should do it or not, he does not place it in the scales of choice; he must do it. Only he who so acts is a man to be confided in. Meritoriousness always involves the notion that a thing is done, so to speak, out of luxury, not out of necessity. The Christians indeed celebrated the highest act in their religion, the act of God becoming man, as a work of love. But Christian love in so far as it reposes on faith, on the idea of God as a master, a Dominus, has the significance of an act of grace, of a love in itself superfluous. A gracious master is one who foregoes his rights, a master who does out of graciousness what, as a master, he is not bound to do--what goes beyond the strict idea of a master. To God, as a master, it is not even a duty to do good to man; he has even the right--for he is a master bound by no law--to annihilate man if he will.
In fact, mercy is optional, non-necessary love, love in contradiction with the essence of love, love which is not an inevitable manifestation of the nature, love which the master, the subject, the person (personality is only an abstract, modern expression for sovereignty) distinguishes from himself as a predicate which he can either have or not have without ceasing to be himself. This internal contradiction necessarily manifested itself in the life, in the practice of Christianity; it gave rise to the practical separation of the subject from the predicate, of faith from love. As the love of God to man was only an act of grace, so also the love of man to man was only an act of favour or grace on the part of faith. Christian love is the graciousness of faith, as the love of God is the graciousness of personality or supremacy. (On the divine arbitrariness, see also J. A. Ernesti's treatise previously cited: "Vindiciæ arbitrii divini.")
Faith has within it a malignant principle. Christian faith, and nothing else, is the ultimate ground of Christian persecution and destruction of heretics. Faith recognises man only on condition that he recognises God, i.e., faith itself. Faith is the honour which man renders to God. And this honour is due unconditionally. To faith the basis of all duties is faith in God: faith is the absolute duty; duties to men are only derivative, subordinate. The unbeliever is thus an outlaw --a man worthy of extermination. That which denies God must be itself denied. The highest crime is the crime laesae majestatis Dei. To faith God is a personal being--the supremely personal, inviolable, privileged being. The acme of personality is honour; hence an injury towards the highest personality is necessarily the highest crime. The honour of God cannot be disavowed as an accidental, rude, anthropomorphic conception. For is not the personality, even the existence of God, a sensuous, anthropomorphic conception? Let those who renounce the honour be consistent enough to renounce the personality. From the idea of personality results the idea of honour, and from this again the idea of religious offences. "Quicunque Magistratibus male precatus fuerit, pro eorum arbitrio poenas luito; quicunque vero idem scelus erga Deum admiserit ... lapidibus blasphemiae causa obruitur."--(Lev. xxiv. 15, 16. See also Deut. xii., whence the Catholics deduce the right to kill heretics. Boehmer, l. c. l. v. Th. vii. § 44.) "Eos autem merito torqueri, qui Deum nesciunt, ut impios, ut injustos, nisi profanus nemo deliberat: quum parentem omnium et dominum omnium non minus sceleris sit ignorare, quam laedere."--Minucii Fel. Oct. c. 35. "Ubi erunt legis praecepta divinae, quae dicunt: honora patrem et matrem, si vocabulum patris, quod in homine honorari praecipitur, in Deo impune violatur?"--Cypriani Epist. 73 (ed. Gersdorf). "Cur enim, cum datum sit divinitus homini liberum arbitrium, adulteria legibus puniantur et sacrilegia permittantur? An fidem non servare levius est animam Deo, quam feminam viro?"--Augustinus (de Correct. Donatist. lib. ad Bonifacium, c. 5).
"Si hi qui nummos adulterant morte mulctantur, quid de illis statuendum censemus, qui fidem pervertere conantur?"--Paulus Cortesius (in Sententias (Petri L.) iii. l. dist. vii.) "Si enim illustrem ac praepotentem virum nequaquam exhonorari a quoquam licet, et si quisquam exhonoraverit, decretis legalibus reus sistitur et injuriarum auctor jure damnatur: quanto utique majoris piaculi crimen est, injuriosum quempiam Deo esse? Semper enim per dignitatem injuriam perferentis crescit culpa facientis, quia necesse est, quanto major est persona ejus qui contumeliam patitur, tanto major sit noxa ejus, qui facit." Thus speaks Salvianus (de Gubernat. Dei, l. vi. p. 218, edit. cit.)--Salvianus, who is called Magistrum Episcoporum, sui saeculi Jeremiam, Scriptorem Christianissimum, Orbis christiani magistrum. But heresy, unbelief in general--heresy is only a definite, limited unbelief--is blasphemy, and thus is the highest, the most flagitious crime. Thus to cite only one among innumerable examples, J. Oecolampadius writes to Servetus: "Dum non summam patientiam prae me fero, dolens Jesum Christum filium Dei sic dehonestari, parum christiane tibi agere videor. In aliis mansuetus ero: in blasphemiis quae in Christum, non item."--(Historia Mich. Serveti. H. ab Allwoerden Helmstadii, 1737, p. 13). For what is blasphemy? Every negation of an idea, of a definition, in which the honour of God, the honour of faith is concerned. Servetus fell as a sacrifice to Christian faith. Calvin said to Servetus two hours before his death: "Ego vero ingenue praefatus, me nunquam privatus injurias fuisse persecutum," and parted from him with a sense of being thoroughly sustained by the Bible: "Ab haeretico homine, qui autokatakritos peccabat, secundum Pauli praeceptum discessi."--(Ibid. p. 120.) Thus it was by no means a personal hatred, though this may have been conjoined,--it was a religious hatred which brought Servetus to the stake--the hatred which springs from the nature of unchecked faith. Even Melancthon is known to have approved the execution of Servetus.
The Swiss theologians, whose opinion was asked by the Genevans, very subtilely abstained, in their answer, from mentioning the punishment of death, but agreed with the Genevans in this--"Horrendos Serveti errores detestandos esse, severiusque idcirco in Servetum animadvertendum." Thus there is no difference as to the principle, only as to the mode of punishment. Even Calvin himself was so Christian as to desire to alleviate the horrible mode of death to which the Senate of Geneva condemned Servetus. (See on this subject, e.g., M. Adami, Vita Calvini, p. 90; Vita Bezae, p. 207; Vitae Theol. Exter. Francof. 1618.) We have, therefore, to consider this execution as an act of general significance--as a work of faith, and that not of Roman Catholic, but of reformed, biblical, evangelical faith. That heretics must not be compelled to a profession of the faith by force was certainly maintained by most of the lights of the Church, but there nevertheless lived in them the most malignant hatred of heretics. Thus, for example, St. Bernard says (Super Cantica, § 66) in relation to heretics: "Fides suadenda est, non imponenda," but he immediately adds: "Quamquam melius procul dubio gladio coercerentur, illius videlicet, qui non sine causa gladium portat, quam in suum errorem multos trajicere permittantur." If the faith of the present day no longer produces such flagrant deeds of horror, this is due only to the fact that the faith of this age is not an uncompromising, living faith, but a sceptical, eclectic, unbelieving faith, curtailed and maimed by the power of art and science. Where heretics are no longer burned either in the fires of this world or of the other, there faith itself has no longer any fire, any vitality. The faith which allows variety of belief renounces its divine origin and rank, degrades itself to a subjective opinion. It is not to Christian faith, not to Christian love (i.e., love limited by faith); no! it is to doubt of Christian faith, to the victory of religious scepticism, to free-thinkers, to heretics, that we owe tolerance, freedom of opinion. It was the heretics, persecuted by the Christian Church, who alone fought for freedom of conscience.
Christian freedom is freedom in non-essentials only: on the fundamental articles of faith freedom is not allowed. When, however, Christian faith--faith considered in distinction from love, for faith is not one with love, "potestis habere fidem sine caritate" (Augustinus, Serm. ad Pop. § 90)--is pronounced to be the principle, the ultimate ground of the violent deeds of Christians towards heretics (that is, such deeds as arose from real believing zeal), it is obviously not meant that faith could have these consequences immediately and originally, but only in its historical development. Still, even to the earliest Christians the heretic was an antichrist, and necessarily so--"adversus Christum sunt haeretici" (Cyprianus, Epist. 76, § 14, edit. cit.)--accursed--"apostoli ... in epistolis haereticos exsecrati sunt" (Cyprianus, ib. § 6)--a lost being, doomed by God to hell and everlasting death. "Thou hearest that the tares are already condemned and sentenced to the fire. Why then wilt thou lay many sufferings on a heretic? Dost thou not hear that he is already judged to a punishment heavier than he can bear? Who art thou, that thou wilt interfere and punish him who has already fallen under the punishment of a more powerful master? What would I do against a thief already sentenced to the gallows?... God has already commanded his angels, who in his own time will be the executioners of heretics."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 132). When therefore the State, the world, became Christian, and also, for that reason, Christianity became worldly, the Christian religion a State religion; then it was a necessary consequence that the condemnation of heretics, which was at first only religious or dogmatic, became a political, practical condemnation, and the eternal punishment of hell was anticipated by temporal punishment. If, therefore, the definition and treatment of heresy as a punishable crime is in contradiction with the Christian faith, it follows that a Christian king, a Christian State, is in contradiction with it; for a Christian State is that which executes the Divine judgments of faith with the sword, which makes earth a heaven to believers, a hell to unbelievers.
"Docuimus ... pertinere ad reges religiosos, non solum adulteria vel homicidia vel hujusmodi alia flagitia seu facinora, verum etiam sacrilegia severitate congrua cohibere."--Augustinus (Epist. ad Dulcitium). "Kings ought thus to serve the Lord Christ by helping with laws that his honour be furthered. Now when the temporal magistracy finds scandalous errors, whereby the honour of the Lord Christ is blasphemed and men's salvation hindered, and a schism arises among the people ... where such false teachers will not be admonished and cease from preaching, there ought the temporal magistracy confidently to arm itself, and know that nothing else befits its office but to apply the sword and all force, that doctrine may be pure and God's service genuine and unperverted, and also that peace and unity may be preserved."--Luther (Th. xv. pp. 110, 111). Let it be further remarked here, that Augustine justifies the application of coercive measures for the awaking of Christian faith by urging that the Apostle Paul was converted to Christianity by a deed of force--a miracle. (De Correct. Donat. c. 6.) The intrinsic connection between temporal and eternal, i.e., political and spiritual punishment, is clear from this, that the same reasons which have been urged against the temporal punishment of heresy are equally valid against the punishment of hell. If heresy or unbelief cannot be punished here because it is a mere mistake, neither can it be punished by God in hell. If coercion is in contradiction with the nature of faith, so is hell; for the fear of the terrible consequence of unbelief, the torments of hell, urge to belief against knowledge and will. Boehmer, in his Jus. Eccl., argues that heresy and unbelief should be struck out of the category of crimes, that unbelief is only a vitium theologicum, a peccatum in Deum. But God, in the view of faith, is not only a religious, but a political, juridical being, the King of kings, the true head of the State. "There is no power but of God ... it is the minister of God"--Rom. xiii. 1, 4.
If, therefore, the juridical idea of majesty, of kingly dignity and honour, applies to God, sin against God, unbelief, must by consequence come under the definition of crime. And as with God, so with faith. Where faith is still a truth, and a public truth, there no doubt is entertained that it can be demanded of every one, that every one is bound to believe. Be it further observed, that the Christian Church has gone so far in its hatred against heretics, that according to the canon law even the suspicion of heresy is a crime, "ita ut de jure canonico revera crimen suspecti detur, cujus existentiam frustra in jure civili quaerimus."--Boehmer (l. c. v. Tit. vii. §§ 23-42).
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 I cannot love with God, I must hate; if they only preach something which is against God, all love and friendship is destroyed;--thereupon I hate thee, and do thee no good. For faith must be uppermost, and where the word of God is attacked, hate takes the place of love.... And so David means to say: I hate them, not because they have done injury and evil to me and led a bad and wicked life, but because they despise, revile, blaspheme, falsify, and persecute the word of God." "Faith and love are two things. Faith endures nothing, love endures all things. Faith curses, love blesses: faith seeks vengeance and punishment, love seeks forbearance and forgiveness." "Rather than God's word should fall and heresy stand, faith would wish all creatures to be destroyed; for through heresy men lose God himself."--Luther (Th. vi. p. 94; Th. v. pp. 624, 630). See also, on this subject, my treatise in the Deutsches Jahrb. and Augustini Enarrat. in Psalm cxxxviii. (cxxxix.). As Luther distinguishes the person from the enemy of God, so Augustine here distinguishes the man from the enemy of God, from the unbeliever, and says: We should hate the ungodliness in the man, but love the humanity in him. But what, then, in the eyes of faith, is the man in distinction from faith, man without faith, i.e., without God? Nothing: for the sum of all realities, of all that is worthy of love, of all that is good and essential, is faith, as that which alone apprehends and possesses God. It is true that man as man is the image of God, but only of the natural God, of God as the Creator of Nature. But the Creator is only God as he manifests himself outwardly; the true God, God as he is in himself, the inward essence of God, is the triune God, is especially Christ. (See Luther, Th. xiv. pp. 2, 3, and Th. xvi. p. 581.) And the image of this true, essential, Christian God, is only the believer, the Christian. Moreover, man is not to be loved for his own sake, but for God's. "Diligendus est propter Deum, Deus vero propter se ipsum."--Augustinus (de Doctrina Chr. 1. i. cc. 22, 27). How, then, should the unbelieving man, who has no resemblance to the true God, be an object of love?
