Ritschlianism
Expository
and
Critical
Essays
James Orr
D.D.
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CAL FAITH. A Volume of The Theological Educator
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NEGLECTED FACTORS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF
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LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27 PATERNOSTER ROW
RITSCHLIANISM
EXPOSITORY AND CRITICAL ESSAYS
125207
BY
JAMES ORR, M.A., D.D.
Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology in the Glasgow College of
the United Free Church of Scotland
LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 PATERNOSTER ROW
1903
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PREFACE
THE papers included in this volume have, with two
exceptions, already been published in various theo-
logical magazines. There they might have remained,
but for the following considerations. The three
expository Essays on Ritschl and his school which
head the list appeared at a time when Ritschlian
theology was still a terra incognita to most in this
country. For that reason they attracted some
attention. They have since been, and still are,
frequently quoted, referred to, and occasionally
adversely criticised. The papers themselves, mean-
while, have ceased to be generally accessible. This
is a disadvantage to both author and reader which
it is thought desirable to obviate, and the Essays are,
accordingly, here brought together. They were of
use to many at the time, and may perhaps be felt
to be of service still.
The author has expounded his views on the
Ritschlian system in his Christian View of God and
the World, and in his Ritschlian Theology, in the
"Theological Educator" series. The latter book
V
α 2
vi
PREFACE
suffers somewhat, for the purposes of the general
reader, from undue compression, and from the
necessity the writer felt, in view of the disputes
with which the subject bristled, of giving chapter
and verse for every statement he advanced. The
Essays here republished, as simpler and more popular
in character, may be found more suitable as an
introduction to this influential phase of theology.
Written independently, they have the drawback that
to some extent they overlap; but any degree of
repetition from this cause is perhaps compensated
for by the fact that the standpoint of each is
different, and, like pictures taken with a different
focus, each helps to fill out the others, and may be
regarded as the supplement or complement of the
others.
Since these Essays appeared, the means of acquaint-
ance with the Ritschlian teaching have abundantly
multiplied. When they were written, hardly a single
important Ritschlian book had been translated. Now
the reader has access in English to leading works
of Herrmann, Kaftan, Harnack, Schultz, Wendt, and
finally of Ritschl himself, in an excellent transla-
tion of the dogmatic volume of his Justification and
Reconciliation. The French phase of the movement
is represented by a translation of Sabatier's brilliant
book on the Philosophy of Religion. In America,
Profs. McGiffert and Swing have laboured, not with-
out success, to popularise the ideas and extend the
influence of the school. In this country, Dr Garvie
PREFACE
vii
is recognised as having furnished in his Ritschlian
Theology one of the most important contributions
to the exposition of Ritschl's system. All this has
served to create and deepen interest in the Ritschlian
movement, and to promote a better understanding
of both its merits and its defects. The movement
is still in progress, and, since the publication of
the writer's volume, has undergone fresh develop-
ments, some of which call for illustration and
remark.
In the conflict of parties and principles thus
arising, the present writer, while trying, he hopes,
to understand Ritschlianism, and to receive what-
ever stimulus and benefit it is fitted to yield him
(and that is not little), has never felt able to join
in the extravagant laudation in which some indulge
regarding Ritschlianism as a system, nor to alter
the conviction he early formed that, as a theology
proposing to displace that of the ordinary creed, its
basis is radically unsound. It may, indeed, in its
more earnest adherents, succeed in outgrowing its
limitations, and in throwing off its elements of
weakness; but, in proportion as it does so, it may
be predicted that it will be found drawing nearer,
as happened before in the wake of the great impulse
imparted by Schleiermacher, to the common faith of
the Christian Churches, against which it is at
present in arms. On the other hand, the danger is
not slight that, on the negative side, it may issue
in many falling back into pure humanitarianism and
viii
PREFACE
rationalism. That the peril is not unreal may be
seen from some of the papers in this volume.
Naturally, the author's opinons and judgments on
Ritschlianism have evoked a good deal of criticism on
the part of adherents or defenders of the Ritschlian
positions. This is not to be complained of; but
it creates an obligation, in the interest of the truth,
of testing the value of these criticisms, and of rebut-
ting them, where they are found to be erroneous or
baseless. It justifies also the application of a fear-
less and sifting criticism in turn to new phases of
the movement as they arise. The Essays in the
volume called forth by this necessity are easily dis-
tinguished, and speak for themselves. The Essays
not hitherto published are those on Ritschl's recent
Berlin lectures, and on the school of Sabatier in
Paris.
A word is perhaps necessary with regard to the
paper on Dr McGiffert's book on Apostolic Christi-
anity. The paper is retained with diffidence in view
of declarations afterwards made by the respected
author of his belief in fundamental doctrines and
facts which his book seemed to place in doubt
declarations which are willingly accepted. The
fact, however, cannot be ignored that the volume
complained of continues to circulate without, so
far as appears, change or explanation of any kind.
This circumstance fully warrants the reprinting of
the strictures made upon it at the time of its publica-
tion. The article is included, along with that on
1
PREFACE
ix
Prof. Swing, as throwing light on the Ritschlian
movement in its American form.
Two Essays, on "The Miraculous Conception," and
on "Faith and Reason," are embraced in the volume,
as cognate with its general subject and as bearing
on Ritschlian controversies.
The thanks of the author are due to the editors of
The Thinker, The Expository Times, The British
Weekly, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, and
The Princeton Theological Review, for their kind per-
mission to reprint the papers which appeared in
their publications; also to the Rev. J. M. Wilson, B.D.,
London, for valuable aid rendered in the revision of
the proofs.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
•
CHAPTER II
PAGE
3
33
CHAPTER III
53
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL.
CHAPTER IV
RITSCHLAND AFTER: A Review
77
CHAPTER V
PROFESSOR SWING ON RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
89
xi
xii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
PAGE
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL . 115
CHAPTER VII
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY:
"SYMBOLO-
FIDÉISME"
151
•
CHAPTER VIII
DR MCGIFFERT ON APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
179
•
CHAPTER IX
THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND MODERN THOUGHT 221
CHAPTER X
FAITH AND REASON
241
APPENDIX
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE.
265
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
4
1
A
I
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY ¹
ONE of the most noteworthy facts in recent German
theology is the rapid rise and widely extended influence
of the school which takes its origin from Albrecht
Ritschl. Not so long since Ritschl's was a name com-
paratively unknown in this country. Those who did
know him knew him best through his valuable mono-
graph on The Origin of the old Catholic Church, in the
second edition of which, in 1857, he formally separated
himself from the Tübingen theory of early Church
history. His great work, The Doctrine of Justification
and Reconciliation, appeared first in the years 1870-74,
yet already his theology divides Germany into contend-
ing camps, and his disciples hold the chairs of leading
universities. Scholars on this side the Channel are be-
coming aware that a new power has arisen abroad, and
every year an increasing number of students find their
way from our shores to sit at the feet of some of the
representatives of the fresh teaching. A phenomenon
1 The Thinker, August, 1892.
3
4
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
like this needs some explanation. For an effect of this
magnitude there must be some adequate cause. It is
worth our while to inquire what it is.
There can be no mistake as to the depth and intensity
of this youngest religious movement. Ritschl himself
died in 1889, but he has left behind him a band of able
and enthusiastic followers, who carry on his work with
a zeal and determination which show no sign of abate-
ment. Probably no impulse of quite the same intensity
has been given to theology since the days of Schleier-
macher. The Ritschlian movement resembles that of
Schleiermacher in this respect also, that the term
"school" hardly describes the exact character of the
relation of master and disciples. Ritschl's followers are
affiliated to him by certain fundamental aims and tend-
encies, but already their theological standpoints and
modes of apprehending Christian truth show wide diver-
gencies. The chief part of Ritschl's influence lay, as
can easily be perceived, in his large and impressive
personality. He communicated impulse along fresh
lines, and his disciples are working out his thoughts,
each in accordance with his own individuality. None
the less on this account is there any want of positive-
ness in the tone in which their various conclusions are
given out. The representatives of the rising party
boldly proclaim that they are in possession of a new
and revolutionary method, which they yet hold to be
the legitimate working out of the principle of the Refor-
mation, and they have already taken great strides in
applying their method to all the principal spheres of
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
5
ها
theology. Herrmann in Marburg, and Kaftan,¹ the
successor of Dorner, in Berlin, represent the party in
scientific theology. Harnack is its Church historian;
Schultz carries its spirit into Old Testament theology;
Wendt into New Testament theology, etc. Other able
members of the party are Gottschick, Reischle, Borne-
mann, Sell, several of whom are associated in the con-
duct of the new magazine, Zeitschrift für Theologie und
Kirche, which exists to propagate their distinctive views.
All this speaks to activity and enterprise, and the
shoals of books and pamphlets which issue from the
press on one side or other of the controversies evoked
constitute an exceedingly lively chapter in theological
polemics.
It would be easy to give a sketch of Ritschl's own
positions in systematic form, adding some remarks on
those of his followers, but this is not precisely what I
wish to do. I wish rather to raise the question, What
is the secret of the influence of this school? From
nothing, nothing comes, and unless there were some-
thing both true and important in this Ritschlian
theology, something that meets a real want and interest
of the times, it could not take the hold it does. Simply
to assail it, to point out its weaknesses, its incon-
sistencies, its defects, is not enough. It is not its
1 Kaftan, indeed (Das Wesen, Preface), rather disclaims being
a follower of Ritschl and representative of his theology, while
acknowledging his obligations to him. But in the wide sense
above indicated, which is the only sense in which we can speak of
a Ritschlian party at all, Kaftan undoubtedly is a Ritschlian.
[See further on the "school" of Ritschl in Essay III.].
6
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
f
inconsistencies and defects-and these are patent enough
-which have given it its hold over men's minds.
There must be truth and power in it somewhere; some-
thing which accounts for the influence it exerts over
most diversely constituted natures, with the result of
inspiring them, as it undoubtedly does, with a new
enthusiasm for religion and for theological work. There
is plenty of criticism of Ritschlianism; plenty of refuta-
tion and of impassioned defence. What I think there
is some need for is a calm attempt to see where the
good lies. Then from this we may proceed to appraise
the defects which undoubtedly exist.
Wherein, then, it may first be asked, lies the secret
of the influence of this new theology? Several answers
might be given to this question, but perhaps the most
explicit, and the one which comes nearest the centre of
the matter, is this: It lies in the attempt to find a
ground of certainty in religion which shall be in-
dependent of, and unassailable by, all critical theories
and metaphysical speculations. We live in a time of
great confusion and uncertainty of opinion. Contro-
versies are raging on the most fundamental questions
of religion. Criticism of the Old and New Testaments
-investigation into the age and authorship of books-
is revolutionising old beliefs. The natural sciences
seem driving out belief in the supernatural. The
philosophical schools give the most varied answers to
the ultimate problems of thought and life. It is obvious
that all this raises a serious consideration affecting
Christian faith. Must a Christian-it may be asked—
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
7
have gone through all this mass of conflicting opinion,
have investigated and satisfied himself on all these
disputed points, before he is entitled to certainty in
his religion? Must he, e.g., have gone through an
exhaustive course of criticism and apologetics, have
arrived at certain conclusions in each of these depart-
ments, have settled his philosophical questions in a
particular way, before he can be certain that he has
salvation in Christ? If he does attain certainty in
this way, what is the value of it? Is his assurance
not liable to be overthrown again by the next new
theory that is started, the next turn in the wheel of
argument? But if this is not necessary-and it would
be fatal to Christianity to assume that it is-there
must be some ground of faith independent of criticism,
and of all scientific and metaphysical theories. And if
there is, what is it?
The answer which the Ritschlian theologians give to
this question is-There is a certainty of Christian faith
which puts a man in a position of independence to all
these extraneous subjects. It is the special claim of
the school to have shown that there is this ground of
certainty, and wherein it consists, and how it can be
justified. No one has spoken with more clearness and
decision on this point than Herrmann, and his views.
may be accepted as fairly representative of those of the
party. Herrmann's explanation of the matter is some-
what in this wise. The certainty of faith, he holds,
springs immediately out of the experience of the revela-
tion of God in Christ. It is the result of the direct
8
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
со
impression (Eindruck) which Christ makes upon the
soul historically confronted with Him. You come into
the presence of Christ as He meets you in the Gospel
page. The impression He irresistibly makes on you is
that in Him God is drawing near to you. It is not so
much a doctrine of God you receive as a vivid percep-
tion that God is there present and acting before you.
Christ does not merely speak to you of a new relation
to God; He sets that new relation before you in actual,
living fact. It is not a matter of theory or speculation
at all. God there meets you in actual history. Christ
as an historically existing person irresistibly draws you
to Himself, and to the Father whom He reveals. In
His presence you not only gain the knowledge of God,
but courage to trust God. He lifts you above your
guilty fears. The spiritual greatness you discern in
Him is combined with a love and grace which banishes
the natural distrust of your heart towards God, and
gives you power to fulfil your moral destiny. All this
is prior to theology or reflection. It is no reasoned
conclusion, is connected with no metaphysical view of
the Person of Christ, but is simply a faith-the result
of the irresistible compulsion (Zwang) exercised by
Christ over those brought spiritually into contact with
Him.
This thought of the immediate Eindruck or impression
of Christ on the soul confronted with Him is the key to so
much in Ritschlianism-especially in Herrmannism—
is reiterated so often by leading writers, that I make
no apology for dwelling a little further upon it. The
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
9
4:
reader will no doubt feel the expressions used above
to be vague, but a study of the literature would prob-
ably convince him that the vagueness is not in my
statement, but in the Ritschlian presentation itself.
It is clear that the Ritschlian theologians build every-
thing on the positive revelation in Christ. But it is
not so clear what precisely it is in Christ which,
according to them, produces this irresistible conviction
within us of the reality of God's presence and working
in history. Herrmann's statements would seem to
suggest that the essence of the matter lies in the
impression we receive of Christ's spiritual greatness
and superiority to everything else in the world, which
forces on us the conviction that there is a Power
working in and with Him which is over all things-
a Power gracious and good as Christ is. The following
is only one out of many passages which express this
idea:
"Our certainty of God is rooted in the simple fact
that in Jesus we meet with a man who must hold His
own against the world. For he who experiences such
a compulsion (Zwang) through the image of Jesus that
he is obliged to concede to Him this dignity, receives
with this at the same time the thought of a Power
over all things, which is not otherwise actuated than
through the disposition from which the life-work of
Jesus has proceeded. God gives Himself to us to be
recognised as this Power which is with Jesus. But
then we are compelled to say that the existence of
Jesus in our world is that fact through which God
10
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
so touches us that He opens up intercourse with
us." 1
Is not our apprehension of God on this showing,
after all, not immediate, but of the nature of an
inference?
An additional extract or two from Herrmann will
further elucidate his meaning. I take them from
his interesting rectorial address on Evangelical Faith
and the Theology of Albrecht Ritschl (1890). He says
there:
"To be a Christian signifies, above all, that one
gains this life-content. But this does not spring up
in the soul of itself, but presses on us out of the
history in which we stand. Not to despair of the
world, and not to despair of ourselves, because Jesus
Christ is an actual constituent of this our world
—that is the beginning of Christian faith. To under-
stand this, one must be able to see the peculiarity of
Jesus, through which He lifts Himself clear away
from everything which else may meet us in the
world." 2
More explicitly:
"The ethical furtherance which we experience from
others always has the result, that we get a quicker
sight for what is distorted in them. Thus, they them-
selves take care that the ideal which we thought to
1 Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott (The Communion of the
Christian with God), pp. 26, 27 (First Edition). [Expanded in
Second Edition, pp. 47, 76 ; E. T., pp. 51, 78.]
2 P. 20 (First Edition).
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
11
find in them always grows beyond them. If it
happened to us in quite the same way with the person
of Jesus, there would be no Christianity in the world.
Assuredly we draw near to Him before all others only
by questioning our consciences, and measuring Him by
the ethical demand. But the nearer we come to Him,
just the more does He become the interpreter of our
consciences. . . . The ethical ideal does not grow
beyond Him. For He makes it evident to us as
something inexhaustible, which seizes our heart and
life, and makes us feel in our deepest part how widely
we are separated from it. It is simply a fact that the
appearance of Jesus handed down in the New Testa-
ment acts thus upon us. Whoever will combat
Christianity must before all dispose of the fact that
numberless men are so laid hold of by Jesus.
But," he goes on, "with this alone that the historical
appearance of Jesus so lays hold upon us, faith is not
yet founded in us. It also happens that the same
Man who becomes Judge and Conscience to the men
affected by Him interests Himself in these men with a
patient and unequalled love. While He makes the
sinner insecure by the simple power of His personal
life, He gives him at the same time a support by His
friendliness. The men who through Him were brought
painfully to feel how it stood with them felt themselves
nevertheless on this account drawn towards Him. In
this way then He forgives sins. . . . In that which he
finds in the person of Jesus it becomes certain to the
Christian that the power of the good not only judges
•
1
-
12
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
but redeems him. Thus is constituted Christian
"" 1
faith."
Here then, according to the Marburg theologian, is
a ground of faith absolutely independent of criticism,
or of any kind of results brought from quarters outside
itself. Suppose, then, you ask-Is this faith really
independent of criticism? What, e.g., if it could be
proved an extravagant supposition, of course, but one
which, for that reason, better serves our purpose-that
the Gospels were forgeries of the Middle Ages? Would
not this affect our faith? For then what was held to
be true on grounds of faith would be proved to be
untrue on grounds of fact. Herrmann has his answer
ready. It is in substance that your Christian faith is
a guarantee to you that such critical results cannot
possibly be true. It is not a faith grounded on
criticism, but, having it, you know as a certainty that
revelation in Christ is a reality, and that any critical
results which would conflict with this must be in
error. In his work already quoted, Der Verkehr des
Christen mit Gott, Herrmann expresses himself on this
point with great distinctness. Through this impression
which Christ makes upon us, he affirms:-
"The doubt whether the image of Jesus which works
on us in the Gospel belongs to legend and not to
history is forthwith excluded. The evidence of the
historical reality of Jesus always rests for the believer
upon the significance which the knowledge of Jesus
1 Pp. 20-22. The same doctrine is taught in nearly similar
language in many passages of his Die Gewissheit des Glaubens.
+
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
13
has won for him. Only after this has been taken to
heart as an indubitable fact of his life does that which
testifies for the historical reality of Jesus stand out
clear and visible before him. A judgment resting
on grounds of historical investigation could only claim
probability. But to Christian faith it is certain that
Jesus has lived as the man who with His message of a
kingdom of God has opened to men the possibility of
an eternal life, and who at the same time was conscious
that the existence of His Person in its life and death
will realise this kingdom of God for all who do not pass
Him by."1
Well, but this is the objection which will next be
urged-in entering on criticism, you cannot, from this
standpoint, enter on it with an unprejudiced mind.
How can your inquiries be impartial and presupposi-
tionless, if you have already decided the most essential
part before you begin? Herrmann, in reply, boldly
concedes the case to be as the opponent states it. The
Christian, he says, does not come without presupposi-
tions to his inquiries. A presuppositionless criticism
is a myth. The Christian least of all comes to his
task with a perfectly unformed mind. He comes with
his faith in Christ already given, and he cannot lay it
aside. And though this cannot warrant him in
tampering with historical facts, it gives him the
certainty beforehand that the results will not con-
tradict the verity already won. This, however, it
1 Der Verkehr, pp. 92, 93 (First Edition). [Second Edition,
p. 184; E. T., p. 177.]
14
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
སཧཾན;
should be added, only applies to the general and total
result. It does not guarantee every detail, every
miracle in the evangelical narratives. It does not
guard against mistakes. This is an important
qualification which opens up, as we shall see, a wide
door to subjectivity.
Thus far every one, I think, will agree that the
Ritschlian school has got hold of some sound and
true positions, though perhaps not quite so novel as
Herrmann and his confrères are inclined to represent.
It is surely a true and important view to take, that
theology must begin with the living and historical
Christ. The emphasis laid on this truth is the service
of the new school as against a one-sided rationalism
and idealism. It turns back from scholastic dogmat-
isms and speculative subtleties to the freshness and
reality of historical revelation. I would agree also
that faith in Christ is the true Toù or for dealing
with critical and other questions which threaten the
destruction of our Christian certitude. This faith,
born, as Herrmann says, of the direct impression
which Christ makes on us in the Gospel, yields us
the certainty that He who lives, speaks, and acts as
Jesus does in the evangelical records, is no creature
of fiction, but the veritable Son of God, the Saviour
of the world. Herrmann's argument is but another
way of stating the self-evidencing character of the
Gospel revelation. It is true that in Christ God
draws near to us, and that the Divinity alike of
Author and of message is irresistibly borne in on us,
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
15
in proportion as our natures are thrown open to the
influence they exert. Such certainty does this faith
give, that the Christian is confident that no results
which criticism can ever yield will overturn the
essential basis on which the Gospel rests. But there is
obviously a danger here, against which the Ritschlian
school has not always duly guarded itself. In its
desire to exalt the certainty of faith, this school is
apt to push its independence of critical results too far.
As if to show how independent it is of the worst that
criticism can do, it is wont to make very wide con-
cessions indeed to destructive criticism-concessions
which, in fact, imperil its own principle. For after
all it is to be observed that in the Ritschlian view
independence of criticism does not mean that any and
every critical theory is compatible with faith. It
means that faith has a certainty which antecedes, and
is not derived from criticism, but which at the same.
time involves the assurance that criticism can per-
manently establish nothing to its real disadvantage.
For example, it is evident that a theory which utterly
denied the trustworthiness of the Gospel records would.
be incompatible with the faith which affirms the his-
toric reality of the Gospel portraiture of Christ. But
the members of the Ritschlian school are wont to make
such concessions in regard to the New Testament as
are barely reconcilable with belief in its trustworthi-
ness. They maintain the Gospel narrative in bulk,
but allow it to be freely questioned in detail. Sayings
and doings of Christ which do not suit them are easily
16
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
got rid of on critical principles. The presence of
legendary and non-historical matter-sometimes in
large quantities-is freely admitted. Harnack does
not hesitate to affirm that there is no historical proof
for the resurrection.¹ Thus, instead of using their
principle of faith as a check against the inroads of
destructive criticism-as, if it has any worth, they
ought to do they make concessions to opponents
which practically mean the cutting away of the bough
they themselves are sitting on.
Quite similar to the way in which the Ritschlian
theologians would seek to make faith independent of
historical criticism is the way in which they would
keep it from all contact with philosophy, or what
they call Welterkenntniss. Here we come on
another of their most characteristic positions. For,
given this faith and its contents, the question next
arises-What are we to do with it? Can we help
turning round upon it, and trying to relate it through
intelligent reflection with the rest of the knowledge
we possess-with, e.g., that given through science or
philosophy? No, says this school, this it is which has
been the very bane of theology. It is this entangle-
ment with philosophy - this attempt to rationalise
Christian doctrines-this failure to distinguish be-
tween the method proper to theology and the method
proper to the theoretical sciences-this mixing up of
the pure dicta of religious faith with the results of
speculation, which has been the evil leaven of theo-
¹ Dogmengeschichte, i. pp. 74, 75. [E. T., pp. 85-6.]
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
17
logical science. We strike here, then, on another
cardinal tenet of the school-the absolute separation
of theology from philosophy and theoretical knowledge
generally. Two kinds of knowledge are distinguished
by Ritschl-the one, religious knowledge which moves
solely in the region of what he calls worth- or value-
judgments (Werthurtheile), i.e., judgments which ex-
press not the objective truth of things, but their
value to us as subjects of pleasure and pain; and the
other, theoretical or world-knowledge, which deals with
things in the light of the causal judgment, and seeks
to establish their objective (phenomenal) relations.
The application of this distinction to the matter in
hand leads to the entire separation of the two spheres
in theology. Theology, according to Ritschl, is the
expression in forms suitable to the religious conscious-
ness (faith-propositions, as Kaftan would call them)
of the content of the Christian revelation-“the right
and complete limitation and clear fixing of the religious
representations or represented facts which are included
in the notion of Christianity." Its safety is to keep
its expressions in this purely religious form (co-ordin-
ating and relating them to each other as a whole),
and not to attempt to translate them into any other.
Ritschl and Herrmann seek to justify this position by
a theory of religion on the one hand, and a view of
the nature and scope of the theoretic activities of the
mind on the other, which exclude from the latter any
possibility of a real knowledge of God, or indeed of a
¹ Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, iii. p. 14 (Third Edition).
1
B
18
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
real knowledge of anything. Ritschl is thoroughly
at one with Kant in thinking that the theoretic
reason can give us no knowledge of God, or proof of
His existence. We are thus driven back on practical
postulates and religious Vorstellungen, beyond which,
as it would seem, even revelation cannot raise us (for
revelation cannot take us outside the essential limita-
tions of our faculties).
On this subject, beyond most others, the Ritschlian
theology seems to me to put itself in a distinctly false
position. Faith and reason are stretched apart till no
point of contact is allowed to remain between them.
Religious knowledge is put in one compartment of the
mind, theoretical or scientific knowledge in the other,
and no relations of friendship or agreement are allowed
to subsist between the two. It is a matter of indiffer-
ence to theologians-so maintains Herrmann in his
work on Metaphysic and Theology-whether philosophy
be deistic, pantheistic, or whatever it is.¹ I humbly
submit that this attempt to create a divorce between
our religious consciousness and the theoretic reason
must always prove a failure. The mind cannot be
thus divided into two parts; we cannot hold contra-
dictory propositions together; we cannot but seek to
unite the different parts of our knowledge, from what-
ever source derived, into one whole of truth. Religion,
says Ritschl-and his followers echo him-has to do
not with theoretic propositions, but solely with judg-
1 See also Herrmann's remarks in Die Religion im Verhältniss
zum Welterkennen und zur Sittlichkeit, pp. 92, 93, and passim.

THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
19
ments of value. That is to say, it is not objective
truth we have to deal with in religion, but conceptions
in the form adapted to satisfy our religious needs. One
may spend months over this distinction of Ritschl's,
and in the fluctuation and vagueness of his expressions
not be sure that he understands him after all. Taken
literally, his words would seem to land us in the purest
subjectivism. Yet it is certain that Ritschl does not
mean this.
The truth seems to be that Ritschl has
got hold here of a real distinction, but turns it to a
wrong use. It is true that there is a distinction to
be drawn between religious and theoretic knowledge.
The religious mode of apprehension is dominated by
a practical motive, and, in its immediate form at
least, makes large use of the figurative element. It
is emotional, poetic, imaginative-throws out words
at its object, as Matthew Arnold says, without taking
pains to subject its ideas to very rigorous analysis.
It contains, as Hegel would express it, a large admix-
ture of the Vorstellung. Theoretic knowledge, on the
other hand, aims at being cool, clear, formally and
scientifically exact. The language of religion, there-
fore, and the language of science are cast in very
different moulds. The personal interest we have in
the assertions of religion may warrant us to speak of
them as worth- or value-judgments, in contrast with
scientific judgments, which are supposed to be perfectly
objective and dispassionate. But to allow this is very
far from granting that religious truths form one class
by themselves, and scientific truths form another, and


20
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
One
that the two classes can never be brought into any
sort of relation with each other, or that it is wrong;
to try to bring them into such relation. My view of
religion leads me to think (in this agreeing with
Hegel) that it is at bottom because man possesses a
rational nature that he is capable of religion at all.
Religious truths are not arbitrarily to be cut off from
reason, but rather, we must hold, are in deepest
harmony with reason, and, rightly understood, con-
tain in them the deepest satisfaction to reason.
thing I am sure of: a system which sets itself in
antithesis to reason will not long maintain itself.
To say that in the revelation of Christ only we have
knowledge of God-that there is no such thing as
natural theology, or any rational evidence for the
existence of God-which is the assertion of this
school-is practically to make the understanding an
atheist. It is to set up dualism in the house of the
soul. The sceptic will not be long in replying that, if
reason and nature can give no evidence of God, that
to him is a strong reason for believing that no God
exists.
It has often been remarked that it is those systems
which most decry metaphysics which generally are
at bottom the most metaphysical. The Ritschlian
school, with its denial of the right of metaphysics
to have any say in theology, is a signal instance of
this. To gain a footing for their position as non-meta-
physicians in theology, the Ritschlians have been
compelled to do the very thing they deprecate-commit

THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
21
themselves to a particular speculative theory. Ritschli-
anism has a metaphysic, and a specially dangerous one,
for its aim is to cut at the roots of theoretic certainty,
and to leave us, in the sphere of religion, dependent on
practical motives alone. So far, besides, from keeping
their theology independent of their metaphysics,
Ritschl expressly lays down that the right construction
theology depends on the theory of knowledge with
ich we start.¹ His aim, no doubt, is like Kant's,
establish a theory of knowledge which will leave
ligion free from theoretic control. The awkward
matter is that in their theories of knowledge the
itschlians are neither at one with their master, nor
ith one another. Herrmann, e.g., rejects the peculi-
rities of Ritschl's theory of knowledge, and is nearly
a pure Kantian. Kaftan, again, renounces Kant, and
goes back to a basis of empiricism. It follows from
this difference in the theoretical basis, that while
agreeing in the point from which they set out—the
positive revelation of God in Christ-the Ritschlian
theologians go widely asunder whenever they begin
to construct a theology in detail. It becomes evident,
in short, that what really governs much of their con-
struction is not the objective revelation, but their
particular theories of religion, and the views they
hold of what is necessary for the realisation of man's
1 Thus in his Theologie und Metaphysik, he says, "Each theo-
logian is under necessity or obligation as a scientific man to
proceed according to a definite theory of knowledge, of which he
must be conscious himself, and the legitimacy of which he must
prove," p. 48. Cf. Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, iii., p. 16.

22
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
practical ends.¹
Herrmann's system, e.g., wears quite
a different complexion in detail from Ritschl's; Kaftan
differs in fundamental respects from both; while
Bender, of Bonn, another disciple of the school, has
gone off in the direction of pure subjectivism, hot
without some justification, it must be owned, in the
fundamental premises of the school. This moving off
of prominent members of the party on different ad
irreconcilable lines is justly regarded by its opponer
as already indicating a tendency to dissipation a
disintegration. Its real cause, I believe, lies just i
that absence of hold upon objective truth which
springs from the divorce of faith and theoretic know
ledge. There are signs that this weakness in th
original position of the party is making itself felt
insomuch that leading writers, as Kaftan and Reischle,
are now taking up much more positive ground on the
relation of faith and knowledge than is to be found in
Ritschl.2 Indeed, along the whole line indications are
not wanting that under the stress of controversy the
1 It would take us beyond the bounds of this paper to enter
into these theories of religion, in all of which God is simply a
postulate demanded by man's nature for the attainment of certain
practical ends. What these ends are is determined by the par-
ticular theory of religion (Herrmann and Kaftan, e.g., widely
differing from each other on the subject); and while the postu-
lates of the theory are supposed to be confirmed by the objective
revelation, the test of the truth of the revelation again is its
agreement with these postulates. Thus we move in a circle from
which the Ritschlian theology cannot free us.
2 Kaftan, of all members of the school, has given most attention
to the positive relations of faith and knowledge. His views
involve some important modifications of those of Ritschl and

THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
23
school is beginning to modify some of its extreme
positions, and the result will probably be, as happened
with the followers of Schleiermacher, the movement of
a section of the party nearer to confessional orthodoxy,
while some, emphasising the negative tendency, will
go further away.
What, then, it may now be asked, since their theo-
logical systems are thus divergent, holds these writers
together, and still leads to their being spoken of as one
party? In answer to this I would say that, in addition
to the general affiliation to Ritschl, there are certain
common aims and outstanding points of agreement
which on the whole form a bond of union among
them.
1. There is first that which I have already em-
phasised the strong contrast they all draw between
religious and theoretic knowledge.
2. There is the insistence on the positive revelation
in Christ as the source of all true religious knowledge
and life—that which alone can ground a right and
satisfying relation to God.
3. Next—and this is a most important point-there
is the central position which they all give to Christ's
great conception of the kingdom of God. This is one
of the principal merits of Ritschl-the new prominence
he has given to this thought of the kingdom of God as a
central idea in theology. It is with him the key to
Herrmann. He proposes also to discard the term "worth-
judgments" as ambiguous and liable to misconstruction.
below, p. 60.]
[Cf.
4

24
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
the understanding of the whole Gospel revelation. All
special doctrines are to be studied in the light of it.
In God's purpose to found such a kingdom lies, from
the Christian point of view, the explanation of
creation and of the whole government of the world.
Ritschl's conception of the kingdom, it is true, is some-
what bald and formal-too much after the Kantian
model. It is simply that of the ideal moral society—
an organisation of humanity, as he explains it, in which
all the members act from the motive of love. To bring
in and establish this kingdom was the great end of
Christ's appearance in our world, and of His life and
death of love. God's end was His end, and it is in this
perfect identity of mind and will with God-this-
solidarity" with God in His supreme aim in the
creation and government of the world-that Ritschl
finds above all the meaning of the predicate "Godhead'
as applied to Christ. I shall refer to this again
immediately. It is only now to be observed that
while Ritschl's followers agree with him in the ruling
place they allow to this conception, they do not always
adhere to his special way of presenting the nature of
the kingdom. Kaftan, in particular, shows a remark-
able divergence; for while, with Ritschl, the kingdom
of God is an ideal of moral fellowship to be realised on
earth, in Kaftan's conception it is precisely on earth
that it cannot be realised, and he throws it accordingly
into the Jenseits-the Beyond.¹
cr
""
4. A fourth point of general relation in Ritschlian
1 Cf, Das Wesen d, christ Rel., pp. 211-215,
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
25
1
systems of the original type is the rigorous exclusion
from theology of everything transcendental—i.e., which
lies outside the range of positive experience. This
peculiarity necessarily results from the separation of
religious and theoretic truth, and the consequent
restriction of religious knowledge to so-called value-
judgments. The Ritschlian system is perhaps best
described as one of religious positivism. It starts with
data of experience—the immediate impression made on
us by Christ, and the experimental knowledge we
have of His power to give us spiritual deliverance
and moral freedom. This we can be sure of, because it
lies within our consciousness. But beyond the veri-
fiable in experience, Ritschlianism will not go. In the
doctrine of God, e.g., it will admit no speculation or in-
ference as to His absolute nature, His immanent modes
of being, or even His attributes, beyond what is directly
apprehensible in His gracious manifestation in Christ.
In Christology, again, it will not allow us to go beyond
what we actually find in history. The pre-existence
of Christ is cut off at one end; His exaltation and
heavenly reign at the other. Where Christ is now,
or what He is doing, are matters beyond our ken.
Enough that He has lived and died, and that His
image abides with us to give us the assurance of
forgiveness of sins, and teach us confidence in the
fatherly love of God. Here most of all, I cannot but
think, the nakedness of the Ritschlian theology reveals.
itself. Here most of all it displays its inability to
maintain itself as a truly Christian theology. Nothing
26
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
could be more unsatisfactory than Ritschl's Christology.
He grants the "Godhead" of Christ, but the term,
when analysed, is only a title of honour. Nothing
metaphysical is to be imported into it. The attribu-
tion of divinity to Christ is only a value-judgment;
that is, it states not what Christ is in Himself, but
only the value He has to the believer as the Revealer
of God to him. The view of Christ's atoning work
which follows from this conception does not get
beyond the removal of the subjective obstacles (ignor-
ance, distrust, sense of guilt, fear of God) which hinder
the sinner's approach to God. Righteousness as an
attribute in God demanding the punishment of sin
Ritschl denies altogether. God, in the Gospel con-
ception of Him, is purely and solely love.
Sin as
we know it is the offspring of ignorance and weakness,
and needs only to be repented of to be forgiven.
Christ's death is the supreme test of His fidelity in His
calling, and proof of His lordship (Herrschaft) over
the world. In this way it guarantees to us the
reality of that religious relation to God into the fellow-
ship of which Christ invites us in His Gospel. Thus,
far Ritschl; but on these points also-especially on the
Christology-his followers are feeling the need of some
modification, and have already made several significant
concessions. It is increasingly realised that we cannot
stand thus simply dumb before the revelation which it
is acknowledged we have in Christ, and refuse to ask
who this wonderful Person is that bears the revelation,
and whose personal character and relation to the
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
27
kingdom of God is so absolutely unique. We cannot
rest content with simply formulating the value of
Christ to us; we must ask what He is in Himself.
There is a self-testimony of Christ to be reckoned with,
and the greater the stress we lay on the historicity
of the revelation, it is the more imperative that this
testimony should not be ignored. The mind will not
stay in the vagueness of expressions about Christ's "God-
head" to which the suspicion constantly attaches that
they are mere metaphors. Thus in spite of their
wishes the Ritschlians are forced to declare themselves
a little further, and it is significant that, so far as their
explanations go, they are in the direction of the neces-
sity of recognising that metaphysical background in
Christ's person against which at first protest was
entered. In a remarkable passage in the Verkehr,
e.g., Herrmann expressly states that, in his opinion,
if any one wishes to follow out this question of the
union of Divine and human natures in Christ," the
Christological decisions of the old Church still always
mark out the limits within which such attempts
must move. Kaftan goes yet further in restoring to
its place of honour in theology the idea of the exalted
and glorified Christ. Thus a process of change has
begun which cannot stop without considerable further
developments.
"' 1
5. Another feature characteristic of the original
Ritschlianism is its antagonism to every form of
1 P. 46 (First Edition). A similar passage will be found in
Die Religion, etc., pp. 438-9.
28
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
mysticism. I have spoken of its opposition to philo-
sophy. Not less pronounced is the opposition of
Ritschl and some of his followers to mysticism, or the
doctrine of any inner immediate influence of God upon
the soul, resulting in direct or immediate communion
with Him. It will probably scarcely be credited that
such a doctrine should be questioned by responsible
theologians, so accustomed are we to think of direct
spiritual communion as of the very essence of religious
experience. Yet there is no mistake about the matter.
Ritschl has expressed himself with unmistakable dis-
tinctness on the subject¹; and Herrmann has written
a treatise on the Verkehr, or intercourse of the Christian
with God, with a view to make clear this very point.
The object of this latter book-one of the best for
getting a good idea of the system on this side-is
directly to combat this idea of any mystical communion
between God and the individual soul. The one way,
according to Herrmann, in which God has entered into
converse with men is in the historical manifestation of
His Son, Jesus Christ. There, in history, you will meet
God; will hear Him speak to you; may learn to trust
His love and grace; may be strengthened by Him to
overcome the world. But of any coming of God to
your soul now-of any spiritual communion with Him
otherwise than through these objective historical trans-
actions of 1900 years ago-it is not allowable to speak,
Direct access of God to your soul is precluded, at least-
1 Cf., e.g., Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, iii., 20, 21; and the
Geschichte des Pietismus, passim.
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
29
in any conscious or recognisable way. What people
take to be such is illusion and phantasy. One wonders,
then, how revelation ever begun; how, in the case of
Christ Himself, converse with God was maintained.
For He had no earlier Christ to fall back upon to mediate
communion with the Father. And what of the Old
Testament revelation, or the inspiration of the prophets?
This is historical positivism carried to an extreme which
threatens the very existence of religion.
These outlines, brief as they are, will suffice, perhaps,
to show that while the enthusiasm which Ritschlianism
on its first appearance has awakened is explicable, and
in a measure justified, there is considerable force in
many of the strictures of its opponents; and that, when
the glow of ethical fervour with which it is set forth is
stripped off, it is a singularly meagre and inadequate
type of Christianity that remains. I do not think that
as a system it will admit to be brought to the test of
Scripture—or, if the apostolic writings are set aside as
non-authoritative, of Christ's own teachings and claims.
I cannot accept its non-mystical view of religion; I
cannot accept its divorce of faith and reason; I cannot
accept its restriction of religious truths to value-
judgments; I cannot accept its agnostic denial of the
right of natural theology; I cannot accept Ritschl's
practically humanitarian Christology; I cannot accept
its denial of hereditary or original sin-for this is
another tenet of the Ritschlian faith; I cannot accept
its view of the divine righteousness, which with Ritschl
is only another name for God's consistency in carrying
30
THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY
out His ends, and does not denote anything judicial; I
cannot accept as adequate its doctrine of reconciliation;
I cannot accept its ignoring of Christ's heavenly reign,
and living action by His Spirit in the souls of men.
The elements of value which I recognise in it are its
fresh, full insistence on the self-evidencing nature and
exhaustless spiritual potency of the revelation of God.
in Christ; its recognition of the uniqueness of Christ
as the One in whose Person and work God's purpose has
come fully to light, and through whom it has obtained
historical realisation; the prominence it gives to the
great Gospel idea of the kingdom of God; and, together
with these merits, the protest it maintains against a
one-sided intellectualism, and its constant reversion to
the fact of a positive revelation. It may be granted to
Ritschlianism that while theology and metaphysics
cannot be so entirely kept apart as it thinks, there is
need and room for a theology built up from purely
Christian foundations, which shall give as adequate an
expression as possible to the simple facts and truths
of the Christian revelation set forth in their order and
connections; and so far as Ritschlianism has helped
by its protests to purge theology of scholastic and
metaphysical conceptions really foreign to its essence,
it deserves our cordial thanks.¹
1 [With the remarks on Herrmann in this Essay may be com-
pared a review by the writer of the Second Edition of the Verkehr
in the Critical Review; vol. iii., 1903.]
1
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
II
ALBRECHT RITSCHL¹
Ir has been given to few men in our generation to
exercise so wide and decisive an influence on theological
thought as that more recently exerted by the subject
of our present sketch-Albrecht Ritschl. Ritschl's
independent activity, indeed, began as early as the
middle of the century, but it is only within the last
twenty years or thereabouts that the breadth and force
of the movement proceeding from him have become
fully apparent. Now it is seen that a quiet power was
going forth all the while from that Göttingen class-
room, which was leaving its life-impress upon a whole.
generation of younger theologians, and sending its
pulses through unobserved channels into the thought
and literature of other lands. Ritschlianism, at any-
rate, is a phenomenon which no one can any longer
afford to ignore, and it is natural that an increasing
interest should be manifested in the personality and
teaching of the distinguished founder of the school.
Ritschl was born in 1822, and died as Professor
1 Expository Times, September 1894.
33
C
34
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
at Göttingen in 1889. His father held the position
of General Superintendent of Pomerania. The bent
of the young student's mind from the first was
towards theology, and we find him successively at
Bonn, Halle, Heidelberg, and Tübingen, sitting at
the feet of the teachers of highest repute in these
various seats of learning. Two things strike us par-
ticularly in this part of Ritschl's career, when his
ideas were yet unformed, and he was simply groping
in search of a system. One is the remarkable
receptivity of his mind-his impressibility by the
various influences which were brought to bear on him.
As one of his critics has said, he traversed all the
crises of the religious thought of his epoch. At Bonn
he came under the powerful spell of Nitzsch, and even
for a time venerated Hengstenberg. He was won to
Hegelianism at Halle by Erdmann. He was on
friendly terms with Tholuck and Julius Müller, though
he afterwards spoke of them in highly disparaging
terms. He sat for six months at the feet of the
speculative Rothe. Thereafter we find him an enthusi-
astic and convinced disciple of Baur at Tübingen. At
a later period we find him deserting Baur for Kant
and Lotze. He thus, as above remarked, in his own
spirit passed through all the phases of the theological
thought of his time. It was this in no small measure
which gave him his peculiar influence. He touched the
thought of his age from within, mirrored its dissatisfac-
tions, showed that he had correctly diagnosed its wants,
and from the very weaknesses of the systems which
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
35
!
1
he rejected, gained wisdom for the construction of his
own. The second thing we notice about Ritschl at this
period is the assertion in the midst of these constant
changes of standpoint of this apparent subjection to
external influences, which of itself might be interpreted
to mean weakness-of a strong and independent person-
ality. It was Ritschl's way of apprehending ideas, if
we may so express it, not so much to argue or reason
about them, as first to take them into his own spirit
in the full strength of their original impression, then
to test them by what he found to be their value for
his personal wants. He applied to them, in other
words, the method afterwards so characteristically
described by him as that of "value-judging." The
practical instinct guided him all through. Each step
in his theological advance was really a new stage of
self-assertion—a fresh verdict passed on what was
needed for his full satisfaction. Even when nomi-
nally a Hegelian, the core of his thinking was ethical;
and he tells us that it was his practical good sense
which kept him from adopting the dialectic construc-
tions of Rothe. The truth is, Ritschl never had, in
the proper sense of the word, any strong dialectical
interest. The dialectic of systems interests him from
the historical point of view, but his own attitude is
always external and critical; and the excursions he
sometimes takes into the regions of philosophy are the
weakest parts of his work. It is precisely on this
account that later on he may have settled down into a
modified Kantianism; for to a thinker of Ritschl's
36
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
stamp it is a positive relief to find a philosophy which
demolishes once for all the pretensions of reason to
have any knowledge on the subjects of religion.
We may say, therefore, that Ritschl was a Kantian
in principle long before he was one in practice. His
abiding bent was towards the ethical, but along with
this, and subservient to it, were two other tendencies,
which likewise gave a character to his work, and
essentially contributed to its success. The first was a
conspicuous talent for history and criticism. It was
this which first powerfully attracted him to the school
of Baur, then, at a later period, led him as decisively
to separate himself from it. The second was the
impulse to dogmatic construction. It is necessary
to emphasise this, for the popular impression of Ritschl,
derived from his attacks on the ordinary school theology,
aided, perhaps, by an element of haze in his own style,
is that he was the enemy of definite and articulated
thought in religion. This is far from being the case.
It is among the recurring complaints which he makes
of his earliest teachers that he found them lacking in
this faculty of system. Tholuck and Julius Müller as
systematic theologians he found "confused." There
can be no doubt that the systematic interest dominates
Ritschl's thinking throughout, and only grew more
powerful as time advanced. It is indeed to the fact
that from his own new standpoint he was able to
crystallise his thoughts into a comprehensive and well-
compacted system-a system very different, no doubt,
in idea and development from those which it sought
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
37
to displace, but an articulated dogmatic view none the
less-that we trace no small part of its power over the
minds of his disciples, and, more generally, its attrac-
tion for those—and they are always the majority—who
desire to see truth presented in a connected and
organised form.
Ritschl's first important work, however—that which
fairly established his reputation-lay not in the region
of dogmatic thought, but in that of Church history.
The impulse he had received from Baur naturally led
him to the study of early Christianity, and particularly
directed his attention to the problem of the develop-
ment of the old Catholic Church. In 1850, accord-
ingly, when he was yet but twenty-eight years of age,
appeared the first edition of his book on The Origin of
the Old Catholic Church, a work already showing in-
dependent tendencies, but mainly dominated by the
ideas of his master. A reaction, however, had begun,
which ere long was to separate him entirely from
Hegelianism, and from the historical theories of the
school of Tübingen. In 1855 he broke formally with
Baur, as he had previously done with all his earlier
teachers. In 1857 his work on the Origins appeared
in a second and entirely rewritten and recast form-
that which it has subsequently retained, and in which
it has had an effect on the study of early Church
history little short of epoch-making. It would be im-
practicable here to give even the briefest sketch of the
positions of this remarkable book-positions which, as
Harnack truly says, have in substance "found accept-
38
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
ance, if not with all, yet with the majority, of in-
dependent critics." 1 It may suffice to say that a main
point in it is the rejection of Baur's thesis that the
old Catholic Church was the product of a fusion or
reconciliation of Petrine and Pauline parties in the
sub-apostolic age, and the development of the counter-
idea that Gentile Christianity is not offhand to be
identified with Paulinism, but was rather the result of
a failure to apprehend Paul's profoundly evangelical
ideas, and of the intrusion of the conception of Christi-
anity as a "new law," which conception had for its
counterpart the legalising of the outward framework
and institutions of the Church, and the growth of the
hierarchy and of sacerdotalism. On none of his writ-
ings, probably, did Ritschl bestow so much pains in
respect of style and clearness and precision of thought
and expression as on this, which exhibits, accordingly,
a special excellence in these qualities.
In 1852 Ritschl had been appointed "Professor
Extraordinarius" at Bonn, where for some years he
had been lecturing as Privatdocent. He was now in
1859 appointed "ordinary" professor in the same uni-
versity. Here he began those dogmatic labours which
have since made his name famous. His dissatisfaction
with existing systems led him to plan a reconstruction
of theology on entirely independent lines. From
scholastic and speculative theories he felt the need of
moving back directly on the historical Personality and
revelation of Jesus Christ. His attention was specially
1 Contemporary Review, August 1886, p. 234.
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
39
directed to a right comprehension of the great doctrine
of reconciliation-one of the foci, as he conceived it, of
the Christian system, the other being the idea of the
kingdom of God. In 1864 came his call to succeed
Dorner at Göttingen. This transference was important
to him in many ways, but not least in that it threw
him in contact with Lotze, to whom he professes his
obligations for furnishing him with a satisfying theory
of knowledge. There are, he says, in the history of
European philosophy, three doctrines of knowledge.
The first is that of Plato. The second is that of Kant.
The third is that of Lotze. This he accepts.¹ Ritschl
attaches the very greatest importance to his theory of
knowledge, which he maintains lies at the basis of his
whole theology-a strange position for one who so
consistently depreciates the intrusion of metaphysics
into theology-but it is exceedingly doubtful whether
he is entitled to speak of himself as in accord with
Lotze. His view, as his critics have pointed out, is
much more a slightly modified Kantianism. With both
Kant and Lotze he held that we know the world of
reality only through its effects upon ourselves-through
the phenomena it produces in us. But whereas Lotze
believed that by reasoning, if not through direct ex-
perience, we could arrive at conclusions as to the
nature of reality beyond us, Ritschl, like Kant, treats
the causes of our impressions as incognisable, and
declares himself concerned only with their relations to
ourselves. This theory, at any rate, seems to have
1 Rechtf. u. Vers., p. 20 (Third Edition).
40
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
!
furnished him with what he needed as a basis for the
complete construction of his system, which soon there-
after was expounded historically, exegetically, and
dogmatically, in the three volumes of his principal
work-his magnum opus-on The Christian Doctrine
of Justification and Reconciliation (1871-4). Later
editions, with considerable changes, appeared in 1882-3,
and in 1888-9. The range of this work, at once critical
of other theories, expository of the author's own ideas,
and under the head of "presuppositions" embracing a
full treatment of the doctrines of God, of Sin, and of
the Person and work of Christ, makes it the authori-
tative text-book on all that pertains to Ritschl's
theology. Of Ritschl's other works it may be sufficient
to mention his lengthy History of Pietism-likewise in
three volumes (1880-6).
What now are the leading thoughts of a system
which, in a comparatively short space of time, has
so powerfully impressed a large number of talented
and earnest minds, and occasioned what may be
described as a new departure in theology? It is
difficult in a few sentences to state them, while, of
course, in a brief notice of this kind, anything like
an adequate exposition cannot be attempted. To
some extent it may be said that Ritschlianism is
an inspiration rather than a system. Few of Ritschl's
followers have adhered strictly to his standpoint, or
slavishly committed themselves to the concatenation
of his thoughts. The note of the school is rather its
independence, leading sometimes to tolerably wide
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
41
divergences. Still there are common marks of the
party, pivots, as it were, round which the thinking of
master and disciples alike revolves, and some of these
we may briefly indicate. We must distinguish between
the formal character and the positive content of the
Ritschlian theology. In a general respect the great
watchword of the school is that indicated in the phrase
theology without metaphysics; in a positive regard,
the principle from which it professes to derive the
whole organism of Christian truth is the historical
Person and revelation of Jesus Christ as the Founder of
the kingdom of God. The bane of previous theology, in
the view of the Ritschlians, has been its adulteration
with the presuppositions and ideas of a foreign philo-
sophy. At an early stage theology succumbed in this
way to the influence of Greek thought-mainly
Platonic; the Middle Ages were dominated by Aris-
totelianism; the Reformation only partially shook off
the bondage, and ere long lost itself in a new scholasti-
cism;
later times have seen the reigns of Wolffianism,
of Rationalism, of Kantianism, of Hegelianism, etc.
It is a primary aim of Ritschlianism to free theology
from this dependence on foreign influences; to vindicate
its right and ability to develop itself purely from its
own principle—the historical revelation in Christ; and,
above all, to assert the truth that in Christianity it is
not the theoretical but the practical, not the intellectual
but the ethical, which has the primacy, and that a pure
theology can only be constructed from a practical
standpoint. All this is healthy enough in its way; it
42
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
is the development given by the Ritschlians to these
essentially sound principles which exposes them to so
much well-grounded criticism. The argument is valid
against the infection of Christianity with the ideas and
methods of a foreign philosophy; but it may still be
contended that in the discussion of its own problems
Christianity cannot avoid coming in contact with
questions which are in their nature philosophical, and
to which-unless it is to abdicate thought-it must
take up some attitude, and attempt some solution.
This need not be done by incorporating alien philo-
sophies, but rather by seeking the development of a
Christian philosophy-one in harmony with Christian
postulates and principles. All this, however, the
Ritschlians would taboo. To justify their declina-
ture, they extend their opposition to philosophy to
the whole sphere of "theoretic" thought, and will
have it that theology has nothing to do with theoretic
thought at all. How then, we ask in some surprise,
can we get any theology? For theology surely has to
do with propositions, with the assertion of truths, with
their concatenation into a system. Ritschl answers
this by drawing a broad distinction between "theoretic "
and what he calls "religious" knowledge, a species of
knowledge which depends solely on practical judgments,
and the truth or falsehood of which is to be tested by
practical standards alone. In religion, according to
his favourite expression, we have to do only with
"judgments of value" (Werthurtheile), that is, not
with the objective or scientific aspects of truth, but
دو
A
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
43
solely with their relation to our practical ends-the
ends in this case being those of religion, namely (in
Ritschl's view), the attainment, by the help of superior
powers, of freedom from the hindrances or limitations
of the natural life. Because this, in point of fact, is
presumed to be attained in Christ's revelation of for-
giveness and doctrine of the kingdom of God, Christi-
anity is certified as true, independently of any other
evidences. But here again the difficulty arises as to
the possibility of keeping apart these practical judg-
ments from all contact with theoretic considerations.
If the truth of a judgment is affirmed, however it may
originally have been obtained, it seems idle to say that
it can be withdrawn from theoretic criticism. We
cannot have two kinds of truth with no sort of rela-
tion to each other. The mind cannot be divided into
compartments, with its theoretic knowledge on one
side, and its religious knowledge hermetically sealed
off from contact with the theoretic on the other. The
two must be brought into relation, into comparison,
into such unity as is practicable. The question,
indeed, cannot help forcing itself upon us whether
Ritschl's "judgments of value" ever rise higher than
merely subjective representations, with the objective
or scientific truth of which, in the strict sense, religion
has nothing to do.¹ This, at anyrate, is his position,
that theology must content itself with the tabulation
and formulation in systematic connection of purely
religious judgments, and must not attempt to impose
1 This, of course, is far from Ritschl's meaning. Cf. above, p. 19.
4
44
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
on them any theoretic character. Here, if anywhere,
is the "Achilles' heel" of the Ritschlian system-the
point at which it is most vulnerable to hostile attack.
There are many subordinate questions relating to the
same subject, as, e.g., whether Ritschl is not liable to
the reproach of doing the very thing which he condemns,
in bringing Christianity into dependence on a par-
ticular metaphysical theory; whether his Christianity
is a pure transcription of the primitive or apostolic
gospel, or is not really as far removed from that in its
essential ideas and presuppositions as any of the theo-
logies of the schools; whether he does accept in integro
Christ's revelation, or only so much of it as fits in
with his a priori theory of religion, etc. These are
wide topics on which we cannot enter further.
We
can only attempt to show what his views are on some
leading points in Christianity.
We have said that the positive principle in Ritschl's
system is the historical Person and revelation of Jesus.
Christ. Here again, unquestionably, Ritschl strikes
a true note. It was time the mind of the Church was
recalled from abstruse theologies and scholastic refine-
ments of doctrine to the fresh, living impression of Him
whose life and work are the foundation of her whole
structure. Largely to Ritschl is due the now wide-
spread reversion to the idea of "the historic Christ" in
theology. Ritschl himself, as we have seen, approached
the subject on the side of a prolonged and exhaustive
study of the doctrine of reconciliation. This led to his
giving this doctrine a coördinate place with that of the
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
45
kingdom of God in his mode of exhibiting the Christian
system. Christianity, he says, may be compared to an
ellipse, with these doctrines as its two foci. In reality,
however, the tendency of his teaching was to make the
kingdom of God the all-embracing notion within which
every other doctrine-that of reconciliation included-
held its articulated place; and this has been the line
adopted, I think without exception, by his followers.
Here, also, in the prevalence which this notion has
obtained in current theology, we trace another result of
the influence of Ritschl. It is this notion of the
kingdom of God, viewed as at once the highest (moral
and spiritual) good for man, and the aim of his practi-
cal endeavours, which in the Ritschlian systems is
made the standard for the determination of every other
doctrine in theology-for example, of God, of the
Person of Christ, of sin, of redemption. Yet, perhaps
not quite logically, this notion is sought in turn to be
derived from the historical manifestation of Christ, and
the revelation of God as Father and as Love given us
in Him. All metaphysical considerations are here to
be excluded. The Christian idea of God has nothing to
do with the God of natural theology. God is solely
and entirely for our faith "the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ." The character of this Being is
pure love. His world-purpose (that for which, there-
fore, the world in the religious view is held to be
created) is the founding of the kingdom of God. It
must be noted, however, that this kingdom but exists
for the realisation of the end-practically Kantian—
46
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
independently posited in the Ritschlian theory of
religion. The same conception determines for us the
place and worth of Jesus Christ in His own religion.
Jesus is one with God in His complete identification.
of will with the Father's purpose of founding a king-
dom of God, and in His entire surrender of Himself to
this as His life-task. He is likewise perfectly equipped
for this task; realises in His own Person the true
religious relation of man to God; is in this respect the
archetype and exemplar of man in His normal relation
to God in His kingdom, as well as the Founder of the
latter; finally, in so far as men are sinners, kept back
from God by the sense of their guilt, Christ perfectly
reveals the grace and truth of God, and His free
forgiveness of sins. How Christ should arrive at this
knowledge of God, should possess these extraordinary
endowments, should stand in this unique relation to
God and to His purpose,-in short, should be the
Person that He is, and should stand in the relation to
God and man that He does-is a mystery into which
we are not permitted to pry. To raise questions of
this kind would be to enter the prohibited region of
"metaphysics." The fact must suffice us that it is
so.
We must not even attempt to ask too precisely
what is meant by "revelation" in this connection.
These questions are better left in convenient vagueness.
While, accordingly, Ritschl continues to speak of the
"Godhead" of Christ, we are warned against putting
on this phrase any "metaphysical" interpretation.
The term is to be understood in consonance with the
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
47
general principles of the school as an expression for the
religious value which Christ has to the Church as the
revealer and representative of God. But the question
still presses-Can we stop here? Will Christ's own
utterances and claims, His present lordship over His
Church, the words and functions ascribed to Him,
permit us to stop here? Or dare we apply this term
"Godhead" in any metaphorical sense to one who essen-
tially is not God? Part of this difficulty Ritschl
avoids by declining to occupy himself with any but
the historical and earthly aspects of Christ's life.
Whether Christ ever rose from the dead is left a moot
question in Ritschlian circles, while the whole range of
scriptural doctrine regarding His heavenly reign, and
His return for the work of resurrection and judgment,
is put aside as non-esssential. But is this to take
pure apostolic Christianity, and preserve it in its
simplicity from unauthorised corruption, or is it not
rather to exercise a criticism on Christianity determined
by Ritschl's peculiar philosophical presuppositions? It
is as possible in the interests of a priori theory to
mutilate Christianity by subtraction, as it is for
philosophy to vitiate its essence by addition.
Intimately connected with the doctrine of Christ's
Person and work is the Ritschlian view of sin, and of
God's relation to it. Since God, in Ritschl's concep-
tion, is purely love, it follows that there is nothing
properly judicial or retributive in His dealings with
the world. Wrath, at most, has solely an eschato-
logical significance, and then only in a hypothetical
48
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
case. Original sin Ritschl denies. Actual sin is due
so largely to ignorance that is a proper subject of
pardon. A feeling of guilt haunts the sinner, and
separates him from God. But the revelation of God's
grace in Christ dispels these fears, and enables the
sinner with confidence to return to the Father. Christ's
death, which, in respect of Christ Himself, is the
supreme trial of His fidelity in His life-calling, is at
the same time that which specially inspires the sinner
with trust in the reality of God's gracious disposition
towards him. For it assures him that Christ's view of
the character of God was a true one. The outcome of
Ritschl's study of the doctrine of atonement, therefore,
is that no atonement, in the old sense of the word,
is needed. But there is subjective reconciliation,
mediated by Christ's life and death, and this is the
kernel of the apostolic doctrine. We do not wait to
criticise these notions, which seem to us to involve as
great a transformation of original Christian doctrine as
any which can be blamed on the orthodox theology.
There is a peculiar side of Ritschl's teaching here on
the mediation of all these blessings to us through the
Church, which (not the individual) is the direct object
of the divine justification, but it is far from clear how
this is to be worked up into the general structure of
the system. Probably Ritschl's idea is that the con-
sciousness of this new standing with God through Christ
belongs first to the community, and is enjoyed by the
individual only as he knows himself to be part of the
body.
ALBRECHT RITSCHL
49
The only other point in the teaching of Ritschl to
which we can here advert is his pronounced anti-mysti-
cism. Ritschl will hear nothing of direct spiritual
communion of the soul with God. Pietism in all its
The one way of
forms is an abomination to him.
communion with God is through His historical mani-
festation in Jesus Christ, and experiences due to a
supposed immediate action of the Spirit in the soul
can only be regarded as illusion. This is the side of
Ritschl's teaching which has been specially taken up
and developed by his disciple Herrmann. It will be
difficult, we fancy, to persuade most people that this is
a nearer approach to the primitive type of Christianity
than is found in the ordinary theology.
D
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
III
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL¹
In a preceding paper on " Albrecht Ritschl" an attempt
was made to give some account and estimate of
Ritschl himself and his theology. Whatever judg-
ment we may form of the man and his system, the
fact is undoubted, as there pointed out, that Ritschl's
teaching has had a most powerful effect on multitudes
of minds in Germany and other countries, and has
given birth to what, by general consent, is recognised
as the most influential theological movement of recent
times. It touches all spheres and sides of theology,
and gives a character to the thinking of many who are
not formally ranked as Ritschl's disciples. This of
itself is evidence of the forcefulness of the original
impulse, while it enables us to estimate better than
we can do even from the study of Ritschl himself the
innermost meaning and permanent worth of his system.
For it is a truism to say that the real spirit of any
movement, and the elements of permanent worth
1 Expository Times, March 1895.
54
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
which belong to it as well as the weaknesses and
inconsistencies which inhere in it-only become fully
manifest in its historical development. In this sense,
the study of the school of Ritschl is on a larger scale
the study of Ritschl himself.
When we speak of Ritschl as the founder of a
school, we mean more than merely that he has
exercised a freshening influence on the theology of
his time, or even that he is a noteworthy theological
thinker and writer. There have been many leaders
of thought in theology-Rothe, for example-who yet
have not been founders of schools. We use this title
to describe one-Schleiermacher, for instance-whose
thinking has something principial or germinal in it;
who looks at theology from a distinctive and original
standpoint; who determines its aims and methods
along new lines; and the principle of whose teaching
proves its fertility by the abundance and variety of
its developments and applications in the different
spheres of theology. Applying this test to Ritschl,
we cannot deny him the right to be regarded as
the creator of a school. Widely divergent in the
details of their systems as many of his followers
are,-strongly as some of them, while acknowledg-
ing their obligations to Ritschl, desire to assert their
independence,¹-they are yet fitly grouped together
as sharing in a common impulse, and united by certain
fundamental resemblances alike to their master and
to one another. Among these generic features which
1 Kaftan, e.g., in his Das Wesen, etc. Preface.
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
55
......
bind together the Ritschlian party are those with
which the study of Ritschl has already made us
familiar, viz., the strong contrast they all draw between
religious and theoretic knowledge; the desire to free
theology from all association with, and dependence on,
metaphysics; the insisting on the positive revela-
tion in Christ as the one source of true religious
knowledge; the central position they all assign to
the doctrine of the kingdom of God, and their making
of this conception determinative of every other notion
in theology—e.g., of that of God, of sin, of the Person
of Christ, of redemption; the rigorous exclusion from
theology of everything which lies outside the earthly
manifestation of Christ (e.g., pre-existence, eschato-
logy); and finally, the distrust of, and antagonism
to, everything of the nature of mysticism in religion.
Partial exceptions must be made in the case of
individuals.
A greater difficulty arises when we attempt to
describe the circumference of this school. Certain
important names are generally recognised as repre-
senting it in theology, as Herrmann of Marburg,
Kaftan of Berlin, and (under Ritschlian protest)
Bender of Bonn; beyond these we have a class of
able writers, more or less representative of the ideas.
and tendencies of the school in different departments,
as Harnack in Church history, Wendt in New Testa-
ment theology, Schultz in Old Testament theology and
Christology; finally, we have a wider circle of talented
and enthusiastic disciples who have done good work
56
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
in the magazines of the school,¹ and in separate publica-
tions-men like Bornemann, Reischle, Gottschick
(editor of Zeitschrift), Schrempf (deposed on the
Apostolicum question), with many others. Reischle,
e.g., takes up the mediating rôle-writing on such
subjects as, "Can we know the deep things of God?"
"A word on the Controversy on Mysticism in Theology,"
and in an able article in the Studien und Kritiken
(1891), energetically combating Kaftan's empirical
theory of cognition. Bornemann, again, in his
Unterricht, has attempted a sketch of the theology
of the school in systematic form; he also writes the
pamphlet Bitter Truths, in reply to Egidy's Earnest
Thoughts (Ernsten Gedanken), etc. His Unterricht is
a curious example of the upside-down kind of treat-
ment to which the working out of Ritschlianism leads
in theology, beginning as it does, after some intro-
ductory matter, with the kingdom of God in its
perfection in glory; then treating of the world in its
opposition to this kingdom; then of the kingdom in
its present form; then of the Person and work of
Christ; then of the knowledge of God; finally, of the
Church, and Christian life and duties.
It is of more interest to us to observe how, within
this general framework of the Ritschlian party, there
has developed itself the most marked individuality in
the different members of the school, often leading to
entire divergence of view on the most essential points.
1 Chiefly the Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche and Die
Christliche Welt. Cf. above, p. 5,
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
57
This may be pointed to as evidence of the healthful
vitality of the movement, but it has its side of weak-
ness also, and leaves the impression of a lack of unity
and coherence in the Ritschlian theology, arising, it
may plausibly be held, from its subjectivism, or weak
hold on objective truth, and from the absence of a
controlling standard of belief. It would, indeed, be
possible, though not perhaps profitable, by playing off
the various writers of the school against each other,
to make out a far stronger case for the disintegration
of Ritschlianism, than they are able to establish, in
their favourite line of criticism, for the disintegration.
of Catholic dogma. Only to indicate what I mean
we have Herrmann definitely separating himself from
Ritschl in his theory of knowledge; we have Kaftan
decisively repudiating Herrmann, and declaring that
with his Kantianism he is back again on the old ground
which makes a philosophical view regulative for the
treatment of theology;¹ we have Reischle as vigorously
demolishing Kaftan's empiricism, and regarding it as
the surrender of the possibility of theology;2 we have
Bender thrown over by all parties, while Herrmann
retaliates on his own critic by describing Bender as
only a "secularised Kaftan ";3 we have another writer
of the school (Troeltsch), in a recent number of the
Zeitschrift, describing Kaftan's apologetic as sceptical
in its standpoint, and only avoiding the consequences
by falling back on revelation in Christ without either
2 Stud. und Krit., 1891.
3 Theol. Lit. Zeit., No. 4, 1886,
1 Das Wesen, p. 13.
58
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
making good the exclusively supernatural character of
this religion as against the claims to revelation of
other religions, or showing what supernatural in this
connection means.¹ Finally, Ziegler of Strassburg, an
independent critic, with much more justice, sees in
Bender's theory of religion simply the "unveiled
Feuerbachism of the Ritschlian theology." 2
Approaching the study of this school more seriously,
I shall endeavour to bring out as concisely as I can
the distinctive positions of some of its leading repre-
sentatives on the main topics under discussion in
their circles. This method of comparison will enable
us to see at once the measure of their agreement, and
the amount of their divergence, both from each other,
and from their common master Ritschl.
We begin naturally with that on which all the
members of the school lay great stress-the theory
of knowledge. The common points here are the
assertion of what Kaftan calls the primacy of the
practical over the theoretic reason; the denial of
the power of the theoretic reason to attain to any
knowledge of God, or of supersensible reality; and
the consequent drawing of a strong distinction
between religious and theoretic knowledge. But
within these limits, as already indicated, the widest
differences prevail. Herrmann is out and out a
Kantian in his view of the Practical Reason, and of
a priori moral law, though, in divergence from
an
1 Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 1893, p. 509.
2 Quoted by Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theol., p. 123,
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
59
Kant, and really in inner contradiction with him, he
places at the centre of all "the feeling of self” (Selbst-
gefühl), to the satisfaction of which both religion
and morality are related as means. Kaftan, on the
other hand, is as decidedly an empiricist as Herrmann
is an idealist-stands on the basis of Locke or Hume,
and rejects all a priori norms, whether on the theoretic
or the practical side. Bender's position I shall refer
to later. Yet Kaftan is distinguished from the other
members of his school by the earnestness of his
attempts to find a means of adjustment between faith
and theoretic knowledge which may avoid the appear-
ance of collision between them, and save his faith-
theology from the reproach of subjectivism. This is
the weakest point in the theology of Ritschl, that by
resolving religious knowledge wholly into “value-
judgments," and making a complete divorce between
religious and theoretic knowledge, he seems to throw
doubt on the objective truth of the former. Both in
his Wesen and his Wahrheit,¹ Kaftan deals with this
difficulty, and makes liberal concessions in the way
of conciliation. He goes so far as to grant the theoretic
character of the propositions of faith. "The fact
itself," he says, "of the theoretic character of the
propositions of faith lies clear before our eyes." He
argues strongly that there is only one truth, and that
all truth is from God; concedes that faith-propositions
2
1 [The reference is to Kaftan's Essence of the Christian Religion,
and Truth of the Christian Religion. The latter is translated.]
2 Das Wesen, p. 109 (First Edition).
60
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
have their theoretic side, and that "in the treatment
of the truth of the Christian religion, it is the theoretic
side of these which comes into consideration"; explains
that "truth" in this connection means simply what
it does in other cases, not subjective truth, but “objec-
tive"-" the agreement of the proposition with the
real state of the case," which is unaffected by our
thoughts and judgments upon it, etc.¹ In a more
recent article in the Zeitschrift, he even proposes to
abandon the expression "judgments of value
altogether, as liable to misapprehension.
"I have,"
he says, "in this attempt to describe the knowledge
of faith according to its kind and manner of origin,
avoided the expression Werthurtheile, though I have
earlier so characterised the propositions of faith. They
are theoretic judgments, which are grounded upon a
judgment of worth, which therefore cannot be appropri-
ated without entering into this judgment of worth
which lies at their foundation." 2 But this only
raises the new question-What is meant by a "theo-
retic judgment" which rests exclusively on a judgment
of worth?
The truth is, that while Kaftan, in the above expres-
sions, seems to be vindicating an objective character for
his propositions of faith, he never really gets-and
from his empirical basis cannot get beyond subjective
postulates and representations. What is more to our
purpose at the present stage-these views with which
1 Die Wahrheit, pp. 1-7.
2 Zeit. für T. u. K., 1891, p. 501,
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
61
•
he sets out, of the unity of truth, of the theoretic and
objective character of our faith-knowledge, are com-
pletely left behind in the subsequent discussions. There
we have the old dualism brought back in the most pro-
nounced form. In the analysis of knowledge in the
Wahrheit, e.g., we have a distinction drawn between
Opinion, Faith, and Knowledge. "An opinion," we are
told, "can be true, and religious faith is always regarded
as true, by him who adheres to it. But neither in the
one case nor in the other do we speak of such a thing
as knowledge. . . . Faith lies in quite a different
sphere from both knowledge and opinion.
In con-
tradistinction to faith and opinion, knowledge signifies
that we are convinced of the state of things in a
manner which admits of no doubt." 1 The drift of
this, confirmed by the context, is, that knowledge is
excluded from faith; and since theology consists only
of faith-propositions, it cannot give knowledge. The
amazing thing is that, after all, it is held by Kaftan
to be the direct function of faith to give us know-
ledge-nay, the highest knowledge-on the supreme
questions of existence; and it is claimed that it is the
sole source of knowledge on these questions. Christian
faith," we are told, "asserts that it is the true know-
ledge of the First Cause and of the final purpose of
all things,... it offers just what philosophy has sought
as the highest knowledge, or as the solution of the
enigma of the world. . . . The task is no other than
that of proving that the knowledge supplied by Christi-
1 Die Wahrheit, E. T., ii. p. 14.
<<
62
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
anity as to the First Cause and final purpose of all
things is true.”1 I think that any one who goes care-
fully through Kaftan's books will be compelled to come
to the conclusion that underneath an appearance of
great clearness and precision of style, there exists
about as confusing and incoherent a system of positive
thought as could well be presented. He will be struck
also by the fact that in neither of his works-while
speaking constantly of faith-does Kaftan ever give a
proper definition of faith, and such descriptions as he
does give have generally reference to it as a mode of
apprehension.
Connected with this theory of knowledge in the
school of Ritschl, considerable importance attaches to
the theory of religion of the members of the school. In
one negative respect the Ritschlians all agree, viz., in
denying to the soul any essential or immediate con-
scious relation to God. The first thing is not the
consciousness of dependence on God, or of relation to
Him, but some impulse or want of the individual life-
in Ritschl and Herrmann, the feeling of personality, and
the desire for freedom from the limitations of nature,
and for dominion over the world; in Kaftan, the wish.
for life, or blessedness. God is then postulated as the
means by which this end is to be brought about.
Here again Kaftan severs himself from the others, and
formulates a theory in keeping with his empirical basis.
Briefly stated, it is this: Man finds in himself a desire
for happiness, which with Kaftan is a synonym for
1 Die Wahrheit, E. T., i. pp. 4, 5.
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
63
"life."
But experience shows that this longing for
blessedness is not satisfied by anything in this world.
The good which satisfies it must therefore be a supra-
mundane, and furthermore an infinite, good. In this
infinity of "the claim upon life," inseparable from our
nature, and which the world is not able to satisfy, lies,
according to Kaftan, the root-motive of religion.
"Generally, the claim on life," he says, "lies at the
foundation of religion. That this claim is not satisfied
in the world, and further through the world, is the
common motive of all religions." 1 It would be a
pertinent criticism on this theory to ask, But whence
this claim on life? Why this striving after an infinite
and supramundane good? What view of man's
nature is implied in the possibility of such strivings?
And how far does the mere existence of such a wish or
claim guarantee the existence of an object or good
fitted to satisfy the claim? These are questions which
Kaftan does not answer, but which a true theory of
religion should answer.
We may see next how Kaftan connects this theory of
religion with Christianity, and with the proof of its
truth. It has been observed by Köstlin that Ritschl
himself never attempted any definite answer to the
question of apologetics-How do we know that in
Christianity we have the truth? Ritschl certainly
hints at the matter when he says in his large work,
Its representation in theology will, therefore, come to
a conclusion in the proof that the Christian ideal of
' Das Wesen, p. 67; cf. p. 60.
(C
64
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
life, and no other, satisfies the claims of the human
spirit to a knowledge of things generally." It is
along this line-the agreement of Christianity with
our postulates of what is necessary to the realisation
of the idea of the supreme good-that Kaftan seeks
the proof of the truth of Christianity. First, he
sketches the idea of the supreme good, as that is
deducible from the claim on life, and the facts of ex-
perience and history. History shows that the supreme
good must be a moral one; experience also demonstrates
that it must be a supramundane one. Its true, rational,
universally valid idea, in short, is that of just such a
kingdom of God as we have made known to us in
Christianity. This kingdom is therefore a postulate of
reason—if the supreme good is to be realised. It is a
further postulate of reason that it must be made known
to us in history by divine revelation. The Christian
revelation, as an historical fact, is then compared with
this preconstructed idea, and these assumed postulates,
and is found of course to agree with them. In this
agreement lies the proof of its truth. Only when we
speak of Christianity in this connection, we have to
remember that it is just so much of Christianity as it
suits the requirements of Kaftan's theory to admit. It
seems to follow that, rightly understood, what is called
faith in Christianity is much more faith in Kaftan's
peculiar hypothesis about religion. Christianity, that
is, does not come to us with any self-certifying power.
First, we have to reach this idea of the supreme good,
1 Recht, und Ver., iii. p. 25 (Third Edition, E. T., p. 25).
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
65
and of the kingdom of God as corresponding with it,
by what Kaftan himself calls the speculative method.
Then we prove Christianity to be true by its agreement
with this idea. I fear if the demonstration is made.
to hinge on the success of this attempt, it will be a
long time before the claims of Christianity meet with
general recognition. Here we observe a distinct
superiority in the method of Herrmann over that of
Kaftan. Herrmann, too, has his theory of religion, and
his manner of applying it to the judgment of Christi-
anity is not essentially different from Kaftan's. But
after his first work, Herrmann leaves his theory of
religion very much behind him, and goes out on a
totally different line of proof. The great-almost the
sole-idea in his later writings is the irresistible im-
pression (Eindruck) which Christ makes on the soul
historically confronted with Him, compelling the ac-
knowledgment that God is with Him, and is gracious.
This is a true thought, and Herrmann has done service
in ringing the changes on it as incessantly as he has
done. After all, however, it leaves us very much in
the vague as to the nature of this "Power over all
things" which Christ is alleged to reveal. Herrmann
thinks that by this method he has shaken himself clear
of all dependence on philosophical assumptions, but
he only accomplishes this by reducing the impression
we receive from Christ to something so indefinite and
formless that no proper theology can be deduced
from it.
From these fundamental positions, it will be possible
E
66
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
to sketch rapidly the attitude taken up by the followers
of Ritschl to some of the special doctrines in theology.
The controlling conception with the whole school is, as
already stated, the idea of the kingdom of God.¹ But
then this idea, as we have had occasion to see, is itself
not very definitely conceived. With Ritschl himself
it is exclusively—with Herrmann predominatingly—
a kingdom in this world; with Kaftan and other
prominent Ritschlians, including Weiss (Ritschl's own
son-in-law), it is wholly an eschatological conception.
With Kaftan the kingdom of righteousness on earth is
but a moral preparation for the true kingdom of God,
which, in accordance with his fundamental positions,
he defines as super-terrestrial and future. A semi-
mystical element, therefore, enters into Kaftan's con-
ception of Christianity which is foreign to most writers.
of the school. The centre of gravity in the Christian
system is not with him, as with Herrmann, the his-
torical Christ, but, on the contrary, the glorified Christ,
and the life of the Christian is a life hid with Christ
in God. Herrmann's attitude is the very opposite of
this. The only Verkehr, or communion, of the
Christian with God he will recognise is that meditated
by the historical life of Jesus; everything that savours
of mystical converse or communion of God with the
soul, through a direct and present communication of
Himself by His Spirit, he energetically repudiates.
By this idea of the kingdom of God, then, variously as
it may be conceived by the different writers, every
1 But see additional note on Kaftan's Dogmatik.
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
67
other doctrine of the Christian system is to be measured.
The central point here again is the Christology. That
all the members of this school reject the orthodox
Christology-regard it, with Herrmann, Kaftan, Har-
nack, as a result of the fusion of Christian ideas with
Greek, and particularly with Alexandrian metaphysics
-is well known. But it is not so clear what they
propose to put in its stead. It is easy to say-Let us
content ourselves with the certainty that in some way,
borne in upon us as an irresistible conviction, God was
in Christ that we can therefore with justice attach to
Him the predicate of Godhead, but the mind cannot.
permanently maintain itself in this vague, unquestion-
ing condition. How should it, indeed, be possible for
a speculative faculty such as both Herrmann and Kaftan
assume, which goes on building up theories of the world,
postulating God to reconcile moral antinomies, and
defining the nature of the true good,-how should it be
possible for such a faculty not to ask itself the question,
What is the postulate needful to explain this extra-
ordinary appearance which we have in Christ? Why
must the thinking mind postulate God for the explana-
tion of the world, and be debarred from postulating
something transcendental in explanation of the Person of
Christ? Now the interesting fact is that the moment.
the Ritschlians do take up this task of trying to
explain Christ to their own minds, they are driven
back on transcendental explanations. There is a strik-
ing passage in the first edition of Herrmann's Verkehr,
in which he says that if the Christian will follow out
68
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
the question of the union of the divine and human
natures in Christ, "the Christological decisions of the
ancient Church still always mark out the limits within
which such attempts must move."1 He expresses him-
self in a yet stronger way on the necessity of recognis-
ing a super-earthly basis for the Godhead of Christ in
his recent pamphlet on the Apostolicum controversy.
Kaftan utters himself hardly less distinctly. This
movement, as I have observed elsewhere, can scarcely
fail to go further, and work itself into clearer relations
with existing Christian dogma.
To discuss the views of the Ritschlian writers on the
doctrines of sin, of reconciliation, of the future life,
would carry me beyond the limits of the present
paper. It is perhaps the less necessary to go into this
region, that the disciples add little that is distinctive to
the general features of the Ritschlian theology. Not
one of these writers holds an atonement in the objec-
tive sense; but Christ's work is conceived of as giving
us the assurance of God's forgiving grace. Without
entering further into this subject, I shall conclude
with a very few words on the views of perhaps the
least known of all these theologians-Bender of Bonn.
Bender is the enfant terrible of the Ritschlian party,
but with all their repudiation of him, I cannot but
think that he expresses the real tendency and essence
of the theology better than many of its more reputable
representatives. He at least starts from orthodox
1 P. 46 (quoted above, p. 27). Cf. his Die Religion, etc.
pp. 438-9.
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
69
*
Ritschlian ground in affirming that religion is simply a
means through which man seeks freedom from the
limitations and hindrances of his existence, and the
furtherance of his lower and higher life-aims. But
Bender makes no disguise of what this means for him.
"Not the question as to God," he tells us boldly, "but
the question as to man, is the central question of
religion. The idea of God is in the first instance only
the imaginary line (Hilfslinie) which man draws in order
to make his existence in the world comprehensible.
The elevation of the mind to the Godhead in worship
is only a means of help, by which man, in the battle of
his existence, seeks to appropriate super-terrestrial
powers to himself, in order to maintain in their integ-
rity his selfish or disinterested, his material or ideal,
interests, especially when his own powers are ex-
hausted." Man, therefore, is the centre, not God.
"Every religious view of the world," he says, "is
anthropocentric."2 Ritschl had declared that what we
affirm of God in our Christian view of the world is
a product of our phantasy (unserer Einbildungskraft).
Bender takes this view of the matter quite in earnest.
"The idea of God," he says, "is a thought-image of our
phantasy more than of our understanding." a He tells
us how it originates. It frames itself "from the need
of so thinking of the world-development that the
specifically human ideal of a perfectly blessed life is
attainable in spite of apparent contradictions." 4 The
1
1 Das Wesen der Religion, p. 22.
3 P. 105.
"3
2 P. 85.
4 P. 89.
70
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
religious cultus is explained as a further means to the
self-maintenance of man and his interests in the world.
The idea of revelation obtains in all religions, and
we get a psychological explanation of it, not unlike
Pfleiderer's. The outcome is-that in religion we move
in a perfectly ideal world. Yet, and this is the
remarkable thing-Bender holds also that we do not
move in a world of mere ideals. He thinks the fact
that we discern a moral progress in the world, and
that in the religious development we find a gradual
moving upwards to the perfected religious and moral
ideal in Christ, with His doctrine of the kingdom of
God, of forgiveness of sins, and of a providential govern-
ment of the world, leaves open the hypothesis-for
it really comes to no more than this-that there truly
is a Power ruling us and the whole world, with whom
we dare find the guarantees of the realisations of our
life-ideals, and who can accordingly be the object of
our faith and worship.¹ Christianity, at the same
time, is accepted by Bender only in a very expurgated
form. Here Ritschlianism and Rationalism are in
perfect accord. The supernatural in every form is
denied. The incarnation, the miracles, the very sin-
lessness of Christ are set aside. Yet just as in
Pfleiderer, a fine symbolism is found in all the
Christian doctrines, and these are to be retained in the
cultus, if not in the judgment of reason. If, e.g., “the
Church honours Christ as the overcomer of sin and
evil, while it also in His individual life dramatically
1 Das Wesen der Religion, p. 241, etc.
+
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
71
represents in the resurrection and ascension the process
of the glorification and deification of human life, there
is nothing," he says, "to be objected to this, if only two
things are remembered "1-then follows the explication.
The Ritschlian critics are right when they say that the
first and second parts of Bender's system do not hold
together, and that what we really have is only a sub-
jective idealism. What they do not show so clearly is,
how, starting from nearly identical premisses, they can
logically avoid similar conclusions.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
1. Ecke on the School of Ritschl.-In 1897 appeared
an admirable work by Gustav Ecke, of Bremen, entitled
Die theologische Schule Albrecht Ritschls, with which
the foregoing sketch, and that in the writer's Ritschlian
Theology, may usefully be compared. The book gives
in the first place a characterisation and criticism of
Ritschl's own theology-friendly, especially on the
point of the severance of theology from philosophy,
but in many of its results not very different from
those indicated above. It traces the rise of Ritschl's
school, and lays stress on the praiseworthy sides of its
theology. It then takes up the Christian doctrines in
detail, chiefly from the point of view of showing an
increasing approximation in members of the school to
"the uncurtailed Biblical-Reformed-Confession."
only remark that needs to be made in criticism is
1 P. 295.
The
72
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
that Ecke's irenical motive leads him sometimes to
press too far expressions in his authors that look
like approach to Church doctrine,-e.g., on the subject
of the vicarious sufferings of Christ,-and to make too
little of the deeper differences of meaning which their
language often covers. He has, nevertheless, to admit
great shortcomings and divergences in Ritschlian
teachings. Ecke's own sympathies are with a type of
doctrine akin to Kähler's, of Halle; and from this
standpoint he upholds, as against Ritschl and such
of his followers as agree with him, the rights of
pietism, the pre-existence and full divinity of Christ,
His expiatory death, etc. His fragmentary method
of dealing with the views of the different writers has
the disadvantage of preventing the exhibition of the
opinions of any of them as a whole. Allusions to
Ecke's book are found in papers Nos. IV. and V. below.
2. Kaftan's Dogmatik.-Since the above Essay was
written Kaftan has published a Dogmatik (1897), which
puts us in possession of his full views on the theo-
logical system. It does not, however, add much to
the knowledge gained from his previous works. In
respect of form, the most striking thing to be noted,
perhaps, is, that Kaftan makes almost no use in his
scheme of doctrine of the category of the kingdom
of God, but follows practically the old divisions: the
doctrines of God, of the world, of man and sin, of the
Person and work of Christ, etc. His treatment shows
a constant desire to do justice to the evangelical
elements in the Christian faith, and is far more posi-
THE SCHOOL OF RITSCHL
73
tive in character than that of many of the school.
In many respects, however, it lacks coherence, and
compels dissent. Sin is viewed as belonging to man's
natural constitution (guilt, on the other hand, arises
with knowledge); the "Godhead" of Jesus is main-
tained, even to the point of affirming an eternal mode
of being (p. 437), but in reality we seem to get no higher
than a perfect revelation of God in a human person
(p. 419); Christ's resurrection and exaltation are
defended; strong language is used on the vicarious
character of Christ's sufferings and the redemptive
value of His death, but the sense in which these
expressions are used is entirely different from that of
the Church theory. The death of Jesus is explained
as the necessary result of His fidelity in his vocation,
and so as the necessary means for the realisation of
the divine aim of salvation (p. 543; cf. pp. 514-18).
The Pauline statement that Christ bore the curse of
the law, is interpreted as applicable only to Jews
(pp. 461-2). But in a sense it is allowed that Christ
redeems us all from the curse by the fact of His dying
for us, since His vocation in realising the counsel
of the divine pity could not otherwise he fulfilled
(pp. 516-17). The whole treatment is seriously vitiated
by the defects in Kaftan's fundamental presuppositions.
4
RITSCHLAND AFTER
IV
RITSCHL-AND AFTER ¹
1
THE Ritschlian movement has by this time got a long
way beyond Ritschl. The Master is credited with
the saying that after his death his followers would
divide into two camps, and neither, he added in his
incisive fashion, would be right. His prophecy has
been fulfilled. The opposing tendencies which it was
evident the movement held within it from the first,
have increasingly diverged; new influences have
coalesced with the primary one; and while one
section of the school has developed in a constantly
more positive direction, another has sunk back into
the general sea of historical and critical rationalism.
This is apt to give rise to an illusion in contemplating
the movement, from the effects of which Mr Garvie,
1 The Ritschlian Theology; Critical and Constructive. An
Exposition and an Estimate, by Alfred E. Garvie, M.A. (Oxon.),
B.D. (Glas.) [now D.D.]. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1899.
[British Weekly, 23rd Nov. 1899.—Mr Garvie has replied to some
points in the above criticism in an appendix to his Second Edition.
His remarks do not seem to call for special comment beyond the
few notes in next article, No. V.]
77
78
RITSCHLAND AFTER
in this able volume, and even Ecke, in the instructive
work to which Mr Garvie owns his indebtedness, are
not completely free. The temptation is natural to eke
out the deficiencies of Ritschl by what is found in
Herrmann, or Kaftan, or Harnack, or, conversely, to
correct aberrations in these writers by the more
positive elements in Ritschl-the resultant impression
rather resembling a "composite photograph" of the
school than yielding the well-defined image of an
individual system.
It would be unfair, however, to judge of Mr Garvie's
full and thoughtful book by what really lies outside
his aim. His frankly-stated object is not to expound
systematically the teaching of Ritschl and his school,
but to concentrate attention on its distinctive prin-
ciples, first in its critical, then in its constructive aspect.
Besides Ritschl himself, the only writers that come
much into view are the three above named. Let it be
said at once that nothing could be more painstaking,
generous, or impartial-with perhaps the exception
of the uncalled-for severity of the strictures on Dr
Denney than the author's general treatment of his
subject. He has framed his opinions as the result of
first-hand study of the Ritschlian literature; has
weighed most that others have said of it; and with care
has summed up his conclusions in a singularly dis-
passionate manner, certainly not sparing criticism
where he thinks it needed, but losing no opportunity
of speaking good of the system he is interpreting.
With the aid of his book, and of the translation
i
RITSCHLAND AFTER
79
of Ritschl's own great work on Justification and
Reconciliation [now published], the English reader
should have little difficulty in following the trend of
a theology which has evoked keener discussion in the
land of its birth than any other of our day. If, not-
withstanding, we have a few points of disagreement
with the author, he will understand it is from no lack
of appreciation of the solid service he has done.
Mr Garvie, in the course of his work, repeatedly
lays claim to special "sympathy" in his treatment of
a theology which, he thinks, has hitherto suffered
somewhat from the unfortunate manner in which it
has been brought before the public. Faults have
been thrust into the foreground; excellences have
been repressed. The "generosity and sympathy" of
Mr Garvie's exposition all will recognise, though it
does not, as already hinted, avail to save the
Ritschlian theology from surprisingly severe handling.
Sympathy, however, is a relative term. It was, as
Mr Garvie does not conceal, lack of sympathy which
was Ritschl's own worst defect. "He showed no
understanding of, and no sympathy with, types of
piety other than his own"-"His individuality
asserts itself in violent antagonisms and exaggerated
antitheses" 2-are specimens of many confessions.
It might be pleaded, too, that there has been much
more appreciation of the undeniably good side of
Ritschl's theology than Mr Garvie allows for. The
present writer may be pardoned for recalling that
1 P. 21.
2 Contents, chap. xii.
80
RITSCHLAND AFTER
well-nigh the first words he ever wrote on Ritschlianism
were a recognition of its service in laying stress on
the need and reality of positive revelation.
“The
general position of this school," he said, "may be
fairly summed up by saying that God can only be
truly known to us by personal, positive revelation,
in which He actually enters into historical relations
with mankind; and that this revelation has been
given in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ. Through
this revelation alone, but in it perfectly, we have the
true knowledge of God's character, of His world-aim
in the establishing of a kingdom of God on earth,
and of His gracious will of forgiveness and love." ¹
A subsequent paper was devoted primarily to showing
wherein the good of Ritschlianism lay, and few of
the merits Mr Garvie has brought forward were there
overlooked. There has been no disposition to minimise.
the ability and influence of Ritschl, or to deny the
healthful impulse he has given in nearly all the
departments of theology. In some spheres of his work
we regard him as facile princeps in his generation.
But when respect is had to the system as a whole—
to its exclusive claims, its ruling ideas, its extra-
ordinary shortcomings as a theology, which Mr Garvie
assuredly does not minimise, its overbearing aggressive-
ness (since much softened) in its assaults on the
ordinary theology of the creeds - sympathy may
require to give way to the
defects, and it may become a duty to speak very
1 Christian View of God and the World, p. 64.
sense of its very serious
RITSCHLAND AFTER
81
plainly respecting them. We may admire the build
of a stately craft, praise its artistic appointments, its
brave flags, its gallant crew; but if it has to be
admitted that its hull is rent, its chart wrongly
drawn, its steering-gear disordered, its compass untrue,
its engines and pumps ineffective, all the sympathy
in the world will not keep it afloat, or entitle it to be
spoken of as seaworthy.
We do not for a moment mean that Mr Garvie
would accept the foregoing as a correct description of
the theology he expounds; but we think, if we cared
to press the matter, we could prove the justice of it
to the hilt from the extremely damaging admissions
and criticisms of his own pages-criticisms which
apply to the foundations of the Ritschlian system,
and leave not a single article of it untouched. Nor
are we able to concede that the apologies set up for
these defects are always of the most cogent character.
It is hardly a strong defence, e.g., after knocking the
bottom out of Ritschl's metaphysics, to plead that he
was really "incapable of philosophical thinking," 1
that his "intention was good, that what he was
opposing was not "philosophy as it might be, but
philosophy as it was."2 It is true enough to say that
Ritschl's rejection of metaphysics in theology, like
his rejection of speculative theism, of ecclesiastical
dogma, of religious mysticism, was in a positive
religious interest. But this is only a half-truth.
There is another half. Professor Kähler, of Halle,
1 P. 45.
""
2 P. 77.
F
82
RITSCHLAND AFTER
rr
said to the writer on one occasion, "I agree with
Ritschl that metaphysics should be excluded from
theology, but then under the name of metaphysics he
gets rid of vital Christian doctrines." Then, when
Mr Garvie says that Ritschl's argument deserves
cordial sympathy" as a protest against any subordi-
nation of Christian truth to speculative thought of the
kind which denies freedom, excludes miracle, and
ignores mystery, it cannot be supposed that he means
that this is an attitude peculiar to Ritschlianism,
especially when it is acknowledged that Ritschl him-
self has fallen into bondage to a metaphysic of a very
obnoxious kind.
It needs, in truth, some effort to maintain at the
necessary pitch one's "sympathy" with a system in
which (to quote only one sentence), "God is, so to
speak, lost in His kingdom, Christ in His vocation, the
soul in its activities "; 1 but, without attempting to
follow Mr Garvie into the details of his criticism, a
glance may be given at one or two of the points on
which he thinks Ritschl has been misapprehended.
One is the difficult subject of the “value-judgments.”
The very range and complexity of discussion on this
subject in the school, shows that the matter is not so
simple as Mr Garvie supposes. But granting him his
own form of it, viz., that it "is but a new way of
putting the truth, that if a man does the will he will
know whether the doctrine be of God or not, that the
pure in heart shall see God, that what is spiritual is
1 P, 62,
RITSCHL-AND AFTER
83
spiritually discerned "1-in other words, that know-
ledge of spiritual truth is morally and spiritually
conditioned, we would ask, does Mr Garvie know of
any church or religious teacher that would dream of
denying the fact? Would Bernard, or Calvin, or
Edwards, or Chalmers, have denied it? What then is
there in it peculiar to Ritschlianism? The representa-
tion is sometimes made as if "faith" outside of Ritsch-
lian theology was conceived of as at least primarily an
intellectual process. The truth is that faith, in the
sense of the ordinary evangelical doctrine, has depths
of "value-judging" in it that the plumb of Ritsch-
lianism is totally incapable of sounding. It is a fruit
of regeneration; a work of God's own Holy Spirit in
the soul; it springs from a heart broken in penitence,
penetrated with the sense of the absolute unworth of
sin, and admitted to some vision of the absolute worth
of the divine holiness, and perception of the mercy of
God in Christ—it is conditioned by "value-judging "
through and through. Ritschl never went so deep as
this; could not in the nature of the case do it; himself
lacked, as our author acknowledges, "an understand-
ing for the deepest Christian experience of abounding
sin and superabounding grace.'
"2
Mr Garvie thinks Ritschl has been misapprehended
on the subject of the mystical relation of the soul to
God, though it costs him long and recondite argument
to try to make out his point, and he ends by granting
that Ritschl "laid such emphasis on the active
1 P. 189.
2 P. 315.
84
RITSCHLAND AFTER
1
functions of the human spirit' as to appear practically
to exclude the mystical element, the presence and the
power of the spirit of God, which eludes psychological
analysis." "The truth is," he says, "that Ritschl and
his school are contending for what is recognised practi-
cally in all the Christian Churches, the dependence of
Christianity on the historical revelation of God in
Christ, as recorded in the New Testament." But if
this is recognised-and who can doubt it?—in all
the Churches, where again is the merit of Ritschlianism
in connection with it? Except to obscure it. "The
truth is" that Ritschl, as one will come to see who
grasps the true inwardness of his rejection of the
unio mystica, and the reason for this in his doctrine
of the soul, means a great deal more. We quote Mr
Garvie's summary of the doctrine of the soul, and it
will be seen of itself how much mysticism is com-
patible with it. In his denial of the metaphysical
existence of the soul, and his restriction of personal
life to the spiritual activities, he implicitly contradicts
the unity and identity of the 'self,' the possibility of
character, the certainty of immortality."2 This reacts.
on the idea of revelation—even in Christ.
On miracle, Mr Garvie brings forward a passage
from Ecke from (unpublished) lectures of Ritschl
which takes stronger ground on the resurrection than
anything in his published works. It fails, however,
1 P. 149. Italics are ours.
2 Contents of chap. v., sect. iii. A statement follows of Ritschl's
3 P. 225.
"intention" to affirm as above.
RITSCHLAND AFTER
85
to remove the settled ambiguity which rests upon his
utterances in the latter; and the views expressed on
the position of the school generally are, so far as our
reading goes, much too optimistic. The Eisenach
Conference, which drew from Loofs his believing
pamphlet on The Resurrection Narratives, is proof on
that point. But there is, admittedly, a growing
positive wing.
The least convincing part of Mr Garvie's book is,
to our mind, that which deals with the Ritschlian
treatment of the "Godhead" of Christ. No argument
can get over the fact that in this theology-certainly
in Ritschl's own-this predicate is an expression of
the "value" placed on Christ by religious emotion.
rather than a declaration of His inherent and essential
dignity. As Mr Garvie truly tells us, what Ritschl
seeks to substitute for the doctrine of the two natures
in the Person of Christ "is an original direction of the
will of Christ, in virtue of which God's final purpose
was constantly and completely accepted by Him as
His self-end." Exactly; but this is not "Godhead,"
and faith, using that term to express "religious value,”
is practising an illusion on itself, and transcending
fact. This is an example of what we think Ritschl
really means by❝ value-judgments," of which other illus-
trations are found in Mr Garvie's volume in the treat-
ment of the doctrines of guilt and punishment, and of
justification. "A man conscious of guilt regards the
evils that befall him as punishments. Here, then, we
1
1 P. 284.
86
:
RITSCHLAND AFTER
"" 1
are concerned with a subjective representation, not an
objective reality.' "Men as in time are conscious of
a change in their relation to God. Before, they had
feared God's displeasure; now, they enjoy His favour.
But this is only a subjective impression involved in
man's temporal existence." 2 It is wholly a straining
to try to make out that Ritschl believed in any sense
in a real pre-existence of Christ.3 Even Herrmann's
words in an early work-which express rather the
necessity of faith giving this shape to its impression
of the mystery of Christ's Person than say anything
of the actual fact-seem left behind in his later views.
It was at Eisenach he bade men turn from questions
of pre-existence with hearts "cold as ice."
There is much else that might be said on this
interesting book, but the above will probably suffice.
Had Mr Garvie treated his subject from the synthetic
point of view, we think his sense of the inadequacy
of Ritschlianism as a theology would be even greater
than it is. The students at Mansfield College were
privileged in having these educative lectures delivered
to them, and Ritschlian literature is permanently
enriched by their publication in this revised and
enlarged form.
1 P. 310. Italics ours. Cf. below, p. 109.
2 P. 377; cf. p. 308.
}
3 P. 292.
PROFESSOR SWING ON RITSCHL
AND HIS CRITICS
V
PROFESSOR SWING ON RITSCHL AND HIS
CRITICS 1
ATTENTION was called in the April number of The
Presbyterian and Reformed Review (1902) to the
volume of Prof. Swing, of Oberlin, on The Theology of
Albrecht Ritschl,2 in an able and temperate notice by
Dr C. W. Hodge, jr. It is not the purpose of this
article to retraverse the ground gone over in that
critique. The present writer, however, may be ex-
cused for taking a special interest in the volume in
question, as in its pages he finds himself singled out
as a chief offender in "misleading" the public in regard
to the real nature of Ritschl's teaching. The burden
of responsibility laid upon him is truly heavy. "Prof.
Orr," says the author, "has done more than any other
critic to discredit Ritschl in the estimation of the
English public. He has gone through the subject
1 Princeton Theological Review, January 1903.
2 The Theology of Albrecht Ritschl, by Albert Temple Swing,
A.M., Professor of Church History in Oberlin Theological
Seminary. Longmans, Green & Co., 1901.
89
90
PROFESSOR SWING ON
›› 2
with such thoroughness and evident sincerity (it is
gratifying to have even this much acknowledged)
that his fundamental misunderstanding of Ritschl's
views has been accepted as historical truth."1 Again,
"The fact is, that Prof. Orr's persistent attempts to
explain away everything objectively real from the
theology of Ritschl vitiate his whole work, and render
him, in spite of his scholarly accomplishments, a mis-
leading guide to the understanding of the Ritschlian
theology." In the index, under Prof. Orr's name,
we have "A misleading guide." In a review in an
influential American paper of the writer's last book on
The Progress of Dogma, the same charge recurs. "Prof.
Orr," it is said, "is chiefly responsible for the misunder-
standing of Ritschl in England and America, and in
this book he continues his inability to appreciate the
Ritschlian point of view.” 3 The curious fact is that,
while certain positions of Prof. Harnack are adversely
criticised, there is scarcely an allusion to Ritschl in
this last-named work except in way of approval.
These are serious charges, and if they are unfounded
deserve to be refuted. Still, the personal aspect of
the matter does not greatly concern the writer; and
were it not that Prof. Swing's assertions raise the
larger question of what really ought to be thought
of the theology of Ritschl, the readers of this Review
1 P. 4.
2 P. 128. Profs. Denney and Wenley are included in the same
condemnation.
3 The Independent, 21st August.
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
91
would certainly not be troubled with any fresh com-
ment on the subject.
To obviate misunderstanding, let it be said at once
that no disrespect is intended to Prof. Swing's treat-
ment of the Ritschlian theology in his book. On the
contrary, it is a pleasure to acknowledge that he has
produced an interesting little monograph on his subject,
which, though, as we venture to think, extravagantly
rose-coloured in its estimate of Ritschl, will have its
value for every student of that author, whether he
agrees with its conclusions or not. Special thanks
are due to Alice Mead Swing for the excellent trans-
lation of Ritschl's Unterricht incorporated in the
volume. Such a translation was distinctly needed,
and on the whole this is as good as could be desired.
The volume is worth possessing for it alone. Neither
is complaint made of the criticism in itself. Prof.
Swing is perfectly within his rights in making what
criticisms he thinks justified; and if the present
writer was convinced that he had in any material
respect misrepresented Ritschl, he hopes he would
have the grace frankly to acknowledge his error. As
the case stands, however, he cannot feel that he is
called upon for any such retractation. His judgments
on Ritschlianism were not formed without long and
painstaking study, and renewed examination has only
had the effect of causing him to adhere to them more
firmly. This by no means implies that he has no
perception of the distinctive merits of the Ritschlian
movement, or appreciation of the healthy impulses that
92
PROFESSOR SWING ON
have proceeded from it. Of these, ample and cordial
acknowledgment has repeatedly been made. The
sole question relates to the adequacy of the basis of
the Ritschlian theology, and the justice of its inter-
pretations of the evangelical doctrines. And on these
points the writer's judgment is unaltered. For the
purposes of the Evangelical Church he does not
hesitate to say that Ritschl's theology is impossible.
This is even more the case with Ritschl's own teach-
ing (to which Prof. Swing confines himself) than with
that of some of his followers, who have in many ways
modified his positions, or perhaps never accepted them.
Only one other preliminary observation is necessary.
Prof. Swing's attitude to Ritschl's theology is, it must
be confessed, peculiar. He constitutes himself an
expounder, not a critic, of the system; but the
exposition is accompanied with almost unvarying
approval. He remarks, "We need not defend all that
Ritschl said";1 but by no chance at any point does
a sign of dissent escape him. In this entire homolo-
gation of Ritschl's peculiar teaching, Prof. Swing
stands nearly alone. Every one familiar with the
literature is aware that even the most sympathetic
critics have conceded large hiatuses, obscurities, incon-
sistencies, indefensibilities, in Ritschl's thinking.2 None
of them would give Ritschl the same unqualified
1 P. 6.
2 Ritschl's followers, as Prof. Swing himself says, have “had
less to say publicly in direct praise of his theology, than they
have in the way of modifying his individual statements" (p. 1).
&
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
93
"1
certificate which Prof. Swing here issues. This applies
to many of the exceptions taken to Ritschl by the
critics whose remarks alone Prof. Swing notices. In
his pages all critics are presumed to be, from one side
or another, hostile to Ritschl. It should in fairness
have been indicated that in many cases the same
criticisms proceed also from those who can only be
ranked as Ritschl's friends. Prof. Swing's method of
dealing with the objectors—" simply placing their
statements," as he says, "about Ritschl side by side
with Ritschl's own words, in a sort of literary pillory
-is a delightfully simple, but, as pointed out by the
reviewer in April, in Ritschl's case an eminently un-
satisfactory one. Ritschl is of all writers the last to
whom it is adapted. His statements are often tantalis-
ingly obscure; are far from being always coherent;
often ar, evangelical in sound when deeper considera-
tion shows that, in the context of his system,
they import something very different. Illustrations
will immediately be given of the caution needed in this
"pillory" process.
The
It may be well to begin by looking at the specific
charges of misunderstanding advanced by Prof. Swing,
and testing his accuracy in regard to these.
following are the instances in which the present writer
is put in the "literary pillory."
1. As respects the "fundamental misunderstanding,"
this is said to be specially seen "in his (Prof. Orr's)
continually representing Ritschl as subjective in his
1 P. 5.
94
PROFESSOR SWING ON
theory of knowledge and judgments of worth, and in
his asserting that Ritschl does not hold to the objective
reality of sin, and therefore of redemption, and that
with Ritschl the very resurrection of Christ is dis-
credited.¹
So far as this relates to the theory of knowledge and
judgments of worth, it is considered farther on. Other
points fall under the remaining heads.
2. On the resurrection of Christ (cf. the closing
sentence in above): "And yet Prof. Orr, in The
Christian View of God and the World" (p. 454), "says
that he cannot but regard the Ritschlian position ‘as the
virtual surrender of faith in Christ's resurrection ""12
The note is one of astonishment that such a thing as
doubt of Christ's resurrection should even be hinted at
in Ritschlianism. The question is discussed below.
Meanwhile it should be noticed that the quotation.
given has reference more immediately to the views of
leading Ritschlian writers, whose words, as cited, amply
justify the statement made.
3. On sin: "And yet Prof. Orr says that with
Ritschl 'sin is only a subjective judgment which the
sinner passes on himself, to which nothing actual
corresponds.' In opposition, Ritschl is declared to
have emphasised "in a thoroughly fundamental way
the fact of sin, of guilt, and of participation in a
kingdom of sin." "And this," he says, "I wish to
make very clear, for the reason that several critics,
and Prof. Orr in particular, have shown here an
1 P. 4.
2 P. 111.
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
95
incredulity that would itself be incredible if we did
not have so many illustrations of it.” 1
Prof. Orr never made any such statement as that
attributed to him. He did not say (as quoted) that in
Ritschl's view "sin" is "a subjective judgment" of
the sinner, but that "guilt” is a very different thing
(see next paragraph). To this judgment, for reasons
to be given, he adheres.
4. "Yet, notwithstanding all these clear and positive
statements, Prof. Orr actually declares (The Christian
View of God, etc., p. 178[9], and not by any means
set right in his later book, The Ritschlian Theology,
pp. 146, 269f.) that the effect of Ritschl's theology,
along with others, is 'to weaken, if not actually to
destroy, the idea of guilt'; that Ritschl regards all sin
as arising so much from ignorance as to be without
real guilt in the eyes of God'; and that 'redemption
is not removal of guilt, but of consciousness of guilt';
and instead of guilt being regarded as something
objectively real, which God as well as man is bound to
take account of, it comes to be viewed as something
clinging to the subjective consciousness-a subjective
judgment which the sinner passes on himself, to which
nothing actual corresponds.
2 دوو
These are the typical examples of misunderstanding
which it is proposed to subject to some examination,
less, as already said, for the purpose of self-vindication
than as a means of bringing out what the theology of
Ritschl really is.
1 Pp. 120-1.
2 P, 127,
96
PROFESSOR SWING ON
1. It will be convenient to begin with the alleged
misrepresentation as to Ritschlian views on the resur-
rection of Christ. It is gratifying to find an initial
point of agreement with Prof. Swing in the importance
he evidently attaches to this great Gospel affirmation.
This constitutes it a good test of the real trend of
Ritschlian teaching. And our surprise is that Prof.
Swing should question the accuracy of the statement
made as to the general attitude of Ritschlian theolo-
gians to this cardinal article of faith. There is, indeed,
a positive wing of the school, represented, e.g., by
Kaftan and Loofs, and, at a greater remove from
Ritschl, by Häring, which does give unequivocal ex-
pression to its faith in the resurrection. But the
greater number who can be classed as Ritschlians either
(1) reject the bodily resurrection (the physical miracle),
while holding as "a thought of faith" that Christ still
lives and rules; or (2) admit supernatural "appear-
ances" of Christ to the disciples, though not a bodily
rising; while (3) practically all hold that the historical
question is one indifferent to faith. It is difficult to
see how they could do otherwise. The resurrection, as a
fact, must rest, if it is to be believed at all, on historical
evidence; and that the Ritschlians will not admit as
a ground of faith. On pp. 203-5 of the writer's Ritsch-
lian Theology will be found a careful conspectus of the
views of most leading Ritschlians on this subject. It
is for Prof. Swing, if he challenges the statement
quoted in his note, to disprove the accuracy of that
summary.
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
97
"1
The views of Ritschl's followers are not hastily to be
set aside in forming a judgment as to the trend of his
theology; but the more precise question is as to the
belief of Ritschl himself on the Lord's resurrection.
On this point Prof. Swing speaks with a confidence far
beyond the evidence. It is one on which every im-
partial mind must admit that great ambiguity rests.
The present writer has never gone further than to say
that "it is difficult to catch precisely Ritschl's own
attitude to miracle, and specially to the Lord's resur-
rection," and that "his whole position is extremely
vague. This, he believes, exactly represents the fact,
and any stronger statement is "misleading." The
passages quoted by Prof. Swing from Ritschl's second
volume as to the apostolic belief in the resurrection ²
are aside from the point (as strong, e.g., will be found
in Baur). More importance attaches to certain pass-
ages quoted by Ecke in his Die theol. Schule A.
Ritschls (pp. 198-9) from unpublished lectures of
Ritschl (date not given), which do show that at a
certain stage Ritschl's beliefs were more positive than
he ever allowed publicly to appear. There remains
the passage in Sec. 23 of the Unterricht affirming
Christ's "resurrection through the power of God";+
with which may be compared another, not usually
1 Ritschlian Theol., p. 93.
3 Cf. Ritschlian Theol., p. 93.
2 P. 111.
4
4 Dr Garvie quotes this sentence as one "about which he, at
least, can discover no ambiguity" (Second Edition of his Ritsch.
Theol., p. 410). But see below. And is a belief supported by one
passage not ambiguous ?
G
98
PROFESSOR SWING ON
!
noticed, of similar import, in his Theol. und Met.,
p. 31. But it deserves careful notice that the word
used in these two passages-the most explicit, if not
the only explicit ones on the subject in Ritschl's pub-
lished writings-is not the usual word Auferstehung,
but another of more general meaning, Auferweckung
(reawakening), and stands in a context which seems to
deny the reality of physical miracle. Over against
these slender references have to be placed the facts
(1) of the entire silence of Ritschl on the Lord's resur-
rection in his (third) dogmatic volume, where, if any-
where, we should have expected to find stress laid upon
it; and (2) of the express statement in the Unterricht
(Sec. 17) that miracles are to be construed religiously,
and not as occurrences contrary to the laws of nature
or the orderly coherence of natural events, by which
Ritschl evidently means events breaking through the
ordinary causal connection of nature. Is it conceiv-
able that, if the resurrection held, as Prof. Swing
affirms, "an
an absolutely vital place in Ritschl's
thought," he should write a work of many hundred
pages on the essential doctrines of salvation, and never
once make an unambiguous declaration of his belief in
it.2 In face of such a fact it will take more than marks
of exclamation to show that Prof. Orr has misled his
readers on this vital point. The truth is, as every one
might see who penetrates to the interior of Ritschl's
1 P. 111.
2 We can hardly except the allusion to Christ's Auferweckung
on p. 341 (E. T. p. 360).
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
99
thought, that it lies wholly apart from his developed
theory to base religion in any degree on a fact which
depends on outward historical testimony.
2. The next main subject on which misrepresenta-
tion is alleged, is Ritschl's doctrine of sin and guilt.
Here, again, it is believed it will be easy to show (1)
that Prof. Swing mistakes the view he criticises, and (2)
misapprehends the real view of Ritschl.
No one,
least of all Prof. Orr, dreams of denying that Ritschl
meant to affirm the reality of sin as contrariety to the
ideal of good in the kingdom of God, and therefore to
the will of God. But it can and must be held that
Ritschl weakens the idea of sin in its Scriptural aspect
by bringing it so largely under the category of
"ignorance," by regarding it as an "apparently in-
evitable product of the human will under the given
conditions of its development," and by denying heredi-
1
:
2
¹ Even the word "relative" before "ignorance" is struck out in
later editions. Properly for sin being measured, not by the
moral law, but by the idea of the kingdom of God, it can hardly
be imputed where that idea is absent.
* J. and R., iii., p. 380 (E. T.); cf. Unterricht, sect. 28. The
apparently" here is not to be regarded (as is done, e.g., by Dr
Garvie) as throwing any doubt on the empirical unavoidableness
of sin, which is deduced from the facts that the will is a
"growing" quantity, and that the self-seeking desires have a
start over the knowledge of the good in consciousness; but, with
the subsequent clause, "conscious as we are of our freedom and
independence, is nevertheless reckoned by us as guilt," is probably
to be explained as a survival of Ritschl's acceptance of Kant's
doctrine of transcendental freedom, in contrast with the empirical
connection of phenomena by the law of cause and effect. See his
vol. i., pp. 389, 394 (E. T.).
DorM
100
PROFESSOR SWING ON
CC
tary sin. The effect is seen in his doctrine of guilt,
which is expounded in so involved and difficult a
manner that misconception is pardonable, but the
essential point in which Prof. Swing seems quite to
miss. He finds Ritschl speaking much of guilt, and,
on the strength of certain statements affirming the
reality of guilt, characterises it as a fundamental
misunderstanding to say that Ritschl's theory logically
does away with the idea of guilt as ordinarily under-
stood-reduces it to a subjective illusion. The mistake
lies in not perceiving that what Ritschl means by
guilt" in his developed doctrine is something very
different from what is ordinarily understood by this
term, and that it is in the current and accepted sense
(believed also to be the Scriptural one), not in Ritschl's
peculiar sense, that the objectors declare the idea of
guilt to be invalidated in his system. In the first
place, it should be recalled that Ritschl's own doctrine
varied at different stages of his development. When
he published his first volume on Justification (1870),
he was almost wholly under the influence of Kant in
his ideas of moral law, of guilt, of accountability, of
punishment; and at this stage his doctrine of guilt,
as involving obligation to punishment, is strongly
and unexceptionably expressed.¹ At a later period
1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 389-96, 411 (E. T.), etc., and see Ritschlian
Theol., pp. 36, 37. "The essence of punishment," he here says,
"is requital. From the idea of our practical reason, which sets
the moral law in the light of guilt, it follows also that trans-
gression deserves punishment" (p. 396). Traces of this mode of
thought survive in the Unterricht.
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
101
The
these ideas underwent profound modification.
whole idea of retributive punishment, and the idea of
justice connected therewith (cf. his former view in Vol.
I., p. 434, E. T.) is parted with, and the existence of
a punitive will in God denied. Dr Garvie, who is
favourable enough to Ritschl, will bear out this state-
ment. "If there is no wrath of God against sin, there
can be no punishments by God of sin. This conclusion
Ritschl expressly draws." This is a great change,
and, as can easily be seen, one which vitally affects his
whole doctrine. At the same time Ritschl gives the
doctrine a turn which substitutes another conception
for that which is rejected, and somewhat conceals the
change that has been made.
1
What, then, is Ritschl's later doctrine of guilt, and
how is it affirmed to differ from the ordinary doctrine?
Distinction is to be made here between what he calls
'real guilt" and the "consciousness of guilt," though
the relation of the two is again declared to be so close
as to be inseparable, and practically "guilt" is resolved
into the "consciousness of guilt."2 (1) Guilt as "real"
he identifies with the actual state of separation from
God brought about by sin, and speaks of guilt as
removed when this separation is brought to an end.3
Ipso facto, of course, sin does separate from God; but
1 Garvie's Ritschlian Theology, p. 310.
2 J. and R., iii., pp. 51, 53, 54, 56, etc.
3 The usual wavering is seen even here. "We ought therefore
rather to transpose 'the removal of the separation of sinners from
God' into the removal of the consciousness of guilt." J. and R., iii.,
p. 54 (E. T.).
102
PROFESSOR SWING ON
1
the state of separation and the guilt of separation
are distinct ideas which ought not to be confused. If
Ritschl tries to combine the two by speaking of
separation from God as the central "punishment" of
sin, this is admittedly done only "provisionally and
dialectically," ¹ as the idea of punishment has no real
place in his system. (2) The real emphasis lies,
therefore, on the "consciousness of guilt," which is held
to include such elements as a judgment of unworth
passed by the individual on himself (which judgment
must be presumed to be also that of God), the conscious-
ness of separation from God, a sense of moral disturb-
ance and feeling of self-blame; while out of it springs
distrust of God, which confirms the feeling of estrange-
ment. With all this there is no fault to find, nor has
the present writer failed to do justice to it. But, as
ordinarily understood, guilt is assumed to carry with it,
nay, to find its peculiar character in, something further,
viz., the liability to punishment (obligatio ad pœnam);
and the consciousness of guilt, in like manner, is held
to involve the sense of evil desert, of punishableness,
of righteous subjection to the judgment of a holy
God. This also is the Scriptural view. The sinner
there is represented as lying under the just judgment
of God, as condemned, as exposed to the wrath of God
for his sins. This element in the idea of guilt Ritschl
undeniably eliminates, or reduces to subjective illusion;
and it is in this sense that he is accused of weakening,
and virtually annulling, the idea of guilt. That such
1 J. and R., p. 50 (E. T.).
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
103
an element enters into the consciousness of guilt is not,
of course, denied. The transgressor condemns himself,
believes himself condemned of God, reads the meaning
of punishments into the evils that befall him. But
this valuation (Schätzung) of evils as punishments,
which springs from the guilt-consciousness, is only,
it is held, a subjective mode of judgment;¹ there is
nothing corresponding to it in God's judgment. If
Prof. Swing is satisfied with this representation of
guilt, there is nothing more to be said. But he must
not "pillory" others who show this to be Ritschl's
view as "misleaders." Dorner does not put the
matter too strongly when he says that "no clear,
connected doctrine respecting punishment, God's
punitive justice, moral freedom, and guilt, is to be
found in Ritschl." 2
3. This leads back to the charge of "fundamental
misunderstanding" in regard to the "subjectivity" of
Ritschl's doctrine. Prof. Orr, it seems, is continually
representing Ritschl as subjective in his theory of
knowledge and judgments of worth.3 It is important
here, in the first place, that the question should be
correctly stated. Prof. Orr certainly never said or
supposed that Ritschl's theology was subjective in the
¹ Cf. J. and R., iii., pp. 354, 364-65, etc. (E. T.). Dr Garvie
objects to this being spoken of as a value-judgment, and denies that
Ritschl so regards it (Second Edition, p. 409), but he is clearly
mistaken. It is the attribution of a penal value (Strafwerth) to
evils that do not of themselves possess this character.
These are
value-judgments, but, as Ritschl tries to show, wrong ones.
2 System of Doctrine, iv., p. 67.
3 P. 4.
104
PROFESSOR SWING ON
sense that he meant to deny the objective reality of
God or the spiritual world; of sin as a contradiction of
the moral order and divine end of the world; of Christ,
and such a work of redemption as Ritschl ascribes to
Him. It is, therefore, quite beside the mark to prove
that, in Ritschl's view, God, Christ, sin, redemption are
real, for this is not disputed. But in another sense
the charge of subjectivity brought against Ritschl's
theology is fully warranted. It may be, and is, con-
tended (1) that Ritschl bases the knowledge of God,
and with it the whole religious view, on purely sub-
jective grounds; (2) that his theology is bound up
with a theory of knowledge and of judgments of value
which makes an unwarranted divorce between theoretic
and religious knowledge, and imperils the objective
character of the latter; (3) that even objective religious
realities are held to be apprehended only in subjective.
relations, or as "mirrored in the subject"; and (4)
that the modes of apprehension of these realities are
not limited by the strictly objective state of the case,
but are moulded, shaped, heightened, coloured by
religious feeling and imagination, in the way that
best suits subjective (religious) needs.
1
It would involve too wide a discussion to go into all
these points, but some examples may be selected for
illustration.
And first, Prof. Swing thinks that a "misleading"
1 J. and R., iii., p. 34 (E. T.). Cf. Leben, ii., p. 191. Ritschl
justifies this by the reflection that even the sensuous object is not
observed and explained as it is in itself, but only as we represent
it. See below.
1
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
105
us. 1
1
CC
account has been given of Ritschl's doctrine of know-
ledge. Ritschl, it is alleged, has been accused of deny-
ing the reality of "things," whereas he plainly declares
that we do know "things," only (after Lotze) not apart
from, but "in" their phenomena, or appearances to
It is to be feared that in this criticism Prof.
Swing shows that he has not himself penetrated far
into the interior of either Lotze's or Ritschl's theory of
knowledge. There is no single point on which the
critics of Ritschl, friendly or unfriendly, have been
more at one than in regard to the unsatisfactoriness
of his idea of the thing." Was Ritschl realist
or idealist? The present writer has no more doubt
than Prof. Swing has that Ritschl meant to uphold
some kind of realism; but it is just as certain that his
arguments would logically lead to a different con-
clusion. Not only so, but Prof. Swing should be aware
that the idealistic interpretation of Ritschl has been
adopted by some of his warmest admirers. Thus, c.g.,
he is interpreted by Traub,2 in what Reischle, in his
recent booklet on Werthurtheile, regards as the ablest
exposition of Ritschl's theory of knowledge. What is
perhaps more striking, Traub's view is apparently
homologated by Ritschl's own son in the Leben.* Even,
therefore, if Prof. Orr had asserted this to be Ritschl's
view (which he did not), he could not have been
1 Pp. 78-9, 82.
2 In Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 1894.
3 P. 9.
4 II., p. 391. This also replies to a criticism of Dr Garvie's
(p. 51). All the above writers admit the vacillating and unsatis-
factory character of Ritschl's theory.
106
PROFESSOR SWING ON
accused of “misleading.”
1
misleading." Nor can the judgment of
these writers be wondered at. Ritschl holds, we shall
presume, that there are actual "things," but he equally
holds that the "things" are known only in the sub-
jective impressions they produce in us, and that the
idea of the "thing" itself is a purely mental construc-
tion. Even as regards Lotze-though it is impossible
here to go into that-Prof. Swing is widely astray.
"Lotze's theory of knowledge," he says, "cannot be
twisted into subjectivism." Yet Lotze himself affirms
"the avoidable and thorough-going subjectivity of our
cognition."2 Space and time are to him subjective
forms of our representation as much as they are to
Kant. He will not reject "subjective idealism” as a
possible hypothesis, and the spiritual beings he postu-
lates as the causes of our perceptions have no relation
of resemblance to the "things" we know. Ritschl, as
his biographer admits,5 was really in error in suppos-
ing that his theory of knowledge was essentially
different from Kant's.
3
4
Next, as to the subjectivity of our knowledge
of God. There is no question, as already stated,
as to Ritschl's tenacious belief in God and His
providence. But it is just as certain-Reischle's
book above mentioned may be consulted in proof
-that the idea of God is reached by Ritschl solely
on the basis of a judgment of worth on our own
1 P. 68.
3 Ibid., pp. 89, 131;
4 Ibid., p. 141.
2 Outlines of Met., p. 143 (E. T.).
Met., i., pp. 350, 354 (E. T.).
5 Ut supra.
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
107
personality, and as a postulate for the securing of
our position as moral and spiritual persons in the
world. The idea is formed from within, and receives
its shape, not from objective data, but from the
working of the religious imagination (phantasy).¹
If it be replied, as it may justly be, that in the
Christian religion the knowledge of God is held to
be derived in a more immediate way from revela-
tion, this only raises a new problem, and throws us
back on the origin and character of the knowledge
possessed by Christ of God - a knowledge which,
however perfect of its kind, still is "religious" in
its nature, and cannot be supposed to transcend
the necessary limitations of religious knowledge in
humanity. The idea of revelation, generally, is one
of the least carefully investigated of all the notions
in Ritschl's system. It is not a notion peculiar to
Christianity, but is a mark of all religions.² That
it is affirmed of Christ in an absolutely unique
sense admits of no doubt; but whether it logically
expresses more than the clearness and perfection of
the idea of God and of His world-end which grew
up in the consciousness of this wonderfully constituted
Person must remain doubtful, as also the question
1 Cf. Reischle, p. 4.
2 J. and R., iii., pp. 201-2 (E. T.).
3
3 "Christ's unique worth," we are told, "lies in the manner in
which He mastered His spiritual powers through a self conscious-
ness which transcended that of all other men, and by His will
brought them all to bear upon His personal destination" (J. and
R., iii., p. 332, E. T.).
108
PROFESSOR SWING ON
of its scientific worth. It is easy for Prof. Swing
to bring forward passages about Christ and His
revelation from Ritschl which, fairly construed, would
mean much more. This his critics have never denied;
but it only serves to bring out, what they are
compelled to emphasise, the remarkable disparity
between his foundation and his structure.
Lastly, there is the vexed question of "value-judg-
ments," about which so much is still being written.
The subject is too large to enter upon at any length;
but before Prof. Swing repeats his charges of “mis-
leading" he had better read what some of the newest
critics say upon that difficult part of Ritschl's theology.
One thing only may be remarked, viz., that it is wholly
inept to quote Bernard, Luther, and Calvin, and repre-
sent Ritschl as meaning no more by his declaration
that religious knowledge moves solely in "independent
judgments of value" than that religious knowledge is
always morally and spiritually conditioned. Ritschl
needed to assume no prophet's mantle to teach us
that. No one would dream of denying it. Religion
is surcharged with value-judgments in this sense.
One can cordially adopt the language of Luther and
Calvin; but Ritschl speaks with a different voice.
The core of Ritschl's theory is seen in his account of
the genesis of the idea of God. The whole religious
view of the world hinges with Ritschl on the idea of
God. But the idea of God, as already seen, is derived
from man's need of securing his personality in rela-
tion to the world. It rests on a judgment of worth;
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
109
but the worth is ultimately that of one's own person-
ality. It is subjective in basis, and subjective in the
The
manner in which the mind represents it to itself.
same is true of every idea which depends on it-i.e.,
of the whole religious view. It has no point of contact
with theoretic knowledge, and derives no illustration
or support from it. This, it is believed, is what Ritschl
means when he affirms that religion moves wholly in
judgments of value. It is not denied that there is a
deep truth in value-judging, as expounded, e.g., by
Lotze. But the worth-judgments relate to objects
that are given by the ordinary faculties of knowledge
(or to ideals); the reality of the object is not made.
dependent on the worth-judgment.
1
Something might have been said, had space per-
mitted, on Prof. Swing's views of Ritschl's doctrines
of the Person of Christ and of redemption.
there is hardly room for a charge of "misleading."
Here
1 How this theory affects even the doctrine of forgiveness, in
giving it an aspect valid only from the standpoint of time,
should be studied in such a section as that in J. and R., iii., pp.
322-3 (E. T.). One or two sentences may be quoted. "On
the other hand, all our reflections about God's wrath and com-
passion, His long-suffering and patience, His severity and
sympathy, are based upon a comparison of our individual
position with God, under the form of time. However indis-
pensable these judgments may be in the texture of our religious
experience, still they stand in no relation whatever to the
theological conception of the whole from the view-point of
eternity. . . . From the point of view of theology, therefore,
no validity can be assigned to the idea of the wrath of God
and His curse upon sinners yet unreconciled. . . If we assume
that God foresees their final inclusion in His kingdom, as
110
PROFESSOR SWING ON
The question is not so much as to what Ritschl
taught as to the adequacy of his teaching. It is
very well to speak of what Prof. Swing calls the
"Godhood" of Christ; but is this predicate satisfied
by saying that Christ, as the perfect revelation of
God in humanity, and as exercising spiritual supre-
macy over the world, has to us the "religious value"
of God? The question recurs, Ought any being to
have the religious value of God to us who is not
personally and essentially God? The whole doctrine
of a real incarnation is here involved. And Ritschl's
system, it must be reaffirmed, has no such doctrine.
Similarly it is not "misleading" to say that Ritschl's
theology has no vicarious atonement, or provision for
the expiation of guilt of any kind. Prof. Swing him-
self affirms as much. The question is, Is such a
theology satisfactory as an interpretation of the
Gospel? There is nothing
There is nothing "misleading" in denying
it, if possibly there is a danger of misleading in affirm-
ing it. Perhaps, however, enough has been advanced
to show that Ritschl's theology is not all such smooth
sailing as Prof. Swing seems to imagine, and to enable
the reader to judge of such a resounding sentence as
theologians we have no alternative but to trace their redemption
back to His love in an unbroken line, even though these very
redeemed ones may, as their ideas take a temporal form, have
the impression of a change from divine wrath to divine mercy.
We must come to the same conclusion, too, regarding the pheno-
mena of those cases where men are conscious of guilt and regard
evils as the effects of God's curse." [Dr Garvie may observe
that this last case is put on the same footing as the experience
of divine forgiveness.]
RITSCHL AND HIS CRITICS
111
the following: "These world-transforming views which
inspired the teaching of Albrecht Ritschl, and which
have been obscured by the wood, hay, and stubble of
so many of Ritschl's critics, we are now, I trust, in a
better condition to estimate for ourselves at something
of their true worth for constructive theology.'
1 P. 115.
99 1
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON CHRIST
AND HIS GOSPEL
2
H
VI
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON CHRIST AND HIS
GOSPEL 1
THE newest and not least interesting phase of Ritschlian
theology has been the delivery and publication by
Prof. Harnack, of Berlin, of sixteen lectures on the
nature or essence of Christianity. These lectures,
given in the winter of 1899-1900, to over 600 students
of all Faculties, excited immediately the most lively
interest throughout the whole of Germany. Probably
no book has created quite so great a stir since the
appearance, in the beginning of last century, of
Schleiermacher's celebrated Discourses on Religion, with
which the lectures of Harnack have repeatedly been
compared. It may be questioned if the lectures have
enough in them that is new to constitute them epoch-
making as the older book was; but there is no doubt
that they form a remarkable pronouncement. On all
1 Das Wesen des Christentums, by Adolph Harnack, 1900.
What is Christianity? Sixteen lectures delivered in the
University of Berlin during the Winter-Term 1899-1900. By
Adolph Harnack, translated into English by Thomas Bailey
Saunders, 1901 (Williams & Norgate).
115
116
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
hands they were recognised at the time of their delivery
as a most noteworthy sign of the times. Their ability,
brilliance, warmth of religious feeling, breadth of out-
look, were universally acknowledged; but they called
forth at the same time keen antagonisms. Extolled
by one class almost as a new Gospel-a rediscovery
of Christianity-they were assailed, on the other hand,
from two very opposite sides: the side of those who
on philosophic or other grounds were already hostile
to the Gospel, and the side of those who, holding the
faith of the Church, believed that Harnack's presenta-
tion was really a subversion of the Gospel in its true
nature. The furor that ensued was immense. Books
and pamphlets-criticisms, replies, defences-poured
from the press in incredible numbers. The religious
magazines all had their articles on the subject. Pastoral
conferences discussed the lectures, generally in an
adverse spirit; in certain instances rival courses of
lectures were delivered (Seeberg, Cremer); translations
of the book were published in several languages.¹
In our own language we have the advantage of an
excellent and spirited translation of Harnack's volume
by Mr Bailey Saunders, which, however, it is necessary
to add, is not without unfortunate lapses at critical
points. An important instance is in the section on
Christology, and has direct bearing on Harnack's esti-
1 The best account of the literature is in a friendly pamphlet
by Ernst Rolffs (reprinted from Die Christliche Welt). His lists
occupy between four and five pages. See also a number of articles,
chronicling and reviewing discussions and publications, in the
Chronik der Christlichen Welt for 1901.
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
117
"2
(C
CC C
mate of Jesus. Harnack repudiates "Christology,"
and will have it that Jesus is to be regarded as purely
human. So it stands in the Gospels," he says; "there
is nothing there that can be turned or twisted. This
feeling, praying, working, struggling, and suffering
individual (Ich) is a man who includes himself also
with other men over against his God" (der sich auch
seinem Gott gegenüber mit anderen Mensehen zusam-
menschliesst). The last sentence is loosely and
inaccurately rendered by Mr Saunders-"who in the
face of God also associates Himself with other men."1
In an earlier passage we have the rendering 'the
falling and rising again,' a new humanity opposed to
the old, the God-Man-Jesus Christ-was the first to
create.' Harnack certainly would not apply the
term "God-Man" in this way to Jesus-nor does he.
The word used (Gottesmenschen) is the object of the
verb "create," in apposition to "a new humanity," and
defines the character of Christ's creation. In speaking
of Paul, Harnack argues that his idea of the entrance
of a divine being into the world, while kept by Paul
himself in subordination to the fact of redemption,
could not permanently remain in this second place.
The translator inverts the thought by rendering, "The
fact of redemption [not in the text] could not perma-
nently occupy the second place." On Greek Catholi-
cism an explanation of Harnack's as to the sense in
which he speaks of "natural religion" is thus given:
"The conception 'natural religion' may be better
3 P, 185,
¹ P. 126.
2 P. 50,
118
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
1
applied to the growth which a religion produces when
the 'natural' forces of history have ceased playing on
it." This is astray. What Harnack says is that the
conception may be better applied "to the final product.
(Endproduckt) of a religion when the 'natural' forces
of history have ceased playing on it." These instances
may suffice to show the need of care in the use of a
translation which is generally admirable.
We cannot profess to wonder at the interest which
these striking lectures have created. Not to speak of
the brilliant style and personal popularity of their
gifted author, their own qualities are sufficient to
explain and justify the impression they have produced.
For one thing, they raise a question, or series of
questions, which the age is asking, and to which it
yearns to obtain a satisfactory answer. What is
Christianity? How far is its essence an abiding one?
Can it be reconciled with the claims of modern science
and criticism, and with the idea of a law-constituted
world? What is its relation to the pressing social
problems of the day, or has it any? In the next place,
Harnack's lectures have the supreme attraction that
they profess to give to these questions a positive answer.
There is, ostensibly at least, no lowering of the flag as
respects the abiding value of Christianity; but there
is at the same time the fullest acceptance of the results.
of modern science, culture, and historical criticism.
The reader finds in them a depth and glow of religious
feeling, an overmastering conviction of the worth of
1 P. 222.
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
119
Christ's religion, intense devotion to Christ Himself,
the assurance that here is the message of all messages
for our own, as for every other generation. Harnack
stands between an age distracted with its doubts,
negations, and futile search for good in finite aims and
earthly conditions, and the eternal Gospel, which he
professes to interpret in a way that points the road to
peace and satisfaction for the spirit of man. He holds
no brief for ecclesiastical Christianity. On the con-
trary, he practically throws it overboard. He accepts
nearly in its entirety what may be called the view of
the world of the man of culture.¹ He finds no place
e.g., for real, though there may be some for seeming,
miracles. He calls a halt only when the view of the
world becomes monistic-when the thinker would
break down the oppositions between "God and the
World, the Here and the Beyond, the visible and the
invisible, matter and spirit, the life of impulse and the
life of freedom, physics and ethics."2 This, all the
same, is a rather important qualification of the position
that Christianity has nothing to do with philosophy or
theories of nature.
1 His admirer, Rolffs, says of him: "In fact, Harnack presents
a type of modern Christianity. . . . He here offers to the present
age a Christianity which is elastic enough to take up into itself
the new ideas won for modern culture by the labours of Lessing
and Kant, of Goethe and Schiller, of Hegel and Schleiermacher,
and by the exact sciences of the nineteenth century, without there-
by losing any of its religious warmth and moral strictness. Such
a fusion of the Christian religion and modern culture is simply a
necessity for the health of the spiritual life of Germany" (p. 4).
2 P. 150 (E. T.).
120
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
It is still more, however, in the actual contents of
the lectures, and their outstanding ideas, that we find
the explanation of the fascination they have had for
so many minds. When we turn from the Gospel as
we have been accustomed to conceive of it, to the
positive teachings of this book, we do not find our-
selves in a wholly alien atmosphere. The things
which Harnack finds in the Gospel-in which he
places the essence of Christianity—are really in the
Gospel, and form no inconsiderable part of it. With
much of his exposition of Christ's teaching, one feels
himself in entire accord; e.g., in what he has to say
of the Lord's Prayer, of the Sermon on the Mount, of
the infinite dignity of the soul, of Christ's "transvalua-
tion" of all earthly values. On these and kindred.
subjects the book abounds in things noble, inspiring,
elevating, and suggestive-above all, true. It is a
feature in the lectures that they frankly discuss, often
with great insight and helpfulness, the relation of the
Gospel to the different aspects of life in the world-to
asceticism, to social problems, to constituted authority,
to art and culture. The historical survey, moreover,
of the development of Christianity from the apostolic
age, through successive periods, to the present, is
marked, as was inevitable, by power and appreciation.
It is possible, while not altogether accepting the author's
standpoint, to recognise the justice he does to the
thoughts of great personalities like Paul, Augustine,
and Luther, and even to agree with much that he says
on the dangers of intellectualism in religion, and on
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
121
the flagrant departures from the true idea of the
Gospel in Greek and Roman Catholicism.
If, therefore, we do not dwell further, as it would be
agreeable to do, on this meritorious side of Harnack's
lectures, we trust it will be apparent that it is only
because our proper object calls us in another direction.
It might indeed seem, after what has just been said,
as if, after all, it could only be a question of degree
between Harnack and those who differ from him as to
what constitutes the true essence of Christianity.
There cannot, it may be thought, at least be funda-
mental or vital differences. Yet that is precisely what,
in our opinion, as in that of many others who have
criticised him, there are. If the question be pressed,
How is that possible? the answer, and solution of the
paradox, is not far to seek. It is to be found in the
fact that the elements which Harnack acknowledges
are, indeed, Christian; but there are other and even
more vital elements left out; while, even for the
Christianity he acknowledges, the proper roots are
taken away. The Christianity with which Harnack
presents us is not only an inadequate Christianity, but
it does not, and never could, subsist of itself, in divorce
from other elements which he ignores. If nothing
more is conceded to Christianity than he allows-if
more is not put into the Person, work, and Gospel
of Christ than he grants,-if Gospel and Saviour
are not drawn closer together than in his presenta-
tion, then not only must Christianity, as the
Churches have hitherto known it, disappear, but his
122
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
own Christianity will remain a thing in the air, a
cloud-picture that must dissolve and vanish away also.
The importance of the lectures is not less, but greater,
on this account, for they bring us, like many other
phenomena in our age, to the true alternative with
which the Churches are now faced. Harnack is right
in saying that the vital question raised by his lectures
is-What is Christianity?
The statement just made will hardly be seriously
questioned that, if Harnack's contentions are admitted,
Christianity, at least as we have hitherto known it,-
as embodied not merely in the dogmatic structure of
the creeds, but in liturgies, hymns, prayers, preach-
ing, in our whole Church worship and profession,--
goes by the board. This is never, indeed, quite
broadly admitted in the lectures. On the contrary,
there is the implied claim to preserve the essence, not
only of Christ's own Gospel, but of the Pauline,
Augustinian, and Reformation Gospel as well. But
there should be no illusion here. A scheme of Christi-
anity which allows no room for miracle; which rejects
all doctrine save that of God the Father; which scouts
Christology; which concedes to Jesus no substantial
place in His own Gospel; which does not admit the
resurrection; which has no atonement for sin, or
regeneration by a living spirit,-is not the Gospel as
any historical Church to-day professes or practises it.
But is this, it may fairly be asked, a true description,
or not rather a caricature of Harnack's positions? For,
as we are immediately to see, Harnack does speak of
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
123
Jesus as the Son of God, and that in a unique sense;
of the Easter Faith, and of the hope of immortality
that springs from Christ's grave; of expiatory sacrifice
(not indeed in Christ's, but in the apostolic Gospel); of
forgiveness of sins, and of a new life in the Spirit. He
does speak of these things, and that is the trouble of it,
when we seek to weave his thoughts into some kind of
unity. For, not only does he not speak of them con-
sistently, or in terms that convey clear ideas to the
mind, not only do his utterances swim in a tantalising
vagueness,—not only are they not brought together in
coherency (this might involve doctrine), and have not
an adequate basis shown for them, but it is Harnack's
most energetic contention that these things do not
belong to the essence of the Gospel as Jesus Himself
taught it. Let us see how the matter stands.
No single statement of Harnack has attracted more
notice, or been more adversely commented upon, than
this-that Jesus Himself does not belong to His own
Gospel. His words literally are: "Not the Son, but
the Father only, belongs to the Gospel, as Jesus
Himself proclaimed it."1 The Gospel of Jesus, as we
shall find, is summed up by him under three heads-
the Kingdom of God and its coming; God the Father,
and the infinite value of the human soul; the higher
righteousness, and the commandment of love. Jesus is
the revealer of these truths, but they are separable
from His Person, as truth is from him that utters it.
1 The translation gives: "The Gospel, as Jesus proclaimed it,
has to do with the Father only, and not with the Son" (p. 144).
124
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
Jesus is the bearer of the Gospel, but is no part of
His own message.
Harnack has replied to one of his critics (Cremer)
on this point, that, in quoting the statement that
Jesus does not belong to the Gospel, he has over-
looked the qualification, "as Jesus Himself taught it."
Cremer, with great justice, answers that it had not
occurred to him to regard this as a qualification of
the statement. He had viewed it rather as a confir-
mation of the assertion. For the very object of the
section in which it occurs is to show from Christ's
own teaching what is the essence of the Gospel.
Harnack warns us against supposing that the Gospel
which Jesus preached was something provisional. "To
contend," he says, "that Christ meant His whole
message to be taken provisionally, and everything in
it to receive a different interpretation after His death
and resurrection, nay, parts of it to be put aside as
of no account, is a desperate supposition." Christ's
Gospel is the whole Gospel; the Gospel in its purity;
to it nothing is to be added. The power and pro-
ductiveness of it are, indeed, only to be measured by
its effects in history; but that alone is genuine which
is evolved from the original norm, and accords with it.
"In the leading features which we described in the
earlier lectures," he writes, "the whole of the Gospel is
contained, and we must keep it free from the intrusion
of any alien element: God and the soul, the soul and
*
" 1
1 P. 143 (E. T.). No one holds that parts of Christ's Gospel
were to be put aside,
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
125
its God.¹ The proposition, then, truly represents
Harnack's contention; yet, in defending it, he is, we
venture to think (1) unjust to himself; (2) incon-
sistent with his own later statements; and (3), what
is most important of all, untrue to the facts of the case.
If, indeed, Harnack really meant what his language
implies, he would represent a marked retrogression
from the conception of Christianity which might be
called the attainment of the past century. Few
theologians of that century, to whom Christ was more
than simply a moral teacher, failed to emphasise the
fact that Jesus and His message formed an insepar-
able whole-that He was Himself the centre of His
message. It was the imperishable service of Schleier-
macher to his age that, while in his Discourses on
Religion he took up a position in some respects not
unlike Harnack's, in the final working up of his system
he got beyond this, and led the way in replacing
Christ and His redemption in the very heart of the
Gospel. Christianity, he teaches, is that form of reli-
gion in which everything is referred back to the re-
demption accomplished through Jesus of Nazareth.?
Similarly Ritschl, to whose type of theology Harnack
is regarded as belonging, identifies Jesus in the closest
fashion with His religion. In contrast with the founders
of Parseeism, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, Jesus is
held to be incorporated into Christianity as a central
and essential part of it. Herrmann, again, practically
1 P. 142 (E. T.).
3 Der christ. Glaube, sect. 11.
3 Just, and Recon., pp. 385-7 (E. T.).
126
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
resolves Christianity into the powerful impression we
receive from the Gospel that God is actually meeting
us in the historical Person of Christ. Does Harnack,
then, mean to deny this? Not altogether, though he
is unable, in consistency with his fundamental view,
to do the truth the justice it demands. Even in the
context of the statement quoted, we find such declar-
ations as these: "He is the way to the Father, and
as He is the appointed of the Father, so he is the Judge
as well.
It is not as one element that he belongs
to the Gospel, but He was the personal realisation and
strength of the Gospel, and is felt to be so still."1
Jesus does belong to the Gospel, then; still, it may
be held, only as the personal medium of its truth
and spirit. In idea the Gospel can still be dis-
tinguished from the Person who reveals it.
It is not so easy to clear Harnack of inconsistency
when we advance to the sections dealing with the
historical developments of Christianity.
Here two
things stand out plainly: (1) that the Gospel has
¹ Cf. E. T., p. 145 (the italics are Harnack's). In almost verbal
contradiction with his language in the lectures, are the words of
Harnack in (C
a Zusatz" to the section on "The Gospel of Jesus
according to His own self-virtues," in his History of Dogma
(Second Edition, E. T., i., p. 71). "The peculiar character
of the Christian religion," he says, "is conditioned by the fact, that
every reference to God is at the same time a reference to Jesus
Christ, and vice versâ. In this sense the Person of Christ is the
central point of the religion, and inseparably united with the
content of piety, as a sure reliance upon God. Such a union
does not, as is supposed, bring a foreign element into the pure
essence of religion. In this rests its positive character."
The passage refers to Herrmann's Verkehr.
•
•
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
127
undergone a transformation, so that Christ now is an
essential—even in an important sense the essential—
part of it; and (2) that this change is apparently
regarded by Harnack, not as anything blamable, but
as a genuine, and altogether proper and necessary
development of Christianity. This holds good of the
pictures given of the Christianity of the Apostolic
Age, and specially of Paul; of the Christianity of
Augustine, which is extolled as the dominant force
in Western Catholicism; and of the Christianity of
Luther, who brought back the Church to its lost
inheritance in the Gospel at the Reformation. The
grand fact in the Christianity of the Apostolic Church
is rightly declared to be the recognition of Jesus as
the living Lord. "The primitive community," we are
told,"called Jesus its Lord because He had sacrificed
His life for it, and because its members were convinced
that He had been raised from the dead, and was then
sitting on the right hand of God."1 Of Paul, who, we
are informed, "stood on exactly the same ground as
the primitive community," the statement is made that
he "definitely conceived the Gospel as the message of
the redemption already effected, and of salvation now
present. He preached the crucified and risen Christ,
who gave us access to God, and therewith righteousness.
and peace." 3 Of Augustine-that "religious genius
of extraordinary depth and power"-the testimony is
similar. The cardinal thought in his theology is grace;
but "with Paul he feels that grace is wholly the work
1 P. 153 (E. T.).
3 P. 176 (E. T.).
2 Ibid.
128
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
of God, but that it is obtained by and through Christ,
and possessed as forgiveness of sins, and as the spirit
of love."1 Regarding Luther-the third of our great
names-our author
our author says: : "Luther's pronouncement
on Justification not only reflects in the main, and in
spite of certain irreducible differences, Paul's train of
thought, but is also in point of aim in exact corre-
spondence with Jesus' teaching."
"12
It is surely a strange alternative to which we are
here brought. Either these ideas of Jesus as the living
Lord, and of the connection of His death and resurrec-
tion with our salvation, found in the apostles, in
Augustine, and in Luther, are part of the genuine
Gospel-belong to its true essence-or they do not.
If they do not, then the Christian Church has gone
astray from its birth in its conception of what the
Gospel is; if they do, then Harnack is manifestly in
error in affirming that Jesus is not an integral part
of His Gospel, rightly understood. It is vain to argue
that even in these later developments the essential
things are still the Fatherly love and providence of
God, the value of the soul, and spiritual righteous-
ness; that all else is husk and wrapping. That may
be Harnack's view, but assuredly it was in no wise.
the view of Paul, or Augustine, or Luther, with whom
the death of Christ for our sins, His resurrection and
exaltation, His living presence and working in men's
souls, were inalienable convictions. As well might a
branch growing on a tree declare that the tree is not
1 P. 259 (E. T.).
2 P. 284 (E. T.).
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
129
essential to its growth and fruitfulness, as, in the view
of these teachers, Christians declare that Christ is
not an essential part of the Gospel by which they live.
The curious thing is, that Harnack seems to hold both
of these positions-first, that the ideas named have a
legitimate place in the Gospel; and, second, that they
are not part of the Gospel as Christ taught it—not
part, that is, of the pure and original, the one norma-
tive, Gospel. In this it seems impossible to clear
Harnack's view of an element of self-contradiction.
This leads now to the question-What really is the
Gospel, and what is Christ's true relation to it? To
answer this, it will be necessary to look for a little
first at what Harnack has to say of Jesus Christ Him-
self. This is given mainly in the section of the
lectures on Christology. Christology, if one may say
it without offence, is Harnack's béte noire. He will
have none of it. The sentence, 'I am the Son of
God," he says, "was not inserted in the Gospel by
Jesus Himself, and to put that sentence there side by
side with the others is to make an addition to the
Gospel." The publican in the temple, the widow
who cast in her mite, the lost son, knew nothing of
"Christology," yet were accepted. Underlying a good
deal of our author's rhetoric on this subject, there is,
it may be remarked, something that must be called a
travesty of ordinary belief and practice. The assump-
tion is that it is customary in the Church—or would
be thought proper-in dealing with prodigals and
1 P. 145 (E. T.).
1
I
130
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
penitents, to press on them a formal Christology for
acceptance as a condition of their salvation. Does
Prof. Harnack really know of any instance of such a
proceeding? A divine Christ may indeed be pre-
sented,-One who, being rich, for our sakes became
poor, and died and rose again for our redemption; but
this is not to be confounded with demanding assent to
the definitions and distinctions of a Chalcedonian
Christology-for it is really this Prof. Harnack has
always in his view. A Chalcedonian or other Chris-
tology may be implicit in what is preached or taught,
but assuredly no sane expounder of the Gospel would
put it in the forefront of his message to sinners.
One understands better this dislike of Harnack to
Christology when his own view of Jesus comes to be
unfolded. That view is, indeed, as high as it could
well be within the limits of the merely human. In
Jesus, he tells us, "the divine appeared in as pure a
form as it can appear on earth.” 1 He had a perfectly
unique knowledge of the Father, and in the strength
of His filial consciousness could, and did, speak of
Himself as peculiarly the Son of God.
"How," says
Harnack, "He came to this consciousness of His unique
relation to God as a Son; how He came to the con-
sciousness of His power, and to the consciousness of
the obligation and the mission which this power carries
with it, is His secret, and no psychology will ever
fathom it. . . . Here all research must stop." 2 Har-
nack hardly seems to realise how difficult it is to
2 P. 128 (E. T.).
1 P. 146 (E. T.).
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
131
admit even this much, and yet fit Jesus into a non-
miraculous theory of the world. Yet this is his
attempt. This wonderful Personality is placed within
the frame of a purely human life. The Logos-doctrine
is of course rejected. There was no incarnation of
One from above such as Paul and John, and the
generations after them, believed in. Jesus, in words
already quoted,¹ was a feeling, praying, working,
struggling, and suffering man, who included Himself
along with other men over against His God. Not only
was His life purely human, it was likewise, apart
from the inexplicable element above-mentioned, wholly
natural. There was no miraculous birth; there were
no miracles of the ministry (though there were wonder-
ful faith-cures); there was no bodily resurrection.
In this sense, as an interruption of the order of
nature, there can be no such things as 'miracles.'
Miracles, it is true, do not happen; but of the marvel-
lous and inexplicable there is plenty."2 In the
apostolic preaching of the resurrection it is necessary
to distinguish between "the Easter Faith” and “the
Easter Message." 3 The Easter Faith is the conviction
that Jesus, as One in whose soul was the eternal life,
lives still with God; the Easter Message is the story
of the empty grave and of the appearances to the
disciples. The latter, modern enlightenment requires
us to reject. It is evident enough that, on such a
foundation, there can be no Christology; evident also,
2 P. 26 (E. T.).
(C
1 See above, p. 117.
3 Pp. 160-1 (E. T.).
132
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
if this be all, that Christ is not a part of His own
Gospel. It will be considered presently whether He
can be the support of even such a Gospel as Prof.
Harnack allows us to retain.
1
What the essential content of the Gospel of Jesus is,
on Harnack's reading of it, has already been indicated.
It sums itself up in three things-the teaching of
Jesus on the kingdom of God, which, divested of
eschatological ideas, resolves itself into the rule of
God in the soul ("God Himself in His power "); ¹
on God the Father (including faith in providence)
and the infinite value of the soul; and on the higher
righteousness, motived by love. The teaching on the
kingdom of God is held to include also forgiveness of
sins. The whole Gospel, it is affirmed, may be brought
under each of these heads, but the second is the most
characteristic. The whole of Jesus' message may be
reduced to these two heads-God as the Father, and
the human soul so ennobled that it can and does
unite with Him." 2 Another summary is-"In the
combination of these ideas-God the Father, Provi-
dence, the position of men as God's children, the
infinite value of the human soul- the whole Gospel
is expressed." 3 Yet more succinctly-"In those
leading features of it which we described, the whole
of the Gospel is contained, and we must keep it free
from the intrusion of any alien element: God and the
soul, the soul and its God." These teachings of Jesus,
1 P. 56 (E. T.).
3 P. 68 (E. T.).
4
2 P. 66 (E. T.).
4 P. 142 (E. T.).
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
133
The essen-
we are reminded, were not wholly new.¹
tial truth contained in them had long before been
declared by psalmists and prophets. But now it was
proclaimed with new strength and vigour. The spring
that had long been choked up burst forth afresh, and
broke a new way for itself through the rubbish of
priests and theologians. The word might be the same,
but it received new power from the Personality
behind it.
Such was Christ, and such was Christianity, as
Harnack depicts it in these lectures; it is now impera-
tive to ask how far the picture given accords with
the actual facts. A preliminary question has already
been suggested, whether, viz., Harnack's view of Jesus
will support even the attenuated Gospel he would have
us derive from His teaching? That is a question of
greater moment than may at first sight appear. It
is not doubted that Jesus entertained those beautiful
and elevating conceptions of God the Father, of
providence, of a kingdom of God, of eternal life, in
which Harnack finds the essence of His Gospel-that
He lived by them, communicated them, and has
implanted them as convictions in myriads of minds.
But difficulties arise when we go a stage further,
and ask, What, even in Jesus, is the guarantee for
these conceptions? The late Prof. Bruce put the
same question, in a chapter entitled "Christianity
without Miracle," in his Miraculous Elements of
Christianity. "God a Father," he said, "man His
1 Pp. 45-48 (E. T.).
134
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
son, a benignant providence, a power in prayer, a
life beyond the tomb-behold the creed of Jesus.
shown to best advantage in His conduct. A beauti-
ful creed, and good for Him, and good for all who
can hold it. But there is the difficulty. With
miracle the infallible guide disappears, and there
remains only a man with very charming views about
God, man, and the universe: views for which He
seems to have been indebted to a happy natural
temperament, and which, to men less fortunately
endowed, may be impossible and incredible."1 For
Jesus, in Harnack's view, it cannot be forgotten, was
still a man whose mind in other respects was largely
under the influence of His age, and dominated by it
in the shape given to many of His conceptions. He
stood on the platform of his time in natural knowledge;
shared its unscientific views of angels and demons;
conceived of His own mission in the mould of current
Messianic expectations; took over from Jewish escha-
tology His whole dramatic mode of picturing the
future of the kingdom of God, the end of the world,
His second coming, resurrection, and judgment. Is
it then an unreasonable thing to ask, What guarantee
have we that his views of God and providence, original
and consoling as in many respects they may be, are
not coloured by the same influences, and marked by
similar limitations? If His consciousness is in error
1 Mirac. Elements, p. 369.
"With miracle" in this passage
means, with a supernaturally-constituted Person, standing in
supernatural relation to God.
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
135
on that which is lesser, how shall we trust it in the
greatest things of all? It will be conceded, of course,
that there is some reality at the basis of Jesus'
religious ideas and experiences-some Power in the
universe of which His beautiful ideas of God are
symbols. But are they more? Can the modern
mind believe in the Father in heaven, with His
angels around Him, as Jesus, in His child-like faith,
believed in Him, or in a special providence, that
marks the fall of the sparrow, and attends to the
wants and requests of individuals? We do not for-
get that, according to Harnack, Jesus is presumed to
arrive at His knowledge of the Father in some way
which is to us a "secret." But if it is a "secret," and
that is all we can say of it, the original doubt remains.
It is not supposed, if we understand our author rightly,
that Jesus reached that knowledge by other avenues
than those which are open to mankind generally.¹
He may have been the pathfinder, but others can
follow. One asks, then-What are these avenues
leading out from the spirit of man to God, and how
far do they guarantee to us objective knowledge?
It is not enough to speak of truths that shine in
their own light, or are verified by immediate spiritual
intuitions; for it may be doubted whether, apart from
1 This is not incompatible with a divine stimulus and guid-
ance, but always on the basis of natural endowment. Even
this, however, leads us into the supernatural in a way that
Harnack's theory, strictly interpreted, would disallow. It
leaves, besides, the measure and degree of this illumination in
obscurity, as also how far it guarantees against error.
136
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
experience, the mind has any such power of intuition
of God as this view ascribes to it. Many roads have
been sought from the human spirit to God—innate
ideas, rational demonstrations, postulates of the moral
life, the feeling of dependence, but none of these is
adequate to reach that knowledge of God as Father
which Jesus possessed. Growingly, therefore, the con-
viction deepens, that the only adequate way in which
the relation of man to God can be grounded is through
sure, authoritative revelation of God Himself; and if
such revelation is believed to be given in Christ, we
must have the courage to say that here is something
which breaks through the charmed circle of a universe
regulated only by natural law. We must find in the
ideas of Jesus more than the results of a psychological
process; must be prepared to affirm regarding Him
such a oneness of knowledge, purpose, and will with
God as gives pure, direct, supernatural insight into
the mind and will of God towards men
such a
"solidarity" of Jesus with God as even Ritschl would
contend for.
But now the question recurs-Is it the case that
the Gospel is as barren of Christology as Prof. Har-
nack declares? We are compelled to reply in the
negative. Already the image of Jesus which Harnack
gives threatens to break through the limits of the
merely natural; and it is only by ignoring other ele-
ments equally original in the portraiture of the Gospel,
that even the semblance of a Christ who is no more
than man can be preserved. The Johannine writings
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
137
we are not, of course, permitted to use; if we were,
dispute would be ended. But, keeping even to the
synoptics, we find whether palatable or
or not-a
Christology there also. Passing over the miraculous
birth, and starting with the ministry, we come first
to the preaching of John the Baptist. Here, at the
very beginning, in Harnack's presentation, we note a
remarkable omission. Harnack dwells eloquently on
John's proclamation of the near advent of the kingdom
of God, and on his call to repentance. But there is
another indubitably genuine element in the Baptist's
preaching which Harnack overlooks the announce-
ment of the coming of One greater than himself, the
latchet of whose shoes he was not worthy to unloose,
whose winnowing fan was in His hand, and who would
baptize with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.¹ That
this description was taken over by the synoptic writers
upon Jesus, and was taken over by Jesus upon Him-
self, no one can reasonably doubt. But let anyone
reflect on what is implied in this one claim-to baptize
with the Holy Ghost. Is it a claim that any ordinary
man could make? Could an Isaiah, or Paul, or John,
have made it? Is there not superhuman dignity, as
well as superhuman functions, implied in it? Yet
probably there is no one who feels it to be in the
least incongruous with the picture of Jesus in the
Gospels. Surely, also, One whose function it is to
baptize with the Holy Ghost must be recognised as
belonging to the Gospel.
1 Matthew iii. 11; Mark i. 7, 8; Luke iii. 16.
138
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
Take next what Harnack recognises to be an essen-
tial part of Christ's Gospel-the preaching of the
kingdom of God. Can it be seriously maintained that
the preaching of the kingdom of God by Jesus in the
synoptics is dissociated from His Person? Jesus is
not simply, like John, the herald of the kingdom, but
appears as the Founder and personal Representative of
it. In Him the kingdom is already there! But
this is not the whole. Jesus is more than Founder of
the kingdom? He is King and Lord over it. It is His
kingdom under the Father. Its authority in heaven
and earth are committed to Him. Its powers are in
Him, issue from Him, and are wielded by Him. He
is the source and dispenser of its blessings. Harnack
quotes the reply of Jesus to the Baptist-"Go and
shew John again those things which ye do hear and
see the blind receive their sight," etc. But what are
we to say of One of whom such things can be declared?
What human measure can we apply to Him?
He be placed in a merely natural frame, or is it legiti-
mate to say that His Gospel can be dissociated from
His Person?
Can
Again, Jesus claimed authority on earth to forgive
sins. He did not simply proclaim God's forgiveness
to the penitent, as any prophet or preacher might do,
but arrogated the right to say to this one and that one,
in His own name, and by His own authority, “Thy sins
are forgiven thee." 2 His pronouncement was SO
1 Matt. xi. 4, 5.
2 Matthew ix. 2, 6; Luke vii. 48.
Į
}
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
139
}
absolute as to provoke the charge of blasphemy.¹ Can
it be held that this is a power which every good man
is entitled to assume? Surely it is not.
"Who can
3
forgive sins but God only?" Herrmann, in a striking
passage in his Verkehr, protests against the notion that
forgiveness of sins follows as a matter of course from
the truth of the love of God. "If the work of Jesus
be seriously considered," he says, "it will rather make
the impression on the student that the forgiveness of
sins is not a matter of course, but is something utterly
marvellous ... an act of incomparable goodness." 2
Only One, therefore, who was conscious of perfect unity
of mind and will with God, could dare to speak with.
the decision and authority that Jesus did on this sub-
ject. Harnack, we cannot help feeling, manifests in
this connection ³ a very inadequate appreciation of the
place and importance which the forgiveness of sins
holds in Christ's Gospel. It is mentioned, indeed, but
in a very subordinate relation to other aspects of the
kingdom. In Christ's own mind, it is the first, and
chief, and most indispensable of blessings. Not only,
however, does Jesus forgive sin; in His later ministry
at least (in John earlier), He connects this forgiveness
of sins explicitly with His death and resurrection. It
is not in the apostolic doctrine, as Harnack's treatment
might suggest, but in His own, that this relation is
established. The Son of Man gives His life a ransom
for many; the prophecies, including those of the
4
1 Matt. ix. 3; Mark ii. 7.
3 Elsewhere he does more justice to it.
2
E. T., p. 103.
4 Mark x. 45.
140
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
vicariously suffering Servant, are declared to be ful-
filled in Him;¹ His blood is shed for the remission of
sins.2 After the resurrection, remission of sins is to
be preached in His name. The freeness of forgiveness
illustrated, e.g., in the parable of the Lost Son, does not
militate against this idea of mediation. It may safely
be affirmed that at no point were Christ's preaching
and promises of forgiveness dissociated in His con-
sciousness from His Person and saving activity. The
dependence of forgiveness on His Person and work is
only a corollary from the fact that the Messianic
salvation as a whole depends on Him. If the
Messianic salvation as a whole is dependent on Him
as its procuring cause, the forgiveness of sins, which is
an essential part of it, must be so also. This, again,
affords a measure of the dignity of the Person con-
cerned-One on whom devolves the redemption of a
world.
In entire agreement with what has been said of
Christ's relation to the future as the Founder of the
kingdom of God, the Redeemer from sin, and the
Baptizer with the Holy Ghost, is the picture given in
the synoptics of His relation to past revelation. Jesus
1 Mark ix. 12; Luke xxii. 37, etc.
•
2 Matt. xxvi. 28. Harnack himself says, in his History of
Dogma: "In this service (to the kingdom of God) Jesus also
reckoned the sacrifice of His life, designating it as a 'ransom,'
which He offered for the redemption of man."
"That
Jesus at the celebration of the first Lord's Supper described His
death as a sacrifice which He should offer for the forgiveness
of sin, is clear from the account of Paul" (I., p. 66, E. T.). How,
then, is this omitted here from his view of Christ's Gospel?
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
141
appears in these records as the consummation and ful-
filment of that old revelation in all its parts. This
also was the point of view of Christ's own conscious-
ness. The old Covenant terminated in Him. He
occupies in this respect a position which distinguishes
Him absolutely from all, even the greatest, who went
before Him, or have come after; for prophet or apostle
never lived who would have dared to speak of himself
as the goal of all God's dispensations-the fulfiller of
law and prophets as Jesus habitually did. This
alone gives Him an entirely unique position in our
race, and sufficiently refutes Harnack's contention
that He includes Himself simply with other men over
against God.
When, from these more public aspects of Christ's
ministry, we turn to his personal character and desig-
nations, the same transcendence of the limitations of
ordinary humanity meets us. One who is to redeem
others, must Himself be without sin; and alone of all
humanity, Jesus appears in the Gospels as absolutely
sinless-the Holy One of God. It is to be presumed
that Prof. Harnack would admit this, though it would
have been interesting had there been a more un-
equivocal acknowledgment of the fact. It is not
necessarily involved in what is said of the absence
of traces of a moral struggle. The presence of One
who is a moral miracle in history, is certainly
a serious difficulty for a non-miraculous theory of
the world. Equally significant with His holiness
are the designations by which Jesus expresses the
142
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
peculiarity of His consciousness of Himself-Son of
Man and Son of God. That in the former title lies
the consciousness of a unique relation to humanity
we cannot doubt;¹ the latter is not less clearly the
expression of a unique relation to God. The unique-
ness Harnack acknowledges, but he seeks the ex-
planation solely in the sphere of Christ's knowledge of
God. No man knoweth the Father save the Son 2-
in that knowledge, he thinks, consists the Sonship.
Surely, however, this is to invert the right relation
of ideas. The Sonship does not spring from the
knowledge of the Father, but it is because Jesus is
the Son that such knowledge is possible to Him. It
is, as already remarked, singular that Harnack does
not seem better to appreciate the extraordinary posi-
tion in which this claim to be the sole medium of
the knowledge of the Father to humanity places Him
who makes it. It is the claim to a perfect reciprocity
of knowledge between Father and Son: one, therefore,
in which Jesus does not include Himself with other
men as against God, but unites Himself with God
over against men. That these two titles carry with
them Messianic connotations may be admitted; but
to Christ's own consciousness it must be contended
that they expressed something primarily personal—
something in which He knew Himself to be dis-
tinguished from every individual of the race. It is
1 This notwithstanding discussions as to the force of the
Aramaic equivalents.
2 Matt. xi. 27.
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
143
certainly in keeping with this unique character-
though inharmonious with Prof. Harnack's picture-
when Jesus is represented throughout the Gospels
as performing works of a truly miraculous character:
healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, raising the
dead-works which cannot be resolved into "moral
therapeutics without surrendering the credibility
of the entire Gospel narrative.
""
It is not disputed by Prof. Harnack that Jesus
identified Himself with the Messianic hope of His
nation, while purifying and spiritualising that hope,
and that towards the close of His ministry He gave
Himself out publicly to His disciples and the people
as the promised Christ of God. The elements of a
Christology lie already in Peter's great confession,
"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."1
It was not till He had obtained that confession-the
result of a divine illumination-that Jesus felt that
He had "Rock" on which He could build a Church.
But it is specially in the eschatological sayings of the
Gospels that we see how tremendous was the claim.
involved in this acceptance by Jesus of the rôle of
Messiah. We are instructed that many of the ideas in
the eschatological teaching of Jesus were borrowed from
current Jewish beliefs. However this may be, the
fact remains that Jesus took them over upon Himself,
and did not shrink from proclaiming His rising again
from the dead,2 and future coming as Judge of the
1 Matt. xvi. 16.
2 The sayings are challenged; but the fact is certain that
Jesus anticipated His triumph over death, and return in glory.
144
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
world, and Arbiter of the everlasting destinies of man-
kind. Harnack quietly drops this side of Christ's
teaching; but it is there, and has to be taken account
of in estimating the value which Jesus Himself
placed upon His Person. That value again transcends
anything that can be placed in the frame of a merely
natural life.¹ With this agrees the great fact of the
resurrection, by which, Paul says, Jesus was declared
(defined) to be the Son of God with power.2 It is
hardly necessary to discuss Harnack's distinction of
the Easter Faith and the Easter Message, for critics
on his own side have abundantly shown the impossi-
bility of separating the two. The apostolic Church
knew nothing of an Easter Faith which had not the
resurrection of the Lord from Joseph's tomb as its basis.
The Gospel of John has, after Harnack's example,
been left aside in this discussion; but it may now
well be asked, in view of what has been advanced,
whether the contrast between the Johannine Christ
¹ The Rev. R. H. Charles, in a sermon on "The Messiah of the
Old Testament, and Christ of the New Testament," observes :-
"As other claims which are without parallel in the Old Testa-
ment prophecy of the Messiah, we should mention first His claim
to judge the world; and next, to forgive sin; and finally, to be
the Lord of life and death. In the Old Testament these pre-
rogatives belong to God alone as the essential Head of the
kingdom, and appear in those prophetic descriptions of the
kingdom which ignore the figure of the Messiah, and represent
God as manifesting Himself among men. Here then we have the
Christ of the Gospels claiming not only to fulfil the Old Testa-
ment prophecies of the various ideals of the Messiah, but also to
discharge the functions of God Himself in relation to the
kingdom." Expositor, Vol. V. (Sixth Series), p. 258.
2 Rom. i. 4.
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
145
and the Jesus of the synoptic Gospels is so great
as has sometimes been alleged. It is to be remembered
that the Fourth Evangelist also, in the representation
he gives of Jesus, claims to stand on the ground of
history. It was not from abstract speculation, but
from what he and his fellow apostles beheld of the
glory of the only-begotten Son while He tabernacled
among them, that he rose to the belief that in Jesus
the Word had been made flesh.¹ He gives deeper
utterances of Jesus than the other evangelists, as on
pre-existence; but those who allege an absolute con-
trast between the two pictures can hardly have
realised the extraordinary uniqueness in character,
claims, and functions of the Person whom the
synoptics present to us as the Christ. One saying
at least that already quoted on the knowledge of
the Father-is allowed to have quite a Johannine ring;
but would it really surprise us in the Jesus of the
synoptics to hear Him declare that He was the light
of the world, the bread of life, the giver of the living
water, of which, if any one drank, he would never thirst
again? Which is greater, to say, "I am the light of the
world,” 2 or to say, "Neither doth any know the Father,
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth
reveal Him?"3 to say, "I am the bread of life," or
to break the bread at the supper, and say, “This is
my body, which is broken for you"?5 to speak of
1 John i. 14; 1 John i. 1-3.
3 Matt. xi. 27.
5 Matt. xxvi. 26; cf. 1 Cor. xi. 24.
2 John viii. 12.
4 John vi. 48.
K
4
146
PROFESSOR HARNACK ON
1
2
giving the living water of the Spirit, or to be
announced as the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost??
Equally with the Christ of John, the Jesus of the
synoptics constantly speaks and thinks of Himself
as in a different category from those whom He
addresses. Even in such a matter as the use of the
word "faith," it is very noticeable that, while con-
stantly inculcating faith on others, Jesus never once
uses the word, or any of its cognates, with reference
to Himself, nor do others use it of Him. The
reason can only be that His knowledge of the
Father was too immediate, too clear, too unerring, to
be properly described as "faith." Faith in us is our
response to the revelation of the Father given by
Jesus; but there was no other to whose revelation
His faith could respond. He possessed the know-
ledge of the Father for Himself - immediately, in-
tuitively, at first hand. In quite the same manner
does John make Jesus speak of the Father as
showing the Son all things that Himself doeth.³
The conclusion to which we are led is, that Jesus
does belong to His Gospel, as the apostolic preaching
affirmed, and that, if His Person were removed, there
would be no Gospel left. Jesus belongs to His Gospel
as the Founder of the kingdom of God, and King and
Lord over it; as the Redeemer who, by His death and
resurrection, has obtained everlasting salvation for us;
as the Bestower of the Holy Spirit; as the living Lord,
through union with whom the Church subsists. The
2 Matt. iii. 11.
3 John v. 20.
1 John iv. 14.
CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
147
powers and blessings of the kingdom are altogether
bound up with Him, and reach us through Him. A
Christianity from which these elements are eliminated
must, in the nature of the case, fail to sustain itself.
In no sense can the Christianity of Jesus fit in with
a theory of the world which excludes miracles; for it
is itself a miracle—a miracle of grace from first to
last, as Prof. Harnack himself acknowledges, a super-
natural gift and blessing. The gulf cannot be con-
cealed between the Christian view of the world, and
a view which refuses to accept the presence and
working in history of a supernatural Power.
The question of the place of doctrine in Christianity,
raised by Prof. Harnack, is one on which we have not
thought fit to touch. Everything, in such a matter,
depends on what Christianity is conceived to be. If its
content is as rich as we suppose, there will be abundant
room and need for doctrine, and doctrine in some shape
cannot permanently be dispensed with. Even Prof.
Harnack will not allow that Christianity can reconcile
itself with a monism which abolishes the distinctions
between God and nature, spirit and matter, the here
and the beyond, physics and ethics. But if so, into
what depths are we already plunged? Profound and
reverent thinking has never really injured piety; but
a piety which tries to subsist without it soon runs to
seed, or falls a prey to rationalism.
148
ON CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL
ADDITIONAL NOTE
((
Harnack on Christ's Deity.—It is only just to refer
to Harnack's latest utterance on this subject in his
published remarks on a letter of the Emperor of Ger-
many, of date 15th February 1903, on the Babel und
Bibel controversy. The Emperor had emphatically
declared his belief that "Christ is God." Harnack,
on his side, thinks that no injury is done to the
peculiarity and uniqueness of Christ if He is placed
in the line of other great men of the race (Moses,
Isaiah, Socrates, etc.); but agrees that "the Christian
community must reject every judgment on Christ
which obliterates the distinction between Him and
other masters." Whether," he goes on, the un-
bending formula 'Godhead of Christ' is the correct
one, may and must be questioned." Even the ancient
Church did not speak of the "Godhead" of Christ
without qualification. In its sense the correct formula
Godmanhood." Even this is not free from objec-
tion (the mystery of Christ's relation to the Father
being impenetrable); but it may be allowed to remain,
“because in reality it explains nothing, but, like the
expression 'Son of God,' only shelters the extraordinary
(in Christ) from profanation." The vagueness of this,
as defining Christ's distinction from other members
of the race, must be apparent.
was
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
"SYMBOLO-FIDÉISME"
VII
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
"SYMBOLO-FIDÉISME ” 1
THE rise of a new school of theology in Paris is more
than an accident; it is a symptom. It is the product
of a tendency which has its origin in deeply-lying
causes in the spirit of the age. On all sides—in
Germany and Holland, in France and Switzerland, in
America and in our own country-the evidences are
unmistakable that a new theology is lifting up its
head among us, and those interested in the future of
the Church will do well to notice carefully whither it
tends. The few articles in its creed are not difficult
to define. A universal Father-God, whose presence
fills the world and all human spirits; Jesus, the soul
of the race, in whom the consciousness of the Father,
1 Esquisse d'une Philosophie de la Religion d'après la Psychologie
et l'Histoire, par Auguste Sabatier. Paris, 1897.
[Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion, based on Psychology and
History, by A. Sabatier. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1897].
Publications diverses sur le Fidéisme et son Application à
l'Enseignement chrétien traditionnel, par Eugène Ménégoz. Paris,
1900.
151
152 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
and the corresponding spirit of filial love, first came
to full realisation; the spirit of divine sonship learned
from Jesus as the essence of religion and salvation-
such in sum is the new theology. All else is dressing,
disguise, Aberglaube, religious symbolism, inheritance
of effete dogmatisms. Will this suffice for Chris-
tianity? It is this question which the Church of the
immediate future will have to face, and meet with a
very distinct "Yes" or "No."
The new French school which represents this
tendency is specially connected with two names—
those of Auguste Sabatier, whose decease since the
publication of his Esquisse has to be chronicled with
regret, and of Eugène Ménégoz, both of the Faculty of
Theology in Paris. The personality of Sabatier was
the real source of the influence of the school, and it
is doubtful if, now his presence is withdrawn, it will .
long retain its prestige. The name "Symbolo-Fidéisme”
by which its type of theology has come to be designated
was originally given to it by a religious journal, but
has been formally accepted by Prof. Ménégoz.¹ Its
import will be seen as we proceed. Ménégoz was in
the field far earlier than Sabatier (1869) with his thesis
of salvation by faith, independently of beliefs; but it
is Sabatier's volume to which we must look for the
main exposition of the principles and fundamental
ideas of the school.
1 Publications Diverses, Pref., viii., p. 148. M. Lobstein, of
Strassburg, on the other hand, declares "Symbolo-Fidéisme" to
be "a phantom," and the "school of Paris" to be "a fiction."
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 153
(C
Nothing, we confess, surprised us more than to find
this volume of Sabatier's, at the time of its appearance,
lauded by an orthodox Scotch critic as one of the
most powerful pieces of apologetic work Protestant
theology has produced in recent years." After this we
were prepared to find it described by its admirers as
an epoch-making book "-" a work of extraordinary
interest"—"this master-work," and the like. Com-
pliments of this sort glide readily from a friendly pen,
and perhaps are not intended to be taken too literally.
It would be a startling omen if they were; for it is
indisputable that if the principles of this brilliant
French Esquisse are to be admitted, the Church needs
not only a new creed, but a new faith. We say this
without prejudice to the many fine thoughts, exquisitely
expressed, which the book contains. It has the true
French grace and liveliness of style, and through it all
there breathes the note of an absolute personal
sincerity. Yet we cannot grant that the author's
theories of psychology and philosophy-not to say of
religion and dogma are really profound. They
impress and charm by the vivid, epigrammatic,
declamatory form in which they are presented; but as
a satisfactory solution of the deeper religious problems,
they cannot be accepted for a moment.
The regret which the volume awakens is the keener
that it was not so long before its publication that its
author's attitude to Christianity was very different.
The Esquisse is avowedly of the nature of a personal
confession. It shows how, after a life-long conflict
154 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
between "the imperious desire of knowing, and the
invincible need of believing and hoping "1-between
the counter - instincts of science and religion — a
tempest - tossed mind found repose in the view of
Christianity which its pages expound. But even this
avowal gives an imperfect idea of the magnitude and
rapidity of the revolution accomplished in Sabatier's
beliefs. When he began his professional career at
Strassburg, it was as a strenuous defender of the
evangelical verities.2 This attitude continued after
his removal to Paris. As lately as 1901 an English
translation of his work on The Apostle Paul was
published, to which he contributed a Preface. In this
volume he still appears as a convinced defender of the
1 Esquisse, p. 4.
2 In 1863 he published Le Temoignage de Jésus-Christ sur sa
Personne, and in 1866 an Essai sur les Sources de la vie de Jésus.
In two letters published in connection with his candidature at
Strassburg, he energetically proclaimed his entire faith, gained
after many struggles, in the divinity and redemption of Jesus
Christ. "This," he declared, "is the true point of separation.
between what is, and what is not, the Gospel. Is Jesus Christ
only a man? Then, however great we may choose to make Him,
Christianity loses its character of absolute truth and becomes a
philosophy. If Jesus is the Son of God, Christianity remains a
revelation. On this capital point, after long researches and
serious reflections, I range myself on the side of the Apostles.
[I am not of] the school which calls Jesus Christ Son of God, but
in the same sense as every Christian is; which speaks of salvation
without believing in a real condemnation; of redemption, while
admitting neither ransom nor redemption; of authority of the
Bible, while recognising only that of conscience. Revelation
is for me the progressive and supernatural redemptive activity of
God in history. I am far removed from what you call the
new theology," etc. (Cf. Revue de Théologie, May 1897.)
•
•
•
•
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 155
miraculous of the apostle's supernatural conversion,
of the resurrection of Jesus, etc.¹ Now, a few years
later, all is changed. The modern evolutionary philo-
sophy holds him in its thrall, and he will have no God
but an immanent one, and no mode of His working but
by continuous development. We can only glance at
some of the leading ideas in the volume in which this
remarkable revolution of opinion is announced.
The philosophy of religion, then, it is laid down in
the Preface, can only have two sources-psychology
and history.2 Before we reach the close of the volume,
however, we find that there is something more, to our
mind even more determinative in the shaping of the
theory-first, a Kantian doctrine of knowledge which,
limiting knowledge to phenomena, destroys the possi-
bility of a knowledge of God otherwise than in symbols;
and second, the distinction, borrowed from Ritschl, of
judgments of existence and judgments of value or
dignity, and the placing of religious knowledge wholly
in the latter.3 From both arise what the author calls
"the subjectivity of religious knowledge," and the
contention that our religious ideas can be expressed
only in symbol. To this doctrine of knowledge we
shall return later, and meanwhile follow the author's
order, which leads him to treat, first, of religion and
1 Pp. 61, 67 (E. T.). A revised edition of the original work
was published in 1896.
2 Esquisse, Pref., xv.
3 Ibid., pp. 371-2 (E. T., p. 298-9). [In what follows, the
references will be, where practicable, to the English Translation.]
4 P. 303 (E. T.).
156 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
its origin; second, of Christianity and its essence; and
third, of dogma and its nature. It is not necessary, in
our rapid sketch, to keep the divisions too rigidly apart.
And first, on the origin of religion, there need be no
quarrel with the root-principle of the author, that the
ultimate fact of the religious consciousness" impene-
trable to analysis"-is "the mysterious and real co-
existence of a particular cause, which is myself, and of
a universal cause, which is God." This immediate
implication of the human spirit with God might seem
a sufficient origin for the religious sentiment; but,
instead, we have a psychological theory of the genesis
of religion from the collisions of man with the outward
world. The contradiction in which primitive man
finds himself involved with nature throws back the
ego on itself in pain; "sparks soon fly, and the inner
life of the ego is lit up "2 in consciousness; from this
initial contradiction springs religion as the solution.
"It is the rent in the rock through which the living
and life-giving waters flow."3 Religion, thus origi-
nated, thereafter, like a divine flower, unfolds itself
according to internal laws. In nature it is imperish-
able. Religious beliefs do not die, they are simply
transformed." Its essence is prayer-not words, but
inward surrender to the principle on which it feels
itself dependent. This movement of the soul to God
is at the same time God's revelation in the soul-
Quid interius Deo?"—and there is no other. All
((
4
1 P. 346; cf. p. 66 (E. T.).
3 P. 21 (E. T.).
2 P. 15 (E. T.).
4 P. 26 (E. T).
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 157
"' 1 (C
3
religion involves revelation, from which it follows that
"the revelation of God never needs to be proved to
any one."
'There are not, and could never have been,
two revelations different in nature, and opposed to
each other." 2 Yet the course of revelation is allowed
to have been marked, as, indeed, the barest inspection
of the history of religion shows, by the rankest over-
growths of superstition and error.
In the Old Testa-
ment, revelation, at first as elsewhere mythological,
becomes gradually interior and moral, without, however,
thereby becoming in any way miraculous, and “this
evolution appears to have been completed in the soul
of Christ." Miracle, in the ordinary sense, Sabatier
utterly rejects, though, as we shall see below, he defines
evolution in terms that might well leave the door open
for it-almost necessitate it. That which makes belief
in miracle possible is "ignorance of nature and its
laws." 4 Revelation and inspiration are simply names
for religious genius. "In the great prophets of Israel,
the formula Thus saith the Lord has become a
simple rhetorical formula. God speaks henceforth to
His people by their eloquence, by their faith, by their
genius." 5
"Thus understood, religious inspiration
does not differ psychologically from poetic inspiration.
It presents the same mystery, but it is not more
miraculous."
6 دو
1 P. 357 (E. T.).
4 P. 71 (E. T.).
2 P. 64 (E. T.).
3 P. 41 (E. T.).
5 P. 41 (E. T.).
6 P. 89 (E. T.).
302, etc.
Cf. Ménégoz, ut supra, pp. 122 ff., 163-4,
158 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
!
Passing next to Christianity, our author has no
difficulty in informing us wherein its essence lies. Its
principle and essence" are found in that filial spirit
toward God, which in its perfect form is the dis-
tinctive and original feature of the piety of Jesus.¹
The religious distinction of Jesus lies in the fact that
"He felt Himself to be in a filial relation towards
God, and He felt that God was in a paternal relation
toward Him," and "that which we observe in the con-
sciousness of Jesus we find in the experience of all
Christians-they are Christians exactly in proportion
as the filial piety of Jesus is reproduced in them.” 2
Jesus Himself, while perfectly realising the filial spirit,
is, in contrariety with all that Sabatier at an earlier
stage contended for, no more than man. The value to
be attached to His views of God and of divine things
will naturally depend on our estimate of the intel-
lectual dress He gave to His experiences; and it
is made abundantly evident that He was in error in
many vital respects, e.g., in regard to His own Second
Advent, which was a mistaken belief borrowed from
current Messianic notions.3
Finally, we come to the consideration of dogma.
Religion, it has been shown, begins in a life, in a
peculiar constitution of individuality, and this life
clothes itself in intellectual conceptions suitable to
its stage of development. Thus arises "dogma," the
variable element in religion, as "piety" is the con-
2 Pp. 148-9 (E. T.).
1 P. 140 (E. T.).
3 P. 192 (E. T.).
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 159
stant element. In dogma there is nothing absolute.
It is with dogmas as with all living things; "they
are in a perpetual state of transformation," the
material of which they are composed "is in a state
of constant flux and evolution."2 Even as regards
Christ, "neither in His language nor in His thought
is there anything absolute."3 "He promulgates no
law or dogma."4 Yet in some vague sense dogma
is held to be essential to religion. "One cannot
conceive either dogma without a Church, or a
Church without dogma." "5 A religion without
doctrine, a piety without thought, a feeling without
expression, these things are essentially contradic-
tory." 6
"Dogma is absolutely necessary to the
propagation and edification of the religious life."7
"By suppressing Christian dogma you would sup-
press Christianity, by discarding all religious doctrine
you would destroy religion." Nay, in almost verbal
inconsistency with the above-as if the author felt
that in this volatilising of religion everything definite
was escaping him-it is affirmed that "Christianity,
in its pure essence, implies the absoluteness of God,
that is to say, His perfect spirituality and His
perfect independence;" that the "variability" of
dogma is "not unlimited," but "is necessarily
confined within limits which, while not easy to
define theoretically, are none the less precise and
3 P. 166 (E. T.).
6 P. 336 (E. T.).
1 P. 231 (E. T.).
2 P. 252 (E. T.).
4 P. 152 (E. T.).
5 P. 229 (E. T.).
7 P. 242 (E. T.).
8 P. 249 (E. T.).
9 P. 172 (E. T.).
160 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
fixed.'
"1 We are not wrong, however, in saying that the
controlling idea of the book is that of the perpetual
"flux," the essential "transformability" of dogma,
and that no phase of dogma can be regarded as of
more than passing importance.2
It would be difficult in brief space to disengage
the threads of truth from those of error in the type
of religious philosophy thus cursorily sketched. Is
Sabatier's account of the genesis of religion, e.g. a
tenable one? Does the primitive mind really
experience this sense of contradiction, or is it
thrown into this agony of pain in presence of nature,
and is religion born, like sparks struck from flint,
from this collision of inward and outward, as a result
of the instinct of self-preservation? Is the child-
like attitude not rather originally one of union with
nature, and is religion in its purest form not born
in stillness? Then what is this "religion" which
assumes such infinitely protean forms, yet remains
one and the same and indestructible through all?
Even if we could abstract the common essence of
phenomena so diverse, what would the residuum be
worth? And what sense can we attach to the
unity of a "revelation" covering the whole range of
religious history between fetishism and Christianity ?
Sabatier depreciates the intellectual element in re-
ligion in comparison with the indestructible essence,
yet he himself makes religion originate in the flash-
ing in on man's mind of the consciousness that it is
1 P. 334 (E. T.).
2 Cf. p. 8 (E. T.).
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 161
a spiritual principle on which he and the universe
depend—that is, he gives idea the lead. And if
each stage of religion has its appropriate intellectual
vesture, and Christianity is the absolute stage, how
can it avoid having its appropriate intellectual vesture
also, which, as is granted above, can only vary within
limits. Dogma in that case is not an absolutely
fluent and variable thing. Then is it the case-and
here the difference becomes vital that religion has
the power of unfolding all forms, up even to the
highest, from its bosom by inherent laws of develop-
ment? For it does not alter the character of the
development to say that God is immanent in it—as,
indeed, He is in everything: in the act of thinking,
or breathing, or lifting the arm-in a sense, even
in the act of will by which a man sins. The
old scholastic doctrine of the concursus recognised
the immanence in all these acts quite as effectually
as Sabatier does. Especially, we ask, Does immanent,
non-miraculous development suffice to explain the
religion of the Bible, and especially of Christianity?
Is it an adequate "apologetic" to recognise Jesus as
the last term and crown of a process of universal
religious evolution? We trow not. One thing more
we must notice, namely, that while Sabatier has
much to say of the necessary persistence and sure
evolution of religion, he has hardly a word for the
glaring and awful fact of ir-religion. Is it the case
that in the true sense of the word men are inevitably
and universally religious? Religious susceptibilities
L
162 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
they have, but is there not the possibility of choking
these by a life of worldliness and sin-nay, of develop-
ing a positive hate and defiance of God? It is surely
remarkable that in a book professing to treat of
Christianity next to no account is taken of sin or of
God's relation to it. Nor does Sabatier mend the
matter when, in a Preface replying to criticisms, he
boldly avows that sin is a necessity for man by his
creation; accepts determinism. It is due to Prof.
Ménégoz to say that on this point he has a much
more positive utterance to give.¹
The key to Sabatier's theory is to be found, as in-
dicated above, in the continuous struggle in his nature
between heart and reason-between religious need
and the claim upon his intellect of a scientific view
of the world. The ruling conception in the latter he
finds to be that of unbroken evolution; at this shrine,
accordingly, he is content to sacrifice the distinctively
supernatural in history and religion, substituting for
it the idea of an immanent action of God in nature
and the spirit of man. But he does not really solve
the problem with which he set out, of effecting a
reconciliation between Christianity and reigning
scientific conceptions. This is manifest both on the
religious and on the scientific side. On the religious
1 In a review of Sabatier's volume, Prof. Ménégoz says: "In
what respects the foundation, my reserve relates to what I
regard as the too slight place (le rôle trop effacé) given to sin in
the genesis of religion. Man has not only to contend with nature
that threatens to crush him, but with God Himself who condemns
the sinner" (ut supra, p. 234).
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 163
side, it is essential to his theory, not only that
man should know himself dependent on a spiritual
principle immanent in all things, but that he should
cognise this principle as a loving, gracious Father,
with whom he can stand in relations of perfect trust
and fellowship, to whom he can pray, and who
responds to his prayer with needed help and blessing.
But not to speak of the impossibility of arriving on
a natural basis at the knowledge and certainty requisite
for such a relation, it must be pointed out that all
this spiritual rapport - this supernatural transacting
in giving and receiving between the soul and a loving
Heavenly Father-is as effectually excluded by the
rigid scientific view of the world, and as inharmonious
with it, as were the old ideas of revelation and in-
spiration. On the scientific side, again, while Sabatier
doubtless believes himself to be taking over in its
integrity the modern doctrine of evolution, it is
certain that he does not do so. His evolution theory
is not that of Darwin, or Huxley, or Spencer, or
Haeckel, who evolve the higher by natural laws from
forces inherent in the lower; but a theory which
places the living God in the heart of nature as the
force impelling its whole upward and onward move-
ment, and imparting to it in its ascent higher and
richer potencies. "At each step," we hear him say-
ing, "Nature surpasses itself by a mysterious creation
that resembles a true miracle in relation to an
inferior stage. What, then, shall we conclude from
these observations, except that in nature there is a
164 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
hidden force, an immeasurable 'potential energy,' an
ever-open, never exhausted fount of apparitions, at
once magnificent and unexpected." 1 On this hypo-
thesis, in fact, the antithesis between "special
creation" and "evolution" tends to disappear; what are
virtually special creations-new apparitions—are taken
up into evolution as phases of it. Sabatier draws from
his theory the conclusion that miracles do not occur
in history. Other representatives of the new theology,
e.g., Dr Lyman Abbott, see more logically that on this
hypothesis the door is open for any number of miracles.
There is no a priori reason why the Power continually
manifesting itself in usual ways should not, if need
arises, manifest itself in unusual ways.2 The concep-
tion is a sound one; but it is certainly as foreign to
the thorough-going scientific view of nature to which
we are asked to become reconciled, as was the older
view of a "redemptive activity" of God in history
which Sabatier abandoned for its sake. Neither
Sabatier nor Ménégoz admits any action of God out-
side of natural law, yet their theories are surcharged
with elements that can find no justification within
a purely natural scheme.
It is now time to return to that peculiar view
of the relation of religion to dogma 3 which has
1 P. 84 (E. T.).
2 Theology of an Evolutionist, p. 141.
3 Sabatier uses this word in the sense of a doctrine stamped
by church authority, and enforced as law, but his theory
really applies to all doctrine, whether "dogma" in this nar-
rower sense or not. Ménégoz speaks commonly of "beliefs "
(croyances).
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 165
procured for the theology of this school its uncouth
designation"Symbolo - Fidéisme." Of the two
ideas combined in this title, Sabatier stands sponsor
for the one, Ménégoz for the other.¹ Sabatier
develops the notion that our religious conceptions
are always and only symbols; Ménégoz lays stress
on the thought that the central religious act of
the soul is faith. By faith, however, in this connec-
tion, he will have us understand only the act of
the soul in turning to God in surrender, with ex-
clusion of every doctrinal or intellectual element.
It is not denied that beliefs may and should
accompany faith; but the saving element is the
faith, which may subsist in independence of beliefs
—even of belief in God and Christ.²
The message
of the Reformation was, "salvation by faith alone,
without works"; the message of Fidéisme to the
modern age is "salvation by faith, independently
of beliefs." 3 This is supposed to be the needed
modern reading of the Pauline doctrine of justifi-
cation by faith. It is paralleled by the contention
of Sabatier, that the essence of religion lies in the
sentiment or movement of the soul laying hold of
1 See note at end of Essay.
2 Ut supra, pp. 47, 48.
³ Ibid., Pref., vi., p. 47, and constantly. A large part of the
book is taken up with rebutting alleged misconceptions of
this principle, as in the form sometimes given to it, that
faith is independent of beliefs. Yet at bottom it is difficult
to see what else the principle can mean. No one denies that
knowledge alone does not save, but only as it is accompanied
by faith of the heart.
166 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
God in prayer, while the idea which springs from
this sentiment, and forms its imaginative envelope,
is secondary. It is surely apparent that there is
here an attempt to separate elements which are in-
separable in fact. The stranger thing is that, holding
this view of the secondary and non-essential char-
acter of doctrine or dogma, these writers should insist
so strongly as they do on the legitimacy, and even
necessity, of dogma. Religion, the inner sentiment,
must give itself some outward clothing or embodi-
ment in idea this we can understand. But
Sabatier goes much further, and insists, as we have
seen, that the Church must not only have doctrines,
but have "dogmas," which are forms of doctrine
imposed by authority.¹ But if dogmas are, as
alleged, at best symbols; if they do not enter into
the essence of religion; if they are in constant flux,
and are incapable of enduring; why, in the name
of all that is rational, should any right be recognised
in the Church to adopt or impose them ? Why
should not each believer be left in entire liberty
to frame such symbols of his faith as may please
himself? With all his skill, it is difficult for
Sabatier here to avoid falling into contradictions.
If in one breath he declares it to be "perfectly ir-
rational to talk of a religion without dogma and
without worship," and "proclaims the necessity for
a Church of formulating its faith into a doctrine”; 2
in the next he says, "We simply say that there is
1 See above, p. 164.
2 P. 250 (E. T.).
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 167
nothing absolute in them, nothing that may be im-
posed by authority on Christian thought." 1 Yet
his very definition of dogma implies "an element
of authority.' "Dogma is a doctrine of which the
Church has made a law." 2
""
That dogma in itself—i.e., as pure intellectual
formulation—has no saving virtue, every one will
admit. Whether, on the other hand, the Church has
a right to define its faith, and to require assent to
at least its fundamental doctrines, as a condition of
communion, is a question that will be differently
answered according to the reply given to a prior
question-Has the Church a faith to define? On
the theory of perpetual "flux" and unlimited "trans-
formality" of dogma, it seems plain it has not. No
Church ever did, or would, frame "dogmas," except
on the assumption that it possessed a measure of
abiding truth, for which it was called upon to bear
witness. We have seen, however, that, when brought
to the point, Sabatier does not carry out his theory
to its logical consequences, but concedes that there
is a content in Christianity which does not vary;
therefore that there are limits, difficult to define,
but precise and fixed, to the variability of its dogmas.
Ménégoz would say the same. The Christianity which
these writers would leave us may be meagre enough.
Ménégoz gives a re-statement of certain Christian
doctrines. Even in Jesus he can see no more than
"the manifestation, the most pure and complete, of
1 P. 252 (E. T.).
2 P. 230 (E. T.).
168 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
1
the conscience of humanity." But an important
principle is affirmed when it is declared that Chris-
tianity has some doctrine of God, man, and salvation
which does not vary. Whatever the essential con-
tent of Christianity, it must always be the business.
of the Church to seek it out, and give it the purest
and most adequate expression of which it is capable.
In this labour, if there is an element that varies
with time and place, there is also something that
can be relied on to abide.
More serious results follow from the other element
in this "Symbolo-Fidéisme" theory, to which we now
turn-the view, viz., that all doctrine is simply
"symbol." To gain light on this, it is necessary to
give attention to Sabatier's theory of knowledge,
postponed, as we saw, till near the end of his
volume. Had the theory of knowledge stood at the
beginning instead of at the end of his exposition,
as even Ménégoz thinks it should,2 it is probable
that it would have led readers to be more cautious
in the acceptance of certain of his positions. For
what is the theory? It is, in a word, the Kantian
doctrine that the mind knows only the world of
phenomena under the forms and categories which
itself supplies. The supersensible it cannot know,
but can only represent to itself in symbol. It was
before explained how the mind strikes out the idea
of God under the pressure of its practical necessities.
It is now shown that this idea, subjective in origin,
2 Ut supra, p. 234,
1 Ut supra, p. 46.
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 169
is likewise symbolical in form. In Ritschlian
parlance, it is not a judgment of existence, but a
judgment of estimation-of value.¹ And the judg-
ment is symbolic. The author must speak for him-
self on this subject. "The reason," he says, "is easy
to discover. The object of religion is transcendent,
it is not a phenomenon. Now, in order to express
that object our imagination has nothing at its dis-
posal but phenomenal images, and our understand-
ing logical categories, which do not go beyond space
and time. Religious knowledge is therefore obliged
to express the invisible by the visible, the eternal
by the temporal, spiritual realities by sensible
images. It can only speak in parables. The theory
of religious knowledge requires for its completion a
theory of symbols and symbolism. It would be an
illusion to believe that a religious symbol represents
God in Himself, and that its value therefore depends
on the exactitude with which it represents Him.
The true content of the symbol is entirely subjec-
tive; it is the conscious relation of the subject to
1 Ménégoz dissents from this formula of Sabatier, but only
to the extent of substituting 66 essence" for "existence."-La
Théologie de l'Epitre aux Hebreux, p. 129. The Ritschlian
affinity of the French school is affirmed by Ménégoz in the
following terms:-"Observe what is happening in Germany.
One after another the Faculties of Theology are separating
themselves from the old theology and the old rationalism, and
are entering, with shades of difference, into the theological
movement to which Ritschl has given his name, the doctrines
of which, while not to be confounded with ours, yet approach
them on the chief points."-Pub. Div., p. 236,
-
170 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
God, or rather it is the way he feels himself
affected by God.” 1
It will probably be felt that, taken in connection
with the general theory, these are very far-reaching
assertions. In light of them, the doctrine as a
whole may be thus summed up: that while ideas.
are indispensable to religion, and must be allowed
to vary as higher and lower, the highest as well as
the lowest are only imaginative envelopes or vestures
of religious feeling, have no independent value as
knowledge, are fleeting, and, as under the laws of
evolution, in constant process of transformation. In
its application to Christianity the theory teaches,
that, even in their best and purest form, the
religious ideas we possess are but symbols of the
invisible-more truly, of the unknowable. For that
of which we have no knowledge save through the
dim symbols our minds may form in gratification of
some aspiration, is not, in the real sense of the
word, "known" at all. We have no means of com-
paring the symbol evolved from our subjective need
with the reality, or of testing how far they corre-
spond.
In forming a judgment on a theory so startling, it
is important that we should, at the outset, recognise
the element of truth which it contains. For it has
undeniably its element of truth. It is the case that
a large symbolical factor enters, and must enter,
into our knowledge of God and of divine things.
1 ¹Pp. 323-27 (E. T.)
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 171
This follows from the circumstance that we are
dealing with an infinite Being, whose nature, attri-
butes, and modes of operation we can only represent
to ourselves by the help of analogies drawn from our
own consciousness and experience.
There is no
absolute knowledge of God no pure Begriff, such
as Hegel speaks of. The element of Vorstellung
cleaves to all our thoughts. For the same reason, it is
to be conceded that, within certain limits, our
religious conceptions are liable to growth, change,
purification, enlargement — it may be, degeneration.
But this is only one side of the matter.
The error
of the symbolic theory does not lie in its affirming
that our knowledge of God, and of divine and spiritual
things, is necessarily largely symbolical. It lies in its
affirming that all our knowledge is of this sort; that
there is nothing in our knowledge of God that is not
symbol. This is a proposition which cannot be sus-
tained. It brings us back to the old doctrine of
"regulative truths," and really amounts to the
affirmation, that God in Himself is unknowable.
Against it, it must be contended that we may have
-in the Christian religion do have a knowledge
of God which in its central and essential part is
true, in the sense of agreeing with reality. A sym-
bolical element enters into all our knowledge, but the
thought that lies at the heart of our conception-which
forms the kernel of it-is not symbol, but stands for
a perfectly clear idea, of the truth of which we are
convinced. Take, for example, the proposition-
172 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
"God knows all things." It is plain that of the mode
of God's knowing I can only form a symbolical and
inadequate conception. How God knows, the manner
of His knowing, is beyond my comprehension. But
this necessity of employing symbol, analogy, figure, to
set forth the mode of God's knowing, does not cast
the least doubt on the central point in the assertion-
that God does know; or deprive me of the power of
making a perfectly clear and intelligible affirmation
on that head. I understand precisely what I mean
when I say that God is not unconscious, that He has
intelligence, that He holds in His mind a perfect
knowledge of all that is, that all things are naked
and open before Him. It is not different with the
other assertions I may make about God-for instance,
that He is love. Here also there is room and need for
symbol; but the central assertion itself is free from
ambiguity and figure. Nor is it merely a relative
conception; for here, if anywhere, I touch absolute-
ness; this is what God in His very essence is.
+
It is not the case, therefore, that all our know-
ledge of God is to be resolved into mere symbol,
or is necessarily fluctuating and changing. Through
and behind the symbol shines the reality which the
mind truly apprehends. The kernel of the truth
we may feel that we securely grasp. Much depends
on this distinction. To say with Sabatier that the
object of religion is in Himself unknowable; that
the content of the symbol is entirely subjective;
that the judgment we form regarding God is not
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 173
(<
one of existence, but only of estimation; that it is
not God Himself, but the relation of the subject
to God, or rather the way in which the subject
feels himself affected by God, in a word, to affirm,
in this sense, the thorough-going subjectivity
of religious knowledge,"-is, as already said, to take
the ground from religious knowledge altogether.
All we can ever reach is imaginative symbol,
subjective in colouring, changing with the changing
years. Religion could never subsist on such a
basis as that. Jesus teaches us, for instance, that
God is our Heavenly Father. That is a truth of
infinite value, if only we can rely on it. But if
this is only a symbol, first in Christ's consciousness,
then in ours, to represent we know not really what,
-if Fatherhood is only our human way of symbol-
ising the ultimate Power in the universe, whose real
nature we can never ascertain, we are in very
different case. Happily religion is not left in this
helpless condition. “We know what we worship." "" 1
How much or how little our knowledge of God will
include in other words, what material exists for
doctrine-depends on the content of the revelation.
On the Sabatier - Ménégoz theory of Jesus and His
religion, that knowledge is perhaps small; on a wider
view of what God has discovered of Himself in His
providence and grace, and to the fathers through
the prophets, till the consummation of His revelation
in the Son, it may include a great deal.
1 John iv. 22.
174 THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
ADDITIONAL NOTE
I
Symbolo - Fidéisme. The following passage, from a
review by Ménégoz of Sabatier's book, may throw
further light on the sense in which this title is
employed. The review is headed "A Theological
Event," and is included in the Publications
Diverses (pp. 227 ff.):-"For nearly twenty years
I have wrought with M. Sabatier in our Faculty,
and have lived in contact with his thought.
have watched his development; he has watched
mine; we have progressed together. Though starting
from different points of view, we have met. My
Lutheran education had placed me on the soil of the
material principle of Protestantism, at the heart of
the dogma of justification by faith, and I have
ended with the doctrine of salvation by faith,
independently of beliefs, to which I have given
the name of Fidéisme. By his Reformed education,
my colleague found himself placed on a soil where
the formal principle of Protestantism was accentu-
ated; the questions which have occupied him are
those of authority, of method, of the principles of
religious knowledge; and, having come to recognise
the essential difference between the religious sub-
stance of the Christian faith and its form, wholly
THE PARISIAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 175
contingent and symbolical, he has concluded with
what he has called Critical Symbolism. Thus the
formal principle and the material principle of
Protestantism are harmonised in Symbolo-Fidéisme”
(p. 228).
DR MCGIFFERT ON APOSTOLIC
CHRISTIANITY
M
VIII
DR MCGIFFERT ON APOSTOLIC CHRIS-
TIANITY¹
WE confess to no little disappointment with this
new book of Dr McGiffert's. The author had pre-
viously given us an edition of the Ecclesiastical
History of Eusebius for which we were justly grate-
ful. The scholarship, acumen, and good sense dis-
played in that valuable work gave hope of a handling
of the phenomena of the apostolic age which would
mark a true advance in our knowledge. In his more
recent Inaugural Address Prof. McGiffert showed that
he had come under the influence of the newer Har-
nackian ideas to an extent which awakened some
apprehensions. But we were certainly not prepared
for so radical and revolutionary a production as this
1 A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, by Arthur
Cushman McGiffert, Ph.D., D.D., Washburn Professor of Church
History in the Union Theological Seminary, New York. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897, $2.50 net; Edinburgh :
T. & T. Clark.
The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, April 1898. [See note
in Preface.]
179
180
DR MCGIFFERT ON
new volume of “The International Theological Library"
proves to be. Dr McGiffert says in his Preface that
his aim throughout "has been positive, not negative,
constructive, not destructive." We fully believe it;
but his work is destructive all the same-destructive
of most received notions on the subjects he is treat-
ing of—and his construction is of a sort which will
cause many not over-conservative people to shake
their heads. Had the work come from the study
of one of the German theologians Dr McGiffert loves
so much to quote, there would have been little occasion
to marvel at its contents. But the views it propounds
are surprising as coming from a sober professor of a
Presbyterian seminary in America-above all from
the successor of the lamented Dr Schaff. Their
publication is, however, a distinct sign of the times.
They are a reflection of the new learning on the
continent of Europe. It is characteristic of this
volume that references to the old writers and
authorities—especially in English are discarded,
and that the pages bristle with references to newer
men like Harnack, Weizsäcker, Schürer, Wendt,
Jülicher, Holtzmann, Spitta, etc. The chief English
writers referred to are Ramsay, Briggs, Bruce-
occasionally Lightfoot. And the volume is a sign of
the new drift and tendency of theology among our-
selves. It represents a phase or trend in theology
which the churches may be sure that they will
have soon to reckon with. We hear occasionally of
movements for the revision of the Confession. But
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
181
if Dr McGiffert is right, the only proper thing to do
is to revise the Confession off the face of the earth.
There is no longer any basis left for its characteristic
doctrines-the bulk of them, in fact, are shown to
be far aside from the Gospel, if not a positive travesty
of it. The new treatment does not simply modify
our existing conceptions-it knocks the bottom out
of them.
We can fancy, however, that Dr McGiffert will
not be greatly moved by any dangers that may
threaten the traditional orthodoxy as a result of his
inquiries. Nor is there any use complaining of his
freedoms. The main question after all is, Are his
views true? If they are, the Church must shift for
itself as best it can. Only, it is a fair demand that
before it is asked to haul down its flag, it should
have very strong and conclusive reasons furnished
to it. Does Dr McGiffert afford us these? Our
belief is he does not. There are various questions
here. One is, What is the picture of the apostolic
age furnished by the sources, and does Dr McGiffert's
picture answer to that? This we believe must be
answered in the negative. The picture of the sources.
we think we can understand. There is a clearness
and consistency about it. But Dr McGiffert's picture
we cannot understand. To our mind it lacks veri-
similitude; it lacks coherence with itself; above all,
we hold it is not true to its professed basis. It is
only made good by setting aside piecemeal the natural
testimony of the records, and substituting for it
182
DR MCGIFFERT ON
arbitrary hypotheses of the author's own. A second
question would be, Is the picture of the sources
historical? Does it, with reasonable or substantial
accuracy (we shall for argumentative purposes ask
no more), represent the course of events? We claim
that it does; and if it does, Dr McGiffert's theory,
so far as it falls asunder from it, must be condemned.
And a third question is, What is the value of this
picture to us? What view of Jesus, or of His work,
or of His Gospel, or of apostolic teaching on these
subjects, does it afford on which humanity may rely
as truth for itself? We do not want simply to know
what men-even apostles, or the early Church-
thought or believed about Christ. We want to know
really who or what Christ is, what He has done for
men, and whether the beliefs entertained by apostles
and early believers were true and valid for the ages.
We want, in short, firm footing on which we ourselves
can stand-not quagmire. And the question is,
whether Dr McGiffert's representations give us such
ground.
While speaking thus plainly, we desire to say that
we do not for a moment question the great ability
displayed in Dr McGiffert's work, or deny that the
reading of it may prove stimulating and suggestive.
The same may be said of very many works
Baur's or Weizsäcker's-from whose general views we
decidedly dissent. Compared with some continental
treatises, Dr McGiffert's book may even boast to be
in some measure conservative. The author claims in
as
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
183
his Preface, e.g., to be moderately conservative in
relation to the sources. He is at one with Harnack,
he says, “in the conviction that 2 Peter is the only
really pseudonymous work in the New Testament,”
and "in the treatment of the Book of Acts as based in
the main upon trustworthy sources." The Pauline
epistles are accepted as genuine,¹ with the exception
of the Pastoral epistles, and even these are regarded
as based on genuine Pauline letters. Mark is a genuine
gospel of that writer, and Matthew's Gospel is founded
on Logia of the apostle. Luke's Gospel and the Book
of Acts, on the other hand, though generally quoted
as "Luke," are not by Paul's companion, but originate
late in the century-the Book of Acts probably in
the reign of Domitian. The "we" passages are pos-
sibly, but not certainly, by Luke. It is to be observed,
further, that while "pseudonymity" is disclaimed for
the epistles of James and 1 Peter, these are not
regarded as writings of the authors to whom they are
commonly assigned. They are later productions, and
the names of James and Peter are probably interpola-
tions. These and other critical dicta will be glanced at
after: we are more concerned at present with the use
the author makes of his sources even as described by
himself. This we shall find to be sufficiently arbitrary.
For the rest, the plan of the book is good, and the
working out of the details, whatever we may think of
1 This is so, even though Rom. xvi. is regarded as an epistle
to Ephesus and 2 Cor. x.-xiii. as the lost third epistle to the
Corinthians.
184
DR MCGIFFERT ON
The body or
the results, is painstaking and full.
central part of the book-about half of the whole-is
occupied with the Christianity and labours and journey-
ings of the apostle Paul-and so far as this can be
detached from the general view of the apostle's gospel
which underlies it, it is often informatory and sug-
gestive-transports us, at least, into the midst of the
most recent discussions on the subject, those, e.g., of
Prof. Ramsay.¹ The book has thus its literary,
historical, and theological merits, which we would not
seek to minimise. When, however, we come to deal
with the fundamental theories and methods of the
volume, and with its general outcome as a picture of
the Church in the apostolic age, we are compelled to
separate ourselves from it almost in toto.
An edifice is not stronger than its foundations.
Christianity rests on Christ. What then does Dr
McGiffert think of Christ? To get at his views on
this subject we must begin a little further back. The
first section of the chapter on "The Origin of Christi-
anity"-all too brief for the weight that is afterwards
rested on it is on Judaism. This gives us already
a foretaste of the author's principles of treatment; we
do not, however, delay further on it than to call
attention to one or two points bearing on the after
discussion. In accordance with the tendencies at
present prevailing, the later theological beliefs of
the Jews, like the Levitical law, are represented as
1 Prof. Ramsay has replied on his own behalf in The Expositor
for January 1898.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
185
a
the natural development of the religious conscious-
ness of the people under the influence of their exilian
and post-exilian experiences. Thus arose, e.g., ideas
of individual responsibility, of resurrection and judg-
ment, eschatological views of the kingdom of God—
above all, the expectation of the Messianic King.
"That expectation," we are told, "was not universal,
and did not constitute a part of the original Mes-
sianic hope." (A "Messianic hope" without
"Messiah" surely savours of paradox.) With the
rise of the Levitical law-also a human develop-
ment-a change took place in the idea of righteous-
ness. The purity aimed at was less ethical than
physical: moral principles tended to be lost sight
of "under the pressure of the constant and anxious
care required to maintain ceremonial cleanness and
to restore it when violated"; observance of the law
'led not unnaturally to the substitution of hard
and cold formalism for the heart-service of the
prophets." The result was a further change in the
idea of the covenant, which now was viewed as a
piece of hard bargaining-" the nation bound to
observe the law given by God; God to pay the
promised recompense in proportion to its perform-
ance." 2
Our point is that, so far as appears, the
law was not in reality a "law given by God" at
all; and that the Messianic hopes and ideals rested
as little on any divine revelation, but were concep-
tions evolved by the nation's own. mind in the
2 Pp. 3-5.
(C
1 P. 8.
186
DR MCGIFFERT ON
situation in which it was placed. We might ques-
tion, too, were this the place for it, whether the
prevailing type of piety, i.e., in really religious
circles, was, till the later Pharisaic period, nearly
so legalistic as is here represented. Those who
think with Dr McGiffert have a hard nut to crack
in the existing Psalter, which, on their view, was,
in its bulk, a creation of this very period.¹
The link between the Old Testament and Jesus is
John the Baptist. Here we get further light on Dr
McGiffert's views and methods. His estimate of
John the Baptist varies widely from the common
one, and is distinctly low. We gain from it an
instructive glimpse of what we shall have occasion to
emphasise all through -the arbitrary subjectivism
of his treatment of the sources. By this we mean
the method, learned from his German masters, of
setting aside at pleasure what is told in the records,
and substituting for it some view based on subjective
considerations. This view, accepted as fact, is then
1 Dr McGiffert himself refers in a footnote to Psalms i., xix.,
cxix., as indicative of a higher strain. But is not the whole
Psalter based on a higher key than that which he supposes ?
Where is the predominating zeal for the "Levitical law” or for
ceremonial rites as the expressions of holiness? Would one
gather from the Psalter that there was a Levitical law at all, or
be able to form any idea of its nature? Are not the indications
as slight, to say the least, as in the earlier historical and pro-
phetical books? Should not the critics, in very consistency,
either (1) put the Psalms back to pre-Levitical times; or (2)
make the law still later than the Psalms-bring it down, say, to a
century or two before Christ; or (3) give up the argument that the
absence of allusion means the absence of the existence of the law?
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
187
not infrequently made the basis of further critical
operations. All our Gospels, e.g., represent John as
the divinely prepared forerunner of the Messiah.
In two of the Gospels (Matthew and John, the latter
in a context accepted by Dr McGiffert as genuine),¹
the claim is put into John's own mouth. John's
teaching of the impending appearance of the Mightier
than himself, and of his personal inferiority to Him,
the contrast of his own ineffectual water-baptism with
the Messiah's Spirit-baptism, imply, if words can do
it, the same thing. The distinct declaration by John
of his divine commission, his recognition of Christ
at the baptism, etc.,2 are main features of the narra-
tive. But Dr McGiffert knows better. John did not
claim to be a forerunner of the Messiah; his concep-
tions were not based on any special revelation; nor
had he any personal knowledge of Jesus (the narrative
makes them cousins): he simply voiced the common
Messianic expectations of his time, and his work made
no deep or lasting impression. The later doubt of
John 3 is held sufficient to discredit the narratives of
the Baptist's earlier testimony to Jesus. Very
different, surely, was the estimate of Jesus of His
faithful forerunner and his work.5 But Dr McGiffert
thinks himself warranted in putting all this aside—
nor, to do him justice, do we see how he could have
retained it, and squared it with his after estimate of the
Son of Man Himself.
1 P. 11.
3 Matt. xi. 3-6.
2 John i. 25-34; Matt. iii. 14.
4 P. 11.
5 Matt. xi. 9-15.
188
DR MCGIFFERT ON
For this is to us the central and crucial point in
the judgment to be formed of the book before us
—the estimate it gives of Jesus. Here we come to
foundations. Everything in our conception of
Christianity depends on what we suppose Jesus
Himself to be. And we can only express our
surprise and disappointment at the utterances on
this subject which meet us in the pages of Prof.
McGiffert. Jesus was "a unique, religious Person-
ality"-and Baur, Pfleiderer, Renan, Martineau,
Weizsäcker, would, we suppose, say as much. Given
this fundamental fact, everything else proceeds,
apparently, by psychological evolution. The miracu-
lous birth and the incidents of the infancy are, of
course, passed over, though the story of the visit
to the temple in His twelfth year is accepted-
on what principle of selection it is not easy to see.
By that time the epoch-making conviction" had
already come to Jesus that God was His Father-
not simply the Father of the Jewish nation, but His
own. This "can find its ultimate explanation only
in His own unique religious Personality." He grew
up sharing the Messianic hopes of those about Him.
'There can be little doubt, then, that Jesus, like
so many of His compatriots, including John himself,
was looking for the speedy establishment of the
Messianic kingdom" and "that He should enroll
disciples and receive baptism
Himself among John's
at his hands, was the most natural thing in the
1 P. 16.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
189
world" -the most natural thing in the world that
Jesus should receive a "baptism of repentance"!
It was in connection with this baptism that Jesus
is supposed to have received the first "revelation "
of His own Messiahship—meaning that at this stage
He somehow "reached that conviction." 2 In the
temptation He rejected the false ideals of his
countrymen, but from this time firmly "believed
Himself to be the Messiah of the prophets" (who
did not predict a Messiah), and proclaimed the
approach of the kingdom for which all were looking.³
Yet His conception of the kingdom differed from
the ordinary one in that He viewed it as a present
reality (though also future), and placed the essence
of its blessedness in "the realisation on man's part
of his filial relation to his Father God."4 The
"spirit of sonship" is the supreme condition of
entrance into the kingdom.5 In the beginning of
His ministry "Jesus said nothing of the necessity
of coming into fellowship with Himself," and even
later His "emphasis of faith in or acceptance of
Himself is throughout an emphasis not of His
Personality, but of His message, and thus simply a
reassertion of filial trust in, devotion to, and service
of God, as the essential and sufficient condition of
1 P. 17.
5 Pp. 25, 27.
2 Pp. 17, 22.
Christ said:
3 P. 19.
6
↑ P. 20.
Christ said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven," but nowhere makes "a true
spirit of sonship" the condition of entrance into His kingdom,
This is a blessing within the kingdom,
6 P. 28.
190
DR MCGIFFERT ON
"12
an eternal life of blessedness with God in heaven." 1
In regard to the Jewish law, we are informed, Jesus
took up a strictly conservative attitude. It was to
Him"
a divine law as truly as to any of His
countrymen" (we saw that really it was not so-
at least the Levitical part of it), and "it never seems
to have occurred to Him that the time would yet.
come for its abrogation.' Obedience to it was
included in the duty of sonship, and His complaint
against the Pharisees was that they observed it not
too much, but too little.3 This obedience embraced
the Levitical ritual, but in placing, as He did, the
principle of obedience in love to God and love to
man, He gave emphasis to the moral elements, and
was able to realise a large measure of liberty, even
under the law.* Unless we mistake Dr McGiffert,
Jesus, in this relation to the law, stood on a lower
level than some even of the prophets, who did not
scruple to speak very scathingly of the worthless-
ness of ceremonial rites as a means of pleasing God.
Jesus, at any rate, is conceived to have been a
strict Jew in practice, and not to have contem-
plated any change in the future. The time when
the law should be abolished "did not come during
Jesus' life, and He gave no clear indication that
he expected it ever to come." It is conceded, how-
ever, that "the subsequent history of Christianity
would not have been what it was had not His
1 P. 30.
3 P. 25.
2 Pp. 25, 26.
4 P. 26.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
191
principles made its coming possible." This at least
is something-Jesus made a universalistic Christi-
anity possible.
2
Jesus' own conviction that "He was the one who
had been promised by the prophets and long awaited
by the fathers," he succeeded in imparting to
His followers, and this was the pivot of His
success. His early views did not necessarily include
the foresight of His death. It was not long, how-
ever, before He saw that the hostility of the
authorities must eventuate in His execution. But
this made it inevitable, unless He were to give up
His belief in His own Messiahship, "that He should
think of Himself as coming again to announce the
consummated kingdom, and to fulfil in preparation
therefore the office of Messianic Judge "; and thus, we
are asked to believe, these views took shape in Jesus'
mind. It is also evident that He expected the con-
summation to take place at an early date. In His
discourses on His return to His disciples, He does
not seem to distinguish sharply between His own
coming and that of the Spirit. He had, indeed,
learned before His death to look on that event as
an advantage to His cause, and spoke of it, also, at
the last supper, as a sacrifice for the sealing of the
covenant with his disciples.*
3
We hardly think that Prof. McGiffert can have
realised how inadequate, from the point of view of
1 P. 27.
3 P, 23,
2 P. 32.
4 Pp. 33, 34, 69,
192
DR MCGIFFERT ON
Christian faith, this sketch of Jesus must appear.
To say that it does not rise above a Unitarian view
is very little; for many devout Unitarians have
accepted a great deal more. So far as we can
gather from this sketch, Jesus is a unique religious
genius, whose views were the evolution of His own
thoughts, and took shape from the ideals of His time
in forms which in any other we would not hesitate
to rank as egregious fanaticism. What are we to make
of a young Galilean peasant, however possessed with a
sense of the divine Fatherhood, who, without special
revelation,¹ reaches the conviction that He is the
Messiah of His nation, reads confirmation of this
in prophecies which were never intended to teach
any such doctrine, is zealous for a law of God which
God never gave and was soon, as men's thoughts
widened, to be abolished; then who, when death
was seen to be inevitable, ventured to proclaim
that He would come again on the clouds of heaven
and judge the world? We know that Prof. McGiffert
says in a footnote that a complete picture of Jesus
would contain much at which He has not even
1 The "revelation," or inward illumination, which Dr
McGiffert postulates, is, we must assume, unless he gives us
much stronger reason for a different opinion, not indistinguish-
able from the psychological process which yielded Jesus His
other conclusions. It was assuredly not a revelation of such
a fact as that He-Jesus-was the Messiah promised to the
fathers, for on Dr McGiffert's principles such promises were
never given. It must have been at highest a development from
his "
unique Personality," and was compatible with abundant
error.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
193
hinted.¹ But surely in the briefest sketch we might
expect to have the things brought forward which
he thinks most important—which enter deepest into
his conception of Jesus as the Founder of the Chris-
tian Church. We shall do him the justice of observ-
ing that later in the book he hints at some of these
deeper elements-the consciousness of pre-existence
in Christ, for example 2-but what we urge is that
these elements find no place in the sketch at the
commencement, are, indeed, incongruous with it,
and, if admitted, would revolutionise the whole
picture.
Putting the sketch of Prof. McGiffert's book
alongside the Jesus of the Gospels, we cannot
acknowledge the identity of the portraits. The
Jesus of the Gospels, predicted by the prophets,
announced by the forerunner, supernaturally born,
growing into the consciousness of His unique rela-
tion to God and His vocation to be the world's
Saviour, divinely attested at the baptism, clothed
by the Spirit with superhuman power, in conscious
and real communion with the Father whose will
and purposes are made fully known to Him at
every step, with clearest insight into the nature,
laws, progress, and ultimate issues of the kingdom
He was founding, its supreme Legislator, command-
ing men and summoning them to the loyal follow-
1 P. 1.
2 P. 491. There remains the question of the value to be
attached to these utterances.
N
194
DR MCGIFFERT ON
ing of, and absolute surrender to, Himself, placing
Himself above the law as its Fulfiller and Lord,
forgiving sin, announcing His future advent, promis-
ing to send the Holy Spirit, assuming the functions
of Judge of the world, withal absolutely spotless
and holy in His personal character, "Son of man,"
yet extorting from His disciples the confession that
he is the "Son of God" in some unique and incom-
municable sense, His life steeped in miracle, His
death crowned by resurrection and ascension-there
is a unity, a coherence, a fitness in this picture
which takes away the idea of extravagance, and
prepares us for Pentecost and the apostolic age-
which needs, in fact, the doctrine of the apostolic
Church to explain it. But there is no such sym-
metry or fitness, so far as we can see, in Prof.
McGiffert's very different presentation. We fail
even to get an unequivocal avowal of Christ's com-
plete sinlessness, though, of course, we do not doubt
for an instant that Dr McGiffert believes in this,
as in much else that he has failed to state. We do
wonder, however, that he should labour to make out
that Christ does not from the first give His Person-
ality prominence, and that even in His later teaching
the Personality is subordinate to the message. Even
if there were any failure of this kind in the
synoptics, it is amply supplemented in the dis-
courses in John, the substantial accuracy of which
Dr McGiffert accepts. But in the synoptics, too,
who can fail to see the commanding place Christ's
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
195
Personality holds, e.g., in the Sermon on the Mount
(Matt. v. 11-"for my sake"; vii. 21-23—“Lord,
Lord, . . . I never knew you," etc.), in the "Follow
me" of Matt. viii. 22, in the story of the paralytic,
etc.? And still more are we astonished to find him
picturing Jesus as outbidding the Pharisees in
scrupulous obedience to the details of the Mosaic
law¹ and binding its outward precepts on men's
consciences, when we see everywhere that Jesus,
while rendering present conformity to established
institutions, 2 laid not the slightest stress on cere-
monial or positive precepts, but took up an abso-
lutely lordly and discretionary attitude toward them
(in marriage, meats, the Sabbath, etc.). That One
who saw so clearly the nature of spiritual religion,
and pierced so far into the future of His kingdom
as the parables and discourses show, should have
had no dream of the abrogation of Jewish "com-
mandments and ordinances," is incredible to us, and
would put Jesus, in this vital matter, really behind
His followers Stephen³ and Paul. Why, if outward
ritual entered into His thoughts, is there not one
allusion to it in any part of His teaching on the
righteousness of His Kingdom? It simply drops
from view as absolutely non-essential.
etc.
¹ He sees this in Matt. v. 19, 20, "Except your righteousness,"
2 Cf. Matt. iii. 15.
3 Dr McGiffert does not think that Stephen had this perception
either.
196
DR MCGIFFERT ON
Jesus died, but what about the resurrection ? If
Jesus really rose from the dead, as the apostolic
Church believed, that fact looks back upon His
whole earthly life and claims, and is, as Paul
declares (Rom. i. 4), an emphatic attestation of the
latter. If He really rose, then it is not a thing
incredible that He should have sent the Spirit, as
He promised. A true resurrection does not tally
well with the Christ pictured by Dr McGiffert,
with his subjectively-evolved and possibly mistaken
convictions. On this subject we are left by the
author in much dubiety. That the disciples had
"appearances " of Christ which produced in them
the conviction that he was alive is assumed as
certain; that they were real appearances of the
living Jesus Dr McGiffert seemingly believes; that
they were the appearances recorded in the Gospels
he will not admit. We are not warranted, he
thinks, in supposing that the events took place as
there narrated. The evangelical narratives are dis-
placed, and, with Weizsäcker, a new hypothetical
construction is substituted for them. It does not
seem to us from the general tenor of Dr McGiffert's
volume that he can, or does, admit the actual bodily
resurrection of Jesus from the grave. What takes
the place of the resurrection of the ordinary
Christian faith, is a species of spiritualism, which,
to our mind, is infinitely harder to accept. With
the resurrection goes, of necessity, the recorded
directions of Jesus to His disciples about baptism,
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
197
the preaching of the Gospel to every creature, the
post-resurrection incidents and discourses generally.
This is how the evangelists and early Church-in
narratives circulating orally, if not in written form,
in the lifetime of the apostles and chief persons
interested-conceived of it; but the critics whom
Dr McGiffert follows know better. It is not ques-
tioned, however, that the apostles preached the fact
of the resurrection to multitudes in Jerusalem on
and after Pentecost. What kind of resurrection did
they preach? Was it one of spiritual manifesta-
tions? or a resurrection which left the grave empty
on Easter morning? Who can doubt that it was
the latter? Surely Paul's testimony-and he goes
back expressly on first-hand witness-is conclusive
on this point" was buried, and rose again the
third day."1 Can it be that such a Gospel was
preached by men who had never taken the trouble
to ascertain whether the grave in which their own
eyes had seen their Master put was empty? And
if Christ rose in the body, why should He not
appear in the body, as the witnesses attest? Dr
McGiffert's spiritualistic theories have little force
when brought to the test of actual facts.
We may simply glance, before passing to the early
Church, at what Dr M'Giffert has to say of Baptism
and the Lord's Supper. As respects the former, Matt.
xxviii. 19 with its Trinitarian formula is set aside,
and it is left doubtful whether Jesus ever gave any
1 1 Cor. XV. 4.
198
DR MCGIFFERT ON
direct command to baptize.¹ Yet surely there is an
enormous counter-difficulty in explaining how the
early Church came universally to adopt this rite
without such direction as is affirmed by Matthew
(cf. Mark xvi. 16; also John iii. 5-" born of water
and of the Spirit"). The hypothesis that the disciples
had been in the habit of baptizing in imitation of
John fails of evidence after the early days of the
Judæan ministry-the synoptics never hint at such
a general baptism by the disciples of Jesus. Christian
baptism had also from the first connotations which
John's baptism had not.² The treatment of the
Lord's Supper is, to our thinking, even more arbitrary.
That Jesus ate a last supper with His disciples, and
even spoke of the bread as His body and the wine
as the blood of the covenant, is not doubted; but
it is argued, on the usual subjective grounds, that He
can hardly have intended to institute a commemora-
tive feast, and the narratives that expressly say He
did (Luke, Paul) must, of course, be wrong. The
idea that Jesus was "giving veiled utterance to any
mysterious truth concerning His person and work
i.c., we suppose, declaring the atoning significance
of His death-is rejected. It was Paul, as we learn
from a later chapter, so far as our sources enable
1 P. 61.
That no contradiction was thought to exist between
the Trinitarian formula and the simpler assertion of baptism "in
the name of Jesus" is shown, among other things, by the Didache
which expressly enforces the former (Chap. vii.), yet uses the
latter as synonymous.
3
2 Acts ii. 38.
3 Pp. 68, 69.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
199
us to judge, who first made it a special meal, and
separated from all others," so that "it may be said
in a certain sense that it was established by him."¹
But how wilful and improbable is such a theory!
Dr McGiffert adopts, we venture to think wrongly,
Harnack's date for Paul's conversion, A.D. 31-i.e.,
only a year after the crucifixion. Paul then, who,
from that time, mingled with the Christian circles,
and knew minutely their beliefs and institutions,
gives a detailed account of the institution and mode
of observance of the Lord's Supper which, he says,
he "received" and faithfully "delivered"
delivered" as from
the Lord. But it is of the very essence of Paul's
account, confirmed by Luke, that the Supper was
regarded by the Church as a commemorative ordinance
instituted by Christ, nor (though the precise expres-
sion, "do this in remembrance of me," may not be
used) is there a word in the other accounts that con-
flicts with this, but everything which harmonises
with it. An individual might be in error, but the
whole primitive Church could hardly be mistaken
as to the Lord's design in His parting meal.
With like freedom in the treatment of his sources,
Dr McGiffert proceeds to depict the earliest Christian
1 P. 538. “It is one of the strange paradoxes of history,"
says Dr McGiffert, "that the great apostle of liberty, who did
more than any one else to oppose and destroy the reign of rites
and ceremonies, should yet have laid down principles in relation
both to the services of the church in general, and to the Lord's
Supper in particular, which were essentially formal and stereo-
typing in their effect.”
200
DR MCGIFFERT ON
it.”1
community. It need not be said that the history
of the Book of Acts is considerably revised. The
day of Pentecost, it is acknowledged, "has always
been regarded as of epochal significance" for the
history of the Church, and "Luke himself evidently
so regarded it."1 But our author again knows better.
The Holy Spirit had already been received by Christ's
disciples, and it is a mistake if the author of the
Acts regards the Holy Spirit as "not given till
then." Pentecost was, however, a day of power for
the conversion of others-this was its true signifi-
cance. The effect of the Spirit's presence was
peculiarly seen in the "speaking with tongues"-a
fact which Luke misinterprets as a gift of foreign
tongues,2 but which was in reality "the ecstatic,
frenzied, unintelligible, spiritual speech of which
Paul tells us in the First Epistle to the Corinthians."
One is perplexed by Mr McGiffert's varied ways of
speaking of this supposed descent of the Spirit. Was
it an objective fact, or was it not? Occasionally
from his expressions we might suppose it was; but
these expressions alternate continually with others
1 P. 48.
2 The question is admittedly a difficult one, and we will not
say that Dr McGiffert is wrong in his understanding of the nature
of the "tongues." But what, it may be asked, would suggest to
one familiar with the ordinary gift of tongues in the early Church
the representation of this particular case as a speaking in the
languages of the assembled peoples, if really it were not? Is
this telepathic power of entering into the speech and con-
sciousness of others in exalted frames of mind altogether without
analogy?
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
201
" 1
::
which throw the matter back upon subjective con-
victions. "The speaker was supposed to be com-
pletely under the control
the control of the Spirit"-" his
ecstatic utterances, inspired, as it was believed, by
the Holy Ghost"-"in possession of the Spirit, as
they all believed themselves to be"
" such
mysterious phenomena were uniformly attributed
to the Spirit, and in them was found the guarantee
of his activity." In this atmosphere, we are told
later, "soberness and self-restraint were at a discount,
and uncontrolled enthusiasm, ecstacy and spiritual
abandonment seemed the natural expression of the
Christian life," so that "these manifestations of the
Spirit doubtless had much to do with the reputation
for folly and fanaticism which very commonly
attached to the Christians in the community in
which they lived." 2 Are we then warranted in
regarding such manifestations as a a work of the
Spirit of God at all, or does Dr McGiffert really so
regard them-save as all religious fanaticism and
extravagance may be described as the outcome of
spiritual enthusiasm? Yet this, we are told, was
the peculiar evidence adduced by Peter and others
of the fact of the resurrection. "Apologetics"-
an apology, we should fancy, of little modern worth
"was the imperative need of the hour. the
emphasis was changed from the Gospel itself to the
evidence for its truth. . . . Not the Fatherhood of
God, but the Messiahship of Jesus, formed the
1 Pp. 50, 51, 518, 520, etc.
2 P. 519.
202
DR MCGIFFERT ON
(C
2
burden of the preaching of the apostles, and so the
Master's estimate of values was reversed.” 1 Other
startling things are said of this early preaching, as
that, e.g., so long as the Messiahship of Jesus was
true, His character and nature were a matter of
comparative indifference." Most astonishing of all
is the declaration that Peter's sermon involved no
rebuke of the self-righteousness of his country-
men"; was not "intended to assert that every man
is a sinner, and that repentance is a universal pre-
condition of enjoying God's favour"; and that His
words "leave room for the theory, which was wide-
spread, at least in Pharisaic circles, that it is possible
for a man to keep the law of God and thereby to
secure through his own efforts the favour and bless-
ing of the Almighty."3 Peter, in short, was a legalist;
and this stands in connection with the theory that
the believers of the early Jerusalem Church were,
as Baur held, Jews of the strictest type-zealots for
the law, and, like their Master, incapable of con-
ceiving of its abrogation. That the early Christians
were Jews, and continued to the end of their days
in the observance of Jewish customs-though not
as a means of obtaining salvation-that, further,
they only gradually came to the knowledge that
the law was abolished for any-lies on the surface
of the narrative: but he will have a strangely con-
stituted mind who can read into the discourses of
the Book of Acts the absolutely unevangelical senti-
1 P. 54.
2 P. 54,
3 P. 59.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
203
ments which Dr McGiffert sees in them.¹ The upshot
of his view is that the true representatives of the
primitive believers were the later Ebionites
position, we believe, utterly unhistorical.²
3
a
It is impossible to follow in anything like detail
the further representations of the early Church given
us in Dr McGiffert's pages. We observe that he
contends that the apostles held "no official position"
in the Church of Jerusalem; nay, "there exists no
proof that they held any official position in the
Church at large, or that they were supposed in these
early days to have been entrusted with any kind
of authority over it." It constitutes no proof that,
as is admitted, "the author of the Book of Acts had
another conception of the significance of the twelve
apostles"-thought of them, in fact, as an apostolic
college, as exercising government, as heads of the
Church at large; and that Paul apparently had the
same view, enhancing, by his emphasis on his
equality with the twelve, "not only his own dignity
and authority, but theirs as well." This does not
suit Dr McGiffert's reading of the facts, and so must.
be set aside. We fear much in the Gospels will
4
1 It is no wonder that Dr McGiffert has to set aside the epistles
of James and Peter as not by these writers.
2 Dr McGiffert does not seem to take account of that other
strain in early Jewish Christianity represented by the Nazarenes,
who were tolerant in their views of the law, friendly to Paul, and
more nearly, though still imperfectly, represented the Jerusalem
community.
3 P. 46; cf. p. 650.
4 P. 47.
204
DR MCGIFFERT ON
require to be set aside also-the delegating by Jesus
to the apostles of authority in His kingdom (the
keys, binding and loosing), the sitting on the twelve
thrones judging the tribes of Israel, the post-resurrec-
tion commissions, etc. Paul will have to lay aside
his "rod";¹ will have to lay aside also his right to
exhort his emissaries to the firm assertion of their
authority when necessary (Timothy, Titus). It is
characteristic that this hypothesis of the non-official
standing of the apostles is subsequently made the
ground of rejecting the narratives of the gift of the
Spirit by the laying on of hands, etc.³
2
Omitting other matters, as the view taken of
Stephen's "blasphemy," we hasten to glance at the
author's picture of Paul and his theology. This, as
formerly remarked, is the principal part of the book,
and in the historical sections contains much that is
suggestive. Yet the whole is marred, in our judg-
ment, by its fatally defective fundamental view,
and the prevailing arbitrariness of treatment. The
extraordinary perhaps supernatural character of
Paul's conversion is indeed emphasised. "Paul
therefore believed that at a particular period in his
life the risen Christ appeared to him, and to that
appearance he owed his Christian faith." But this
1 1 Cor. iv. 21; cf. xi. 34; 2 Cor. x. 8, 11; xiii. 10, etc.
2 We remember that Dr McGiffert does not accept the Pastoral
epistles in their present form. He ingeniously argues that the
apostles (in the usual conception) are rather successors of the
bishops, than the bishops successors of the apostles (p. 97).
4 P. 121.
3 Pp. 97, 100.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
205
risen Christ was, to Paul's view, a spirit, not a
being of flesh and blood (it is, however, to depart
from the whole analogy of Paul's teaching to
suppose that Christ's appearance was not in a body,
albeit a glorified one-the very body that had risen
from the grave). Paul at once recognised this spirit
appearing to him as the risen Jesus, and gained
from his vision the convictions (1) that Jesus was
the Messiah; (2) "That such continued spiritual
existence presupposed a life of absolute holiness on
the part of Jesus" (Paul's conviction of Christ's
sinlessness is thus made an inference from his
Damascus vision); and (3) "that he must have
been nothing less than a heavenly being, endowed
with the Spirit of God." He was thus led to the
belief, not altogether unknown among the Jews of
his time, "that the Messiah belonged to a higher
order of being than man, that He had an existence
in heaven before His appearance on earth, and that
He was to be sent down thence by God to fulfil his
Messianic calling." 2 Here then is the basis of the
more supernatural part of Paul's theology, and the
reader may judge of its adequacy for himself. But
Paul's theology, we are instructed, had a deeper
root-his own consciousness of the inner conflict of
flesh and spirit. Paul's view was dualistic. The
flesh, or evil nature, is incurably corrupt, and must
die; the personality is drawn into slavery to the
flesh and participates in its sinfulness. Hence the
¹ Pp. 126, 127.
2 P. 127.
206
DR MCGIFFERT ON
terrible struggle between
between Paul
"as
a conscious
What, in Paul's
forgiveness, but
person, knowing and approving the good, and his
human nature or flesh with its inherent corruption;
a struggle which results in his continual defeat."1
What now is salvation ? Here we come to Dr
McGiffert's characteristic positions.
view, the sinner needs, is not
deliverance; deliverance, not from the penalty of
sin, but from the source of sin. The flesh, or evil
nature, must die-that is the necessary fruit of its
corruption; and the only way to escape from this
death is to escape from the flesh itself. How is this
escape to be accomplished? Paul gained the secret
in his Damascus vision. Jesus had died in the
flesh, but through the stronger power of holiness
within Him, was now living the life of a glorified
spirit. But why had Jesus-a superhuman being
-done all this? The only answer possible to Paul
was that He had done it "to free others from the
burden of sin and death, and to give them that
life with God which he himself enjoyed.' " 3 The
efficacy of Christ in salvation, therefore, lies in His
power to impart this new life: the person united
with Christ has a new nature;
new nature; "His personality
has received a new content-Spirit in place of
flesh." 4
"It is not so much forgiveness, as a new
life; not so much pardon for the old, as release
from it that is needed, and that is secured, accord-
1 P. 125.
3 P. 127.
2 Pp. 126, 127.
4 P. 133.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
207
1
a
ing to Paul, when a man dies with Christ unto
the flesh, and rises with Him in the Spirit." In
this light Dr McGiffert re-reads the Pauline doctrine
of justification. The believer is free from the law,
"not because the law has exacted its full penalty-
the law exacts no penalty-but simply because it
can sustain no relation to one who has ceased to
exist."2 Justification is not to be interpreted foren-
sically, but vitally; and the righteousness of God
which the believer receives is the actual divine
righteousness or righteous nature which man receives
from God when he receives God's Spirit' "3
"righteousness not imputed, but imparted to man.
The difficulty remains that, as is admitted, Paul does
use forensic terms, speaks of imputation, etc., but it
is held that "to regard such expressions as forma-
tive in Paul's thinking and to read his conception.
of salvation in their light, is to misinterpret him."5
Forgiveness is not prominent in his writings; save
in Ephesians and Colossians, it is only once ex-
plicitly referred to. So far is this carried that we
are actually asked to reject Acts xiii. 38, 39-
"Every one that believeth is justified from all
things," etc., as not sufficiently Pauline.7
"' 4
A great deal of the above requires perhaps little
comment. It conflicts too absolutely with well-
1 P. 133.
2 P. 139.
3 The view reminds of Osiander's, but Osiander had other
elements.
4 P. 143.
6 P. 144.
6 Rom. iv. 7.
7 P. 186.
•
208
DR MCGIFFERT ON
established exegetical results as to Pauline usage to
need formal refutation. The one thing clear about
it is that it subverts the ordinary Reformation
doctrine of justification-leaves no place in consist-
ency for even forgiveness of sins-and substitutes.
for Christ in His atoning righteousness as our hope.
and standing-ground before God the doctrine of
salvation through the impartation of a new divine
life. The root of the whole matter lies, we take it,
in the false dualism which Dr McGiffert-again
following German leading-imports into Paul. The
apostle teaches no such doctrine of realistic dual-
ism as our author attributes to him. The "flesh"
is not with Paul a term identical with "human
nature," in the sense that human nature in its
whole substance- mental and bodily-is incapable of
redemption and sanctification. Originally good, it is
in its entirety the object of Christ's redeeming
work. The renewed man, accordingly, carries with
him into the new life all his original faculties and
powers is the same man in every respect as before
-only he is delivered from sin's dominion, and
lives unto God through the power of the Spirit
given to him. Even Dr McGiffert cannot ignore
the passages in which the apostle exhorts Christians
to use their members as instruments of righteous-
ness, as formerly they had used them in the service
of sin. 1 It is in fact their bodies they are to
present to God as "living sacrifices." 2
This single
1 ¹ Pp. 136, 137.
2 Rom. xii. 1.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
209
fact shows the baselessness of Dr McGiffert's con-
tention; just as his argument about the body on
p. 134 is wrecked on such a passage as Rom. viii.
11—“shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his
Spirit that dwelleth in you." The personality is
identical throughout, the subject of sin and con-
demnation in the old life, of forgiveness and
renewal in the new; needing justification; find-
ing both in Christ, sin's Atoner, and the Giver
of the Spirit (in Dr McGiffert's version of the
Pauline theology, Christ is the Spirit; the two are
identical).
Paul's theology is represented by Dr McGiffert as
so peculiarly the evolution of his own experience
that it is difficult to bring it into any line with the
positive teaching of Jesus, and equally with the
theology of the other sections of the Church. Yet
nothing is clearer than that in proclaiming Christ's
death for our sins, and His resurrection for our
justification, Paul believed himself to be preaching
only the Gospel currently received. So with his
views of the Person of Christ, in regard to which
he constantly assumes that his readers' estimate of
the Lord's Person is the same as his own. His
doctrine and theirs is one. One thing is gratifying
in this book, viz., the positive ground Dr McGiffert
takes up on the genuineness of the Pauline epistles
(excepting the Pastorals), and his cogent argument
to show that the theology of the later epistles in no
way conflicts with that of the earlier. One staggers,
O
210
DR MCGIFFERT ON
2
however, at his placing Galatians before 1 and 2
Thessalonians, and at the separation of it from
Romans,¹ as at many minor features of criticism.
The details of the historical chapters cannot be
gone into at length, though very much in them
invites remark. There is what looks like an unequi-
vocal recognition of miraculous powers in the early
Church, an acknowledgment all the more welcome.
after previous ambiguities about the supernatural.
In the treatment of the famous interview of Gal. ii.
and of the Jerusalem Council, which Dr McGiffert
rightly, we think (as against Ramsay), brings to-
gether, there is, with some suggestive discussion of
the difficulties, more
more deference to the Tübingen
theory than is necessary. It is certainly surprising
to find it argued that there is no sign that Paul
was acknowledged by the Three as a fellow-apostle.3
This is soon after converted into the positive asser-
tion that they did not so recognise him. But it
is inconceivable that Peter and James and John
should give Paul "the right hand of fellowship
without thereby endorsing his well-known and
stoutly maintained claim, or that Paul should have
accepted a "right hand" which did not carry such
endorsement with it. The apostles-Peter and the
others could not have denied Paul's apostleship
without disputing his conversion and the commis-
sion which accompanied it; and the evidence is that
4
1 The view, of course, is not peculiar to Dr McGiffert.
2 P. 189.
3 P. 197.
4 P. 201.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
211
they did not.¹ The episode of the decree is an
acknowledged difficulty, but there seems no need for
resorting to the round-about theory favoured by Dr
McGiffert. It is more than probable, as Ritschl
argues, that there was from the first a real difference
of view in the Jerusalem Church regarding the
principle on which the decree rested, and when this
came to light, as it was bound soon to do in the
matter of eating, the arrangement of the Council
broke through and the decree passed into desuetude.
There is, to our mind, no insuperable difficulty in
Paul's agreeing to the very moderate compromise
proposed by the Jerusalem Council; any more than
we see occasion to doubt the truth of the state-
ments that Paul personally observed the customs of
his nation.3 Dr McGiffert, however, again knows
better, and categorically affirms-"Paul had certainly
been living for years in entire disregard of the law
of the fathers." 4 The question of the second im-
prisonment need not detain us, but Dr McGiffert's
peremptory dictum: "If Luke could have recorded
that he was acquitted and released by the emperor
it seems inconceivable that he would have failed to
do so,"5 might surely as well be met by the asser-
tion that if Luke had known that Paul was put to
death at the end of his two years' imprisonment, he
could hardly have failed to mention the fact. And
1 Acts ix. 27; Gal. i. 18, 19.
2 Cf. Gal. ii. 11-14.
3 Acts xxi. 24; xxiv. 18; xxv. 8; xxviii. 17; cf. xviii. 18, 21.
5 P. 418.
4 P. 40.
212
DR MCGIFFERT ON
Clement's expression τὸ τέρμα της δύσεως, taken in
connection with the circumstance that the writer's
standpoint was Rome, means surely more than Dr
McGiffert puts into it.¹
2
We remarked above that in his general view of
Christ and His Gospel, Paul knew himself to be
standing on the common Christian ground of his
day. Dr McGiffert, however, will have it that the
general Church had a very different kind of Christi-
anity from Paul's-"wide asunder as the poles."
This general Christianity was legalistic in spirit.
Its ruling idea was salvation through fulfilment of
the new (ie., Christian) law. Grace comes in to
supply deficiencies. "The grace of God manifested
not alone in His offer of salvation to men, and in
the revelation of His righteous will by whose
observance that salvation might be attained, but
also in his readiness to assist men in their efforts to
keep His law and to forgive them for their breaches
of it." 3
The idea of faith was becoming "intel-
lectual" (even in John); it furnished the motive
"which leads a man to obey the law of God, and
thus secure salvation." 4 Calvinists will note with
election of Christians is
interest that the divine
based "on the observance of that law." "Many
passages, as indeed the entire conception of the
1 P. 416.
2 P. 459.
3 P. 460. The view thus attributed to the early Church hardly
rises above the level of the Socinian.
4 P. 458.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
213
2
Gospel which underlies them, show clearly enough
that the election is not independent of man's con-
duct, but that it is either a general determination.
that they shall be saved who lived truly Christian
lives, or the particular choice of those who it is fore-
seen will thus live."1 Where, we ask, is this
wonderful type of Christianity found depicted?
Marvellous to relate, the first "striking evidence"
of its wide prevalence is found in the synoptic
Gospels; then the other writings of the New Testa-
ment are adduced, with the addition of Clement,
Barnabas, Ignatius, Hermas, etc.-all treated as on
the same level. We should regard it as a work of
supererogation to attempt to prove that this is not
the teaching of Hebrews, of John, of Peter, or even
of James. It is marvellous how for a moment Dr
McGiffert can imagine he finds it in them. If the
inculcation of the duty of keeping God's command-
ments of doing His will is a sign of legalism,
the reproach must fall, not on the disciples, but on
the Master Himself. Yet the writer of 1 Peter is
held to be "saturated with Paul's ideas"; Hebrews
4
is Philonic; the Johannine writings are per contra
cleared of Philonic influence. But strange opinions
are attributed to the Johannine writer. Though he
has learned much from Paul,5 his theology is in-
3
-
2 P. 462.
,
1 P. 461.
3 Nearly everything that Dr McGiffert finds in the other
writers could be matched in Paul: even the more general mean-
ing of faith is common in his usage (cf., e.g., 1 and 2 Thess.).
4 P. 485.
5 P. 492.
214
DR MCGIFFERT ON
dependent. He tends to intellectualism,1 "has no
such controlling ethical interest as characterised
Paul and the synoptists," above all has the idea
"that the Gospel is not for the sinful but the right-
eous "3-this in face of John iii. 16.4 Yet his exalted
view of Christ's person is gained from the impres-
sion of Christ's earthly life (not from Philo), and
even the belief in pre-existence is thought to be
based on genuine words of Jesus. The writer in
the early Church with whom "the characteristic
views of Paul found their fullest acceptance and
their most remarkable development" was "the great
Christian reformer Marcion." Were we not justified
in saying that the picture given of the apostolic age
lacks in an extraordinary degree in symmetry and
unity?
6
5
We cannot in the closing sentences of this article
touch on the important questions of Church con-
stitution and government raised by Dr McGiffert,
nor can we enter at any length into the critical
questions involved in his theories of the documents.
We adhere to the view, which seems to us best sup-
ported, that "elders" and "bishops.
elders" and "bishops" were one and
the same class of office-bearers in the primitive
Church, and regard as arbitrary Dr McGiffert's
attempt to make out a distinction between "elders"
1 P. 498.
2 P. 496.
3 P. 496.
4 John is even tinged with the current legalism (p. 495), has
a lower view of Christ's resurrection than Paul (p. 494), etc.
6 P. 502,
5 P, 489.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
215
and "appointed elders" (bishops) in Clement's
epistle.¹ Acts xiv. 23, which there is not the least
ground for questioning, shows the practice in
this respect, and proves the official character of
the elders. The critical questions open up a wide
field, the working of which in detail must be left to
others. We only desire to put on record our im-
pression of the arbitrariness which seems to rule in
Prof. McGiffert's procedure here also. Is there not
an arbitrariness, e.g., in accepting so largely the
trustworthiness of the records in Acts, yet denying,
in face of the consentient tradition of antiquity, the
authorship of this book and of the third Gospel to
Luke, the companion of Paul?2 Apart from other
reasons, how does Dr McGiffert get over the proved
linguistic identity of the "we" sections (which are of
apostolic date) with the other portions of the book?
Does the introduction to the third Gospel also not
fairly require us to put the author in the second
generation of Christians? Is it again so certain
(though the view is usual) that Luke used the
Gospel of Mark and the Logia of Matthew, and
would he have ranked such documents so sum-
marily amongst the attempts at narration which he
mentions? The intricacies of the synoptical problem
are not yet so cleared up that one can assert this
1 P. 663.
2 Of course, if Luke were the author, Dr McGiffert would not
be able to take many of the liberties with the narrative that
he does.
216
DR MCGIFFERT ON
dependence with confidence. To take only one
simple example-if Luke used the Logia in common
with the author of our Matthew, it must have been
in a Greek form, for many of the passages in
Matthew and Luke are verbally identical (or nearly
so) in Greek,1 Yet again Luke breaks off from
Matthew, and gives identical sayings in so entirely
different a shape that they cannot easily be con-
ceived of as taken from the same written source,
either in Greek or Aramaic (passim). If, however,
the author of Luke (and Acts) was not dependent
on our written gospels, his date must be early.2
Take again 1 Peter, which on subjective grounds.
is taken from that apostle and given to an unknown
writer in the end of the first century. Here again
we have the arbitrary setting aside of the inscrip-
tion, of an unchallenged tradition, of the incorpora-
tion of the epistle in early versions,-all because
certain critics have a preconceived hypothesis of
how Peter must have written if he wrote at all
The epistle of James does not possess such complete
early attestation, but the circles that did accept it,
so far as we have any evidence, did not doubt that
it proceeded from the "James, a servant of God and
1 E.g., Luke x. 2-Matt. ix. 37; Luke x. 13-15-Matt. xi.
21-23; Luke x. 21, 22-Matt. xi. 25-27.
2 With hardly less ingenuity and cogency the Baur school
made out Mark to be based on Matthew and Luke, because in
several sections Mark agrees partly with one and partly with
the other, and so seems a compound of both. See Davidson's
Introduction, i., p. 480.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY
217
>>
of the Lord Jesus Christ whose name appears in
the commencement [this Dr McGiffert rejects]; and
the majority of scholars who are not controlled by
dogmatic reasons accept it as genuine, and of early
date. Dr McGiffert's hypothesis requires him to
regard the "twelve tribes of the dispersion" (i. 1)
as applying figuratively "to Christians in general
without regard to race. "1 The arbitrariness of treat-
ment is perhaps even more apparent in the verdict
passed on the Pastoral Epistles. Portions are
selected as genuinely Pauline (parts of earlier
Pauline letters), and the rest is discarded for its
supposed un - Pauline character. The difficulties
attaching to these letters are well known, but
granting (thus even Harnack) a second imprison-
ment of the apostle, they are not insuperable;
and the literary peculiarities seem to preclude a
parcelling out of the material in the way attempted.
We shall not trespass on the Johannine question.
The approximation of Dr McGiffert is so close to
the Johannine authorship that it is hardly worth
his while to resist the general tradition. Taken in
its entirety, we cannot believe that this work of
Dr McGiffert will hold the field as a successful
interpretation of apostolic Christianity.
1 P. 584.
Uor M
THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION
AND MODERN THOUGHT
Vor M
IX
THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND
MODERN THOUGHT¹
It is proposed in this article to offer some suggestions
on a question by no means new in itself, but which a
recent ecclesiastical decision in Germany has again
brought into prominence-the question, viz., How
far the miraculous conception is an essential part
of the faith of the Church about Christ? The decision
referred to is that in the case of a talented young
Würtemberg pastor-Herr Schrempf-who a year
ago (1892) was deposed by his ecclesiastical superiors
for his refusal to use the so-called Apostles' Creed in
the public service of baptism. This case of Schrempf
naturally excited much interest, and has called forth
a somewhat warm controversy in which Harnack
and other writers of a Ritschlian tendency have
taken a leading part. The controversy has gradually
widened out into one of principle, involving the
attitude of the Church to the Apostles' Creed generally,
and specially raising the question of how far belief
1 The Thinker, August 1893.
221
222 THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND
in the miraculous conception is of the essence of
Christian faith.
In dealing with this question it is important to
guard ourselves against ambiguity. At first sight
it might appear as if it were less faith in Christ
that was at stake than faith in the two particular
narratives of the Gospels which record this super-
natural occurrence. These narratives might con-
ceivably be regarded as legendary additions to the
original apostolic tradition-attempts on the part of
the Church to explain the wonderful impression
which Christ's Person made upon it,-and yet faith
in Christ Himself, as respects the main features of
His character and claims, might be thought not to
be affected. This is, in fact, the attitude taken up
towards these narratives by many critics and theo-
logians whose Christianity we do not dream of doubt-
ing. The immediate object of faith, they contend,
is Christ's Person-Christ Himself; whether He
came into the world in a supernatural manner is a
secondary question to be decided on historical grounds;
on which, therefore, individuals will hold different
opinions according to their views of the worth of the
tradition. One need not, however, either doubt the
bona fides of the theologians who take up this attitude,
or dispute the soundness of their general position that
the immediate object of faith is Christ Himself, and
not the manner of His origin, in order to remain
unconvinced that faith in Christ and the doctrine
of His supernatural birth are really so loosely
MODERN THOUGHT
223
related as they suppose. It may very well be that
Christ's Person is the direct and immediate object
of faith, and yet that, in the nature and reality of
things, the supernatural birth is the necessary pre-
supposition of that Person, and therefore a fact
which faith, whether at first it realises all that is
implied in it or not, is vitally concerned in holding
fast.
<<
In the mind of the early Church there was no
dubiety on the question here raised. An instinct
which we may pardonably regard as a sound one
led it to place the supernatural birth among the few
fundamental articles of its earliest creed-the much
contested Apostolicum. 'Born by the Holy Ghost
of the Virgin Mary," reads that symbol in its oldest
(Roman) form. We need not suppose that this
article was introduced simply because of the two
narratives of the supernatural birth in Matthew and
Luke. Its presence there is due much more to the
sound instinctive perception of the collective Church
that this article was vital to its faith in Christ as
Saviour and Lord, and in this light the testimony
of the creed is still of value to us. It is noteworthy
that the recently discovered apology of Aristides and
the epistles of Ignatius likewise include the Virgin
birth among the fundamental facts of Christianity.
This faith of the early Church remained practically
unchallenged for centuries. Only one (Judaizing)
section among the Ebionites, and Cerinthus, the
Carpocratians and certain of the Ophites, among
224
THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND
the Gnostics, are known to have denied it. Now,
however, it is impossible not to recognise that there
is a wide-spread drift in the opposite direction. That
it should be so where the sinlessness of Christ and
the supernatural aspects of His character and work
are rejected, as, e.g., by Strauss and Renan, is not
wonderful. But even within the Church, from
Schleiermacher downwards, the tendency has been
strong to dispute the historical character of the
narratives of the miraculous conception, and to
treat the belief in the fact as at least unessential.
1. Critically, the tendency is to regard the nar-
ratives as legendary. Thus, e.g., Meyer, Ewald,
Beyschlag, Keim, etc.
2. Dogmatically, the belief is treated as unessential.
Thus, e.g., by Meyer on Matt. i., and now very
emphatically by writers of the Ritschlian school.
3. Scientifically, it is held to be inadmissible. This,
however, is dangerous ground to take. Professor A.
B. Bruce well points out the issues in his work on
Apologetics. "A sinless man," he says, "is as much
a miracle in the moral world as a Virgin birth is a
miracle in the physical world. If we are to hold a
speculative view of the universe which absolutely
excludes miracle, then we must be content with a
Christianity which consists in duly appreciating a
great but not perfect character, or cease to profess
Christianity at all. If, on the other hand, to satisfy
the demands of our religious nature we insist on
retaining the moral miracle, then we must provide
MODERN THOUGHT
225
ourselves with a theory of the universe wide enough
to make room for as much of the miraculous element
as may appear to the wisdom of God necessary for
realising His great end in creating and sustaining
the universe." 1
The case of Pastor Schrempf has been referred to
above. It need not be overlooked, however, that
this case only brings to a sharper and more public
issue a difference of view which has long been agitating
the continental Churches, and which sooner or later
required to be faced, together with the difference in the
estimate of Christianity which it involves. It is many
years since Dr Philip Schaff wrote in his Creeds of
Christendom, "It is characteristic that, while the
Church of England is agitated by the question of
continuing simply the obligatory use of the Athan-
asian Creed, the Protestant Churches on the Conti-
nent are disturbed by the more radical question of
setting aside the Apostles' Creed for teaching what is
said to be contrary to the spirit of the age. Lisco
and Sydow, in Berlin, have taken special exception
to the clause 'conceived by the Holy Ghost, born
1 P. 410. It has been plausibly argued by Mr Griffith-Jones
(Ascent through Christ, p. 262) and others, on the ground of the
curious scientific facts of parthenogenesis, that if the miracle of
the Virgin birth is above nature, it is not contrary to nature. It
is certainly a striking statement of Prof. G. T. Romanes, in his
Darwin and after Darwin, that "even if a virgin has ever con-
ceived and borne a son, and even if such a fact in the human
species has been unique, it would not betoken any breach of
physiological continuity" (p. 119). On the facts of partheno-
genesis, see Geddes's Evolution of Sex, chap. xiii.
Р
226 THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND
of the Virgin Mary,' and maintain, in the face of St.
Matthew and St Luke, that Jesus was 'the legiti-
mate Son of Joseph and Mary.'" 1
On the critical aspect
of the question I have at
present nothing to say. For what may be urged
in reply to the critical objections, I may refer to
Weiss, Lange, Godet, [Sanday], etc.2 Only it is
important to recognise, even in this regard, that if
the narratives of the supernatural birth are rejected,
the alternative which has to be confronted is that
of deliberate fiction for unconscious myth and
legend are here quite out of place. But this is an
alternative from which, when it is fairly faced, most
reverent minds will shrink. My immediate purpose,
however, is not to discuss the critical objections, but
rather to consider the underlying premiss of the
critical objections—namely, the idea that the super-
natural birth is a thing indifferent to the substance
of the Christian faith. I propose to ask whether
this is so, or whether it is not the case that this
miraculous fact is a necessary presupposition of the
faith we have in Christ as the Holy One of God
and the Divine Redeemer of the race. It is, in
other words, the dogmatic, rather than the critical,
aspect of the subject I propose to look at.
Here, again, there are certain lines of argument
belonging to the old dogmatic modes of thought
which I would at once set aside. From the point
of view of the federal theology, e.g., the miraculous
1. I., p. 20.
2 See additional note.
MODERN THOUGHT
227
conception was necessary in order to secure the
Person of the Redeemer from participation in the
guilt of Adam's first transgression, with its entail of
original sin and other penal effects on all descend-
ing from him by ordinary generation. In virtue of
His exceptional origin, Christ is regarded as outside
the sphere of this damnosa hæreditas. He is not
an ordinary member of the race, but a supernatural
addition to it; an incomer into it, or graft upon it
from without, and therefore not involved in its
Adamic liabilities. As thus free from sin and
hereditary guilt, He is able to undertake man's
redemption. I am far from saying that the idea
at the bottom of these representations is altogether
a false one, but I do not undertake the discussion
of them here. The line I mean to pursue is differ-
ent, and more in accordance with the ruling ideas
of our own time. I wish to ask, How far does the
simple fact of a new creative origin such as we
have in Christ-of a sinless Personality-or, on the
higher level of faith, of the union of the Godhead
with humanity in the incarnation, involve a super-
natural act in the production of Christ's bodily
nature?
Before answering this question in respect to the
second Adam, I would go back for a moment or two
on certain problems suggested by modern inquiry
respecting the first Adam, or what is called in
modern parlance "the evolution of man." The
whole drift of modern science, as every one now is
228 THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND
aware, is to seek an explanation of the production
of living organisms-and as the highest of these, of
man-in accordance with the laws of evolution.
But in the process of this inquiry along the lines
of science itself, certain difficulties emerge. 1. First,
there is the difficulty of explaining satisfactorily the
mode or laws, or what are termed by Mr Spencer
the "factors," of evolution. 2. There is the difficulty
of applying the conception of evolution to the world
without being compelled to recognise the existence
of new beginnings, e.g., the origin of life, of con-
sciousness, etc. 3. Above all, there is the difficulty
of giving a satisfactory account of the origin of
rational and moral life in man. It is well known
that this is the point at which Dr A. R. Wallace
in his work on Darwinism specially feels the need
of a supernatural cause.¹ I may cite, however, a
more recent work bearing on this particular subject
-I refer to Professor H. Calderwood's volume on
Evolution and Man's Place in Nature. The main,
and, as I think, irrefragable thesis throughout this
volume is, that while the doctrine of evolution may
be admitted (Dr Calderwood thinks must be admitted)
in the organic sphere, it fails utterly to explain the
origin of life and mind, and, above all, the rational
and spiritual life of man as the highest being in
nature, and the connecting link between the natural
and the spiritual worlds. His position is concisely
summed up in the following sentences:-
1
1 Pp. 473-6.
MODERN THOUGHT
229
Research, extended over the wide field of com-
parative biology, has accumulated a large body of
evidence demonstrating the impossibility of tracing
the origin of man's rational life to evolution from
a lower life. There are no physical forces in nature
sufficient to account for the appearance of this life.
The insufficiency of the evidence for its evolution
becomes increasingly obvious as the demands are
more exactly ascertained. Animal intelligence shows
no effective preparation for rational intelligence
nor can the characteristics of rational life be ex-
plained by any possible advance in the structure of
nerves and brain.
The rational life of man
stands out to view on an eminence completely
severed from this scheme of organic evolution. As
animal life-a type of physical existence-human
life is fitted into the system of organic life on the
earth. As a rational life-a type of spiritual exist-
ence-human life is exalted above all life besides,
severed from the companionship of animals." 1
Now, it is noteworthy that many of the writers
who take this view seem willing to concede that,
while man's mind cannot be accounted for by the
processes of Darwinian evolution, his physical nature
may be accounted for by these processes. I am not
sure whether this is the position of Professor Calder-
wood in the work above cited, but there are some
passages which would suggest that it is. Dr Wallace,
at one time at least, held that exceptional causes.
¹ Pp. 337-8,
230 THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND
are implied in the production of man's body, as
well as of his mind. (See his essay on "The Limits
of Natural Selection as applied to Man" in his
Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection.) If
he has not changed these views, he does not, at
any rate, urge them in his more recent work. But
the point I wish to press here is, that the view
which postulates a supernatural cause for the mind.
of man and hands over his body to the ordinary
processes of evolution is untenable. For see the
difficulty in which such a view lands itself. It is a
corollary from the known laws of the connection of
mind and body that every mind needs an organism
fitted to it. If the mind of man is the product of
a new cause, the brain, which is the instrument of
that mind, must share in its peculiar origin, The
higher mind cannot be put into the simian brain.
From the human brain to the ape brain there is, as
science tells us, "an abrupt fall," and no links have
yet been discovered to fill up the gap between.
Evolution, on the theory in question, has brought up
the brain of man's simian ancestor to a given point;
then a higher cause comes in to endow the creature
with rational powers separated by a wide gulf from
the degree of intelligence previously possessed. But
of what use would these powers be if a correspond-
ing rise did not take place on the organic side?
And on the terms of the hypothesis, natural evolu-
tion has no means within itself to effect that rise.
The conclusion we are driven to is that the produc-
MODERN THOUGHT
231
tion of a higher type of organism-the distinctively
human-is the correlative of the creation of the
higher type of mind, and a special supernatural act
is needed for both.
Now, let us apply this analogy with all reverence
to the greater mystery-the production of the bodily
nature of the second Adam. Here, again, we have
a creative beginning. On the lowest supposition
compatible with Christian faith we have in Christ.
a perfect human soul-flawless-one standing in
such unique relation to God that a perfect Son-
ship is the result. On the higher ground of faith,
we have the entrance of a divine being into humanity
-the incarnation of the Son. But a perfect soul
such as we have in Christ, to go no higher for the
present, implies a perfect organism. Moreover, in
its place in history such a soul is a moral miracle.
It is not to be accounted for out of historical evolu-
tion. It transcends the past; is lifted clear above
it; is not to be explained by factors already in
existence. Whence, then, the organism that clothes
it, and serves as its perfect medium of expression?
Whence this sudden rise from the imperfect to the
absolute in humanity, from the impure and sin-
tainted to the absolutely pure? This rise, as we saw
before, cannot be on the spiritual side alone; it in-
volves the organic as well. There must be a suitable
humanity on the physical side to match the per-
fection of the spirit. I would not simply say,
therefore, with Professor Bruce, in the words above
232 THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND
•
light of the physical
quoted, that "a sinless man is as much a miracle.
in the moral world as a Virgin birth is a miracle
in the physical world," but I would say that the
moral miracle, from its very nature, implies the con-
currence of a physical one. This is where Meyer,
and all who would make
miracle, seem to me to err. They recognise a Divine
act in the Incarnation on its spiritual side, but do
not seem to perceive that this "mystery of godli-
ness" necessitates a special cause operating on the
physical side as well. The origin of One like Christ
is, view it as we will, a miracle.
A new power
comes with Him into humanity. The words of the
annunciation to Mary are to this hour the most
scientific expression of what we must acknowledge
as involved in the birth of the Redeemer—“The
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power
of the Most High shall overshadow thee; wherefore
also that which is to be born shall be called holy,
the Son of God" (Luke i. 35, R.V.).
The view here taken is strengthened if we observe
how commonly in practice belief in the miraculous
conception and in the sinlessness of Jesus stand or
fall together. There is much truth in what Professor
Bruce says: "It has to be remembered that faith is
ever in a state of unstable equilibrium while the
supernatural is dealt with eclectically; admitted in
the moral and spiritual sphere, denied in the
physical. With belief in the Virgin birth is apt
to go belief in the virgin life, as not less than the
MODERN THOUGHT
233
1
other a part of that veil that must be taken away
that the true Jesus may be seen as He was—a
morally defective man, better than most, but not per-
fectly good." I have sought to show a yet deeper
ground for this, viz., that the virgin life drives us
back upon a supernatural origin even in the sphere
of the organic. Professor Bruce, indeed, says on
a previous page: "Under what conditions such a
sinless Christ is possible is a very important
question, but it belongs to theology rather than to
religion." 2
But it only does not belong to religious
faith so long as faith does not clearly recognise its
own presuppositions.³
I am far, therefore, from being prepared to
concede that this article of the miraculous concep-
tion is an unessential one, or one which can be
dropped without injury out of the Apostles' Creed.
The objection naturally which will be made to the
above line of argument is that at most it proves
the existence of a supernatural factor in Christ's
birth, but not necessarily the Virgin birth of the
Gospels. This is the position taken up apparently
by the writer of a conciliatory article on the Apos-
tolicum question in the pages of the Ritschlian
1 Apologetics, p. 410.
2 P. 409.
3 In his Mirac. Elements of Christianity, Prof. Bruce says:
"The connection is so close that few who earnestly believe
in the absolute worth of Christ's Person will be disposed to
deny the truth of the Evangelic narratives relating to the
manner of his entrance into, and exit from the world." See
the whole passage, pp. 352-3.
234 THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND
r
journal, Die Christliche Welt (27th Oct. 1892). This
writer, Professor D. Fricke, of Leipzig, cannot under-
stand why any one should take offence at the article
of the Creed, "conceived by the Holy Ghost." For
if there is agreement that Jesus Christ is the in-
comparable One, who has the Spirit 'without
measure," and that from the root of His life out-
wards, how could He have been otherwise conceived
and born than in the power of the Most High, the
power of the Holy Ghost? Neither would he
stumble at the clause, "born of the Virgin Mary,"
but he objects to any one dragging down this, which
he grants to be a Scriptural expression and thought,
into the physiological. This would be to overlook
the fact that God acts only on the ground of His
own natural order, never without it, or against it.
He would interpret the expression, therefore, as
simply meaning that the humanity which was to
be redeemed could not produce the Redeemer from
its own power, else it would have redeemed itself,
and not have needed the Son of God. Now, it may
be impossible to show a priori that the super-
natural birth necessarily implies a Virgin birth;
but on the other hand, if the fact of a supernatural
factor in the earthly origin of Jesus is admitted-
and, with all respect to Professor Fricke, this
amounts to a physical miracle-all a priori objec-
tion to the Virgin birth vanishes. The record in
the Gospels simply supplies, in the form of history,
what faith on its own grounds demands. The history
MODERN THOUGHT
235
becomes, therefore, credible and worthy of all ac-
ceptation. For that at which naturalism stumbles
in the synoptic narrative undoubtedly is not simply
the parthenogenesis, but the idea of miraculous con-
ception in any form. If once it is granted that a
new creative cause enters into the production of
Christ's humanity, what is there any longer in-
credible in the supposition that this should super-
sede the ordinary natural cause in the manner
which the synoptics represent? I conclude that
the narratives of the nativity - which in their
ground-traits could only have come from the Virgin-
mother herself are entirely in keeping with that
which faith demands as the presupposition of its own
assertions on the Person and character of the Son
of God, and that the supernatural conception is
rightly regarded as an essential part of the Christian
Creed.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
1. The critical objection.-A few words may be
added to what is said on p. 226. Objection is taken
to the narratives in Matthew and Luke on the
ground of supposed discrepancies, the silence of the
other Gospels, references to Joseph as the father of
Jesus, and the absence of allusions in the epistles.
These objections do not seem able to outweigh the
fact that in two of the Gospels-the very two that
236 THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION AND
give the genealogies-the fact of the birth of Jesus.
from the Virgin is assumed as undoubted, and is
circumstantially narrated: in Luke's Gospel by a
writer who claims to have "had perfect understand-
ing of all things from the very first" (i. 3). Mark's
Gospel cannot be adduced against this, for Mark
begins his narrative with the ministry, and it is not
open to us to say what his account of Christ's origin,
had he given it, would have been. He certainly
commences his Gospel with a striking statement—
"The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the
Son of God" (i. 1)—but in what sense, or from
what cause, he was the Son of God, is not told. St
John gives the divine genealogy of Jesus, but fur-
nishes no narrative of his earthly origin. He must,
however, have had the other Gospels before him, and
does not contradict them. His statement—“The
Word became flesh" (i. 14)-does not exclude, if it
does not presuppose, an exceptional mode of birth.
Neither the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, nor
the occasional references to Joseph as the father of
Jesus, can be adduced as in real opposition to the
history, for, had they been felt to be in real anta-
gonism, the Evangelists would not have inserted
(still less invented) them. The mystery of Christ's
birth cannot be assumed to have been generally
known; but, apart from this, Joseph did stand to
Jesus in loco parentis, and was properly and natur-
ally designated "parent" and "father." [Cf. the
usage of children by a former marriage in address-
MODERN THOUGHT
237
ing step-parents; of children by adoption, etc.] As
respects the epistles and the earliest apostolic preach-
ing, it is to be remembered (1) that naturally this
was not a matter which would form part of the
public preaching or testimony of the apostles, con-
fined as that was chiefly to the facts of the ministry
of which they had been eye-witnesses; (2) that it
was, even if known, a divine secret to be reverently
cherished and delicately handled, especially during
the lifetime of Mary herself, from whom alone the
facts could be derived; and (3) that there is noth-
ing in the epistles, any more than in the Gospels,
inconsistent with this belief. The Johannine declara-
tions, "The Word became flesh"-"He that cometh
from above is above all" (iii. 30)-is paralleled by
St Paul's "The second man from heaven" (1 Cor. xv.)
God sent forth His Son, made of a
woman "
(Gal. iv. 4). The latter declaration of the apostle
harmonises well with an exceptional mode of birth,
although it does not necessitate it. The unanimity of
the Church tradition is referred to in the text.
[The discussion of this subject in Gore's Disserta-
tions, pp. 1-68, may be referred to.]
2. Necessity of the Virgin Birth.-To the question,
whether, granting a creative miracle in Christ's
origin, the conditions might not be met by ordinary
generation, the reply might be given-Cui bono? If
a creative origin is postulated, why the complica-
tion with the male factor? There is another con-
sideration which Dorner justly emphasises. We do
238 THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION, ETC.
not lean to a doctrine of immaculate conception
when we say that in Mary a fitting instrument had
been prepared, both in body and mind, for this
service to our race. But natural generation in-
volves the introduction of another influence of a
strain of a different quality and kind. Was there
then a second and male parent prepared, as Mary
was a female? Or would not the blending of dif-
ferent, and in fact inferior influences, have been a
drawback for the end contemplated-a disturbance
calling for a new miracle to check and correct it.
Natural generation thus does not afford relief from
miracle, but rather doubles the miracle. Dorner's
remarks deserve careful study (Syst. of Doct., iii.,
pp. 347 ff.).
FAITH AND REASON
!
:
X
FAITH AND REASON ¹
THE ancient quarrel of the poets and philosophers
has its theological counterpart in the controversy
about faith and reason. On the one hand, there is
the question of their respective provinces, and of the
rights of each the question of delimitation of frontier.
On the other hand, there is the question of their
relations—whether of peace or war, of antagonism,
neutrality, or friendship. The battle is waged in
our own day as fiercely as ever, often amidst a cloud
of misunderstandings, ambiguities, and confusions of
ideas, which hopelessly obscure the issues, and make
it impossible for the combatants to recognise each
other. Faith looks with suspicion upon science;
science sneers at and contemns faith. It is the com-
monest of all things to find faith and reason pitted
against each other as powers necessarily antagonistic.
Sometimes faith is spoken of as if it were a
disposition to take things on trust without grounds.
or reasons of any kind-a species of credulity. The
¹ The Thinker, December 1893.
Q
241
242
FAITH AND REASON
believing habit of mind and the scientific habit of
mind are held, therefore, to be in toto distinct, and
terms of accommodation are alleged not to be possible
between them. More frequently faith is spoken of
as if it were a purely theological affair-not some-
thing entering into the ordinary everyday life of the
man of the world, without which the house of reason
itself would collapse, and science could not advance
a single step. Nor have the attempts at the adjust-
ment of these rival claims from opposite sides met
with unmixed approval. Neither Anselm's Credo ut
intelligam nor Abelard's Intelligo ut credam has been
accepted as a final word upon the subject. Hegel,
from the high philosophic side, will have it that
faith is but a lower stage of reason-that which is
given in feeling or immediate experience being subse-
quently translated into terms of thought. The Neo-
Kantians, on the other hand, are all for deepening
the gulf between faith and theoretic knowledge.
They will allow of no comings and goings between
the two territories. Reason is warned off the ground
of faith. Faith is adjured to have nothing to say
to reason. The relation desiderated can best be
described as that of armed neutrality.
In this long-standing conflict it may seem bold
for any one to venture to interpose even with the
mildest of amicable suggestions. Yet no harm can
come-if much good is not accomplished-from the
endeavour to clear away a few of the ambiguities
and misconceptions which do so much to befog the
FAITH AND REASON
243
discussion of the subject. A possible error of this
kind may be guarded against at the outset. It should
carefully be observed that when we speak of faith
in its relations to reason, it is only one aspect of
faith which comes into view, that, viz., in which it
is concerned with the holding or possession of truth.
Thus only can faith be brought into comparison with
reason, or can the question arise of possible collision
between them. There are a multitude of other
aspects of faith-some of them, it may be held, far
more vital and important¹-but this at least is the
aspect in which it comes into consideration here,
and it is one which, in a greater or less degree, is
implied in all the rest. For a faith which is mere
feeling, or vague, indefinite impression, which has
no element of enlightenment or knowledge in it, is
not a faith which Scripture, at any rate, ever recom-
mends. This is the more to be emphasised that
writers like Professor Herrmann, of Marburg, are
never weary of denouncing the view which would
identify faith with "the holding-for-true" of certain
doctrines. There may be justification for his warmth
in the excessive stress laid on doctrine by Lutheran
scholastic orthodoxy; but, on the other hand, it is
not to be overlooked that, in the spiritual sense,
there is no faith which does not involve a "holding-
1 As when faith is viewed in its place in practical religion as
trust or confidence in God, as the organ in the appropriation of
His grace, as the bond of union with the Saviour, as the active
principle in Christian obedience, etc.
244
FAITH AND REASON
for-true" of some fact, truth, declaration, or promise,
and sometimes this aspect of the matter is made
very prominent.¹
A convenient starting-point will be found for our
inquiry in the well-known definition or description
of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews, xi. 1: "Now
faith is the assurance of (or marg., the giving sub-
stance to) things hoped for, the proving (marg., test)
of things not seen" (R.V.). Here, first, the peculiar
province or sphere of faith is defined generically to
be-things future and things unseen ("hoped for,"
"not seen "); and, next, the act of faith itself is
described as an "assurance" of these things, and a
"proving" of them. If we adopt the alternative
rendering of the first of these terms (Gr. hypostasis,
substance), the meaning is the same-faith is that
mental act of realisation which makes the unseen or
future object real to us-gives us assurance in regard
to it. It is the second term (Gr. elenchos, proof)
which will be felt to be the more enigmatical. Faith
as an "assurance" we can understand, but in what
sense is faith a "proof," or "proving," or "test" of
its objects? Is not faith, in the ordinary acceptation
of it, the very antithesis of proof? that which supplies
the lack of proof, or stands instead of it? Nay,
would not "proof" destroy faith, and does not the
use of such a term import a semi-intellectualism
into the conception of faith which is foreign to its
nature? It may perhaps occur to us that this,
1 Specially in John. Cf. John iii. 32-4; 1 John v. 5-11.
FAITH AND REASON
245
possibly, is the very reason why faith is described
as "proof," viz., that it comes to us instead of, or
takes the place of, proof. But it is more satisfactory
to suppose that there is some positive reason under-
lying the use of this term, and, if we are not mis-
taken, the course of our inquiry will show what
it is.
Before dealing with this, however, let us look a
little farther at the former of the terms in this
passage" assurance "-expressive of the element of
trust which enters into all faith. It is of the nature
of faith,—it is chief among the facts which constitute
it faith, that, as an assurance regarding things
unseen and future, it involves a certain personal
and volitional element: an effort, first, to realise
that which lies beyond the sphere of sense, and,
second, to grasp it with firm assurance, and present
it to the mind as real. This personal element, this
act of trust, is involved in all faith, however good
the grounds may be on which our belief rests; and
the further removed from the routine of ordinary
experience, the greater, and
the greater, and grander, and less
customary the object of our faith is, the more is
the mind thrown back on itself, and the stronger is
the effort required to maintain a firm and unshaken
assurance of its reality. Probably no one has brought
out this important aspect of faith with greater force
and vividness than Mozley in his lecture on "Belief
in a God," in his Bampton Lectures on "Miracles,"
and we may refer to his pages for further illustra-
246
FAITH AND REASON
tions of it. He points out there-what for our present
purpose it is so important to observe how largely
faith is present even in our ordinary intellectual
operations.
"Not, however," he remarks, "that the existence
of God is so clearly seen by reason as to dispense
with faith; not from any want of cogency in the
reasons, but from the amazing nature of the con-
clusion—that it is so unparalleled, transcendent, and
inconceivable a truth to believe. It requires trust
to commit oneself to the conclusion of any reasoning,
however strong, when such as this is the conclusion;
to put enough dependence and reliance upon any pre-
misses to accept upon the strength of them so im-
mense a result. The issue of the argument is so
astonishing, that if we do not tremble for its safety,
it must be on account of a practical principle in our
minds which enables us to confide and trust in
reasons, when they are really strong and good ones.
Which principle of trust is faith-the same principle
by which we repose in a witness of good character
who informs us of a marvellous occurrence
marvellous that the trust in his testimony has to be
sustained by an effort of the reasonable will." 1
SO
"We may remark," he goes on, "that when reason,
even in ordinary life or in physical inquiry, is placed
under circumstances at all analogous to those of
religion, reason becomes, as a consequence of that
situation, a kind of faith. . . . Indeed, the remark
1 P. 100.
FAITH AND REASON
247
may be made that a kind of faith appears to be
essential for practical confidence in any reasoning
whatever and any premisses, when we are thrown
back upon ourselves and do not act mechanically in
concert with others.
In religion, then, where
conclusions are so totally removed from the type of
custom, and are so vast and stupendous, this applies
the more strongly; but in truth all untried conclu-
sions need faith, whatever strong arguments there
may be for them. When a scientific man sees various
premisses conspiring to direct him to some new
truth or law in nature, the aptness with which these
coincide and fall in with each other may amount to
such strong evidence that he may feel virtually cer-
tain of his discovery, yet he does not feel it quite
secure till it has stood the test of some crowning
experiment. His reason, then, in the interim, is
faith,” etc.¹
The important point brought out in these extracts
is that all faith involves a certain element of trust,
or, as we might phrase it, of risk and venture; yet this
does not necessarily reflect on the goodness or suffi-
ciency of the grounds on which the mind rests in
its act; and while the highest examples of this kind
of faith are found in religion, a similar or analogous
faith is constantly required of us in the most ordinary
exercises of reason. The bearings of this on our
problem will be discussed below.
Thus much for the element
1 Pp. 102-3.
CC
of assurance" in
248
FAITH AND REASON
faith; but what of faith as "proof" or "proving"?
A word must now be given to this part of the sub-
ject. It may be observed, then, as another peculi-
arity of faith, that in every important example of
it-in acts of religious faith, above all-there is an
inward as well as an outward element to be taken
into account, and faith originates, not from one or
other singly, but from the wedding of the two.
Without anticipating what belongs to a subsequent
stage of the argument, it may be noticed that reason
itself, in the last resort, runs back into, draws its
certainty from, and tests its conclusions by, principles.
which are given to it immediately-which cannot be
demonstrated. In like manner, our moral judgments
go back on instinctive dicta of conscience
the ex-
pression of primal and indemonstrable moral laws.
Our judgments of taste not less clearly draw their
sanction from æsthetic canons which seem grounded
in the essence of reason. It is by these principles
that sometimes consciously, but oftener spontaneously
and instinctively, the mind tests the various matters
that come before it, judges of their merits, and
decides how far they are entitled to its acceptance
as true or false, good or evil, beautiful or the reverse.
But besides these, there are deep and ineradicable.
convictions and experiences which spring from the
essence of man's nature as a spiritual being-the
sense of dependence, for example, the inextinguish-
able consciousness of freedom and responsibility, the
instincts and inspirations which have prompted men
FAITH AND REASON
249
in all ages to anticipate a future life, etc.—and these
also constitute a set of laws which determine what
it is, and what it is not, possible for us to accept as
truth in the moral and religious region. It is when
a word, message, revelation, comes.
us which
accords with these laws of the spiritual being—which
strikes and awakens the verifying chord within-
that faith is generated. No revelation from without,
however strongly attested, could produce faith of a
vital kind, unless at the same time there were this
inward susceptibility to appeal to: it is the meeting
of the outward and the inward which engenders
faith. It is the inward principle which is the select-
ing, testing, verifying, appropriating, principle. "The
word preached did not profit them, not being mixed
with faith in them that heard it."1 This does not
mean that the scope of God's word or revelation is
to be restricted, in Coleridge's phrase, to that which
"finds me." No wise man will make his individual
susceptibility—a constantly growing quantity the
measure of revealed truth. But whatever the
objective character of any message may be as revela-
tion-however I may be led to submit to it as true
on external authority-it is plainly not revelation
to me unless it comes as light and power into my
soul, and penetrates me with a persuasion of its
truth. Even the trust we repose in the authority of
another in matters that lie beyond our own power
–
1 Heb. iv. 2. On the reading and meaning of this passage, see
Professor A. B. Davidson's note in his Hebrews, in loc.
250
FAITH AND REASON
of immediate verification has its source in the con-
fidence with which he is able to inspire us from
what we do know and can verify regarding him.
What is affirmed, therefore, is that in every act of
faith, faith itself contributes an element-supplies,
as it were, an inward premiss, some principle, fact,
instinct, experience, out of which the full practical
conviction comes. Hence Christ and His apostles
never speak of their words as so much foreign matter
to the spirit of man. On the contrary, because of
this native affinity with the inner self, they enter
the soul as "spirit and life," are capable of spiritual
verification by him who is willing to do God's will,2
come to the heart "in demonstration of the spirit
and of power," are "quick and powerful," " "piercing
even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." 4
"By manifestation of the truth," says Paul, "com-
mending ourselves to every man's conscience in the
sight of God.5
1
On the basis of these remarks, we are now in a
position to inquire more precisely into the relations
of faith to reason. In doing this, we have to bear
in mind the other part of the description of faith
in Hebrews that it has to do generically with
things future and unseen. And as there are various
ranges and grades of the unseen, so there are various
ranges or spheres within which faith operates-
lower and higher orders of faith.
1 John vi. 63, 68.
4 Heb. iv. 12.
2 John vii. 17.
3 1 Cor. ii. 2.
5 2 Cor. iv. 2.
FAITH AND REASON
251
how
How
1. And here, first, it is important to remember
how largely faith enters into the ordinary business
of life, and-as shown in an earlier part of the
paper-is connected with exercises of mind the
most strictly theoretic. As respects common life,
the fact is notorious. How little of the knowledge
which we possess, e.g., rests on evidence which we
have personally or scientifically investigated
much depends on the testimony of others?
few (if any) of the acts which we perform do not
involve dependence? Suppose I post a letter, I
commit it to agencies and arrangements which are
to me invisible, of many of which I know nothing,
and over which I have no control. My confidence
that the letter will reach its destination can be
described as nothing else than an act of faith.
it is with all transactions relating to the unseen,
the distant, and the future, that is, with all that
lies beyond my direct and immediate experience.
Yet, while thus trusting to the good faith of others,
and the arrangements of society, have I not the
best and most rational grounds for so acting? Here
is a case of the simplest order, which shows that
whatever faith is, it is not necessarily an acting
without sufficient grounds, or in opposition to reason.
It is less frequently observed how, as shown in
the quotation from Mozley, an element of faith is
involved in the purest and most theoretic exercises
of reason itself. Thus a scientific induction, how-
ever strong the impression of certainty it may
252
FAITH AND REASON
convey to the mind, is still in a measure an act of
faith till it has been experimentally verified.¹
Similarly, every conclusion based on reasoning, how-
ever perfect the proof, is an act of faith so long as
it has not been put to the test of experience. When
Leverrier (and Adams in England) discovered the
planet Neptune by pure calculation, he was able to
predict the precise time and place in the heavens
when this planet could be seen. But as yet no eye
had seen it. Up to this point, no one would
question that belief in the existence of Neptune
was, even for the discoverer, an act of faith. But
when the telescope was actually pointed to the
heavens, and the new planet was identified in the
very spot which had been indicated, faith was
changed to sight. Or the grounds of belief may be
rational-sufficient to warrant subjective certainty,
and to justify action, yet may fall short of demon-
stration-may yield no more than strong probability.
The voyage of Columbus, e.g., was surely, if any
ever was, a voyage of faith, yet the result showed
that it was a faith which had ample rational justi-
fication. Higher still in the order of reason is that
type of mind to which discovery comes, as it were,
by a sort of divination, a flash of insight, a feeling
or intuition of truth, which anticipates the slow
processes of proof, and yet from the first is certain
((
1 On this account Mr J. J. Murphy, in his Scientific Bases of
Faith, would go so far as to define faith generally as certitude
without verification "—not "certitude without proof" (p. 110).
FAITH AND REASON
253
of the sureness of its ground. Here, once more, in
its purest form, is faith, but it is faith the rational
ground of which admits of being laid bare. Nor is
the case greatly altered if, from the theoretical
speculator, we turn our minds to the practical
reformer who, perhaps, has grasped a principle
which few others share with him, which is as yet
held only in faith, but for which the years to come
are to furnish a splendid vindication.
The argu-
ment, indeed, if it were worth our while to follow
it, might be carried much further. It has been
hinted at above how reason itself ultimately rests
in its exercise on principles that are indemonstrable,
and the minuter analysis of the act of knowledge
would yield some strange results. What, e.g., is
each exercise of memory but an act of faith ?1 Or
how shall we logically justify the instinct on which
all our inductive inferences depend the confident
expectation of the uniformity of nature? So far from
being opposed, the truth is that faith and reason in
no department of our experience can ever be held
absolutely apart. The one needs, and co-operates
with, the other. Their operations interblend. As
in the psychology of the senses, sensation and per-
ception are always present together, though in some
senses (taste, smell) sensation predominates, in others
(sight, touch-the so-called intellectual senses), per-
ception, so faith and reason, as twin powers of the
¹ J. S. Mill says, in criticising Sir Wm. Hamilton, "Our belief
in the veracity of memory is evidently ultimate."
254
FAITH AND REASON
soul, invariably act together, and eke out each the
other's deficiencies.
2. The examples just given show not only that
there is a kind of faith which rests on strictly
rational grounds, but that there is scarcely any exer-
cise of reason which does not involve some demand on
faith. So far there will be little dispute that faith
and reason are not necessarily antagonistic. All
these cases, however, agree in two respects-(1) in
being related to the present order of things, and (2)
capable of sensible-often of scientific-verification.
It may be thought that faith in this region is
warranted. But the question next arises, How does
it stand with a faith which has for its objects.
"things not seen" of a supersensible or trans-
cendental order; which cannot be sensibly verified;
and the belief in which does not rest on grounds of
reason, such as are most of the objects of religion?
That, from the peculiar nature of its objects, religion
makes a special demand on faith is already evident
from what has been so well said above in the
passage quoted from Mozley. It is likewise evident
that they do not admit of a sensible verification as
the facts and laws of nature do; though it is not to
be overlooked that many things in science also do
not admit of sensible verification (e.g., the ether,
atoms), and further, that religion has its own modes
of verification, which are to it a source of as great
certainty as in the other case (e.g., Christian experi-
ence). Besides, sensible verification, even in the
FAITH AND REASON
255
natural sphere, is not the only kind of verification.
Who, e.g., has sensibly verified the existence of a
soul in himself or others, or the existence of love,
righteousness, and truth? Our mental operations are
withdrawn from sense; they are not objects of faith,
yet are apprehended through a different faculty from
sense.¹
1 It is granted, however, that both from the
transcendental character and greatness of its objects,
and the inability sensibly to verify them, religion
is pre-eminently a thing of faith; but the main
question, after all, relates to the grounds on which
that faith is exercised. Are its grounds those of
rational proof or demonstration, or even of proba-
bility (in which case, as Mozley has above shown,
from the greatness and strangeness of its objects,
faith would still be required); and if not, how is
the faith justified? Here, it is first to be pointed
out, there is need for guarding ourselves against
ambiguity by a very important distinction. To say
that faith has reasonable grounds, or is rationally
justified, is very different from saying that in every
case it rests on reasoned grounds. I may accept on
the testimony of another a truth of which I myself
could offer no reasoned proof, yet I act perfectly
rationally in so doing. Or, what is more germane
1 It may be observed also that the basis of distinctively
Christian faith-viz., the historical Person of the Lord Jesus
Christ—from which it rises to the apprehension of the presence,
love, Fatherhood of God, and of all the other vital truths
of religion, is a verifiable fact in history. The Ritschlian
writers have done well to insist on this.
256
FAITH AND REASON
to the present point, my belief may rest on moral
grounds, on the testimony and postulates of my
moral nature (as in Kant's moral proof for the
existence of God), to some extent, even, on feelings,
instincts, emotions, aspirations of the soul (as in
the case of belief in a future life, though a faith
resting on this ground alone is apt to be wavering
and insecure), or may be evoked by some impression
made on me from without, as by the vastness,
grandeur, beauty, order, and regularity of nature,
in conjunction with my natural consciousness of
dependence on a higher power
a higher power — yet reason, when
questioned on the subject, may not hold any of
these beliefs to be irrational, but in the proportion.
in which they give evidence of springing from the
original make and constitution of the soul may
pronounce them eminently reasonable.
For reason
is not the only power in my being. My moral
nature has its voice also which must be listened to,
even more imperative than that of reason. My
instincts, affections, and aspirations; my primary
intuitions and experiences, religious and other; those
depths of the personality from which are the issues
of life, which the plummet of reason cannot sound,
have their inalienable rights, which no philosophy
of man can afford to ignore. Out of all these, in
their contact with our natural and spiritual environ-
ment, spring convictions, faiths, which are among
the most precious heritages of the human family.
These beliefs do not rest on ratiocination, but they
FAITH AND REASON
257
are not the less on that account reasonably held.
Moreover, while they do not rest on grounds of
reason (save as the possession of a rational nature
underlies and is implied in every one of them), it
does not follow that reason, even in its theoretic
exercise, has no function in regard to them. It has
first to examine the character of these beliefs, to
trace them, if it can, to their ultimate roots in
human nature, to see how far they spring out of
its essence and inherent laws, and thus, if indirectly,
to afford a certain rational justification of them.
But it may go further, and may aid in giving the
natural belief a better defined and more perfect form,
may even partially verify it by bringing to light
the implicit reason which underlies so many of our
spontaneous beliefs, and is their hidden spring and
support; higher still, may be able to show that
what is given primarily as a truth of faith is like-
wise capable of a large measure of theoretical con-
firmation, and may as justly rank as a truth of
reason. The palmary example here is the primary
truth of all religion-the existence of God—which
is the highest of all truths of faith, and yet may be
boldly held to be the most clearly supported of all
the truths of reason. We disown, therefore, in its
totality, the divorce which some would fain intro-
duce into the sphere of religion between truths of
faith and truths of reason. Reason would act
irrationally if it did not recognise the existence and
rights of the province of faith; faith is unwise if
R
258
FAITH AND REASON
it does not realise its oneness in root with the
truest reason, and does not thankfully avail itself
of all the illumination, correction, and corroboration
which reason can yield it.
3. Natural religion, however, is not all we have
to deal with. What degree of knowledge of God-
of His Fatherly love and care, of His all-directing
providence and moral government, of a future state
of rewards and punishments-would be possible to
man were his nature a pure mirror reflecting the
divine, it is impossible to say. The fact we have
to face is that this is not man's moral condition,
and that over the whole wide field of history
religious faith has never been able to maintain
itself at a high level without the aid of supernatural
revelation. As a natural growth, it has been dim,
uncertain, wavering, and its light has not tended
to grow clearer as time has gone on.
There are
only three great monotheistic religions in the world,
and those the three derived
derived from the Bible—
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is the belief
of the Christian Church, therefore, that God has not
left man simply to feel after Him by his unaided
efforts, but in historical revelation has given him
a better knowledge of Himself, of His will and
purposes, and of the way of life; and that this
revelation culminates in Jesus Christ- the Word
made flesh at once the supreme Revealer and the
supreme Revelation. Our last question, accordingly,
is, How does it stand with faith and reason in
FAITH AND REASON
259
relation to the knowledge of God and of divine
things coming to us from this supernatural source?
On the deep and difficult problem of revelation.
itself it may be sufficient to recall what was said
above that revelation even when coming to us
with the strongest external attestation is not simply
external; it is only truly revelation when it enters
the soul as light and power, and awakens faith
through the response it meets with in the spiritual
nature. The highest example of this is the Lord
Jesus Christ Himself, in whom "the eternal life"
is set, as it were, visibly and verifiably before us.¹
What else there is in revelation which we cannot
immediately and directly verify must grow for our
spirits out of that which we can verify-out of our
faith in Christ, or the parts of His teaching which
we are able spiritually to assimilate, or the apos-
tolic word in its adaptation to our spiritual nature
and needs. This neither excludes Christ's personal
authority, nor the corroborative testimony of His
miracles and resurrection, nor any of the other
lines of what are customarily called the "external
evidences," but it throws the weight in the pro-
duction of spiritual faith on that on which it must
always ultimately rest, viz., the character and con-
tent of the revelation itself. When, therefore, the
question is as to the production or existence of
Christian faith, we are heartily in accord with those
who think that the grounds of faith in the Chris-
1 1 John i. 1-3.
260
FAITH AND REASON
tian religion lie within the Christian system itself,
and are not to be sought beyond it. Faith in
Christ, in other words, has its grounds in the im-
mediate appeal which the objective revelation in
Christ and His Gospel make to the soul-it has its
central point in the self-certitude of the conscious-
ness of reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ,
and of the new life which springs from this-and is
not dependent on, certainly is not produced by, any
prior or subsequent demonstration that may be
given of its agreement with truths of reason or facts
of science. The proof of the reasonableness of the
Christian system, of its coherence and agreement
with other truths, or with the system of knowledge
as a whole, is a confirmation of faith, a corrobora-
tion of it, a clearing of it up to itself, a removal
of difficulties, a connection of it with science; but
it is not the origin of faith. The roots of the faith
lie elsewhere, and are otherwise nourished. They
involve many other elements besides the intellectual.
Any theory of apologetics which proceeds on an
opposite hypothesis is, we are convinced, funda-
mentally astray. Yet in the very statement of these
limitations it is already implied that Christian faith
stands in no fundamental antagonism to reason, and
that the latter has a wide and legitimate sphere
open to it-assuming it has been led to adopt the
Christian standpoint-in laying bare these har-
monies, in showing, e.g., the reasonableness of the
Christian view, its coherence with itself and with
FAITH AND REASON
261
its own presuppositions, its agreement with human
nature and with
with the facts of experience; its
necessity, even, if an adequate solution is to be
afforded of rational and moral problems, and if the
theory of the world built up from other stand-
points is to receive its satisfactory completion. I
do not touch on other fields in which reason will
find abundant exercise within the pale of Christi-
anity. These will readily suggest themselves in con-
nection with the historical and critical inquiries, the
re-handling of theological problems, and attempts.
at the adjustment of old standpoints to new dis-
coveries, which evoke so keen an interest at the
present hour. The perfect juste milieu in the
relations of faith and reason in theology is perhaps
difficult to attain; but we do well, at least, to
cherish the conviction that God in His wisdom has
a place in His religion for both, and that nothing
but harm can come of seeking to excite jealousy
and conflict, where only harmony should prevail.
}
APPENDIX
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE
:
ļ
APPENDIX
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE
A LITTLE may be said in further elucidation of the
place of the much-discussed "judgment of value"
in religion. Prof. Reischle, of Halle, published
recently (1900) a booklet on "Judgments of Worth
and Judgments of Faith" (Werturteile und Glaubens-
urteile), which perhaps loses itself somewhat in dis-
tinctions,¹ and ends in what we are compelled to
regard as an untenable view of the relations of
religion to knowledge, but which deserves all praise
for the thoroughgoing manner in which it works
out its subject. There are still, however, it seems
to us, points of extreme importance on value-judging
which even Reischle, in his painstaking analysis,
overlooks.
1 E.g., he distinguishes judgments of value, according to the
standpoint from which they are regarded, into verbal, psycho-
logical, and thymetic judgments. Religious judgments mostly
are not judgments of value in the verbal sense (for in form they
are judgments of being). They are psychological judgments of
value only in part and indirectly (for in part they are traditionary,
and rest on authority). They are properly to be classed as
thymetic judgments, on which see below (Cf. Reischle, pp. 88-93).
265
266
APPENDIX
Reischle, it need
self Kantian in his
only be said here, avows him-
theoretic Agnosticism, and, like
1
Kant, builds up his convictions of the supersensible,
and of a moral end of the world, on grounds of the
Practical Reason. Religious judgments he places in
a class which he calls "thymetic," ie., judgments
whose validity is established, not on theoretic grounds,
but on grounds of the heart and conscience.2 With
this he combines the view of a positive revelation
of God in Christ. The root-impulse in religion is
the desire of freedom from the world, and the
Christian religion approves itself through its power
to satisfy this need. Thymetic value-judging here
resolves itself very much into inward appropriation
and verification of a revelation objectively given.3
This really takes us beyond value-judging into the
region of historically ascertained facts, to which
our judgments of value attach themselves. A judg-
ment of value is involved in my admiration of a sun-
set; but the sunset is first there to admire, and my
judgments upon it do not rest merely on subjective
grounds.
That we do attribute worth or value to objects
1 P. 114.
2 P. 93.
3 In a sense, of course, the subjective validity of any judgment,
even the most purely intellectual, depends on the power of the
mind to appreciate the force and sufficiency of the grounds which
support it. I assent to a proposition of Euclid because I inwardly
perceive the cogency of each step of the demonstration. It might,
therefore, conceivably be argued that the ultimate guarantee of
the truth of mathematics was the irresistible feeling of certainty
in the subject.
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE
267
Any judg-
within our knowledge, is undeniable.
ments in which we do this are "judgments of value.”
Those objects which we esteem or value, and on that
account delight in, or desire to possess, we call
"goods." A "good" is a thing which has value to
us. Reischle has drawn up a scale of values, but
the main heads are of themselves obvious. 1. At
the bottom of the scale are pleasures, which are
valued for their own sakes. 2. Higher are œsthetic
values (beauty, sublimity, harmony, etc). 3. There
are intellectual values-truth being loved, desired,
and sought after for its own sake. 4. Still higher,
because of their unconditional worth, are moral
values. 5. Finally, there are spiritual and religious
values, of which more below. From connection with
these primary values, objects in themselves indifferent
acquire secondary or derivative values, which need
not here detain us.
Now we come to points in which it appears to us
that there is oversight, and sometimes confusion and
error.
The usual mode of contrast between theoretic
judgments" and "value - judgments" is that the
former express the objective state of a case, as that
is known to us by perception or reasoning, whereas
the latter" value-judgments"-express the relation
of the object to ourselves as affecting us with pleasure
or pain, and exciting in us desire or aversion.¹
Religious knowledge is said to consist in, or move
1 Cf. Reischle, p. 23.
268
APPENDIX
in, such judgments of value (so Ritschl and others),
or to rest upon them (Kaftan, etc.). It is, then,
claimed that religion is to be kept clear from all
contact with theoretic knowledge (in above sense).
I. But a number of important facts and distinc-
tions are here overlooked. And first, with regard to
value-judgments themselves.
1. A first important distinction is that between
what we may call objective and subjective values.
It is not the case, as the theory affirms, that value-
judgments express simply the relation of objects
to us as causing pleasure or pain, affecting us
agreeably or disagreeably, aiding or hindering our
personal ends. A far more important class of value-
judgments relate to inherent and intrinsic values:
values which belong to the object as existing, and
which are quite independent of our personal feelings.
The estimable or valuable quality
or valuable quality—say courage,
unselfishness, purity-may excite in me feelings of
admiration or delight; if it is a good I can acquire,
may awaken in me a desire to possess it, or pleasure
in its possession; but the value which the judg-
ment affirms is in the object, not simply in its
relations to me, or is in its relations to me only
because first of all it is in the object. I have the
faculty of recognising and appreciating it, but in
no sense is it dependent on my judgment, or state
of feeling. Such, to take the highest examples, are
holiness or love in God or Christ; such is virtue
in a fellow-man; such as righteousness, as the quality
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE
269
of a good act. It is a quite inadequate account
of such judgments to speak of them as simply ex-
pressing relation to the subject. On the other hand,
value - judgments may and do express the relation
to the subject; but even here not simply as exciting
pleasure or pain, but as meeting some need, im-
parting some moral and spiritual benefit, furthering
some end. Religion abounds in such judgments,
but they practically always have the former class
of judgments as their presupposition. We love
and trust God because He has revealed Himself to
be a Being worthy of our love and trust. Such
judgments do excite in us pleasure
us pleasure produce a
state of satisfaction or blessedness; but it is not
necessarily the pleasure which they excite which
imparts to them their value. Pleasure, as said.
above, has a value of its own; so far it may be the
object of a value - judgment. I may love a thing
simply, or also, for the pleasure it gives. But to
say that all value - judgments - even those that
express relation-are of this class, is to say that all
value - judgments are hedonistic, which is certainly
a poor enough account of religion. This distinc-
tion is the more important that, by adhering to it,
we are taken at once out of the circle of subjec-
tive valuations, and brought into contact with objects
actually existing; while, by neglecting it, the weight
is so strongly laid on values of relation, that the
object, however far this may be from the intention,
constantly tends to vanish in subjective judgments.
270
APPENDIX
2. A second distinction, not without importance, is
that between judgments of value that relate to
being and judgments of value that relate to quality.
This is not the broad distinction, so frequently can-
vassed, between judgments of existence and judg-
ments of value; the distinction intended is in the
sphere of value-judgments themselves. Some judg-
ments of value relate to being, some to qualities,
though in the latter also a reference to being is
generally implied.
(1) Some judgments relate directly to being. Such,
e.g., is the judgment of worth-which Ritschl so
justly emphasises-which we pass on our own person-
ality in comparison with the material world. This
self-conscious personality of mine I compare with
the world around me, and judge that I am of more
worth than it. I attach a value to my personality
and its ends as such. From my Christian stand-
point, I attach an infinite value to each human soul.
I make a scale of being, and judge the sentient to
be of more worth than the insentient, the self-con-
scious than the unconscious, the personal than the
impersonal. Highest of all I judge of God as the
One whose being has absolute worth-who is the
absolutely Good and Perfect One. These are judg-
ments of value, but in their very nature are
judgments also on being-on being as given ere it
can be judged upon; not therefore on being the
knowledge of whose existence is based in some way
on the value-judgment. A worth-judgment and a
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE
271
judgment that can only be described as theoretic
coincide in the same object.
(2) The greater number of our judgments of value,
however, are judgments on qualities-but generally
on qualities of objects given in experience, or
through some medium of objective knowledge (testi-
mony, biography, history, etc.). Judgments of
value,'" we have remarked elsewhere, "do not hang
in the air: they are connected with real objects. If
I pass an æsthetic judgment on a beautiful flower,
I affirm in the act the existence of the flower, the
knowledge of which is given in perception: if I
commend a disinterested action, I affirm the reality
of the act." There is here, again, no divorce of the
value-judgment and theoretic knowledge-both rather
are inseparable elements in the one act of knowledge.
3. A third distinction of importance is that be-
tween natural and artificial or accidental value-judg-
ments.2 A value-judgment may declare, as we have
seen, a quality inherent in an object; or, again, a
value which arises naturally from the relation of
the object to the self; or has its necessary ground
in man's moral or spiritual constitution.
It may,
however, be the expression of a value emotionally,
imaginatively, putatively, given to the object; not
a value which is real, or real in that measure or
degree, but a value which has its origin in the
heightened and coloured feelings of the subject. The
1 Ritschlian Theology, p. 246.
2 Cf. Reischle, p. 49. Our idea, however, is different from his.
272
APPENDIX
imaginary charms and perfections with which one
invests a beloved object is a familiar illustration.
The case is not one of objective value-judging, but
of idealisation. In another direction, the judgment
may express a value purely individual, the result
of peculiarity of taste, of association, of acquired, or
it may be depraved, liking. It is specially the intru-
sion of the former-the imaginative and idealising
-tendency that has to be guarded against when we
speak of objects having "a religious value," and
Ritschl and his followers, we think, have not been
always sufficiently watchful against this danger.
When value-judging is freed from objective control
and resolved so largely into subjective estimations,
the transition is easy to a play of imagination
which gets far enough from the actual truth, and
creates its object after its own liking.
4. Yet another distinction is that made in certain
of the theories between value-judgments proper, and
theoretic judgments based on these (Kaftan). Thus,
e.g., if I postulate God as a necessary implication of
my moral consciousness, or of the worth of my
personality, the affirmation that springs from this,
viz.: that God is, and is the Author and Ruler of the
World for a moral end, is not, in strictness, a value-
judgment, but a judgment of existence, or theoretic
judgment-one based, indeed, on a value-judgment,
but even that a judgment about self, not about God.
That this is a true distinction Reischle also admits,
but abolishes it again by calling religious judgments
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE
273
'thymetic," as depending for their validity on in-
ternal determinations.
Such other distinctions as that made by Ritschl
between concomitant and independent value-judg-
ments may here be passed over. Ritschl's distinction
is faulty in so far as it tends to dissociate value-judg-
ments in religion from given objects.
II. It is already evident from these considerations
that there is not, and cannot be, that opposition
between "value-" and "theoretic " judgments which
some have affirmed; and that it is an error to set
these up as distinct and mutually exclusive classes
of judgments, and to place religion in the one, while
debarring it from the other. The objects to which
our theoretic judgments apply are also objects of
our worth-judgments; conversely, theoretic judgments
have a place in the sphere of religion. They are
even more essential in religion than in morals and
æsthetics; for in religion we are dealing immediately
with relations to a real Being, and that the Being
who is the ground of all reality. The mutual relations
and inseparable implications of the two spheres will
be better understood when certain things are con-
sidered which again are frequently overlooked.
1. If by "theoretic judgments" are meant purely
intellectual judgments, it is to be observed that these
are by no means coterminous with knowledge even
in the sphere of outward cognition. There is no
sphere of knowledge-not even that which is called
world-knowledge"-in which intellectual judgments
((
S
274
APPENDIX
alone rule. The world given in perception and in-
vestigated by science is not such a world. A domain
of purely theoretic knowledge, in the above acceptation,
is a fiction. Relations of space and time, of number,
of causation, furnish but the framework of our know-
ledge. The objects of the outer world are clothed
with qualities which pure intellect could not appre-
hend-with sounds, colours, tastes, odours, harmonies,
etc.- qualities which appeal to, indeed have their
sole being in, sentiency. The sweetness of an orange
is as truly the object of a value-judgment (if of a
lower kind) as the beauty of a flower, or the purity
of a soul. Value-judging, therefore, enters deeply
into all our knowledge, even in the theoretic
domain: it applies to the same objects as the theo-
retic judgments, and completes our knowledge of
them.
2. It is not less true, on the other hand, that all
value-judgments in the moral and religious spheres
are inseparably associated with theoretic activities and
theoretic judgments.
(1) It is the fact that man is rational, thinking
spirit which creates for him
creates for him the possibility of
religion, and makes him capable of religious value-
judgments, or of judgments of any kind. Only
in such a nature could religion appear. Only such
a being is capable of rising to the idea of God, or
of so much as conceiving of eternity, infinity, im-
mortality, duty. It is man's rationality, therefore,
which is the root-fact of even his capacity for
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE
275
་
religion. Hegel was undoubtedly right thus far at
least. It is only through reason that the mind is cap-
able of framing such an idea as that of God. Reason
in man not only creates the possibility of, but gives
the impulse, and leads man instinctively to rise
to such a conception-impels him, that is, by a
necessary movement of spirit, to ascend from the
caused to the uncaused, from the finite to the
infinite, from the temporal to the eternal, from his
own self-conscious personality and morally legislative
reason to a Supreme Personal Intelligence and
Moral Lawgiver and Ruler. What peculiarly con-
stitutes a religious judgment is that it has relation
to God. It is not in the predicates we apply to
Godthough
though it might seem to be so that the
peculiarity of the religious value-judgment consists.
To say of God that He is loving, righteous, merciful,
is not to frame judgments different in kind from
those which we employ when we attribute love, or
justice, or mercy to our fellow-men. The difference
in the religious judgment is that these things are
now affirmed of God-of One who is thought of (in
whatever religious language we may clothe the idea)
as the supreme, infinite, eternal Source of all being,
wisdom, power, holiness, and love-Author and
Sustainer of all that is. But this thought of God
is neither in itself a value-judgment, nor springs
wholly, though it does in part (through the moral
nature), from value-judgments; but is involved in
our whole nature as rational and moral beings.
:
276
APPENDIX
(2) A second fact, the full bearings of which are
not always considered, is, that everything we call
value-judging falls necessarily within, and is, if we may
so say, ensphered by, the theoretic consciousness. The
value-judgment, like every other element in our
experience, falls within self-consciousness. This is
often overlooked. It is assumed that reason, or
the theoretic consciousness, has to do only with
purely intellectual truths. But this is palpably an
error. Self-consciousness is the purest act of know-
ledge of which we are capable, but within it lies
everything that belongs to mental,
to mental, moral, and
spiritual experience. It surveys in its reflective
exercise the whole realm of inner experience. It takes
knowledge of it, discriminates its parts, investi-
gates, judges, and reasons upon it. There is not
self-consciousness for value-judgments and
another for theoretic judgments. Our self-con-
sciousness is one.1 In one act it embraces all the
contents. A sensation, e.g., is not only felt, but known.
We can reflect on our feelings, affections, emotions;
on our æsthetic, moral, and religious experiences.
How else should there be possible philosophies of art,
of ethics, of religion? So far, therefore, from value-
judgments being set in a compartment distinct from
theoretic judgments, the theoretic self-consciousness
is the wider activity which embraces value-judgments
with other judgments in its one act of knowledge.
one
1 Reischle would admit the fact, but fails to give it its due
weight for his problem.
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE
277
(3) It is already implied in these considerations
that a theoretic element is involved in the value-
judgment itself. It is not simply that the value-
judgment has reference to an object which, even
in religion, is given through some means that in-
volve theoretic activities. But the value-judgment,
in its own nature, is inseparable from theoretic
elements. It has the rational self as its presup-
position and condition of its possibility; it appears
as a constituent element of a rational self-con-
sciousness; but still more, in its very character as
"judgment," it shows that rational functions are
involved. For "judgment" is essentially the act
of a thinking, as distinct from a feeling and willing,
being; the ordinary mental operations of obser-
vation, memory, reflection, distinction of subject
and object, of subject and predicate, in short, all
logical and rational categories, are implied in it:
how then can it claim to set up house, as it were,
for itself, in complete dissociation from theoretic
reason? The simple fact that these rational opera-
tions are capable of being pressed into the service
of the value - judgment, that it is amenable to mani-
pulation by them, proves the falsity of the division
that is sought to be effected.
It does not relieve the difficulty created by the
too wide severance of the theoretic and value judg-
ments to bring in the idea of revelation. If the stress
is laid on the positivism of the revelation, in that
very fact it is manifest, as before remarked, that we
278
APPENDIX
have transcended the sphere of pure value-judgments.
If, on the other hand, it is the content of the revela-
tion in which its peculiar value is supposed to lie,
it is to be remembered that even revelation cannot
raise our knowledge above the essential limitations of
all religious knowledge, i.e., above subjective valuations.
It is to be observed, however, that Jesus did not
take up this exclusive attitude on the subject of
religious knowledge. Jesus did not come to reveal
to men that there is a God. He assumed that to
be known, and brought to the world fuller and clearer
knowledge of the character and will of this Heavenly
Father. He came above all to reconcile the world
to God. Strange, indeed, it would be, if, believing
in God as the Almighty Author of this world and
Ruler in providence and history, we were yet com-
pelled to affirm that no trace of His being, action,
character, were anywhere discernible, that neither
the reason of man, nor the world He has made, had
any intelligible word to utter regarding Him.
We conclude with the remark that, so
the introduction of the idea of value-judging is
assumed to mark a new epoch in theology, the claim
appears to be baseless. There is nothing true in this
theory which a sound theology has not always recog-
nised. There has never been the idea on the part
of any one of running the whole of religious know-
ledge into purely intellectual propositions. God is
a Spirit, and is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.
Spiritual things can only be spiritually discerned.
as
ON THE JUDGMENT OF VALUE
279
Religious knowledge is conditioned throughout by
the state of the heart and the obedience of the life.
Even the doctrinal propositions of theology-if intel-
lectual in form-embrace, just as self-consciousness
does, all the value-elements of religion. They relate
throughout to spiritual magnitudes and spiritual
transactions. The fruit is unto holiness, and the
end everlasting life.
INDEX
ABBOTT, Dr Lyman, on evolution
and miracle, 164.
BENDER, W., 22, 58-9; theory of
religion, 68 ff.
Bruce, Prof. A., on Christianity
without miracle, 135; on mirac-
ulous conception, 224, 233.
CHARLES, R. H., on Christ's
claim, 144.
Christ, impression of God in, 7 ff.,
14, 25, 28, 44, 65; as principle
of revelation, 23, 41, 44; "God-
head" of, 24-5, 46-7, 67 ff., 85,
110, 147-8; claims of, 136 ff.,
193-4; His knowledge super-
natural, 130, 135 ff.; relation to
sacraments, 197-8.
Christianity, ground of faith in
(Herrmann), 7 ff., 65, 260;
proof of (Kaftan), 63
essence of (Harnack), 120, 123,
132; Sabatier on, 158; doctrine
in, 147, 173.
ff.;
ECKE, G., on school of Ritschl,
64, 71-2, 78, 97.
Evolution, influence on Sabatier,
155, 162; Sabatier's view of,
163; Lyman Abbott on, 164;
evolution and dogma, 159-60,
167, 170; limits of, 228; relation
to mind, 228-9; Prof. Calder-
wood on, 228; relation to body
230; bearing on sinlessness,
231; on incarnation, 232.
FAITH, origin and certainty of
Christian faith, 7 ff., 14; Ritsch-
lian divorce from theoretic
thought, 16 ff., 22-3, 25, 42 ff.,
55, 58 ff., 81, 104 ff., 168; rela-
tion to reason, 241 ff.; Scrip-
tural view of, 244; element of
trust in, 245 ff.; verifying prin-
ciple in, 248 ff.; place in ordi-
nary life, 251; in theoretic
exercises, 251; with respect to
supersensible reality, 254; to
supernatural revelation, 258.
GARVIE, A. E., his Ritschlian Theo-
logy, 77 ff.; on Ritschl's philo-
sophy, 81, 105; on judgments of
value, 82, 85, 103, 110; on sin
and guilt, 85, 99, 101, 103, 110;
on mysticism, 83 ff.; on God-
head" of Christ, 85; on Christ's
resurrection, 84, 97.
Gospels, historicity of, 12, 15;
•
picture of Jesus in, 136 ff.,
281
282
INDEX
192 ff.; synoptics and Gospel of
John, 144-5, 194.
; on
HARNACK, A., 5, 37, 55, 78, 90,
221; Berlin lectures, 115 ff.
essence of Christianity, 120,
Jesus and His
123, 132;
Gospel, 123, 129, 133, 146; on
Christology, 125, 129-30, 136 ff.,
148; on Gospel in history,
126 ff.; on miracle, 119, 122,
131; on Easter Faith, 131,
144; defects of view, 122, 125-6,
128-9, 133 ff.
Herrmann, W., 5, 22, 55, 65, 86,
243; on knowledge, 18, 57 ff.;
theory of religion, 17, 22, 62,
65; on revelation in Christ, 5 ff.,
14, 28, 65-6; on faith and
certainty, 10 ff., 12 ff., 67; on
Christology, 27, 67-8, 86; his
Verkehr, 9, 12-13, 20, 28, 66,
126, 139.
JUDGMENTS of value, 17, 19, 29,
35, 42-3, 59, 60, 82-3; Appendix,
265 ff.
KAFTAN, J., relation to Ritschl, 5,
54, 55; on knowledge, 21, 57,
58 ff.; theory of religion, 22,
62-3; apologetics, 63 ff.; on
judgments of value, 17,
60, 268, 272; on kingdom of
God, 24, 64-6; on Christology,
67-8; on the exalted Christ, 27,
66;
his Dogmatik, 72.
Kant, on knowledge, 18, 21, 39,
106, 155, 168; moral theory of,
58-9, 160, 256, 266; on kingdom
of God, 24, 45.
Kingdom of God, place of idea in
Ritschlianism, 23, 45, 55, 64,
66, 72, 99; see Kant.
Knowledge, theories of, see Kant,
Ritschl, Herrmann, Kaftan,
Sabatier.
LOOFS, F., 85, 96.
MCGIFFERT, A. C., on Apostolic
Christianity, 180 ff.; critical
views, 183, 215; on later Juda-
ism, 185; on John the Baptist,
186-7; estimate of Jesus, 188 ff.;
his view compared with Gos-
pels, 193 ff.; on the resur-
rection, 196; on the sacra-
ments, 197-9; on Pentecost,
200 ff.; on apostles, 203; on
Paul's conversion, 204-5; on
Paul's theology, 206 ff.; on
Paul's apostleship, 210; alleged
legalism of early believers,
212-13.
Ménégoz, E., his Fidéisme, 152,
165, 169, 174-5; see Symbolo-
Fidéisme.
Miraculous Conception, disputes
regarding, 221 ff., 225; view of
early Church, 223;
223; critical
objections, 224, 235; Prof.
Bruce on, 224, 233; dogmatic
importance of, 226, 232, 237;
relation to evolution, 227.
PHILOSOPHY, excluded from theo-
logy, 16 ff., 41 ff., 45, 46-7, 55,
81.
REASON, relation to faith, see
Faith.
Reischle, D. M., 22, 56; on
judgments of value, 265 ff.
Religion, theories of, 21-2, 62,
69, 156, 160; see Ritschl, Saba-
tier, etc.
INDEX
283
Revelation, Herrmann on, 8 ff. ;
Ritschl on, 107; Sabatier on,
157.
Ritschl, A., his life, 33 ff.; char-
acter, 34-5, 79; influence, 3,
33, 37, 53 ff., 77, 111, 169;
school, 4-5, 14, 21 ff., 49 ff.,
53 ff., 71, 77 ff., 96; works, 3,
37, 40.
theology of, its merits, 5,
14, 30, 38, 44, 80, 92; its
defects, 18 ff., 25, 29, 43-4, 47,
49, 80 ff., 92, 104, 110; positive
character of, 23, 55, 80; theory
of knowledge, 16 ff., 39, 55, 58,
69, 81, 105, 168; theory of
religion, 22, 44, 62, 104; on
value-judgments, 17 ff., 29, 42,
58 ff., 82 ff., 94, 103 ff., 108,
155, 169; on kingdom of God,
23-4, 30, 39, 45, 66, 123; on
revelation, 7, 18, 23, 29, 30, 41,
44, 46, 55, 64, 80, 107, 157 ff.,
on
"Godhead" of Christ, 26,
46, 67, 85, 110; on resurrection
of Christ, 16, 47, 84, 94, 96 ff.,
122 ff.; on atonement, 26, 48,
68, 110; antagonism to mysti-
cism, 27, 49, 66, 81, 83-4.
SABATIER, A., his Philosophy of
Religion, 152 ff.; early beliefs,
154; theory of religion, 156,
160; on miracle, 157, 163; on
essence of Christianity, 158; on
religion and dogma, 158-9, 161,
164 ff. ; on “symbol" in religion,
165, 171 ff., 175; theory of
knowledge, 168 ff.
Schleiermacher, F., 23, 54, 115.
Schrempf, C., 36, 221-5.
Sin and guilt, 4, 7-8, 26, 29, 55,
84, 95, 99 ff.
Subjectivity, of Ritschl, 93-4, 103;
of Lotze, 106; of Ritschlian
theologians, 22, 57; of Bender,
22, 68 ff.
Swing, A. T., his Ritschlian Theo-
logy, 89 ff.; on critics of Ritschl,
90 ff.; on Christ's resurrection,
94, 96 ff.; on sin and guilt, 95,
99 ff.; on knowledge, 105; on
subjectivity of Ritschl, 93-4,
103 ff.; on judgments of value,
94, 108; on "Godhead" of
Christ, 110; on redemption,
110.
Symbolo - Fidéisme,
Fidéisme, origin of
name, 152; meaning of, 165,
168, 174; see Sabatier, Méné-
goz.
THEOLOGY, the New, character
of, 122, 153-4, 180, 224.

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