The Essence of Christianity

§ 21

The Christian religion is a contradiction. It is at once the reconciliation and the disunion, the unity and the opposition, of God and man. This contradiction is personified in the God-man. The unity of the Godhead and manhood is at once a truth and an untruth. We have already maintained that if Christ was God, if he was at once man and another being conceived as incapable of suffering, his suffering was an illusion. For his suffering as man was no suffering to him as God. No! what he acknowledged as man he denied as God. He suffered only outwardly, not inwardly, i. e., he suffered only apparently, not really; for he was man only in appearance, in form, in the external; in truth, in essence, in which alone he was an object to the believer, he was God. It would have been true suffering only if he had suffered as God also. What he did not experience in his nature as God, he did not experience in truth, in substance. And, incredible as it is, the Christians themselves half directly, half indirectly, admit that their highest, holiest mystery is only an illusion, a simulation. This simulation indeed lies at the foundation of the thoroughly unhistorical,²³⁴ theatrical, illusory Gospel of John. One instance, among others, in which this is especially evident, is the resurrection of Lazarus, where the omnipotent arbiter of life and death evidently sheds tears only in ostentation of his manhood, and expressly says: “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me, and I know that thou hearest me always, but for the sake of the people who stand round I said it, that they may believe in thee.” The simulation thus indicated in the Gospel has been developed by the Church into avowed delusion. “Si credas susceptionem corporis, adjungas divinitatis compassionem, portionem utique perfidiae, non perfidiam declinasti. Credis enim, quod tibi prodesse praesumis, non credis quod Deo dignum est… Idem enim patiebatur et non patiebatur… Patiebatur secundum corporis susceptionem, ut suscepti corporis veritas crederetur et non patiebatur secundum verbi impassibilem divinitatem… Erat igitur immortalis in morte, impassibilis in passione… Cur divinitati attribuis aerumnas corporis et infirmum doloris humani divinae connectis naturae?” – Ambrosius (de incarnat. domin. sacr. cc. 4, 5). “Juxta hominis naturam proficiebat sapientia, non quod ipse sapientior esset ex tempore … sed eandem, qua plenus erat, sapientiam caeteris ex tempore paulatim demonstrabat… In aliis ergo non in se proficiebat sapientia et gratia.” – Gregorius in homil. quadam (ap. Petrus Lomb. l. iii. dist. 13, c. 1). “Proficiebat ergo humanus sensus in eo secundum ostensionem et aliorum hominum opinionem. Ita enim patrem et matrem dicitur ignorasse in infantia, quia ita se gerebat et habebat ac si agnitionis expers esset.” – Petrus L. (ibid. c. 2). “Ut homo ergo dubitat, ut homo locutus est.” – Ambrosius. “His verbis innui videtur, quod Christus non inquantum Deus vel Dei filius, sed inquantum homo dubitaverit affectu humano. Quod ea ratione dictum accipi potest: non quod ipse dubitaverit, sed quod modum gessit dubitantis et hominibus dubitare videbatur.” – Petrus L. (ibid. dist. 17, c. 2). In the first part of the present work we have exhibited the truth, in the second part the untruth of religion, or rather of theology. The truth is only the identity of God and man. Religion is truth only when it affirms human attributes as divine, falsehood when, in the form of theology, it denies these attributes, separating God from man as a different being. Thus, in the first part we had to show the truth of God’s suffering; here we have the proof of its untruth, and not a proof which lies in our own subjective view, but an objective proof – the admission of theology itself, that its highest mystery, the Passion of God, is only a deception, an illusion. It is therefore in the highest degree uncritical, untruthful, and arbitrary to explain the Christian religion, as speculative philosophy has done, only as the religion of reconciliation between God and man, and not also as the religion of disunion between the divine and human nature, – to find in the God-man only the unity, and not also the contradiction of the divine and human nature. Christ suffered only as man, not as God. Capability of suffering is the sign of real humanity. It was not as God that he was born, that he increased in wisdom, and was crucified; i. e., all human conditions remained foreign to him as God. “Si quis non confitetur proprie et vere substantialem differentiam naturarum post ineffabilem unionem, ex quibus unus et solus extitit Christus, in ea salvatum, sit condemnatus.” – Concil. Later. I. can. 7 (Carranza). The divine nature, notwithstanding the position that Christ was at once God and man, is just as much dissevered from the human nature in the incarnation as before it, since each nature excludes the conditions of the other, although both are united in one personality, in an incomprehensible, miraculous, i. e., untrue manner, in contradiction with the relation in which, according to their definition, they stand to each other. Even the Lutherans, nay, Luther himself, however strongly he expresses himself concerning the community and union of the human and divine nature in Christ, does not escape from the irreconcilable division between them. “God is man, and man is God, but thereby neither the natures nor their attributes are confounded, but each nature retains its essence and attributes.” “The Son of God himself has truly suffered and truly died, but according to the human nature which he had assumed; for the divine nature can neither suffer nor die.” “It is truly said, the Son of God suffers. For although the one part (so to speak), as the Godhead, does not suffer, still the person who is God suffers in the other half, the manhood; for in truth the Son of God was crucified for us, that is, the person who is God; for the person is crucified according to his manhood.” “It is the person that does and suffers all, one thing according to this nature, another according to that nature, all which the learned well know.” – (Concordienb. Erklär. art. 8.) “The Son of God and God himself is killed and murdered, for God and man is one person. Therefore God was crucified, and died, and became man; not God apart from humanity, but united with it; not according to the Godhead, but according to the human nature which he had assumed.” – Luther (Th. iii. p. 502). Thus only in the person, i. e., only in a nomen proprium, not in essence, not in truth, are the two natures united. “Quando dicitur: Deus est homo vel homo est Deus, propositio ejusmodi vocatur personalis. Ratio est, quia unionem personalem in Christo supponit. Sine tali enim naturarum in Christo unione nunquam dicere potuissem, Deum esse hominem aut hominem esse Deum… Abstracta autem naturae de se invicem enuntiari non posse, longe est manifestissimum… Dicere itaque non licet, divina natura est humana aut deitas est humanitas et vice versa.” – J. F. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. l. iv. c. ii. § 11). Thus the union of the divine and human natures in the incarnation is only a deception, an illusion. The old dissidence of God and man lies at the foundation of this dogma also, and operates all the more injuriously, is all the more odious, that it conceals itself behind the appearance, the imagination of unity. Hence Socinianism, far from being superficial when it denied the Trinity and the God-man, was only consistent, only truthful. God was a triune being, and yet he was to be held purely simple, absolute unity, an ens simplicissimum; thus the Unity contradicted the Trinity. God was God-man, and yet the Godhead was not to be touched or annulled by the manhood, i. e., it was to be essentially distinct; thus the incompatibility of the divine and human attributes contradicted the unity of the two natures. According to this, we have in the very idea of the God-man the arch-enemy of the God-man, —rationalism, blended, however, with its opposite – mysticism. Thus Socinianism only denied what faith itself denied, and yet, in contradiction with itself, at the same time affirmed; it only denied a contradiction, an untruth.

Nevertheless the Christians have celebrated the incarnation as a work of love, as a self-renunciation of God, an abnegation of his majesty —Amor triumphat de Deo; for the love of God is an empty word if it is understood as a real abolition of the distinction between him and man. Thus we have, in the very central point of Christianity, the contradiction of Faith and Love developed in the close of the present work. Faith makes the suffering of God a mere appearance, love makes it a truth. Only on the truth of the suffering rests the true positive impression of the incarnation. Strongly, then, as we have insisted on the contradiction and division between the divine and the human nature in the God-man, we must equally insist on their community and unity, in virtue of which God is really man and man is really God. Here then we have the irrefragable and striking proof that the central point, the supreme object of Christianity, is nothing else than man, that Christians adore the human individual as God, and God as the human individual. “This man born of the Virgin Mary is God himself, who has created heaven and earth.” – Luther (Th. ii. p. 671). “I point to the man Christ and say: That is the Son of God.” – (Th. xix. p. 594.) “To give life, to have all power in heaven and earth, to have all things in his hands, all things put under his feet, to purify from sin, and so on, are divine, infinite attributes, which, according to the declaration of the Holy Scriptures, are given and imparted to the man Christ.” “Therefore we believe, teach, and confess that the Son of Man … now not only as God, but also as man, knows all things, can do all things, is present with all creatures.” “We reject and condemn the doctrine that he (the Son of God) is not capable according to his human nature of omnipotence and other attributes of the divine nature.” – (Concordienb. Summar. Begr. u. Erklär. art. 8.) “Unde et sponte sua fluit, Christo etiam qua humanam naturam spectato cultum religiosum deberi.” – Buddeus (l. c. l. iv. c. ii. § 17). The same is expressly taught by the Fathers and the Catholics, e. g., “Eadem adoratione adoranda in Christo est divinitas et humanitas… Divinitas intrinsece inest humanitati per unionem hypostaticam: ergo humanitas Christi seu Christus ut homo potest adorari absoluto cultu latriae.” – Theol. Schol. (sec. Thomam Aq. P. Metzger. iv. p. 124). It is certainly said that it is not man, not flesh and blood by itself, which is worshipped, but the flesh united with God, so that the cultus applies not to the flesh, or man, but to God. But it is here as with the worship of saints and images. As the saint is adored in the image and God in the saint, only because the image and the saint are themselves adored, so God is worshipped in the human body only because the human flesh is itself worshipped. God becomes flesh, man, because man is in truth already God. How could it enter into thy mind to bring the human flesh into so close a relation and contact with God if it were something impure, degrading, unworthy of God? If the value, the dignity of the human flesh does not lie in itself, why dost thou not make other flesh – the flesh of brutes the habitation of the Divine Spirit? True it is said: Man is only the organ in, with, and by which the Godhead works, as the soul in the body. But this pretext also is refuted by what has been said above. God chose man as his organ, his body, because only in man did he find an organ worthy of him, suitable, pleasing to him. If the nature of man is indifferent, why did not God become incarnate in a brute? Thus God comes into man only out of man. The manifestation of God in man is only a manifestation of the divinity and glory of man. “Noscitur ex alio, qui non cognoscitur ex se” – this trivial saying is applicable here. God is known through man, whom he honours with his personal presence and indwelling, and known as a human being, for what any one prefers, selects, loves, in his objective nature; and man is known through God, and known as a divine being, for only that which is worthy of God, which is divine, can be the object, organ, and habitation of God. True it is further said: It is Jesus Christ alone, and no other man, who is worshipped as God. But this argument also is idle and empty. Christ is indeed one only, but he is one who represents all. He is a man as we are, “our brother, and we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.” “In Jesus Christ our Lord every one of us is a portion of flesh and blood. Therefore where my body is, there I believe that I myself reign. Where my flesh is glorified, there I believe that I am myself glorious. Where my blood rules, there I hold that I myself rule.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 534). This then is an undeniable fact: Christians worship the human individual as the supreme being, as God. Not indeed consciously, for it is the unconsciousness of this fact which constitutes the illusion of the religious principle. But in this sense it may be said that the heathens did not worship the statues of the gods; for to them also the statue was not a statue, but God himself. Nevertheless they did worship the statue; just as Christians worship the human individual, though, naturally, they will not admit it.

§ 22

Man is the God of Christianity, Anthropology the mystery of Christian Theology. The history of Christianity has had for its grand result the unveiling of this mystery – the realisation and recognition of theology as anthropology. The distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism – the old Catholicism, which now exists only in books, not in actuality – consists only in this, that the latter is Theology, the former Christology, i. e., (religious) Anthropology. Catholicism has a supranaturalistic, abstract God, a God who is other than human, a not human, a superhuman being. The goal of Catholic morality, likeness to God, consists therefore in this, to be not a man, but more than a man – a heavenly abstract being, an angel. Only in its morality does the essence of a religion realise, reveal itself: morality alone is the criterion, whether a religious dogma is felt as a truth or is a mere chimera. Thus the doctrine of a superhuman, supernatural God is a truth only where it has as its consequence a superhuman, supernatural, or rather antinatural morality. Protestantism, on the contrary, has not a supranaturalistic but a human morality, a morality of and for flesh and blood; consequently its God, at least its true, real God, is no longer an abstract, supranaturalistic being, but a being of flesh and blood. “This defiance the devil hears unwillingly, that our flesh and blood is the Son of God, yea, God himself, and reigns in heaven over all.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 573). “Out of Christ there is no God, and where Christ is, there is the whole Godhead.” – Id. (Th. xix. p. 403). Catholicism has, both in theory and practice, a God who, in spite of the predicate of love, exists for himself, to whom therefore man only comes by being against himself, denying himself, renouncing his existence for self; Protestantism, on the contrary, has a God who, at least practically, virtually, has not an existence for himself, but exists only for man, for the welfare of man. Hence in Catholicism the highest act of the cultus, “the mass of Christ,” is a sacrifice of man, – the same Christ, the same flesh and blood, is sacrificed to God in the Host as on the cross; in Protestantism, on the contrary, it is a sacrifice, a gift of God: God sacrifices himself, surrenders himself to be partaken by man. (See Luther, e. g., Th. xx. p. 259; Th. xvii. p. 529.) In Catholicism manhood is the property, the predicate of the Godhead (of Christ) – God is man; in Protestantism, on the contrary, Godhead is the property, the predicate of manhood (Christ) – man is God. “This, in time past, the greatest theologians have done – they have fled from the manhood of Christ to his Godhead, and attached themselves to that alone, and thought that we should not know the manhood of Christ. But we must so rise to the Godhead of Christ, and hold by it in such a way, as not to forsake the manhood of Christ and come to the Godhead alone. Thou shouldst know of no God, nor Son of God, save him who was born of the Virgin Mary and became man. He who receives his manhood has also his Godhead.” – Luther (Th. ix. pp. 592, 598).²³⁵ Or, briefly thus: in Catholicism, man exists for God; in Protestantism, God exists for man.²³⁶ “Jesus Christ our Lord was conceived for us, born for us, suffered for us, was crucified, died, and was buried for us. Our Lord rose from the dead for our consolation, sits for our good at the right hand of the Almighty Father, and is to judge the living and the dead for our comfort. This the holy Apostles and beloved Fathers intended to intimate in their confession by the words: Us and our Lord – namely, that Jesus Christ is ours, whose office and will it is to help us … so that we should not read or speak the words coldly, and interpret them only of Christ, but of ourselves also.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 538). “I know of no God but him who gave himself for me. Is not that a great thing that God is man, that God gives himself to man and will be his, as man gives himself to his wife and is hers? But if God is ours, all things are ours.” – (Th. xii. p. 283.) “God cannot be a God of the dead, who are nothing, but is a God of the living. If God were a God of the dead, he would be as a husband who had no wife, or as a father who had no son, or as a master who had no servant. For if he is a husband, he must have a wife. If he is a father, he must have a son. If he is a master, he must have a servant. Or he would be a fictitious father, a fictitious master, that is, nothing. God is not a God like the idols of the heathens, neither is he an imaginary God, who exists for himself alone, and has none who call upon him and worship him. A God is he from whom everything is to be expected and received… If he were God for himself alone in heaven, and we had no good to rely on from him, he would be a God of stone or straw… If he sat alone in heaven like a clod, he would not be God.” – (Th. xvi. p. 465). “God says: I the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth am thy God… To be a God means to redeem us from all evil and trouble that oppresses us, as sin, hell, death, &c.” – (Th. ii. p. 327.) “All the world calls that a God in whom man trusts in need and danger, on whom he relies, from whom all good is to be had and who can help. Thus reason describes God, that he affords help to man, and does good to him, bestows benefits upon him. This thou seest also in this text: ‘I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.’ There we are taught what God is, what is his nature, and what are his attributes, – namely, that he does good, delivers from dangers, and helps out of trouble and all calamities.” – (Th. iv. pp. 236, 237.) But if God is a living, i. e., real God, is God in general, only in virtue of this – that he is a God to man, a being who is useful, good, beneficent to man; then, in truth, man is the criterion, the measure of God, man is the absolute, divine being. The proposition: A God existing only for himself is no God – means nothing else than that God without man is not God; where there is no man there is no God; if thou takest from God the predicate of humanity, thou takest from him the predicate of deity; if his relation to man is done away with, so also is his existence.

Nevertheless Protestantism, at least in theory, has retained in the background of this human God the old supranaturalistic God. Protestantism is the contradiction of theory and practice; it has emancipated the flesh, but not the reason. According to Protestantism, Christianity, i. e., God, does not contradict the natural impulses of man: – “Therefore we ought now to know that God does not condemn or abolish the natural tendency in man which was implanted in Nature at the creation, but that he awakens and preserves it.” – Luther (Th. iii. p. 290). But it contradicts reason, and is therefore, theoretically, only an object of faith. We have shown, however, that the nature of faith, the nature of God, is itself nothing else than the nature of man placed out of man, conceived as external to man. The reduction of the extrahuman, supernatural, and antirational nature of God to the natural, immanent, inborn nature of man, is therefore the liberation of Protestantism, of Christianity in general, from its fundamental contradiction, the reduction of it to its truth, – the result, the necessary, irrepressible, irrefragable result of Christianity.

THE END