The communion of the Christian with God : described on the basis of Luther's statements

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CROWN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Preface

Apart from the substitution of this for the former introduction, the numerous smaller alterations have reference to the two most important objections that have been urged against the conception of our faith here defended. It is said to be impossible to experience the Person of Jesus as the fact that can give to our confidence in God the calm and strength of victory. From the opposite side I am told that what helps us is not the Person of Jesus, as we ourselves can lay hold of and experience it as a fact. The power that saves us lies rather in narratives about Jesus—that is, in “facts which require faith,” and not in a fact of which we ourselves are become witnesses. ‘The two objections are fundamentally at one in a legal conception of religion. For my opponents on the left wing the Gospel of Jesus is the rule of doctrine, by the acceptance of which they wish to become or reckon that they are Christians. They observe truly enough that through historical inquiry the Person of Jesus becomes for us a problem, not a reality which can decisively determine our existence. And so they draw the conclusion that there is nothing left for us except that combination of amazing ideas, Jesus’ gospel. But when they conclude that through the conventional possession or the determined vill PREFACE acceptance of these ideas a man is a Christian, they are grievously mistaken. General ideas, the truth of which is clear to us, may indeed be accepted by us, but they do not transform us—and conversion has always been reckoned the first effect of the dawn of Christianity in the soul—they are rather an expression of what we already are. And general ideas, the truth of which is not clear to us, because perhaps they go far beyond anything comprehensible by us, for that very reason we cannot appropriate so long as we remain what we are. If we, nevertheless, make the attempt, and imagine that it lies in our power, we do not make Christians of ourselves, but something quite different.

My opponents on the right count it part of their glory that with them the sum of doctrine is much more comprehensive, and embraces at the least all that is reported or taught about Jesus in the New Testament. In this assertion, of course, the legal character of their religion is still more sharply defined. And the most strange thing in this is that they wish to make a law for all who will become Christians the very doctrine of that Apostle who contended so hotly for the recognition of the fact that there is no law there that can make alive. They evidently imagine that the sum of doctrine constructed in this way by them ceases to be law when it gets the name “ gospel.”

The fact that these two tendencies are dominant in our church would be cause for despair were it the case that they really lived only by the stimulus of the dogmas they profess. They live, however, also by the mysterious force of the tradition to which, as a matter

PREFACE 1x of fact, they are linked, and which, even in their abuse of it, they mean to honour. For many of them, in spite of everything, there does form itself out of the material which the Biblical tradition offers them, the spiritual picture of Jesus, which can become their one and all, when they perceive in it the approach of God to their soul, His judgment and His compassion. That must comfort us when we see our church under the power of the teachers of the law ; but it must not take away from us the sense of our duty to oppose them.

They hold that they will sink in a bottomless quagmire if what they are to believe is no longer prescribed to them. But if it can here be shown to them that the basis of faith can only be what produces faith as the inward experience of pure trust, one would think that even on their minds there must force itself the truth that faith can only be created by a personal Spirit whose reality and power we ourselves experience. But instead of paying heed to our proof that we can experience this personal Spirit and its power when we listen to the sacred tradition of the Christian community, they remain blind and deaf, and will not budge from the position that this tradition can only become a means of redemption to any one by his declaring himself ready to make up his mind to accept as true its doctrines and narratives. Many are even quite willing to point out to people particular portions of the tradition which must be unconditionally “ believed,” if one means to possess faith at all. These people often bear indubitable marks of a true faith themselves, and yet they have obviously no suspicion that by this demand

“ | PREFACE they are making themselves faith’s executioners. Doubtless those of them who are in truth Christians have another object than that which they formally give expression to. They wish to see preserved the sacredness of the Scriptural tradition. They do not notice that they themselves are profaning it when they lay upon others as a ceremonial law what is in truth a gift of God’s grace. Nor do they reflect that the Holy Scriptures are truly reverenced when they are, first of all, investigated in their historically determined reality ; and when, in the second place, these books are used, just as they offer themselves to us, so that in them we may seek out the revelation of God. But this gives us all the more reason to hope that the perception of this truth will soon generally prevail. From every one who wishes to adhere to her, the Christian community must demand that he endeavours himself to win from the — Biblical tradition the vision of that Personal Life which alone can fill him with perfect confidence.

The assent which our opponents demand to an extract of Biblical doctrine is, first of all, morally impossible ; and, secondly, a convenient substitution for what is really necessary. But if we gain a clear insight into what the Bible ought to be for every Christian, namely, the means byiwhich with his own vision he lays hold of the Person of Jesus, then it is easy to see what attitude towards the Christian community must be taken up by the theologian called to her service. He must be ready to impart to her, without any deduction, the Scriptural tradition, and must possess the faculty of showing the people how they can use this means to

PREFACE xe reach that one end. But, on the other hand, if the ecclesiastical authorities should be in the habit of demanding from such a man that he shall “believe” a sum of doctrine prescribed by them, be it ever so small, then they would become guilty of a tyranny which ultimately they themselves must feel to be useless and barbarous. Perhaps there are not many who will venture to cherish the hope that it is in these ecclesiastical circles that a revulsion might occur which would overcome their fast-rooted perversity. But the whole corruption of the Christian faith through the use of tradition as a ceremonial law will be rooted out if in the Christian democracy there awakes the consciousness that God can reveal Himself only to those who desire to be sincere, and that, therefore, the state of moral self-consciousness into which we are brought by the compulsion of a stronger personal life is also the beginning of a faith which has a truly religious character.

W. HERRMANN.

REVISER’s NOTE PREFACE

Introduction

. The present situation of Protestant Christianity . The difficulty of the position is overcome by the piety of those not under bondage to law

. The exposition of what personal Christianity is is the common task of all parties in the Church

. The impossibility of uniformity of doctrine in

Christianity .

. The feature of unity in the Ney Pestaniont aad in the Christian community generally is the communion with God that is mediated through Jesus Christ

. The true objectivity of Ghrarian Raowieage

Chapter I The Relation Of The Christian Religion To

MYSTICISM AND TO THE FORMS OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE INVOLVED IN MYSTICISM

§ 1. The uncommunicable element in all religion § 2. The Catholic choice of this incommunicable element as the common essence of religion

§ 3. Mysticism and its significance for Catholicism

14 16

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. A want of clearness in the Protestant attitude to mysticism

. The enduring onidanee of mysticism for ie

Christian life

. Why, within the Christian contin niee? the way of mysticism must be abandoned

. The unsatisfying element in the doctrine of the two natures in Christ is correlated to mysticism .

. We get free from mysticism and scholasticism when we get beyond the legal conception of religion .

. We part company with the older Protestantism . The difficulty and practicability of our undertaking . The longing of the Christian for an objective reality to support his faith is made effective in Luther’s Christianity

. The elements of Luther’s iteolony ee tielone ‘6 the past

Chapter II

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF OUR COMMUNION WITH Gop THROUGH THE REVELATION OF Gop

. The conception of revelation as communicated knowledge about God and the ae founded on this notion

. Revelation as a fact aie our own experience, ie distinct from ourselves, convincing us of God’s working upon us .

. The Person of Jesus as the only rove convincing one who perceives the necessity of unconditional obedience

. The Person of Jesus is the men iminoriane elutiegts in the sphere of reality which we can reflect upon

. It is not through a historical judgment that the

Person of Jesus becomes a fact we ourselves establish

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. The personality of Jesus, by its own power, makes it possible for us to grasp it as an element of our own sphere of reality . .

. The peculiarity of the Christian relies is rooted in the consciousness of this fact in our own experience ,

. The saving fact is the paraotil life of :; esus shad it is grasped by us asareality . . The simplest features of the portrait of Jesus Pin is to be got from thetradition . : ;

. The claim of Jesus to be the Redeemer and ae proof of its truth . : . The Person of Jesus as the spa ee a of God .

. The objective grounds of our certainty that God communes with us

. The subjectivity of an Apoiiraey Beat beton i. faith . The power of the Person of Jesus over our heart is the vital principle of our religion

. The mystic, traditional, and rationalistic aijeetions . The impossibility of giving expression to the new life in communion with God in representations that are devoid of self-contradiction

. The Christianity of children . . Adult Christianity . ; . The easy Christianity that renounces Calf. Eowledae and reflection and accepts the conceptions of others . °

. The possibility of a acy of ‘ho iret of

Christ .

. Defects in the old Percent aeeterie of the nee of Christ and the way of salvation. ‘

. The value of the doctrine of the substittionary penal sufferings of Jesus. °

. Luther’s criticism of the thought of a eahatitul tionary satisfaction . ; ‘ . The receiving of forgiveness throngh Jesus .

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78 80 84

101 105

108 111

116 117 119 124 126 129

157 140

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§ 25. The true idea of the Deity of Christ and Christological dogma

§ 26. Luther’s attitude to Christolenieal es § 27. The connection of Luther’s peculiar idea of the Deity of Christ with his view of redemption and ~ with the Christian knowledge of God . ‘ ‘

§ 28. The advancement of Christian piety by means of

Luther’s thought . ; .

§ 29. Communion with God and Christ throwee ine imagination . i : .

§ 30. The mediation of true communion ‘eit God by means of the Christian community

§ 31. The difference between this Christian religion ant mysticism . :

Chapter III

THE EXERCISE OF OUR COMMUNION WITH GoD IN ReELIGIouS FAITH AND MoraL ACTION

§ 1. Turning to God is wrongly gush to gas in prayer . : ‘

§ 2. The form of the paraotial life in Which a communion with God can take place : .

§ 3. Our turning to God begins in the use of ‘His set of beneficence, that is, in faith.

§ 4. Faith is not experiented by the renewed man asa work of his own .

§ 5, Luther rises superior to this error § 6. The reappearance of the Catholic idea in Propane

Christianity . 4 ‘

§ 7. We get free from it by berdonal forces . § 8. The relapse into the old view accounted for by the force of criticism inherent in faith, especially in regard to miracles

§ 9. Worldly religion hardens the ormodoe notion of

Lattin...

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142 146 172 179 184 189

202 205 212

214 216

221 224 230

§ 10.

§ 11.

§ 14.

§ 15.

§ 16.

§ 17.

§ 18.

§ 19. § 20.

§ 21,

§ 22,

§ 23,

§ 24.

§ 25, § 26.

§ 27.

-§ 28,

§ 29,

§ 36.

True faith in itself communion with God and not merely a preliminary condition for communion .

Submission to God only in pure trust .

The place of forgiveness of sins in the life of faith

Repentance as an element in the life of faith .

The element of contemplation in faith

Faith fleeing the world

Luther’s idea of the freedom of a Cresian man

Christian humility . : . : 3 : .

The fear of God :

Love to God or to Christ .

The historical and the exalted Gine in ne life i faith . ‘ ; ; °

Communion with God as an experience and as an act ; : :

Moral activity in communion rah God

Faith as the power to will the good .

Faith as the impulse to will the good

Luther is defective as regards this point . ‘ :

The inner connection between love to God and love to our neighbour . : -

The foundation of a Christian aaron of ates

Eternal life in bearing the cross and in one’s moral calling

The consequences of ‘hth further dovelonmacnt a Luther’s ideas

The prayer of faith .

Prayer and willing resignation . : : :

Prayer for earthly blessings. : : : :

The new birth . : ; : :

Baptism and the new ae

Science and the thoughts of faith

Our attitude among the theological parties of i present day . : ; : ‘ ‘ . .

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296 298 300 306 310

313 317

INTRODUCTION

§ 1. The Present Situation of Protestant Christianity.

Tue work in which for the last fifteen years this book has had its share has not been in vain. He to-day who is willing to see, can find the way which, even in a world altered by science, Jeads those who seek God to Christ.

Of course, with all our efforts, we cannot make it clear to all Christians how profoundly our whole existence, down even to that arrangement of our habits of thought which is fixed by mere caprice, has been altered, not so much through the results of science as through the method which, in point of fact, it follows, and which is, in point of fact, unassailable. ‘There will be many Christians for a long time yet on whose consciousness this has not dawned.

But the task for the Church and for theology which grows out of this change is now facing us in fullest distinctness. The Church must endeavour to satisfy the spiritual wants of the thousands who are able to move so freely in the traditional forms of Christianity that they can find in them the means of expression for their own religious conviction. But this does not imply that these Christians, who are not compelled by their course in life to clear up their mental attitude to what is real in the world, are to be made lords over the Church.

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The leaders of the Church must not avail themselves of these docile masses in order to close the Church to others who are so controlled in their life that they are simply obeying the truth, when they regard the things of this world in a different manner. One may call those happy who do not see themselves forced out of the traditional forms of Christianity by the duty of sincerity. But the Church does not make itself indifferent to them ; if she does she will become a sect ; that is to say, she will sever herself from the historical movement of humanity. She ought to stand at their service. It is just these men who are in crying need of help if they are rightly to use the precious inheritance that is theirs and not make it an instrument of their ruin.

First of all, they need to be preserved from making the Biblical tradition a law for themselves or others, by the fulfilment of which they may inherit or appropriate salvation. For thus they block the way to God for themselves and hinder others from finding it. But they are not preserved from this depravity simply by the fact that the sacred tradition has been made uncertain for them. For that only means for each Christian to whom it happens, an addition to his burdens. He sees therein only a new task God sets him. And it will not occur to him to lay this burden upon others who have, perhaps, no time to solve such a question, being taken up with other duties.* It is by the right use of the

* [The meaning is a little difficult to follow; it is this: People beginning to have doubts themselves are all the more vehement in demanding simple acceptance of the narratives from others. They think thus to keep the others out of the difficulties they feel themselves. —Tr.]

Biblical tradition that a Christian grows out of its misuse. .

The Church must also aid the Christian democracy to see to it that the Bible holds its place. When the perception grows within the Protestant Church that the Bible is given us in order that in the stress of life and stilled in prayer we may listen to its words, if haply we may catch in it the voice of God speaking to our own hearts, then surely must perish the sacrilege that makes a law out of this gift of God’s grace. Of course we have in view the fact that in our Church such a deliberate profanation of the holy place gives itself out for “ positive Christianity.” But in the midst of the darkness, guarded as it is by ecclesiastical authorities and by the State, God sends light into many a heart, so that, in fear of the judge of the conscience and in joy in the Creator and Father, it escapes from all the vulgar arts by which the world and its potentates dress up their Christianity. Among us as well as among Catholics this profound injury to the Church, this reduction of the holy Scriptures to a rule of doctrine, is limited in its practical working by the power of the Spirit that is met with in the holy Scriptures. One who comes under the grasp of the spiritual character of Jesus wins a right appreciation of the doctrines about the Person of Jesus, so that he can find in even them that one thing great and precious to him above all else in the world, the power of this personal spirit over men who are yearning to become conscious of God. When a Christian has seen shining through the thoughts of others the fact that Christ has united them to God, these thoughts are no longer

A COMMUNION WITH GOD strange to him. He, therefore, cannot lay them upon himself as a rule of doctrine warring against his own thinking. For he now sees in their essential characteristics, the expression of what he himself has experienced. And the rest of what is there he puts calmly aside until it shall please God that it too shall appear as originating in Him.

This is the religious way to overcome the delusion that we ought to constitute the means of God’s revelation a rule of doctrine, and that the observance of such precepts, a thing which always makes us sink into insincerity, can unite us with God. But Protestant Christians would be much more quickly set free from that most influential of Roman Catholic ideas, if among us the Church had some help to give to the millions who have become conscious of their inward dissatisfaction with many Biblical representations. Through their mental attitude these people feel themselves shut out from a Church that regards and demands as the beginning of Christianity the assent to the teaching and narratives of the Bible. Short-sighted critics may hold that for this reason the Romish Church is better suited than the Protestant to the spiritual needs of moderns. For she declares herself content with the man who, even if he does not share her doctrines at least does not contradict them. In the Protestant Church, on the other hand, the demand is made that the Scriptural doctrines shall be echoed as personal conviction. The lesser seriousness of the Romish requirement will thus make it possible for many to rest in the Church of Rome who could not remain with the Protestant communion,

But it is those spiritually asleep who, in this manner, remain inside the Church. We will, therefore, be glad that for such people attachment to the Church is made harder among us than among Catholics. Yet it is a pity, too, that it is not made easier for the sincere. How shall they make a start with talk of “ facts which demand faith,” when by these facts are meant the miracles reported in the Holy Scriptures, or, indeed, anything that is an event of the past and not something that can be experienced here and now? They must feel repelled by a Church that through multitudes of its ministers spreads among the people the belief that a man does not become a Christian by reverently reflecting on what is undeniably real, but by being ready to obey a general invitation to declare as true things which are doubtfully apprehended, or, in any case, are not grasped as real by himself. Further, however, in the majority of those who are thus injured and left unsuccoured by the Church, there is: developed an extraordinary want of comprehension for the Biblical tradition, ‘They count it a meaningless thing, because they are tormented with it in a meaningless way. When, therefore, earnest Christians see how the multitude regards the Bible without reverence or piety, they imagine they must be up in defence of their holy thing and thus they become compliant tools of those very guardians of it who, by their violence, have done it most harm.

§ 2. The Difficulty of the Position is Overcome by the , Piety of those not under Bondage to Law.

There is only one way out of this vicious circle of destruction. From the leaders of the Church, who are thrown into dismay and confusion by this tremendous apostasy, nothing is to be looked for but an even greater dependence upon State support. They feel reassured when the State gives the salary and title of professor to some theologians who take up a “ positive attitude,” that is, to some men who ignore as much as they do themselves the existence of such a thing as science and the spiritual requirements that science creates. But in such a matter force does nor count. Help can be expected only from a reawakening within the minds of those who have lapsed from the Church of an intelligent reverence for a Bible which has been degraded in the Church to a rule of doctrine.

Now this will happen in so far as they observe that the Bible itself, instead of making an inhuman demand on us, offers us an incomparable gift. When it becomes clear to them that the Bible introduces us to a marvellously vivid personal life that compels us to self-examination, that shakes us up, that humbles us, and yet that also fills us with comfort, joy, and courage, then they will look away beyond all that has hitherto been strange and repellent in this tradition to the redeeming vision of God that they see dawning there. They learn, too, to understand at last how good such hindrances have been for them, for thus they have been preserved from the abomination of making the Bible a law of doctrine. And they even learn at last to think with heartfelt pity of the leaders of the Church, who by their high-handed action make the Bible a stumbling-block on which many fall never to rise.

When, however, those who are thus set free by Christ begin the work of self-conquest, they are blessed by continually finding in parts of the Christian tradition that had been previously repellent to them more that is now able to enrich and rejoice their souls. Perhaps, to take an example, they may never succeed in sharing the apostle Paul’s conception of the Person of Christ. But it will certainly be given them to rejoice in the fact that such thoughts did rise in a Christian soul. They see there the effect of the one saving fact that they themselves, just as much as the apostle Paul, have before their eyes, namely, the personal life of Jesus. This joy in the Christian tradition will spread among our people the more hearts are made to glow with the glorious knowledge that true religion, the blessed life of the spirit, is given to us only when we are willing to obey the simplest demand of the moral law, namely, to know ourselves. We must let ourselves be ready to take to heart in its weightiest characteristics that which is undeniably real, and gladly despise the suggestion that for God’s sake we are to adopt the thoughts of other men. The right dependence on the Christian tradition must not, in the way the Church has up till now desired, draw its strength from want of moral insight or purity, but must result from moral earnestness alone. One may hope that this knowledge will prevail among the people, for the books in which this view is upheld are becoming more numerous and are widely read; and further, even by *‘nositive” theologians the convictions for which we contend are now occasionally treated as the fundamental ideas of a really Christian religion.*

The new day of Protestant Christianity can dawn only in hearts that have perceived that truly religious faith recognises no other law than the moral law of sincerity and love. The day will break when these people will joyfully make, in quite another sense, the old demand of the legal party, that nothing of the treasure of the Church’s tradition shall be lost; and when, with faith free and infinitely various in its individual forms, they take up the unavoidable duty of bringing together into one truly Christian community all who are working for the same good.

§ 3. The Exposition of what Personal Christianity is os the common Task of all Parties in the Church.

The unity of Protestant theology in a common peaceful task far removed from the noise of ecclesiastical party

* Compare the reference to this fact by Gottschick ‘ Die Entstehung der Losung der Unkirchlichkeit der Theologie” in the “ Zeitschrift fiir Theol. u. Kirche,” 1903, p. 94. Gottschick expresses his delight that Cremer, in his attack on Harnack, has laid chief stress on the point that the legal aspect of religion must be done away with and the Person of Jesus recognised as the basis of faith. Without any doubt Harnack too has been delighted to notice this perception on Cremer’s part. For Cremer will doubtless now exercise his influence to secure that throughout the Christian Church it shall be reckoned as what it really is, namely, sin, to talk of “facts which demand faith,” even though we are not of ourselves able to lay hold of them as facts. Otherwise he would be serving that false legality which like us, he hates. ;

INTRODUCTION L, strife will at last be attained if we devote our attention to that which is usually expressly conceded by the one opponent to the other. Our opponents do not deny our personal Christianity. Well, then, let the endeavour be made on both sides to describe what we understand by personal Christianity. Christians are fully agreed as to its general meaning. It is a communion of the soul with the living God through the mediation of Christ. Herein is really included all that belongs to the characteristic life of Christendom—revelation and faith, conversion and the comfort of forgiveness, the joy of faith and the service of love, lonely communion with God, and life in Christian fellowship. All this is then only truly Christian when it is experienced as communion with the living God through the mediation of Christ. When we believe in a man’s personal Christianity we are convinced that he stands in that relation towards God in which all this takes place. The reformers never doubted that Christianity in this sense might exist, and continue to exist, even amid the perverted teaching of the Romish Church. Of course, they maintained that two of the Romish ideas destroyed the very basis of Christianity. Besides the idea of the meritoriousness of good works, the notion seemed equally obnoxious to them that the Sacraments had a saving efficacy, not the outcome of a religious ccmprehension of God’s promise as expressed in their dispensation. But although they knew the Christianity that was under the guidance of Rome reckoned on its own merits and ascribed to the Sacraments magical effects, for instance, baptismal regeneration, yet they held that even there true Christian life was to be found, the inward strength of which made all these hurtful doctrines mere external additions. And so it is among ourselves. I hold the theological teaching of Frank, Lipsius and Luthardt to be wrong; I believe I see clearly how such teaching hinders the man who surrenders himself to it from coming to Christ and through Him to God; I think I know why this is the case. But I hold these teachers themselves to be Christians, to whom I owe many a good word of faith. Still, I cannot help observing that they sometimes lapse into a theology in which little that is Christian is to be discovered. The fact is, that as theologians they are products of their age; as Christians, they are created by God in quite another fashion. By the strength of that which has come to them through no medium of doctrine, they are enabled to move as Christians even loaded with the fetters of their “‘ systems.”