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MAN IN REVOLT
A CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY

EMIL BRUNNER
Professor of Theology in Ziirich

TRANSLATED BY OLIVE WYON

PHILADELPHIA

THE WESTMINSTER PRESS

 ae
COPYRIGHT, MCMXLVII, BY W. L. JENKINS

All rights reserved—no part of this book may be

reproduced in any form without permission in writ-
ing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a
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Theology Library

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
AT CLAREMONT
Calitoraia

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 From this we see how necessarily our
Self is rooted and grounded in Him who
created it, so that the knowledge of our
Self does not lie within our own power,
but that in order to measure the extent
of the same, we must press forward
into the very heart of God Himself, who
alone can determine and resolve the
whole mystery of our nature.
: Hamann

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 CONTENTS
PAGE
AUTHOR’S PREFACE (TO THE GERMAN EDITION)
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE 13

INTRODUCTION
THE QUESTION OF MAN

CHAPTER I. THE RIDDLE OF MAN 17

” Il. MAN’S OWN VIEW OF HIS SIGNIFICANCE .
20
” Ill, THE VARIETY OF THE VIEWS OF MAN 40

MAIN SECTION I
FOUNDATIONS
CHAPTER IV. THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF
MOA certiy, Pao es el Sed ae | Cogn pk a e 57
(a) The Word of God as the Source of Knowledge. 7)
1. Knowledge without Presuppositions? Sy)
2: The Principle of Empirical Criticism 60
€3.) Man viewed from ‘above’ his Present
= Existence 63
4. The Forms in which the Word of God is
expressed Sere 66
&@ G.)| Natural fates and the Knowledge ofo
— Faith 68
(8) The Word of God as the Source of Being. F 7°
©) 1. The Word of God as the Ground of Being
Fs 70

2. The Being of God: the Trinity 74

3. The Will of God: the Decree of Election. 76
4. The Work of God: Creation and Soa
tion sh Serhan: S 78

99
Vv. THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI . 82
((a) \The Problem ; 82
. The Starting Point 82
2. The Classical Doctrine 84
(3. The Scientific Situation and Task 85
)
 MAN IN REVOLT
CHAPTER V.—Continued PAGE

((6))Man as Creation 89
((c) The Image of God gi

1.) The Historical Heritage gli

(2. The Fundamental Terms of the iets

Doctrine 96
3. Historical Retrospect 99
4. The Imago Dei and the Being ofMan 102
( 5.) Community in the Concrete 105
6. The ‘Thou’ as the Boundary © 107
7. The Body and the World 107
8. The Citizen of Two Worlds 108
9. The New Doctrine and the Ancient
Doctrine IIo
10. Religious or Rationalistic Mythology? 112

39
( vI.) THE CONTRADICTION: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE IMAGE
_ OF GOD 114
. The Problem: ae Citradtis ; 114
2.\The Ecclesiastical Doctrine 118
3. The Reaction of Modern Theology 123
4. Radical Evil : 125
5. The Primal Contradiction: the Fall 129
6.) The Irreparable : 133
7.. The Perversion of Man’s Nature 135
8. Solidarity in Sin 139
g. The Elements of Truth and Error in the Ecclesi-
astical Doctrine Aiea tice 142
10.eee Sin and Sins of KA 145
. Greater and Lesser Sins: the Ethically Good 153
12. The Origin, the Contradiction, and the Law 155
13. The Wrath of God and Existence-unto-Death 163

9 Vil. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE ORIGIN AND THE CONTRA-

DICTION IN MAN: MAN AS HE ACTUALLY IS 168
. The New State of the Problem 168
2. The Traces of the Image of God and of the
‘Greatness of Man’ F 172
3. The Manifestations of the Gonvadietion and the
“Misery of Man’ 181
4
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER vil.—Continued PAGE

4. The Manifestations of the Contradiction as such 187

(a) The Conflict of opinions and the aoe
to construct a Synthesis 187
(b) The Recognition and the ioe of
the Contradiction in non-Christian
Thought IgI
(c) Certain Particular spectra which mani-
fest the Contradiction 195

5) VIII. THE OBJECTIONS TO THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, AND THE

; RETROSPECTIVE QUESTION FROM THE STANDPOINT OF
ACTUAL EXPERIENCE . ; 205

MAIN SECTION II
DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEME

CHAPTER IX. THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY 215

1. The Unity of Personality 215
2. The Decay of Personal Unity . 228

; X. THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON. . 237

_ . The Spirit of God and the Spirit of Man .. 237
. The Rational Idea of God 241
. God and Ideas 243
. The Creaturely Aspect of Reason
. The Values and the Creative Element 248
. The Intellect . 250
. Feeling and Mysticism . 251
FP
Oo
DN
WO. The Spirit of Man and Evil
onmr 253

3 XI. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 3 256

_ . The Philosophy of Freedom and Unfreedom 256
. The Christian Understanding of Freedom 261
. The Christian View of Unfreedom 267
. The Humanistic Objections 273
N
OO
oP
. Points of divergence from the traditional
doctrine
 MAN IN REVOLT

CHAPTER XII. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY . . . "278

1. Individual and Individuality . . . . 278
2. The Ground of Self-Value . =. . . . 282-
3. Self-Responsibility and its Negation . . . 285
4. Various Forms of Association; Community . 288
5. Basis of Genuine Community . ... . 290
6. Community and Self-Existence . . . . 2gI
7. Collectivism . . ent te iy ee e Regs
8. The Understanding of Giusy outside the
Christians Paithre (soe eo ea er

“5 XIII, CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER «VeRO

1. Character as Act . ; : ; : - 300
2. Characterasa Middle Term . . . . 305
3. The Ambiguity of Character dete 2 ae OG
4. Varieties of Character... PAS e he Silo
5. The Overcoming of Character in Faith . . 316
a XIV. INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY . . Fane WR05
. The General Problem of Individuality te e aS
2. The General Problem of Humanity . . . 325
3. Raceand Humanity... 330
4. The Psychical and Mental Individuality of
« the
Individual =. 5.) =.) 335
5. Genius and the ‘Average Man’ Se aE o) eae Om
am Vos MAN AND WOMAN (6 (5. mutant sia Tey, sew) bea AAS
1. The Sex Difference as Creation So Si ers SUMO ies
2. The Rent, Shame and Longing . : , . 348
3. The Masculine and the Feminine Nature. . 352
4. Sex and Humanity a dio a cain Cote er a e RES
G., LheeProblem of Orderigic'c..\s> Shia aire RR
Ap XVI. SOUL AND BODY ., 6 ; “ é f ~ 362
. Soul and Spirit : h : : ; . 362
2. The Body neater 373
3. Theories of the Relation betireeh Body aie Soul 375
4. The Meaning of the ema in thegeo of the
Creationin cio suis 379
§...Nature and Greation: smite els, «4 swan ey gee
6
 CONTENTS
PAGE

THE GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLU-

CHAPTER XVII.
TION . 399
1. The Three Forms ofthewelfe Epshinoe 39°
. Hypothesis and Knowledge. 392
. The Limits of Genetic Thought . - 395
. Evolution, Creation and Sin 398
PB
oO
N
CO . Growth and Spiritual Being 403

»> XVIII. MAN IN THE COSMOS 409

1. The Threefold pha 409
. Man in the Centre of the World 412
_ Man and the Animals . 418
. Man in Infinite Space . 421

. The World and its Meaning 423

WO F The
f
N
Ao Historical and the Non-historical View of
the Universe 425
. The Modern Myth
~sI
429
8. Pantheism and Responsibility 43r
g. The Element of Decision 433

a XIX. MAN IN HISTORY 435

1. The Philosophy of Historyay the Monica
Understanding of History : ; 250
i) . The Person as Historic al . 440
. The Personal Meaning of History
. World History and Redemption .
00

MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH

” XX.

1. The Natural Understanding of Death and of

Eternal Destiny. ‘ : :
. The Eternal Destiny
. Mortality and Existence-unto-Death .
. Eternal Death
ND
Ww
PB
oa
. The Conquest of Death

EPILOGUE
MAN AS
THE REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN
AS HE IS INTEND ED TO BE 478
HE ACTUALLY IS, AND MAN
7
 MAN IN REVOLT

APPENDICES
PAGE
APPENDIX I. The Image of God in the Tee of the Bible and
the Church : e ahe s : 499
a I. On the Dialectic of the Law 516

st oe sls The Problem of ‘Natural aulein and the ‘Point of

Contact’ (Ankniipfung) 527
BAS 5 Iv. Philosophical and Theological Anthropology 542
se Vv. The Understanding of Man in Ancient x aes and
in Christianity SAS OBIS ae 547
INDEX 560
 PREFACE TO THE GERMAN EDITION

Wuat is Man? This question is the point at which the passionate

interest of men and the divine message of the Bible meet and
come into conflict. Primarily, man_regards himself as the ||
and of his world, Even where intheory
natural centre of his life |
ee ‘thinks that he has overcome this ‘naive anthropo-
centricism,’ in practice, in life itself, he does not cease to assert
himself <as this centre. A world with as many |centres as there
are human beings—that is the ccause_of all ‘the. chaos and
disintegration iin the world of men. The message of the Bible,
therefore, is this: God, not man, is the centre; this truth must
be. expressed not only in theory but in practice, Hence this
message is not concerned with ‘God in Himself,’ but with
‘God for us,’ the God who manifests His nature and His will
in the Son of Man, in order that in man this centre may once
more become the true centre. The great obstacle to_ this,
however, is that view of himself held by man; to overcome this
“misunderstanding” ‘of man about himself, to which he clings
as a supreme good, is the revealed will of God, and the act in
which this resistance is overcome is faith. The understanding
of man’s being is decided in faith or unbelief; in the fact, that
is, whether God or man is the centre.
Thus in itself the truth of faith involves discussion, the Gospel
is essentially—not accidentally—controversial. It is an attack
on man who is his own centre. Divine truth wrestles with
human falsehood, and man_ conceals himself behind his ‘self-_
knowledge’ in order to defend himself against the Divine
claim. Hence a Christian doctrine of man must be beaten out
ogee

“on the anvil of continual argument with man’s own view of

himself. If faith simply means that human thought and will
PT notmeNE

finally capitulate to the truth and the will of God, then theology
can never be anything other than an attempt, in some way or
another, to ‘transcribe’ this controversy between the Word of —
God and the thought of man. Hence all genuine theology is
dialectical and not orthodox. It is aware that its ‘transcript’
reflects the imperfection of our human effort of thought as
9
 MAN IN REVOLT

|\ much as the glory of divine truth. Above all, it is aware that

}
| its task is never finished.
| Thus this book also is an unfinished piece of work, and would
_ still be so even if I were to work on it for many more years.
Its first beginnings lie in the past, more than fifteen years ago,
_ when it became clear to me, under the deep impression made
_ by the anthropological work of Kierkegaard, that the distinc-
tion between modern Humanism and the Christian ‘faith must _
be madeat this point: in the understanding of man. Acquain-
‘tance with the thought of Ebner, Gogarten, and Buber helped
me further along the path which I had begun to follow. Here
too, however, I learned still more from the new light thrown
on the teaching of the Reformers; I learned most from Luther,
for I came to see that in this question, of all the Reformers hise
teaching i:
isthe most Scriptural and the most profound. Yet as
I probed more deeply into the subject I saw that it would be
impossible simply to re-affirm the Reformation position and to
go no further. I saw too why this was inevitable. In the central
anthropological question of freedom versus unfreedom, in
particular, the inadequacy of the teaching of the Reformers’
was evident. There is a great deal to learn from Augustine the ~
thinker which escaped the! notice of Luther the fighter. Above —
all, itbecame plain to me that the whole ecclesiastical tradition
was” burdened with certain fundamental axioms, wrongly
regarded as Biblical truth; it is these ideas, regarded as axioms,
which frequently provide a handle for attacks on the ecclesi-
astical doctrine on the part of its opponents. In the attempt to
reformulate the Christian doctrine of man I took it for granted
that I should utilize the results of Biblical criticism, and also,
even though less directly, of modern discoveries in the field of
natural science. Since we are now at the beginning of a theo-
logical era of increasing rigidity in orthodoxy, it is particularly
important to preserve the faculty of criticism, atnough this
too has its own peculiar dangers. ©
_ The book which I here present has passed through a number
of preliminary stages. The germ of the whole was an article on
Law and Revelation which I published in March 1925 in Theo-
logische Blatter; the second stage was a lecture on Christian
Psychology which I gave in the winter of 1927, which, completely
10
 /

PREFACE TO THE GERMAN EDITION

recast in 1934, forms the foundation of the present work. A

chapter on Biblical psychology in my small book God and Man
provided a preliminary outline for the structure of the whole;
but most of the other papers which were published, both
before and afterwards, turned on the question of anthropo-
logy, especially those entitled Die andere Aufgabe der Theologie
(the Other Task of Theology) and The Point of Contact
(Ankniipfungspunkt). ae
With the publication of this book I hope that I have redeemed
the promise made in the foreword to the second edition of |
Natur und Gnade, namely, that only a completely theological
anthropology, which begins with the ‘great central truths of
‘the Christian faith—the Trinity, Election, and Incarnation—
and is “directed towards the final Redemption, will be in a
‘position, without causing new “misunderstandings, to ‘show
clearly my concern, as.; against Karl Barth, namely, man’s
eri
mai
responsibility. It is that-;alone, and. ‘not any weakening “of
<of the
octrine of the sola gratia, which causes me to hold fast to‘the
Biblical doctrine of a general or “natural” revelation of God,
in_spite |of all that_may be said to the contrary. The funda-
mental idea of my book is this: that even the unbeliever is still
related to God, and therefore that he is responsible, and that ~
this
iisresponsibility iis not put out of action even by the fullest
emphasis 1upon the generous grace of God, but, on the contrary,
‘that God1 requires it. ‘This fundamental idea is illustrated in’a
number of ways throughout the book as a whole. It is con-
cerned with a Biblical doctrine of man, whom the Word of
God—as a word of judgement and of promise—addresses and
apprehends. One ‘theme with variations’ will always be
exposed to the reproach of repetition—especially if there are a
good many of them. In my justification I would point to the
illustration of the winding tunnels in our Swiss mountain
railways, which continually present us with the same view seen —
from another aspect and from a greater height. The same, if
said in a different context, is not simply the same.
_Owing to my conception of the task of theology, all technical
discussions are relegated to the notes and the appendices. Real
_ theology is not only for experts, but it is for all to whom
! e religious questions are also problems for thought. Hence I have
II
 ¢ MAN IN REVOLT

tried to deal with difficult theological questions in such a way

that they can be followed by those who have no special theo-
logical equipment. There are many ways of faith to Him who __
alone isthe Way;_ theological _reflection also may ‘be such a
way,
way, although it certainly is not the way most people would
choose. Among all the problems of theology that of anthropo-
logy is one of the most important. It is only through the study
of this question that many a person comes to understand the
Christian message itself, simply because he has learned to think
more deeply about himself. Even thought may lead us into
| ‘the cell of self-knowledge,’ but this real self-knowledge is the
| point at which faith comes into being. Rightly understood,—
4 therefore, to begin
at this point is genuine missionary effort.
In conclusion, there are two things I wish to say. I would
like to express my cordial thanks to all those who have helped
me, especially those who have helped me in the arduous labour
of proof correction. And I would like to ask the reader to
forgive me for not saying what I had to say in briefer compass.
In spite of all my resolutions to the contrary this has developed
into a big book after all, and yet I have left a great deal of
material untouched. May the readers of this book regard its
length as a parable showing that, in the last resort, we human
beings cannot fully express even that vision of the truth which
we have seen.
EMIL BRUNNER
ZURICH
March 1937

12
 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
THE present work is an unabridged translation of the book
which was first published in German in 1937, by the Furche-
Verlag, Berlin, under the title: Der Mensch im Widerspruch, with |
the sub-title: Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom wirklichen
Menschen (Eng. Man in Contradiction. The Christian Doctrine
of the true (or ideal) man, and of man as he actually is).
The English title: Man in Revolt, has been chosen by Dr.
Brunner himself.
For the English version the author has slightly altered the
text on page 360 (page 372 in the German original).
The translator desires to offer her cordial gratitude to the
many friends who have helped her, in various ways, during
the course of this work. For assistance with the revision of the
manuscript she would thank particularly: Dr. H. Bookyer; Dr.
L. Frankl, Miss L. Goodfellow, and Miss Edith Sandbach-
Marshall, M.A., B.D. For the elucidation of some difficult
passages she is grateful to Edwyn Bevan, Esq., D.Litt., and
to the Rev. John Oman, D.D.
OLIVE WYON
LONDON

May 1939
 INTRODUCTION

THE QUESTION OF MAN

 CHAPTER I

THE RIDDLE OF MAN

Ir is not self-evident that man should inquire into his own

To ask
at all. ns
nature, or even that he should ask questio
questions and to take things for granted are incompatible
attitudes; when man begins to inquire, he can no longer take
things for granted. A mysterious movement has begun, and
none can tell whither it may lead. Moreover, once the question
of his own nature has been raised, man seeks an answer to
a second, still more disquieting question. The earlier questioning
hadmade only hissurroundings, the shell of his existence, seem__
insecure; now, however, he himself feels insecure. Not only
who asks the riddles,
is the world full of riddles; he himself,
has become a riddle. Small wonder, then, that man tries to
evade this upheaval: He feels the danger of inquiry, and tries
to avoid it by persuading himself that it does not really matter.
wn =

A sane human being, he says, has something more sensible

In any
to do than to look at himself in a mirror. case , man_
should not consider himself so very important. What is there in
him so outstanding—this Eero , this none too successful
late product of Nature? In the world of antiquity it was perhaps
allowable that man, with his restricted view of the world and
his geocentric outlook, should consider himself to be specially
important; but we modern men, for whom astro-physics has
shattered the familiar and homely picture of the world, and
has opened up to our gaze the infinity of the universe, can
no longer ascribe any special importance to man and his
that
problems. Man must accustom himself to the idea _ he is
only one problem among many otheand rs, by no means ihe,
most important._
But the riddle of man cannot be shelved like thi S.
This riddle is not the fruit of ouropinions; it springs from
|
its as the question above all others.
own inward necessity,
Other problems may seem to us to be greater or more important,
but they are still our problems. It is we who probe into the
remote recesses of the world’s existence; it is for us that the
17
 MAN IN REVOLT

3 A phenomena of the universe become questions. ‘All our problems

“| Tlare focused in.this one _question: Who is this being wi
A
who
; yajuestions—the one behind | all questions?) Who isthis who
perceives
es the.
1einfinity « of the world? Who is this who is tortured
by all life’s problems—whether in human existence or outside
it? Who is’this being who sees himself as a mere speck in the
universe, and yet, even while so doing, measures the infinite
horizon with his mind? We are here confronted by the problem
of the subject, separated by a great gulf from all problems of
the objective world. What is this to which things are ob-
jects, which they are ‘set over against’? What is this unextended
point, like the inapprehensible originator of waves behind
a field of electro-magnetic force, its emissive and receptive
\__centre—the soul?
‘Go hence; the limits of the soul, thou canst not discover,
though thou shouldest travérse every way; so profoundly is
it rooted in the Logos,’! says the great sage of Ephesus, he
who was the first to utter the proud word: ‘I have inquired
of myself.’? Hence the soul is separated, as by a deep gulf,
from all that man can know or discover by search and inquiry,
because the soul itself, which makes itself known, is that which
knows; because in the very act of laying something upon the
dissecting table for examination, the soul looks away beyond
it. It is the inquiring eye, the intelligence, that makes what
is examined into a unity; this it is that knows the problems
and seeks to solve them. But the soul does not only think and
examine; it also wills and feels, makes estimates, loves and
hates. It gives its rightful place within the intellectual life as
a whole to research, science, thought—to all, indeed, that has
value and meaning. Only he who forgets this can overlook
the fact that the question of man as subject is not one
among many others; it is a new dimension of questioning,
and the soul is an ‘object’ whose particular problems |consist

;assign any place to the soul—that is, to man——because the soul

itself is
1s‘that which puts everything Rom in its right place. Hence
man isunfathomable in a way different from everything else,
because he himself fathoms things ; he is the discoverer of that
Scr et

ceTn Diels, Fragmente ‘der ‘Vorsokratiker, Fr. 45. 2 Tbid., Fr.1

18
 THE RIDDLE OF MAN

which is unfathomable. If to fathom anything means to get

to the other side of it, then the soul is unfathomable because
it is that which penetrates to the other side. The fact, however,
of
that man, who can include in his gaze the whole horizon
same time a minute point in the world,
the world, is at the
but
an object of infinite smallness in space, does not reduce,
rather increases, the riddle of his being. The differe nce—
indeed, the unfathomable gulf—between the subject and the
and
object, the soul and the world of things, between soul
a second problem , and one with which
body, is one problem;
thousands of years, is that
thinkers have wrestled _invain for the
the relation between both, and way in which both exist
leandm soul. __
_of
alo ide
ofoneanothe
ngs r—the prob of body
this ¢dualism, although
Even the ‘man in the street’ is awaof
re
he does not give it much thought. He knows that he oughte
to treat human. beings differently from things, not only becaus
they ‘react differently,’ but because he has no right to treat
as things. A purely objective attitude where human
them
beings are concerned is not only impossible; it is not right,
he
and is therefore forbidden. It is precisely this sense that
-creatures
has no right to dispose of himself and of his fellow
man the consci ousnes s of his peculiar
in such a way that gives:
as man. This ‘thou shalt’ and ‘thou shalt
nature—of his being
;ae
not’ is not something added externally to human existence
pu!

of man’s being. Man’s being is insepa rable |.”

constitutes the heart ha aa
ee
|
from his sense of obligation.
in human existence..s- disclosed.
Once again a new depth
characterized
Man is not merely what he'is; his peculiar beinghisconfr
by that inward and higher ‘something’ whic onts him_
or at least with pressure from without.
era

either with a challenge

But this clement, which, confronts him. does so_as that which
is ‘over against? him, and not_ as
an ‘obje ct.’ It.is genuinely
“over againstht’-him, whereas objectsarenot really “over against |
but ‘benea
neath’ us. This cha lle ,
then,
nge man's
is not foreign to call
a
own nature, as the to |
_ life, but it comes as a call to one’s
accept responsibility for one’s own life,t to be truly oneself, |
n to one of the leading
1 The original word is Eigentlichkeit—an allusio
of Martin Heideg ger. If ‘one’ accepts responsibility
ideas in the philosophy on his own
he is, and to decide
for one’s life, if a person desires to be what
19
 MAN IN REVOLT

and yet it exercises a kind of compulsion. Man is not only one

_ who can ask questions because he is subject; but he is one who
| must ask them—one who is constrained to do so because he
does not yet know, and is not yet what he would be. Whether
he will or not, in some way or other he must reach out beyond
himself; he must transcend himself; he must measure his_
thinking, willing, :and| acting by something higher tthan himself.y
\sthe butterfly is attracted by the light, sO irresistibly iis he
‘drawn | by this ‘higher’ element, whether it be the ‘truth’ which—
he does not yet know, and by which he tests his thought, or
by ‘righteousness,’ ‘the good’ or ‘the beautiful,’ ‘the perfect’
or
‘the holy,” or even that which is ‘truly hea However
he may explain this ‘higher’ element to himself, he «
cannot.
escape from it, and the disturbance which it causes is so
intimately connected with his existence that without it the
nerve of his existence as man would be cut, and he himself
‘would sink to the sub-human level. Just as the tension of the
bow-string makes the bow—apart from this it is merely a piece
_,of wood—so it is this tension between him and this ‘higher’
a ( element
nt
which constitutes the
theessential human quality inhuman
existence,
ice, without which man would be only a particular kind _
‘of animal. Man is not merely what he is; he is the being which
first seeks himself. All that man creates by his own works,
which express his nature, is at the same time a manifestation
of the fact that he seeks to understand himself. |
Man is not at home with himself; as he is, he cannot come
to terms with himself. Hedesires to be and to express himself_
as that which he is; yet at the same time he does not want si
to what
be he is. ‘ence he conceals himself behind his ideals. .1}
| He is ashamed of his naked existence as it is. He cannot. i
pm etd NY haaiimece

tolerate it; he feels that in some way or other he must live |

for a fae existence in order to endure his own view of

himself) ) In some way or other he counts that ‘higher’ element

responsibility, then he is eigentlich (literally ‘proper,’ ‘true,’ ‘real’). If, on

the other hand, man allows himself to be concealed by conventional
fictions about himself (idealistic, traditional, etc.), he does not accept
responsibility for his own life, and is therefore un-eigentlich. On Heidegger’s
philosophy, see Werner Brock’s Contemporary German Philosophy (Cambridge
University Press, 1935).— Translator.
20
 THE RIDDLE OF MAN

as his own, in order to be able to say “yes’ to himself, and

‘higher’ element is not real. Thus—in
yet he knows that this ‘hig!
a far deeper sense than in the dualism of ‘body and soul—he
“js a divided being, and iis always conscious of this division.
“The ‘harmonious human nature’ completely at rest within
itself is an extreme instance which does not really exist, whereas
the other extreme instance certainly does exist—that of the
man who is so divided that his inner nature no longer finds.
any unity at all, the schizophrenic, the insane. The sense of
n_that which.
division, however, owing to the contrast between.
pba

co he is and that which Iheought tobe orwould |i forms _

liketo be, f
part of the very essence of all human life ‘known to_us. We :
are all aware ofthis defect in the bell, and of the discords | eee ot

which it causes Mani is a contradictory creature in a threefold|

sense: he contains contradictions within his own nature, he |
that this is so and suffers accordingly, and, on account
‘knows
thiss very contradiction, ‘opposes himself to and vainly - tries |
of
from this contradiction
to free himself fi aba
Or can it be that ‘man with his conflict’ is fortunately an
exceptional instance? Is it true to say that ‘man’ as such exists
at all? Is not that an unreal abstraction, and can it be that
the illusion of the contradiction is created by the fact that in
a quite unallowable way, which completely falsifies reality, the
various qualities of the individual man, as we observe him,
have been ascribed to a common denominator, in order that
we may then exclaim: ‘See, what a monster is man?’ If this
were so, then we should be dealing not with a contradiction
but wath individual differentiation. The one genus humanum is
presented to us in a variety of species, sub-species, varieties
and individuals, each uniform in itself, but impossible to
reduce to a common denominator. How can we possibly
_speak of ‘man’ in view of the immense differences between.
the races ‘and historical epochs—from the cave-dweller of the
Stone Age to the Athenian of the days of Pericles, from St.
Francis to the man of the age of ferro-concrete and of the
wireless ;in view of the differences which separate the civilized
world of the East from that of the West; or again, in view
of the fundamental differences which are brought out by the
psychological study of types and of character? Does what we
21
 MAN IN REVOLT

say about the old apply also to the young man, and-what is
true of man to woman as well? Thisatleast is true, thatto
“ speak of man as a whole without taking these differences into
account would mean that one was talking not. of man as he.
actually i
is, |but o
of.an _ empty abstraction.
a ae
But the converse is also true. All these human beings are
bound to one another not only by a very far-reaching common ~
elementin their physical and mental endowments, but also”
bythat ‘something”‘which makes man man, the ‘mind’ or the
‘reason’; so that, in spite of all differences, they can speak
with tte aaetnee work together, create aad tend common
goods and hand them down to succeeding generations. The
term ‘man’ not only denotes a zoological species, but, in
_contradistinction from all names of zoological species, it also
seems to denote an independent whole, something _ which_ is
distinctive, in contrast to all that can be conceived from tk the
biological j point oofview; thati isto‘say,
Ss ‘the.
t humanum, Indeed,
is it not a fact that it"belongs tto this common 7 element—common,
that is, to all human beings, but to them alone—continually
to deny the reality of that humanum which distinguishes it from
Ce all other creatures? Is it not part of the picture of man that
gs
he is the being who can deny his nature, his human existence,
ee and continually turn into his opposite, the inhuman? Is it
not in this humanum itself that the cause of the conflict from
which man suffers resides? Is it not a fact that the mind,
the very element which teaches human beings to understand
one another, is also the main cause of their being brought
into conflict with one another? Indeed, is it not true that
the more we learn to understand man the more we see that it
is impossible to understand him?
Then _perhaps, though for a different reason, we are not
justified in Speaking of ‘man’ in general. When we do so, we |
think in
inyoluntarily of the individual human being, even if at
the ssame time we also think of the common element present_ 4
in_allMay it be, after all, for this reason, that ‘man’ is an
‘abstraction, since he cannot in any way be understood as an
individual? Possibly what leads us astray in the line of thought
which starts with the contrast between the subject and the
object isi this: that it isolates the individual human being as
22
 Set:
THE RIDDLE OF MAN

|
‘though it were something which could be understood as an
independent entity, whereas man inhis concrete actuality not.
dua
only does not occur as an indivior existphysically,
cannotl,
humas n can only be
iar gale existence as pemernensr
precisely in- ag eisaDEswIe
lyGrescit1n his _pecul
‘Dut
_but preciseey
conceived nd understood ‘in his relation to the other, "The_
oSeeennerthe GADiS

decisive, distinctive element 1s not the ‘I’ which confronts the

yer aah :
‘Wtetocananyrenen tae PDpeeton
nog iors ee Pate seat

which confronts the “Thou’—o

object, the ‘It, but the ‘I’ ‘Thou,’
ee
r.
rather does notconfront the but in its very existence eS
SPE

as an ‘I’ is also determined by the “Thou.” However unfamiliar

this viewofhuman nature may be, may it not be the correct
view? Has it not always been familiar in some way or other
to non-reflective thought—to thought which has not been
corrupted by the abstractions of philosophy? ne
The fact that man is a zoon politikon, a social being, wa
already taught by Aristotle in a decisive passage.” The fact.
that the ind ivican
duaonlylbe understood in_the_context..of
a larger whole was indeed, although in an entirely opposite
way, brought afresh to our consciousness by Darwin and Hegel;
the former, by treating seriously the idea of the zoon, and the
latter, by dealing seriously with the idea of the politikon:
in the
the individual human being a dependent member
of living creatur es
series of his species, and further in the series
in general; the individual man a more or less unimpo rtant
point of transition in the universal history of Spirit, which
attains its highest point in the State. In both views the
ent
individual is understood as a collective being, as a depend
part of a larger whole.
But the idea that the ‘I’ can only be understoodin the light,
not the
of the ‘Thou’ means something quite different. It is
eerie See

man as the more

member of a species, not the zoon, and not
history of civiliz ation
or less indifferent transitional point in the
the ‘Thou, ’ but
and of Spirit, the spirit-being, which knows
|
solely the human being who, in the “Thou’ of the ‘Other,’ comes NN ESAS ONT ENTE AEST ae
which
snare acs ONAN

to realize that his being a Self means his being a person,

> ~—- .

ophy dates from

1 The ‘thou’ as the theme of anthropology and philos
though in the narrow er sense only
Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence, ach
to the contrary, Feuerb
since Buber and Ebner (in spite of appearances
On this cf. Cullberg, Das Du und
cannot be mentioned in this connexion).
die Wirklichkeit (Uppsala, 1933). 2 Aristotle’s Politics, 12534.
23
 MAN IN REVOLT

4s not subordinated to any higher ‘something,’ but is itself the

ultimate meaning—that which alone gives to every mental
object, to all culture
and civilization, and to alllife in political
‘co mmunit itsmeaning
ies and
,itsright.Bythis we do not mean
merely Goethe’s conception that ‘the highest happiness of
earth’s children is in personality alone’; for this saying again
suggests that the individual is the ultimate and final point
of
__referencé. What is meant is the person, which only arises and
exists in inseparable union with the ‘Thou’ of the ‘Other’
as |
‘I-Myself.’ Just as man, as the subject of all science, stands
over against all objects of knowledge, and cannot be include
d
among them as a member of a series, so man as person stands
over against all his intellectual objects, his science,
his art,
‘his civilization, his political life, as their source, the
one who |
gives them meaning, and their measure, and is neither
incor- )
porated with nor subordinated to them. Man does
not exist I,
for the sake of culture or civilization, he is not a
means to .
an end, but he is an end for himself, precisely because
, and
in so far as, he, as person, is a self which is related
to and
bound up with a ‘Thou.’ A new depth of human existenc
e |
and of the riddle of man has disclosed itself to our
gaze. Can |
it be that thisisultimate and final? OF as
Man is part of this world; he is a physical body,
a con-
glomeration of chemical compounds, a zoon with
a vegetative
and sensory-motor system; he is a species of the
great order
of mammals. He isalso. the homo faber, the maker
of tools—
and what a monstrous tool he has created for himself
in modern
technique! He is, however, also the humanus,
that is, the being
who not only makes signs, but can and does speak
; the being
who not only maintains his own physical existe
nce, but creates
and shapes culture and civilization. As this
individual human|
being, he is an individuality which cannot be
compared with
any other. Hence, in spite of all human resem
blances, and
in spite of his power to communicate with
others through ~
the medi um of speech, in the depths of his being
he ‘is
incomprehensible to every other human being.
_ person who only becomes an ‘I-Self® in union with He is the
the ‘Thou.’
And he isalso the little creature who is for ever seeking
himself,
and therefore also fleeing from himself ; one
who is for ever
o4
 THE RIDDLE OF MAN
»
f
| being drawn and attracted by something higher, and yet is
ever seeking to release himself from this higher element; the
creature who is both aware of his contradiction and vet at
_ the same time denies it; a creature so great and again so
pitifully small that he can measure the universe and yet can
be attacked by a bacillus and die. Man is a spirit which dreams
of ‘eternity’ and creates ‘eternal’ works—and then the loss of
a little ee gland makes him an idiot. Man is allthis, Is.
this all?
There is one final depth in man which we have hitherto __
ignored. “Man has gods, and he renders them homage. He has
‘religion, Whatever may be said of the dividing-line between
“him and the other living creatures known to us, this at any
rate is his special preserve; it has been pharactenisac of him
from his earliest beginnings, and seems to be an inseparable
part of his existence. Whether he adored his totem animal or
the gods of the sun, the moon and the stars; whether by the
practice of magic he tries to gain control of sinenaten al forces;
whether by the practices of asceticism and of Yoga he achieves
union with the ‘Wholly-Other’ ;or whether in union with his
fellow-countrymen he brings a solemn sacrifice to the high
gods, or somewhere in solitude he approaches the Ground of
all being in mystical contemplation ; one thing remains the |
i

same, namely, that just as man is homo faber,

so also he is homo \

ret ss He is this even when he 1renounces allmythology, }

ideas of a2 supernatural ‘being, and becomes an agnostic.

‘or an_“atheist. ‘The dimension of the infinite, of the absolute,
of the unconditioned, is not empty for any human being, even |
when he has cut himself adrift from all traditional religious |
ideas. If he no longer has any personal gods, all the more
surely
he has one or more impersonal gods'—something which —
he regards as taboo, something which may not be touched
at any cost, “whether it be his Communism or his Nationalism,
his civilization or ‘life.’ ‘Man always has God or an idol.’? He i
|
can no more rid himself:‘of thisdimension of |hisexistence than
}
F i

rid himselfofthe dimension “oftime:past, present,

}
he
can ;

and future. Justas little as he can get Irid of his past by ceasing 1

1 Cf. Th. Spoerri, Die Gétter des Abendlandes. —

22 “Der Mensch hat immer Gott oder Abgott,” Luther.

25
 MAN IN REVOLT

to take it into account, can he get rid of his relation to God

by denying it. And just as little as he can get rid of anxiety
about the future by shutting his eyes to it, can he escape from
the unrest of the unconditioned and the longing for perfection
,__ by renouncing ‘religious mythology.’ This too belongs to the
| nature of man, and he has as little power over it as he has over
| the fact of his existence. He can ‘do away with himself’—but
_ can he? Is this so certain? Anyone who has tried to do this
_ has always begun to wonder whether it was so simple, after
all, to evade the riddle of man and the torment of his existence.
The dimension of eternity remains, never unoccupied, even
| if only by the sense of insecurity and the anxiety which
' accompanies it. Even the extreme instance confirms the truth
| that this ultimate depth which calls everything else in question,
| and possibly constitutes the ground of everything, forms an
! __integral part of human existence.
And now, what isman? In view of the wealth, the variety,
| andittheobscurity ofthe problems -upon which we “have touched
in ¢ourrapid survey, isthere any possibility of‘solving the riddle
of 1‘man? |Isanyone able to demonstrate. the.point ffrom. which
multiplic
multiplicity c:
can be. reduced Towa unity, and "presented _as an
intelligible whole? Attempts to do this have never been1 lacking.
Aristotle must have been the first to undertake to bring together
_all the particular knowledge of man into a systematic order,
and to present from one central point of view an interpretation
of man. His attempt has had an incalculable influence upon
the whole “of Western thought. The Aristotelian anthropology
‘has been part of the supporting structure of European history.
This immense influence should not be regarded as due to an
unusual depth of thought, but to the fact that in him—in a
way which has never been repeated—philosophical, scientific
and psychological thought was combined with the non-
reflective knowledge and understanding of the. ordinary,
non-philosophical and non-scientific human being. It is, of
course, also true that he owes a great deal of his enormous .
influence to the fact that behind him stood the. greatest thinker
the world had known up to that time—Plato, his master and _
teacher. But neither Plato norAristotle mastered the problem
of man. Although eevenn to-day
to- no one who wishes to deal
26
 THE RIDDLE OF MAN

seriously with this question can afford to ignore them, yet no

one can take his stand on the views of either of them. Two
thousand years of history are no small matter, even—and
particularly so—for thought about man. The man of the
twentieth century not only knows other things about man;
he himself, too, is different, not finally because he knows, or
thinks he knows, fresh things about himself. It is characteristic,
if not of our own day, at least of the period which “immediately,
preceded it, that ‘anthropology’ had become a branch of
natural sscience, and that a book with the title ‘Man’ was as_
a rule ‘either ee eee ae or a medical book. In the nineteenth
century, ‘humanity tried once more, and with more material
than at any previous time, to solve the riddle of man from
the point of view of objective research. The effort has not been
without result; an immense amount of material about _m man
—T might ee have said, ofi
emai laseansnhor
as:
incriminating “material against =|

man—has been collected, ert to some extent ‘sifted. Butwae

theAsh?
> ¢
“main ‘result must still be regarded. as this, that. the decisive —
questions of human existence are not even perceiveMeret
objective scientific
s« research ;still Tess ‘does 1Itr contribut
r
fo their | solution. “By aorhropolosy, then, to--day, men begin
to understand something which, at any rate in general outline
and in its main features, far more resembles the attempt of
an Aristotle or a Plato than of a Darwin.
But between the extremes of a purely materialistic and
a purely spiritual, a purely individualistic and a purely
collectivistic, a purely positivistic and a purely religious or
theological way of looking at the subject, there lie also to-day
all the hundred_and one different possibilities of method and
combination which have emerged in the history of the. past
two tthousand. years, after it has been proved that the problem
‘two
cannot be solved from the point of view of objective scientific
research, in spite of all the resources of scientific method.
Naturalistic anthropology iis to-day Gne among several others,
and, if I am not mistaken, it is no longer the predominating
one. At the present time, therefore, we seem to be as far as
ever - from being able to give a clear answer to the question:
What isMan?
“Andd yet_we ought tto have an. answer. We are not concerned
wn
A
w
37
 MAN IN REVOLT

_ with science and its achievements. We are concerned with

ourselves. We are concerned with our life. How can man live
if he does not know what, his life. means?..And_ how,can_I“he
understand what “his‘Jife means if he does not knoww whathe,
man, 1s? The question of man is not one which can be pushe
aside at will, like that concerning the character of a species
of animal or of a spiral mist. Knowledge of oneself forms part
of human existence; but human existence is not something
optional, which one can take or leave at will, it is the one
thing which is not optional but obligatory. It will be worth
while to devote some thought to this problem.

28
 CHAPTER II

MAN’S OWN VIEW OF HIS SIGNIFICANCE

THERE exists, at least apparently, a certain kind of human

life which asks no questions; a human existence which, at least
apparently, knows nothing about itself, and has no desire to
know—that non-reflective existence which Goethe, for instance,
admired and envied so much in the poetry of Homer, and which
is such a favourite subject to-day with poets who are weary
of civilization. Yet even the ‘Homeric’ man, and he particularly,
does not lack a quite definite, clearly defined anthropology;
he believes that he knows what genuine human existence is.
The question lies behind him; he has found an answer, and
he is expressing it in his life.+ ‘The naive human being is not
distinguished from the reflective human being by the fact that
‘he neither knows nor cares about human existence, but by
the fact that he regards his knowledge of human existence as
settled. ‘In this sense alone is there an existence which does
not raise _questions. Above all, however, there is a longing for.
“such existence; it is there as a postulate, as the romantic
‘idealization. of some kind of primitive existence. The man who
is weary of his intellectuality and his culture, the man who
is weary of activity, longs for the repose of ‘simple existence’ ;
the man who is tormented by the unrest of questioning dreams
of immediacy. But to know oneself is always reflection, ‘turning
in upon one’s self’; therefore we must do away with self-
knowledge. Reflectionis unhealthy; the healthy human being
does not reflect, he lives. He does not let his left hand know
what his right hand is doing; he is man, without knowing or
asking any questions about himself.
The reasons for thislonging, as we shall see in a moment,
are not superficial, nor are they merely a sign of weariness;
but this does not alter the fact that this longing produces a
deceptive picture. The human being who knows nothing about
his human existence, and does not inquire into it, is not a
human being; this existence freed from all questioning is not
1 Cf. Nagelsbach, Homerische Theologie; Rohde, Psyche; W. Jager, Paideia.
ay)
 MAN IN REVOLT

human but animal existence, and those who consider this to

be the correct view would do well not to write clever books
about ‘the mind as the enemy of the soul.’! For who will
believe that it is possible to find the way back to this
unquestioning kind of existence simply by reading books?
Knowledge of human existence and the desire to have this_
knowledge is indissolubly connected with the nature of will.
The fact that ‘I will this or that’ cannot possibly be separated
from the fact that ‘I am this or that’ and ‘I will be this or
that.’ My understanding of myself is reflected in my will.
- Self-understanding and self-determination are two aspects of
one original fact; willing and doing are always at the same
time a demonstration and an exposition of one’s understanding
_ Of oneself, whether this understanding be genuine or sham.
The purposes and ends which determine my practical attitude
are not only related to one another, either secretly or openly,
but they are also connected with the picture whichI.make
to myself of the rightorhappy
always
or true orgood ‘life’; and this
means, of human life. Even a human being who one
day decides that he will take no more trouble about questions
of human existence does this upon the basis of a picture—
althou this gh
may be unconscious—of the right life; and what
hehencefodoes
rth or “lives” is, so far as he does not sink to
the unquestioning level of the animals, still, and continually,
determined by that secret connexion.
This connexion of thought is, however, only one of the
component parts which determine our actual existence. Man
is not absolutely what he wills and what he loves—as Fichte
thinks he is—he is also that which he does not will to be and
that which he does not love; he is also something ‘accidental,’
through birth and destiny, through the play of obscure forces, _
often borne with reluctance, of the surrounding reality which
influences him. But that element of deliberate volition which”
determines the ends and purposes for which man lives is never
absent from human life, and it is this which gives to our life
its distinctiveness and its specifically human character. There
is asyste
ofm
our ends and purposes which cannot be evaded.
* An allusion to the chief work of Ludwig Klages, Der Geist als Widersacher
der Seele (in three vols.).— Translator.
30
 MAN’S OWN VIEW OF HIS SIGNIFICANCE

I will this or that, because I will that particular thing, and

Twil it bec
l aus
Twill
to this final
e
something still
basis any
morename—hap ntally
fundamepiness,
different . I may give
meaning, value, divine destiny, whatever I choose—yet in so
doing I have not yet expressed that controlling content of my
purposes which determines my will and my action. This
content, however, comes from that which I regard as the
truly human, or happy, or divinely destined, or significant
life, that is, human life, even though this ‘thought’ may be
- quite in the background and largely unconscious—something
which is rather ‘felt’ or pictured than a clearly formulated idea.’
Still another point should be noted. If, having become aware |
of this inward system of practical active life, of this hierarchical
of ends and purposes, we name the highest point in this
a order
Sedge oy Se aoe ane eee ei a

the dominant,
hierarchy which determines all the rest,consciou
a

we.
li a SEHOK NOT SrA ED

must not beledinto thinking that the s, soto. speak.

official, dominant must be the actual one. There are human
“beings with an elaborate system of conscious aims which they
rps
nr 2

acknowledge and even proclaim as ‘official,’ with a very ideal

who in. their actual life do not live...
ultimate end or dominant,
in the very least in accordance with these proclaimed ends
and purposes—perhaps without_being _altogether conscious
‘ofthe inconsistency. This “does not prevent their having a
certain secret but nevertheless close inner connexion, but it
by another
is of a quite different kind, because it is dominated
“unofficial? dominant. Karl Marx’s view of history, his theory
of ideologies, and his systems of values which are not in the
of
least in harmony with them, are based upon the proof
this dualism. With exactly opposit e methods , the psychol ogical
he
background of Nietzsche does the same; this is the method
try to get to the bottom of the ‘official ’
employs in order to
lies of human history. But Marx as well as Nietzsche cannot
help regarding the actual behaviour of human beings, not, it|
istrue, frthe om point of view of the ‘official’ values, but from _
tha oftone which is equally ordere d in a hierarchical manner,
and ultimately ends in a definite viewof man. Here, therefore,
we may leave this distinction between the ‘official’ and the
translation: “The
1 Cf. my book Das Gebot und die Ordnungen (English
Divine Imperative’), Chap. I.
31
 MAN IN REVOLT
‘unofficial’ system of values, and the self-understanding of man,
since all we are aiming at here is to prove the presence, of
some such system as a presupposition and an impelling force
in human life and action. Human life isalways—not exclusively
but also, andessentially—determined by this system of values,
which againis rooted in man’s view of himself.
Indeed, how could it be otherwise? For our loving and
our hating, our desires and our fears, our longings and our
detestations, do not constitute a fortuitous bundle of instincts,
but—so far as they are human at all—they all flow from one
~ source. Man wills ‘something as awhole, and’he determines the
‘detailsofhislife inaccordance with this purpose. Even in the
extreme instance of the man or woman who drifts through life,
at least a trace of this can be found; that is, in the constancy
of this determination to drift, which is rightly, if paradoxically,
described with an active verb, ‘to let oneself drift.’ An animal
does not let himself drift; he cannot do so, for in him the
presuppositions are lacking, namely, the possibility of not
letting himself go, of acting according to any other logic than
that of his instincts.
History shows us to how great an extent man’s understanding
ofhimself—even when conscious and _explicit—actually
influences and shapessociety. Thus, the Stoic view of
man influenced Roman law, and through that the whole
development of law in Europe, right down to Rousseau’s
Contrat Social and the ideas of the French Revolution, and
beyond that to modern Socialism and Communism.? Thus,
too, the civilization of China is—or was—dominated by the
classic ideals of filial piety and fraternal subordination created
by the great teachers of antiquity, and, through the system -
of education which they brought into being, handed down
from generation to generation. What a rigid form has been
stamped upon Indian society, and indeed upon the life of
India as a whole, by the religious doctrine of man standardized
in the Code of Manu!? Finally, how firmly the Christian view
* Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 1, 64-9; 150 ff.;
IV, p. 726. Dilthey, Ges. Schriften, II, pp. 246-82.
* Cf., e.g., A. Geiger, Die indoarische Gesellschaftsordnung, 1935, and Max
Weber’s Religionssoziologie, vol. ii.
32
 MAN’S OWN VIEW OF HIS SIGNIFICANCE

of man, in spite of all the forces ranged against it both inside

and outside the Church, has been imprinted upon the peoples
of Europe! :
These are only a few examples which show how a definite ai

view of human existence—whether itbe empiricalor ideal—

peice Sumer

‘is able to determine historical reality for thousands of years, \

‘and indeed has actually done so. The fact that alongside these
‘official’ views considerable influence is exercised by the
‘unofficial’ views of man proclaimed by Marx, Nietzsche and
Freud, of man as determined by hunger, power and sex, does
not contradict this statement, but is only another proof, along
a different line, of the same truth, namely, that man’s view”
of himself determines his life. I would, however, repeat that ©“
by the following qualification: it
this truth must be modified
‘d et erhis life
mi negswith the ‘accidental’ elements of his_
alon
existence and his environment.
~ Every culture has its own special aspect, and behind this
_aspect_its soul. It is possible that Spengler’s assertion that
religion is the soul of every civilization may be too strong;
but it is impossible to refute his argument that every civilization
possesses a relative, systematic unity, and that this unity is
determined by its ‘soul.’ It would, however, be more correct
to say that we find this ‘soul’ rather in man’s view of himself
‘than in religion. The culture of the Renaissance, for instance,
certainly has its own clear characteristics, and the power by
is

which this was shaped is its ‘soul.’ But who would claim that
this was due to the religion of the Renaissance, and not rather f

to its ‘feeling for life-—which means precisely man’s view of 4" |

himself—which gave it its dominant laws and its dominant
aspect through all the varying forms of expression, in actual
contrast to the religious forces which preceded and followed
it?! Similarly, scarcely anyone will say that our machine age
possesses its distinctive—though relative—essential unity in its
religion, and not rather in man’s particular understanding
of himself as the homo faber, as the man of technique and
of natural science. The fact, however, that man’s view of
himself may also be a religious and even an ecclesiastical or
1 Cf. Jakob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance, especially Die Ent-
deckung des Menschen.
33
 MAN IN REVOLT .

theological one, is shown easily enough by the history of other

epochs, such as the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries. At’a
second point, too, Spengler is right, namely, when he says
that thevitali that which is specifically human, the
ofty
humanity-content of a. civiliis zation
determined,by its con- _
nexion witha living religious tradition. For every civilization,
for every period in history, it is true to say: ‘Show me what
y kind of a god you have, and I will tell you what kind of a
» ~~ humanity you possess.’ A purely secularcivilization
willalways.
y# Jack this deeper kind of humanity; and the converse of this
“statement would be that the purest humanity is to be found
“whe God,renot man, is at thecentreofall.The truth of this
statement will be examined later on.
From some outstanding modern instances, we can see how
largely a definite view of the nature of man is able to determine
the practical reality of human life, both of the individual
and of groups. They show us that the ‘solution’ of definite
practical problems of a period—as, for instance, those of race,
economics and sex—is always based upon definite views of the
nature and the destiny of man. The fact that binds together __
the mostinfluential thinkers ofrecent generations, those whose_
thought was capable of determini ng the thought not only of
>, other thinke‘butalso ofthe imiassés, “and through them of
rs,
\, "determiningthewhole
~ <
course of political
Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl developm ent—Charles
Marx—was this: that
cac h gained power, directly or indirectly, over_a.
of ‘them
o considerable section of mankind by his view ofman,by his
- “anthropology.” Whethe ey were aware of it or not,
not theirscientific systems or their systems ofphilosophy itwhich
was_
_made history, but thei
viewrofman. ahs ea
~~ Darwin, if not the first, is still the most impressi ve of the
thinkers who placed the life of man under biological categories.
I am not speaking here of the importance of Darwin’s work
for natural science—no one questions that, whatever else they
may think about the views of Darwin—but for us that is a
matter of only indirect importance. It was not the origin of
the species _as_a_scientific.theory.of the genesis of the
forms
| oflife, but the inclusion of man in the biological process of
evolution, and theexplanation
of human forms
oflife in terms
34
 MAN’S OWN VIEW OF HIS SIGNIFICANCE

of biological laws of growth, which made Darwin’s theory

a force in the life of our day. Man understands himself as a
“Yiving being” in continuity with all other living beings, and
~ the laws of his life are biological in character. This is an
man can understand, which
argument whicl. even the ordinary
appeals to something familiar to him, and justifies it. The ..
theme itself is not new, but the general acceptance which it”
gained in an era of natural science, owing to its ‘scientific’ »
character, is certainly new. Those who popularized this theory
found people willing and even eager to listen, both among
large. The period
atle
“the educated classes and among the peop
of humanism was succeeded by the period of biolo Bsthe
humanum—_that which distinguishes man from all that 1s sub-_
human—disappears in the view that man is essentially an
animal ‘like all other living Creatures.” One of the most
practical conclusions drawn from this general thesis is the
understanding of man from the standpoint of ‘race.’ The unity
of the human race becomes doubtful, the varied types and
values of particular races come to the fore and become a
guiding principle in politics, especially in a political theory of
civilization. The anthropology of Darwin, in the conclusions
which he himself did not draw, became a main factor in
political legislation and action.*
Nietzsche’s picture of man, and its historical influence, is
far more complicated. But whatever may be the elements of
humanistic idealism and humanistic romanticism contained
in his idea of man, here too the main element is naturalistic.
That which became influentialin the thought of Nietzsche
was essentially his vitalistic dynamism, his theory of man as /
a creature governed byimpulse and instinct. Thejustification
for this theory is not scientific ‘but philosophical, we might :
almost say prophetic. Nietzsche is aware of himself as one who
proclaims a new man—namely, that man who gives first place
not to the mind (or spirit) but to life itself, and indeed to a
‘life? which is understood essentially as strength of impulse,
sureness of instinct, and ‘self-expression.’
1 The following well-known book is typical: Gunther, Rassenkunde des
deutschen Volkes. Cf. the book of Hertwig, Zur Abwehr des ethischen, des sozialen,
des politischen Darwinismus, which is still instructive.
35
 MAN IN REVOLT

Here, too, simplifications and transformations had-to take

place before useful slogans for the political conflict could
be gained from the ideas of the over-cultivated and ultra-
sensitive humanistic philosopher. But they were acquired,
and they have made history. Both Italian Fascism and German
National Socialism are unthinkable apart from Nietzsche.
The direct influence’ of Nietzsche upon the thought of the
Duce is well known; his influence upon the German Fihrer
is less direct. National Socialism springs from a view of man
which may be described as Vitalism, and among its chief
creators Friedrich Nietzsche may be considered supreme,
whether or not many of his views agree with those held in
the Third Reich.
The third and still more outstanding example is that of Karl _
Marx, as regards both the significance of his view of man as”
‘such,
meh, and its direct influence in the political sphere. Marxism
is not primarily an economic
or sociological theory; it 1s above
all an
ai anthropology, a definite attempt to define the nature
‘of man. In spite of all the differences between Marxism and
the views of Darwin and Nietzsche, the former has1this <at least
in common with them: the refusal to admit any transcendental,
metaphysical c or “religious. basis for.his view of man. It is not
his political economy and his theories of value and capital,
and the scientific arguments on which they are based, or even
the proofs of the economic conception of history—the so-called
‘historical materialism’—but the ideal of man and of society
taught by Karl Marx which has created modern Socialism,
and has made Marxism an historical force of the first rank.
This ideal of man and of society, which at the same time
provides the standard for the criticism of bourgeois society,
is itself a structure which cannot easily be understood .or
analysed. Various threads have here been interwoven: Jewish,
Christian, Stoic rationalism as well as modern naturalism.

1 The work of Nietzsche shows an increasing preponderance of the

naturalistic over the classical-humanistic elements, while certainly the
formal element, the prophetic consciousness and the imperative character
of the doctrine of values, cannot be understood either from naturalism or
from humanism, but only from the Biblical background. Nietzsche draws
his strength and his nourishment from his opponent, Jesus Christ.
36
 Z MAN’S OWN VIEW OF HIS SIGNIFICANCE

The ideas of human dignity and of justice, that of the identity

of the idea of man and the ideal of society, and lastly the
understanding of the historical nature of human existence,
may be regarded as its main elements. But whatever may be
its content or its ee it_is this idea of man which has roused
the masses ofthe proletariat, “and has welded them into a
unity of desire and action which, at least in one of the great
states of the world to-day, has nehigeed great political success.
pg te ene power of the aprolctanan.. revolution is | an
AA,
WA
faith in oneself,
ee
in the common man,"in his ideas, his powers,
(5 SCE Ue PHS TANH ONES

and his rights. Karl Marx has made history, not as an academic
“economist, but as an anthropologist.?
_A fourth illustration may be added which shows the effect
of anthropology not so much in the sphere of political and
public life as in that of private life and_of custom—Sigmund Ee
F ‘reud’s theory of sex and of the unconscious. Here again what
concerns us is not its medical and therapeutic aspect, nor its
psychological and scientific aspect, but its significance as a
general theory of man. Manis is essentially se:
sex-instinct—in the
view of Adler, desire for|power, in the view of Jung, libido,
in a broader and more indefinite sense of the word—and is
above all to be understood from the point of view of the
unconscious.? The new scientific theory shows not only that
this is so, but that it is meaningless and dangerous to play
off any sense of obligation against this existence. This theory
justifies man as a sex being, it gives him the right to understand
himself” primarily 4from the point of view of his sexuality. Here
again, as in other instances, the simple thesis is embedded
in a complicated system of scientific and in part also of
philosophical arguments. It is not, however, these arguments
which exert an influence, but the ines itself, the view of man
which is able to become a leading idea, and indeed has already
to a very large extent become so. The sexualistic—in the
broader sense the erotic—view of man is a force in the
literature of to-day, both literature proper and merely popular
1 Cf. Orient und Okzident, June 1936; Die biblische Botschaft und Karl Marx,
by Lieb and Berdyaev. Also Allwohn, Die marxistische Anthropologie und die
christliche Verkiindigung in Imago Dei, published by Bornkamm, 1932.
2 G. Adler, Entdeckung der Seele. From Freud and Adler to Jung, 1934.

37
 MAN IN REVOLT

writings, which to a large extent determines the practical life

of man.? .
Although these four thinkers are very different from one
another, and although at many points their views and their
methods of teaching maybe opposed, yet they have three
elements in common. Firstly, they show that it is through the_
hie interpretation. of man that ideas make history. Secondly, they
man _
, show that deliberately positivist or even atheistic views of
fave done most to influence the thought of our day. “Thirdly
and this should be added to what has gone ‘before—t ey
‘show that even these theories could only become. factors in
the formation of historywhen they _ themselves, in some way.
orranother, became either a
a religion or asubstitute for religion. e.
To-day, as in pre-Christian days, there isonce again a religion
of blood, of power, and of sex. So long as the idea of man—
of whatever kind—is not elevated to the plane of the.absolute,
able to “shape history,
of the unconditioned, “it isnot. really 2
and it remains more or less a private concern; it remains
academic, and has little power to influence actual life. As we
suggested in the previous chapter, this ishow the matter stands:
the dimension of the Absolute does “not remain _unoccupied, reuters

y even when it has been.deliberately cleansed ‘from all religious

ea
anal a nacre

mythology. ‘The various views of man are distinguished from |

| one another not by the fact that man posits an “absolute
“when he tries to understand himself, but by what kind of an |
absolute he posits, and of what kind his relation to it is. |
_Man h hasalways¢either. a god oor an idol (Gott oder Abgott). rey |
At the close of this brief survey, “however, we must also
remind ourselves of the fact that all these_ modern_views. of
man, which we must describe primarily as positivist and
atheistic, although they have brought pressure to bear upon
the two main older traditions which have formed our civilization _
—those o: Biblical Christianity and of Platonic Idealism—have te
of I
ern
by 1no_Ineansis
got rid ofthem, The individual and the ‘social
still nourished by their deep roots. No one has yet
ethos is
attempted to discover in any detail how much there is in our
legal institutions and our social services, in our views of good
1 Tllustrative of this whole tendency: D. H. Lawrence for English
literature, and (the later) Gerhard Hauptmann for German literature.
38
 MAN’S OWN VIEW OF HIS SIGNIFICANCE

and evil, of what is and is not permitted, is noble and base,

sacred and despicable, that gains its vitality from these sources.
The question whether this element is diminishing or not is
as a rule one rather of personal conviction than of proof. The
new usually attracts more attention than the old. Here it
is not our concern to try to weigh one against the other; all
that we have tried to do is to remind ourselves that the Christian
and the ancient humanistic views of man have as much right
to exist, to-day as in other ages, as the new views of man.
 CHAPTER III

THE VARIETY OF THE VIEWS OF MAN

WE must know what man is; for in all that we do we answer,

we are obliged to answer, the question of how we understand
ourselves, our life. But where shall we find the right answer?
' An almost unlimited variety of views and theories opens up
before us as we look. Which of them is the right one? Can it_
& be possible that there is no right view, that there are only
fragments,here a little and there eaa little, but nothing which
v —
binds all these -individual perceptions int
into a|unity? There is a
good deal to be said for this opinion and it would be in harmony
with a view of man which regards him not as a unity, but as
composed of various elements which are co-ordinated but not
united. Man is, indeed, an _entity_w
entit which belongs to the most
varied spheres of existence :to
the inorganic, vegetable, animal,
psychical, spiritual, and\d perhaps to some transcendent sphere
of reality. Canitbe that from each of these standpoints there is
a. particular vie
view which in itselfis“always correct, and yet can
never be the only view, but must always be ‘complemented by_
others? Why not? Whyy should we notletthe experts in each of
these spheres speak for themselves?,pee
Man, a part of the physico-chemical world, subject to the law
_ of gravity like everything else, is a portion of matter composed
of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, and other
elements. Itwill
villnotdoto regardthis physico-chemical substra- _
tum _as a mere¢
trifle, ass merely the outer shell within which the
real human being lives. Not only does alittle” ‘thyroid-gland ~
secretion more or less determine the whole of a man’s bodily -
existence; it also affects his psycho-spiritual existence as well.
A blow upon the head—that is, a purely physical movement,
the shifting of a molecule—may turn a genius into an idiot, and
bring to an end the existence of the strongest man. It is not
surprising that, from the days of Democritus until now, attempts
have been made again and again to a man as a whole

40
 THE VARIETY OF THE VIEWS OF MAN

chromosomes and hormones. It is easy to understand that the

physician, who every day observes the physico-chemical
limitations of human life, and who finds that he must exert his
influence almost exclusively at this point, constantly falls a prey
to the temptation to ignore other aspects of man. It is indeed
a temptation; if he seeks to understand the whole nature of man
by studying the physico-chemical aspect only, he is chasing a
will-o’-the-wisp, although it is quite true that this aspect should
be studied.
Side by side with and above the materialistic theory there is
the organic-zoological theory—that of man as an animal having
A) 2 A a GER EOS
SEE Sa eee meal
ems
eee a aa” a
ne

eee Semaine eas Ri ergo Mims

a peculiarly complicated structure, in particular a_highly

tee
pate ene bireRNG Snan

l nervous system whichThegives him his

may Raa OTST ES ? ad

ifferentiated centrarity
° ”
mie

biological superio over the other species. modern idea

of evolution which has changed the rigid distinction of the
species into a fluid continuum is supported by such a mass of /
observations and established facts that no one with insight can
fail to be convinced by its arguments. Man, the final—perhaps
from some points of view the highest—offshoot of the mammals?
Why not? The fact that man has a soul, and that it is impossible
to identify this ‘soul,’ without further consideration, with an
organism, need not on that account be denied. Then has the
animal, for instance, no soul? Are the instincts of man—even
though the one-sided development of the brain and intellect
Vy La

may have weakened them—essentially different from those of

the higher mammals? The ancient traditional view that the
intellect forms the boundary between the animal and man can
be held no longer. Even though the intellectual facultiesofman
may surpass _ a hundredfold the intellectual faculties ‘of the
animal, it is still impossible to fix a boundary-line; everywhere
we see points at which continuity exists. Is it not particularly
true that man to-day has no cause to elevate himself too high
above his fellow-creatures, his own animal nature and bondage
to his instincts being only too evident? The fact that man has
even conceived himself recently as a degenerate animal may at
least be noted as a sign of the times, nor must we overlook the
grain of truth which exists even in this strange theory.
But in spite of all these attacks of modern naturalism,
the view still exists, well established _and. not_confuted, that _
4I
 MAN IN REVOLT

man differs from the animal, not only in degree but in principle,
LESSEE
on SERIA RERISISSION OC NOR eh treater ayaieabne
aied fei: oS Ss NM

/” “by_a ‘something’ which the animal lacks at all stages of his

RSE FO MASE NORE RE Ny

development—and in an unconditional sense, not merely to a

certain degree; and that down to the present time no traces of
this ‘something’ have ever been discovered in an animal—the
reason or the mind, in the sense of the power to grasp ideas and
to express them. ‘Man alone, in so far as he isperson, is ableto
rise above himself as an animal, and, from a centre beyond the
Lo... world of time and space, to make everything—including himself
—the object of his knowledge.’ ‘Thus man is the being which is
superior to himself and to the world. . . . As such a being, he is
_also capable of irony and of humour, which always include an
_» €levation above one’s own existence.’ ‘The capacity for the
»/(" separation between existence and nature constitutes the main
v
~ © sign of the human mind.’ ‘Man is able to separate “‘three-ness”
_-»® as a number of three things from these things, and to operate
with the number three as an independent object according to
the inner law of production of the series of such objects. The
animal can do nothing of this kind.’}
By means of his mind, his reason, man is able to create
culture and” civilization; this is hisfumanifas—that
distinguishes
which
him from all other living creatures, from
all other
zoa—his distinctive characteristic. The animal may have the
rudiments of technique and civilization—that is, the artificial
means of preserving life—but it never has the slightest beginning
. ofvculture. Man alone hasscience, that is, research for the sake
of truth alone; he alone has art, that is, creation of beauty in
form and colour, for the sake of beauty alone; he alone has
religion, that is, worship and adoration for the sake of Holy.
the
Man alone has speech; the system of signs used by animals,
wrongly called the language of .animals, is—as William von
Humboldt has shown us once for all’—something fundamentally
1 Scheler, Der Mensch im Kosmos, pp. 57 ff.
* Ger. Kultur—practically untranslatable; but W. von Humboldt’s defini-
tion may be quoted: ‘Civilization (Zivilisation) is the humanizing of the
nations in their external organization, and in the spirit and temper to
which this is related; to this culture (Kultur) adds science and art.’—
Translator.
° W. von Humboldt, Sprachphilosophische Werke, published by Steintal,
Pp. 51.
42
 {

THE VARIETY OF THE VIEWS OF MAN

different from human speech. For speech is formed precisely by

that which the animal lacks—the general conception, the idea.
the
This contrast is sharp; it is the direct line of division between
human and the sub-human. The animal remains connected with
that which constitutes sense-existence, and his interest does not
extend beyond his biological sphere of existence. Man, however,
even when he makes no use of this capacity, is capable of going
beyond this sphere through his mind, his reason. This capacity
constitutes his humanity. This humanity, however, is the
distinctively human element. Thus, whoever desires to speak of
man must speak of his humanity, his capacity for culture, and
his_spiritual destiny. eens <0
Here theme teach the position ni ee eee
since its first splendid outline by. Pla to_all
ofman,ne
doctri
tle, maintained, in opposition
has triumphantly
Aristo
attempts to understand man from the point of view of natural
scienceor ofpsychology , the levels of sense-existence
from and
ofthat which can be experienced physically: the humanistic °
;
idealistic understanssn dingofman,Inthe spiritanéw dimensionof
existence 1s opened up: the truth that our life here is determined ice
ree myeaincau verti ad re
Lar BR
LeeEADs
onAe TIS

by a life beyond, that which is conditioned by that which is

- unconditioned, that which is accidental by a norm of necessity,
the imperfect by the perfect, the changing by that which is
eternally valid. In all that is specifically human there is this,
relation to a realm beyond, a transcendental realm—whether_ »
in the formal logical laws of thought, in”the conteof ntthe -
Good, in the idea
idea of Truth,inthe idea of Justicoreofthémeaning.
Beauty,ofthat which is full of absolute
of Man is the
bear ideas, the shaper of ideas; the actual nature of man,
ofer
in contrast to his ‘accidental’ appearance, is the Idea itself.
From the first creative suggestion of Plato down to Leibniz,
Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and their modern successors, the ways in
which this one fundamental idea has been expressed have been
most varied, and their influence within history has been
immeasurable. But the creed of Idealism is always the same:
essentially man is spirit, and therefore immortal, eternal, divine,
‘in the deepest part of his nature. All that is mortal, perverted,
meaningless, limited, is ‘non-essential’ ;it is a kind of foreign
addition, perhaps even a mere illusion. Although apparently,
43
 MAN IN REVOLT

in accordance with his empirical aspect, man may be un-free,

as homo noumenon he belongs to a wholly different world, the
world of freedom, eternity, and perfection. Indeed, from the
Far East, where one comes to terms more easily with this
tiresome irrational actuality than in the realistic West, this
gospel is proclaimed still more boldly and completely; Atman
is Brahman,‘ the spirit in us—the being-subject—is the same as
the All-spirit; tat tvam asi, ‘that’—namely, the All, the Deity,
the One—‘art thou,’ the man who knows.?
This perception arises not only out of the intellectual labour
ofthe philosophers, but also out of the contemplation of the
mystics. He who in this contemplation severs himself from
“illusion, he who ‘detaches’ himself from the world, who sinks
down into the inmost ground of the soul, or into ‘ecstasy,’ who
in mystical rapture forsakes the prison of his bodily nature, he
also experiences it thus. He beholds his unity with the principle
of all existence and of alllife, with changeless, eternal being;
-_ he knows no contradiction easesno separation any longer between
nf the One and the Self; he has reached the point where the
Wholly Other and the oe are the same. This mysticism is tied
neither to time nor place; whether India be its country of
origin or not, it has found a home everywhere, in pre-Christian
and Christian Europe as well as in Asia; it has its parallels in
Africa and among the ‘primitive’ people of America. To-day it
is the religion of the educated and the learned, just as it was
three thousand years ago; it is combined to-day with the most
recent modern psychology as in the days of the first yogis. And
its varieties, as countless as those of Idealism, yet display «one
fundamental form of the view. of man or of the soul.®
“One +variety we must not _overlook, owing ‘to_its _special
influence iin modern times and at the present day—the he
romantic
-
view, which lies midway between the organological and the
mystical views. Its starting-point and its fundamental principle
the
is ‘soul,’ _as distinguished from the ‘spirit.”"This “soul,”
through the medium of the unconscious and psychical, is ‘the
_ formative _power |of the organism; it is that which makes it a
1 Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, 1, pp. 79 ff7
? Thid., p. 37._
3 Otto, West-Ostliche Mystik; Lévy-Bruhl, L’dme primitive.

44
 = 4

THE VARIETY OF THE VIEWS OF MAN

living whole. On the other hand, it is the mother-source from

which springs the life of the spirit. But it is more original,
deeper, more profound than the spirit. In the spirit arise ,
contradictions, harsh opposition; in the soul, however, is the
original totality and unity. Nature and Spirit, subject and
object, reality and ideality, are one in the deepest experience
of the soul, in that obscure darkness _of the unconscious into —
which division has notyet..entered, which only arises in the
garish light of the spirit. Here in the realm of the unconscious
and the psychical, the realm of the mothers, is the origin of all
genius as well as of all creative dreams. Here in the fiery centre
all is still fluid, which on the surface forms into solid shapes.
Here the truth has not yet been solidified into sharp masculine
conceptions, but everything is still maternally soft, in symbols,
intuitions and emotional awareness. Here in the deep centre, _
in this seeing, this awareness, this feeling, we are close to the.
_ primal reality,tothat existence and life which has no contradic-
tions, which has not yet been differentiated, the ‘immediate.’?
Hence the soul and not the spirit is the true centre of man, in
such a way, however, that the contrast between man and
nature, the arrogant elevation of the son above the mother, is
regarded as the primal sin. It will not be necessary for me to
produce documentary historical evidence for this view from the
mother cults of the ancient world down to the romantics of
last century2—down to the ‘Psyche’ of Carus, and the Kosmogo-
nische Eros of Klages, and the metaphysical psychology of Jung.
All I wish to do at this point is to describe briefly a typical and
important interpretation of the riddle of man.
Nor must we forget the ‘wisdom of the man in thestreet.’
Even the simple
man, whoisneither a scientist
nor aphilosopher ~
‘hor a mystic, hashis own view of man. There is an anthropology
of the sensus communts, difficult as it is to discover it among all the
historical débris of the various religions. It lives in the wisdom
literature of the various nations, and reveals in it its sensus, its
meaning, as well as its communis, its universal expansion. But we
can only speak of it with extreme caution, for at every step we
perceive definite and distinctive historical opinions which are
1H. Kutter, Das Unmittelbare.
2 Cf. Baeumler’s Introduction to Bachofen’s Works.
45
 MAN IN REVOLT

now regarded simply as ‘common sense. ’ To-day we no longer

believe in those notiones communes in the sense in which Cicero
used the words—which were the basis of the whole of the
medieval and modern anthropology until modern historical
research swept it away. And still this characteristic wisdom of
the man in the street, which Oetinger loved so dearly and
described so beautifully, does exist. What does itsay about
mani*
First, it says everything 1in an un-academic way; it makes no
appeal to principles.” Quite deliberately it does not attempt t
to
“go too deeply int
into these problems. It knows that man is body,
soul,
and spirit, and that he is both an independent individual,
with his own responsibility, and a being who is bound to the
community and intended for community. It is aware of »
man’s freedom and:also of man’s bondage; of the higher
element in man and of his pitiful need; of the unity of
his personality and of the contradiction which it contains.
Further, it is aware of man’s eternal destiny, and yet also that
man dies, and that all his life is in some way determined by
the fact of death, and tends towards death. It is aware of the
necessity of becoming conscious, but also of the dangers which
this involves, and of the power of the unconscious. It is aware
of the peculiar character of each individual, and also of the
/common element which binds all individuals together. This _
‘wisdom’ knows all these things, but it cannot be grasped ;at
any particular point. The more eagerly we try to seize it, the
more elusive it becomes, this extraordinarily intelligent and
reflective, and yet at the same time superficial and incomplete
kind of knowledge. If we inquire into it too boldly and eagerly,
it waves its hand and turns its back on the questioner—just
like mother-wit, that keen, merry, profound, lighthearted
thing.
Before and behind all scientific, philosophical and theological
anthropology there lies this ordinary, universally human, naive,
pre-reflective understanding of man, very variously interwoven,
concealed, enriched and distorted ay those other views, and
1 Oetinger, Die Wahrheit des Sensus communis oder des allgemeinen Sinnes in
den nach dem Grundtext erklarten Spriichen und Prediger Salomo. Also i Auberlen,
ihe Theosophie F. C. Octingers.
46
 THE VARIETY OF THE VIEWS OF MAN

yet independent of them.’ All that the poets and artists tell us
about_man_usuall comes. from this,“source. It is possible that
fn

genius consists mainly inina specially high cdegree of such naiveté,

which is able to maintain itself against all that is conventional,
against all clichés, against all the established forms which have
been set up by tradition. But wherever a poet or a thinker in
a special degree probes into the depths, there, to the extent in
_ which he moves away from this sensus communis, he comes under.
the influence of a scientific, philosophical, or definitely religious
anthropology which both enriches and distorts, deepens and |
injures his view of man. As_naiveté. disappears. the, ‘isms’.
become powerful—Realism, |Idealism, Pantheism, each of
ofwhich —
makes one element of human nature ‘theprinciple of iinterpreta-
tion, and
in sodoing possibly brings to Jight truths which are
‘not
SEcconiblc to the ¢others, but at the price of a one-sidedness_ :
‘which distorts thepicture“of
o man. There seems to be only one
‘exception1to
ee
tothis.rule. Where the poetic naiveté of this view of
eels iB Baty tga TET OO Te RN eT TO ee OO
puma nature has been combined with the Christian. faith, sepege

sky, ORT penetrating view of rman_which has no 1 » rival.

That which the non-reflective simple: human being, whose
highest point is attained in the genuine poet, knows about man
seems to be fulfilled in the Christian faith alone. This, however,
means that we have already entered the sphere of religion.
Every religion has its own view of man, which springs out
of its own nature—the ‘Homeric as well as the Egyptian, the —
Iranian as well as the Vedic or Hindu, the Jewish or the
Mohammedan. Each of these religious anthropologies 1is based _
_upon the view of common sense—Which, a8 we have already seen,
must bere
regarded as something very indefinite—but it"deepens
‘or broadensor transforms it in a way that springs out of the
fundamental nature of the religion in question, often leading
1 The ontology of Heéwuers is very largely a philosophical interpretation
of ‘ordinary’ human existence, -the non-philosopher’s view of himself
expounded in philosophical terms. In it there are interwoven elements of
Fichte’s philosophy (Eigentlichkeit), Neo-Platonist mysticism (das WNichts),
and of Christian thought (guilt, conscience, death); these form a unity
which is more impressive than inwardly articulated. The really important
element in Heidegger is his respect for ‘simple’ human existence, which
he has learned from Kierkegaard.
47
 MAN IN REVOLT
to caricatures, to strange and curious structures which are
scarcely intelligible, but also often in a way which cannot fail
' to make a deep impression upon us.
In spite-of the infinite _Variety | of the views of man, it is
ossible to distinguish certain directions inwhich the doctrine
_ofmannexperiencesafurther development iin religion. ‘Man, in
some way or another, is a dependent being, conditioned by
those
se higher powers “which he adores. In so far as they are the
oe of the sacred law of life, he is responsible to them,
and must give an account of himself to them. Through fe
gods, or through the Divine Being, the individual human being
is in some way united with his people or his tribe; but in his
relation to the divinity he also experiences a heightening of his"
own value and an intensification of his own nature. It is in the
sphere of religion, not in that of philosophy, that the view of
the immortality of the soul, of a transcendent ‘reward, ofa:
higher world for which man is destined, arises. All these
statements ‘must, however, “be qualified ‘by the observation
‘that scarcely one of themiisacknowledged in ail religions. At
this:point t it
it becomesvery clear that the idea of the Enlighten-
‘ment—the idea that behind all historical ‘religions there lies a
‘natural religion’ or the ‘essence of religion’—is “untenable. The
Enlightenment doctrine of ‘natural religion’ is a misunder-
standing which has arisen out of the age-long union, beginning
in the early days of Christianity, between Gheknaae and the
ancient humanism of the philosophy of religion, in which both
these unique historical forces were welded into a more or less
artificial unity.
In spiteofits apparent ssimilarity to the religious philosophical
humanism of the ancient world handed on to us, for instance,
~by_ Cicero, the Christian doctrine. of man,_as. far as both ts
“content(and its origin are concerned, is completely unconnected
with it, unless we regard 3 as an any the fact that it goes
"beyond that which is obvious to everyone. But to class both

1 Of. Stratton, Psychology of the Religious. Life, a book which provides a

valuable comparative religious anthropology from, unfortunately, rather a
dull and formal psychological point of view. Cf. also the anthropological
sections of the comparative Phdnomenologie der Religion by van der Leeuw.
2 Cf. Scheler, Mensch und Geschichte, 1928.
48
 THE VARIETY OF THE VIEWS OF MAN

together as a unity, as Scheler does in ‘the classic theory,’! can

_only succeed in the hands of one who looks at the whole subject
from such a distance that even the most obvious contradictions
have become blurred and indistinct.

* oat, ‘
* * *
Pat

The first thing «t

shatmust be said of the Christian doctrine
of man is that
it isnot a‘theory’ or a_ philosophumenon, but2-
“statement of Faith.‘Thus even the expression ‘doctrine’ is mislead-
ing, or at least it needs some explicit qualification. It is the
essential element in the Christian faith—and it is this which
distinguishes it from all religions, as well as from all mysticism,
philosophy, and science—that its statements do not Spring fifrom
a process of analysis or meditation or r. reflection uponeé:
existence,
but from their rrelation to an. historical event, in which it itself,
as one element, participates, and in so doing itself becomes),
historical. One is tempted to contrast the Christian faith as'a~
metaphysic of history with the non-historical philosophies or
religions—that is, with those which have no essential relation
to the historical. But again, to do so would be to miss the whole
point and distinctive character of the Christian statement. For
every metaphysic must, as the great example of Hegel shows
us, derive the historical from a super-historical which, as such,
is accessible to thought; whereas the Christian faith, while it.
derives, it is true, the historical from asuper-historical—namely,
the_eter
eternal will and counsel of God—goes back. to_a_super-,
historical which only
O makes itselfknown within history._Every
attempt to derive the historical to which the Christian faith is
related from a system of timeless truths and a system of truths
which is independent of the historical—as was done by all the
great German Idealists—falsifies its substance. The principle of
Fichte that it is only the metaphysical, and not the historical,
which saves us, is diammetrically opposed to the fundamental
creed of Ghirigtianieys [‘Grace and truth came by Jesus |
Christ . . . No man hath seen God at any time; the only|
Begotten Ban which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath
declared Him. 2 This, which would make every good Platonist’s
1 Cf. Scheler, Der Mensch im Kosmos, p. 73. 2 Johni. 17,18, R. V.

49
 MAN IN REVOLT
|
:

hair stand on end, is the central article in the Christian theory

of knowledge.
This statement, however—in order to make it quite clear that
\ it is not a ‘theory’—needs to be supplemented by another. “But
\ we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which
| is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given
\ to us by Gad: "1 This knowledge, which is given to us by the
SAA ninemscecrnlari ies Ay
ssentenasoiver:~

|Spirit of God, ofthat which has been historically revealed by SENIOR

' God, isalert in the New Testament ‘faith,’ or, to put it more
exactly, the “obedience of faith,’? thedecision offaith. Faith is
not a neutral, objéctive, tntellectual or even ecstatic or intuitive
view; faith is the act of obedience, of decision, in face of the
historical revelation. But just as the Christian faith is not
related to the historical in general, but has to do with a definite.
point in history—namely, with the historical in which the truly
super-historical is revealed—so also the decision in which faith
consists is not any decision, but ¢hat decision in which man
completely surrenders to the Divine Will which is disclosed to
him in that historical. In_this decision is fulfilled the new
understanding of humanexistence; in this ‘self-surrender_ man.
experiences the meaning of his existence. “Thus we see how little
we have ‘to
neers
0 do here with an anthropological theory. What.

only be perceived and acquired at‘the priceof the ‘surrender of

“self to the will of resale
God.”A
“Tn the Christian doctrine of man we are concerned with the
true knowledge of responsible existence. One who has under-
stood the nature of responsibility _ has understood thenature’ of~ ~
wahiasOnaee

erento
man. Res esponsibility iis not an attribute, it is the ‘substance’ of |
human existence. It contains everything :freedom and bondage,
“the independence of the individual and our relation to one
another and the fact of community, our relation to God, to our
fellow-creatures and to the world, that which distinguishes man
from all other creatures, and that which binds him to all other
creatures. Thus even the knowledge of responsibility is that
which makes every human being a real human being—although
otherwise he may be and think or believe, what he wills—thus
it is the absolutely universal human element. Yet responsibility
1 Cor. ii, 12, 2 Rom. i. 5.
50
 THE VARIETY OF THE VIEWS OF MAN

is at the same time that which no man rightly knows, unless he

holds
ep ilaiaaanape canarfaith.
the Christian a alienhe i ake
‘Ttis, of course, true that every of
human being is aware
responsibility ;ifthis were not so, he would be eit er agod or
a devil. ‘Christ and the Devil have no conscience.’ The’
consciousness of sacred obligation is indestructible; it outlasts
all destructive developments of human thought. Even the |
atheist or the cynic is aware of it, although he may deny it in
his theory; it is not wise to charge him with irresponsibility.
The boundary of the knowledge of responsibility coincides with ‘|.
the boundary of human existence; if a human being had lost |
be ahuman™
all sense of responsibility, he would have ceased to
being. Butthe converse is equally trie; thatthe basis, depth,
and ultimate meaning of responsibility are concealed from man ISTO ge NG
MARIESSHAMEE rear 5

“Until they are revealed to him through the Christian faith.

en REE
ge ate
Cigar EVE aa ss SO
— - en A See car

Ignorance of the real significance of responsibility is inseparably~

gg U5 eget HEMT
AE y |
fe Len ET DRA RN ge RU
Senne BY 0
os Sneteninmiaenmans

connected with not being responsible. Here existence and

perception are indistinguishable. Man is not fully aware of
responsibility because he does not live in a. truly responsible |
manner. He lives in that irresponsibility and in that misunder-
standing of responsibility which the Bible calls ‘sin’ and ‘life
under the law.’ The moral consciousness is still far from being
a knowledge of the meaning of responsibility. On the contrary,
there is no clearer proof of the fact that man does not fully
know what responsibility is than the moral. The moral is the ||“)
substitute for the loss of responsibility, in the meaning both of
existence and of knowledge. The moral is the misunderstanding.
of responsibility which arises when the meaning of responsibility
“fas been Tost, and when one does not live in a truly responsible
manner. True responsibility is the same as true humanity ; the
jmoral, however, which would preserve the human character of
ck
settingeupdykes tochethe
byenc
-exist inrush of the flood of
ng inhuman about it. The
{hesab-himan, actually has somethi
existence of the moral behindthese dykes is the human life
which has already lost its truly human character; human ~~
existence, that is, which has lost the knowledge of its origin and
of its meaning et
ion
. It is the Christian faith—or rather it is the Divine revelat
hic
once again
_in history—w hses to us the meaning of ©
disclo
51
 "ELLY
=
~ IPP AP okt

\ gy Eres He
/ re cat
oa
LA ? Hk ey ¢A i
f \ L \ ae e " mies € .
B Pr DX / A J } A Ay
iN 3 sAL yv

Ad
age MAN IN REVOLT

" responsibility, and with itrestores to _us trueiehumanity. Ie

reveals to us themeaning and origin, the nature and the content
of human existence as responsibility, by unveiling to us the
_ origin of man in the Divine Word; the answer to the Divine
Word, the possibility and the necessity of this answer as the
meaning of life—that is, genuine responsibility, and at the same |
x5Pay,\ ed
time genuine humanity. We have lost this Word, in which,
from which, and for which we have been created; we have
become alienated from it. No Platonist anamnesis, no mystical
or philosophical contemplation, can give it back to us again.
Genuine humanity has been taken away from our life. A
_ sinister inhumanity clouds all life. We have forgotten who we
ray are, and no remembrance of an absolute obligation brings us —
hack to our lost origin; all obligation simply intensifies the
; qi gulf which lies between us and our origin in the Word of God.
Responsibility and love, which were formerly a unity, have
been turned into a contradiction. The way to man’s original
destiny has been blocked—from the point of view of knowledge
as well as from that of existence.
Then, however, the way is re-opened, both in knowledge and
‘in existence. Faith as the renewed _knowledge..of.man’s..lost.
origin through “the
_ re--establishment of the beginning in the .
centre of history, is both existence and knowledge. It is a new
understanding of our nature as man, and a new life. It means
that man, who had been separated fom his origin, has been
re-united, both in knowledge and in love. 1
|]

The Christian faithis so utterly simple; it is nothing less than. -|

the renewed 1 understanding of the meaning of responsibility. ||
But in order that this ‘simple’ thing :should take place, the most
ower
_tremendous ever
events had to happen. God had to become man,
“in order to restore to man his original existence and knowledge, oar

his responsibility. We can. express the whole meaning of the

truthof the Christian revelation with the one: word Jove.But in
order to define thisword for‘ourselves ssO‘that iits inmost ¢content
be revealed, it was necessary to have all the miracle of theee ger)
ones
=

history of salvation. All that matters really is this: ‘We love,

because He first loved us.’! But only one who has been reconciled
to God by Jesus Christ knows what this means, and only to
1} John iv. 19.
52
 THE VARIETY OF THE VIEWS OF MAN

him can this demand be made with any meaning. All that
matters is something excessively simple—responsibility; but
this extremely simple thing is the same as the revelation of the
Triune God. Responsibility is existence in the Word of God as |
an existence which is derived from and destined for the Word >
of God. If.any human being were ever to respond to God in.
harmony with His Word, and _upon the basis of His Word, in.“
believing love, |
he ‘would
wou betruly human, “He would know what |
human existence means, and he alone would express and
represent this knowledge iin his life. In this humanbeing the_
riddle of humanity would be solved, both in theoryy and
. in L
“practice. All other attempts to solve the riddle of man are only
fragments of meaning, broken and distorted parts of the whole,
which cannot be fitted together again because they are distorted.
They are all significant, because they reveal traces of the Divine
Origin, of the Divine Purpose; but they are useless as solutions.
Hence it would be futile to add one more attempt to the
thousand efforts which have already been made. Our aim in
this book is entirely different. It is this: to show, as clearly as
possible, the Divine solution of this problem.

53
MAIN SECTION I

FOUNDATIONS
 ae a ol Spat i Ay, . 4
ego Na macaiieteae Aastes Raamiet 2 at pana Roni St amc maemo
é heh if , .

'

«me PSR mR eR aN a oa
Ciecds Mia dor ‘ e .eat 2
edatsiihtie teadaancneemeiaredideiadieedensee aan a gsm
‘ Psa Meelam, helFe
 CHAPTER IV

THE
PRESUPPOSITIONS
OF THE CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE OF MAN_ :
(a) THE WORD OF GOD AS THE SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE
I. KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT PRESUPPOSITIONS ?
One of the most important chapters in Jakob Burckhardt’s
Kultur der Renaissance bears the pregnant title: “The Discovery
of Man.’ In point of fact the men _of the Renaissance, that is,
the leading minds in the art, philosophy and science of that
day, were filled with the proudconsciousness
PETS
that_they had
either discovered man, or that they were about to do so. It is
true of course that even in the Middle Ages man was in the
centre of thought, but the ‘man’ of that day was not man as
he really is, but—so ran the agreed criticism of medieval
anthropology—man as he was conceived, postulated, believed
under the speculations of _
to be. His actuality was concealed
metaphysical philosophy, the dogmas of the Church
or the
mythologies of the Bible. The thin of the Renaissance felt
kers
it incumbent upon them to clear all
away this rubbish, just
as they felt it incumbent upon them to set nature, in its reality,
free from the trammels of the teaching of Aristotle and St.
Thomas Aquinas. In both instances the programme was
of reality which
understood in the same sense: a knowledge
freel,
was empirica from all presupposition s, non-metaphysical
then by a few thinkers
and non-theological,1 The task begun
was carried forward by others in the centuries which followed,
and, with the aid of a vast scientific apparatus, the thinkers|
of the nineteenth century tried to complete it, the task, namely,
_. “ofconstructing anempirical anthro and psychology, a
pology
direct, unambiguous knowledgeof man as he actually is, based_
ona knowledge which is free from all presuppositions.
When we look back over the path that has been trodden
for these past four hundred years, and when we weigh up the
1 Cf. Dilthey, Ges. Schriften, II, especially Die Funktion der Anthropologie in
der Kultur des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, pp. 416 ff.
57
 MAN IN REVOLT

result of these gigantic efforts, the comparison between that

which has been attained and that which was expected is
absolutely grotesque; at any rate, at the best it has a very
sobering effect. While natural science moved forward from
one
one revolutionary ‘discovery
discov ttoanother, the knowledge of man
—apartfrom that of his body as a part of nature as a whole—
has not made progress in essentials, although |it has done so
t_particular points. The psychological _ laboratories _of our
Goiventuss,which were opened fifty years ago with thehighest.
expectations, and even twenty years ago were full of activity,
are_to-day deserte d, and passers-by merely glance at them
with gentle amusement. Why has the programme of a science
free from all presuppositions, which in the one case revolu-
tionized the world, not proved successful in the other? The
answer is easy. Because neitherin the one case nor in the other

In both cases men worked on the one and ornaresame pre-

supposition; only in the one instance it was suitable and in
the other it was not. In both cases the presupposition which
was really operative—although usually |
people 1were not aware
of this—was that man, like nature, was accessible to “the.
methods of“objective-causal. Tesearch, Modern anthropology
wasno more ‘free from presuppositions’ than the anthropology
of the Middle Ages or of antiquity, only the actual presupposi-
tion was different: the parallelism between nature and man,
the knowledge of nature and theknowledge ofman, “proved
tobeunsuitable forhuman nature, or at least - applic able only
to one ‘part’
rt’|ofhuman nature. “Where ‘this presupposition was
effective, that is, in so far as man is really part of the natural
world, the anthropology of natural science has gained just as
brilliant and amazing and indeed revolutionary results as in
“any other branch of natural science. Only this knowledge
affected the zoon homo sapiens rather than the humanus, that is,
itdid not touch the essential element_in human nature.
This perception, from the point of view of method, is of the
highest significance. It shows that anthropology, even when
it desires to be wholly disinterested, cannot be so; indeed, that
then in particular it makes specially irrelevant presuppositions,
which are remote from its subject. Man 1 1s is not only a part
58 ie
 PRESUPPOSITIONS 4

of nature; indeed, essentially that is not what he is, and.

efor
therthis ely impartial research, which in reality
apparent
only applies the presuppositionofnatural science to this sphere,
never s l.elemen
the essentia
touche t_in man or in human
existence at all. All ‘empirical’ research is definitely limited
when it touches man, for the following reasons: because,
whether he is aware of it or not, man is always aspiring after
something beyond himself, or perhaps it would be truer to.
say that he is ‘apprehended’ by a world beyond himself;
because, further, man, in contradistinction from all ‘other
animals,’ is the ‘animal’ who has ideas, who seeks Beauty,
Truth, Goodness, Justice, or the Holy—or else he flees from
them—because man has mind and conscience; and, finally,
because man 1s aware of, or at least dre the Infinite,
of,ams
is forgotten
(neces

the Perfect, the Absolute. The more that this fact

by anthropology the more meaningless and misleading will
be itsresults.
Moreover, the empiricism of the period of the Renaissance
‘pure’;
and of the two succeeding centuries was riot thatis
precisely why, at that time, people wereable to see man
afresh,
Pa
about him. The
ctBaiand to say all sorts of new things. :
concept of nature of that day, namely—especially when one
spoke of human nature—included within itself such a wealth
of determinations, that at the present time they would no
longer be reckoned as belonging to ‘nature’ but either to
‘spirit,’ to the ‘super-sensible,’ or to the realm of ‘metaphysics.’
The ide a
of nature of those days—at least so far as man was.
concerned—wa s a long way from the physics of Galileo;
still
it was rather that of Stoic philosophy, that ‘natural system’
whose nature and significance for the whole modern world
was first brought home to us by Wilhelm Dilthey.* Thus the
anthropologists of those days, although they believed that
they were working on purely empirical lines, were working
1 W. Dilthey, op. cit., Das natiirliche System der Geisteswissenschaften im
Anthro-
17. Jahrhundert, pp. 90-245. Cf. also B. Groethuysen, Philosophische
pologie, part ii, in the Handbuch der Philosophi e of Baeumler and Schréoter.
Christian
Dilthey, like Troeltsch, tends to undervalue the influence of
of the orders
ideas, because he is not aware that the Biblical conception
and is
of creation (cf. Matt. xix. 1-8) forms an analogy to the lex naturae,
often concealed under Stoic terminolo gy.
59
 MAN IN REVOLT

with a fundamental capital of supra-empirical presuppositions

which had been bequeathed tothem by Plato, Aristotle,
Roman Stoicism_ and_also‘o_by Christianity, _ which ‘they.calmly
included _in_ their _‘conception of nature,’ and thus in their
‘freedom from all presuppositions.’ This ‘transcendental’
element the anthropologists of that day, still supported by
the tradition of the previous centuries, imported in a quite
naive way into that which already existed, that which empiri-
cally existed of human ‘nature.’ Thus their picture of man
still remained impregnated withhumanity. The sharp division,
however, which the last two hundred years made between the
causal world of nature and all non-causal spiritual existence
‘and transcendence, makes it the more imperative for us to
emphasize very clearly that all purely empirical views of man,
in the sense of objective science, do not touch man ‘himself,
‘but
but only the framework, _of man. The problem is not whether
only the
‘man, in order to be “understood, must be seen in the light of
that realm beyond, but what this standpoint beyond himself
is? The understanding of man always leads us—we may
dispose of it as we will—either into the region of metaphysics
or into that of faith; whether this metaphysic be that of
materialism, idealism or of mystical pantheism, or whether
this faith be the Christian faith or some other form of religion.

2, THE PRINCIPLE OF EMPIRICAL CRITICISM

Yet the empiricist reaction of the Renaissance against the
dogma and the metaphysic of the Middle Agescontainsan __
“element «oftruth, which we ought ni not to lose, the-principle
of critic
criticism 1 in.“theTightofexperience.
| “By this we mean that —
statement
no ‘about | man, whatever its source, may ‘contradict
experience, and, on “the_otherhand, that all" that can be
Tearned about man from ex experience ought tobe included in
any doctrine of nman. ‘This requirement was “obviously «contra- _
ort the anthropology ofthe Middle Ages, in spite of
the depth of its knowledge. From the point of view of its
theological presuppositions it set up postulates about man
which could not be reconciled with the knowledge gained
from experience, and_up_to the present time theological
aero ERO

anthropology has done the same. The fact, however, that

60
 PRESUPPOSITIONS

under the cover of ‘impartial research’ much materialistic

metaphysic has been set before an unsuspecting public is
equally true and unfortunate; but it does not in any way
weaken the postulate of the criticism of experience which is
quite formal, and is opposed to all that goes beyond the facts,
even from the materialistic point of view. This principle also
applies, to the fullest extent, to Christian anthropology, and
the Christian doctrine of man should unhesitatingly adopt
this principle as its own.
The Christian doctrine ofman maintains that, although
of ~
of view of thétruths
it understands.man from the point
revelation, which are not.accessible to experience, yet it does
radi
‘notin any way contwhat ct of maninand |
can be known
through experience; this —
on the contrary, it incorporates
knowledge gained by experience into its rightful context.
The Christian doctrine of man itself requires that all its state-
ments about man—so far as they have any connexion with
actual experience at all—should be in harmony with man’s
‘natural’ experimental knowledge, and should indeed absorb it.
At this point, as at all others, the Christian truth includes
‘natural’ knowledge; this means, all that man can know from —
observation and thought apart from faith. The Christian does
not claim that he has a special brand of mathematics, physics
or chemistry, zoology, botany or anatomy. Christian theology
operat and
es with the same formal logic as any other science,
in preaching or in teaching the Christian Church depends
upon the validity of the psychological laws, like any other
body which has something to teach or explain. The old theo-
logians, even our Reformers, summed up this dualism in a

practice—the reason is competent; in spiritual matters, faith.”

‘This simple divisionof labour is useful as a starting-point, but
—as we see in ethics, for instance—it contains great dangers.
The relations between the ‘natural’ and the ‘spiritual’ sphere
cannot be presented quite so simply,
1 Lau, Ausserliche Ordnung und weltlich Ding in Luthers Theologie. Above all,
Luther’s Disputations, especially De homine, 1536, and the disputations
about the graduation of Palladius and Tilemann in Drew’s Disputationen
Dr. Martin Luthers, pp. 90 ff., 110 ff.
61
 MAN IN REVOLT

There are problems ofanthropology which belong equally

and_the “Supernatural” “spheres, that is, they
to the ‘natural’ ar
to
‘belong both to the-realm of scientific philosophy and to that
of religion. Such problems are, for instance,those concerned
with the human mind, the conscience, and free will.It is
impossible. to.make a clear. distinction between. ‘thespheresin
which the different _ problems_arise; for it is in these very
questions that we can trace, all ‘through the history of the
development of Christian thought, the way in which both the
Christian and religious view and the philosophical and rational
view are intertwined; sometimes they run along parallel lines,
at other times they are interwoven, while again they may
sometimes be opposed to one another. No simple delimitation of
_spheres will do justice to this state of affairs. The only possible
attitude is a dialectical one, which—if I may ‘say‘s0—takesinto
account, from the very outset, the theological nature of man.
It is of course self-evident that there is practically no conflict »
between | mathematics and theology, between physics, chemistry
and theology, because here the autonomy of the sciences, even
from the point of view of the Christian faith, is almost complete ;
but the nearer we,come.to.the personal centre ofman the more _
the. situation changes. We may reject the postulate of a
“Christian psychology,’ if by ‘psychology’ we mean the doctrine
of sensation and other elementary processes. But we shall
recognize it immediately as a necessary and integral part of
Christian theology as soon as it is understood to include the
doctrine of the human soul as the bearer of personal life, as
indeed the best Christian teachers of all ages have always
done. The more we have to-do with man as a personal whole, _
the more—from the Christian point«
ofview—does the ‘autonomy
of theempirical-rational view decrease, and the more important
and definite does the claim of Christian. truth. become... The _
point, however, at which both hecessarily..come.into. conflict, -
“and_where the question of priority necessarily aarises, is the
problem _of responsibility. This too all the great Chastan
teachers—from Paul to Kierkegaard—have recognized. The
NORWCLstai
uy
natural knowledge 1is aware of a divine law, an obligation. is
The perception of the Divine law as ‘Taw, that1
is, the cognitio
sonra ReeieLena Ml LIS

legalis, i
also belongs iIn principle, according to | the‘most strict
ethene oan a TT . eso

62.
Ss
 WH gde gt wa tet Ah,
PRESUPPOSITIONS RT fr i

Reformation view, to the realm of ‘natural’ knowledge.* No

one is without some sense ofresponsibility, and there is no pally
een : ore

ristian missionary or spiritual adviser who does not make | ;

this sense of responsibility his point of contact. According to |
Kierkegaard the sense of ‘guilt’ belongs, in contradistinction .
to the knowledge of sin, to the sphere of immanence. .
On the other hand, it is clear that the contact of the Christian Here
,
/

message with the natural moral sense, with the knowledge of |<”
fo be
‘the law, is at the same time the most fundamental contradic-
tion. Man’s understanding ofhimself from the point ofview je
‘ofthe law isopposedby man’s understanding of himself from AM 4 phy
in such... »”
the point ofview ofgrace; this takes place,nothowever,
a way that his knowledge of the law is but is
removed
and intensified. This is the dialectic of the |
“greatly heightened
Christian knowledge of man, which is most intimately con-
nected with the centre of the Christian truth as a whole, with
the message of the Cross. Thus at this point the ‘natural’
truth and the ‘religious’ truth about human existence lie very
close to one another; indeed, at some points they cross each
other in this dialectic. The ‘natural’ knowledge of respon-
sibility—of the law—is the point at which the rational and |
‘thereligious self-knowledge of man come closest together and
yet are farthest apart. The natural understanding of respon- |
sibility is, on the one hand, the source of ‘natural’ humanity,
and at the same time—as we shall see more clearly later on—
the place of the greatest contradiction between divine destiny ns

and human self-will, just as the ‘natural’ knowledge of human |

freedom is at the same time the presupposition and the opposite |
of the Christian doctrine of freedom and un-freedom.? Why |
this is so, and how this should be understood in greater detail, |
will be the subject of the next chapter. —

3. MAN VIEWED FROM ‘ABOVE’ HIS PRESENT EXISTENCE

The fact that man as a whole cannot be understood from

himself, but that, insome way or another, inaddition,he
1 So Luther. See Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 1V, first half;
pp. 202 ff., and Theodosius Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 1, Gott in seiner
Doppelbeziehung zur Welt, pp. 69-112.
2 See Appendices II and III (pp. 516 and 527).
63
 MAN IN REVOLT

must be regarded
from a point of viewwhichis above’ man, _
is_the presupposition common to all anthropologies. This
-(~ conviction lies in the conception
of understanding itself. All
\ understanding is co-ordination and sub-ordination.! But what
this standpoint ‘above’
man may be, from which we may come
to understand his nature as awhole, gives rise to views which
are radically and irreconcilably opposed to one another. Some
postulate this ‘above’ as Nature—conceived more or less in a
purely causal and material manner; others postulate it as
Spirit or the Idea, others again as a_Deity which in some way
or another we can learn to know by ourselves. The Christian
doctrine of man posits this standpoint
as God, as He makes
Himself known to us and teaches us to know ourselves in His
revelation, the Word of God. Thus it takes its standpoint
‘above’ man in the one and only genuine ‘above,’ in God
P Himself.
Itsfirst article of belief is that man cannot be known
from himself but only from God. As the materialist maintains
that man must beunderstood from the point ofview ofmatter,
and as the Idealist tries to understand human existence from -
Riel hla aa cca < le teenies ena ae S02 REASONS
MESH ESA Gy Cote FR BaBAe PASTRIES LEN TE TEAST
ETROSAS

rom Hic point of view. fspiritual existenceor from that of the

EE

vi" Idea, so the Christian faith asserts that we can only understand |
, Yrs him in the Tight of the Word of God.? Thus by this statement
aN we do not mean merely that the Bible is the fundamental
basis of the correct doctrine of man, although certainly this
suggestion is included in that first statement;? but we mean
NR
1 Cf. Dilthey, Die Entstehung der Hermeneutik (Ges. Schriften, V, pp.
2 lgit.)
2 I can accept the thought expressed by Schlink in his book, Der Mensch
in der Verkiindigung der Kirche: ‘Philosophical anthropology does not attain
to knowledge of man but it only succeeds in establishing certain particular
(isolated) truths about man’ (p. 173). But this phrasing is not altogether
happy, in so far as ‘philosophical’—Schlink is thinking evidently only of
non-Christian philosophy—that is, rational anthropology, not only has all
kinds of individual things-to say about man, but it is able for its part to
grasp important aspects of human existence which should also be acknow-
ledged by theology. On this whole question, see Appendix IV on philo-
sophical and theological anthropology, p. 542.
* That is the difference between a ‘Biblical psychology,’ as it has been
conceived by Beck and Delitzsch and others, and that which is here
presented. They all conceive the relation to the Word of God only in a
formal way, although they—and Delitzsch in particular—come very
64
 PRESUPPOSITIONS meee
—,

something far more fundamental, namely, that the way of

human existence, the being of man itself, that in which it is
different from all other forms of being, can only be understood
in the light of its relation to the divine Word, namely, as
being in the Word and from the Word of God.
This means that man can only understand himself when he
knows God in His Word. All merely natural understanding »
of man is a misunderstanding. Not only the man who believes,
but also the man who does not believe, the ‘godless’ human
being, can only be understood in his human existence in the
light of God, or more exactly in that of the Divine revelation,
from the point of view of the Word of God which demands an
answer, through which he is responsible. Man is the ‘theolo-
gical’ being, the creature whose peculiar characteristic it 1s _
tenc
that his exisis e of God, whose greatness and
in the Word
misery, whose destiny and guilt, possibilities and limits, freedom
and bondage, meaning and meaninglessness can only be rightly )
seen from that point of view, in the light of that origin. In all |
that man is, does, says, and thinks, he gives an answer to the
word of creation, the word of destiny; indeed, he not only
gives an answer, he himself is an answer. Human existence,
in contrast to every other form of existence, is responsive
existence, that is, existence which must and can answer, and
in so doing is free and yet bound. But the answer which man
gives, the answer which he is himself—like all other answers—
is not intelligible in the light of his own nature, but only in
that which precedes it—a primal truth. Man’s independence __
is based upon and in this dependent human existence, and it
this primal origin that we can compre-_
oft
js only in the ligh
hend the end for which he has been created; it is onl iny this —
lightthat we can understand the aim of man’s existenc e and
themeaning of his failure to attain this aim. The truth of man
is more original than his untruth, but the source of knowledge
ari apuaiiias ik nN a ane
Seen ee eee ee eeeee mame

untruth of human exiestste

of the truth and the with isthenceWord of ©
God, in accordance the principle : verum judex sui et falst.
The fact that this Word of God, in which we have been
of man
_near to the truth in the fact that they take seriously the origin
in Christ, the Eternal Word. Cf. Delitzsch, System der biblischen Psychologie,
p: 27:
65
 yn od, MAN IN REVOLT
pare, the _Word_of our origin in Jesus Christ, has been
restored to us, is the reasonwhywe are able to understand our
human _existence_in
in_faith; why, for instance, as is necessarily
the case outside the Christian faith, we are not obliged to
misunderstand ourselves. The Word of God which has been
iven back to us, isJesus Christ; inHim God reveals to us
both His being <and.our “being, Histruthand
a ‘the‘truth.of man.
The truth of human existence isdisclosed to us not by an
anamnesis which we ourselves can accomplish, but only by an
anagennesis which is based upon faith in the Incarnate Word
of God; thus it is only an act of knowledge which is at the
same time an act of life—and indeed an act of life in which
God is the One who gives, and we are those who receive—
which discloses to us the truth of human existence. This new
knowledge is at the same time a new being, the true being of
man.
Even in the Greece of Pericles something was discovered,
once for all and irrevocably, about the true being of man.
A visitor to the British Museum who passes from the Sphinx
art of Egypt and the Lion pictures of Babylon, and stands for
the first time before the frieze from the Parthenon, may still
experience something of that emancipation which came to
man at that time in classical Athens. And yet that which was
then released was not the distinctive element in man; therefore
that release was a deliverance which at the same time was
bound to lead to the self-destruction of man. If genius, the
creative power of thought and influence, was the distinct.
‘human element, then the Greeks ought to have‘the first prize,
“both fordiscovery. and_for emancipation. But genius, the
‘creativee mind and spirit, is only. the possibility, not tthe reality
ve|‘of humanlife. But the reality iis: love, It is not creativeness TORO
A ney

‘but responsibility which constitutes the truly human. This,

Pern ave

_ however, has been. “disclosed and given to us, not upon the
~ Acropolis, but upon Golgotha, where God “reveals. to_us the
‘truthabout. Himself, and about ourselves, as love,
4. THE FORMS IN WHICH THE WORD OF GOD IS EXPRESSED
reer eawen ne a AP POR AANA eT SA RR NN CC Cpe

We can only. -speak ‘of the Divine Word and of existence in

Him, to Him and from Him, because He has revealed Himself
66
 PRESUPPOSITIONS

to us in Jesus Christ. As the incarnate Logos we only possess

Him in the word of His witnesses, the word of the Scripture.
He Himself is the Word,? the ‘Word of the Bible is the witness
to Him as the Word.? Christus dominus et rex scripturae (Luther).
We
But the Divine Word revealed iin the flesh is identical with the
Word in the ~beginnin with the “Word in hall that.
in“which
d;| with the
is has been created, ‘Tight “which ‘lighteth every
man, coming into the world.’? The revelation of Christ points
SS
oe

Tas to the revelation in the Creation, to the Word ‘in whom

all things cohere,* in whom also, in a very special way, man
has the ground of his being, as man. His responsible beings” TI
based upon the Word. of thee Origin ; buit
but although man’s
r being
4s perverted both in its meaning and iin its content by. sin, it
oes not cease, on that account, to‘be ‘responsible being. Even
the beingof the sinner is aa being in God’s Word, or being
‘in the sight of God’—otherwise how could it be sinful? But
it is a perverted being-in-the-Word-of-God.°®
On the other hand, the Word of Scripture,2, Which | Points
nd the “Word 1in the“Beginning, 3is not.
to Jesus. Christ ‘and
back to
t Church, which
given to us except ‘through -‘the message ‘of the
hands down to us translates and explains _ s the
‘the Bible_ as
“Word of God. But one link in‘the chain is still“missing. “Tt is
“hot a matter of course that in Jesus Christwe should know
the truth of God and the truth of man. This knowledge is
something which we can in no wise guarantee or enforce.
God Himself wills to speak to us; we can only perceive that
truthin so far as. God Himself actually speaks to us. The
t
Bibleexpresses thisdouble truth by ‘the two phrases: the
the faith of the ae _Only
witness of the Holy Spirit, and
where God Himself speaks to me can I have faith, and only
in my faith does God Himself speak to me. God Himself must
speak His Word to me, if it is to become mine. I myself
must say ‘yes’ to Him if I want to hear God’s distinctive
Word.
The Word of God and the word of faith are inseparable. It|
is not God who believes but I myself who believe; yet I do |
not believe of myself, but because of God’s epeetr which is |
1 John i. 1. 2 John v. 39. 3 John i. 9. “
* Col. i. 17. 5 See below, p. 169.
67
 LOS OO oe Ne ia ea ke oe tn TLE eesns ea
Jj

accept vesponsiali by wake farith ?

MAN IN REVOLT

a gift, and because of His gift which is a Word. In this faith

He gives menot only Himself, but He also gives me ‘knowledge
sansa

of myself. In this faith He decides about my existence, so that

I decide for myself. Outside this decision there is no true,
self-knowledge, no true ‘knowledge of human existence. There.
., » is no theoretical and neutral knowledge of God_ and of the.
‘true man; for knowledge of the Word of God is at the same _
\ —~ 6
}

eet aat ‘time the- a of true responsibility. To know God’s Word —

2 R : 7
means: to perceive and accept, and therefore to obey, the
Lord’s Word as the Word of the Lord.
At this point we have reached the limits of the validity
of,a Christian doctrine of man. In so far as every doctrine
presupposes an objective and detached attitude, a theoretical
‘g severance from the process of decision, the Christian ¢doctrine
as ;
4,100; _as doctrine, is no longer the truth, but simply the human
li
A
s trueunderstanding of him- |
Cai takes place only iin1 the— of the divine self-testimony
Beet and ofP human :self-decision. Every doctrine sharesin the« errors.
es j
| which arise when ‘theoretical forms are imposed upon that {|
“which | cannot be. conceived in theoretical terms. Hence we
must always be aware that Christian doctrine, ‘although it |
grasps divine truth, because it does so—that is, because it |
becomes incorporated and bound up with human Inowledge= i; I

|
it always stands in need of correction. |

CaP RMN LINC

SA Nn ED

In all that has penerae up tooanid mains we have only had

in mind that which makes man man, that which is decisive
and distinctive about him, not that which unites man with
other creatures and with all creaturely existence. Man, how-
ever, is not only the being who is responsible to God; he is”
Slane Ia

also dust of dust, Zoon, a psychical .and rational being. Mant is

‘a hierarchical eine: 2 In every fou the ‘understanding

1 Cf. my pamphlet, Vom Werk des Heiligen Geistes, 1935, pp. 29 ff.
2 See below, p. 409, in the chapter ‘‘Man in the Cosmos.’? Haecker
lays much stress ypon this ‘hierarchical’ element in his fine Catholic
anthropology, Was ist der Mensch? But when he reiterates ‘we are “hier-
archists” ’ and in this refrain expresses opposition to Protestantism and
68
 PRESUPPOSITIONS

goes from higher to lower, not from lower to higher. To the _

understanding
of man’s reesponsibility. to God it is possible to
add also Ae 1 ‘lower’.‘elements, material, biological, psychical
and tational nature—but +not_ccontrariwise. The meaning of
a wholecan only b eunderstood in the light of its ultimate
and final meaning, even in its material aspect; but the meaning
cannot be understood from the material end. This makes it
clear that the understanding of man from the ‘point of view
of the Word of God does not exclude, but includes, the partial .
understanding of these lower aspects in their own context.
The dust out of which man has been created is not dust of
some special kind, but ‘the dust of the ground.’! It is therefore
not_only possible that a Christian anthropology should be
connected with a physico--chemical _anthropology 5 so long as __
it remains within its own proper bounds, it is necessary. All
the possible and necessary light on the anatomy and the
chemical elements of the human organism, however, we shall
seek not in the Bible but in natural science.
In principle the same is true of the biological, psychical
and rational nature of man. We shall seek not only the laws
of biology and psychology, but also the logical and the other
noetic laws—like those of science, art, law, morality—pre-
cisely where these laws, which belong to human nature, are
studied with the means and methods which are suitable for
them. Therefore we are not concerned. with declaring war
upon a “philosophical _anthropology. from_the _point of view
of the Christian faith. On the contrary, this too is required —
DA bac
aga Sr

from the point of view ‘of the Christian faith. But it will
‘certainly _always __ be a _sphere_ of frequent conflict.2_ These
conflicts ‘will be due ‘first of all to the fact. that the human
eed

aaa
reason will claim more than its due, only with great reluctance
will it‘allow itself to be limited and corrected from the point
of view of faith. This iswhy so many of the best Christian

connects his belief in the ecclesiastical hierarchy with the idea of the
hierarchical order of human existence, he evidently forgets that there is
also a Neoplatonic, and thus non-Christian ‘hierarchical’ theory, that of
Dionysius the Areopagite: ‘Of the Celestial Hierarchy,’ which had a
good deal of influence upon the formation of the medieval view.
2 Gen. ii. 7. 2 See Appendix IV, p. 542.
69
 MAN IN REVOLT
theologians are so distrustful of all philosophical anthropology,
and, ‘within limits, their distrust is justified.
But these conflicts may equally well arise out of a mistaken
action on. ‘the. part. of theology; ‘that is, theology may go
' Beyornd its province, and, forgetting _ the inadequacy of all
human formulations of Divine truth, it may proclaim as a
Divine revealed truth what is“solely a human and erroneous
conception ofDivine
L truth. In the course of history the natural
sciences and philosophy have had just as much reason to
_complain of these encroachments on the part of theology as
“theology .has to complain of encroachments upon zs sphere,
Hence both sources of error must continually be watched, and
the opinion must not be allowed to gain ground that it is a
special sign of Christian conviction. to ignore philosophical
and sscientific knowledge, or that it is a special sign of scientific
accuracy t
toignore, Christian truth. We should remember that
saying of the Apostle, ‘what man knoweth the things of a man,
save the spirit of man which is in him?’?! but ‘the things of God
knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received
. the spirit which is of God,’? in so far as we have
perceived the truth and affirmed it in His Word. The greatest
teachers of the Church have allowed themselves to be guided
by this distinction, and we do well to follow their example,
without believing that this exhausts our responsibility. How
little this is the case will soon become clear.

(6) THE WORD OF GOD AS THE SOURCE OF BEING

I. THE WORD OF GOD AS THE GROUND OF BEING

The fundamental article o

of the Christian faith is this, that
God isis tthe Creator. In this statement a Christian, Biblical,
religious doctrine of being is opposed to all ofher forms of
ontology. Its main thesis is that all being is either of God or
has been created. and established by Him. But the Biblical
1 1 Cor, ii. 11. Here Paul merely sets a fundamentally natural and a
spiritual knowledge alongside of one another, and admits that the former—
within its limits—is justified, but he does not reflect upon the dialectical
relation between the two. 2 1 Cor. ii. 12, A.V.
70
 PRESUPPOSITIONS

ontology is not content with this. It states that God has created
all that is outside Himself through His Word. The Word of
God therefore, according to the teaching of the Bible, is the
ground «of being of all created existence, not merely in the -
sense that allcreated being has
I itsorigin in the Word of God,
butin‘the s
sense.‘that in
i the|Word ‘all things. cohere,’! that all
‘that God has ‘created He upholds ‘by th
theWord of His power.’?
“Thus fbetween the Word of God and creaturely being there.
exists not merely the relation that it is only possible to perceive
the origin and the truth of created existence from the Word
of God—the cognitive relation, with which we were dealing
in the last section—but further there exists, and fundamentally
or that cognitive relation, the ontological relation, which
rounds all being 1in the Word of God.) ee
Now this is true in a special way of the being of man. Man
has a quite special relation of being to the Word of Go d,
because in man being and perception stand in a Recunat
relation to one another. All things have been created by the
Word of God: ‘All things were made by Him, and without
Him was not anything made that was made.’® But only of
man is it said that this Word is also the Light, the true Light,
which. “‘lighteth. every man.’4
The specific being of man, which distinguishes him from
all “other. creatures, is not only known from the Word. of
God_but |itis also ‘based upon the Word of God. ‘Since all
created existence is based upon the Word of God, human
existence is based upon a special relation to the Word of
God. Man is man by the fact that he is a creature who. stands|
in a special relation |to the Word of God, a relation. of being |»
“grounded inin and upheld by the Word. eis no mere phrase
‘or figure of speech, but a simple and realistic expression of
the fact that man lives ‘by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God.’5 Just as the new man is generated by the
Word of God, so. also the original man in the divine original
act of CCreation was generated by the Word of God. But just
as this generation in the Word of God includes the hearing
of ‘the Word and” belief in the Word—and thus a spiritual
Galas Ty. 2 Tlebi is): 3 Johni. 3.
-4 John i. 9. 5 Matt. iv. 4.
71
 pf
LRA
fg if
2?

MAN IN REVOLT

relation to the Word of God—so also the original Creation

includes such a process, which makes man not merely a ~
product |but a receiver ‘ofthe Divine Word. “This is the content
of the doctrine of the Image of God with which we shall be
) Seah
f
in detail in the next chapter.
\1n this original, ontological relation between the being o eee
/pman_ and the Word of God lies the reason that man can only
“understand himself in God, or to put it more exactly, in the
bee of God.t The Word of God, as revealed to us through
the Holy Scriptures, isthus not merely the ground ofknow- _
Wetec but it is also the ground of man’s being.) This is what
Calvin means in the famous sentence with which he opens his
Institutes, ‘Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed
true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: |
the knowledge of God. an of ourselves. But as these are con-
nected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which /
of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.’?SThere
exists, Calvin continues, a reciprocal relation between the
understanding of God and of Man. But this is not meant in
the sense of a rational and speculative doctrine of God—as
if it were just as possible to discern God from the nature of
man as to discern man from the nature of God. On the con-
trary, only from the knowledge of the revealed Word of God
can both the nature of God and the nature ofman be perceived,
‘but in such a ‘way that we understand: ‘Our existence itself
is simply subsistentia in uno deo.’ But this is true of man as he
actually is, of the being whose miserabilis ruina Calvin describes. _
This Actual, sinful man (that is, 1 we ourselves, as we are) is to |
be itlerstnodidin God and in God alone; ‘hee actual man has
his continued existence and the ground of his being in the
Word of God. Even in his perverted condition, even in his
opposition to the Word of Creation, man can only be under-
1 Thus Luther says of Adam’s original condition: ipsa natura adeo fuit Dc

pura et plena cognitione Dei, ut verbum Dei per se intelligeret et videret (WA.
42, 50).J.Gerhard, Loci theologici: posuit Deus intra ipsummet hominem suam
imaginem, quam homo intuens cognosceret, qualis sit Deus (IV, 247); and:
creaturae omnes stabant in ordine suo . . . homo ex earum et sui inspectione Deum
creatorem cognoscebat; ibid., 294.
* Calvin, Instituiro I, i, 1. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by
Henry Beveridge (p. 47), 1845.)
72
 PRESUPPOSITIONS i‘

stood as existing in the Word of Creation as that being which |

not only has his existence—-like all other creatures—in the |
Word, but also as a being which, in his special relation to the |
Word, has a special nature, that is, human nature. 5
We will now express this—without waiting to develop it
further—by | a conception |which indicates this special relation
to the Word and the special form of being which is grounded
“in it, namely: man is the being who is responsible. Human
‘responsibility thas no other ground than that of the Word of |
wae We
f.

God, that is, that man, in contrast to all other creatures, is <<”
a

not only borne by this Word of God, but is borne by Him in .

5 Ae

such a way that he is in some way or other aware of it. ‘In’

a a

some way or other’ every human being is aware of his respon- — . f:

sibility, just as every human being—to the extent in which <<» Ar
he is really a human being—is responsible. Every human being
knows that he is responsible; how and why he is responsible
he should and could know, were it not for the intrusion of if
__ the fact of sin. 1 Responsibility iis the presupposition of the fact -/°
that man is able to be a “sinner»Only the human being who ~~
isresponsible is
is able to sin. Responsibility aand the knowledge
is a
of i it—however obscure and distorted it may be—the respon- |
i ‘sibility precisely of the ‘godless’ human being, can only be
“understood from man’s special relation to God, to ‘the Word
of God.
We s shall understand this connexion more clearly if instead
of the formal conception of responsibility we use the pregnant
idea of love. The meaning of all responsibility iis love; for love Mab nc yneneenes,

is the_fulfilling of a Jaw. Hence man can only be “understood

of all Or ue,

as issul ng from love ‘and. ‘made for love. Love is both the
—_
«
source and the meaning of his life.“Again, every human ee hay
ee

1 Rom. i. 19. The meaning of the passage is evidently this: to lay bare
human guilt and human responsibility through the relation of man—pagan
man—to the revelation of Creation. Cf. on this point the good exposition
by Schlier, Evangelische Theologie, 1935, PP- 9 ff., and Gutbrod, Die
paulinische anthropologie, pp. 12 ff.: “The connexion between the fact of man’s
createdness and his Zesponsibility in the sight of God, as it is expressed
especially in Rom. i. 18 ff.,’ ‘precisely because man is aes: in the sight
of God, the question of just—unjust is so significant,’ p. 22, against
Kuhlmann’s curious exposition in his work, Die Theologia naturalis bei Philo
und Paulus.
73
 i ; ‘MAN IN REVOLT
is aware of this to some extent, even if only dimly ; but what
he cannot and does not know Tron ‘himself is why this is 0),
“and what the real’ content..and meaning of love is. This is
indeed the content of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
| Only in this revelation is the meaning of the word. ‘love’
=f

Tightly ‘defined’ for us by the Divine action; and in it alone

is this love revealed to us as the ground and the end of our__
s lifes“In it we perceive why, to whom, and for what’ purpose
| we are responsible. We understand ae only when we
understand ourselves in the light of the Divine love—even in
our very godlessness. For only so do we understand that
godlessness and lovelessness are the same thing. The being of
man has its ground in the Being, the will and the work of God.

2. THE BEING OF GOD: THE TRINITY

Being-for-love is not one attribute of human existence among
others, but it is human existence itself. Man is man to the
exact extent in which he lives in love. “The” degreé “of “his~
' .‘a¥ienation from love is the degree. of his inhumanity. The
i gn distinctively | human element is not freedom, nor intellectual”
we creative power, nor reason. These are ‘rather the conditions of
realization of man’s real human existence, which consists in
love. They do not contain their own meaning, but their
“meaning is love, true community. It is not the degree of
genius wwhich determines the degree of humanity « of human
existence, ‘but the degree ‘of love._ But all this is true only and
in so far as ‘we understand love in the ‘New Testament sense
as the fulfilling of responsibility, the one explaining the other,
‘and maintaining i its right meaning. .Both these words can only
be understood in their unity when we understand Tespon-
: ‘sibility and
a Tove i in the light of their origin, the love ofGod,
Only as an answer to the divine love is human love the fulfil-
i" ment of responsibility and the realization of humanity. The
ns love of God, the Primal Word, with which God calls man
, into existence, and in so doing gives him the meaning and
, the stability of his existence, is the ground from which human
\). existence comes into being. _Hence mu: firstof all speak
we must {
vs ~ of God ifwe want to speak about man. ‘But we «can only speak
LEA. of God t
because a
and iin so far as He has revealed Himself to us.
‘ ) ot » 74. —
 PRESUPPOSITIONS

God, who discloses Himself to us in His revelation in His

unfathomable being, God who shows Himself to us in His
revelation as He is in Himself, so that His revelation is not
something different from Himself but is Himself: this is the
‘Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We'can only”
understand who man is and what human existence is, being-
in-responsibility, being-for-love, when we know that God is
the Triune God. He is the God of the Christian faith.
First of all we mean only this one simple truth, that God
in His open historical revelation, in His Son Jesus Christ, and
in His secret and inward revelation, in the Holy Spirit, is no
other than He is in Himself, in His eternal Father-Mystery._
It.is really God Himself who as the.Holy Spirit implants..His
n.o
hearts. The
Word_i reveals His love to.us in
God who ur ;
_Jesus Christ and in it His holy, inviolable, sovereign will, in \
so doing really shows us Himself, not merely something of |
not merely an apparent form of His existence. No, ,
|
“Himself, |

|
we may now know that ‘Godislove; and he that dwelleth in.
Tove dwel God, and God inHim,”? This love
inleth isGod and
which springs from this love is from
God is this love. Existence
God, and only existence which springs from God is really
existence in love. =
But this first statement also contains a second: God is not
only one who loves us, whose love is connected with us; i. recog4

Himself, quite apart from the existence of any. creatures,.ap art

_from’ the’ existenceof man, Heis the One who loves, other-
wise He would show Himself to us as other than He is in
Himself. His love to us, to men, is the outflow of His being,
Itis
of the fact that He is Himself loving, and that Heloves.
the radiation of His love which He has to His Son from all
eternity.2 So also the love which the Son shows us, is the
outflow of the love which He has for His Father, from all
eternity.? And as He makes this His love our own through the
Holy Spirit—for ‘the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit’*—so in God Himself is the Primal source
and ground of this inwardness. The Father loves the Son and
the Son loves the Father\through the Holy Spirit. One God—
1 1 John iv. 16. 2 John xvii. 24.
3 John xvii. 5. 4 Rom. v. 5.

75
 MAN IN REVOLT

who in Himself is the truly loving. We know that we are

stammering when we say this. But we must say as much as
this in order to bind together indissolubly both the idea that
God is love and that He is an unfathomable mystery. ‘Thus,
_this is the nature of God from which we are to understand the
“nature of man, our essential being. It is not any kind of love
from which, in which and for which we have been created,
but it is this love, the unfathomable mystery of God, cut off
from all that is natural by the abyss of the mystery of the
Trinity. It isthis God who makes us tesponsible, and_as the
content of our “responsibility—of cour Tesponse—gives us Him-
_self, His Primal Word, His love. The God who in Himself is’
“loving, ‘who has need of no creature in order to be able to
love, He alone can freely and groundlessly love the creature
in His spontaneous generous way which seeks nothing in
return. In Him alone is the source of all unfathomable,
generous Tove.”

3. THE WILL OF GOD: THE DECREE OF ELECTION

The Christian doctrine of the Will of God is the doctrine

of the divine ‘decree.’ This means that all that exists has its
“origin” in God’s thought and will, but that this will and ‘thought ~
of God is not arbitrary but is in harmony with ‘His nature.
The Bible knows nothing of a ‘double decree,’! but it knows
one alone, ‘the decree of election, and thus no twofold will, but
“only one, the will revealed to us as love. But it reminds us of
the Ee eoad this is the truth in the mistaken, unscriptural
doctrine of the double decree—that this will of nace of God,
is His Holy Will, against which he who opposes His love is
shattered. Thus all that is creaturely has its origin not in the

1 To Calvin the doctrine of election is rightly the centre of theology.

The doctrine of a twofold predestination, on the contrary, lies on the
fringe of his thought; we see this indeed from the fact that Calvin scarcely
ever preached this view, which has however been constantly asserted by
theologians since Schneckenburger and Alex. Schweizer. This doctrine of
a_ twofold predestination is not even Scriptural ; it is an unallowable
“conclusion drawn from Scriptural premisses, in the nature of the case a
philosophical idea—that of necessity—dragged into to ttheology. by Augustin
Cf. the Ziirich dissertation of P. Jacobs, Pradestination und Ethik bei Calvin
76
 PRESUPPOSITIONS

nature of God—as an outflow of His nature—but in His will,

which stands over against the one who has been created.
From this it follows that all that has been said hitherto
about the nature of man in its connexion with the nature of
God, must not be understood as meaning that man is of one
nature with God. Man, _although he has been created out of
love, in love and for | love, isnot of divine nature, as “though
~he had a sharein”‘the“hey of God; but he is a product of
_His vwill,ee is a|creature. “But this wil of love which God
“imparts in His word to man, is certainly the eternal will of
God; so that the nature of man, although it is created and thus
has a beginning, has its ground iin the eternal will of God.
‘Tt is not man and ‘his nature that iseternal, but the ‘ground
of his being in the eternal will of love, the sternal election of
God. The man who knows his true being can only under-
stand himself in the eternal will, in the free, gracious election,
not in a state of eternal independence.}
Once again, however, this means that man ought not to
understand himself in the light of his own nature, nor should
he regard himself as-due to ‘something,’ but that he must
_ understand himself in the light of the Eternal Word, which
precedes man’s existence, and yet imparts Himself to him.
Man possesses—and this is his nature—One who stands ‘over-
against’ him, One whose will and thought are directed to him,
One who loves him, One who calls him, in and from and for: 1
BOA

love. And this One who confronts man, and imparts Himself”
to him, is “the ground of man’s being” and nature. ‘Thus the
Bible “bases the responsibility of man upon the doctrine of
pe oc
Severe

1 The connexion between the doctrine of the Imago and the doctrine of
election is expressed most clearly in the New Testament in Rom. viii. 29;
cf. also Eph. ii. 10 and all that refers to the connexion between the Creation
and Christ, Creation and the plan of salvation. The understanding of
eternal election from the point of view of judgement, which inevitably
leads to the idea of a twofold predestination, cannot be proved from the
Scriptures. Why? That would have to be seen in the light of a Biblical
view of Time, of the dialectic of ‘before’ and ‘after’ which takes Time
seriously. Here that can merely be suggested. Those are rejected who reject
the eternal election in Christ which is proclaimed to them. It is the task
of theology at the present time to free the Scriptural idea of election from
the Augustinian-Neoplatonic misunderstanding, which also overshadows to
some extent the theology of the Reformation.
77
 MAN IN REVOLT

election. Only he who is aware of this eternal call of election

~ Knows what he should answer; he alone isable to respond ~
The word of Divine erainie is the call to ‘human destiny,
| the ‘callwhich at oncé makes us frée’and binds us; makes ©us
f ee the world, and binds us to God, makes us responsible z
of ey | to.God, and "therefore. free from the “compulsion of things.
ON 2H Ted“There is no other freedom than that which is grounded in
‘ this responsibility, and’ no other responsibility than that which
“/ "is based upon the divine election. He who “overlooks this, and.
“fails to listen to“this Call, “does not cease to be responsible, it 3
is true—just as little as fature to hear the call annihilates the
he ceases to understand his responsibility aright.
“callitself—but
Above all,, he ce in‘this‘responsibility. The respon-—
ceases to ‘live 1
sible life, the right knowledge of responsibility, and life in the
love of God, are all the same.
The eternal electionis the divinewill, of which the so-called
eric law is only a reflection, the Fedlection in which God
shows Himself even to fallen man. The eternal election for
communion with God, and through that for communion with
© _ 0 all creatures, is the primal form and the primal reality, which
~~~ still lies behind the moral law, even though there it is con-
“. cealed"Hence the-possibility and the reality of the Good, of
true>humanity”‘and love, isnot obedience to the Law but the Rr te

rr" belileving: knowledge o

of.election. “Election iisthe ‘way. in “which
vafinnerontniarnreaney

God allows us to participate inHis being, iin His eternal Oo

and in so doing gives Us our Own human existence. We know
Epbanks
Ges eon
veneers

of this eternal election, however, only ‘through ‘the

t historic comer mre oe

Word of God, through “Jesus Christ, “but in such a way that

htaar

we
fe understand it as the Primal "Word in which we were
created.i.) F ‘ RE MP fed

4. THE WORK OF GOD: CREATION AND REDEMPTION

The work of God in.which the being ¢of the actual man has
itsorigin
and its continued existence is the word and_work
anne byoe

1 Cf. P. Jacobs, loc. cit., where it is shown that this connexion between
election and responsibility is the fundamental structure of Calvin’s theology.
Especially it might be shown from the Old Testament how the whole
‘ethic’ is based upon Israel’s election, and the remembrance of election is
constantly the main ethical motive. *"Col, 1.15, Hs
78
 PRESUPPOSITIONS

of creation saree he cocoustbut the ground of knowledge

of.‘this
s firstt wor. is th second :- the work. and word of recon-
work
Ciliation ; and redemption, ‘the ‘historical Word of revelation
“which. discloses eternity. In the second work ofGod weperceive
“His first as first, as that in which we already always had our ~
life. For in it, in the word and work of creation everything “
has its continued existence, not merely its origin.1 The fact
that man has been created by God means that he, the actual
man, even in his godlessness, is upheld by the Word of God.
Hence although creation and preservation must be distin-
guished from one another, they must never be severed from
one another. Man was not, in his origin, a responsible being,
but he is still’a_responsible. being, even in fhisirresponsibility,
there, ~ where he denies his responsibility and sets himself in
“Opposition tto his origin. Hence he does not cease to be man,
i
even whennhis.human existence is distorted qualitatively ;into
ern aye

‘inhumanitity.’ He could not be a perverted human being, he

could not act irresponsibly, he could not be a sinner and
_commit sins, unless, even now, his ‘continued existence’ was
still in the Word of God, unless the ‘true light’ was still
illuminating him who has been blinded.? As he in the midst
of his apostasy from the Creator is still borne and guided by
the Divine Providence, so also is he borne by the Word,
‘which uphoids all things. ’8 And he as man, in contradistinction
from aall other creatures, is so borne byy the Word 1
‘that,although
his
is_spiritual
s vision is obscured, he is aware of this fact,
even if in a distorted manner. Even distorted knowledge is
‘knowledge, and is infinitely more—and at the same time
infinitely less—than ignorance. Hence man is the being who
is above and at the same time also below all the rest of creation
known to us; he is above by his responsibility, and below
because he denies his responsibility and acts against it. Man
never ceases to be the work of God and to live by the power
of God’s operation. ‘In Him we live and move and have our
being’*—that was spoken to pagans and is true without any
qualification at all. The Divine Creation and Preservation is
1 Col; 1. 17.
2 John i. 9. This is how Calvin understands the passage: xlix, xliv;
xlvil. 73 xxiii. 39. tetieb. 1. 3; 4 Acts xvii. 28.

79
 ~

MAN IN REVOLT

greater than the godlessness of man. The desire of man to be

independent of God has indeed been suggested to him by the
Serpent and is therefore a deception. Man remains 1in the
Hands and in the workshop of God, even “when he is perverted,
and moreover, if I may put it so, when he feels the pressure
of the Divine Hand to be ‘against“he
1 grain’ of his own désirés.
“Like the Creation and the _Preservation of man, so also the
nature of man can only be understood in the light of the
perfected work of God, the Redemption.‘It
Tt is
i not asthough_
Hoek

\the redemption was merely the restoration of the creation

the formula Urzeit gleich Endzeit (‘the End reproduces “he
Beginning’) applies to pagan mythology, but not to the
revelation of the Bible; for it describes the world-process as
an eternal cycle. [The oal which has been shown to us in
esus Christ is indeed also and firstof all the restoration
of
that which was at thebeginning, but it is much more than
that; it 1isthe “eternal consummation which oes, far beyond
the Creation.\Thus also that which is‘proper’ to man, accord-
Ing to ee plan of Creation, can only be understood in i
the light of the End which is disclosed in Jesus Christ, the aim
of the Kingdom of God. It is at that point that the destiny of |
man is shown to us" tl the destiny _h belongs tto_the
nature of man,“That is reflected, in.the fact that in the present .
sinful and godless condition of man, man must never be
“understoodd merely inthe light _ of his being, | but. also iin the_
light. of what _he ought. to..be. This sense of ‘obligation. is a
fragmentary trace of the original aim of life for man. _[n_
faith in the redemption through Jesus Christ what is and
whatt ought tto be are once again united, through grace the aim
of the Creation is once more ascribed to us as our reality, and
its realization has begun. He who is called the Incarnate.
Word, He in whom God reveals to.to us the aim of His Kingdom,
life inperfect communion with God and man as the whole |
meaning of existence, is also the One in whom we “perceive i
the meaning. ofour.existence—both that which is in accordance
with the original purpose of Creation and with man’s present
opposition to the aim of Creation—and of our sense of obliga-
tion and our destiny.
1 y John iii. 2.
80
 PRESUPPOSITIONS

Man does not only perceive, he actually has his origin and
igueeal ae he meron
tortie Word
of Coe. inote
imitative but creative; ‘all things have been made by Him’ ;1
hence the Word not only promises, it creates anew. Hence, as
we have already said, the knowledge of true human existence
is no mere matter of knowledge, it is at the same time also
a new being. Only in this new existence—what the Bible
calls being ‘in Christ’-—can man truly understand himself;
“sinceonly in Him, in the Word of God, man himself becomes
true, can perceive the truth about himself, and also the great
lie which we call sin. This opens up the further way for our
inquiry.
1 John i. 3.

81
 CHAPTER V
Waa
( THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

(a) THE PROBLEM

|
| 1. THE STARTING-POINT
|We all feel that there is something distinctive about man, that
_ he belo:
belongs |toaa_‘higher’. category _than the.rest of creation.
eieasid LUE. LN os pinta a aed ae

| Even thecynicwho denies this in theory does not allow himself

. to be classified _as an animal without. protest, and he also
expects
ects ¢
ot
sther_people to treat _hin
him in ‘human’ fashion. ‘Even
expects he expatiates upon his nihilistic views, in which. he pours
ridicule upon this ‘distinctive’ element in man, he demands a
hearing as one who proclaims valid, absolutely valid truth—an
attitude which is not very fitting for a being who is nothing
more than a ‘degenerate cerebrating animal.’ No man is a
cynic where his own claim to be considered is concerned.
But, on the other hand, if man really belonged to this ‘higher’
category there would be no room for cynicism. The idealistic
mystic who makes man into a god, but loses his temper
per because ;
he has toothache, is the exact¢
opposite «
ofthe cynic who ardently
“defends his nihilistic views, and is just as amusingly inconsistent.
The ordinary simple man is neither a cynic nor a mystic. He
is aware of this distinctive, NAS element in man, but he is’
also
also aware
re«of the‘‘misery of man.” He knows—and yet he does
not know; for heknows neither the ground nor the limits, nor
the origin of this ‘higher’ element, and he does not know the
origin of the contradiction in human nature.
Of ourselves we cannot know either this ‘higher’ element or
the contradiction, because they are within ourselves, because
we ourselves are entangled in the contradiction between the
two. Indeed, the sinister thing about this contradiction is the
fact that we cannot perceive it because we are involved in it,
because it is not ‘something within us’ but is our veryes
tence, because we are wholly in it, and do not stand above it.
To see truly we need to be at a distance, or at a certain
elevation; if we were above the contradiction we would be
82
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

able to perceive both it and the source of the ‘higher’ element

in man. ~
As Christians we say that we can know ourselves, our origin |
Word
thet,
and the contradiction, only “in Christ,” Jesus Chris
of God, is indeed not a symbol of our nature, of that ‘higher’
element by which we interpret the ‘higher’ element within us; _
no, Jesus Christ is God’s Word to us; this ‘Word’ does not spring a ce

out of the depths of our own being, but descends to us from the
heights God, and lays hold of us from beyond ourselves, from
of
beyond the contradiction to which we have fallen a prey, in
order to show us what we have lost through the contradic tion.
He shows this however only to him who is ‘in Him,’ to him who |
in faith accepts this Word of God, and in so doing allows ©
that_
himself to be lifted to this higher plane, and thus attains
Pe Pilea Pie :
Ta es $5 LEER TIS OTN Noel ACOSO
‘nee Tete
ry 7

elevation elf
above himsfrom _
which he can henceforth perceive
himself both in his origin and in his contradiction. The Word |
of God, which perceive that of |
is itself theOrigin, allows us to
aware; at the same time _
Se

which every human being isdimly

this light shows us that our ‘dim perceptions’ are merely a |
groping in the dark. Hence the Christian doctrine of man is —
threefold: the doctrine of man’s origin, the doctrine of the — ;

eontradiction, and the doctrine of the actual state of man as —

aA VS REAL RIE
PELLOO GS LEA SLOS APAREP
a eee ses tagcar aig
~ Tn

between his origin and the contradiction, The

LE IS SOOM ELE ENN A OE lla 4 aa,
in confi LILI PII IIS ORT MON CETL
fife

© in conflict
Christian doctrine of man is therefore quite different from all |
other anthropologies, _because it alone. takes this conflict —
seriously, and does not try toexplainitaway or to neutralize |
it in any direction. —
The ieee with which the Christia n doctrine describes the
origin of man, and in so doing the ground, the character, and |
the limits of that higher element, is the parabolic expression of
|
:

the Creation narrative: namely, that man has beencreated “in| {

the image of God.’ What this means, however, the Church / |

ought to make clear, not by arbitrary interpretations, but by

ae

explaining this phrase in the light of a second, New Testament

expression, namely, that we, in so far as we are in Jesus |
Christ, are ‘being renewed unto knowledge after the image of
a clear
Him that created him.’*) We must gai the
n idea of A

+ Col. jij, 10, On the doctrine of the Imago Dei in the Old and. the New
Testament, see Appendix I, p. 499.
83
 MAN IN REVOLT

meaning of the Jmago Dei reflecting

by on whatissaidto usin_
Jesus Christ about our origin, and not by speculating upon the
deeper meaning of that mysterious expression in the Creation
narrative, It is not the Old Testament narrative as such, but
‘its meaning fulfilled in Jesus Christ, which is the ‘Word of God’
in which alone we can understand ourselves.

2. THE CLASSICAL DOCTRINE —

If the Church had followed this rule it would have been

reserved from teaching that the original existence of man was
an actual state which eee eee of a status
“Antegritatis. The fact that it has done so has burdened the simple
a1
Bible narrative .with itstia own
ons
views—in themselves absolutely
; . :
y t/(Uj4g necessary and highly significant—and in so doing it created
‘a picture of ‘thefirstman’ which, thetore itwastheologically
oa correct, the more it_was in oppositionto its historical form.
Whereas in the pre-Augustinian Church the picture of the first
man oscillated between a being at a still wholly undefined,
childlike and primitive stage of human development, and that
ofa being which was not of earth at all but of heaven, Augustine, _
for religious reasons, created that picture of thePrimitive
State
which has remained the classical ecclesiastical doctrine ever
1 The Apostolic Fathers do not mention the Primitive State (apart from
an allusion to the Biblical ‘narrative in the Epistle of Barnabas) ; Justin
Martyr knows a doctrine of the Fall (Dial. c. Trpho, chap. 88) without
any closer definition of the Primitive State; Theophilus emphasizes the
childlike, undeveloped condition of Adam (ad Autol. II, 24 ff). The same
may be said of Irenaeus, who deals with the question in detail; Adam's
advantage was innocence, not righteousness (IV, 38), his condition was
primitive; we find the same attitude in Clem. Al Strom. IV, 23, 623. For
the quite different theory of Origen, see p. 74. The Greek Fathers say less
about the Primitive State than about the Jmago, which they regard as more
characteristic of the nature of man than the historic Primitive State. On
the other hand, with Athanasius the later orthodox view begins to emerge.
Adam is described as a fully contemplative soul, with a mind detached
from earth (cf. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, II, p. 146). Gregory of Nyssa
oscillates between Origen and Athanasius; to him the most important
point is that before the Fall Adam had not been tainted by sexual inter-
course (ibid., p. 150). This oscillation between a monistically evolutionary
theory and the dualistic theory of Origen was the prevailing attitude;
it was not until Augustine, and the Pelagian controversy in particular,
that this oscillation ceased; and even then, only in the West.

84
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

since. The first human pair was not only endowed with the
justia originalis, that 1s, with full obedience to their Creator in
faith and Jove; but also with all the perfection of human
endowments in body, mind and spirit. Their complete innocence
therefore was not merely that of children or of primitive man;
rather it was thatof fully mature human beings in union with
who possessed, to an unlimited extent, the /iberum
arbitrium, that is, a freedom of the will which was limited by.
nothing save the Comman d Later on in this book we
of God.
shall consider the important differences which, in spite of this
common ecclesiastical doctrine, arose within the different
confessions. At first, in any case, they completely disappear
behind the common dogma: the first historical human beings,
inhabitants of this earth, those who constitute the first genera-
tion of this history—in contrast to the Gnostic doctrine of
Origen (which was rejected) of a state of pre-historical or supra-
historical pre-existence—were practically in every respect / fe
erfect human beings. It was not the distinction between these”
erfect’ beings os Primitive man which created difficulties, ;
ut the distinction
but_the_dis tinc between them and those redeemed by
of the former was alreadyso
Christ, because the starting-point
y grasped the Christian central
a theology
high. The more purel
idea the higher it placed this point of view, in so far as this
was compatible with the distinction between the first man and
the redeemed man.

. THE SCIENTIFIC SITUATION AND TASK

ee

This whole historic Ppicturee ‘of

of the lirst man’
‘the first has been
man nas
on
finally
been nnally
and absolutely destroyed for us to-day,? The conflict between
the teaching of history, natural science and palaeontology, on
the origins of the human race, and that of the ecclesiastical ae
doctrine, waged on both sides with the passion of a fanatical , bee
concern for truth, has led, all along the line, to the victory of . $y
decline
to the gradual but inevitableresearch,
the scientific view andUpon
of the ecclesiastical view. the plane of empirical
whether that of history or of natural science, which in the wide
1 Eyen Luther can scarcely say enough about the perfections of the
Primitive State. But in the main he is only concerned with one thing: the
justitia originalis, WA. 42, 45 ff. 2 Cf. Chap. 17, p. 390.
85 ;
 MAN IN REVOLT

field of pre-history often merge into one another, no facts have

been left which could support. the Augustinian ecclesiastical
view of the historical ‘first man,’ or which could prove that the
empirical origin of the human. race was.to be-sought on a
specially elevated plane of spiritual existence. It is true, of
course, that we shall have occasion to realize that we must not
forget the hypothetical character of the theory of evolution,
and that we must leave much room for future modifications of
our present state of knowledge; we shall also set aside those
views of Primitive Man which give too dogmatic a picture from
the point of view of natural science, since we regard them as
the products of an uncritical scientific dogmatism. But all this
does not alter the fact that the more deeply scientific knowledge
probes into the obscu ritythe picture
ofpre-history, ofman
still more
“become s ‘primitive,’ and the fewer are the traces of
g
to the. distinctively
a higher form of existence correspondin
*higher’ nature of man. The pitiable comedy which is produced
“when theology claims that a ‘higher, more perfect’? human
existence of the first generation existed in a sphere not accessible
hai! to research, as it retires before the relentless onward march of
scientific research, should be abandoned, once for all, since it
has for long provoked nothing but scorn and mockery, and has
exposed the message of the Church to the just reproach of
‘living at the back of beyond.’
EO ee important
pon than this external reason for giving up
of Adam and Eve is an inner one. By clinging
the story to the
historical framework the actual fun amental content of the
Set eethoralir
ee deal eles meee Uae leat oat rae cea ant tee

Christian doctrine ofthe originofman has been either concealed

or buried, So long as. the historico-theological interest was STEN TT a SETAE a om

maintained on the plane of empirical

ere
eee lala ges
history, the central_
a ee

“Biblical truth remained concealed behind’

a story which was
perceived to be impossible, To one who thought in scientific
MeN Sas ya

terms there remained only the two other alternatives which do

not conflict with historical research: a theory of evolution
conceived in either naturalistic or idealistic terms; that is, a
modified Darwinian or Hegelian view—and from the very
outset the Hegelian view was only possible for a small circle
of philosophical thinkers. Thus to-day we are confronted by
the fact—and preachers of the Gospel would do well at last to
86
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

confess that this is the fact, and to realize its meaning—that

the average man of to-day knows or believes about the origin
org ee tay

of man only that which remains in1_his_mem ry from. his"

instruction in natural history a
about
opt Sg OLRM Noes Wn
conanee
tA
t
the ‘origin
° cof man. The
ecclesiastical doctrine ofAdam. and Eve cannot “compete with :
the Amprcssive,
i power of this :scientific kr owledge.
The ‘modern theology’ of the nineteenth century perceived
this situation, and drew its own conclusions. Schleiermacher,
(as usual) under the cloak of a re-formulation of the Christian. A _
doctrine, actually gives up the fundamental Christian view of
the origin of man, and substitutes for it an idealistic,evolutionary
theory _ with a stronngly naturalistic
1 bent; fc
for the idea of the
origin in Creation. he.‘substitutes. ‘that. of thegoal ofevolution
ofa universalspiritual process. Hase shows this change of view
quite
ie plainly
plain
platy Sr Resays That,in
| his opinion, the doctrine of
tid origin ‘deals not so much with a lost past as with an.
intended _future.’? Rothe, with an evident Hegelian tendency,
thinks that ‘the concept of the Creation itself contains the idea
that at first the personal creature could not emerge otherwise
than from matter, and was then immediately tainted and
defiled by matter; thus even its personality became changed,
or, in short, sinful.’* Pfleiderer believes that after the traditional
doctrine has been given up it is possible to retain, as its core,
the idea that the dignity of man does not lie behind us
but before us as the goal of evolution.* Similarly Troeltsch
declares that ‘the doctrine that man was made in the Image of
God does not mean the loss of an original condition, but a goal
to be reached through historical development.’®
All along the line, therefore, the Christian doctrine, because
itshistorical form has become 1¢ impossible, ds
isrenounced and iis
replaced by an idealistic
ic evolutionism which—as also took place
at other points—was$ then stated to be the ‘real content’ of the
Christian view. The real core of the Christian doctrine, however,
quite apart frfrom its. historical form,
forr ‘differs fundamentally both

1 Schleiermacher, Glaubenslehre, § 60
2 Hase, Evangelische Dogmatik, § 52.
3 Rothe, Theologische Ethik, § 480, p. 46.
4 Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlicher Grundlage, p. 537.
5 Troeltsch, Glaubenslehre (postum), p. 295.
87
 7 MAN IN REVOLT

from the naturalistic and from the idealistic evolutionary

; consists inthis truth, that mar
theory 3.1t |
aflict‘between _
in ‘creation‘and his opposition ‘to the latter,
his divine origin it
our concern to modify
that is,sin. Itis not our our theology to ee
e Mcreasing pressure of secular knowledge, because we cannot
do anything else, hoping that we may at least save a ‘core’ of
truth; our position rather is this: the fact that the increasing
pressure of secular knowledge has awakened us to the nature of
this problem leads us to reflect upon the real meaning and
“content of our own message; in the light of this reflection we
then deliberately renounce a form of belief which was never
any real part of Christian theology, which only obscured its
meaning, and burdened it with dubious suggestions.
The abandonment of the historical form of the doctrineis
not a loss, nor is it atrifle,
but it is a necessary purification of
the Christian doctrine for its own sake, not for the sake of
science. 1 Science stimulates us to find a positive and adequate
‘form for theBiblical message.of the origin of Creation and the
Fall of man. _ Only | s, too, will it be possible | to_clarify and
en Pre A SATA rene

‘intensify our opposition t "metaphysical evolutionism. 2 Above

all; by this new formulation it will become clear that when we
‘talk about theorigin of man we are not speaki of acertain |
“man called Adam, who lived ‘so so many thousand or ago, but
ofi myself, 2and ofF yourself, and
and<of"everyone
¢ |else in tlthe world,
“Only in this way will we Christian doctrine cease to be bad
metaphysics ;for in its old historical form, without intending it,
it was a metaphysic of history, and thus bad theology.

1 Karl Barth’s answer to the question: “Did the serpent in Paradise

really speak?’ (Credo, pp. 163 ff.; English translation, p. 190): “We should
rather inquire what the serpent said,’ is a clever evasion of a problem
which, in Holland in particular, ought not to be evaded. There is more
at stake here than a desire for enlightenment which has little theological
importance; it is not a mere question of apologetics. For theological
reasons the Adam narrative ought to be abandoned, since it is the main
source of that ‘determinism’ with which even Barth reproaches the classic
ecclesiastical doctrine.
2 The scientific doctrine of evolution is something different; meta-
physical evolutionism is something different. Cf. Chap. 7.

88
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

(b) MAN AS CREATION

‘For Thou hast possessed my reins:
Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks unto Thee; for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made:
Wonderful are Thy works;
And that my soul knoweth right well.
My
framewas not hidden from Thee. —
When I was made insecret,
in the lowest parts of the earth.
And curiously wrought
Thine eyes did see mine unperfect substance,
Andin Thy book were all my members written,
Which day by day ‘were fashioned, —st—CS~S
When as yet there was none of them.’
He is.
So speaks the Psalmist! of his origin in God’s Creation.
aware of the ‘natural story he isaware that man
ofcréation,”
“arises through procreationin his mother’s womb, and passes
through remarkable stages of embryonic development before
he reaches human form and receives human existence.” But he
is also aware that this is only the visible side of his nature. ‘The
invisible side of this same process of growth, however, is the
fact that God ‘sees’ and ‘knows’ him, that he has been pre-
by God. Directly, not by reflecting
ac RON oe

determined and created

upon a “first man,” he knows that he has been created by God ;
the creativacte of God, accessible only to faith, and the natural
genesis of man which everyone knows, are directly related to
one another. He is awareof his empirical beginning ; that is, the
process_ of proc mother’s womb. But he is also
inhision
reat
is,thethought, the will and the creation
thatn;
aware of his origi
God, The fact that he may set his beginning in the light of
of
this origin is to him an occasion for praise and adoring thanks-
giving. But he reflects upon his origin—and that is the signifi-
cance of Psalm cxxxix—in his worship of the Omnipresent
Deity. The Christian doctrine of Creation does not give us any
of man, but it takes over a view
_ peculiar view of the beginning
_ which is well known to everyone; yet it is.itself the doctrine of
| the invisible Divine origin behind, above and within this visible _
and earthly beginn doctrine. ofCreation
Theing does not
Seek enmianmnee

1 Psa, cxxxix. 13-16 (R.V,). 2 Cf. Job x. 8.

89
 MAN IN REVOLT

compete with secular science, which deals with» the visible _.

maT TeRTI
beginnings ‘which can be discovered by the processes ofresearch,
be No POTTS age eaieeaal
but itpoints to a quite:different dimension, the dimension of the
‘origin, of which,in principle,science “knows “as a little 2as the
veeseconenna

pecarenereracemate

chemistry of colour knows of thee beauty

uty of
of aa‘picture, or
ee
or physical
aeeee eet

acoustics of the¢
content of a symphony.
AMOR TTY

The ‘original Biblical

E ‘word ‘Creation’ means first of all, that
there, ds.an. “impassable gulf | between the “Creator and‘the. :
“creature, “that for ever they stand over against one another in a
relation which can never be altered. There is no greater sense _
of distance than that which liesin the words Creator—Creation.
Now thisis thethe. first and_the. fundamental thing which can be
said about man: He is a creature, and as such he is separated |
‘by an abyss from the Divine manner of being. The greatest
dissimilarity between two things which we can | express atall—
more dissimilar than light and darkness, death and life, good
and evil—is that between the Creator and that which is created.
For all other dissimilarities are- ranged below this fundamental
difference. They are related to that which has been created,
and thus they are included in the fundamental similarity which
they possess as that which has been created. God, however, is
the Uncreate, the Creator. Man, whatever may ‘distinguish him
from all «
other crea tures, | caiin commonoerot “which

to man when arya of his peculiar nature, when he is

conscious of his selfhood or of himself as spirit.1 If man may
rightly assert that he is not a bit of the world, that, indeed, he
is not the world at all, yet he has this at least in common with
this world with which he contrasts himself, that he too is a
creature, like the world, and thus stands over against the
Creator. Like all other creatures, he is a dependent, being, a.
being who not only came into “being from. another region, but
whose continued existence depends upon this further dimension,
That which has been created has not only been created by God
once for all; the same Creative Word by which the Creator
created it also supports it, and thus preserves its existence.
1 Hence belief in the Creation is the great stumbling-block to Idealistic
Monism, and at the same time the protest against all metaphysical dualism.
go
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

r
1
| Just as the concep of ‘creation’ or ‘creature’ places man and
i
i| God at a distance from one “another, so$02also it binds man fast-
i) t e createdworld is air ‘the world, but the
world- bee Godl the world in which God is present and
operating. When the Psalmist speaks of the Creation he is
UR nee HW PEN itr aR

speaking at ru same time _ of the inescapable, ‘operative |

resence 0 “The idea of Creation is not only the protest
against every Saalof-Pantheism, which blurss the boundary line
line_
between God and the world, but alsoagainst allDeism, which~
separates God and theworld,
w a
as though there was a form of
existence which
ch could _exist_ absolutely “apart from God.?
Creaturely beingis aa
form of being which—for blessednessor
judgement, for joy or torment—is indissolubly united with God,
and is always an instrument and a manifestation of Him who
operates. There is no divine creation which is not as such also
a divine manifestation and a divine presence at work. ‘The
phrase (which sounds rather pantheistic) : ‘In Him we live and
move and have our being,’ is a fundamental statement :
of
Scripture; it distinguishes the creation from the secular world.
In truth there is no secular world; there is only acreated world,
whic has been secularized. The very ear of ‘the secular’ is an
abstraction,
a view of actuality apart from Him who acts. All
reality is actuality, the actuosity of God.

(:) THE IMAGE OF GOD?

I. THE HISTORICAL HERITAGE

Although man has his created nature in common with all

other cre
creatures, he ‘has t
been created iina different manner, and
1 Karl Barth in his Credo (pp. 33 ff. )—probably to the astonishment of
a good many people—has clearly accepted this ‘immanence of the God
who so absolutely transcends the world.’ But there is no immanence of
the Creator which is not at the same time His manifestation. This is the
root of the revelation of the Creation, so obstinately contested by Barth,
which is an integral element of the Bible. According to Luther, God spoke
with Adam His Word through the creatures (see above p. 72); this con-
nexion has been destroyed by sin, but—at least in part—like the Imago, it
is restored by the New Birth. Hence the summons to behold God in His
works (Rom. i. 19 ff.).
2 On this whole section, see Appendix I (p. 499).
gI
 MAN IN REVOLT

in a different way. Commentators have not

he is a ‘creature’
been playing with words, but they have been true to their
expository aim, when from time immemorial they have always
laid stress on the fact that in the Bible narrative of Creation
something new begins with the creation of man, After the whole |
cosmos has come into existence, even if in different ways, yet |
always under the same Divine imperative: ‘And God said, Let |
there be . . . and there was . . .” it is as though the Lord of |
Creation paused for a while before the last great die was cast, |
and then began a new kind of creation. ‘And God said: Let us |
make man in our image, afte r ..’ Anew kind of
our likeness.
creative act, a wholly different relation between the creature
and the Creator, corresponds to the new form of existence of that |
whichisabout to be created: man. Here the Creator does not .
“create bymeans of an imperative word,! but—as Michelangelo |
has magnificently expressed this thought in pictorial form—
in stooping down towards the human being whom He |
on,
creates. Man, in contrast from all the rest ofcreatihas not _
God and through God, but inand for.
pects |

createhed by
merely been what is originally, by God and through God;
God. He is,
he is also in and for God. Hence he can and should understand
saidofno other creatures,
himseif_in God alone. Just as it is
“et us make,’ so also it is said of no other that it has been created
- ‘after Hislikeness’or ‘in His image.’ What does this mean?
The whole Christian doctrine ofmanhangs upon the interpreta-
tion of thisexpre ssion—buton the interpretation which. is
ntview of Jesus
drawn fromt,thepoiof
from the New Testamen
y
ee
I
ne

Christ. The history of this idea is the hist or

of the Western —
‘understanding of man, in which both the great spiritual forces
of the past two thousand years, Greek philosophy and the
Christian faith, have, so to speak, an equal share. Here the
question was, and indeed still is, of the relation between
Christianity, humanity and humanism. When Max Scheler—
in the passage which has already been quoted—-ranges both the
Christian and the Idealistic Greek view under the one concept
as the ‘classical theory,’ he is justified in so far as even in the
1 With this exposition cf. Tertullian: the creation of man took place
non imperiali verbo ut cetera animalia, sed familiari manu, etiam praemisso
blandiente illo verbo, faciamus, etc. Adv. Marc. 4*; so also Luther, WA. 42, 41.
92
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

early Christian days it was this very concept of the Jmago Dei
which formedd_a
a synthesis between ‘the Platonist--Aristotelian-
‘Stoic view and the Christian = view of1man, which dominated
the whole of the Patristic period and the Christian Middle Ages,
and has been, and stillis, operative.
How can man, how can the humanum, that is to say, that
which _distinguishes man—whether he is a believer or an
unbeliever—from the non-human creation, be_so_understood__
from the point ofview of the divine creation, tthat.thisview will
also express the “contrast _be
between man in his present.“sinful
condition and his original creation? “Theunderstanding of the
meaning of being ‘created in the likeness of God’ determined
from the first—and still determines—the statement of the
relation between reason and revelation, the Church and
civilization, faith and humanity. Irenaeus outlined the path the
Church was to follow for nearl ‘fifteen hundred years, and his :
solution is stillthat of the Catholic Church. Supported by. the.
eet

double e:
expression ‘image’ ‘and
and ‘likeness’ee

Hebrew <dlem and Demuth

Greek elxwv and opoiwais
Latin imago and. similitudo4

the first great theologian of the early Catholic Cinten

distinguishes a double elementin man: the image ofGod/,which
gegen era

pre ecerernomnentiere

consists im the freedom and rationality oof his

AA
his nature, and the 7
NANA

Likenessto) God, 1
which consists
inhis self-determination "according
to the divine destiny, in the justitia originalis aas a special divine.
gift, the gift of supernatural communion with God. While sin_
midestroyed this second element, which was added to nature,
‘manhas retained the first,the human._nature, the humanum.
‘This is a simple and ‘brilliant solution of the central problem
of anthropology—the solution which
upon the whole edifice of
Catholic theologyand conception of culture
cul eis
iisbased ;‘asynthesis ~
of immeasurable consequences.
It
It was not until
until Luther
Lut came that this ‘two-storey’ edifice
wass destroyed
destroyed and
andAlso
< itits
its| systematic db.sis, Irenaeus’ doctrine
eel

1 On these expressions and the whole question of the Old Testament

f. Eichrodt, Theologie des Alten Testaments, I1, pp. 60 ff. Cf. Appendix I
Pp. 499).
93
 MAN IN REVOLT

of the Imago and the Similitudo. Luther, with his sure feeling for
exegesis, recognized the nature Of |Hebreww parallelism, and saw_
vinnie mnnittertiat ACR On One KMORY

that the distinction between the Imago “and the. Similitudo was
PTE dit
Ret AID Gm
untenable, But he was “concerned with more than exegesis ; he
wrrlnetieetnertireacannautiAE
saw plainly that the actual unityofhuman nature was involved, WOamemNt ee

or, to put it more exactly, the unity of the theological and

religious views of human nature. In full accordance with the
spirit of Scripture he saw that man must be interpreted inthe mee se UDO

light of one principlri‘that.of‘the Original Word and Imagere of

Eel se main oe Sond Armee Sot eee
Man’s being |as man is both in one, nature and grace. The
AA era ees

- fact that man is determined. by (Godis theoriginal 1real nature

{ of man} ‘and what we now know in man as his ‘nature’ is.
de-natured nature, it is only a meagre relic of his original
} human nature. Through sinman has lost.not a‘super-nature’_
-| but his God-given nature, and has become unnatural, i nphuman.
Mea pacshaDaee
FRE HG begin ‘the understanding of man with a neutral natural Sekar MOS SALTO

concept—anemal 1rationale—means. ‘a hopeless‘misunderstanding

n
‘seperienerneveesnisseeranceceeenentieinh
any Sihngreree
mh HN

SRE " cemecetes

.~ of the being of man from, tthe vveery outset.1 Man is not a ‘two-
eAa NINN ET AD
storey” Creature, |‘but—even1 if now corrupted—a_ ‘unity. His
eonitengaorarnienaoareesn eng anassre tained tal
‘ sivempiiaiesiin

relation to God is not something

tata Lie
ve Dealer
\ arabs
rhich is adde to his human
GNIS

azitisthe core and theground ofhishumanitas. That was

Wit SAE GLEAN TR ARTA

| iN nature ;
uther’s revolutionary discovery. But this process of piercing
through the thirteen-hundred-year-old falsely-synthetic tradition
was not fully completed.
In order to make a complete formulation of the doctrine of .
Original Sin, Luther abandoned the Catholic dualism. The
element_.
Jmago Dei, man’s originalnature—not merely the addede
of * super-n
nature’>_has been destroyed. What then is to be said
of man’s persisting‘ational nature, of his‘humanity, 1inshort, 209 COREE
EI rai ecu

of all that now distinguishes him from the animal creation?

Ont thé plane of the traditional historical view there was “only
adouble i: either, not to equate this“humanum with othe:
‘original Creation, and ae ‘with the divine destiny of man; Or,
in some way or other, to acknowledge this relation “atterwards.
The Reformation’ took the sécond ‘path: It™introduced™the™~
confused and dogmatically «extremely | doubtful concept of a
enn a we skein Om EA eaeseaneaiit bape louibainaseanee ayy yma nos SSRNAR

1 The same is true of a neutral structure idea, as required by Bultmann,

op. cit.

94
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

‘relic’ of the Imago Dei: essentially,itis true, the image of God ~

in man has been destroyed, buta certain ‘relic’ has remained,
just enough to enable man to understand the humanum—that
which differentiates man from the animal—in the light of his
origin, that is, from the point of view of theology. The second,
more radical way, has been taken, so far as I know, first of all
the fumaand
Barth the bond between.
Rant Barth: numman’s -
' relation with God has beensevered ; the fact that ‘man is man
and not acat’ is ‘quite unim ortant,’! the humanum has become
a profanum. This dualism between revelation and reason would,
logically
Wf carried out, lead to the destruction ofalltheology
extreme ‘Puritanism’ in our attitude to culture and
and to an
civilization.
Hence none of the Reformers dared to do what Karl Barth,
with apparently greater logic, has done.* In spite of their
conflict with the humanism of their own day they were
‘humanistic’ enough to know that the difference between man
and a cat is neither banal nor secular, but a matter of the
highest theological importance. Deeply as they were impreg-
nated with the idea of man’s ‘total depravity,’ they refused to
go to the extreme length of severing the humanum from man’s
relation with God. Rather reluctantly they admitted that a
‘relic’ of the Jmago still remained in man’s nature. But whether
they did this willingly or not, the fact remains, they did it. Thus
by means of an only semi-legitimate conception they saved the
connexion between the humanitas and the Imago, between
Reason and the Word of God. But this confused idea of the
‘relic? of the Imago (which had only been smuggled in, as it
1 Karl Barth, Nein! pp. 25, 27.
~
2 The fact that the Confessional Writings only speak of the complete
loss of the Jmago, but make no mention of the ‘remnant’ of the Jmago on
_
which the humanum is based, is due to their polemical and ecclesiastical
purpose. For that period the doctrine of the ‘remnant’ of the Imago was—so
to speak—merely a theologumenon. Yet not only Melanchthon and Calvin,
but Luther too, wherever he speaks of the lex naturae, of the heathen
idea
knowledge of God, or of the justitia civilis, come back finally.to this
of a ‘remnant’ of the Imago. There can be no shadow of doubt that Luther,
when he speaks of ‘conscience,’ ‘reason,’ theologia naturalis, etc., regards
them as relics of man’s original relation with God, in spite of the hopeless
‘corruption’ into which he has fallen. (Cf. Appendices II and III, pp. 516
and 527.)
95
 MAN IN REVOLT

were) prevented the actual clarification of the problem. It

conceded both too much and too little to humanism; this was
the point at which, at the time of the Enlightenment, ihe whole
Reformation front was pierced and crumpled up. This, too, is
the point at which we must start our work afresh. What.we
need to do is to think out, quite logically, the idea of the unity _
‘of ‘human nature taught i
‘in the Bible and by the Reformers. |
“This 1means, however, at we ‘must avoid all the three solutions
which have been previously “suggested : the separation.‘between
‘the Imago and the ‘Similitudo,the concept of the ‘relic’ of the
Imago, 7and |
the y
view -
which1deprecia es or secularizes humanity;
or, to put it positively, we must recogniz that the humanitas
which sinful man stillpossesses, “and. ‘thejustia “originalis “which
hhe‘has
he’ Tost, both
hhs;
spring from the same source. This, however,
only
‘is “possible“by abandoningtthe historico-“mythical‘form of |
the 1traditional doctrine, and by relating each human being‘both —
to
his origin inthe Word of God and to the Fall; and, on the ©
‘other hand, under the guidance of the New tans we must
conceive the idea of the Imago Dei in a completely personalistic
and actual manner, which means that we must do away with
the Aristotelian idea of the animal rationale.

2. THE FUNDAMENTAL TERMS. OF THE IMAGO DOCTRINE

“SeesawFE PE EY TOP REVIT METRY

‘Created i
in His Image, iin His Likeness’ is a arable, hence _
its
meaning
does not lie on the“surface, First ofeaeitsaysthat
t
‘thenature of man—in
man—in hishis origin or in general—is is nothing in_
itself,‘and thatit is not intelligible from _itself, but that its
“ground existence
of and of knowledge
kn iis in1 God, If we under-
stand this phrase ir
in the light of theespecifically New
N Testament
doctrine, we would do well to understand ‘image’ in the sense
of reflection: that is, as an existence which points back or refers
back to something else. ‘But we all, with unveiled face reflecting
as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same
image from glory to glory.’1 Man’s meaning and his intrinsic
worth do not reside in himself, but in the One who stands ‘over
“ against’ him, in Christ, the Primal Image, in the Word of God.
And the fact that man ‘has’ intrinsic value—that is, his distinc-
tive being—consists in ‘having’ the Word, that is,that heknows
See
1 2 Cor. iii. 18. Cf, Rom. viii. 29.
96
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

himself to be inGod, and also knows that God knows and

recognizes him.! God ‘creates man through the Word, but—all
the passages of the New Testament which deal with this zmago
agree in this—He creates him in such a way that in this very
creation man is summoned to receive the Word actively, that is,
he is called to listen, to understand, and to believe. God creates
he is determined
man’s beinginsuch a way that man knows that
and conditioned by God, and in this fact is truly human. The
being of man as an ‘I’ is being from and in the Divine “Thou,”
or, more exactly, from and in the Divine Word, whose claim
‘calls’ man’s being into existence. The expression, that God
‘calls’ the creature into existence,” is solely applicable to man
in the literal sense, and is then also transferred from man to the —
the side of God this twofold
rest of the created universe. From
relation isknown as a ‘call,’ and from that of man as an ‘answer’ ;
‘thus the heart ofman’s being isseen to be: responsible existence.
to all other forms of creaturely
~The being of man, in contrast
being, is not something finished, but it is a being-in-self- |
knowledge and a being-in-self-determination, but in a self-
knowledge and in a self-determination which is not primary
but secondary; it is self-knowledge and self-determination on
the basis of being known and determined. Figuratively speaking,
God produce s creaturesin a finis
the other they are
state;hed
God retains —
But n.’
what they ought to be, and this they remai
man_His
withworkshop,inwithin His hands. He does not |
him and finish him; human nature, indeed,
simply make

OP Cod The creatures which have not been endowed with

- 5 wees
|
i
i -

reason are turned out as ‘finished articles.’ The characteristic

ee a aaa
|
imprint of man, however, only develops on the basis of the |

1 Luther understands the being of man in the Word of God thus:

“Where or with whom God speaks, whether in wrath or in grace, the same
is certainly immortal. The Person of God who there speaks, and the Word,
indicate that we are creatures with whom God wills to speak on into
eternity, and in an immortal manner.” WA. 43, 481.
2 Gen. i; Rom. iv. 17; 2 Cor. iv. 6.
to the fact of that growth which also
8 Naturally that is not opposed
which is
takes place in the world of nature. It is not gradual growth
by the ‘finished article,’ but the responsiv e relation, self-
excluded
realized.
determination of such a kind that in it alone a divine destiny is
O/
\ MAN IN REVOLT
\
|
{
| Divine determination, as an answer to a call, by means of a
| decision. The necessity for decision, an. obligation vwhich, he_
can never evade, 1s ‘the iedistinguishing feature of man, It
Lae tes erttore inccontrast to all sub-human existence—a
form of being which at every moment posits itself, thinking-
willing being, the kind of being which is being for self. But it
is at the same time—in contrast to the Divine Being—not
actus purus, not a being which arises out of itself, not one which
originally posits itself, but is responsive, ‘answering,’ respon-
sible being. It is a being for self it is true, but it is not self-
originated; it is the creaturely counterpart of His Divine
Self-existence, posited by God Himself; it is the being created
by God to stand ‘over-against’ Him, who can reply to God,
and who in this answer alone fulfils—or destroys—the purpose
of God’s creation.
But this responsibility—and here the Biblical understanding
of man finally parts company with the Idealistic understanding
of man—is not first of all a task but a gift; it is not first of all
a demand but life; not law but grace. The word which—
requiring an angwerdealle man, is not a ‘Thou shalt’ but a
‘Thou mayest be.’ The Primal Word iis not an imperative, but
it is thé indicative of the Divine love: “Thou art Mine.’ _
The original Divine Word, therefore is not first of all a
manc , because it is ‘self-communication, a Divine ‘word of
on yns_man_ to communion _withHim,” the—
“Creator, <as_the> destiny of man. “With:‘this ‘Word God turns to
man|,imparts. Himself tto ‘him, andin so doing gives him his
in“sucha way that man must 1
Tife.But He gives it.him in TeCeive
a He does not fling iit at him—for that would mean that he
was a ‘finished article-—but He offers it to him through His
call: so man must answer by accepting the gift of life from
His Hands. He must ‘repeat’ the original Divine Word—he
must notn
make. a word of his own, but of his « own accord he
~must “give itback
saying
sz “Yes, IamThine.” Man is destined
Soe DRURemiesig irony

to answer God in enna responsive love, to accept in

grateful dependence his destiny to which God has called him,
~ as his life. ‘Thus Jicre we are a concerned
but with ‘word’
not with an i‘ima e
and an.:samaplinabiiak. y
and_a ‘reflectic
ion’“but. with ‘word’
a and an ‘answer’ ; “this is
“the exposition which the New Testament gives of the Old
98
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

Testament story of Creation, the idea of the Imago Dei. The.

_intrinsic worthofman’s being lies in’the"Word"oGod, f hence
ility from love, in love, for love.
his nature is: responsib
3. HISTORICAL RETROSPECT

Current anthropology also knows something about respon-

Pamariver saat a SARWe Deis
SPEMKASNSOERE ATI LLU

sibility, even—in one way or another—of aUArelatio

é ?

I ED
n between
man an od. But it regards this simply as accident al, as
ATE OT a a a rn Aded ioe a

something which has been added to the natureol man, 2Vian.,

the first point

js,totakea soul-enti first, something for himself, a_sub-
stance,! ty, or a body-entity. ‘Where however—as
Tdéalism—_man is understood as spirit, he is understood as
in
the subject of this spirit, as a spirit-centre which is self-sufficing.
It_is_ true of course that Plato has some dim_sense of the
responsive character of the soul and its relation to God;
according to Platonic doctrine,the soul only attains its true
nature by the contemplation of the Divine Idea. But this
Idea_is neutral, it 1s not.an.act ingtosubjec t;..it..does.notlay
old of man, it does not give itself man but man lays hold
on it. The Idea does not love man and give itself to him, but
man alone loves and thus acquires the divine life. Because
Plato does not know the God who is self-giving love, his Eros,
in which he defines the real nature of the soul, is something
utterly different from that which the New Testament calls
and
love; it is not self-surrender, belonging to another,
e delight, enjoym ent of
responsibility, but it is contemplativ
the Supreme. In the thought of. Aristotl e relic_of a.
even. this
relation with God has been deleted; man_is the being whois
endowed with reason, intelligible as_he is in_ himself. The
“ ve ae rE A
OM CI ONT MINI oy ne
A i
NESS

Platonic longing has become alien to him, man in the Aris-

law within himself. 2 The doctrin e
totelian sense has his own NPC SINE i

hical
1 The current anthropology is summed up by Aristotle in philosop
accident’ which
ideas; the scholastic distinction between ‘substance’ ana
Writings of
arose under his influence also penetrated into the Confessional
source of this fatal termino logy, which. causes
the Reformation. Another
idea that all being
hopeless confusion in the problem, is the Augustinian
Cf. for instance
is, as such, good, and thus that evil is only privatio boni.
Enchiridion, wv. 12.
to himself. Man
2 ‘With Aristotle there is achieved the return of man
ing positi ve—man , like all other natural beings, bears his
becomes someth
99
 We > d vs a en cee
NS avr -

Brunner wae :: ie ae respons: billBy (A & _ personal

- ye /ationsh:

MAN IN REVOLT

of the autonomous. Self, of the autonomous reason, isdawning

Sica mera ibeNieneae s ORAS fate

on the horizon, “which was then worked out. b the.Stoics and

it ast
hand ed_ downtosucceeding _generations, No longer do God
and man stand <over against’ one a other, but instead. t.here 1Is2
thee one Reason, in which an, as the animal rationale, partici-
ea RSC ical RU tall en Na de as
_pates.. Onnverscton must become conversation mate oneself.
The time has come to say the highest things that one has to
say els éavrov, in conversation with oneself.
This concept,.of,,the.Divine. Reason, in which man, as the
Pay, animal rationale, has a share—through
geet i RNS
the concept.of theImago
SNNAinrE SAID
‘Dei, asuntentece by Irenaeus—now pene
poateJa onto eg aE ST aiek Maaliie SUE LITER EID

theology itsel ‘To be ‘in the image of God’ has now become
ie

an attribute of human nature; the view now prevails that it

is of the essence of rational being. to resemble the being of God.”
ay cua: Rae REY ZR Auer eines
‘Man is now “also arational being,’ as God is arational being,
only with this difference, that God is Infinite Reason and man
is only finite reason. “The ‘actuality and the relation to the
Thou of the
SWseeromna
New
pA RON
Testament conception ‘of the tmago(<ikadv)
GL AIL SHAOIISNA
has been forgotten and_its place has been taken by the idea
ih | of aanaloogy.”‘The nature of manisnow something quite different
all
LYALL NAT

from his relation to God; the original essence of man, his.

original nature, is i aiteatal even as God is “rational, e and it
is no longer REAR
:AE‘to stand in a responsive
i?teiennioatieninaanti a
relation
Le EAE OBOE
to God. ;
Communion with Godiis now a secondary, |
SATS PR
additional, _‘super-_
TE ee

natural’ element, which may disappear, owingtto:sin,=Without ore seers r nn,

altering the essence. Ot! ther nature of man. ras Greek |

‘Tationalismhas :suppressed Biblical| personalism.
Among the philosophersitwas Kant who first shook this _ reese

meaning within himself’ (Groethuysen, op. cit., I, p. 39). Aristotle dea

man as that living creature to whom the vodc¢ is its distinctive element
(De. an. II, 1, 2). In this connexion it is decisive that for him the vodc is the
Divine: tov vedyv povorv O8paber émerorévat Kal Beiov eivat wdvor (de gen.
et corr. B.3.7365). The real question is not the one which is usually asked—
that is, whether Aristotle, whether Greek philosophy as a whole, in some
way or another makes a distinction between the human and the divine
vovc—but whether it places the human vodc over against the divine vodc as
‘’ and ‘Thou.’ To put this question is to answer it. Where God and man
stand over against one another as ‘Thou’ and ‘I,’ there the philosophy of
immanence ceases, there begins revelation and faith; or rather, this
‘over-againstness’ only takes place from the point of view of faith, not from
that of reason.
100
 THE ORIGIN: THE |IMAGO DEI

thousand-year-old tradition by his definition of the person as

a responsible being; the Christian idea—here as in other
points—forced its way into his philosophy; but the notion of
the one, autonomous reason left no room for this idea to
develop.Theresponsible human being finally became the
homo noumenon, responsible to himself alone; the monistic idea
of reason conquered.’ In another direction Fichte revolted
violently against tradition. He disposed of the traditional idea
of a soul-entity or a mind-entity and replaced it by the idea
of the actual ‘I’—with an intellectual energy for which the
world owes him a debt of permanent gratitude. But he was
dominated by the will to autonomy, to which he gave the
most audacious titanic expression in the idea of the world-
creative and self-creative Ego.2, Hamann alore—that solitary
thinker who dared to make the Bible the starting-point of his
thinking—as he brooded long over human language and its
‘relation to reason, began to perceive thefundamental
scrip-
tural idea of the Image ofGod,
and of the opposition which_
of reason. Once more
itcontainstoall ideas of the autonomy
he knew that the human ‘I’ has its origin in the divine ‘Thou,’
and in the Divine Word, and that the idea of autonomy is its
1 It is true of course that the obscurity of the concept of the ‘intelligible
ego’ and the ambiguity of the meaning of the relation between empirical
(human) and transcendental or pure reason has always been pointed out
(cf. Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel; Sannwald, Der Begriff der Dialektik und die
Anthropologie). But this obscurity is not accidental; it is inherent in the
principle of transcendental philosophy itself. Whether critical Idealism
is possible upon the basis of the belief in the Creation may perhaps still
be an open question. But wherever the idea of Creation is based upon
philosophical argument (as for instance recently in the Gifford lectures
of the Archbishop of York, Nature, Man and God, by W. Temple), either the
idea of Creation or the rational process of proof is not used strictly enough.
2 To how great an extent this kind of Ego-God philosophy is active
within the Idealism of the present day—even if it does not venture to
express itself quite so plainly as Fichte—comes out in the following passage
from Hermann Schwarz, quoted by Sannwald: ‘The remote infinity
disappeared from him (Fichte), that spiritual infinity arises within our-
selves. The name for this spirituality we may choose as we will, so long as
we are conscious of this one thing: it is as much more than our empirical
Ego as the heaven is higher than the earth. Most people may call it God,
or eternal Life, or infinite consciousness . . . the Supra-Ego within us’
(loc. cit., p. 114).
IOI
 MAN IN REVOLT

own tragic and sinful ‘confusion of reason with itself.’ Through

Kierkegaard we have learned to know Hamann’s thought, and
to re-interpret it in its connexion with Scriptural revelation.
4. THE IMAGO DEI AND THE BEING OF MAN
In him _
Man may, be described as an hierarchical system.
e
he should
there is an ‘above’ and a ‘below’; hence as a whol
from above, and then downwards; not vice
be understood
versa, On this point common sense, idealistic Humanism and
(the Christian faith agree. Difference of opinion only arises
e nature of this ‘above.’ Idealism
ta guise ea ee

‘when we astry
ereto definthe
privateer
bar aoset ; — ; > i raceme ile
the Divine Reason in which man participates; the
bei
osits it
Christianingfaith
. ‘challeng posits it as the Word of God, that self-bestowing,
Word, in Whom man as man has his ground.
- The first thing said about man in the Bible is that his relation
to God is like that of a picture to its model. Man must first
of all be defined theologically ;only then may the philosopher,
the psychologist and the biologist make their statements. The
fact that man is what he is is not a merely human but a
he is not
‘theological’ concern; SS be understoo
ea toO. amaceenta d in himself,
yeieonemieenitncn SI AEHESAI™
nor from that reason which 1s in him. He can be understood
‘only in the light of that which stands ‘over against’ him, the
onnothis reason, is the,
to God,
Word of hisCreator. His relati
~ summit d, in the hierarchy;
highest point
themi
it_of the pyra
this is the way in which man is built, and this is how man
cma tasale amiisahMdA ZR, ce

can be understood. Reason is, so to speak, only the organ

of man’s relation to God, as the soul is the organ of the reason,
and the material body is the organ of the soul. The summit
of man, purely from the point of view of man, is the ‘I-Self.’
The ‘I-Self,’ however, is what it is, and what it ought to be,
through the Divine “Thou.’
'Man’s relation to Godis not to be understood from the |
oint of view. of reason, but reason is to be understood from !
tion to God.| Responsibility _
| }the point of view of man’s relation.
ae

_ is not an attribute, or.an.enrichment.of the rational man, but _

i

from the very outset reason. is directed towards the perception. \

\

Sears

_of the Divine Word. It is—so to say—the material, the sub- |

stratum of man’s relation to God. Becau creates_man__
_God se
as one who can hear His call and can answer it, He also |
NAREHENE ASAI ONT AAEM i bende CARE Hl
Ne ahahNA POSUERE ete Th GI NRE
Reese sR see KAR NANA AAR

TO2
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI
See _

creates him as a rational | being. The reason is the organ of

erception, but then
meaning of this organ, its final ‘Whence’,
and Whither,” that which determines its structure, is the Word
“of God.
¢ Because in creating man God creates one who stands
overagainst’ Himself, one to whom He wills to impart Him-
self, He creates man as a rational creature, as a being who is
able to receive His Word. Hence the concept of the Logos is
the highest and final conception which even the reason alien-.
ated from the Word of Godiis able to conceive. The reason is
so prepared and disposed for the perception of the Word of |
God, and man’s relation with God is so deeply implanted,
that even in his godlessness the reason must conceive God—
although certainly a rational deity, who is not the Living
God; for we cannot conceive the Living God; we can only
perceive Him in His Word. The ‘metaphysical idea Of the.
~ Logos may be described as an impotent and strained attempt
of a mutilated organ to fulfil its function, which, owing to its
mutilated condition, it can no longer fulfil.:
Thus we ought not to understand man, who has been —
created inthe Image of God, as ‘of a rationalenna
nature, T
like.‘unto.
God—to which the peeaecaa iene hisrelation to God,
isadded, as something secondary; no, we should “understand
man as one created by God ‘overr against’ ‘Himself, asa creature etapa?

to
whom He imparts Himself ‘through FHis Word, whom tithere-_ EOP,
ae He endows with reason asthe organ for the rec
receeption oiof
the€ Word.
Word. But because ansneiesasnseacsius
ucnnyusssecnipmeien this call ofasisiaieeiata
God is;first‘of all an act
ofself-communication, an act of the Divine -love, and not ‘first
of all a demand,a law, thé “Primitive State,” even if it isnot __
_anhistorical fact, should be ‘understood primarily not as an
¢
~ obligation
igation ‘but
but <as a form of being. Being “according to
CTRL CALE I, TDD
to“the
LEA PID RL LIL IEEE I eens t

1 The ultra-Reformation theology, which does not allow for a relation

between the Aumanum and man’s relation with God, cannot even concede
a fundamentum in re to the speculative idea of God. But precisely from this
point of view does the connexion of the deus nudus (absolutus), the wrath of
God, the law and the speculative knowledge of God become plain in
Luther (cf. Th. Harnack, op. cit., pp. 84 ff.). The God to Whom one
comes by way of speculative immanentism is always—whether we know
this or not—the deus nudus, the wrathful God, to Whom the ‘majesty of
the creature is intolerable.’ Both the Divine Thou and the human I are
swallowed up in an abstract conception of the All-One,
103
 MAN IN REVOLT

| apace Dei
| is a divine gift, it.is.communicated. life, not. merely
/_an aim. Seen_from. a negative point of view: “that‘from vwhich’
)sin turns away is not ‘merely a demand, but a God-given being.
| The life originally given to man‘is being in the love of God. |
. This gift, not merely a divine task, is prior to our empirical
‘ sinful existence. Human existence wasSeanoriginally disposed for
gift,,not for meeting
seme n ‘obligation by ee
|the _receptioon_ of this gift
“means of our own. OWE1 efforts. Tt is thus that we come to under-
stand ourselvesonce more—our being according to the Imago
Dei—in the light of the New Testament, since we are renewed
unto this image, through the Word which gives, through the
self-sacrificing love of God, through a purely receptive faith.
Since then the gift comes first, and not the task—‘Let us
love Him ‘because He first loved us’—the original, God- created
1 to be ‘understood. as _an_ existence in love, as a
SAMIR AR

state ‘of lifeis

a ‘first man’ of
4 _justitia originalis.J1t js not that we think thatany time—this idea
this type actually ever lived anywhere at
is merely the historical husk concealing the kernel of the
Biblical message—but this original righteousn ess—being in the
love of God who gives and who loves us first—is that for which
God creates man. When man turns away from this divine gift,
he turns away not merely from a task, a destiny, an aim
which is to be attained by our own efforts, but from the gift
of God. Life as God gives it is existence in His love; if this is
not the character of man’s actual empirical life, the fault lies
not with God but with man.
Thus the original nature of man_is being in the love of NEAR A

God, the fulfilment of responsible being, the ‘responsibility

Ct RR NSE SSS Ce

which comes not from _a demand but from a gift, not from
Reels pee IR HR na AL Rl

the law but from grace, from generous love, and itself consists
in responsive love. From the point of view of God this isHis
Intention for human life, and this is the reason for which He
created it. The human ‘character _oof existence consists in the
very factth
that. itis‘related to) God, and it
indeed iin the reception
of man’s
of the divine‘love. The Reformers defended this truth
fulfilment in God, and its responsive character when they
insisted that the Imago Dei, which determines the nature of
man, is to be understood as justitia originalis and not as, reason
freedom or creative capacity. Man is to be understood fon)
\ 104
 ‘THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI
os

the oint of view of his being-in-God, ESA

of his derivation
Ne NE! HBMEENA RE BT
TINNED) HRT |

from God, and not.in_ the light ofhis own efforts and
" eee memeeaeeeat i ie ee

achievements. ——
What, then, is the positionofthat being of man which even
the godless man, who has turned away from God, sinful,
“fallen man—man, possesses? irical sphere,
that is, in_the empall
mae Js towhich,
‘we al belong—still From that I have said already
it isevide ntFwe must abandon the dubio
that us
idea of a.
|‘relic’ ofthe Jmago, which was introduced by the Reformers.)
For it says both too much and too little; too much, because
it seems to suggest that there is a sphere in human existence |
which is not affected by sin; and too little, because it does
not take into account the fact that man—precisely in his sin—
bears witness to his original relation with God, that also, and
particularly in sin, he manifests his ‘theological’ nature, as
one who ‘stands before God,’ and is related to God. We ought }
to say
rather that the original stateof life,the jusilia crgingl |
hhas been completely Iost—ow in point of
ingtosin—and that
not living
fact_man_is loving inaccordance with the love of God;
man is not God who ‘first loved’ him; yetlthe ‘theo- |
logical’ structure of human existence, as it has been created”
bythe the Creator, ©not annihi latof
bythehostility edmanto” i Seren AR tee

will of the Creator, although it is perverted in its operation. |

as a sinner man can only beundersto
Even odof|
in the light
the originaltoImage of God, namely, as one who is living in
it. Let us not forget that when we speak of an —
opposition
‘Image of God’ and of its ‘destruction’ we are speaking figura-
tively,y)So far as clear-cut ideas are possible in this realm, |
what we can” say is this: man’srelatiwith on God, which
determineshis whole being, has not been destroyed by sin, _
d. Man does not cease to be thebeing —
God, but his responsibility has been | |
_ “who is responsible t
being-un
t9.a statethis ofwhole der
PHM RITIS

lievedaw, From of
astat g-in-love ofGod.|But
beeinr.
the wrath
a life unde question
can only be fully treated in the ‘context of the next chapter.
5. COMMUNITY IN THE CONCRETE
Responsibility-in-love first becomes real in man’s relation
, alongside the. first commandment
with hisfellow-menFor
105
 MAN IN. REVOLT

_of Miran
the innelove of God there is
i a second which is ‘like unto it?}—
“a second and” yet not a second—the love of man. Here tas,
ee geen, payPensieetonay a

“however, ‘itis not the “commandment which ‘comes first,

‘thee gift; the fact of the Divine ‘Thou’ means that the —
‘Thou’ is also given to man as the possibilityof]
his_selfhood.
fan. “cannot. “be _man_ ‘by. Tthimself’;
OSCE A Ram
he can only be man
SOOM AR
in
community. For love can only ‘operate in community, and
WHERE OT EDGR
only in this operation of love is man human.? Thehuman
‘Thou’ is not an accident.of human existence, something which
gives to_his present human existence a new content and rich-
nttiSO ATONE
\
ness; but it is that which conditions his human_ existence.
Only if he is_ loving can he be truly man..This, means, the. Seas
ORNs sie
discovery. of a new. idea of humanity, which, doesSnot, find, the.
_distinctively human element, the core of humanity, |in the
ISRNGAAy saan 9 Pemaerstung iN, pesuiltteab HEAOAVAHE heGoh A iyiSeeietnces KA cea SSFeA Ut

an |
creative or perceptive reason, but in community, as,the fulfil-
Ee ane sendin ty Pai SUNK EL Warten setae igre piace canara

_ ment of respons bty “Tove is the fulfilling of the Law’’—not

RASA Sts

merely of the moral law, but of the law of life. Human life is
characterized .as human, not by its attainments in the realm
of reason, but by the union of human beings in love. That is
the content of human existence, which is in accordance with
man’s original divine destiny, ae is.an earthly reflection of_
_ the divine nature itself, ‘In Himself? the Triune God 1s love;
in His relation to the world He is Creator. Therefore He.
ahs Himself in His Incarnation, not as creative genius, “but
_perfect “Tove; in the freeman we perceive both the
rere nature of God and the reflected original nature of
man. True community is the ground and the content of
Christian ‘humanity’; it, is fundamentally different from that
fh
‘| of individualistic humanism.‘ Where man is regarded as a (Boren mermintiterioat his ee
BS a
UY
rational ssa as a participatorin the one reason, hishumanity
URS ieee gnorctaas

consists in his rational thought and activity. “Whether in so

bean agatha lige Ltn etre Dean rm Tag yn QS SL

doing aeremains pune or not is of no importance. The Stoic AAO

‘sage aswellas the Platonic contemplator of Ideas is self
sufficient. The ae es other human beings exist may perhaps
1 Matt. xxii. 39.
2 Hence rationalism, even in its speculative idealistic form, is necessarily
individualistic or abstractly universalistic; in both instances it has no
“Thou.”
* Rom, xiii, 10; Matt. xxii. 40. 4 Cf. below pp. 324 ff.
106
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

lead him to undertake a task of political ethics or of philan-

thropic obligation.

6. THE ‘THOU’ AS THE BOUNDARY

In the Christian_conception, however, community is not Peel ne)

only a concrete | working ‘out of man’s destiny; |

ItJS also the
‘concrete limitation ofthe‘I,’ The Divine ‘Thow’ is not con-
fronted by a single human ‘I’—for if this were so, such a self
would not be responsible, a being with genuine ties—but by
a number of selves who recognize that the bond which unites
them with God also unites them with one another. As the |
Creator gives to man the humanity of his life in community, ~
in love, so also He assigns to him his limitations in his con-
nexion ‘swith others. From the outset the human ‘I’ is limited
by a concrete ‘Thou,’ and only so does it become a conc
concretely
_responsible Self. The fact that thisisso rules out both the self-
sufficiency and the arrogance of the autonomous reason.
The self which understands itself as autonomous reason, gusset for
ay 1
Once it
ithas
has ‘discovered’
ciscoveres its divine nature, has 1
Dre
no limits, for no
AE ROOTS WN A Br SAM RRH TRIES ae cet ienacY

gue
one seins
Snesover
over against’
any it. Hence too the boundary "between
poo
itGod
and fades away. This individualism leads not only to,
earshy icto metaphysical m andto self--deification ;.
to
that titanic of
idea the self which has been most strongly
expressed in‘the West by Fichte, which, however, in all its
intensity could only be worked out to its extremest limits in,
the East. There the self does not kno ‘itself ‘ascreated being,
henceitknows neither rrespponsibili ty or limitation. No other
human or divine; fan-
being sstands ‘over against’ it,either|
tastic asthis may sound to our realistic Western ears, it is: the
‘In its
Divine Self. The rationalistic West, however, precisely in grt ne Rael, Ayriimenn

this En
SEW AREESED TAT rti
at
at Teast one element of
sisahecatia
rationalism, has preserved
ee

a REN ES Cad spe eA SEH MES

eS HE ATEAAcee
the deifica ion of reason,
r
ivinnyngoapernend ht
‘the un- Pro erm etyTt

toitbe
claim of reasonAah
bounded ¢ one
recognized
EAE eA ds
as
<PADDED RN Aram CoA
reme.
valid and su Som
acne

7. THE BODY AND THE WORLD

Yet again, however, in the Christian truth concerning man’s

origin, man is given a possibility of self-expression whichis at
laced
the same _time pl: within certain de ite lim s. The
material body is given to man, with his ‘actual responsible
107
 MAN IN REVOLT

self-determination, in order that it may be quite plain that

he is a ‘creature,’ and that he may be aware of his ‘creaturely’
character. The body is given that he may come into contact_
with the world, empirically, and also that he may shape the _
world; the body has been, set_as. the _creaturely boundary of
the“individual between. “himself"and tthe Creator, _and _ also
between himself ‘and other. r individuals, According to the >
anthropology of the Bible, man is notonly of this world, but
he is also a bit of this world, ‘dust of the ground.”! In spite
of the vehement protest made by Fichte, he is a localized
self, bound to a definite spot in this world of time and space.
His corporeal nature ought tomake him aware of his distance
Creator ‘Spirit, and c‘of the fact of his“dependence <
on
her human beings, on. the ‘Thou.’ ~The clearest expression
“of this bond by means of the body iis: ‘procreation and birth.
‘Here, in so far as he does not in his abstractions transcend
reality, man experiences the fact that his life is bound up with
and conditioned by‘the existence of other human beings. He ~
“experiences it also in his bodily nature and in the way in
which his mind and spirit are connected with his body. But
in this he experiences notonly alimitation but also |his creative
capacity. Through | the body heshapes matter, and in thus
shaping it he is imitating the Creator. As a physical shaperof
matter he is able.to.manifest his spirit in a reflected _manner,
n
“Just as the Creator does in His creation.
ie

- 8. THE CITIZEN OF TWO WORLDS

From this point of view there is one final thing to be said.
accra to his origin man is a being composed of body
“and spirit; hebelongs to
to two ‘spheres of being. In two waysCnr
Tareesaree rare fed

he has a share>in,the DivineSpirit: ‘through the fact thatke

Nee ANC
he.
‘springsfrom. ¢God __and that, be Js.made for God. ‘This is is not.
meant, owever, in n the sense inwhich it is understood in
speculative rauonalisnn that is, as substantial, as particula Dez,?
ey
mu Geniagy.
2 The account in the story of the Creation (Gen, ii. 7) of the divine
in-breathing of the breath of life was of course from the time of Philo a
favourite occasion for the idealistic allegorization of the Bible. Here the
Bible seemed to come into contact with the fundamental idea of ancient
108
 -1

yur 2 Rt THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI ~~

ne as functional, in the sense of dependence and responsi-

ility. ‘But through od’s giving
he has a share inthe life
of
God. He is so created that he can perceive God’s eternal
Word, and can answer it as the reason which perceives, and
as a self-determining will. The false element in the definition
of rationalism and _Idealism 1s not “the | fact.‘that man is a
rational being and can determine himself, but their error con-
sists in saying that he is an.autonomous “rational being, and that
he of at determines his.own life. The fundamental error’
of the non-Christian doctrine of Reason is this: it implies
reason without anyone to perceive, self-determination without
any Divine determination, an irresponsible rational self with-
out any other being ‘over against’ it.
NOE
Through this participation in the divine life and in spiritual
existence man, for his part,
eens
nds
i Wa Z
‘over against’ th
Sala area
the
1e world, as ee TeNRE M IE ot

its master—in accordance with the divine appointment. ! As

“@ rational being who is able to think about that which presents
itself to his consciousness, man is able to look at the world
from a distance, with the detachment of an outside observer ;
goer eet he
he isable’ to know it, and. through this knowledge he iis able_
‘to master it. This oes not take place in
Garena at a ARI
i the sense in which —
God does so, as absolute, sovereign Lord, but in a limited,
imitative manner, in a mee sense. But this man can do,
and this is ee
his destin
iny
ny
assigned him by the Creator, just as
nomen 2

See i oS a IA season
responsibilityfor love is his destiny so far as hisfellow-man iis
concerned.
Bie
AAS ess O In this position of spiritual domination man “is.
Dae ee a oe CEES aR UIA De i ba ede grPUL No neta
something other than the world, Setar
TLC PANE IEE Gl NOT eR PEL
OPBORE
aare Me NETO
being,
SARIS
|
and this is why hecreates within it something which is other |
than the world, namely, culture the work of the mind and )|
it casita ret
spirit. He is a citizen of two|
“worlds, a being who stands mid- |
way between two spheres, in ‘virtue of his divine destiny. —
Thereforeitis not ——. when he takes a position above
the world. He ought to do so, and he may do so—so long as
Humanism, participation in the divine spirit (particula Dei) or the Nous.
Doubtless this personal in-breathing indicates a special nearness of God to
the man whom He has created (cf. Eichrodt, op. cit., p. 99); but there is
not the remotest connexion between this Hebrew idea and that spirit-
immanence of the Greek philosophers. Cf. Calvin on this passage, opp.
23, 35: it is life as a whole which man thus receives.
1 Gen. i. 26, 28; Psa. viii. 7 ff.
109
 MAN IN REVOLT

all this takes place within the limits which have been appointed
‘him, and he himself remains aware of his ‘creaturely’ char-
_acter. He may know that he stands above other created beings,
_ in virtue of his mind and spirit; he may know |therefore that hans

_he is-a higher-creature, the crown of creation,

. on, although as a
“corporeal being he is a ‘mammal, “without any specially dis-
“tinctivecharacter, His distinctiveness as a physical beingrefers_
only tto)that“which. makes him capable of expressing his mind
inn ef effectiveway, ‘and,
and, by
by
b means of his ‘spirit, to rule;+; or to
/ that which is Terviceable to his responsible relation to his
| fellow-creature.|In several other relations man is not the
“crown of creation, but rather he is heavily handicapped. And
why should he not be? His distinctiveness is not based upon
the power of his muscles_0or the acuteness_of his sense-organs,
Se aa
‘butLupon tthe factthat he
be partiesin the lifeof 2 SeatGod’Sssid

unobserved by ‘thethinkers i
mi1 the ancient world. 1 Their per-
éeption of and insistence on ‘this fact is the common ground
of the principle of humanity both in Christian thought and
in the thought of antiquity ; but its basis and its limitation are
utterly different. It is precisely this perception of being some-
thing higher and_“distinctive ‘which. serves, the speculative 2
_philosopher as.
as the.‘starting--point of his concept of the autono-
mous reason, . Conversely, Idealistic Humanism (both ancient
and modern) regards the corporeal nature of man as the
partie honteuse, indeed as a ‘prison’ which is incompatible with
the spiritual nature of man. To it the body is a kind of survival
—whatever one may do with its instincts, or however one
may use them, so far as this is possible, for self-glorification!
The idea that the body could be an instrument to do the will
of God is an idea which is as alien to this mode of thought as
it is natural to the thought of the Bible.”
Q. THE NEW DOCTRINE AND THE ANCIENT DOCTRINE

At_two_points..we have been obliged. to..criticize, the tradi-

tional doctrine of the Jmago_ and the Primitive State. ‘The first
2° OR Appendix V, On the ancient iden of Humanity (p. 547).
2 Rom. xii. 1.
TIO
 THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

point is concerned with the historical form of the doctrine.

DREN ATE

t is not some human being who happened to live in the far-

off and dim ages of pre- history who is the Adam created in
the Image of God}; it is you, andme,and everybody. ‘The
Primitive State is 3not_ an. historical |
perl
period, but an historical
moment, the moment «
of the:Divinely ¢created origin, |
which we ~“*
onl ‘know in in connexion1with its
itcontrast, with sin. The. question —
of the historical originss of humanity
hum le
feeds into a ‘quite different.
Giiticaeeatein which there is no hope of finding an answer to
our question. Pre-historic man, whoever he may have been,
has no closer relation to Adam than any of the rest of us.
The question of the ‘first man’ leads us into the impenetrable
obscurity of palaeontology, of which all that is clear is that
from the theological point of view it contains nothing to guide
us on this point.1 We must face this quite seriously; the fact
that in so doing we not only do justice to the scientific -con-
science, but also to the fundamental Biblical view of the
responsible human being, will come out still more clearly in
the next chapter.
The second point is still more important. The fact that even
the sinful and fallen man is still ahuman being Ted ancient |
eology
ttheol tOo regard thi
this _appareent ly‘neutral
tral hLummanity yas
« ;the
ar stinctively
ly“human
I nz
nature, and to ‘interpret t this in
i ‘the“Spirit
reek —— as a rational nature.
1 It is this rationalism
= naturalism which dominates the whole history of theology,
which we contest. There is no nature of man as man, to be
understood first of callaas “rational, no human 3nat ure ‘which
peanneer =e
ioe

is to be understood a apart ‘t from “man’s.

s relation. to.“God, to
DIS SEER RRL “may th eres “tea
“which man’s relation to Go may the. en be"added aas super shea aS

nature... istinction between imago "and similitudo is bad

exegesis. The whole ‘nature’ of man is supernatural—that of
the sinner no less than that of the redeemed. Man is funda-
mentally misunderstood when, by a method of subtraction,
that which is common to fallen man and to man as originally
created is contrasted as ‘nature’ with that which has been
lost as ‘supernature.’
The Reformers fought against this error by teaching that _
1
the whole _nature of man—andidnothing «else—is corrupt, and
CF ‘Chap. 17.
II
 MAN IN REVOLT

that this original nature is identical with communion with_.

¢
God, with thejustitiaoriginalis. But thee _pseudo--historical doc-
0 “the Primitive.=State prevented the>fullTesult of. their
‘trine of
p
revolutionary ‘perception eing _ gained. “Because they ‘did
ynfifrom bein
not venture to identify us with the original Adam, they did
not know how to relate the undeniable humanum of fallen man
to the imago, which was supposed to have been lost; hence on
the one hand they went back to the rationalistic idea of the
animal rationale, and on the other hand they introduced the
confusing concept of the ‘relic’ of the Jmago, without being
able to unite both with each other, and with the original
conception of the lost Jmago. The abandonment of the his-
torical character_of the ‘Adam’ “narrative alone made possible
for usthe ‘logical. carrying through of the strictly theological,
‘because actual. and_personalistic_ concept of the Jmago, and
in_so doing tto think through to its conclusion the Biblical
‘and Reformation idea of man as created in the ‘Image ‘ofGod," aes Se,

"whose ;¢
destiny 1
wee know ‘through
h Jesus ‘Christ. alone.”

10. RELIGIOUS OR RATIONALISTIC MYTHOLOGY?

So long as the doctrine of the Primitive State was burdened
with the Adam narrative, rationalistic criticism could make
short work of it. The impossible |historical form concealed the
true contradiction : ‘between an understanding |of.man “as due
0 the |
to Word of God. ‘and an tunderstanding of man from the
joint of view of the autonomous reason. Seen from the ‘stand- |
‘point of the autonomous reason, every strictly theological
doctrine, that is, every doctrine which takes into account the
Word of God as the Word from ‘over against’ man, must be
condemned as ‘mythological.’ For if the human reason with
its ‘divine’ character is the highest court of appeal, how can
the Christian doctrine be other than a reversal of truth, an
anthropomorphism projected into the transcendent sphere?
The logical result of this anthropomorphic idea of God is then,
so runs the conclusion, the theomorphic idea of man, in con-
sequence of which there lies the further necessity for a revela-
tion, and thus the necessity for a mythology..
So long as the idea of the autonomous reason is maintained,
it is impossible to escape from the logic of this idea. Every
II2
 '

THE ORIGIN: THE IMAGO DEI

. time the frontier of that which can be attained by reason

Is exceeded, it must appear
ppear
mythology,
to
to be mythology, or to use the
language. onKant,extravagance..,] But JKant. himself never got
rid of this ‘extravagance’; the simple Christian within him
was always wrestling with “the
t transcendental philosopher,
and this struggle was still going on in his later works which
were published after his death. At many points in his theo-
retical philosophy, in the KA7itik der reinen Vernunft; above all,
in his reflection on the problem of responsibility, he came to
the extreme limits of his rationalistic doctrine. Once he stepped
over this boundary, namely, where without taking into con-
sideration the postulates of the doctrine of autonomy he
examined the phenomenon of responsibility in its most critical
form, in the form of evil. In his doctrine of radical evil, amid
the protests of his contemporaries, he abandoned the Idealistic
line of thought and went part of the way with the Bible.
Then, however, he turns back resolutely; he cannot and_will
not renounce the claim of the autonomous 1re h ideaof
e son,_ the SOS airy aRRTER RANI
the
the intelligible. human |
|being as
as our. real. self. “Such :aSurrender
su —
indeed is not to be. achieved
>d by way ofthought.”Thisissurrender
would be what in1 the New Ne Testament i1s called |‘Rep entance’:
AiG dtc NAN TAREE AEST
AES HANA AEN
the se which A a CSAceases to be ‘its own 1 judge, | and Tecognizes t ie
Judge who is above and ‘beyond ‘himself, At this point alone,
aN
ercsNotaS

DRY ANSP KAAS

and this means once again in the ‘sphere. of real responsibility,
the question is decided which of the two is mythology: the
Christian thought which is derived from the Word of God, or
the Greek, which deifies the human reason.
1 On this point cf. my book, Religionsphilosophie protestantischer Theologie
in Baumler’s Handbuch der Philosophie, pp. 25 ff.

113
 pare CHAPTER VI
THE CONTRADICTION: THE DESTRUCTION OF
THE IMAGE OF GOD
|
j
I. THE PROBLEM: THE CONTRADICTION

|
|

Tur Christian message of the reconciliation and redemption

of mankind contains, as its negative presupposition, the doc-
trine that man, who has been created in the image of God
— be
himself inopposition
has set origin
to hiseneies ai Ramee
,
and that it is this
aR: i pieilanalagiaay enpappegeanentl
imgpeaer
Opposition which determines the contradiction in his nature,
SR ee
a ORGRSIOO

eg |ature.
ee ALN

n true nature and his actual, empirical

NSISHts MO
SE A ANAM ge semen

the conflict betweehis

SES meer een getirscoe
en

n truth—
of this only disclosed
iswhich
es Ss

In the perceptio
i yt 5

to those who believe

\ -

in
)

God’s Word through Jesus Christ—

y/
‘

j the Christian doctrine maintains that it is the only realistic

eky
y a j doctrine of man, that is, the only one which. is in touch with
j
reality, the only one which understands and explains man
\_aright.1
Just_as everyone knows something of the higher and_dis-
tinctive element _in_man—even the cynic—so_also everyone
knows something of the contradictionin _man—even the
‘idealistic mystic. The thesis that man is identical with the
Deity, or that his nature is divine, cannot be made plausible {1
to anyone without certain reservations which take some |
account of the contradiction in human nature. The mystic is
forced to admit that man is only identical with Deity, or
divine, in the ‘depths of his being,’ in his ‘real’ nature, which
|
has somehow become unreal, or concealed, or at least appears | te

to be so.\On the other hand, the sceptic is embarrassed by

the ‘higher’ element in man when it appears in a negative
form, as a sign of conflict, as, for instance, an accusing con-
science. In romantic Pantheism the contradiction comes out

1 In his otherwise most informing article on ‘the Question of Theological

Anthropology’ (in the work, Um Kirche und Lehre, pp. 78 ff.) K. F. Schumann
confuses anthropology as a statement about myself with the statement as
one which is made by me myself (p. 89); hence he maintains that what
preaching (or the Bible) says decisively about man is not an anthropological
statement, but Christological, pneumatic, theological anthropology.
114
 i

THE CONTRADICTION

in all that is opposed as the enemy of immediacy; in the mind

as the adversary of the soul,! in intellectualistic reflection
which destroys naiveté, and the like. Gommon sense, how: _,
ever, is simply aware contradic
of the fact ofn
inthetio evil,
~~ “which it does not to deny, but is unato
attempt explain.?
ble
In point of fact, evil is the open wound where the disease
breaks out and can no longer be concealed. Evil, however, at
least in practical life—especially when one has to suffer from
it—is recognized by everyone, even if denied in theory. The:
contrast between good and evil, different as the content may wd.
be, which will be given to these two concepts, is a perception” —
common to all human beings and to all races. Even the
content of these ideas, as soon as one examines the various
interpretations more closely, is comparatively a common one:
good _is what furthers life; is what
bad only corruptof
hinders,which
destroys life. But ‘good’ or ‘evil’ mean that furthers
Bre ne OEthe idea of respon-Ee >, ag 55
or destroys life where it is combined with misfI LEI RIN ase eee ee
oe
ortune (Ubel)
Evil (das Bése) js different from
sib lity, Evil "— 2
evilisthe destructive action of a responsible being. Thus evil <<"
is the negative “aspect of responsibility. Here—in_resp onsi-
bility—the contradiction becomes evident.
of the
as soon as we try to givea more exactdefinition
But
origin and the nature of this contradiction which comes out
in evil,opinions become very confused. Some maintain that
rofour nature,
the contradiction springs from the dual charactemind;
that is, the fact that we areboth body and or it is with earthly-
supposed to be due to our fatal entanglement

1 L. Klages, Der Geist als Widersacher der Scele; Bergson, Evolution créatrice
and Iniroduction a la métaphysique.
2 Cf. what Heidegger has to say about ‘Uneigentlichkeit’ and guilt in
Sein und Zeit (pp. 280 ff.). Here in particular we see what was said above:
on guilt are
the value and the limit of value of Heidegger’s observations
precisely those of the sensus communis. (Cf. Translator’s Note on p. 19.)
t, where,
8 Cf. Cathrein, Die Einheit des sittlichen Bewusstseins der Menschhei
apart from the Catholic interpret ation, there is a mass of anthropo-
quite
logical material for evidence.
without a moral
4 Ubel, almost= misfortune or disaster. It is ‘evil?
a ‘defect’ or ‘imperfe ction’ ; it is
element; it contains the idea of ‘evil’ as
, because ‘evil’ (in this sense) is not regarde d as due to the
partly negative
individual.— Translator.
115
 MAN IN REVOLT

cosmic existence; or it is a tragic Fate, due to the will of

supernatural forces;. or it is the act of the will determined
by the sense-nature; or it is the result of man’s animal nature
which has not:yet_ been overcome emageme
by culture and civilization
—the natural expression of primitive human nature, which is"
still undeveloped.* In all these ‘explanations’ the attempt is
made to derive evil from a kind offate, and. thus to relieve
mann_of
of responsibility for hissexistence, In
In_contrast to) all
all these
views isthe purely moral ‘theory, “namely, that evil has no
other
other ori
origin than the fi
free willof nman, who is able to decide
equally well for evil as forgood.Here
>tl
the
e
whole responsibility _
for evil is ascribed to man, without any attempt to explain
how it comes to pass that sometimes he decides for evil
and at other times for good. Thus we are confronted by
the fact that in the one instance
the deep cleavage in the
nature of man is recognized but_responsibility forit is_dis-_
is
claimed, while in the othercase, although|responsibilit
sibilityis
admitted, the cleavage is denied. Evidently it is not possible
for us tovisualize at the same time both the fact of the fatal
cleavage in human nature and the fact of full responsibility.
The Biblical vever, Shows usbothinone, since_
it tells us that “we. are sinners, that means human beings who
who
not only sin now and. then, occasionally—that is,
i every time
we do not do the good—but whose very beingis defined as
sin; but this also means human bei ngs who are fully respon- _
siblefor all the evil they do, and fo | the evil in their nature as
well.” "Thus the Biblical revelation eit ‘the contradiction
1 On all these theories (as well as on the whole chapter) of evil, cf. the
work—hitherto unsurpassed—of J. Miiller, Christliche Lehre von der Siinde,
2 vols., 1838-44, 18778.
2 Possibly there is significance in the fact that both the Old Testament
and the teaching of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels always speak of sin (or,
more correctly, of sins) in the sense of act, and scarcely ever in the sense of
state of being. Sin is rebellion, disobedience, disloyalty towards God and
the transgression of His commands. Even where, as in the story of the Fall
and in the parable of the Prodigal Son, sin is the subject, it is always
presented to us in the form of a story, that is, sin is shown us as act. Only
against this background can the Johannine, and still more the Pauline,
doctrine of sin be rightly understood, in which sin is mainly spoken of in
the singular, as a state of being, as a force which dominates man. This
deeper view is really deeper only if the character of sin as act has been
116
 THE CONTRADICTION
in man’s being to be seen without weakening it; at the same
e e e e e

Fan too it allows the whole responsibility in action to be seen AL

fe
a

without weakening it.1 It

It recognizes the fatal sense of the.
) inevitable, the sense of Fate in eyvil; iit calls-
us ‘slaves of sin,’
|
who have no free choicePERERAnot TE alk
to commit
mi sinners; but it ‘also reco gnizes man’s
sin or ‘notto
acl Waals vibabPaanis dada

an’s absolute.
eer
tto be
responsibility, —
é
_and does not attemptto_ascribe it to some impersonal force ie
‘in the form of a destiny outside cour ownn will. It conceives sin, . |
| the contradiction, wholly ontologically, so that the whole
nature of the individual human being, as well as the numerical ~)
. totality of all human beings, is affected by it, and it is quite
impossible to isolate the individual moment, or act, or indi- _‘
. vidual human being; at the same time it conceives it as wholly
personal and deliberate, so that nothing neutral, no natural
' element, is admitted as a ground of explanation. It defines the
| contradiction in ontological terms, to such an extent that the
_ whole character of human existence, even that which lies far
_ removed from the moral sphere, is affected by it, and again it
| defines it so personally that it consists simply in a personal
relation, namely, in the relation between God and myself,
| which works out in my relation to my fellow-man. This
| paradox, which cannot be grasped by thought, shows “atself-in —*
faith as
as the:
the actual condition of man, which man. cannot. per ~~
Saar aieueeiatienane melons

ceive just_because he is so deeply entangled iin it. It is of sin—<**

in this sensethat Luther speaks when he says that it is ‘such
a deep and evil corruption of nature that no reason under-
stands it, but that it must be believed from the revelation of
an
secured; because unless this is done the personal knowledge of sin is
replaced by an impersonal metaphysic of sin—however profound this may
be—and this has actually been the case in the ecclesiastical doctrine of
Original Sin. The Augustinian scholastic distinction between sin as actus
and as habitus is unscriptural. Sin, even as Original Sin, is always actus,
even if it is not a momentary act which can be isolated, but a wholly
personal act, an act which determines the being of the person as a whole.
Cf. below p. 148. And also on this point the word dyuaptia in Kittel’s
Worterbuch.
1 Even J. Gerhard, who as a rule does not hesitate to use very crude
naturalistic concepts to describe Original Sin (see p. 121 note), says: ‘ita
cohaerent peccatum originale et actualia, ut non facile sit homini contentioso ostendere
punctum mathematicum, in quo distinguantur’ (op. cit., v. 17).
117
 ee MAN IN REVOLT

the Scriptures.’ In this view that which every man recognizes

asa| symptom, as the open eruption
rely as
as ‘evil’ is regarded nmere
of the ‘sickness unto death,’ while it unveils the source of the
the difference
self w ich lies behind
| disease, the contradiction itsé
Pe ai-between good and evil. The contradiction—this is obvious
| from what has already been said—is not simply ‘something
contradictory’ in man, but it is a contradiction of the whole_ fuera ens

man divis
against 1 the, whole. man, aa division “within 1man. himself.
| |
Ae nmiarmiecnnes tec!

And
And this d this division, if what refs— said ; about “man s
man’s origin
origin bbe
correct, can only consist in the fact thatman, who was origin-_
an created to eote in_accordance wi ith‘the d divine deter-
\ ination, has decided| against this determir
all
RAMEN TRON RPAPERDeere

1,,SO that, just

vas the original “determination gave him his” fue life, this
Pe
~.. hostility to it robs him of his true life, and allows him to fall
r a prey to an unreal life. It is with this contradiction to his true
origin, which becomes a kind of fate which man has brought
“co upon himself by his own fault, that Christian doctrine is
J, (concerned.
“2. THE ECCLESIASTICAL DOCTRINE
The traditional ecclesiastical doctrine dealsSewith _this con-
tradiction under the twofold conception of the Fall and of —
_ a
F all suggests.thatthe ‘contra-
the Fall
Original Sin: the idea of the
aeneaanr mammnuermuller
mimes

man’s origin;
sy from m
diction’ consists in_apostasy eens
idea of —
sin; tthe idea
aww a ra RRS

a
ay.) OriginalSin maintains that this ‘contradiction’ isfatefu l
. eee netics1 of man’s
’s actual condition. Primarily there
is no
objection to this twofold view; indeed it is entirely relevant
1 Schmalk. Art. (WA. 50, 221), Luther certainly uses the customary >
ecclesiastical terminology, corruptio naturae, etc., but he immediately trans-
forms it into personalistic terms. Where he pickele formulates what sin is
he uses expressions such as: to be under the devil, or outside of Christ,
under the wrath of God, enmity against God, contempt of God, dis-
obedience, curvitas cordis, unbelief. ‘And thus briefly and barely there is
included in this word sin what one lives and does outside faith in Christ’
(EA. 12, 111). ‘Unbelief is in all men ‘the chief sin, even in Paradise it
was the beginning and the first of sins, and it probably remains the last of
all sins.’ It is this ‘unbelief which has been implanted in human nature by
Adam’ (WA. 46, 41). This results from the relation of man to the Word
of God: Quam magnum igitur est verbum, tam magnum etiam est peccatum quod
contra verbum admittitur (WA. 42, 122).
_ ® Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode, Werke, Jena, vol. 8.
118
 THE CONTRADICTION

and must not be abandoned. The question, however, is only

this: is the way in which these two aspects of the same fact
are seen together in accordance with reality? And does_it
succeed in expressing the two intentions—necessity and respon-
sibility, totality and individuality—equally clearly? _ >:
To this question the only answer can be ‘No.’ The ecclesias-
tical traditional doctrine is forced by itshistorical formto
Seen ene enn ia negra

sever PREtheAES unity

= “ = of the
Of
two
the two points
of view. Iteg.destroys
points | aE the uni
S ‘oys the unity

and necessity, since it distributes it first

between responsibility
“of all to aiferent persons, and then afterwards removes the
unity into the sphere of nature instead of keeping it in the
sphere of the person.
The classical doctrine of sin, too, the doctrine of the Fall
of Adam; and of the Original Sin handed down from him to
all succeeding generations, starts, like the doctrine of the
Imago, from the Old Testament narrative, as it is stated in
Genesis iii, but in such a way that the narrative, interpreted
in the light of the New Testament doctrine of sin,’ with the
1 To what extent can the Augustinian doctrine appeal to Romans v.
12 ff.? The exegesis of this locus classicus of the doctrine of Original Sin
may indeed be regarded as one of the most difficult tasks of Biblical
theology. Here I will only touch upon some of the chief points: (a) The
use of the story of the Fall as an explanation of the sinfulness of man is
foreign to the Old Testament itself; it does not appear until the time of
Jewish Apocalyptic (cf. N. P. Williams, The Idea of the Fall and of Original
Sin, 1929). (b) In the New Testament indeed, even with Paul himself, the
story of Adam plays no part in connexion with the doctrine of sin, apart
from Rom. v. 12 ff. and 1 Cor. xv. 21. The idea of sin in the New Testament,
indeed, even the Pauline doctrine, is in its general sense independent of
the story of Adam. The story of Adam is one of the means by which Paul
interprets the universality and the power of sin. (c) Even in the Epistle to
the Romans the real theme is not Original Sin, but death as the result of
the sin of Adam. ‘Paul first calls death that which the one has made to be
the lot of all’ (Schlatter, Theologie der Apostel, p. 264). (d) From the outset
it is explicitly emphasized that this has happened ‘on the ground that all
have sinned.’ The condemnation of all is not directly attributed to the fall
of Adam but to the sin of all. The Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin,
in the narrower sense of the word, was based upon the questionable
of all as a
exegesis: 84” @ = in quo = in lumbis Adami. The condemnation
result of the sin of Adam does not annul the first-mentioned presupposition,
but it silently presupposes it. (¢) The exegetical evidence is not sufficient
the
to deny that Paul taught something like a doctrine of Original Sin; on
But
contrary, in this one passage Paul comes very near to such a doctrine.
I1Q
 MAN IN REVOLT

aid of dogmatic postulates, is systematized and is stated in

terms which cannot be excelled. After the early Christian
theologians _had_ developed very contradictory | and “different
_views of the Fall, and the extent ofits effects upon the human_
race, it was
as Augustiine who.) gave to the ecclesiastical doctrine_
its standard form, in which itit determined
pone EN SE
de not only the history
oot Ri reryrenenne

of
Roman Catholic theology but
butthe development oof Protestant
theology
aswell, _
For our generation, the fact that this narrativeis.no longer.
iL meanss th:at‘the convincing power of this
historically credible
amposingd
doctrine, “which
_ dominated the thought of ‘Europe
*for fifteen Thandie years and—although modified in different
phon' all Christian
\; Q YY
4
thas formed the solid substance of the doctrine of sin of
churches, has completely disappeared. For most
of our contemporaries Adam is a kind of legendary figure; it
yp

AV gf
can no longer play any part in the thinking of the succeeding
generations as a historical force.
But what we said in connexion with the question of man’s
origin is still more true here: t -formulation to which we
are forcedby scientific knowledge is not aa retraction \which
_cannot, ‘unfortunately,” be avoided, but it is an inner cneces-_
iP, ‘sity, ‘inherent in the verytruth “apprehended by, faith. It is
not for scientific1
reasons, in the main, that the historical form
(of the doctrine of the Fall is questionable, but for religious
reasons; it has led to serious distortions of the faith, of the
understanding of sin, and of man’s responsibility in the sight
of God. The protest against it has not sprung only from a
it is just as inadequate to provide a convincing argument for such a doctrine.
What Paul wants to express here is this: with the means at his disposal he
wants to assert both the solidarity and unity of humanity in sin (see below
p- 139) and the responsibility of each individual; the power which sin
exerts over humanity as a whole, and also the personal character of sin.
In 1 Cor. xv. 21 he is speaking not of sin but of death.
The Apostle’s idea clearly is this: that where the redeeming power of
the Risen Lord is not operative, sin now dominates man and humanity as
a whole; that man, and humanity, at present not only ‘sins’ but is ‘in sin’;
here for once, and for once only, he expresses this view, which he never
uses again, which also is not known in the rest of the New Testament.
The theme of the Bible is not the historical origin of sin, but the universal
and irresistible power of sin as affecting man’s being.
1 Williams, op. cit., pp. 167 ff.
120
 THE CONTRADICTION

rationalistic, ‘Pelagian’ way of thinking—although of course

it is perfectly true that this is one of the chief reasons for the
protest—but it is also due to the fact that men haveseen that _
this wording of the contradiction emphasizes the 1 necessity
fy
of.
sin at the expense of responsibility.
What Augustine wanted, and what he defended against the
liberalism of his day—Pelagianism—inspired by the sense of a
Eg cere eee . °
divine commission and the truth of the Scriptures, using the
whole force of his powers of thought and faith, was this: the
unity of inescapable necessity and
responsibility which cannot
be shaken off, sin as a totality which determines-the person,
and at the same time sin as a _personal act. But_his actual
solution of the
the problem. fell_very far short of his intention. e
We do not say this in order to criticize him—his contribution
to the solution has no rival. But his solution can no longer
satisfy us, once our feeling for personal responsibility has been
awakened. The solution whichAugustine gives, that Adam’s
masons te pane met

deed makes us sinful and guilty, is supported by two

YO
_argu- |
ments of veryunequalvalue and of different origin. ‘Adam is
the physical father of the race; sin is inherited sin (Erb1-
stinde).2 The German translation of peccatum originis by Erb-
1 Erbe = inheritance.—Tronslator.
2 It is only logical that the best teachers of the Church should be those
who—to the extent in which they took up a position upon the doctrine of
Original] Sin—should represent the most massive doctrinal forms. Augustine:
the peccata of Adam are our contagione propagationis (contra Ful.c.m.4) ;Anselm:
ex parentibus leprosis generantur leprosi, ita ex primis parentibus, etc. (De conc.
virg. Chap. 2); peccatum intimis visceribus ac fibris arctissime per omnem vitam
adharens (Gerhard, IV, 334). A sinister part was played in this connexion
by a wrong translation of Job xiv. 4: quis faciet mundum de immundo conceptum
semine? (Gerhard knows that the translation is incorrect, but in spite of
this he continually uses it. IV, 326.) In primo conceptionis ardore peccati venenum
una cum ipso calore a matre sit in ipsum transfusum (Gerhard, IV, 349). The
same tendency appears—in contradistinction from Augustine—when the
earlier Lutheran theologians felt obliged to attribute to infants not merely
Original Sin but actual sin, just as they had to ascribe actual faith to them
in order to be able to uphold the view that their baptism was a genuine
sacrament (cf, Hutter, Loci communes, X, 1, 3, quoted by Miller, op. cit.,
p- 51). This idea of transference shows further to how great an extent the
dualistic view of sexuality in Augustine has also affected the formation of
Protestant doctrine. Without this element the doctrine of Original Sin is
inconceivable.
121
 MAN IN REVOLT

element—it is by far the less

siinde has given to this one
as a rule even
important of the two—the main emphasis, and
asis :we are sinners because we: have inherited
the whole emph
ul |atherof our
in through our natural descent fromthe sinf
g y. Pemsone 2.sin,
1spurel
Xace, Something which in its meanin
oy
jb" “disobedience to the will ofnt. a purel
God, isascribedtaketo over
of physi cal desce We must the respon-
o¢_ fact, that
have actually no
? “sibility for guilt, for something in which we
a thing in the
)3 part. It is of course possible to ‘believe’ such
to believe
sense of the sacrificium intellectus; but it is impossible Jesus
believe that
it in the sense in which I may and ought to
to take the
Christ is my Lord and my Saviour. Here faith had
to its nature.
character of a false heteronomy, which is contrary
The second _argument—which_is_far_m va luable_and
ore
Adam is th
relevant—was this: Adai i of the human
tive
the representa pote teres ete

all sinned; we are all

.

In Adam we have
paso

race as a whole.? Here the point to be emphasized is not the

sinners in Adam.
in sin as act and
physical fact of inheritance but our solidarity
guilt. But,inorder to make this phrase, ‘sinnersinAdamas,con-
fe once more
tine int erp ina
ret
it edcal.
physi
“| erete as possible, Augus cally, we were
“manner:in lumbis Adami. In germ, physiologi
‘represented’ in Adam. Thus in the concrete development
back to the first,
of this doctrine this second motif also leads
and intensifies its fatal supremacy.
under-
If we reject this conception of the Christian
a perso nal
rack standing of sin as insufficient and dangerous, since
cal fact, thus
relation ought not to be explained by a physi
element in
when we describe as questionable precisely that
generis peccavit. This
1 Adam non ut privatus homo, sed ut caput totius humani
Gerhar d follow ing August ine. This doctrine has
is the phrase used by J.
to appeal to Romans v, where
more right than the doctrine of Original Sin,
on the contrary, it is said
nothing is said of a physical transference, where,
dience of the one the many are ‘treated’ (by God)
that through the disobe
here is not physical but
as sinners, or ‘represented’ as such. What is meant
which comes very near to that
legal transference, and thus something
Furthe r, Harna ck has rightly pointed out
which we call ‘solidarity-in-sin.’ ne
a contradiction of the doctri
that even the words in quo are to some extent
ch as this expres sion is intended to express our
of Original Sin, ‘nasmu
ch der Dogmengeschichte,
personal participation in the sin of Adam (Lehrbu
IIT, p. 215).
122
 THE CONTRADICTION

the doctrine of peccatum originale, which leads to the rendering

Erbsiinde, this does not_m nat._the fact
of procreation and
of the relation between the ié generations should be excluded
from the group «of factors which are to be considered. The
peccatum originis is certainly also inherited sin. The solidarity of
being involved insin manifests itselfalso in ‘inheritance.’
What we reject isthis; the one-sidedness with which this one AGMAape

element iss made theprevailing and,“final

finally, |‘theonly"element |
in the octrine.
TNT

3. THE REACTION OF MODERN THEOLOGY

Justas in the questionof the origin of man, modern theology
has tried to>find a new solution of the‘problem, in which the
impossibilities of the historical conception should be avoided.
If we examine these ‘solutions’ more closely we find that they
can be divided into two groups, as modifications of two leading
ideas. In the one group the idea of fateful necessity, in the other
that of personal responsibility is re-formulated; but this is
done in such a manner that in each case such scant attention
is paid to the second aspect of the idea that the latter aiNas
comes off badly.
In Schleiermacher, for instance, in harmony with his thought Saranas

_as a whole, the aspect of Tatefal. necessity, of determinism is”

“expressed _ very impressively, His doctrine of ‘Original Sin’
comes to this, that att every new. stageein his development
SERENE RIO
man
NMI toa

ete

minationss which alwa

ways.spring ray
f the ‘sense-nature,’ > which
‘Schleiermacher, completely distorting the language of the
Bible, describes by the Biblical expression, the ‘flesh.’? In his
thought the conflict between the spirit and the flesh, of which
the Bible speaks,, becomes a . dynamic dialectic of the develop-
ment of the natural, or sense element, and the ideal, or spirit
element, instead of a personal decision. Original Sin is a kind

2 For Schleiermacher sin is ‘an arrestment of the determinative power

of the spirit due to the independence of the sensuous functions’ (Der
christliche Glaube, § 66, 2). As Original Sin it asserts itself by the ‘advantage
which the flesh at that time (that is at the beginning of the spiritual
activity) had already gained’ (§ 67, 2). Hence Schleiermacher praises the
first part of the word Erbsiinde and criticizes the second (§ 69; addition).
123
 MAN IN REVOLT

of atavism; it means that the spirit has not kept pace with the
rest of human development which is proceeding from the
sphere of sense to that of spirit. Thus the problem of Original
Sin (Erbstinde) is ‘solved’ afresh, that is, turned in a completely
new direction, by means of an idealistic evolutionism with a
strong naturalistic tinge—here we can only repeat the formula
which has already been used. Schleiermacher.is notdealing |
but with, stages of developme
with sin at all,those nt. The problem
is ‘solved’ by theologians who are influenced by Hegel
in the same scheme of idealistic evolutionism although with
somewhat different concepts.’
The attempts which were made to deal with this question.
from the Kantian point of view—for instance, by Ritschl—
-were the very opposite. Ritschl, as a good Kantian, starts
from the problem of responsibility. Sin—and in his thought
re
can
the be no doubt at all about this—is the responsible.
act of the individual. In his thought the moral characterof
sin is preserved. But how doesheapproach the other aspect
the problem, that_is, necessity—with this primarily purely
of
moralistic, Pelagian and rationalistic conception? His attempt
does not lack originality; but this originality, when we look at
it closely, consists only in the fact that he applies the psycho-
logical theories of ‘environment’ to the problem of sin. The
will of the individual, he says, is no isolated fact. The indi-
l affected in his resolvesby his environmen
is always
vidua t.
are always a number of
in so far as in this world there
Now
forces which are operative, in which evil is expressed and
exercises an influence—both personal forces, that is, human
beings who do and will evil, and also impersonal forces such
as institutions, customs, literature, catchwords, etc.—which ~
influence the individual in the sense of evil, he lives in a
‘kingdom tothe.influenc
of sin’ and is exposed permanen tly es —
of thelatter. In this fact of a ‘kingdom of sin,’ which contains
within itself the whole historical experience of evil, and thus
brings a universal-historical power of sin to bear upon the
1 Thus for instance Biedermann, Dogmatik, II, § 769. The fact of Original
Sin ‘has its natural basis in the nature of man as a finite spirit,’ especially
‘in the fact that from the very essence of his nature the single instincts of
life . . . in their natural immediacy individually form the motives.’
124
 THE CONTRADICTION A

individual and allows it to influence him, Ritschl believes that

he is able to conceive the true content of the doctrine of
Original Sin.
This idea of a ‘kingdom of sin’"certainly _ corresponds to a
eles Tea
S up a |number of facts in one definite: and
a cae

ow iither
that whic
whe “hristian doctrine means “by. peccaium originis -is _
very
very remote,
remote, Ton ii
Rip etetidiee
its content
anc natn
conte is re yp sychological ; it could
equally “well bebe expressed by the proverb: ‘evil communi-—
cations corrupt good manners.’ For the _way_ in which my
environment influences meiss not
not any
any necess ity which
which lies in
i
myself, but itis an urgent temptation to evil. The power of
the temptationr
may ‘be as great as possible; there is no necessity
to succumb to it. The insidious,contagious power of evil in
the worldmay be very.great; but there is still the possibility
of saying
saying Vo,of!off| remaining independent.} 2 | So F
Ritschl_allows eg.

7
for the possibility ofofresisting temptation,, and ir
in1sosodoing he.
s
eliminates the main‘in element from the | Christian doctrine, that”
‘of totality.” V
When this doctrine is examined more closely, it
proves to be simply a form of Pelagianism, intensified by
social psychology.

4. RADICAL EVIL
Kant’s effort to define the nature of ‘radical evil’ goes far,
deeperr _t
thanall ‘other attempts to. solve. the _problem.? His
strictly personal idea of responsibility permits “him to separate
himself sharply from the contrast between the sense nature
and the idealistic emphasis on Spirit, which dominates the
whole tradition of Idealism. Evil is not to be sought 4in_the
sphere of sense but Solely iin the will, The origin of evil is |

not the fact that man is finite, the metaphysical constitution of

man, but a personal. decision. Evil must not be traced back
1 ‘The working together of the many in these forms of sin leads to an
intensification of the same in common habits and principles. .,,. Thus
there arises an almost irresistible power of temptation .. . the Kingdom
of sin . . .’ Ritschl, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, § 30.
2 Ritschl, op. cit., §§ 27, 28.
3 Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, first part.
Cf. on this point, too, my book The Mediator, pp. 126 ff.; Sannwald, op.
cit., pp. 93 ff.
125
 MAN IN REVOLT

to any impersonal neutral entity but it has its origin in the

centre of personality, just as in its working out it injures
personality. It is still possible, however, to combine these ideas
with the rationalistic, Pelagian conception, with its indi-
vidualism and indeterminism. ;
position.
thisnd
ant now takesan important step, beyo
evil decision
is nd€Qnaware that the evil act,thetherationali
He of the_
for
ent
‘will, which jis the final elem st, isnot itself
back to an ultimate,
, but rather that itpoints an_
origin. He describes this origin of the evil act as the ‘tendency
alegre

Rena

is tendency, this reservoir of evil which lies in the

I DME a $ SER ora AT rhage ag ia ate RMON
ewer F cole ROeORM EIS SEN

to evi
- from which alone every evil decision springs,
s as a fact, and indeed as a fact of unrestricted
lve
this
"totality. Ajll human beings haveinthemse s.
tendency
se
he recogniz
to evil. Likewi es the impossibilityofdiscovering.
g tendency, of this evil personal
of this
a temporal beginnin
l life of the individual, or indeed of
quality in the empirica
even thinking of any such; for every beginning would indeed
presuppose this tendency. Thus Kant is confronted finally by _
the insoluble mystery of ‘inborn evil,” by which he does not
‘regard physical birthas the beginning—the idea ‘inborn’ is
to be understood solely negatively, evil has no beginning in
the empirical course of life—but only the fact that it—is
impossibletoderive evil from any source, with, at the same
time, thefact of unconditional personal responsibility. Kant
is quite aware that he is faced by the paradox of an insoluble,
impenetrable mystery, and points explicitly to the storyofthe.
Fall as the only relevant, although certainly symbolic expres-
sion ofthe fact which he has perceived...
With this viewof evil Kant came so near to the Christian
view that all his Idealistic contemporaries charged him with
treach eryy. He then himself became unfaithful.
and hypocris
third part of his book), and, in
(intheon
asaetheD A

to his own percepti

orderto be able to maintain his concept of the autonomous
rgason,he gaveup the doctrine of radical evil, surrendering
man isthe bette
for the idea that the intelligible selfrofman,
from which standpoint evil can be overcome by the force of
own efforts.,But this does not belong to our subject. |
one’s
“Kant’s idea of radical evil remains the most serious attempt
126
 THE CONTRADICTION

ever made by any philosopher—who does not bring his system

into conformity with the Christian revelation—about evil.
In spite of this, however, his doctrine certainly cannot be
considered as the re-formulation of the Christian truth about
sin. It is the expression of that which the man who reflects
seriously upon evil can discover for himself. It is a ‘borderline’
truth; that is, the man who perceives
it—as the example of_
Kant shows—cannot stand still at this point; he is forced to
do oneof twothings: either to turn back toofa rational “explana-
tion,” thought outfrom thepointofview the concep oftthe
or,
ous reason, and then to giveup the idea itself,
he must
reason, us
eaving the sphere of the autonomo
self become a
ae

Christian believer.*
t Kant never’ speaks
that
€ must not forge of
,
sin butof
evil (das Bése). ‘This means that the subject which he has in,
mind iy Hot sein
‘of life, buttothe
opposition
abstract
to
law
Cod,
of
the
reason,
Creator
Thus
and
Kant
Giver
is not”
concerned about the fact that man, who has been created by
God in responsibility, for love, contradicts the life-giving pur-
pose of God, that is, that he sets himself in opposition to his -
divine origin, that he rebels against God, and thus sets himself
up against the Lord as his own master, and in so doing perverts
the good creation of God. Thus—and this is the heart of the
matter—in his understanding of evil Kant.is.not.concerned
with the fact that man takes hislife into his own hands, breaks
away from God and desires to do the good in the strength_
of his own will, so that both his “doing good’ and_his ‘doing
evil’ are sin. Kant is not and cannot be concerned about all
1 I cannot describe Schelling’s Philosophische Untersuchungen iiber das Wesen
der menschlichen Freiheit (Werke, vol. iv, p. 223, Miinchner Neudruck) (against
Jul. Miiller, op. cit., pp. 126 ff.) as in every direction a deepening of the
Kantian doctrine of evil, since it seeks the solution of the problem in the
Gnostic view of a dual divine nature. Cf. further Miiller’s excellent
criticism, op. cit., pp. 131 ff.
2 This significance of the idea of autonomous reason is clearly seen by
Sannwald (op. cit.) and by all the thinkers who have rediscovered the
‘Thou,’ especially Ebner, Gogarter. and Grisebach. The excellent Jul.
Miiller is also aware of it: Autonomy—Theonomy (op. cit., I, p. 107). ‘Even
if the autonomy of the human spirit were no contradiction in itself it would
still be a contradiction to the concept of the creature’ (I, p. 114). Miller
only lacks insight into the dialectic of the law.
127
 MAN IN REVOLT

this, because his view lacks both the starting-point and the —
point of view of man’s original relation with God.
Just as Kant’s conception of ‘person’ is derived. from the law,
the “Thou shalt’—that means (on the one hand) a respon-
sibility which is on this side of the contradiction to the generous
Creator, God, and (on the other hand) a personality which
no longer knows anything about being ‘over against’ God—
so also his ‘radical evil’ isonly one manifestation of sin, whose
other far more ¢
dangerous manifestation isi precisely that which
‘in the thought of Kant is ‘regarded as the Good: the fact
that man
m does good by. his own efforts.jAhe fact that through
the Fall alone man ‘knows what is good. and evil,’ that already
the difference between good and evil is itself the product of
the contradiction, and therefore is only a relative contra-
- diction—of all this Kant can know nothing, since on the plane
on which he stands such things cannot be perceived.
But since we must finally say farewell to Kant, let us at
least recall his observations on what he rightly describes as
the perversion of the> problem, This applies to doctrine of all
kinds, ev
even the traditional Christian one. The contradiction,
he points out, ought not to be traced back to an objective,
neutral, impersonal entity, neither to sense, nor to the fact
that man is finite, nor to the imperfection of the stage of
development, nor to ignorance—the Socratic modification of
the doctrine of imperfection—nor to the weakness of the spirit,
nor—as in the ecclesiastical view—to inheritance. By all
all these
formulations the concept |of sin is corrupted 1in its centre, in_
responsibility. If ‘poe is one element in the Biblical message _
which from time ipfmemorial has been clear and beyond all
doubt, it is this:Vsin and |responsibility _ are. inseparably con-
§
Lh
hi
nected, and thereis no “ascription of. responsibi lity, .no verdict
| “of guilt,‘without accusation and proof of responsibility, |
thatis,
_ no one is$ pronounced guilty for something which he has not

1 Harnack (op. cit., p. 216) is perfectly right when he says that Augus-
tine’s doctrine of the Primitive State is Pelagian. Here, as in the fathers of —
Calvinistic theology in their doctrine of the foedus operum, Aristotle’s
rationalistic idea of man comes out (‘A relation between man and God
which is based upon mutuality.’ Heppe, Dogmatik der reformierten Kirche,
Pp. 204).
128
 THE CONTRADICTION

survey of th history ofthe problem.

5- Grits PRIMAL CONTRADICTION - THE FALL

The
ean
Ag st_thing that.theBible
petereme aioe
falls; us about
a ee ee en TE cas
Primal |Sin iisst
that it18 the revolt of t
the.creature against t
theCreator; us it,
| Spree maaan
is not something ne ative, it is a positive negation, Sin is
e
defiance, : arrogance
gance, agdesire to be equal with God,-emanci-
pation, _ a_ deliberate severance from |the hand of‘God.“This | Ptt\

is the explanation of the nature of sin and its origin, not only
in the story of the Fall? but also in the parable of the wicked
husbandmen—the stewards who wanted to make themselves
masters,? and in the parable of the Prodigal Son.* The son
who lives with the father goes “to him with the request:
‘Father, give me my ‘inheritance ?! He wants to be independent.
. When Andre. Gide, in his booklet, L’enfant prodigue, extols this
will to independence as the birth of human freedom and of
man’s responsibility for his own life, he is speaking out of the
depths of the modern mind, severed from God, which believes"
that an independent human existence can only, be attained
by being freed from God, just as N. Hartmann postulates
atheism for the sake of freedom. The fact that true freedomis
sl batt
is ;anidea ‘which: lies outside: thehorizon
he is united with Goc d, is
of the emancipated ‘autonomous reason. Indeed, it will not
understand this idea, “for if it were to do so it would have
to die.
“And this is the very origin of sin: the assertion ‘OL human
inst God, the declaration of the>rights
independence over against,
of man’s freedom as imdependent of God’s will, the constitu-__
tion of the autonomousreason, morality, and culture, that
‘misunderstanding of reason in itself > (Hamann) where reason
refuses any longer to apprehend, but wants to give. and to
ave, where
have, it no longer. reflects. upon. ary truth, Put
where _it_no_
a ng eae eran

1 Cf. Jer. xxxi. 30, and Ezek. xviii. 5, 9. 2 Gen. iii.

3 Matt. xxi. 33 ff.
4 Luke xv. 11 ff, 5 Nik. Hartmann, Ethik, p. 735.
129
 eae MAN IN REVOLT
thoughts in its own way, a human self-
| produce its own
|initiated creation made by ‘man in his own strength.’?
" This sin dwould had not actually. been.
not be possible if manndent,
| create to be master, to be indepe to be.superior
namely, over the world, ovthe er ‘earth’ which is to be “made
‘subject unto him.” To this end he has been endowed by the
Creator with spirit and reason, with powers of creativeness~
and thought. ‘All things are yours’*—so is it said in the story
of the Garden of Eden as well as in the First Epistle to the
Corinthians. But to this is added: ‘Ye are God’s,’ or—in the
parable—‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat;
‘ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt
' not eat.’? The whole world _is yours, but its centre _is_not_
ae

yours. Its centre is God Himself, To infringe His sovereign

rights, His divine privilege, is to ‘desire’ to be ‘like God.
What happens then, if you still insist ‘on doing it? The Lord
says, ‘Thou shalt surely die’;* the serpent says, ‘Ye shall be
as God.’5 The story of autonomous humanity may well show
, us which was speaking the truth.
But it is precisely this which attracts man: to measure him-
self against
|‘actual, God. ‘That ispresumption, arroganc e.the
It3s
primal sin. Sin in its developed form is this presumption ~
=.
of the son who rebels against the father. In this pure form it
may rarely appear; in spite of this, however, it lies at the
bottom of all sin, even the most pitiful sins of weakness, as
_ arrogance, defiance and the illusion of independence, as the
will to be independent of the will of God. Man_neyer. sins.
purely out of -weakness_but always also in the fact that he
lets himself go’ in weaknes Even in the= dullest sinner
s. aqeerecenergn there.
, positive negation which
°
earns
3
ae te mR

of active
ove
sion
7 &lea

is still a spark of deci

seein
a

e.’
is not merely ‘negativ
The Formula of Concord (sol. decl. art. I) defines Original Sin as
corruptio superiorum et principalium animae facultatum. When Joh. Gerhard
asserts, against Bellarmine, that unbelief and not arrogance is the origin
of sin (IV, 308), he is right from the point of view of dogmatics; and wrong
from the point of view of psychology. From the dogmatic point of view,
the severance from the Word is the first thing; but from the psychological
point of view it is precisely this severance from the Word which is arrogance.
Luther often expresses the same view. 2 1 Cor. iii. 22; Gen. ii. 16.
3 Gen. ii. 17. 4 Gen. ii. 17. 5 Gen. iii. 5.
130
 THE CONTRADICTION pas

The decisive and

an distinctive element in the Biblical doctrine |
of sinis“that sin is not described as something negative, but as -| »
“a
positive negation, whereas the non-Christian doctrine,
especially that of Greek philosophy,ae“which also”‘determines
“modern Westernmm philosophy, u understands |evil abso ely asa
Jack, a defect, a
as something in1 the€ s
spirit 1which iis ‘not ‘yet.ae
Not “the:spirit,
free bat
itthe lack of the spirit, is“made responsible
for. evil. How ; could. “the divine _Treason’ be ;able tosin?2woul
All
‘non-Biblical doctrine _makes evil harmless and excuses man, |
- whereas the Bible ‘shows up. sin in all itsterrible character a
Key
‘and makes man ‘inexcusable.’ No Fate, no _metaphysical 4
;
constitution,no. weakness of his nature, but himself, £ an, in
bu

the centreearthhis personality, ismade responsible for‘his‘sin.

And yet we must not exaggerate this idea to the extent of
making human. sin ‘satanic.’ It is the story of the Fall ‘itself
which prevents us from accepting this interpretation. Man
does not sin like Satan himself, purely out of defiance and_
rebellion.? He_is
is led astray |by s sin. WasetnEvil forces were already
hy aan ttre diss
|
there before > him; man is not great enough to discover sin rr
‘Introduce it into “the world. But man :is ledastray in such a
alana” rae TT ote

way that once desire is aroused, it militates against confidence

God. The sin of man is no purely spiritual matter, but it
in
always takes place through the medium of the desires of the
senses. Man begins to suspect that his connexion with God
does not give full satisfaction to his hunger for life. All human
sin has an element of weakness; itis mingled _with anxiety. for
pleat

fear of losing something by obedience to God;

_one’sslife, a_fe
‘Tack.‘of
it3is_a_l.
“thus it all_on.God
ofconfidence, a fear ofventuring 2

1 Augustine’s unfortunate theory that evil is.defect comes mainly from

the fact that he does not make a distinction between moral good and
actual good (the impossibility of making a distinction between malum=
evil (bése) and malum= disastrous (iibel) ), logically, from the failure to
make a distinction between contrary and contradictory, and this means,
in the last resort, from the fact that nature is ranked higher than per-
sonality. The negative theory of evil completely dominates pre-Chystian
thought, especially in the modification of sin to mean ‘not knowing.” Cf.
Kierkegaard: ‘That sin is not negative but positive’ (Krankheit zum Tode,
94).
a 2 Luther: ‘In the devil there is a far greater enmity against God .
than there is in man’ (WA. 42, 107).
131
 MAN IN REVOLT

alone; it is not simply impudence, but anxiety about oneself;

‘it is not “merely rebellion, it is a kind of dizziness which - arenes
those who ought to step over the abyss leaning only on God.
Superbia pure and simple is satanic, not human sin. Man’s
arrogance. consists in believing that he.can. ook after himself.
than ‘God can, that he knows what is good for him
. better _t
| better than “his "Creator, His sin is composed of the mingled
“element s of distrust, doubt, and defiant desire for freedom.
) Itiiss impossible ;for us to reduce it to a single. formula; even
in its inmost centre itis tainted. with ; ambiguity. It is only pure
| spirits, not man ‘with his psycho- -physical nature who can sin
| simply from pure arrogance. This mixed character of primal
‘Sin is described in an inimitable way in the story of the Fall.
It is a fruit that attracts, it is a whispered doubt which stirs,
_it is the dream of being like God which turns the scale.
But neither Satan’s whispering nor the craving awakened
from without is meant to explain the origin of sin. Only he
who understands that sin is inexplicable knows what it is.?
Sin—human sin, and not only satanic sin—is the one great _
negative. mystery of our existence, of which we knowronly
_one the possi-
g, th tt we are ‘responsible for 3itwithout “the
bility of pushing |the _responsibility on_ to ‘anythingoutside
“ourselves. We believe this, not because the Bible says so, but
“we perceive this when Godiiin Christ shows us our Giiein and
our Fall. Through the Word of God we ourselves know that
it is so; we accept our guilt, freely acknowledging it in the
eaiflence of the knowledge of faith, and to the judgement of
God we say an unambiguous ‘yes.’ The final. eens of sin.As.
this, that we love ourselyes_more than._our Creato:
selewill, 1incomprehensible as it is, yet ‘known to us all in the
SS
depths of our being.
Thus man’s distinctive endowment, his by the fact of his
fact that he has been made iin the image
creation, namely, the fa
of God, is the presupposition._ of sin, Sin itselfis a1 manifestation
~ of the image of God in man; onnly he who y i
been. created bie
1 ‘Rather we must recognize evil as in its very nature incomprehensible, |
since it only comes to be through caprice, and caprice on the other hand
means breaking away from the ground and context of reason. > Jul. Miller,
II, 234.
R52
 THE CONTRADICTION ‘
the image of God can sin, and in his sin he shows the‘super-
natural, spirit-power, ‘a power not of this world, which issues)
from the primal image of God. Even when he commits sin
man shows his greatness and his superiority. No animal is able |
to sin, for itiss unable _ to rebel against_its destiny, .against the
form in_which_ it_has been. created; it has not the power of)[
decision. The1¢ Creator has given ie dangerous power to His,
last and highest earthly creature, since He created him not
simply through His Word, but i His Word, and “therefore /
responsible,A
And. it is this very distinctiveness which becomes, ©
a temptation to man. ‘The copy wants: to be the model itself, (2
the one who ought ‘to answer wishes _Fe be the.
the P anet wants to be the sun, a star in its own light. Man! 24%
‘can’ do this, thanks to the gift of the Creator. But if and when! “
he does so, he destroys the possibility of doing what he coul
have done.
This is the mystery of the irreparable.

i 6. THE IRREPARABLE
/\ The ego exists not_as substance but as activity, | as Fichte
.
knew. ‘Yet. the human wie in contradistinction to. the.Divine,
eS
eae atta
exists not ‘as
as pure |activity, but as re-active, or, as we“say,
|
responsive |_activity, relation. Man exists originally for God,
in accordance with the fact that he comes from God. But sin
is the reversal of this position, turning direction towards God ;
into aversion from God. Then, if the view holds that ‘being

same eethe.See of the being, This does not mean

that man has received a different structure of being, for
instance, from that of the animal or the thing; he is and he
remains man, he is and he remains, in contradistinction from
allother creatures known to us, in that particular, special
relatedness to God which is called responsibility ; his being
is, both before and after, responsible and responsive existence;
both before and after iis distinctive element is the quality of
decision.; Both before and after man remains one whose exis-
tence is not only through the Word, but in the Word of God—
otherwise how could he be responsible? But sin means that
this relation—this particular and indissoluble relation—is_ now
133
 MAN IN REVOLT

the lie behind

in_a negative manner. This is precisely |
“qualified in
. the original rebellion, the lie of the Serpent;
eo ae
man thinks that
“he can set himself free from God. He cannot indeed be God,
« he remains dependent, he remains in responsibility 5but his —
oe ina negative manner,
tyisnow determined ix m “He was
estined to say ‘Yes’ and “he has said ‘No’; he was destined
ir eadainas

for community and he has broken community ;he was destined

for love, and now through his defiance he has fallen away
from love. The ‘mind of the flesh’—this means, in the lan-
guage of the Bible, the desire of the creature whichis severed
from union with God—‘is enmity against God.’ For the
defiant human being. there isno loving God but only 2a hostile _
again it is in the centre of his being, in the con-
one. “And agai
‘Sclousness of responsibility, that this enmity breaks out: in
the bad conscience.
Adam is afraid of God and hides from Him, when the Fall
has taken_ ‘place. Previously he had no fear of this kind; it
does not belong to the original Creation as established by
God. It is the sign of distance from God, it is the manner in
' which distance from God becomes conscious to man. To the
bad conscience God is the angry God; man as sinner ‘has’
' God only in the form of one who is angry, distant, accusing
and ‘condemning.’
This is no merely subjective illusion, but a reality. This is
the effect of Holiness and Righteousness, the ‘logic’ “of‘God.
“God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall
he also reap.’? God accepts man’s emancipation from Himself;
‘ He burdens him with it. The broken relation with God sets
between God and the sinner: guilt. What has happened is
not something passing ;; the past cannot be shaken off, it
belongs to me. Sin, in so far as it stands between me and
In_
God as something wich 3is both past and present, isguilt.1]
“the—concept.. of.guilt, the seriousness of the happening is_
Ripe rien

‘objectified, something has taken place which. can never _

be undone;5“it islost’ for ever. 8 Innocence, once ‘it has been
‘Tost, cannot be regained. The loss of innocence is irreparable;
ns REMUS ROARS, 5 Neowin eEhgesouny

:
1 Rom. viii. 7. 2 Gal. vi. 7.
8 Cf, the connexion between guilt, the irreparable, and the wrath of
God in Luther (Theodosius Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 1, pp. 197 ff.).
134
 THE CONTRADICTION

the breach cannot be healed. Man is able to destroy his

) life, but he cannot restore it again. He is able to blind “his
i
| vision, but he cannot restore his sight. He iisable to destroy
| his communion with God, but he cannot r restore it, The way
of return to Paradise is hacen “the angels with flaming swords
| stand on guard at its gates; it is impossible to go back; between /
/ us and God there lies guilt, an obstacle which we cannot~~
) remove, something which cannot be set aside and cannot be
:
,
got over. The avalanche has fallen and has blocked access to~~*
God. Hence the problem of guilt—the problem of how guilt —
ee

) can be oved—is the central problem of the Christian

| Faith. Guilt binds: us to the irreparable past, it identifies us
| with this which has once happened, which can never be
undone. The knowledge of this, the central knowledge, the fe

| knowledge at the place of responsibility, is the bad conscience. yy~~ i

The bad conscience preaches the angry God.

7. THE PERVERSION OF MAN’S watune. )

- But that_is only one aspect of the question. It is not as
thoughsin could be repaired if this one obstacle, guilt, were
removed, as though we, ourselves, would return, if only the
way were not blocked by guilt. The real situation is that on ae ek
perversion _¢
ofman’s relation
tt with. ‘God. ‘carries _with_ it
perversion of his nature as it actually iis. “We have ‘not Ae
become debtors but sinners. That is what we now are, once
we have become so. ‘Everyone that committeth sin is the ‘bond-
servant of sin’;1 we have destroyed the picture; we cannot
mend it. We have taken too much upon ourselves. Like some-
one who has shrieked too loudly and has lost his voice, so we
have been boastful in our freedom, and now freedom—not all|
kinds of freedom but our primal freedom—has ‘been lost.
This“freedom | has” been destroyed by sin, for it was based m\
upon man’s :‘relation to God, as God had established it,jWhen
we lost that status we also lost that freedom. When as children
we ‘pulled faces’ our mother would warn us: “Don’t do that,
or you may be “‘fixed” like that!’ This ‘grimace’—emanci-
pation from God, rebellion, the lie of independence—has
remained with us. It has become the permanent form of our
1 John viii. 34.
135
 } yA yn i
Se j EH

MAN .IN REVOLT

present existence. We are sinners; we do not only commit
sins. We are those who ‘commit sins,’ who have become
‘slaves of sin.’
And the rest? what does ‘the rest? mean here? As person
man is a whole. His personal being is based upon that amago.
The breaking of man’s relation to God means that the image_
of.God in man has also been broken. This does not mean that
it no longer exists, but that it has been defaced. The person
“has” not been removed, but the personal content ‘of the person,
the personal being, the being in the love of God, fellowship,
has
isgone. Or rather it has not_ simply gone, but it has been
“perverted. “Hate does not mean that love has gone, but cthat,
t
love has been turned into ‘its.“opposite. ‘The wine of the divine
Jove has become the vinegar of enmity towards God. In virtue
of the divine creation, we are irrevocably bound to this form
of existence: we must_either love or hate, we cannot leave_
this dimension of love- hate. “Thus the primal :form .
has.Ce
appeared ssince it has been. turned i
into its negative ‘form. But
this means that we cannot speak of ‘the rest.’ The fact that
the nature has been perverted means that the whole is per-
verted. Existence is now turned in the opposite direction,
God has been removed from the centre, and we are in the
penteremmnenge mera ev EES BODOG AEN

centre of 1 the picture; our ‘Tife has “become * ec-centric.” The

Jie that we are the centre is characteristic of our present life.
We ‘revolve round ourselves.” The dominant note in our life
is now no longer the dominus but the rebel: the ‘T’ itself. Cor
incurvatum in se, the self which is bent back upon itself, Luther?
calls iit; in saying this he is not using an exaggerated expres-
‘sion
Sonat the one exact formula, by means of which the reality
of man’s life can be seen right down to the smallest detail.
He discovers the ‘I’ which seeks itself not where everyone sees
it, in crude egoism, but where we generally see the Good, in
our virtue, in our ‘striving after the Highest,’ in our piety, in
our mysticism—we shall follow it further in our art, science
and philosophy. In every cherus of this life the self which
seeks itself is the leader of the chorus. The broken relation
1 Luther (Rémerbrief, Ficker, II, 184, 136): Incurvatum in se adeo, ut non
tantum corporalia, sed et spiritualia bona sibi inflexit et se in omnibus querit. Curvus
es totus in te et versus in tui amorem, II, 337.
136
 ‘ THE CONTRADICTION

with God means the perversion and poisoning of all the func-
tions of life. As we shall see later, thisstatement of the complete
ares wpitgiaeniis “Bilin

corruption of man does not mean that there is no longer ‘any 97,
n it has been
4 0

him because
Goodin man af all. All is good’i
“created by God,? butall this good which proceeds from God's”
os

Creation, stands under a Jaw of evil, or rather, sin. ‘The order

of the whole, the final motive, the final connexion, the unity,
‘the fundamental direction, is not good because everything
has been”
has been dislocated.As upon a chess-board which
en,
all the
shak individual chessmen are still there, unbroken,
“good,’ as they came out of the workshop of the turner;yet
‘at the same time everything is confused and displaced and
“meaningless nature of man. We shall be dealing
is the—so
with this later on however; all that we need to stress here is
the point of view of the totali tyas‘suc
of sin eo
h,
not its indi-
EOREADS LSA Aho eee esanie
fri“ -

yidual manifestations. By sin the nature of man, not merely

et ~ = Eahgerenengsonunnn Sire hee 2 “9 CARRERE Ge

somethin in his nature, is changed and perverted. th og

“But there is one manifestation of man’s perverted relation

GRALE

1 It is not the fact that Augustine (see above, p. 131) calls being, as
such, good, which is Neo-Platonic and unscriptural, but the fact that he
does not—or does not always—distinguish between the non-being of
something—as defectus—and the defectio as act, between the privatio boni as
an ontological, and the privatio boni as an ethical or existential statement;
and secondly, that even where he speaks of love to God he always seems
inclined to regard this in the sense of the Platonic Eros. Luther’s doctrine
of the divine preservation of the world (apud Deum idem est creare et conservare,
WA. 43, 233; God remains with His creatures with His Word, the
Only-Begotten Son) comes to the same result as the statements above; cf.
Note (1) on the next page.
2 This is the relative truth in the heresy of Flacius; in point of fact the
Imago Dei is no mere ‘accident,’ and the loss of the Jmago is not the loss
of something ‘accidental,’ but the Jmago Dei is being and its perversion is
a perversion of one’s being. The idea of perversion corresponds far more
closely to the contradictory character—that is, the relation of sin to the
Word—than the idea of corruptio which has more of a contrary and therefore
natural character. The controversy between Flacius and his opponents can
never be settled, because it contains a false antithesis. Flacius could appeal
to the fact that even Luther spoke several times of sin as the ‘image of the
devil’: ‘Man must be an image either of God or of the Devil. For he is
like that according to which he orders his life’ (WA. 24, 51). His
opponents were able to appeal to the fact that man, even as a sinner, is
still always the creation of God: Omnis substantia est a Deo creatore (Gerhard,
op. cit., IV, 335).
137
 MAN IN REVOLT

to God of which we must speak, when we are dealing with

man in the Biblical view: the_perversion_ of his relation to
his fellow-man. Here if anywhere we must prove what has
‘been saidabout the effect of sin. Man, so we said, was created_
in and1 for community, iin and for lov
love.“Sin:does 1not alter the
fact that this is the meaning of his existence.This is what
ought to be, as every one knows. ‘And even in sin it does not
cease to be so, so far as God’s work is concerned. Even now_
an is a ssocial being—not a collective being like an animal,
nor an individual being in the sense in which he is Conca es
in the abstract reason. His whole existence, from birth onwards,
where through the union of two the new third comes into
being, is impregnated with social relations. The individual
becomes what he is in community and through others, and
what he is also has its effect upon others. This—if I may aia aed

put it so—formal structure ofcreation of man’’s_

s being has et at

remained 2
as well.
W as. formal["responsibi
o
euewuariciecg
es wn
1tye Indeed, ‘at bottom
both are one, since ‘community is simply responsibility in
i its
concrete form. But: the quality ofcommunity, the love-content
PUA AAO FEOR

of this communiity-existence has been destroyed. ‘Quite oother

mE)
forces
ces th:
anlo ve—that love whichis described in the Thirteenth.
‘Chapter “of,Corinthians—determine its
itsreality. So far as motive
is concerned, this ‘community’ is called bellum omnium contra
omnes, whether in a coarser or a more refined form, physically,
mentally or spiritually. Cor incurvatum in se—that is the secret
formula, even when the opposite, love and justice, seems to
be the case. Once _again, this does not mean that there is no Dab eaeWER

blind
argon:
to facts as to assert. this !2— ut that ‘there is
is; no love
BTEC
or
4) os
justice“which iis not tainted with egoism, ‘behind whichas the
Va tg kd NTT AAS RP RAR ST FH

1 Luther: merito autem hoc in loco (Gen. ii. 29) id observamus, quod inter
morbum naturae per peccatum viciatae, et suum opus . . . spiritus sanctus discernit
.. . etiam in viciata natura . . . donum generationis nobis commendat, tanquam
insignem benedictionem (WA. 42, 433). We must always distinguish between
the creatura and its (recognizable) orders on the one hand, and the peccatum
originale—something which to-day especially is forbidden in the name of
the Reformation doctrine of sin. Cf. on this H. Thielicke, Geschichte und
Existenz, 1935.
2 Cf. what is said below about the good in ethics and the justitia civilis,
Pp. 154. ;
138
 THE CONTRADICTION
final reality there is not the ‘heart which is turned in upon
itself.’
8. SOLIDARITY_IN_ SIN
Ego totus, 1wholly, thatis the truth with which we have _
been dealing up to the present. Nos tot, we all—what that _
means is the next and perhaps the most_difficult question.
For the question cannot be that, so to say, accidentally, ‘it has
happened to all as to me the individual’ so that when we
learn to know ourselves, we learn to know each as ‘one like
ourselves.’ It may perhaps happen like this empirically; but
the problem why it is so remains hidden behind this statement
of the facts. What did Augustine really want to say—without
being able to say it aright—when he summed us all up in the alt
one Adam? Certainly nothing of that which everyone who *
studies life with close attention is able to perceive, neither
that ‘kingdom of sin,’ nor any kind of neutral actuality which
seems to be due to Fate, for which we bear no responsibility.
Only from the Word of God, and that means only when we
take the Biblical idea that we are created in the Word seriously,
can we gain any light upon this, the greatest mystery of all.
Who is ‘man’
who has originally been creat ed
by God after,
His Image? Is it I or you? Or someone else? Each for himself?
itis
Certai I, and you, and everyone for_himself_as_this
nly,
, his own particular life, his
individualwith I-self, which cannot
be exchanfor any
gedother.1 But is it not strange that when
speak
“we of the peculiar element, the central element in
ourselves, we know that we might just as well be speaking
of others as of ourselves? It is of course always true that I can
only speak of myself; but I know that while I am doing so |
not only can the other understand it, but thatit is equally
applicable to him and to myself. This, we note, is the pre-
1 Cf. the remarkable passage in Ezekiel, where the prophet receives a
commission to address the King of Tyre: ‘Thou sealest up the sum, full of
wisdom and perfect in beauty. . . . Thou hast been in Eden the garden j....6
of God; every precious stone was thy covering. . . . Thou wast perfect in
thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in
thee . . . therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God.
_.. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty. . . . I will cast
thee to the ground . . .” (Ezekiel xxviii. 12 ff.).
139
 MAN IN REVOLT

supposition of the fact that we are able to understand

one another. But we do not know the reason for this. The
Word of God tells us the reason, since it shows us that the
‘man whom God created, is always both this individual ‘and
humanity’. (Kierkesaard)® For, as we have already seen, this
is the Biblical idea of man, that God, since He creates me
as responsible, creates me in and for. community with others.
athe : isolated individual is an abstraction, conceived by the
Teason which has been severed from the Word of God. ‘The
other’ is not added to my nature after my nature, after I
eee

| myself, as this particular individual, have been finished. But

the other, the others, are interwoven with my nature. Tam.
not man at all apart from others. I am not ‘I’ apart from the
“Thou.’ As I cannot be a ‘human being without a relation to_
God, without. the Divine, “Thou,” “so also I cannot be man
| Without.‘thehuman ‘Thou.’ And were all human beings upon
‘the earth to die and leave me alone alive: my life, in its
impaired and solitary condition, in so far as it is still a Paiva
life, would still be related to the ‘Thou’ in remembrance, in
longing and in hope. Robinson Crusoe’s whole longing was to
mingle once again with human beings, in order to become
a human being once more.
In the Creation we are an individualized, articulated unity,
one body with many members. ‘Whether one member suffereth,
all the members suffer with it; or one member is honoured,
all the members rejoice with it.» We are a unity bound
RTLTTCAN TNH RAW ENTE rot

_ together in a solidarity, bound together not as members of

\.a species, like the individuals of a zoological species—that we
' may be, but this does not concern our existence as human
beings—but we are bound together in a quite unique way,
in that way which iscalled mutual responsibility, which is,
1 Kierkegaard, Der Begriff der Angst, p. 22:‘. . . the essential fratine)
tion of human existence, that man is individual, and as such is both
himself and the whole race, so that the whole race participates in the
individual and the individual in the whole race (thus if an individual
could fall away wholly and entirely from the race his fall would at the
same time determine the race in a different way; if, however, an animal
falls away from the species this would make no difference at all). . . . The
perfecting of the individual in himself is at the same time, and in so doing,
the perfect participation in the whole.’ a 2 1 Cor. xii. 26.
140
 THE

. however, to_be. understood _n

CONTRADICTION

not_as a task but as a gift, as a

ee
tae.
Rc
God-given life, not as an aim to be realized by us in the future,
but as our Creation and Beginning in God. God has created
us as this whole—so that only and precisely in i this being-in-
_ the-whole, in this personal existence which is based upon our -
\ relation Pees and to one another can each become that for
|_which he is destined, a responsible person, a human man.
If that is our origin, then our
our opposition to thisorigin cannot
be an experience, an act, oftheindividualas an individual.
The sin Adam is the destruction of communion with God,
which is at the same time the severance of this bond; it is that d
state of ‘being against God’ which also means ‘being against
one another.’ Certainly each individual is a sinner as an
individual; but he is at the same time the whole iin itsunited
solidarity, he body, actual humanity as a whole. As we know |...
ourselves in Christ as this original community-in-the-Word, 7 —
as those who have been elected not to be individuals but for 4“
the Body of Christ, as the community of the elect, so we. ~ en
perceive in Him also sin as the opposition to the electing. ~,.-" |
Word and the dissolution of this community intended and~_
hae in the fact of election. All one in Christ’—that is not.
nly the goal but also the origin, anditalso applies to the
orem of the origin, AAs the man who has been created in _
“the Word of God iis at. the sz
same time both the individual and
humanity, scSO.also the man who has fallen away from the original .
Creation isboth the individual and the community, In sin we ae
are bound together as a united “body, just as we are bound|
together in the Creation, only with this difference, that—and |
this belongs to sin—we den this solidarity iin sin. |
Hence the Divine oo in which He reveals to us~
Himself and our origin—the true God and the true man—
is the revelation of a love which is a complete solidarity, which
does not do what we all. do: reproach _the other with guilt
andina Pharisaical way separate. ourselves, as innocent, from,
the guilty. IIf Jesus Christ is the Word “525God, who reveals
to us the meaning of true human existence, then His solidarity
with our guilt in the counterpart of His solidarity with all,
1 Cf. the observations of Kahler on the historical character of human
existence in the Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, pp. 2°71 ff.
141
 MAN IN REVOLT

time
reveals the true character of our guilt, and at the same
the character of our sin: the breach of solidarity.
AL
9. THE ELEMENTS OF TRUTH AND ERROR IN THE ECCLESIASTIC
~ DOCTRINE. rst ae
ent ;
In Adam all have sinned—that is the Biblical statem
ne of
but how? The Bible does not tell us that. The doctri
New |
Original Sin is read into it.1 In the doctrine of the
human
Testament all that matters is this: the unity of the
the counte rpart of the unity of redee med |
race in sin as
that:
humanity in Christ—type and anti-type. But more than
of Adam, the ‘secon d Adam, ’ Christ, is at the
the anti-type
the
same time the Origin; the Redeeming Word of God is at
and
same time the Creator-Word, in Whom, through Whom
have been— not only redee med—b ut created ./
for’Whom we
ord?
Only out of this unity of the Creator- and Redeemer-W
does there come an understanding of the unity of all individuals
which also expresses itself as a unity in sin. But just as the
origin cannot be visibly represented—the historical presen-
tation of the ecclesiastical doctrine of the Primitive State leads
to the most unfortunate and erroneous definitions—so also the
unity of all in the contradiction cannot be visibly represented.
Just as in respect of the Creation we ask in vain: How, where
and when has this taken place? so also is it with the Fall.
The Creation and the Fall both lie behind the historical visible
actuality, as their pre-suppositions which are always present,
and are already being expressed in the historical sphere.®
1 Cf. above, p. 119, Note (*).
2 ‘God the Father has begun the creation of all creatures by His Word,
the same,
and He has finished it, and still preserves it for ever through
His work which He creates as long as He chooses,
and He remains with
John i. 3).
until the time comes when it shall no longer be’ (Luther on
by
He says the same of Christ: ‘. . . and all is still ruled and sustained
end of all
Him to the end of the world, for He is the beginning and the
the same Word also all things which are thus
creatures’; ‘that through
remain so
created are preserved in their nature, otherwise they would not
long created’ (WA. 46, 558, 560, 561).
individual
3 Julius Miiller’s theory of ‘a sinfulness which lies beyond our
and temporal existence, which . . . must have its origin in our personal
personality
self-decision,’ the ‘idea of a manner of existence of the created
496),
outside time, on which its. life in time is dependent’ (op. cit., II,
142
 THE SONAR DLO N

The truth _and the e1

error in _ the. traditional. ecclesiastical
Paw ta tt

nt on
ies

cng rt cr ROSNER NSD ee

“But what it says, in order to make clear or to arin “what
‘is meant, in order to report what took place originally and
what was done in opposition to this origin as an historical
event, is something quite different: the responsible 2 act of ;an
Tadividual, whose guilt, forr incomprehensi s, isfastened
on us, and whose sin is transferred. to us in :
EAST
ave witinta a Bere, ek aa manner. ‘which i
ES is
quite incompatible. with, thernature. ‘of sin,_hamely,.. through
natural mbheritance. “To confuse this stumbling-block with that
stumbling-block ‘which always lies alongside the possibility of
faith as the possibility of unbelief, means a sinister misinter-
pretation of what is revealed to us in the New Testament as
faith and ‘stumbling-block.’ In the New Testament the *,
‘stumbling-block’ is always: the desire to evade responsibility
towards God, or the evasion of complete dependence upon
His action. The’ ‘stumbling-block’ of the ecclesiastical doctrine, os
however, consists in this, that we are made responsible for.
asin “which.‘someone else ‘has committed. For when the
‘ecclesiastical doctrine tries to right its mistake by teaching
that we all commit sin now owing to the inherited sin of Adam,
this certainly does not apply to the sin for which we are held
responsible: the peccatum originis. And the sins which we our-,
_selves comminitare, according to the.ecclesiastical doctrine, the
necessary, conscaucnces. of0 that ‘transference, -‘thus once again
somethin
thing for 1which honestly. we cannot accept responsibility.
What is the reason for this confusion? Simply historical
demonstration, the idea that it is possible to present an
historical report about this. This led to the fact, as Kierkegaard
springs from very similar considerations to those which are made here, but
it is a metaphysical and speculative transgression of the boundary which is
set for our knowledge, even for our knowledge in faith, and—in spite of
Miiller’s modification (II, 102)—leads into paths trodden by the specula-
tions of Origen. The particular question which could most easily lead to
such a doctrine of the Original Fall, that of the basis of solidarity in sin,
is not solved by Miiller’s theory, whereas Origen does solve it—in his own
platonic dualistic way—by a combination of the Fall and (physical)
humanity.

143
 MAN IN REVOLT

points out, that the first man is singled out in_a fantastic way
from the series of all the human beings who follow him,* and
farworse—
. whate ofishistor foll
human. beings whomaniz
the inthe
himow
cours y are in a fantas tic way de-hu ed. I would
_Tepeat:wemay be grateful to historical science that it has
eliminated the historical element from the story of the Creation
and of the Fall, and in so doing has forced us to seek. once
more for the Divine Word concerning the Creation and the
Fall of man.
By all this I do not mean to say that this idea of Original
Sin (Erb-Siinde= inherited sin) in_ this narrower, ecclesias-—
‘tical, traditional sense hasno of truth in it at all. As one of the
manifestations of the solidari ty sin, we must take into account
- the connexion of individuals through the fact of physical
_ descent, which, obscure though it may be, is forced upon us
by experience. The transmission of the spiritual nature, of the
‘character,’ from parents to children is such an evident and —
iragically powerful experience onthat itwould beofstran geifit_
were not bro into
ugh t
connexi with the idea
the idea o f the
the peccatum
originis, But it wasan error to see in this fact an explanation;
SERIE PO

of the primal fact of solidari ty in sin itself, Upon this plane —

“thedoctrine—rejected by the Church as Pelagian—that this
element of inheritance should be understood as merely a
pre-disposition, that is, as an occasion for, but not as the
ground of sin, had as much justification as the ecclesiastical
doctrine itself. For in face of this physical determinism its
denial for the sake of responsibility has a certain amount of
quite solid justification. Both facts, the relative fact of being
conditioned by one’s heritage and the relative freedom over
against it, are indeed manifestations on the one hand, of
necessity, and on the other, of responsibility; but they do not
actually constitute either necessity or responsibility. The fact _
that we are to some extent conditioned by our heredity is no
" MatsNAMEN CEASE YDSO ENEMA RSet SY IAPR NNER EME IED a i foe MO
Dae PSV A SOLIELS PALO MED in:

1 Kierkegaard, Begriff der Angst, p. 22.

“The Pelagian doctrine of
2 Karl Barth says too, in a similar vein:
all
freedom and the fatalistic doctrine of necessity . . . are in principle
similar distortions of the freedom in which the Divine Providence recog-
encompasses and governs the contingency of the creature, the
nizes,
freedom of the human will, as such’ (Credo, p. 35):
144
plane oid Che abarbile ! dra they —mearely porate & ec
| pe a j re , , ‘be - _

Lan ie (= chakkeche ? } Hrur eee a Aehtie a AEivamertlee, ohe

THE CONTRADICTION

proof of Original Sin (Erb-Stinde) , nor does .the: relative. -,4-7

freedom we possess to_resist_ this inherited tendency ‘provide he ef -
a proof against Original Sin (Erb- Siinde) ;3 but both facts.are “wre #@
important, though not absolutely clear indications which ©point |
towards sin, in itsfateful character and its responsibility,
Among” these.>indications, upon the 1 relative plane, even that
theory «of the ‘Kingdom of sin,” the ethical theory of environ-
‘ment, 2gains ‘its
itsrelative Justification this, too, shows how the
“invisible, 0}
opaque ‘solidarity of sin comes out visibly, in an
historical and psychological way. Conversely, however, upon
this relative plane also the perception of a moral free om,
Of a capacityfor the Good due to free resolve, as is“taught
by ethical rationalism, is not to be absolutely _ rejected, if we
‘remind ourselves of the fact that this Good lies within the
sphere which includes the concept of sin. There is sin within
good.as well as within evil, in virtue as well as in vice,1 and
to deny the reality of this Good, this virtue, this highminded-
ness and this ideal disposition, would be just as wrong as to
play it off against the fact of universal and total sinfulness.
This confronts us withaproblem which needs more detailed
explanation, tthequestion. of the relation. between thepeccatum
origins and actual ‘‘sins’ which. can. be directly perceived. This
explanation must ‘also give us more detailed information in
answer to the question : In what sense 18: the peccatum originis
accessible toexperience orr not?

IO. ORIGINAL SIN AND SINS OF ACT pe AA

The fact that we are sinners means that sin is not only an
occasional, perhaps even a frequent _ act, always, arising out
of thewrong
w ddecision of the moment, “butthat it is a perverted
tendency of 0
our nature, The assertion, however, that sin has
‘become “our nature’ has been rightly condemned, even by
Lutheran theology, within which this terrible view arose, as
a ‘Manichean’ distortion and exaggeration of the idea of the

1 It is this which idealistic Humanism, and also religious moralism of

every kind—in short, what the man who is outside the Christian revelation
does not know—the Pharisaism which necessarily inheres in the moral
human being, the ‘Pharisaism of the idea’ as Kutter so profoundly calls it.

145
 MAN IN REVOLT

peccatum originis.1 But even without this extreme exaggeration

the Christian statement remains difficult enough. “Thou art
a sinner’ means: ‘thou must sin, thou canst not act otherwise
. than in opposition to the will of God.’ How are we to under-
’?
stand this ‘being unable,’ this ‘must,’ this ‘necessityHow
can we uiderstand itwith out~dest charactng
theroyi er of
| on and the responsi
' _»decisi bility of our present life in its actual
' experience? How can we, on the other hand, make room for
this element without cutting the nerve of that fundamental
statement, that ‘must’? In opposition to the usual uncritical
respect for the Reformers it must be said that in this question
their doctrine is very far from being the final word, and that
on this point Augustine? has thought through the problems
involved far more thoroughly, and, I would repeat—in this
question—he has done more for their solution than either
can be no doubt that the Reformers,
Luther or Calvin. There
in their desire to preserve the fact of man’s sinfulness_ at all
costs, have often done so in such a way that we cannot wholly

form of Determinism. The traditional, historical conception

of the doctrine of Original Sin has indeed done far more than
give ‘occasion’ for this; so long as this rigid doctrine held sway
only two courses were open: either, to reduce the sense of
obligation to the merely psychological level ofa ‘semi-necessity,’
or, on the other hand, to accept the view of a natural causal
determination. And yet in Augustine’s searching discussions
of the various meanings of the non posse, of necessity, the
rudiments of a solution of this fatal dilemma might have been
found. Who would want to reproach the Reformers for not
having solved this problem? We are not raising this question
in order to depreciate them, but in order to show clearly the
nature of our present task. The phrase, man _‘is’_a sinner, he
must_on no account be understood to mean that
the sinful action which takes place at any particular moment
st’
‘musin,
ta ae rea

1 Cf. what was said above on p. 137 about Flacius.

2 Cf. the yaluable presentation and interpretation of Augustine’s doctrine
of freedom by Heinrich Barth, Die Freiheit der Entscheidung im Denken
Augustins ;and H. Diem, Augustins Interesse in der Préadestinationslehre, Festschrift
fir K. Barth, pp. 379 ff.
146
 THE CONTRADICTION

‘follows’like a final conclusion from certain premises, or as

a2 physical effect
t follow
follows. ‘its causes. The analogy of the tree
and its fruits? ought not
not to beexpounded iin such a way. The
statement, ‘man is a sinner,’ is neither the major term for the
logical conclusion : thus all his acts are sinful, noris the fact
which it describes, the fact of being a sinner, “the ca
cause of his
‘individualsinful” actions. “This word ‘must’ can have neither —
the logical-consecutive nor the ‘physico-causal meaning. For
every sin, which man commits, is a fresh decision ‘against ( God;
‘hence the Bibleregards it Just as seriously as
a the fact of man’s
general sinfulness. Indeed—however remarkable this may at
first appear—between the two_statements.. that man is the
slave of sin, and that every sin is an actual decision, there
does not seem to be in the Bible even a relation of ‘tension;
both statements are set alongside each other, each in its//
own place, and are given equal and full weight. Nothing is ~”
y
~
further from the thought of the Bible—Paul included—than »»
determinism, unless it were indeterminism! How.is this to be. ~~“ “~~
understood?
It would only be possible to give a comparatively satisfactory
answer at the close of this whole book, since all the inquiries
which follow are intended to be contributions to such an
answer. Here all we can do, anticipating the result, is to sum
up the most important points. All the hopeless confusion which
characterizes the ideas on_ thisis_question—and _“especially _‘also.
the classical ecclesiastical ideas—is due to the fact that man
was not understood in his essential relation to the Word of God,
but was conceived as a soul-entity or ‘rational being, existing
1
independently, aand therelation of the Divine Will to him had
to be conceived either in a ‘deterministic-causal_ manner
Seelen-ding), or in an indetérministic and |autonomous manner
eT ay “Thus from the very outset the relation between
divine and human freedom is definitely insoluble. And even
such a remarkably Scriptural thinker as Luther was not able
wholly to free himself from this Greek habit of thought. In
the last resort, however, by means of his paradoxes he always
retrieves the Biblical understanding of man; but in these
paradoxes—which do not arise out of the matter itself but out
1 Matt. vii. 17.

147
 MAN IN REVOLT

of inadequate means of thought—he expects from us an inner

force of tension which as a rule we do not possess, which also
we should not need, if the truth were not expressed by such
unsuitable means.
Man ‘ is’ a sinner; but. this‘is,’ pecause it refers to man,
must ‘not“be “confused with any “other ‘ is. > Man’ S ‘being’ never
‘ceases to be a ‘being-in-decision. ’‘Even as sinner man is not
“asoul-orreason-entity of some kind. Man ‘is’ not a sinner in
‘the way in which an elephant ‘is’ a mammal or the sum of
~— lo-the angles in a triangle ‘is’ 180 degrees. The whole problem
a RRR Nr ne

a of human existence is contained in the copula Loft

« “this.
is predicate,
_ in the ‘is,’while the philosophers and theologians usually seek_
oateR
inthe’
TN
‘predica cate. mH AG_be a.
calaeareNyane
a si
sinner means:= LO)Be: “engaged in
in
| e‘Tebellion-- against “God. ‘Sin ne never ‘becomes “a
a quality or even ibaa.
asubstance. Sin is and. remains. ‘an act. The doctrine of the
Church” which, through the idea of inherited sin, has slipped
into the physical sphere, has overlooked this permanent quality
of the actuality of sin or at least—through its physical emphasis
—it has obscured it; for it equates the state of “being a sinner’
with, for instance, a child’s ‘being blue-eyed’ because his father
had blue eyes.
Hence, because tthis_actuality of the ‘is’ was not understood, -
but was confuse: e logical (‘is’ 180. ‘degrees) -
“Or.Sah
thephysical Gais” ‘blue--eyed), the relation betweenthe actuality
*
of primal |sin and so-called‘
‘sins’ of act was nott understood.
Sin is never a state, ‘but at:isalways act. ‘Even being aa sinner
ds not a“state. but an act, “because it is being person. ‘Being
‘person is actual being, even if it is ‘permanent being.’ The
application of concrete, physical natural categories to sin can
only fundamentally corrupt the understanding of it. Even
‘flesh’ in the New Testament isnot a natural buta a personal.
definition :
1 the permanent_aact_ of being. turned. away. from_
God, the fact that theperson. has become rigid in thisnegative _
econ in th the Bible—not only in
i the Old Testament, but also
in the New, and not only in the Synoptic Gospels but also in
the writings of Paul—there is nothing said about sin which
means anything other than the act of turning away from God.
But in the very concept of‘being
a sinner’ this act isconceived
1 See below Pp- 254, note.
148
 THE CONTRADICTION

as one which determines man’s whole existence.! If Pelagius|©

had only asserted this against Augustine his position would
have been impregnable. But he asserted something quite
different; he maintained that man is always able to decide
this way or that, for or against God. But if this statement
were true, the whole Christian message of redemption would |}
be Sanaliede and Augustine was obliged, with all the means |
at his disposal—and if he had no other, then by means of the |
doctrine of Original Sin—to banish this destructive error from
the Church. In the main, all the right was upon his side; but
he was not wholly right. Tedis with this point that we are now
concerned. '
Man’s apostasy from God is not simply something which |\
happened once for all, and is over and done with; man is
‘doing it continually. ‘The contradiction isnot a fatal tragic
disaster which has taken place behind us andrema anins—
equally
how~ —_
adiction
disastrous quality within us. The contr
could it ever be anything else?-—contradiction, turning away,
apostasy. Hence we, each one of us, are ‘Adam,’ _just_as we
all together are “Adam.?aul He.statement that we are sinners,
that we are fallen creatures, doesnot tell” ‘us anythiningabout
the ‘cause’ of this ;apostasy ;
; for here there are no ‘causes.’
at 1t does express is‘the‘truth, that allman’s personal be
being |
is involve in tl nls act ofturning: away from God, It states _
Sonu WITy
that he who commits this.; apostasy ¢ can do no other than repeat -
a on Lone

it continually, not because it has become a habit, but because.

this is the distinctive character of this act. It is because the
foundation of the Creation, the truth and reality of the Creation
1 Gutbrod (Die Paulinische Anthropologie, p. 135) has expressed very well
the difference between being a sinner and sinning: ‘Because man sins he
is a sinner, and because he is a sinner he sins.’ The fact that in the thought
of Paul sin appears as a force which dominates men is not in the least in
opposition to our contention that sin, and being a sinner, is never to be
understood as a state but always as an act. Precisely the personification of
sin as a force is an attempt to assert its (negative) actuality. It points in
the same direction as the analogy of sin and ‘constitution’ in the text
(p. 150). ‘Constitution’ is here—as there ‘power understood as principium
activum. Only once in the New Testament is ‘nature’ connected with sin:
‘by nature children of wrath’ (Eph. ii. 3); but y%vovc is here rather an
historical than a metaphysical definition: being, outside the revelation of
salvation.
149
: i De MAN IN REVOLT
of our being is denied in this act, that in this act—in its
nti
continual iti
repetition—our nature isis altered,
altered,perverted. It do
perverted.
1t does BESET
ONS ORME BREA RINE.

not cease to be an actuality, nor does it cease to be a related

or responsive actuality ;but itnow lives as a negative actuality, oe oe

in permanent opposition to itself and to God’s original inten-

tion) Luther touches the spot—although he is unable to express
it ddequately with the means of thought at his disposal—when
he always emphasizes the fact that the person is sinful; hence
the person can do no good works. This is his clue to the
labyrinth, by means of which he strides forward with con-
fidence.! To him ‘the doctrine of Original Sin is the means
provided by tradition to visualize this in his mind. ‘The method _
- of express is often questionable, but the truth which he is
ion
to express, namely, that
trying issinful, is_
the whole person
wabrewerng>

indeed the whole point at issue. The Bible says this, and nothing
else. To be person is a total act; but the total act can have
woe:

of the relation
no other content. save “that LSOYt VITALS RAS
te2 God The being
SAAR TPR

of
EE PTSEMA

‘of the person is constituted in the whole personal act, whic

TL ESA ETERS TYRE IIO IES SESRE

Hpanmbeerihta breil tyeAUCpare AbD Ararat ware aM Sea eo

ig Ri TAU ORES
henceforward in allthat the person “does.”
SE aA
must express itself
Seti oaubanngs neta2S Se ee cmae laadunn: Mememmeniiiaamas -maaarananant isle Se ee ein eens as
a twill try explain this bycellent an illustration which is SESEalso
PV RUESE
aeRO LENO Ne a
Vaart ARES AREA TEAR

than an illustration. A state is a state by means

semana << anaemia |
something mo
ietenieaeers aeeememnemeenrtl
sien

eee RICE MN Scag ear Catt a

of its constitution. The constitution takes place, it is not a

IORI ETITG EOME REISE Tae ema enema alia

atural event, but an historical event; and, as certainly as it

has a beginning, it is always in actu. A state decays, or at least
1 ‘Original sin, or natural sin, or personal sin, the real chief sin; if this
were not there would be no real sin. This sin is not committed like all
other sins, but it is, it lives, and it commits all sins, and it is the essential
sin, which does not sin for an hour or for a time; but where and for how
long the person is, there too is the sin’ (WA. X, I, 508 ff.). Luther says
directly of his’ doctrine of the person: est autem haae doctrinae nostrae summa
quod docemus et profitemur personam prius Deo acceptam esse quam opus et personam
non fieri justam ex opere justo, sed opos fieri justum et bonum ex persona justa et
bona (on Gen. iv. 4, WA. 42, 190). In another passage (Disput. Drews,
pp. 20-2) the conceptions tota persona, cor and imago Dei are related to one —
another: Redime, hic dicitur, ad personam totam. Igitur primo requiritur cor. Opus
fit per cor. Cor debet primo credere. . . . Rex vero credit et fit nova persona. Iam
ergo non est amplius larva diaboli, sed imago Dei. Further there appears in this
connexion fota vita (22), actus primus; oportet prius adesse personam quae credat.
Persona, imago, cor, totus homo are equivalents, and are all to be conceived
in an actual manner: relatio ad verbum (cf. also Schott, Fleisch und Geist nach
Luthers Lehre unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung des Begriffes totus homo, 1928).
150
 THE CONTRADICTION fears
it begins to decay, as soon as the original constitution is no
longer a living thing. A living state constitutes itself ever anew
in the will of the people (here I am not thinking of the contrat
social or of any other form in which a state comes into being).
oe state ‘is’ not in the way in which a building ‘is,’ but it
> in the manner of actuality. But out of this actuality of the
shareat NS:

teen which | gives | it its character there now follow other

subordinate
acts: the legislation as a relatively total act,the —
‘decrees as further subordinate acts, and finally the current —
government business. These differentiated| subordinate acts do
not ‘follow’ with logical ;and causal necessity. In a living state,
it
true,
is the legislation, the decrees and the individual
proceedings do ‘follow’ out of the living constitution of the
State, that is, out of the constitution which is constantly
establishing itself afresh; this, however, does not, take place
from causal necessity or from logical necessity, but in a special
manner. The constitution manifests itself ever afresh in these
more or less comprehensive ‘Individual acts, and at the sa
same
AW
Me A WL

time
in them itiscontinually “being reconstituted; ‘thecon-
stitution is
isa permanent aact. Thus there is something quite
‘distinctive about the constitution in relation to the laws,
decrees and proceedings of government. The actuality of the
constitution determines and includes those other acts in a
manner which makes them into manifestations; but the con-
stitution does not invalidate the acts as acts. On the contrary,
only in the
1e genuine actuality of these acts, in the fact that they
are not logical “conclusions and causal consequences from the
constitution, is the ever living constitution of the State attained.
~ To some extent ‘the. act which constitutes the person, and
the individual ‘acts’ or ‘works’ of the. person, resemble the.
procedure which has just been described. The constituting of
Rangel

the person is attained—and can only be attained—by the

determination of his relation to God. Man is, so we said, what
his attitude towards God is, or, to put it even more correctly,
he is that as which he “determines his attitude to God. But
in this fact he is not free in the way in which we have imagined
the constituting state to be. The attitude of man to God_is
determined by. the Creation ;Zit isgiven. to man.1.It is,‘irrevocably,
so created that man is grounded in the Word of God, that
tw

151
 MAN IN REVOLT
|he has been created in and for love. Now if man decides |
G ‘in ‘so“doing he does not simply give |
| against, the ‘Word of God,
shimself” another constitution—for
— this power. he simply ¢does _ i
ial
"i eae ossess—but he sets himselfin opposition to his «constitution. —
Thus hisconstit ition—to continue. the parable—is a; permanent
revolution.’ As inall revolutions the situation, however, is this,
that “they do not come to an end of themselves, but only
through the fact that a powerful man comes and creates order,
by simply sweeping away the revolutionary ‘government’
cw
which was no government at all. It is the same with the human
revolution against God; ofitself it cannot bring itself to_an_
end. This it cannot do, forthe curseof the opposition to God’s

constitution doesnot. cae fora.Se order. For the principle

to create OrGer.
of revolution is disorder, chaos, the inability t
But this’‘disorderly constitution, “thisrevolutionary government
—which iis no government—is 1the very essence or characteristic
of the constitution of man as sinner. The man, who is a sinner,
cannot be a non-sinner, not because he now ‘has the ‘quality’
of ‘being a sinner,’ but because thisnegatively total act brings
about aquite. peculiar state of affairs, which cannot be com-
pared “with any other (save with Something which resembles
the personal—like the State), namely, 1that this act can never
be reversed, but can only continue to repeat itself
_ afresh.
Kant was upon right lines when he maintained that radical
evil cannot be overcome. “by. gradual reform... . but must_
be overcome by a revolution in the disposition. 72)|
But his_
: It may be assumed that it is clean that the view here eeeeenien has
only a very remote connexion with the philosophical theory of the
‘intelligible character’ as it was developed in different ways by Kant,
Schelling and Schopenhauer. The contrast lies above all in the starting-
point: no creation in the Word of God; it lies, secondly, in the fact that
that theory (in accordance with the starting-point) is completely indivi-
dualistic; thirdly, that so far as the empirical is concerned, it is completely
deterministic. What is held in common, however, is this, that what the
Church means by the Fall and Original Sin we do not seek in the region
of that which can be empirically proved, but ‘beyond’; not in a timeless
or supra-temporal sense, however, but in a created primal existence, which
like the Creation can only be ‘seen’ from the point of view of the Word
of God, and not from the point of view of experience.
2 Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Vernunft, Ausgabe Kehrbach ,p. 49.
152
 THE CONTRADICTION

mistake
was that he thought that the possibility of such a
“revolution lay
layiin mann_himself. He_came to this view because
he did not rightly perceive the totalitarian and revolutionary Ma
-w
character of evil. Indeed, he would not see it; because, if he
“had done so, he would have been forced to give up his
immanental philosophy and his doctrine of the autonomous
reason. But that he did not wish to do; he wanted | to hold
fast to the conviction that man himself, as homo noumenon, is
his own creator and re-creator.

II. GREATER AND LESSER SINS: THE ETHICALLY GOOD

The second point which we perceive as a result of thinking

out this question afresh is this, that this act \which affects man
as a whole must continually re-emerge in particular ;acts of
greater or lesser intensity. This relative difference inintensity,
which has always been noticed by man, is the basis for the
distinction between greater and lesser sins,whichistaken for
a NTT,

granted throughout the Bible. E _They are all manifestations ’

os Sean bio %

of the one rebellion; sofar as “primal si

nr ent ee ee
sin_is concerned.“there 3

Is no ‘greater’ or “lesser.” But it would be asign of complete

Cte reality ‘of an “obstinately doctrinaire spirit, were
we to refuse to acknowledge that it does make a difference
whether a man kills a fellow-creature in cold blood, or makes
an unkind remark to a dear friend, which hurts him a little.
Both are manifestations of the one and the same original fact
in which there are no degrees; but from it there follows—in
accordance with the extent of the sphere affected by the action,
in accordance with the extent in which the person as a whole
is ‘in’ it—the
thegreater or lesser_sinfulness of the ‘sin of act.’
Failure to perceive these distinctions has caused a great deal of
useless |controversy and—what is worse—has created a terrible
amount of«confusion of conscience.
Indeed, we must go a step further. Within Original Sin the
disarm between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ has not been obliterated.
‘The fact that we are ‘all sinners’? does not mean that
REA ERIE NM NIE IN t
we can
1 Peccata alia aliis graviora esse docet Christus. ‘The Stoics alone have
ventured to remove this difference contra omnem sensum generis humani
(Gerhard, op. cit., V, 59). Cf. Matt. xii. 31; 1 John v. 18; Luke xii. 47;
John xix. 11, etc. 2 Rom. iii. 23.
153
 ee die \

ol’ J)" IN REVOLT MAN

do nothing good—in the usual ethical sense of the word—that
we can only do evil. Such an assertion contradicts both
experience and the clear Biblical doctrine. The Reformers,
too, frankly admitted this fact—although they obstinately and
passionately resisted the inferences which Catholic theology
drew from it—and to this sphere they gave the name of the
justitia civilts.+
Within the great circle of sinful existence which includes
us all, there is an obvious difference between faithful and
unfaithful married partners, between officials who are con-
scientiousin the performance of their duties and those who
are careless and unreliable, between people who give them-_
selves pains to do good and who do achieve a large measure
who have gon
“of goodness, and those edogs, to whom
to the
complete indifference, indeed,
all that is moral is a matter of
who find it rather ridiculous. A doctrinaire theology must have
become very extreme if it has reached a position in which
it is able to deny the reality of these differences and their
significance; in any case, those who take this position cannot
appeal to any important theological tradition, and least of all
to Luther or Calvin. It_is perfectly possible to combine being
a_sinner, with being ‘good’ in the ethical sense; indeed in,the
not being a sinner has nothing
the fact of being or
last resort
“f do with the difference morally ‘will
between thethe harl and
‘good’ots the into.
the publicans and
morally ‘evil’; enter
‘the KingdomofHeaven before the righteous Pharisees—whose
“moral righteousness no one would dream of impugning. This
is notbecause the Pharisees are morally good—as though it
‘were anadvantage to be a moral rascal—but, because those_
who are morally goodarearesinners. to evade
tempted to trygood—alwa
always The the —
truth that they too morally ys
ranneeinpaitw Mec Aero tie!

1 The idea of the justitia civilis suggests the state of affairs indicated in
Rom. ii. 14. Luther went a very long way in the recognition of pagan
virtue, because to him this ‘moral righteousness’ was not in opposition to
‘sin.’ Systematically this possibility was based upon those tenues quaedam
reliquiae of the Imago Dei, which have been left us as recirices externae
disciplinae (another term for justitia civilis) and as a point of contact for the
divine grace qua velut paedagogia quadam Deus utitur ad instaurationem imaginis
(Gerhard, op. cit., IV, 292), and with that externa illa paedagogia in Christum
locum habere posset, quae in diabolis non est (Gerhard, op. cit., V, 202).
154
 THE CONTRADICTION

understood in wits relative sense, which indeed ‘is expressed

in the word ‘moral’—is in itself, Bbicctively, naturally in closer
correspondence with the will of God than the morally bad.
When God commands: ‘thou shalt not commit adultery,’ He
actually wills that adultery should. ‘not. be committed, in the
solid everyday sense in which the word is used by everyone.
eaeis what God wills, this is what His Commandment means;
nly it means infinitely more. than. this, and it is tthis Snfinitely
more’ that remains hidden from the eyes of the. Pharisee, ©
the legalistic person. In order to understand this aright, tthere
is still a final aspect of the problem of sin to consider, that is,
the law.
Sn

12. THE ORIGIN, _THE CONTRADICTION, AND THE LAW

——-

image of God,_is the “truly. responsible man, ‘that iis,“the man

who _answers.“God?'S call of love with ‘grateful. love,.the man
a eee.

who lives in communion with the Creator, and in conSequence

also with |
his fellow-creatures.. True responsibility is identical
with this love, whichh iis grounded iin the love of God. ‘In this
love alone can man fulfil the destiny of his creation; in this |
love alone does he live and act responsibly towards his Creator’:a
since he knows that he is bound in this way to his neighbour, .
and since hemakes this bond the law of his life,1 he is a \
truly Auman being.
_ Such
_a_
a human
bh being does not exist, he has only existed
Vig eed
once in the ‘whole course
< of history, iin the form of tthe.‘One_ ,
‘who could Say: “The “Son of Man came not to be ministered
unto but-
tominister, _and to SVE. His life aransom for many.’2 ~
But all the rest of us are ‘sinners, > which means that we all live,
we all are, in opposition to
to our origin. eeperceive that we are in
H this oopposition .to our origin in the.ve fact.‘that. ‘the origin
«
_is once more placed before, our eyes. There’ where the depth
of the divine love is revealed, “there, where at the same time
true human love does its incomprehensible utmost, in the
Cross of Christ, we become aware of our opposition to our
origin. There alone do we perceive how irresponsibly we live,
1 Law of faith, Rom. iii. 27; Law of the’spirit of life, Rom. viii. 2; Law
of freedom, Jas. i. 25. 2 Mark x. 45.
£59
 MAN IN REVOLT

This practical and actual denial of responsibility, this self-

determination in opposition to it, this is sin.
Now, however, we see plainly that the divine determination
in the Creation is far higher than our negative self-determina-
tion; in other words, that the two elements in our being, the
divine (positive) and the human (negative), are not in equal
proportions; this comes out in the fact that although, through
‘sin, we cease to express_our_ respon sibili ty, we do not cease to
“be respon Wesib le.
do not even cease to_be awareof respon-
sibility. Responsibility still remains the characteristic formula
for the nature of man, for fallen man as well as for man in
‘his origin. But responsibility is now no longer the formula of
his reality ,its but onlyngthe1sformul obld.iga
of hischange
andly tio
and n,h —
throug
| this fact meani profou It is true that
(ae, man does not love God and his neighbour, but himself; yet
he ought to love God and his neighbour. The divine law of
ee me
nature has becoa law of obligation. Instead of an existence Es

in love, life has becthe ome dualism

S eehiiaaiads

, derived from, and lived

oA NN ETN TT LT IE

é XK of whatis and what obligation

ought to be, It is this law of
ich
“whPaul means when he speaks of the ‘law.’ Being under
the law 18 thus the way in which man exists as sinner. There-
fore being under the law is just as clear an expression of the
contradiction as sin itself. Both are the same, seen from two
different aspects. Sin means: man no longer does what God
wills but what he wills. Law means: even the man who does
what he wills, does not cease to live under the will ofGod,
er
only now this will ofGod is forhimno longa gift of life
but a death-bringing demand. Hence the law, as Paul says, |
‘has come in between.? The fact that we ought to do the
good is the sign that we no longer live in the good. The
“ aU nine to

knowledge of ‘good and evil,’ the knowledge of _God’s will

in this for mthe contradiction, is the effect of the Fall.*
of
1. Stange, Die diltesten ethischen Disputationen Luthers; F. V. Baader,
Philosophische Schriften, 1, p. 17.
2 Gal. iii. 19, ‘The law... was added’; Rom. v. 20, ‘The law
no
entered . . .?; Luther too: ‘Adam was thus created that he needed
commandment’ (WA. 24, 72). The will of God becomes ‘a law unto man
in the real sense of the word only after the entrance of sin, as then it ceases
to be law once sin has been removed’ (Theod. Harnack, op. cit., 382).
3 Gen. iil. 5.
156
 THE CGONTRADICTION
Wr Od
Sin_is the manner in which man emancipates himself. from as
God, “takes himself. out of the hands of God; but the law is
the way in which God. still holds the Febelthe man who has
tried to sever his connexion with God—in His hands. Man _
cannot escape from the law of responsibility; this iron “ring
surrounds his whole existence; it cannot be broken, thus_it
preserves for man’sexistence avestige of humanity.?
~ Not “only is the man who has become ‘separated from his
origin Speepie but also, even though dimly and obscurely, Yi

in ‘his heart; some een peg of this, in some form, con-

stitutes an essential part of human nature and one that can
never be lost. ‘Every human being knows that he is respon- —
Jsible.¥ But it is in the very nature of the law as such that |
there cannot be any ‘perfect knowledge” of the law. The will|
“of God, in so far as it is understood as ‘law,’ is always mis-
Gnderisod from the outset, although no one comes to. the
knowledge of the will of God except through the knowledge
of the law. Hence the law and the knowledge of the law
is the really‘“critical”
point in the relation between God
and man. In the understanding of the law the decision is
made.® This was clearly seen, first of all by Paul, and then
by Luther. Redemption does not mean simply. that man_is
set_free from_the ‘curse ofthe law,’ from the punishment of ;
guilt, and ‘that he receives strength to fulfil the law; it also Re
means that
he “ceases
< to regard his life in terms Of law? at AOA
all; once more he has learned to regard it as a divine gift ~~
a Cf. the idea of the divine ‘protective custody’ contained in Gal. iii. 23.
2 Luther: ‘The knowledge from the law is known to the reason, and ©
the reason has firmly grasped and tasted God; for from the Law it x»
has seen what is right and what is wrong, and the Law is written in our
hearts. . . . Although it is more clearly given through Moses, still it is
probably true to say that by nature all rational beings come so far that
they know that it is wrong to be disobedient to father or mother or to
the authorities, etc. . . . so far the reason comes to the knowledge of God,
that it has cognitionem legalem, that it knows God’s command. . . . And the
philosophers have also had this knowledge of God, but it is not the right
knowledge of God which takes place through the law, whether through
that of Moses or that which is written in our hearts’ (WA. 46, 667 ff.).
For Calvin cf. now: Bohatec, Calvin und das Recht.
8 See Appendix II.
157
 aie yr

Ww 4
y ral
fA
o—¥

Be MAN IN REVOLT
and grace. Only in freedom from the law is the meaning of
the law fulfilled, because love—the meaning of the law—isin,
opposition to the law as a statutory demand. Hence the perfect
will of God cannot be perfectly summed up in any law, not
even in the law of love. The meaning of love is simply this:
freedom from the law through being united and grounded in
the divine love.
The law, however, places between the Divine ‘Thou’ and
human ‘thou’ and ‘myself,’
likewise between thewhatever
«miyself” andethi
a ‘som ng,’
anabstract rule, its content may be.
ed g’ which is required
tothis ‘somethin
Attention is. direct
_to_be done, througtheh law as ‘law, ’sodoing man’s
and in
relation to God,to his fellow-crea tures, and to life, becomes
‘rigid and_abstract, The law as a statute necessarily contains
“an impersonal element. The law interposes between person
a
and person, so_that direct relat is impossible.
ion Even where —
the law is conceived quite formally, as in Kant’s Categorical
Imperative, where it expresses the pure form of responsibility
itself and renouncing all content loses its statutory character,
it does not cease to be abstract and impersonal because it_
remain s ofobligation. It does not put me in contact
a law with the
“with the “Thou’—whether divine or human—but
abstract entity ‘reason’ The final motive thereforeinlegal
‘mora self-respect; responsibility to God and to one’s”
islity
neighbour has been distorted into the self-responsibility of the
empirhuman
rational self towards itself. I, the ical being, am
responsible to my own higher self, the intelligible self “or the
noumenon- toI,the autonomous rational self. In the last resort
legalistic responsibility is self-responsibility, thus it is not a
relation to the ‘Thow’ but to the ‘I.’ Hence it is not surprising,-
but isits necessary. consequence, that Kant will have nothing
to do with the idea of a love-commandment. To him whatever
goes beyond rational respe ct the boundary of
is erroneous;
ofthe self-contained reason must
the sphere notbe crossed ;
“@ih notbecome truly personal. ==sst—<“CS*éi‘=~*~*S
mustics
But even where the law has a more personal character, in
the religious ethic of the various peoples, in their sacred law-
books and decalogues, the conception of responsibility remains
impersonal. Here, it is true, it is not, as in philosophy, the
158
 THE CONTRADICTION

abstract reason which constitutes the impersonal character -

of responsibility ;it is its statutory element. You must do this_

or that, this or thatis.com)mmanded you. by the“gods ¢or ‘by:‘God|
—this ‘something’ comes in between me. and the Thou. The
ritual and|ceremonial element, the magical--technical element,
the whole apparatus ‘of the cultus, isi connected with the ethical
element. ‘Ttis precisely this confusing mixture which is charac-
‘teristic“of the
e religious. world outside the. Bible. Even where,
for instance, the command to love God and man emerges, it
is not recognized as the ‘fulfilling of the law,’ as the one
great twofold commandment which really says everything.
This radical intensification of the law as law only takes place
in the New Testament, where the law, since it is fulfilled, is
at the same time abrogated. This brings us once again to the
question of Law and Revelation.
Everyone knows that we are responsible, but not everyone ~ gees:ane [Ie

knows the content, the basis and the meaning of responsibility. 4 aor
The law of Godiswritten in our hearts; this does not mean pruse:
It is
that.“we really knowthe will of God. ‘On ‘the contrary! AL
a
agro

¢ God, from. ‘us—the

precisely 1the law which hides the “will “of. gf Ana,

ally reminds us sinners of ‘the will «

same law which continually
<0
‘
ry

G _ and keeps us to it. Even the cynic or fanatic who PSs “nd
ns AY

of God We. a AM

cas
deniesGod does not escape from God—in so far’as he is
always forced, in some way or another, to recognize ae
fact of responsibility. But the interpretations which he gives
of this responsibility show how far he is from God, just as
the fact that in some way or another he feels bound to inter-
pret the phenomenon of responsibility indicates that he is
connected with God. But where is the law rightly interpreted?
The right of interpretation of responsibility is the love-com-
mandment, and indeed the twofold love-commandment: “Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart . . .’ and the
second, which ‘is like unto it,’ “Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself. ace commandment of the love of man is not
specifically Scriptural; even the truth that the commandment
to love our neighbour sums up all law, is a truth which is not
wholly lacking outside the Biblical revelation.” Indeed, even
1 Matt. xxii. 37 ff.
2 Haas, Idee und Ideal der Feindesliebe in der ausserchristlichen Welt, ‘1927.
159
 MAN IN REVOLT

the commandment to love God and the unity of the love of

God and man is well known, in some way or other, in ‘the
non-Christian : sphere of religion. But the phrase, ‘in some way
or other’ is characteristic. This belongs to the nature of the
law. Even in its purest form, in the form of the twofold love-
commandment, the lawis at the same time both the disclosure
and the“concealme of the divine will. The Hebrew con-
“ception.‘shows this clearly.
The great twofold commandment iis not a discovery ofJesus._
Every pious Jew knew,? in some way or other, that these two
commandments contained ‘the whole law, although’ of course
it was not so clearlyseen and expressed as in the New Testament.
_The same is true of the Stoic sage. For the Jew, the personal
3meaning of this commandment lay beyond all discussion,
whereas for the Stoic it was problematic; on the other hand,
for the Stoic the humane meaning of this commandment was
clearer than for the Jew, for whom it was burdened with
national religious orthodoxy, and therefore with a great deal
of the statutory element. But Jew and Stoic sage alike were
equally full of the thought that this commandment could be
“fulfilled, because_it was. commanded, The fulfilment of the.
‘commandment was,. for both, the..way.to right. existence and
/_/ to the right relation to God and man. Neither of them under-
‘stood that the mere form of the imperative _ “Thou shalt love’
“manifests the whole contradi tion in man. tne.‘Thou shalt,”
PUSS RELAIS LY KT,
|‘the commandment
ame
as “Taw,
esi
Taw, _ only e¢
“exists for_hi
‘him
aim who is —
Tonger |in communion with (
God and therefore ‘does not take
love to be the most natural‘thing i
in the world. The law already
“Imanifests_‘the breach which has been made; thus it conceals—
while it announces the will of God. It gives a CGod to man.
with whom it is possible to enter into right relations through
the correct fulfilment of the law. But this view is not only
erroneous, it is sinful: it is false human independence, self-
righteousness. The very man who thinks that through the eee

fulfilment_of this commandment he is doing the will of God,

1 Cf. dydmn in Kittel’s Worterbuch: ‘The love of which the Rabbis speak
is neither only love between God and man, nor solely love between man
and man, nor both side by side, but both at once and in one’ (I, p. 43).
Cf. the Appendix.
160
 THE CONTRADICTION

shows by this very fact that he has no idea of the will of God;
“true
as itis, onthe other hand, that the love of God and man
is the willOf God. The confidence of man inhimself—of the
egalistic type of man that is,the Pharisee or the Stoic—his
certainty _ that he
h is able to achieve this obedience by his own
efforts, and in so doing to place himself in right relation to
God and man, this autarchy of the religiously moral_man_is
precisely the full
i measure of sin—alongside of which the“
moral degradation of the ‘publicans and harlots’ seems almost.
insipid, because to them at least their incapacity to do this
is to some extent apparent, and they are free from the
danger of considering themselves righteous. The moralistic |
and legalistic understanding of responsibility, which leaves me
dependent on myself, is the very acme of the misunderstanding
of responsibility.
In such a dialectical way is the ‘natural’ and the revealed
understanding of responsibility, and therefore of human exis-
tence, interwoven. Only through the extreme intensification ae.)
of the law do we come to the understanding of grace. But we a

come to the understanding of grace only when we ‘perceive /

that thelegalistic relation to God itselfis sin. _The point of

greatest nnearness _to“God
| is at the same time the _point_of
greatest “distance from God, the most direct point of con-
‘tactis at the same time the greatest point of contradiction.
The
The meaning of the law can only be understood in the over-
coming of the Taw. What the law desires and should achieve,
Ser Taeseen only from the farther side of the law, from
that point at which man breaks down under the divine law,
where the man who relies upon himself and his own efforts
perceives that the realization of his responsibility is not possible,
that he always falls short of what he ought to do, that guilt-
obligation and obligation-guilt are the same. It is only when
man takes the law seriously that he comes ‘to the point at
which,
Pa
acantesteie
broken down under the law, he is at last able to perceive ~
nnvtertvstenrtveteen eaomrtons

the fundamental perversion of his whole existence, his false

independence...we hus the law is not only the critical, but the
diacritical point in the right understanding of God and oneself.
The command ‘Thou shalt love God and thy neighbour’ is
the most ac
accurate knowledge that man can have of himself.
161
 a by :

Aa MAN IN REVOLT

drives him
But when he takes this seriously this commandment
which only forgiving grace, the incompre-
NN cn acme ANIA,
ASS INS RRM SR
ELT TS OU

fromr,
Yo despai
‘ennianeeantie sey eni Leena anaRIAL

hensible generous love , can save him.

sola gratia,
““From all this it is plain why the question of the relation
ed unam-
between the law and revelation cannot be answer
of all
biguously. The law of God is implanted in the hearts
cal and in
men; but, as comes out plainly enough in histori
rubbis h
daily experience, it is at the same time covered by the
tion
of sin. Hence it must be revealed anew; but this revela
in the
is not the proper one. In so far as the ‘law’ is revealed
Old
Old Testament it belongs (according to Gal. iv.) to the
Covenant, to the ‘Jerusalem which now is.’ For in principle
s
++ does not lead further than the lex naturae; it always remain
at that cognitio legalis which, as such, is not the truth of the
true God and of the true will of God. In so far, however,
as the Old Testament is really a revelation, in the same sense
as that of the New (‘the Jerusalem which is above’) as the
same passage in Galatians says clearly: it is a promise, a
revelation, not of the God who first of all demands something,
,
but of the God who first of all gives. The Sermon on the Mount
although in itself it is certainly the highest intensification of
the ‘law,’ is not to be understood essentiallyas law but as
Messianic order of life; given to those
a who know the grace
_of God in Jesus the Christ, who do not live in strivings after
‘God, but who live in the grace which they receive from God.
The real ismeanin g of this lawlies beyond all ‘law’;it is revealed
where it abrogated, in that it is fulfilled:in the Cross of
Christ.
We only know what love is when we know it in the, sense
of the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians;
and no one knows this love fro them law, not even from the
we only
Sermon on the Mount!—ifitisconceived as law—but
i ee

perceive this love from Him who is the sole Object of the Chris-
anatase nsec aksash
vasicmemmanaiins

tian Message:Jesus Christ , Crucified. Here alone is

and Him
disclosed the meaning of responsibility, its source and its goal; ”
“put here it is” not merely disclosed but also given, as the new
1 Cf. Thurneysen, Die Bergpredigt, the main argument of which I would
the
like to support with all my power, while the detailed exposition, on
other hand, seems to me very often to do violence to the text.
162
 THE CONTRADICTION

life which is love, through faith. Here also the whole legalistic
understanding of human existence and of man’s relation to
God reveals itself as the profound ‘misunderstanding of reason
within itself,’ namely, as sin itself. For here it is shown that
the legalistic understanding of God and of the self belongs to ©
‘the primal perversion; the God who is known thus is the
angry God.
13. THE WRATH OF GOD AND EXISTENCE-UNTO-DEATH

As the original being of man is existence in the love of God, _

so also the ex
existence. of fallen ‘man iis existence in the wrath
‘of God, Man
an ne
never escapes from God, not even in hell. Indeed, —
‘this isthe very essence of hell—that one would like to be free
from God at last, and it is impossible. But certainly: it is the
‘strange’ God whom one has in hell, not the real God; the |
God with the ‘altered Face,’ not He who as the Triune God |
is in Himself what He is. For iin Himself He is pure loveey But
this ought not to be understood to mean that the wrath of
God is something purely subjective, or a kind of misunder-
standing. In point of fact, in an ultimate profound sense
of course this is so, it is a misunderstanding; namely, in
the sense in which sin too is a misunderstanding, that un-
happy ‘misunderstanding of reason within itself,’ the fact
that one misunderstands God and oneself. But just as.this

human nature, so also

a ‘its correlate, the ‘wrath of. God, is an
objective reality... This.is.the God of the man who. is in. sin;
he cannot and must not have any other. He can only have’
a differentt_ God—the™ true God, God as He really is—when
he is ‘brought back to his origin ‘through the reconciliation
which proceeds ffrom God alone and takes place solely through
Him. Here it 1s not our business to occupy ourselves with the
“transcendent aspect of this problem. The doctrine of the wrath
of God, the penalty of God’s anger, and the doctrine of release
from this penalty does not belong directly to our theme.*
1 On this above all Theodosius Harnack, op. cit., The Dialectic of the
Wrath and the Love of God, which corresponds on the one hand to that of
the Law and the Gospel, and on the other hand to that of the Deus nudus,
absolutus and Deus Revelaius, has since then not been seen again in this
163
*.
 MAN IN REVOLT

But that doctrine is the point of view which gives the right
perspective for all that can be said about man as sinner, if
it is to be seen aright. Our question therefore must be expressed
thus: What is the nature of the existence which man has under
_
ak _ Uf the’ wrath of God? In what does : this our existence, known
© tous all as the existence of man as he actually 1s, manifest itself
1° as existence underthe wrath of God? The answer is as follows:
gL? ) # It is existence-unto-death. That is the effect of the wrath of _
—
AA
a
til
Al
s
God in sinful existence. “The wages of sin is death.”?
\
vo Se
Not in vain have we held obstinatelytothe statement which
| ~

sounds so paradoxical: in His! word of love God gives man

life.We must not understand the life of man first of all as ~
a biological fact (unless we are to misunderstand it hopelessly),
to which then ‘all kinds of things’ are added, for instance, ,
consciousness, mind and, finally, religion. ‘The genetic view
may show us this picture a thousand times; but a real under-
standing of man can only be gained if we begin wholly from
above. The being of man is being in the love of God. In the
love of God alone is the bond of unity which holds all the
parts together, as the love of God is also the origin itself,
the basic ground for human existence. Forthat very reason
the opposite, existence in the wrath of God, is the.dissolution
of this ‘bond of unity, existence-unto-death, Here, it is true,
we are not dealing merely with a negation. This is excluded
_by the very fact that is ari existence in the wrath of God, that
’ ifis, an existence unto death. The positive statement , the Yes.
gp. \has the priority against the negative
eae AN
statemen t, the ‘No’; for
wv
if
~~ ‘God’s Creation is not annihilated by sin, man|
Even as a sinner
toebein God; that in particular, if I may put |
does not ceas
it so, is the negative miracle of sin. This is why there is no |
manner. Cf. further Der verborgene Gott bei Luther by Blanke, my book The
Mediator, and my article Der Zorn Gottes und die Versdhnung durch Christus
in Zwischen den Zeiten, 1927, pp. 93 ff.
1 Rom. vi. 23. The expression ‘Sein zum Tode’ comes from Heidegger,
who has taken it and transformed it from Kierkegaard’s Krankheit zum
Tode, which again has been taken from 1 John v. 16. What Heidegger
means by this idea is—more or less—that knowledge of oneself and of
death of the sensus communis, in the sense in which it is used by Oetinger.
Luther regarded death quite differently; see Stomps, Die Anthropologie
Martin Luthers.
164.
 THE CONTRADICTION ot
such thing as a neutral secular humanum which, as such, would Id |
have nothing to do with God. Even the sinner stands in a |
relation to God, but it is a perverted relation, since the sinner a
himself has been perverted. The perversion ofhuman existence
corresponds tothe alteration of God. God ‘alters His Face.’ _
And that againis_the same as existenceunder the law. The |
Taw and the wrath of God belong ‘together.For the law, as _
‘the ground of existence understood as the basis of life, ‘that |
is, as the correlate of legalistic existence or of legalism, is the|
perversion of the will of God. God, who stands in relation 1
‘toman first of all as the one who niakes demands, not as the |
one who gives, is the God whose face has been disfigured, the ,
angry God. The curse of the lawis existence-under-wrath and
existence-unto-death. Beret
By ex
existence-unto-death we do not mean the fact that human
life tends towards death and is aware of this in all its expressions.
That iscertainly part of it; but it is only the surface. It is
‘because man is above all subject, not merely object, because
he has been created in God’s eternal Word, that his death
is entirely different from the death of any other creature. We _
shall be dealing with this later on.? Hence also existence-unto- [
death is something quite different from the mere fact that all |
human life is moving towards the fact of physical death. It |
is not theknowledge beforehand of physical death, of the end
of earthly existence, which characterizes existence-unto-death,
but_rather the ‘unknowing’ Knowledge _of an ‘afterwards.’ It
is the ‘unknowing’ knowledge of the sinner; the bad conscience
is combined with the thought of the atin oye ‘afterwards,’
Here, if
if“anywhere, ‘sinful man meets the wrath of God, in a
dim ‘pre-awareness
LapaA AY TPAD CEA
of tthe possibility ofeternal punishment. .
1 This is how Luther translates Jer. iii. 12, probably incorrectly. On the ©
other hand, the expression that God ‘hides’ His face is frequently used,
and always means the withdrawal of the gracious revealed Presence
(Isa. Ixiv. 7). Especially characteristic are the words: ‘Your sins have
hid His face from you’ (Isa. lix. 2). Similarly 2 Cor. iii. 13 ff.
2 See below p. 462.
3 Cf. the observations on the connexion between the wrath of God,
conscience and the fear of death in Luther in Ginther Jacob, Der
Gewissensbegriff in der Theologie Luthers, pp. 23 ff. The conscience is ‘in such
anxiety and would like to flee from the world and from the face of God
165
 -
i |
A | Wf MAN IN REVOLT
|
This ‘unknowing’ knowledge... this undefined anxiety about Xi

| what is coming, throwsofitstheshadow. over all human life, It is

river which is hurrying towards
eT °

| the downward current

;| the cataract, and is already swirling from its
effects.
But existence-unto-death has not ry ashyRO
only
RL
this
ia
subjective
eesree
aspect.
unsnngetge poe
Tear ees Tm ASS tt RIED

The dissolution of t e bond ofIRlife is, it geisow true, not yet achieved,
3 a

| But it. is in process of being achieved. Human _ life is

ATOR RIA AMC EITAEDI SILA ITPRT HA NOTES LSNE it
Mi co

point of view this

PAE
REO PRT REN Spe

objectivelya.djying./From the physiolo gical

statement has no meaning; for we have no concept of positive
life, by which death and dying as something negative might
be measured but that one which is given to us; hence there
is no sense in calling this a dying. But we are not
speaking of the biological phenomenon, but of human life.
In the human act of life as such, as we know it, there is always
given with it a dissolution, an act of death, a division. In all
our acts of life there can be perceived a disassociation, the .
breaking up of that which was intento dedbe a unity, but
never becomes a unity. The central expression of this dis-
“associationr.is:division ,bethe subject of the followingL
which will
Chapte The more we are concerned with the person as a
whole the more clearly evident does this disassociation become.
In the being of the subject being and consciousness can no
longer be separated. Human personal life—so far as it is known
always
to_us_empirical divided. Christian theosophists ~
ly—is
speak of the turba as a result of the Fall, and an effect of the
wrath of God.! Just as glory corresponds to the Divine love,
so the turba, the revolt within the creature, corresponds to
the Divine wrath. Through sin man has become ‘ec-centric,
into confusion. With_
and through this eccentricity he hasfallen
“AIT hiseffortsheis unatoble elem
unitethosethere
belong to one another. In everything
which
ents really
is an element of
ofdissolution; ail that is empirica
“division, has in
humanlly
like a clot, just as blood clots when it no longer
Tt something
circulates in the bloodstream.
if it could; that is the greatest fear, that of a bad conscience, that will
also be the pains of Hell, that the damned will want to flee away and
hide themselves in order that God may not see them, and they cannot’
(p. 33).
1 Cf, Delitzsch, System der biblischen Psychologie, p. 94.
166
 THE CONTRADICTION Eat

This ‘clot,’ seen from the centre, islegalism. Life and

legalism are enemies. Law is rigidity, “Tet1s adaptability. Love
_alone has this adaptability iach is| at the same time unity; 42
“it is the bond which hoolds ‘everything “together
to -without forcing
“Gt.1 Legalism however, is hard as iron. It does not make the
heart strong, like real
real faith:;2 it makes the heart hard. It does
not really bind one to one’s neighbour; it separates. Above >
all, it does not uniteus
1 3 with God, but makes us independent.
Tt is the ‘independence ‘of.
of death, ofdivdivision. The separation
“of the leaf from theliliving tree is its death. The curse of the
law is not only, as is so often said in books on dogmatics, the
result of punishment, but first of all and most profoundly:
existence-in-the-wrath-of-God, existence-unto-death, and thus
existence which is divided within itself and separated both
from the love of God and also from one’s fellow-creatures.
We will now turn to the study of this divided existence in its
manifestations iin gre
reater_detail.
ia
1 Eph. iv. 3, 16; Col. iii. 14. 2 Heb, xiii. 9.
 CHAPTER VII

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE ORIGIN AND THE

CONTRADICTION IN MAN: MAN AS HE
7 ACTUALLY _IS sure

I. THE NEW STATE OF THE PROBLEM i

Tue real enigma of man is the conflict within his own nature,
not the fact that he is composed of body and soul; the_real
problem does not lie in the fact that man is part of the world _
andisyet more than the world; the real problem is that the
unity of all these elements—given by the Creation—has been_
aiding one another, _
ne eG ratednt

anding
lost, and that instead of complement
they are in conflict with one another. Non-Christian anthro-
conflictin two ways: either by
pology triesto deal with this
ascribing it to the constitutional conflict between sense and
spirit, or it seeks to resolve the discord by suggesting that the
difficulties are merely successive phases in a process of develop-
ment, continuous stages in self-realization. The Christian
doctrine takes this conflict seriously: man, by his own act of
self-determination, contradicts the divine determination in the_
y its particular imprint
which gives
Creation, It is thisdualit
to human life as it actually is. Because man has been created
in the image of God, and yet has himself defaced this
forms ofence, —
exist
image, his existence differs from all other
as existin conflict.
ence TEPER
assigned the Original Creation and
ences
a
See

The traditional doctrine

the Fall, on the one hand, and man’s actual sinful state, on
the other, to two different subjects—i n the one case to Adam,
and in the other to myself. This, as we have already seen,
meant that it could give only a partial expression to the fact
of the conflict in human nature. The result was that either
human nature was regarded as uninjured, and man’s apostasy
from God was regarded as something external to human
nature; or that the corruption of human nature was empha-
sized to such a degree that justice was not done to the fact of
the distinctively ‘human’ element. All that could then be done
168
 Lott tf
al
it fA
je)
x

CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

was to argue that this quality of ‘humanity’ was due to ‘relics

of the original image of God.’ When we renounce the historical
view of the Creation and the Fall we are set_
et free from this
; dilemma, and we are able «oncemore to see thecontradict
iction
in man as an actual conflict. Man as sinner is inpermanent “f

revolt, in a re
rebellion (which -he cannot now renounce by his
ac tyre

‘own
own efforts) <
against_his
his divine determination as “tntended iin
the Creation, and thus agairagainst the nature given “him byGod.
‘The divine Creation still exists in man, not in the shape of /
‘relics,’ but as the primal elementin human nature, inevita aby
but continually being ‘denied afresh. -
Man is and remains one who has his nature and existence
in the Word of God, and is therefore, and for this reason alone,
responsible. He does not cease tobe in the Word of God,
called by God and summonedto responsibil ity. But(through —
his contradiction his attitude to the tod‘who. calls himis per-
verted ;hence also thecall itself has beenn transformed ‘from
| a
call of generous love into that of a demanding and accusing
Jaw.(The law as the really ‘determinative element of human
‘existence is the sign of both these facts: that the call of God
does not cease, and that man’s hearing 1is perverted. It is not |
the law that is perverted, and it is not the God who re
reveals .
Himselfin the law who is perverted, an idol; but man’s *s under-
‘standing
standing of th
thelaw,
law,y,_and. therefore his legalistic understanding
of God and 1man, is perverted, and the God which he makes
for himself is an idol. Luther reveals profound insight when
he reduces the whole“of_pag:
« paganism - including
ng. - false. Christi-_
anity—to_the ‘one Cicommon _ denominator :.legalistic rereligion.!
The God whoisunderstood from a legalistic point of view is -
an idol, that is, a God with whom we ourselves can deal; and L
the legalistic understanding of man is, in its deepest sense, |
self-deification, since it seeks in man that which can only be |
found in God: the truly human possibility of life. "4
Hence there is nothing human which does not suggest thé |”*
Imago Dei, and there is nothing human which does not indicate’
the perversion of human nature. Even now, on this side of
the Fall, there is a humanum which distinguishes man from all
1 Cf. Vossberg, Luthers Kritik aller Religion, pp. 46 ff. Also Seeberg,
Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, IV, pp. 201 ff.
169
 [ , MAN IN REVOLT
other creatures known to us. But this specificall human
element is not uncorrupted _human nature, as 1sae by the
Roman Catholic Church:3.nor 1s rite t merelyemaa “relic”
isvecICNEON es
OL ithe
we bactel
the|
original human_nature, as_is
is represented “bytthe Reformers. _
It is rather the> whole Nz human. natur
A ERLE eseitne sae
eated iin_the image
A PERSE
aa YSERA
of God, but.ina.completely erverted.
per ‘form.. The human
The “human
element asform, as structure—namel y, “as ng
being
“responsible_bei
~—has remained ; “the human element as content, that is, as
in love, has been lost. Man does not cease to be mie
_ being
sight of? God; but he is in the sight of God as a perverted
being, and therefore God also appears to be perverted to
_\him;
“Hence the temptation continually arises to regard this form
of humanity in itself, and the idea of man! which it contains, as
the real nature of man, as is done by Idealism. The respon-
sibility of man which is distinctive of him, which he cannot
evade or throw off, is understood in such a way that the law
is interpreted as the law of his nature and is thus made the
basis of the idea of autonomous humanity. Instead of man
.v, asking himself whether he is fulfilling this law, he deludes
himself into thinking that this law is ‘in him.’ He ascribes
what is God’s claim on him and God’s witness against
him, to himself as the witness of his nature, and in so
doing he conceals his own reality.? Responsibility becomes
1 Schott (op. cit., p. 28) expresses in an excellent manner the contrast
between the rational-philosophical and the religious anthropology according
to the view of Luther: ‘Philosophy shows what might have become of
man, theology shows what he has become.’ That which we here describe
as ‘formal’ Luther calls secundum substantium metaphisice (WA. II, 464).
2 Plato’s myth of the soul is most intimately connected with his theory
of Eros and the Ideas: the ascending movement of the Eros corresponds
to the ‘Fall’ out of the world of the Ideas into that of material corporeality.
The anamnesis is that which leads back from the one to the other. The
myth of the soul is differently conceived in the Phaedrus, the Phaedo, the
Symposium, the Republic and the Timaeus, but the fundamental idea remains
the same. On this cf. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, vol. 11, pp. 690 ff.;
Heinrich Barth, Die Seele in der Philosophie Platons, 1921. In Aristotle the
fundamental idea of the myth is transferred to the intellectual sphere, the
Unmoved moved in the way of being loved: kivei do &pwuevor (Metaph.,
1072, b, 3); at the same time, however, this ethico-religious principle has
a tinge of natural philosophy: this ascent is the graded movement of
the whole world of nature. Neo-Platonism again has a genuine myth of the
soul; it is distinguished from the theory of Plato, on the one hand, = the
170
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

divinity; this is the humanistic misinterpretation of formal

‘humanity.’ Lf . “ : : # GRD, y LU), j

On the other hand, on account of the corruption of the

original Creation there is the danger of depreciating or
secularizing the specifically human element which has remained
even in sinful man,? that is, of forgetting that even fallen man
is still always in the sight of God, and that even in sinful
existence the ‘theological’ nature of man, that is, the nature
which is related to God, is manifested. When man as sinner
is severed from his imperishable relation to the Word of God,
he becomes a truncus et lapis which is absolutely passive under
the Divine Word, like an object which bears the divine opera-
tion without any willed response of its own, as a stone bears
the blows of the stone-mason. A false humanism therefore
brings with it a false, de-humanizing view of man. vid
Serene to the true Scriptural doctrine it isprecisely that |
iin man which indicates
his sin which also indicates his divinely
created nature, because both are understood in their actual
contradiction to one another, and not in a neutral quality
of nature which has, so to say, become full of dross. Man is a_
rebel against his divine destiny; he is the steward who pre-
tends to be the master of the vineyard and then kills his lord’s - <t§
a

ee
messengers. He is the prodigal son who has demanded ‘the |
portion of goods that falleth to him’ and now squanders it. |
Not only has he done all this in the past, but the revolution is |
still in full swing. The fatality of the Fall does not consist in |
the fact that man was once created by God, and now, some |
thousands of years later, is nothing but the heir of the sin of |
idea of emanations, and, on the other, by the mystical-gnostic theory of
the One and of ‘becoming one’; we might also add, by the preponderance
of the aesthetic and speculative element over the moral. The Beauty of
the All-One is that which moves all. Cf. Zeller, op. cit., pp. 600 ff.
1 Karl Barth has often and with a certain satisfaction pointed out that
German Idealism finally led to Feuerbach, Strauss and Marx; he does
not even allow that an Idealistic anthropology may be relatively superior
to a purely naturalistic one; to him, indeed, the humanum as a whole is a
profanum, and man, ‘even within the created world, is something trifling
and insignificant’ (Credo, p. 30). In this view Barth is clearly moving away
from the standpoint of the Reformers, who frequently mention Plato’s
myth of the soul with approval, contrasting it favourably with the “animal”
conception of Epicurus, although—apart from Zwingli—they do not make
this relative distinction into a principal difference.
171,
 MAN IN REVOLT

j Adam; the fatality of the Fall consists rather in the fact that
every hain being,in hisown person, and inunion with the
rest of humanity, everyy dayrenews this Fall| afresh, and cannot
ffalling and cannot escape
help doing so, that he is in processs of
‘from it, that he cannot get back to his origin. Hence the fact
that ne has been created in the image of God as his origin,
which he is always denying, is always present in the accusing
law which man always knows, somehow or other, as truth
and yet in practice denies. If man is to be understood as he
really is, he must be seen in this actual contradiction, which
is the real conflict.
he traditional anthropology of the Church conned
however, not merely the Bible but the actual experience of
-man. Not as though experience as such could show us the
real man; we know that every empirical programme is derived
from hidden axioms. But the doctrine and message of the
Church must be such that experience cannot charge it with
falsehood. We must not hide behind the paradoxical character
of the ecclesiastical doctrine, accessible only to faith, in order
to hold fast statements which ought not to be regarded as true
because experience proves them to be false. The genuine
paradoxes of the Bible never contradict the truth of experi-
ence, however little they themselves may be accessible to
experience. The Bible does not _postulate _any_ other_kind_ of
man than the oneknown to us t
by experience ; but it interprets
the enigma presented by man as we know him from experi-_
‘ence, the enigmawhich no ) system. ofphi losophy or psychology
can solve. The conflict_in man comes out in definite pheno-_
mena, although the background of these phe ph enomena, the
conflict _between_t € origin ‘and_the < contradiction, between
creation and sin, does not. itself‘appear,’ but can only be-
grasped by faith.In the following pages facts of this kind are
treated from three points of view: as manifestations of the image
of God in man, of sin, and of the conflict between the two.

2. THE TRACES Se A IMAGE BL: ED, AND OF THEE “GREATNESS __ ‘

aaa pene we 7 sR ORION EP LONE LESLT ETO

There mustt certainly | be something distinctive in man in|

the fact that, “without t being absolute
lutely mad,
m he can confuse_
172
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION __ fv

himself with God. Fichte is certainly not an idle talker; nor

is even the most amazing audacity of the teaching of the
Vedanta with its identification: ‘Atman equals Brahman, 1 \
equal God,’ sine fundamento in re. It is precisely this apex of the |
‘misunderstanding of reason with ise? which is at the same
=
ee ee staan estes re
|
time the clearest manifestation of the fact that man
has been |
t

created in the image ofGod, and that this original divine. | LOE ENN

destiny is still present with |him in the midst of his perversion.? |

The_most daring ofall sins, that of self-deification,
is only ,
ossible through the divine destiny
of creation, which raises)
man above the whole of the rest of the created world. sWhat
indeed is sin as a whole save this misunderstanding of man’s
God-given freedom? And is not this a sign of his Divine
Origin? Man alone is a spiritual subject, like God. As spirit,
he stands over against the whole world as a being which is —~j/-
=

in his power of perception.

He ‘has’ the world only because he
stands away from it, at a distance, because he is ‘over against’
it. As the subject of all knowledge, he cannot be compared
with anything there is to be known. How could he to whom
all is made subject,to whom it was said: ‘all is thine, of all
trees shalt thou eat,’ he who alone might name the creatures,
not be exposed to the temptation to touch the tree in the midst
of the garden and to confuse it with the other trees, to wish to
be like God? This sinful confusion, by which the copy makes
itself the original, is only possible because it 7s a copy. The
original relation of man to God lives in every spiritual act—in
the very fact that it is a spiritual act. The spiritual is spiritual
through the relation to the absolute, infinite, unconditioned.?

1 ‘A mesure qu’on a plus de lumiére, on découvre plus de grandeur et

plus de bassesse dans ’homme’ (Pascal, Pensées, Fr. 443). ‘La grandeur de
homme est si visible, qu’elle se tire méme de sa misére. Car ce qui est
nature aux animaux, nous l’appelons misére en l’>homme. . . . Car qui se
trouve malheureux de n’etre pas roi, sinon un roi dépossédé?” (ibid., Fr. 409).
‘Il est dangereux de trop faire voir a l-homme combien il est égal aux
bétes, sans lui montrer sa grandeur’ (ibid., Fr. 418).
2 ‘The first part, the spirit, is the highest, the deepest, the noblest part
of man, by which he is enabled to grasp incomprehensible, invisible and
eternal things; and this is indeed the house in which there dwells faith
and the Word of God’ (Luther, WA. 8, 550).
173 |
 MAN IN REVOLT

Why_does_man_ seek for truth? Not merely because the

knowledge of truth is useful to him, but because the idea of
unconditioned truth leaves him no peace. He_is seeking for
his lost home, although he does not know it. ‘The abso ute
a4
.

Word ofthe Creator. He.seeks.andhe.must, seek “what 13 it

that holds the world together at its heart,’ the deepest ground,—
the primal Cause, the connexion; and his perceptive spirit”
bows before the law of the true, before the demands of
‘absolute,’ ‘objective’ Truth, before truth for truth’s sake. So
great is the power of this idea of pure truth that for its sake he
will even sacrifice his life. Who will denythat in this search _
for truth there is something holy? ‘This search for truth cannot ©
be understood in terms of biological concepts of self-preser-
vation or of the preservation of the species. The idea of the
unconditioned, of validity, of truth-in-itself, cannot be grasped
from any instinctive copy of actuality. It is not derived from
anywhere except from the divine origin, the Primal Word, in
which the spirit of man is based, even after he has fallen.
This, too, is the truth which lies inthe Ontological Proof
of God. The idea of God which the human
Existence
for the
‘mind necessarily forms, can only beexplained from God
Himself) true as it isthat this self-formed idea of God is not
the living God but an ‘Adgoé#’ (idol) and gives man occasion
Ne
‘ for self-deification. Because man has been.c din the We
of God, even_asasinner he cannot escape from the idea of
God. He cannot escape from it, indeed, even when he denies it.
Even in his denial of God, namely in its claim to validity, there
lives, unconsciously to himself, faith in unconditioned truth.

1 ‘Such light and understanding (that there is a God) is in the hearts

of all men and does not allow itself to be obscured or extinguished. There
may have been some, of course, like Epicurus, Pliny and the like, who
deny this with their lips . . . and who desire to obscure the light in their
hearts. But it does not help them at all, their conscience tells them a
different story. For Paul does not deny that God has revealed to them
that they know something of God’ (Luther, WA. 19, 205). What Augustine
says about the connexion between God and veritas (cf. Gilson, Der heilige
Augustin, pp. 135 ff.; Heim, Das Gewissheitsproblem, pp. 49 ff.) remains
extremely important, even after all the specific elements of Neo-Platonism
have been eliminated from his statements.
174
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

The actual man, not only when he is thinking, but also

when he is creating, lives on his divine origin in the Word.
When the beaver ‘creates’ his house, he does not go further
than is useful to him. Man, however, even in the sphere of _
mere technique and civilization, always transcends the boun-
dary of that which is merely useful. Heexperienc andes
secks regan tena TOCA ANN

in_technique_at the same..time dominion over Nature, “not ~

merely the utilization and/exploitation of her material treasures.
He desires to prove himself, to show his superiority over
Dassiascas niliadair
wi EA GEE SE
. ANE A
—
MRL SSNBRFi RIES SPN Leit KE
th RENATO A,
HER SEMTAA st AHABNITES SSRN
ve Craters
ABTA ADAP BPSTSBL SO eR
poe ANNO
:
Tern FEMI T SO

nature, he desires to trrumph over it. But hisdivinely-created

‘nature comes out still more clearly in his own ‘creative’ acts,
in which he consciously _and_ willingly
goes far beyond the
borders of mere utility. Art in its historical beginnings may
TELMCAIN ain eT

ave arisen out of technical, or magical motives, or out of

motives connected with self-preservation: but in any case its
nature is independent of interest in the preservation of life;
it is the shaping of the beautiful for the sake of beauty. Man ee

contrasts the imperfect world of actual experience, as he knows

it, with a perfect existence, a heightened, intensified, ideal |
existence, freed from the contingent and accidental, the sight )
of which gives him a satisfaction which is wholly different |
from that of the experience of any reality in this world as it |
is, Art is always—whatever else
it may, be—the child of the |
longing for perfection. But perfection is an ‘idea’ which does |
not spring out of any observation of the existing world. Rather_
this Le is an Original standard by which we measure allthat
- IR NPA SSAly © CREATAS NRG IER lL ROE IE a SD |

now exists) Plato’s argument that the idea of Perfection—

even if it were only the idea of the perfect circle—does not
spring out of any perception, but that, on the contrary, it
precedes all perception, and alone makes it possible, has never
been controverted from that day to this. The Perfect is not an
‘intensification of the imperfect’; for the intensification of the
imperfect would be only that which is still more imperfect.
It is also no ‘abstraction,’ the ‘elimination of the imperfect’ ;
for in order to eliminate the imperfect I must use the idea of
Perfection as the rule for elimination. Only complete stupidity
canerception.
entertain theidea that the Idea can be derived from the
But art lives on the Idea—not on that which 1s
searaly but on that Perception which it inwardly beholds,
175
 MAN IN REVOLT

and for which it longs. All g enuine creativeness comes eelfrom

ne a
5 REBEL SAIUEDEY Se
such a vision and such a longing, and this vision and longing
oe

J
¢ theWord.
comes from the Original Creation rsin felt
When the frst Greek philosophe impelled to describe
the ground of all as the Logos they must still have been dimly
aware of the connexion between reason and the Word, an
~ awareness which
: was lost by la rationalism. The fact that
by later
man can speak, and that he must speak, that he has the power
afspeech, of the word, has always and rightly been regarded_
token of humanity. Animals have
‘as the most characteristic
unableto hold in their
nolanguage; moreover, they are
minds truth which is independent of an object or situation
accessible to sense-perception. Speech is the expression of
reason, not merely of the intellect. But speech is far more than
‘this; speech is theexpres ofthefact thathumanexistence
ion
revere AANA SD MALAI HMR —
eer

consists of the re ation between one human being and another.

‘The fact that even when we are ‘by ourselves’ wecannot do-
without speech, and that something has only really been .
thought out when it has been formulated in speech, is a sign
that human existence is not a solitary rational existence but
that it is a common existence in which we impart to one
another.! Speech is reason-in-community. We may indeed turn
the current phrase, speech is the means of reason (which is
derived from the idea of rational autonomy with its lack of
community), the other way round and say: reason is the
means of speech. We have been created in order that we may
have ‘something to say ‘to one another. However that may
be, among all the indicationsof‘the creation of man in the
9 “Word
. of God, speech is the plainest.It was not the ‘Deed’
but the ‘Word’ which was ‘in the beginning’; for _God_has
not created_a world which is without meaning and without
Sau the
“the Word Hecreated World: this is the
basis for the truth that He created it in and for love. Speech
is not to be understood from the point of view of reason; but
4 both reason and speech should be understood from the point
of view of theWord of God, as the two most powerful indi-
cations of a lostdivine.origin, in which we “iil live, though
1 his is the fundamental idea of the epoch-making work of Ferdinand
Ebner, Das Wort und die geistigen Realitaten. %
176
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION,

in a perverted manner. That is why God reveals Himself and

our origin through the Incarnation of the Word, and this
again through the proclamation of the Message: thus by
means of human speech.
But it is not only speech which points
to the fact that
in his.
origin man isdestined for community, We can certainly make
the attempt—an it hasbeenmade often enough—to under-
stand all forms of community-life from the point of view of
instinct. But all these attempts break down on the facts. The _
elements which compose instinct _are not adequateto explain |
friendship, marriage, theieunity ¢ of a people, the consciousness
of humanity. In all these existing facts an ideal element is
coupled _ with thatof
o instinct
insti : the idea.‘of c community, the
“capacity for
orcommunity, “the ‘willingness for, and the lon ing
for, community. Give a human Being thar he ongs for,
‘pressed down and running over,’ and take community away
from him; he will be the most miserable of creatures. Even in
his flight from community man seeks community: in the
cloister. Behind the formation of states, the loud, dominating
theme of world history, the will to gather all men into com-
munity, of the most comprehensive and concentrated kind, is
at work as the secret, impelling force. Man is not a CHov
moAutiKov, but humanus. No woAis, no nation-state can satisfy
him, because beyond these boundaries dwell human beings
who also belong to him. In the ancient imperialist or pacifist
dream of the one kingdom of humanity there lives the ‘remem-_
retaavs
sacdtm

brance’ of an original paradisaical 1unity

ty_of ‘all mankind! a as.
the destiny of humani
The most direct a rdence for this truth i
isthe ¢ethico-
-o-religious _
consciousness. No human «community1
now,"exists, or ever has_
existed, which has not had its oral cc
code;no community ‘has |
ever existed in which—in spite
of constant changes—the dis-
tinction between the ethically ‘good’ and that which is merely
conventional or ‘utilitarian’ has not been a vital part of its
consciousness. In spite of the doctrinaire assertions of theo-
1 Perhaps the most impressive instance of this is that of Alexander the
Great; it may be true, of course, that in this connexion we can speak of a
sense of a universal cultural mission for humanity ;but the elemental scope
of his reach was deeper than his Greek conception of humanity.
177
 q

MAN IN REVOLT

logians, it is a fact that the moral sense extends far beyond the
circles affected by the Christian ethic, and has a profound
influence. The sense of responsibility is the really primal
humanin phenomenon, ,which ds notThole absent om_anyone ;;
bsent from
sometimes it attains an Immense power, or again anincredible
delicacy. In its negative form, particularly, as the sense of
guilt, as the bad conscience, it is a force which mocks at all
. rationalizing views and does not care a fig for theoretical
denials. It is simply there, and witnesses against us—to our
lost origin. For there is nothing more profoundly human
than the sense of guilt; nothing in which the lost image of
We God manifests its presence more clearly. It_is the sense of
Ny responsibility 2and itspower which stampsthe life. of man.with
t‘humanity’ “which
that thatof“the greatest. genius, a
wi |reason, even.1
it often robsit. It is
never give it, aand, indeed,of which
can n
not man’s creative ROWer Per pressed in varying degrees of
genius, nor his play and his laughter which make the life of
man ‘full of human dignity-—even Hell has its geniuses, and
there is a devilish laughter and play—but only unity in love
and loyalty. The most richly endowed and the freest spirit
could also be quite inhuman; the devilish element is not
checked by creativeness but By unity-in-responsibility. But
this union and this unity does exist always and everywhere
to an unexpected and astonishing degree.* In it we are not
confronted by the riddle but by the mystery of man. Fidelit
J where all the advantage would be on the side of infidelity ;_
which. flows uphill.”This miracle_
, >StRisasthe miracle of thele water W.
ey doess happen. Here —“supernature’
‘st “Is
is‘revealed iint
n the._nature. of
| man, of and
sy
ae “sinful man, ‘Here, inthe ‘midst of;apostasy
contradiction, its origin iss revealed as a sacred presence.
And yet the sense of the Holy, tthe religious _clement,. is at
first of quitec
distinct.origin,and_ itsdevelopment iis toalarge
extent independent o of et
ethics.. Why must human beings wor-

1 Cf. Kahler, Das Gewissen, especially pp. 139 ff.; Cathrein, op. cit.
Calvin: Certe conscientia, quae inter bonum et malum discernens Dei judicio
respondet, indubium est immorialis spiritus signum (Institutio, I, 15, 2).
2 Calvin, Exempla igitur ista monere nos videntur, ne hominis naturam in totum
vitiosam putemus, quod eius instinctu quidam non modo eximiis facinoribus excellerunt,
sed perpetuo tenore vitae honestissime se gesserunt (Institutio, II, 3, 3).
178
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

ship gods? All the positivist theories of religion—its derivation _

from fear, from thee desire and_need for an explanation, fromn__
wonder at that which isunintelligible anc
andthe like—do not
answer the question: Why does man acknowledge something _
OoYswhich, often against his own desire and advantage, he
eels he must worship and serve?, Modern theories of religion
may throw a great deal of light upon the more detailed con-
tent and raison d’étre of religion, but the original fact itself, the
recognition of a sacred power before which man must bow in
adoration, not because he gets anything out of it, but because he
is inwardly overwhelmed by the Holy, because he feels he ‘must
not’ do otherwise mus? and ae not’ are fundamentally
religious words—defies all ex gator just_as its intellectual
_correlate, the idea of. =, of theUnconditioned
L and _
“the Perfect, cannot ORB from
om any finite content.
According to the cose state of ethnography, |there never
have been, anywhere, peoples without religion.1 This does not
mean that it would be impossible for sinful man to be without ~
religion. There is indeed, alongside of religion, also atheism
and agnosticism, to-day perhaps for the first time as a mass-
phenomenon. But even in the denial of God there is an aware- =
ness of God, and the motives for the denial of God are often” =
more religious than those of the particular empirical
« Teligion . me
whose content is denied. Thereligious instinct also expresses
itself, unfailingly, in the godless disposition: as an impulse to
posit something—however absurd—as unconditioned and to
worship it as divine.?
1 Cf. the monumental work of P. Wilhelm Schmidt, Der Ursprung der
Gottesidee (especially the last of the six volumes), which, whatever one may
think about the author’s interpretation, presents an incomparable collection
of material, which has been well sifted, of primitive religion, by means of “f
which certain positivistic prejudices have been destroyed once for all. A
2 Here, as in all questions which concern the ‘nature’ of man, we must raed
make a distinction between the ‘officiai’ consciousness and the forces which < Y
actually control the inner life. Atheists are always more religious (or more, 6
superstitious) than they will admit, and as a rule religious people are less
religious than they are aware—both of these not in the sense of a value-
judgement but in actual practice. Jung has shown how religion which has
been suppressed in the conscious life comes out in the unconscious. Cf. for
instance the interesting case which he records in Die Beziehungen zwischen
dem Ich und dem Unbewussten (pp. 24 ff.).
179
 MAN IN REVOLT
In the history of religions the Holy is always, in some way
the Good ;divinity and humanity
or another, se arated[from |
Tie apart. TtJs
is tthe ‘distinctive ‘element of.the Christian idea_of
‘God that, “although these |two. are not one, they are revealed
in one; the Revealer of"perfect: humanity iis at the same time
the
“the Revealer of the true Divinity, the Holy is also Good,
a

as such is
isrevealed_as love, which ‘as
because the Holy,|God,
“the Good, But even if this unity remained concealed from the
religious consciousness outside the Bible, yet in all religions
there exist fragments, crooked, defaced,..but yet undeniable
traces of this primal mystery in which man. has_his origin.
For that ‘Word which was in the beginning’ is also the ‘Light
which lighteth every man coming into the world.’ Hence
the history of ofreligion, whatever else it may be, is also,
o,and
above | allelse: a ‘witness—evenen 1if.
pa e N
f perverted—to |the relation
of man
man |to God. It witnesses to the fact that man can never
get away from God, but that,inthe midst ‘of his fight from
God, he mustt always turn to Him again and again; and
that man, even when in turning away from God he distorts
the picture of his nature, even in this perverted nature still
preserves a remembrance ‘OEhis origin, “which manifests itself
effectively in him and in his life. This is the Biblical doctrine:
that although man through his apostasy 1s;far’ from God,
God Himself is ‘not far from ev ry one Of us,” but that “in Him”
“welive and move and hav our being.” ‘T "Hecmse” that which
may be known of God ismanifest in them; for God mani-
fested it unto them.’? He has not left.Himself without witness
_unto man rt that which He shows them they have ‘‘changed’
“intoidols.
“Thus even
even the
the most
m horrible idol tells us. something of the
Cs oe

secret of the Os
Holy, annd_ the ‘most, abominable. cultus tells us SASS EN,

“something of the fact that we have been created| by God for

“God: Hence religion always produces, inspite of the non-
pt SELLA Tm

1 Acts xvii. 27 ff.; xiv. 17 ff. 2 Rom. i. 19. 3 Rom. i. 23.

4 This dialectic of the history of religions, which corresponds to the
dialectic of the natural man as a whole, has been misunderstood by
J. Witte—influenced by Karl Barth—in his book, Die Christusbotschaft und
die Religionen. He appeals (wrongly) to Luther for support; whereas the
latter, as the very quotations used by Witte show, perceived and acknow-
180
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

morality which it may contain, the sense of a holy bond and

of a sacred unity, which makes fe
life human.
Salts
Therefore, to use_,
* ‘ 4

the words of an unbeliever, religion, whatever it may be, is _,

the soul of all human culture; and where it dies, there culture
declines into mere civilization and technique (Spengler).

3. THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE CONTRADICTION AND THE

‘MISERY OF MAN’!
There is no stronger proof of the actuali depth of that
and ty
contradiction, which we called ‘prima sin,’ l
than the self-
eification of man. Only rarely is this innermost tend ency of
ve % ag i WaenEAS i RE EEN cae ES

our cor incurvatum in se ipsum conscicusly 2ndopenly manifested. SLE CONTA TINYAA CET satesspnnapenencipinly thmagmte st

designates a ‘summit’ o
sevilla: ae d | are one

‘God and I are one’

a eA

The formula
mystical religiosity. It presupposes a complete severance from
the concrete world of experience. For in this world of ex eri-
ence man is not given much opportunity to confuse himself
cangums " % eg oe ets A aa a aa

with the Almighty. lat Man experiences rimarily Js_his

impotence and nothingness. The end of his Faustian way of
knowledge is ‘and I see that we can know nothing’ ignoramus
ignorabimus, docta ignorantia, the despair of all knowledge—not
merely of its attainment—scepticism.
What do we really know, if we do not know the whole? _
ately
What is a knowledge that immedichanges itself into
fresh problems? Is our progress in knowledge simply like the
movement of people stranded on a moving ice-floe, who do
not know whence it comes or whither it is going? Is it any-
thing more than the aimless ‘progress’ of the Wandering Jew?
, knowledge is useful in the technical sphere;
Certainlyour
of nature. At least
forithelps us to control and use the forces
ledged this dialectic. Luther regards idols, in particular, as proofs both of
the general revelation of God and the sinful perversion of man. But
perversion does not mean annihilation. The fact that man must always
have either a god or an idol shows that man’s being is ‘theological.’
1 The ‘misére de l’homme’ is one of the main themes of the Pensées of
Pascal; but for him—in contradistinction to Barth and his followers—this
misére is a dialectical idea: la misére se concluant de la grandeur et la grandeur
de la misére (416). L’homme connait done qu’il est miserable . . . mais il est bien
grand puisqu’il le connait (ibid.). Toutes ces miséres-la mémes prouvent sa grandeur.
Ce sont miséres de grand seigneur, miséres d’un roi dépossédé (398). It is the
knowledge of this dialectic which distinguishes Pascal from Montaigne.
181°
 MAN IN REVOLT

in the world of facts our knowledge helps us to find our way

about in practical matters. But does this mean: to know?
Do we know what an atom is, what matter or force is, time
or space, life or impulse? It is true of course that knowledge
is moving forward in one direction; once for all we have left
behind us the view of the universe held in the ancient world.
But where will the next century be? And does not all progress
in knowledge also bringwith it an increasing alienation from
reality? Is not the very abstraction “which
5 makes things
ings useful
thetechnical sphere a ) that wwhich se
se Darates us from
| the _intimacy
it of thee knowledge of“nature
natt whic
ich 1s
1s possessed
| by the primitive man,
m the. zartist, and the child eee
not the
simple human being knowohetter wher tire and. water are
than the scholar who gives us the formula for it?! And_
further, are not those who know the most, most inclined to
seitcuar nce baowmtniic uote ata Petcare
fall a
eee nee
“to the completest scepticism, ‘s
since _with every
ae in Fry Gi ‘the seas ‘What isthat ‘which. ase
“has: only become n
more “perplexing? ‘And T'see.. that wecan.
know nothing.. . .’ Is not perhaps that very objectivity, which
‘is the pride of our knowledge, that which most thoroughly
separates us from reality?All our modern progressinknowledge
SaRAIT

has not brought us any nearer to essential truth; indeed, it

as only led us still further
into mare : feeling hat
tl weeknow —
nothing, that “everything is dim and obscure, that
we are
strangers in the universe. Ultimately does not an honest little
sparrow know more about the mystery of nature than we who
are so clever? O irony of homo sapiens, O the tragi-comedy oof
man, who confuses himself with God!
“But the misére de“Phomme does 3‘not. only become evidentin
Saaremaa

the sphereof ‘Knowledge. ”The creative human being has

to-day Sra to such a pass that he has learned to
understand the story of the Magician’s Apprentice? as his own.
1 It is above all the Romantic theory of knowledge which points out the
one-sidedness of this conceptual rational knowledge which so distorts
reality. Cf. Bergson, Evolution créatrice; Introduction a la métaphysique. To this
also belongs Scheler’s emotional theory of knowledge, and in principle too
that of Nietzsche (cf. Wille zur Macht als Erkenntnis), although actually he
does not get away from the intellectually positivistic picture of reality of
his own day. See likewise H. Kutter, Das Unmittelbare.
2 An allusion to a poem by Goethe.— Translator.
182
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

He falls into imminent danger through all the serviceable

spirits which he has created for himself; the thousandfold ‘ea
strengthening of his sense-organs, of his hands and feet through ae
technique, has not really made him richer; in any case, ithas “7.
not made him happier and freer. He has become the slave of
his own machine, He must—what irony—‘serve’ it (Haecker),?_
must live for it; human life must be adapted to its laws. While —
mankind has come a hundred times closer. together, so far as
space is concerned, inwardly,in the same |degree, ithas;become
more remote and far more divided.
In the sphere of cultural, actual creation, this is less impres-
sively felt; but perhaps this is still more dangerous. The out-
cry, ‘the intellect the enemy of the soul,’ is not a chance
outburst; the flight into the primitive isnot merely a natural
_symptom of fa
fatigue, but a deep despair of this whole mental
which we call education, art culture, The intellectual,
bearer offculture, issomehow «essentially
ly an enemy
yo of man,
man,
Fccumegamcaraiy a system of intellectual values or goodss he
conceals, masters, or destroys the distinctively human element.
Was Ferdinand Ebner wrong when he described all this intel-
lectuality as a mere ‘dream of the intellect’??? Do we not see
again and again that somehow this intellectuality make:people
s
unfit for life? We long for“simplicity : for t
that \whichiswholly (HBT) dee
natural. But it seems as though man, and rman alone, were .
condemned. never to find the2simple _and_the. ‘natural. Civery-
wild rabbit can live his own rabbit-life quite naturally and
fully; man cannot do so, as a civilized being ; from the very, ~“”, --+f-¢
outset he is burdened with a kind of ininsanit which makes all Pi 7 ‘Z
his attempts to be ‘natural, and to
to.“enjoy “existence
¢ -
in
in_a simple nr fies 4#
way, unsuccessful. aaah tLe
Whether we regard man as an individual or ‘as a social
being, it is all the same. Since history has been in existence
this has been its theme: the contrast between individualism
and collectivism, freedom and authority, independence and
1 Scarcely anyone has ever said anything more significant than Berdyaev
in his book, The Fate of Man in the Modern World, and in his profound Cing
méditations sur l’existence (Solitude and Society).
2 Th. Haecker, op. cit.,p. 37.
8 Ferdinand Ebner, Das Wort und die Geistigen Realitdten, p. 20.
183
 MAN IN REVOLT

submission, the predatory man and the herd-man. Every move-

, ment which aims at helping the individual to attain his rights
“ends in libertinism and the dissolution of community—the
Athenians knew quite well why they gave Socrates the cup
of hemlock; and every reaction which tries to assert com-
munity, authority, order, the whole over against the caprice
and the egoism of the individual, ends in oppression, violence,
and dull stupidity. The movements for freedom, full of vitality
at the outset, and splendid in their leaders, ‘shatter_comcom-
at first full
“munity, and tthe movements for community, < ofa
full of
“deep :sense of responsibility _ and of service,t
trample_on_
on the
the
i Sere A
Seanad Ie
his rights. Tt isnot the observation Sons
oiiual andihis the pro-
cesses of nature, but the. contemplation of this tragic element
in human history, which is the school of pessimism, of despair
of man, and of his destiny.
ihe.Man has a ke conscience,Bou which timistic Enli htenmeni
an o aoe
|declared” ‘to be the ‘Voice. of God.” 3 | - hat_has
y _not
3 t_ this
conscience >already commanded |man to ¢ yy
| as well as the Inquisition, with” ‘its“tortures anc its urnings,
“anarchy as wellastyranny, cynical frankness aswell as diplo- ANA PRL CAN

| matic
matic lies, «all| appeal tothis ‘Voice ofGod.’ Have there ever
been |greater. tormentors |‘of mankind than the conscientious,
athe“moralists,. “the ‘Pharisees of the. idea’?“ST Tnstinctive sadism
UNS S Fares ABS Re
Pag

is simple compared with the cruelty of those who are doc-

|
j

I trinaire, who sacrifice all human happiness, rights, freedom

and heart to the idea, the principle, the ‘great cause.’ Frat
justitia, pereat mundus! The divine Moral Law within us—what
arrogance, what an insane assumption “of 0 divinitty has aalready
arisen from this sourcé? Whichisworse :the chaos of lawless-
ae
a
ness immorality
and or the slavery of custom and the hostility
to life of a rigid morality? Which is more terrible, the morally
egraded, the ‘publican,’ or the morally ‘just,’ the “Pharisee’?
umanity: the battlefield of demons; the human spirit:
the arsenal of the instruments for the destruction of life. How
impotent
_is human reason in construction, how almighty in —

destruction! With a few (EAs: sin a few seconds

‘the work of centuries, and no one knows whether the next
war will sweep away, in a few days, the culture of thousands
1 Hermann Kutter, in his little pamphlet, Ich kann mir nicht helfen . . .
184
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

of years, for ever. It is not the animal instincts, but the mind
eer
of man which is the origin of all evil, the same mind which
creates, builds, carries on resea rch, strives, which seeks truth
and loves righteousness, which longs after love and community; ~
this same mind, this same ‘heart which glows with a sacred -
aes (oratnnerencncacns Sonam ie

fire’ is the fiery abyss whence issues all that is demonic and
"destructive.
The same mind which worships the divinity also flees from |
it. What is the history of religion itself but the story of the |
CLC NADAL TLE LEAT

way in which man, who cannot get ridof God, tries to get off
as_easily as he can? This origin of the development of the i
‘religious imagination lies far behind all conscious motives.*
No one consciously tries to escape from the Lord God, the
Living God, by his pantheistic idea of God; and yet this is
the case. Religious symbols, and also the real formative forces
of metaphysical thought, arise out of the unconscious. But the
unconscious is' not something to which man is helplessly
exposed. The unconscious, also, is a sphere for which man is
responsible—even though, like Original Sin, it may lie behind
all that we have at our spiritual disposal, even though it may SS
seem to us to be a kind of Fate.
are theways by which guilty man tries to
Many andvaried
evade the Divine Gaze. They are summed up in the history
of religions, of their cults and mythologies. Its principle is the -
deification of the world, whether in the primitive imaginative |
form of pagan polytheism, or in the conceptually abstract form |
_ of pantheistic metaphysics; or it may take the opposite form:
‘the banishment ofGod from the world the, impotent, de-
See: Bia
DE MTR Re h1D

throned, distant Divine Being, the fallen dynasty of the gods, |

the shadowy First Cause, the Creator-God of Deism, who|
‘only pushes from without, Celestial bodies, driving them |
about’;? and finally atheism, which says bluntly: “God_is |
Nera rar iad ans
AER nS Ld PHN ATEN

1 This is where the naturalistic theory of religion—Hume, Spencer,

Comte, Feuerbach—down to Freud’s Die Zukunft einer Illusion is relatively
right (Jung’s psychology of religion takes into account a metaphysical
depth which opens up in the collective unconscious) ;but it sees equally
one-sidedly only the background, the all too evident instinctive aspect of
religion, just as Idealism only sees the foreground. Cf. my Religionsphilosophie
(pp. 64 ff.) and my paper Die Christusbotschaft im Kampf mit den Religionen.
2 Goethe, Spriiche im Reimen: Gott, Gemiith, und Welt.— Translator.
185
 MAN IN REVOLT

dead’ (Nietzsche), which imagines that with its theoretical

asgot ridof God for«ever,) It would be an
denial of God it has
undertaking of more than “theoretical value to write a Christian
mythology, or theory of idols, a doctrine of the formation of
idols written from the point of view of faith in God. In the
first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans Paul has sketched
in the main features of such a Christian doctrine of the creation
of idols. The idol arises through man’s apostasyfrom the
»
Creator and|tthetra: 3 His due
fere nce,of the homage. which, Js.
to the creature. The motive for this apostasy and this false
‘transference>of Ihomage is ingratitude and disobedience. itis
so much easier for man to worship idols than to _worship God.
“Even when the ‘idol demands much. “from _‘man, It, does not
ohetatihira Sesion;

demand the 1 man IhimselfSeven. Whereoneoffersalltothe

‘the “man
god, in soo doing <oneScoes::at least gain his favour. And again:
where the god or the gods gain full power over man, man
falls into demonic dependence which destroys responsibility.
Even Pantheism and Deism, these more abstract and reflective
forms of mythology, are also efforts to escape from the claim
of God.
SEC idol has an. infinite number of faces it appears
asone
a
and as many, in
(PeuRI Re
n personal or inwholly impersonal form,as a ca a aL
transcendent; Tea
yt or even. as something finite “which,
unawares, | een treated as infinite. But the idol is"always
a power towhich man jsenslaved, without being truly respon-
sible to it—‘carried away unto these dumb idols,’ says Paul?
—a power which binds without setting free, or which sets free
without binding, which one cannot truly, in the sense of
reverence, fear. The idol is always a secularized God and a
deified world, a humanized God who is not truly human, or a
deified man who is not truly divine. The idol is always as
much like the devil as the true God; it is never both the Holy
and the Merciful, the Absolute and the Personal, the Lord

1 Schelling’s Philosophie der Mythologie cannot provide any substitute for

that, however much there is still to learn from it even to-day; for ultimately
its starting-point is not that of the Christian faith, but that of a more or
less dualistic gnosis. An important corrective to Schelling is offered by
E. Reisner, Die Geschichte als Stindenfall und Weg zum Gericht, 1929, pp. 208 ff,:
Das mythische Vergangenheitsbild.
186
 CONFLICT BETWEEN, ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

of All and the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for
the sheep. The idolis always—and this describes his nature
most fully: the godlessness of man projectedd into ‘the “uncon-_
ditioned, wets this god is called Zeus orthe All-Self, the
-One, Nothing; or else ‘Reason,’ ‘culture,’ ‘Man,’ iinmarse
ity,’ ‘the ideal society’ or anything else. As a mountain climber
at evening may suddenly perceive his own figure reflected
upon a sea of cloud beneath him, but enlarged and distorted,
so the idol is my/godless self projected on to the plane of the
unconditioned/ and distorted in the mist of my fanciful
imaginatio We can, indeed, truly say that. man creates his . .of
idol int his own image.
pelea
nereiot
But seam is one. thing “we_must.never
‘get..thetact. that.man.is..able.to.do..this,..and.that.he. feels,
impelled to do SO, he derives from God.
Single out any part of human life that you may choose,
whatever you examine will always be a product of the original
perversion, of the primal sin! But when you see sin you also
see the image of God. Only where there is the Jmago Dei is
there also peccatum; sin itselfis a testimony to the divine origin
of man. Even where man revolts against God in titanic rebel-
lion, and with great daring and insolence ‘gets rid’ of Him,
or deifies himself, even there, behind the human perversion,
the Divine image itself looks: forth. Man could not be godless ~~
without God; he could not curse God if he were not firstof
all loved by God. The wrath of God under which the idolatrous,
sinfully perverted man stands is simply the divine love, which
has become a force opposed to him who has turned against
God. The wrath of God is the love of God, in the form in~
which the man who has turned away from God and turned
against God, experiences it, as indeed, thanks to the holiness
of God, he must and ought to experience it.

4. THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE CONTRADICTION AS SUCH

(a) The Conflict of Opinions “and the Attempt to construct a ‘synthesis
The conflict in human nature is so evident that it is scarcely
possible 1to overlook
esineexee
it.
t. Hence the ‘manifestations
1 of this conflict
are phenomena 1 which “everyone ‘knows;; everyone ‘who has
reflected upon them ‘connects them, in some way or other,
187
 MAN IN REVOLT

with the conflict in man. From the point of view of the

such
Christian truth about man, what we say is not that
they are, but that
phenomena of the conflict exist, and what
these phenomena, which are so well-known, |manifest the
alone —
speak as Christians, whichdictio
contradiction of whichthewe word
“the strict sense of can be called contra n.
| The contradiction to which we allude her isethe co-existence PENDANT Segre
ion
(8
the oppositSRST
eSeIetd NLS HIREGEN URI
and
TSOT
n
NIE SRI
of Creatio
TAFT ARNO
SCIATICA

ofA TATE divineONT purpose

the TINIAN ELIT aia
is
a
This
Tee a
CET eee
\thereto of the sinful _self-determination of man. ee TSee

‘lower
aaa

not the commonplace truth that every man possesses a

ss Sasha

which dwell, alas! within

and a higher self,’ of the ‘two souls
definite.
my breast’; no, what we maintain is this: it is this
and sin,
contradiction between man’s Origin in the Creation
thing that strikes us is the fact that man oe can no
ARfirst
“The ES eng eNLP
But in so far as he
ONTARIANS INNS ester ay a SL SLANRE RITE AS eo ae

himself as. a unity.

>

longer understand nemesis...”

as scientist, philosopher, or thinker,
.
ELIT
ie
rs° ° ee
_ strives after_unification
| :

“he usually forces thisunification by over-emphasizin g

one
2 EAL OATES encarta I

“aspect and depreciating the other aspect of the nature “of

the material-
jnan. For thousands of years the idealistic and 1
ep
jstic concof manti s ng with one another.”
onwrestli
have been
Idealis m starts from the reason, regards
from the spirit, and
the corporeal aspect of mathe n, sense and material nature of
“nan, as anaccident, assomething which does “denotconcern his
“essential” nature. It sees only the grandeur V’homme, all
reckon
that suggests his divine origin; but because it does not
proper, the bounda ry betwee n
the sense nature as part of man
human and divine being in general become s fluid. The ‘intel-

ligibl e man’ is identifi with

edit the purelyofdivine , omous.
auton
man, is the divine
reason; the spir of man, or the reason
world-reason itself. The ugly raw mate ri
which al
arises “from
below’—since Plato’s myth of the soul there have been in
Idealism the most varied theories about the way in which
of God,
1 A Christian-dialectical theory of the non-Christian conceptions
t the back of
Man and the World was hovering—as is well known—a
he outlined it. On the same
Pascal’s mind; in his conversation with de Saci
outside
lines, only fuller, is the dialectic of the understanding of existence
aard—
the sphere of Christianity offered by the whole work of Kierkeg
(Either- Or) to the Krankhei t zum Tode (Sicknes s
from the Entweder-Oder
unto Death).
188
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

this takes place—is not able to obscure this glorious picture

of human nature. Man is divine.1
Materialism, on the other hand, sees in the ASEAN
senseend, or material
nature of man the ‘real’ nature oP aa
mann, whereas the so--called” 0 a NAM DEA nO he

‘spirit’
spirit’ is
is only an
an epipher
epiphenomenon of.of ‘the; mmaterial
iallife-process.
Essentially man is an animal, his instincts asaswell as his physico-
psychical organism are the same; the only difference is that
through the special development cofhis brain
A RAEN
and of the
RENN RN AIO
the central
nervous system the life-process gains new _possibilities...of
differentiation. TtIs from such differentiation that ‘culture’ is
RARE IS A... PAN PENNA brea
en aE SI en ENR ATENEO 0

to be understood, as a s uperstructure—biologically necessary—

semnantencgte nT Tl

of the vital functions. The spiritual element serves to regulate

“the life of this highly developed animal, and to keep its course
as even as possible; owing to the special character of this
animal, it needs these special measures to protect Ee
Man a god, man ananimal—even at the present day these
two theories are striving with
with one
one_another
er_about. the nature.
of man; each, especially the idealistic theory
t in many ways aE GEN
“modified
sd_and
and refined, but. the fundamental features of both ATT CUBA NNR ARGOS
‘are_quite
are ite clear. Common to bo th_of.. them, however, is this
view: they understand man from the point of view. of an
impersonal “something,” whether it be from that of ‘ spirit in
fener ay or “nature in_general’; both therel ore ignore
3 REEF RRAERY ca Sh TST STA SINS,“Isnore. t eo

terialism | transforms res sonsibility —

PONTere ea aI ai hcg ES iota sana mmr: a

an impulse towards
rds altruism fortheRete ofthe species ;
‘Tdealism turns. it into.
into the Tesponsibili of
the self to itself.
ie Mi SRA
dh ABATE SPONTA

1 The synthesis between Christianity and Idealism which is still repre-

sented in England—upon the Continent this was tried for the last time by
Eucken—is achieved by a modified fusion of genuine Idealism with genuine
Christian faith, as for instance in the works of Dean Inge.
2 The most serious approach to the idea of true responsibility is presented
in Kant’s Categorical Imperative; but it too—through the idea of the
intelligible, autonomous self—finally ends in self-responsibility without any
feeling for the ‘Thou,’ whereby we cannot even say that the empirical self
is responsible to the intelligible self; for the empirical self is not capable of
responsibility because it is causally determined. For Fichte it is still more
difficult to construct a view of responsibility ;in its stead he sets first of all
the consciousness of freedom and the claim of freedom as autonomy (cf.
for instance Fichte, System der Sittenlehre, Werke, Medicus, 11, 401 ff.). In
Heidegger’s terminology: the ideal of existence of Ligentlichkeit (or
‘accepting responsibility for one’s life’).
189
 MAN IN REVOLT

Because both theories neither recognize nor acknowledge _

man’s origin in the Word, they cannot perceive _existence-in-
existence
responsibility, for -in-personal-responsibility, _and_thus
man’s destiny love. Hence they are also obliged to give
a different meaning to the fact of sin, of evil and of guilt,
whether they do this by calling it a disturbance of the process
of evolution, or of adaptation, or as an error caused by the
obscuring of the spirit by physical instincts and sense-per-
ceptions. Thus it is either ‘arrested development’ of the spirit
by physical causes, or it is an organic-functional disturbance
of the life-process. Because man in his self-knowledge lacks
thecentre—the fact created in
thathehasbeenfrom theWord of
God—eve in him breaks
amthing OR away
neePa very other clement,
and t en he tries to knit togethe r which
that en RONEN DSIRE OE(a ea ADaoe
broken
SCANAD away
IS EDSON NEOPM Aa Sie
Oe ANN

of artificial, forcibly abstract schemata.

inna

by means
This confli ct however, then extendstothe whole,
ofopinion,
to the wholeworl d-vi oflife. If faith is lacking
or philosophyew
is necessary; we have either a world-view or
a ‘world-view’
either eewe
faith, that is, annrRamaay understand existence
T =
from >the point
ee
e ANREP
ws may
Pye ere

of view of responsibility, or theoretical

.
ly. World-vie
in pairs: materialism-idealism ;Pantheism-Deism ;
PORE N CONS {eth ARM TRAN
AR AG LT EOL NITE

e grouped
rationalism-sensualism; dogmatism-scepticism; monism-dual-
ism (pluralism, etc.). Of course there have been many efforts
to construct a synthesis; but the history of philosophy shows
‘asthat the syntheses were always weaker than theone-sided
“systeTims: isevident that upon the plane oftheory the syn-
thesis is only possible by a compromise between both the
principles which constitute the starting-points of the theory.
Possibly the most magnificent synthesis is that of Hegelianism5
yet—or it would notbe so magnificent—thisis not really a
synthesis at all, but the gradual overcoming of the contra-
dictions by means of the dialectic of Spirit, the presentation
of all antitheses as only apparent contradictions, as phases of
development of the one Spirit.Vfhe final contradiction which
is heretobeovercome isthatbetween” thefinite(human)
and the absolute divine spirit; and the “overcoming takes
gthe religious consciousness, in
to Hegel, in
“place, accordin
the sense of the unity of nature with God, in the achievement
of the fundamental idea of speculative mysticism. Thus this
190
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

apparent synthesis turns out to be absolute Idealism, the

closest spiritual relation of theIndian mysticism of identity.
This ‘solution’ therefore is onlypossible
by ultimately declaring
the contradiction in man to be an illusion, something which,
seen in the light
of higher reflection, is seen to be no contra-
diction at all, but merely different stages in a course of spiritual
development. Where thought has the final word the contra-
diction is soon dealt with; for thought is determined to get
rid of the contradiction at all costs. As the devil fears the
crucifix, so thought fears the contradiction; it cannot rest till
it has got rid of it.1 This is the lie in thought; this, we might
say, is the despairing self-assertion of man in his thought: he
denies the contradiction in which he lives bycontinuing the
¢ assmatins pesos Dis a RSI Ne i ml euataalda amanaiynentanns

process of thought until the contradiction |disappears.”

nitio
and
(6) The Recog in
n of the Contradiction
the Interpretation
non-Christian. Thought
But thought does not always ‘succeed’ in doing this. There
are people who are quite unable to persuade themselves by
this kind of argument that the contradiction in their existence
which they experience, from which they suffer, and for which
in some way or other they feel responsible, does not exist.
A courageous attitude of this kind is characteristic of the
re ligion of Zarathustra, To it the conflict between ee and
darkness, go d and evil,
lieand truth, istheprimal fact, which
=" ss SEN a sent aT STON ON A wearin - epeennnge menage

A ett le

onfronts.
us. It is to be traced back to two primal powers, the
good and the bad God, but in such
a way that man has a share RUG
Sn RET ea

1 Of course, the removal of the contradiction is a task, and indeed an

ethical postulate for thought; but this formal postulate is limited by the
material one: respect for reality, that which ‘we called the ‘experience-
critical postulate.’ The monism of thought alone does violence to reality,
and above all to that primal reality :the ‘over-againstness’ of ‘Thou’ and ‘I.’
2 It is the great philosophical achievement of Kierkegaard to have
stressed the idea of contingency (of that which cannot be thought) and of
the contradiction as a contradiction of existence as against Hegel. Here
Grisebach has stepped in and has shown the connexion between Idealism
and the principle of identity. But Kierkegaard has seen more clearly that
both contingency and contradiction can only be rightly perceived in the
Christian faith (Creation, Sin), whereas Grisebach has continually surren-
dered to the ideas of a neutral philosophy (lastly in his paper, Frezheit
und Lucht).
IgI
 MAN IN REVOLT

in res : ponsibilit
EAR a3
forer theAR ELNevil. The. conflict, _therefore
SIR RRRIARAE aan
_cannot be
overcome... by .means.. ofany theory. or explannationn but
but only .
een act, and1 only throught ‘theact 0 the ood God,
ViQO=R REAgh nitylreanat raat ee Beis
in which, “however, man_also must participate 1 ry means of
is 1S, indeed, ‘a most courageous attempt to
grapple ach the problem of the contradiction! If there is
anything in the history ofreligions which might claim to be
arallel’ to Christianity, then certainly it would be this
dualistic and ethical eschatology of Zarathustra. And yet the
difference. iis evident. Man is onl _confronted Sgucncsssm
the ‘contradiction. does not yet_penetrate
- Ais _
whole” Ey
hence
in virtue ofhis goodintervention, he can, asone W
is himself uninjured, help to heal the contradiction abiatede
is
in the cosmos. He himself does not need healing, he does not
_ need the restitutio imaginis, but only the exercise of his God-
given powers. The conflict isin the world, certainly, but it is
ot in man imself,1
¢of ‘another ki
kind, aand perhaps. still more profound, is the
Hlatonic mytl of the.soul, which, on its“part, again, isCOn-—
nected with the conception of tragedy. The contradiction
certainly goes right through human nature, it is the result of
a ‘fall.’ This ‘fal? however is not a rebellion n_againstthe_
oa. and the severance
of man’s connexion with Him,_
“but it is the fall out of theheavenly world, which was caused
by the ‘bad horse’ in the double harness, ‘through the sense
nature. What the exact meaning of the Platonic myth is, it is
difficult to say ;? but one thing is certain: the fall out 6 the
heavenl world Js caused b _the sense nature; that “means,
ELAS CCRT TART responsible. ‘for evil. is poin
of view finally leads to the idealistic view which has already
been mentioned, namely, that the contradiction does.not, affect.
_the spirit itself,but that itcomes from the fact that t he ignoble ~
“part, sense existence or CO orporealitty, is allied _with the_noble
1 Cf. Lommel, Wee RelientKarathustras, nach dem Awesta dargestellt, 1930.
2 Rohde’s exposition seems to me the most relevant: the pre-existent
soul descends into the material world on account of a ‘weakening of the
perceptive part of the soul.’ “Thus it is not, as in Empedocles, a religio-
moral transgression that leads to the anes of the souls, but a failure
of intellect, an intellectual Fall in sin.’ Cf. Rohde, Psyche, II, pp. 271 ff.
(p. 480 in English translation).
192
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

part. The spirit is the victim of the delusion of the senses.

“has this view is not dealin with an actual contradiction,
defiance, rebellion of man against the Creator, but,"With. an
un ortunate com bination of thee. elements. “of which.
—
- human

"he greatest. ee the..most...profound. things outside. che

Biee ees
e that have been said_.about. the pee, are con-
nected with t e Greek idea oftragic guilt. Man. falls itinto‘guilty
_Opposition to the Will of Go , but this is” 1s fate. Like.
blind man he falis into
int)_this,’1not, knowing, not
n willing, a_
playthin ofFcircumstances, <a sacrifice to the‘tragic entangle-
ment of circumstances.’ MTherefore one has sympathy with a
hero who has become guilty in so tragic a manner. In this
@ on his own tragic guilt,
Self-pity and the.
_the veryr
>tragicelement, are. inseparably
reason.that theguilt is not genuine, incurred by man__
united, for.
|
himself, Man.oss. nol fake th
the guilt really upon himsel f,he.
it_as due. tiny.
I ‘This tragic aspect may also bebe
transferred to the cosmos as a whole, and it then becomes
the pessimistic doctrine of the sorrow of the world and its
tragic Fate.
/
With this cosmological doctrine of disharmony (which again ’
is dissolved in the subjective idealism of the Brahman-Atman
speculation) there is combined in India, in a manner which
to us is incomprehensible, doctrine,
a which. has _a_certain
resemblance to that of Original Sin: the doctrine of Karma.
particular earthly situation, which
hich seems “ap-
destiny, is due to an act of the ‘individual in a
previous stage of existence. Each individual, his
in previous
existence, determines his own later destiny in the chain of
re-birth. Here determinism and Fate and moral indeterminism
“ACC RAISE CASTES LENSES LO PONTE RENNTN TIAN ANSE AET

1 °This guilt is not the moral guilt of a human being who possesses
freedom of choice between good and evil, but it is illusion, which is
ultimately part of his existence. Man must become guilty. . . . From the
limitations of human knowledge there follows human guilt... a guilt
which is part of existence’ (Article: duaptdvw in Kittel’s Wérterbuch, I, 300).
At the same time there is here a theory of Original Sin (Tantalus,
Oedipus): ‘the transgressions which have been handed down from our
ancestors’ (Eum. 934) are those which drive Eteocles to his horrible
decisions (Rohde, Psyche, II, 229). Fate and guilt are one.
193
 MAN IN REVOLT

are combined with one another in a remarkable way. Behind

lies as its presupposition
there r,
the doctrine of re-birth, howeve
cal
the fundamentally Indian view that the physical, empiri
world ought not to be (yu) év) ; and, accordi ngly, emanci pation
self-
from Karma takes place essentially through .ascetic
redemption. The parallel with the Christian doctrine of
Original Sin, therefore, is illusory; for the fundamental
and
Christian idea is absent: the good Creation of the holy
loving God.
Thus the npower and the fideli the fact of the
ty with whichisalways noticed
SEEMS LONE) eae inane

contradictio (which, in some way or other,

in human existence) is held and interpreted varies
aCeATT
ASTIN ARIA IN Toe eeea eaRaRN Ae SP
reatly.
however, different
Sey SpA TRIED

“But all the efforts to solve the problem,

i RELAY HA ON rere ac oes

ARNE MMMM

the real._contradiction, sin,

r

they may be, show one thing:

met auire

understoodItby man. Man. sees thed breac h, AIRLINE saa

cannot berightly see

Aele
thtisha noc
pace ercnntr pilin
Sireptremasse been (Senaramoneg

Nernaatielpricgn nenihone SNA LANNE! meter

nisite cree
Ps
"0 |
ona
but he does not it tully. is too deeply embedde within
ee)“th | him for him to be able to. seeitaright, EXPE ences
1 ather, he experi “Hn 7 rs \amail-“soeet- daisies

as an actual state of division,

OE TENS mers
| Se isi hipeS NN ae
iously
>
unconsc
the contradictionALGE TORI LAE IEE TL IEE TENE ‘pea! f

owever,
MENE

whose cause does

he Nam notieknow. TheA modern
Pasta

p,
man,
ale -
as UATASORTE
way of
Rapingrta
spiel
who denies this—in accorda nce with his monisti c
| thinking—is forced to feel it all the more acutely in this uncon-
scious manner as the conflict between the unconsc ious and the
'-’ conscious, intensified in neurosis , and in some cases, in that
final intensification in which the individual concerned has no
conscious relation with real life at all, in that division of per-
| sonality which characterizes actual mental illness and madness.
We have no right, it is true, to assert that all mental illness
/
i
are

has this origin ; ‘yet that the increasi ng frequenc y of neuroses

Naa i aE in ASM erent Syl t R AN
eA IRSERN pRB ace AeeRENTE AMAA 2wn

thecomplicatesed
due first and foremostbutto‘above
SEA a TRAE TH ‘¢Saas Succntemcneit TeTrSstrar

| anc pacer s is notof modern

mia ety an nated Hedin
}

f/sq,) nature of the life civilization, all to that ONOmia ve IWR TERS DITA SLURP SEN Wo TE EI SEEN,

of the contradiction by its denial,

POUT EMT ULB TIE
ERE HIS BetsUNDA C

repression, to that ‘evasion

; "eee per

seems to mean interpretation of the phenomenon which

: cannot easily be gainsaid; it is indeed one towards which
| ial

1 The theory of Karma, which—with that of Samsara (never-ending cycle

of successive existences)—determines Indian thought, is, so to speak, a
metaphysical moralism, a doctrine of the cosmic causality of moral trans-
gression. It is as impersonal as it is rigid, individualistic and remote from
the world. The rent does not pass through man; it is man himself who
frees himself from Fate, especially through asceticism.
194
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

modern psychiatrists, in their own way, are tending more

and more.}

(c) Certain Particular Phenomena whichmanifest the Contradiction

A
A fundamental | phenomenon, “of.‘this
his kind, “which “indicates |
the presence
presence of t
t
the contradiction, isfear.” Tou Ty Bible teaches
er rr
us that fear is the fundamental s
‘situation of man as separated |
from God,of the man who is not ‘reconciled ‘with God. The, |
world has thevery. opposite of that state of mind which corre-

|
sponds to faith, which_is| described _ as ‘having peace.’ F ear?
is the feeling of not being at home, of feeling uncanny and
lost in the universe. This fear dominates the life of man, not
only exceptionally and in certain individuals who have |a.ten-
dency that_way, but absolutely, and in all human beings at
_every age. Fear is the air which man—in so far as he is separated |
from God-—breathes, or does not breathe. Fear is difficulty
of breathing—angustiae—the suffocating distress which the soul
feels in its separation from God.
Most men are not aware either that they are afraid, or to!
what an extent “fear rules” their 1
lives. ‘Consciously, a rule,
they are not
ot afraid ; but their ‘actions ‘betray 1
a ACTA | oe
the. piesence ee.
fear. Much of thein
ntensity of humann effort. springs _ from_the
desire for security of every|kind, that ls, ffrom fear Fear
be in
connexion with practical life is
i ‘called anxiety.y. Itwouldindeed
seem to be more sensibleto s:
say‘that’anxiety is the fundamental
attitude of man; but what is anxiety except fear of life seeking
for security? It is not by accident that themostt_important
philosophicalanthropologist of the present day conceives
anxiety as thedistinctivere element of the life of man.’ All fear,
and all the efforts of anxiety to remove it, have their final
ground in death, in the fact that our whole life is moving |
1 Cf. Maeder, Psychoanalyse und Synthese (Arzt und Seelsorger, No. 8) and
Die Richtung im Seelenleben; C. G. Jung, Wirklichkeit der Seele (especially
Vom Werden der Persénlichkeit, pp. 180 ff.).
2 Angst: anguish, dread; fear; terror— Translator.
3 Cf. John xvi. 33. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 184 ff., 266; his analysis
of ‘fear’ or ‘anguish’ is secular and neutral compared with that of Kierke-
gaard, and is therefore less profound. To Heidegger the fundamental
characteristic of existence is ‘anxiety’ (Sorge).
4 See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 180 ff.: Die Sorge als Sein des Daseins.
195
 :
MAN IN REVOLT
towards death. Not only the Egyptian pyramids, but the whole
death,
| of civilization and culture, are an attempt to evade
| that death which is the wages of sin, that is, that death which
| we experience as connected with the contradiction in our
| existence.
of life is the way in which, emotionally, we become
- Fear
our home.’
‘|| aware of our homelessness, our banishment from
culture consists in con-
| But a large part of our intellectual
cealing and suppressing this fea
against fear of life.
| |{ ‘culture’
cul is.simply,.a,,sleeping theaught
use of chemical narcotics.
ye PRERELNeaSy Genem ed 3 sehaiatnsteA SRE IS

‘ i n
PREP
NOTSEEEIA,

% |This C
is comes out most.crudely. Lalenarisee
pur-
But there are also mental narcotics which have the same
e away, for a time, this
in driving
pose, and are equally effectiv
fear of life. A particular form of this fear is that which Pascal
describes as ennui, which we cannot translate simply as “being
H
nse
of
“sewhich the sterility
futility, of its life; it is the state of the empty
of
aa {|
soul, feels emptiness ‘and Cannot stand it without
gto fill the void,? This comes out.very lainly
i
f
\i
“makinan effort
in the phrase ‘to kill time.” Time is the ESTAS nae
\
4

it 18, So to speak, the substratum of our life.

TH’ Our’existence,
:
And this time one desires to—kill! Existence in time cannot
; people flee from it into a sham existence, into a
i be endured
life where they can forget themselves. Not only the greater
z | part of our obvious pleasures, sport.
and play, but also a good
deal of our highly intell ectof
pursuit ualculture, is at bottom
nothing more or less than a ‘pas-ti me’ of this kind, by means
|
|
which man hopes to be able to forget himsel
of f; itisa sub-
whic
stitute with—it h—al thou gh
it isimp oss to satisfy ethe
ibl
empty soul it; it is a narcotic with
isat least possible to fill
ich
| “whthe hunger of the soul is to some extent ‘doped.’ In
‘
1 Cf. Max Picard, Die Flucht vor Gott.
d’étre dans un plein repos,
2 ‘Rien n’est si insupportable 4 ’homme que
sent
sans passions, sans affaire, sans divertissement, sans application. Il
impuis-
alors son néant, son abandon, son insuffisance, sa dépendance, son
la
sance, son vide. Incontinent il sortira du fond de son Ame l|’ennui,
noirceur, la tristesse, le chagrin, le dépit, de désespoir’ (Fr. 131). ‘Si Phomme
comme
était heureux, il le serait d’autant plus qu’il serait moins diverti,
les saints et Dieu’ (Fr. 170). Distraction is the greatest misery, for it prevents
salvation (Fr. 171).
us from seeking the reason for our misery and our true
196
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

such reflections we see the truth of the magnificent phrase

of ustine: ‘Our soul is restless until it finds rest
in Thee,
O Lord. For Thou hast made us for Thyself.’ This saying is
the guiding principle of all genuine psychology; without it
one wanders hopelessly in the labyrinth of the soul.
This unrest of the soul, which on its negative side is called
fear, on the positive side is longing. Longing, t erefore, like
“fear, is a fundamental state of our existence in which the
contradiction, as contradiction, comes out perhaps still more
plainly. We could not long, if there were nothing there to
desire; we would not feel obliged to long, if this other were
really ours.
significance of longing. Longing,
istant Beloved, namely the divine
truth and goodness,
1s for Plato the wings bymeans of which
the soul soars back to its origin. He saw longing correctly,
‘but he has ascribed too much to it. The dream of the spirit—
“the vision of the Ideas—is not yet life in the spirit. Hence this
spirituality, like mystical longing and mystical spirituality,
lead to.our fellow-man,to love, but itseparates us
from others, and leads us to seek solitude. Longing is not the
way back but ismerely the obscure remembrance of something
and the fruitless turning to it inphantasy,
which has been lost,
in the dream of the spirit. Hence all ideal spirituality, the_
roduct of longing, understoodas anultimate,isjust as much
a substitute for the true ‘bread of life’ as ‘distraction’ and
narcotics. The emptiness of the soul can be filled only by that
in which and for which one has been created, the Word of
God.
The whole emotional life of man, and thence the whole|
mechanism of the human mind, could be re-interpreted from
the standpoint of fear and longing. It is a significant fact that .
Platonic love is called Eros, that is, it is described by the word
which is used to describe the humanized form of the sex-
instinct. Human love, in the sense of love between the sexes, /
should never be understood from the point of view of animal |
instincts, although it does include some elements of the animal |
instinct and of the animal function. It always has a specifically |
human element, the infinite element of imagination. Man |
197 :
 MAN IN REVOLT

always seeks much more in sexual love than it is really able -

‘distinctive.element™
TEEN TEL NEI A NI pie tic.
akc ERTSCHI NINA

he is seeking the
AN

Fyos butin lovealone, thatlove

Eyos NE
Rineunoasmaee

to offer, ecause in wa
Fit Ea ROHN HOST PN ‘xa pihaneceeasmers: +,

which can never be found in. ros_b

3

To a very great extent

of which the New Testament speaks.erstan
ove’ between the sexes is a misund ding “of love, there-—
ToreWeitisoweanaeternally unsatisfied Tonging s
i tn

great debt of gratitude to psycho-analysifor

|
showingusthe immense importance,
ofEros—even. if primarily
mated

. sense,...Eros_is in fact connected

beac
eaectSilt grctiochea cea iEiee

owly
rrsexual
ccTLD

oe “in the na
life of man, and is not merely a artial function.
with the whole

:
a ESL IE = sad 1 pectegnnes
SLi pe

It extends from the lowest plane to the highest. In a certain

eeest ela ST
meee REE TUATUATIO

sense it istrue to say; man is Eros. In any case it 1s as correct

to saythis as.tc say that rit, or
man7 is spirit, reason. The fact
orreason.
that Plato has connected them so closely with one another
- shows the incomparable depth of his philosophical conception.
i Which of the great Idealistic thinkers of later days is aware
:

of this fundamental fact? Man is Eros to such an extent because

he has been created by God in and for love, and because he
in its present dynamic is the
has fallen away from God. Eros
of our. existence. The account of the
roduct_of the confusion
Fall and its emphasis on the first result of disobedience is not
LOT ISI

a ‘naive’ idea, but profound wisdom: ‘And the eyes of them

both were opened and they knew that they were naked, and
they sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons.’?
The attitude which took the sex-relationfor_ granted has
vanished, and sham e_
Eros d.
that the
showan original order
has been,.broken. The destiny of man for love now works out
in a devastating dynamic of this ‘love,’ in which man is always
| impelled to seek without ever finding what he seeks, and what
he cannot cease seeking in spite of all disappointment.
But there are also a whole series of psychological. pheno-
whi tradiction 1s manifested, from which it
cannot merely be deduced indirectly, as in the two forms
which we have just discussed, but directly, indeed in which
we become. conscious of it_as contradiction: doubt, despair
iB and the bad conscience.
7

Doubt means that the mind is divided about wha true,

ist
good, right, just or ‘valid.’ At first it seems to be one psycho-
1 Cf. my booklet, Eros und Liebe, Berlin. 2 Gen. iii. 7.
198 \
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

logical phenomenon among many, which, like others, appears

under certain conditions, and then disappears again. But when
we examine it more carefully we find something different.
There is a ‘chronic’ kind of doubt—not merely in those rare
individuals whom we call ‘doubters,’ or somewhat more
academically ‘sceptics’; but when
we look
at doubt clearly...
we see_that, just like fear
and longing,
it is a fundamental
element in human existence—to the extent in which the human
spirit is awake. The fact that the spirit is alive shows itself in
the keenness of its questions. A living mind cannot help ques-
tioning everything. The ‘normal person,’ it is true, does not
doubt that twice one are two, nor that fire is hot, nor that
lead is always heavy, nor that to-morrow morning the sun |
will rise. But where life as a whole is concerned, its meaning, |
its origin,
its purpose, wherewe are trying
todiscover what |
is or is not permitted,what is commanded and what 1s pro-
hibited, the nature of true happiness and of true human life,
the question of what comes after death, and of what lies
behind the veil of things seen and temporal—about _all this
man has no certainty, into all this doubt creeps and gnaws—
as the grub of the cockchafer eats away the roots of grasses
and herbs—and eats away the secret certainties of one’s child-
hood. How can man come to certainty—save through thefaith
for whichhe has been created! Doubt also belongs to the cor
inguietum which finds no rest until it has found the centre of
life.t There are other religions than the Christian faith, it is
true; and one is easily tempted to assert that that other faith
is ‘just as certain’ for those who hold it as the Christian faith
is for Christians. It is true that a Maori believes as firmly in
his gods and his magic practicesas a Christian believes in the
Incarnate Son of God. But there is one incontestable fact:
when reason awakens in the Maori, he beginsto doubt, and_
can never again find rest. Reason destroys religion in all its
Se ee : eimeeeenenin’ ta eceienntie, ae TO 5 °
forms, and ‘philosophies of life’ are very pallid and academic
substitutes for the loss of a faith; from the very outset they
1 Luther: ‘We must lay great stress upon the word “doubt.” For the
Papists make faith a very slight matter and do not think that doubt is
anything evil. But Christ lays all the blame upon doubt and makes us
understand clearly that a doubter sinks’ (after WA. 38, 581).
109
 MAN IN REVOLT

contain the seeds of doubt. It is a process which we see going on

around us at the present day at a great rate. All religion is
seized by doubt and _destroyed—with ‘the exception of that —
faith which is aware of the ‘misunderstandi ing of reason within
th
‘tself,”of that faith which knows ‘that is derived from
reason
the Word
‘the its master. It is of course im-
rd“of‘God, and is not its
possyble to prove ‘this ‘statement; to the end of time it can
ony be proved by practical ‘experiment.’
hen doubt reaches the centre. of man it_ becomess despair. |
abou what
Despair i1s norie merely a“state of‘uncertainty ‘about. wl
Ass valid, itiis the earthquake which shakes the ‘very foundations |
ot existence.”’The person who is in cera not only feels
of our |
mentalT anguish, difficulty in breathing ;Kpiritually he feels as
if he were being suffocated. He has lost spiritual oxygen, that |
|
is, hope, faith in at least a possible solution of the problem of
|
life, he has come to an end of everything; he is ‘finished.’
¢
The_ idea: of life—what he has eduaae eefrom life, all thatis _|
meanins ul, beautiful,.goods..desirable—and oflife_|
thereality
are no longer connected; movement between the two has |
‘Ceased and = become nititene they have become separated,
the tension is broken, the nerve of life has snapped. This is |
the despairing man, that is, the person
of his faculties, without being insane
who—in full possession
is torn in two, into the
|
‘true’ man outside himself, and the ‘actual’ man, so that the
unrest which usually passes from the one to the other is over.
The point of absolute frigidity in existence has been reached, |
‘where all Taovement has ceased. }
Possibly. ‘such. ‘despair _asthis is an extreme which ns eee

ever reaches, What we usually call a state of ‘desperation’ is .

an approximation to a state of despair, a comparative ope- |
lessness; it means rather that within a certain limited sphere |
everything iis over; it does not mean that the person in ques- |
tion despairs of life as a whole. Of course it is evident that the
man who ‘makes away’ with himself, because life has ceased
to mean anything to him, is certainly very near this point of \
final, rigid despair. And yet—does any suicide lay hands on
himself wholly in cold blood, without fear and without hope; .
without the feeling that in so doing, in some way or another, |
he has found a ‘desperate way out’? Man, we may say, is |
200 J
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

never completel y in1 despair sc

sO. Jong 2as. he _breathes, It is as
though the parable of the breathing of thesoulwere more
than merely a parable, as if the final boundary.of despair.
could
not be combined with the act of life itself. On 1theother
hand, there
there is
is more
mo: despair
irin
in the
the world ‘than atfirst we are.
inclined to,believe. It was no merewhim of Kierkegaard,
when he undertook to try to represent the whole of human
life—in so far as it is not in ‘faith’—as despairing, and its
phenomena as countless variations on the one theme of despair;
and the book in which he does so has become one of the finest
of his writings. 1 Let us not quibble about words. The point
at issue is this: the state of mind which reaches its et in.
‘despair
despair is
is the
the contradiction ‘between man’s ‘ttie and his
‘actual’ nature, between his Divine ‘destiny 3
in Creation and his »
selfdeterminatio
determination in
in_actual experience, and it asthis conflict -
“which not only runs ‘right through human life as a whole, but
is also somehow felt by all men, even if dimly and obscurely,
_ as a sense of hopeless division, of being ‘torn in two.’ Even the
happy and placid person ‘isrnor sO happy and “placid as he
thinks, or makes other people think, he is. Even he perceives,
though dimly, that his life is torn, that he is inwardly bleeding
from an unhealed wound at the centre of his personality, his
heart. Even he observes that he cannot ‘square’ his own ideal
of life and his actual life-experience, that things are out of
proportion, the symmetry has been disturbed, ‘something has
gone wrong.”
Every human being who is aware of his humanity at all,
that is, who has some sense of responsibility, is aware that the
order of life has been disturbed; this comes out in ‘a bad
conscience.’ Of course peoplemaintain
im that_ modern. man_
never suites from a ER conscience, -‘butthose
those who say,.this
at. their own.v1 w.of lifeis
i
is superficial, they. are _
“only een ‘at the surface-consciousness. Man’s knowledge
1 Kierkegaard, ‘Die Krankheit zum Tode.
2 Luther speaks of a fiducialis desperatio (cf. the letter to Spenlein, 1516,
Zwischen den Zeiten, 1923, 26 ff.), of a confident despair: “Through confident
despair in thyself and in thine own works thou wilt find peace.’ But this
despair is simply the abandonment of self-assurance of the autonomous
self and the return to the original position: the self which is grounded in
the Word of God.
201
 MAN IN REVOLT

_of himself is far deeper than that of his ‘consciousness,’ and

\ his ‘consciousness,’ again, is far deeper than his theories about
»Zphimself. Theoretically, modern man is very often not aware
‘of a bad conscience. For he has destroyed the sense ofought,
and also the Idea. of God. He explains what used to be called
~ guilt and sin in a ‘natural’ way. As we have already seen, he
possesses a monistic explanation which for him solves the
contradiction. But all this only concerns the ‘official reading’ ;
the ‘private,’ssecret. read ing is quite ‘different. ‘Of course,
‘consciously, even to himself, man swears by the ‘official
reading’; but in experience he finds that his actual conscious-
ness, and still more his soul as a whole, takes very little notice
of this reading. The sense of guilt for example reacts extra-
ordinarily promptly, and usually in an amazingly delicate
manner, wherever he is concerned with the guilt of others
which affects himself. It reacts, however, also continually
secretly in himself; he has ‘a.bad conscience,-even..when- he
swears over and over again ‘that ‘all that sort of thing is merely
‘an ancient ‘superstition.’ He finds that itcontinually“ breaks
through when ‘the ccensor of theory « does 1not intervene
i suffi-
_ciently. “swiftly, ‘The ‘bad conscience is like a ‘dog which is shut
“up in the cellar on account of its tiresome habit of barking,
' but is continually on the watch to break into the house which
is barred against him, and is able to do so the moment the
master’s vigilance is relaxed. The bad conscience is always
there, it is chronic; but it is not always there with the same
intensity, it only becomes ‘awake’ in the more intensive sense
when it is aroused by special events. But then it not only takes
up a position to this new particular occasion, but with the
judgement on the particular, it also pronounces judgement
upon the whole situation, even if a quite irrational and unin-
t one, It is a well-known |fact that when. pe ople who.
have a strong alert sense of responsibility ccommit
mmit a
a slight.fault
‘this Immediatelyy raises the whole “problem of
of existence,..and_
exis
awakens the amo sense of guilt.
€ bad conscience is very closely connected with the fear
of life and unconfessed despair. But in contrast to those other
two phenomena, it is hegative, the sense of the contradiction
Mat the very heartOt existence, “at
at the point”“OF “Tesponsil
re ibility.
Centon A Ah wenn ti NRE ANE

202
ee
ee
 CONFLICT BETWEEN ORIGIN AND CONTRADICTION

The bad conscience announces that my responsible existence,

that is, my distinctively human existence, is determined in a ~
negative way—that is, “being guilty. > But itis not the rational“ ”
moral judgement: ‘this or that is wrong.’ It springs froma...
greater depth than that of the moral sense.' It is thee place at
which’ responsibility_means “the “whole, thus it isconcerned
aati

just as much with our relation to God as with our relation to

our fellow-man and to the world. Like fear it i of
homelessness, but of a different ee
et
an
ae ees
cast out of one’s: home, and indéed of being cast out for one’s
own fault."That is the picture which is sketched for us in the
pictures of mythological phantasy of the bad conscience, the
phenomenon which the poets describe, and which every one
of us, though in very different degrees of clarity, experiences
in ourselves. No monistic theory can deal adequately with this
fact of the bad: conscience, any more than it does with the _
fear of death. In the bad conscience alone we experience the
€anny nature of our existence in its full wretchedness.
othing makes us feel so lonely,so strange,s
so
restless,as a
POETS Pessina

“bad conscience. Anyone who deliberately suppresses it will

meet
it agai
again in dreams, in nervous disturbances, and finally
perhaps in serious mental illness. This inhabitant of the house
cannot be turned out simply by giving him notice to quit.
The bad conscience is the wayinwhich we, as sinners, experi-.
ence the presenceoff God,It is,soto say, the 1negative Holy
Spirit, the wrathof of“God
( a:as_experience, Tee ranter he ie
at the Taw as a sychological
ps oe “That is why life must be
reversed—from unbelief to , from _sin to reconciliation
with God—at this point; this is the witness of the Bible which
was
re-discovered by Luther in particular. ‘God_and_the
conscience cannot tolerate one another,’ namely, the living
God of love andthe bad conscience, che the central
expression of our contradiction, that is, the central effect and
the first result of sin/The fact that the actual man is to be
understood only from this standpoint is a truth which at the
present day especially forces itself upon the notice of those
1 Cf. Kahler, Das Gewissen, 1878, and Kahler’s article upon the conscience
in the PRE’. Further, my book, The Divine Imperative, pp. 155 ff.; and
G. Jacob, Der Gewissensbegriff in der Theologie Luthers.
203
 MAN IN REVOLT

who would like to help men out of their contradiction. Whether

they believe that they themselves are able to remove this
contradiction, or whether they recognize it simply to be what
it is and expect its healing from some other quarter, will be
the criterion by which the real soul-doctor will be distinguished
from the soul-quack. ;
* * _ # % *
=.

This then is the actual man, this being who lives in contra-
diction. Because man is in opposition to his divine origin in
he lives in
| the Creation, daily renewing this opposition,
sei SRaS
a2RU coe nahn ~oe SCRA Hagangy ade

‘opposition to hisown God-given nature; therefore his present

j to anpragismaici4"
[ast
n

“Quelle chimére est-ce donc que homme? Quelle nouveauté,

quel monstre, quel chaos, quel sujet de contradictions, quel
prodige! Juge de toutes choses, imbécile ver de terre; déposi-
taire du vrai, cloaque d’incertitude et d’erreur; gloire et rebut
de univers. . . . Connaissez donc, superbe, quel paradoxe
vous étes A vous-méme .. . Si ’homme n’avait jamais été
corrompu, il jouirait dans son innocence et de la vérité et de
la félicité avec assurance; et si ’homme n’avait jamais été que
corrompu il n’aurait aucune idée ni de la vérité ni de la
béatitude. Mais, malheureux que nous sommes . . . nous
sentons une image de la vérité, et ne possédons que le mensonge ;
incapables d’ignorer absolument et de savoir certainement,
tant il est manifeste que nous avons été dans un degré de
perfection dont nous sommes malheureusement déchus.”’*
1 Pascal, op. cit., Fr. 434.

204.
 CHAPTER VIII

THE OBJECTIONS TO THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE,

AND THE RETROSPECTIVE QUESTION FROM
THE STANDPOINT OF ACTUAL EXPERIENCE

Jae ceatson abou the:..truth

A or untruth. of the. Christian.
octrine of man is made in
n_experience, This statement: may Ayn,

be questioned from two “points of view: from that of theology

and religion, and from that of rational philosophy. a The
theologian, as the steward of the faith, may see in this statement
an abandonment of faith in the Word ‘of God or in the message
of the Church, and
he may feel obliged to protest thatthe |
truth of the _|Christian “doctrine isbeing” abandoned |foran
_appeal to “experience. For him, isnot the Word of God, the
‘Biblical ‘Gospel, and thus also theBiblical doctrine of 1man, .
an a priori, and therefore never a product of ex erlence? Does )
not fe Church, the Bible, — demand a ‘blind’ faith in its |
Message, that experience can neither prove nor disprove? |
Here we come to a partingof the ways; hence it is very
F
rie ra

important to use words very carefully and exactly, and to ae

Ve
t

avoid all catchwords. According to theteachin wotthe Bible CSRS paca

| —~y
La
there is no other faith save that “which is
“35.‘itself"experience, i
ey
namely, are
real meetl
ting
ing with
\ the
there
real| ( God,Faith in
iSRE TEMPGod’s Word es&
——
is bind: in the sense that.“the.onewho. _believes does
EW MBNA RMD
|
not know why he ‘believes, or wwhy he “ought tto believe, but.
simply that he is obeying the command of the Church to :
;
believe. Genuine faith is ‘one’s own’ faith, it is an event in
which ‘I myself’ am vanquished by the power of thetruth eS

of the Word of God. The Word of God, however, willnever

really vanquish anyone, never constrain ham inwardly to faith,
‘casting down reasonings,’! save through the message which
is proclaimed to him in the Bible, in the message of the Church,
in the pastoral ministry, which as God’s Word discovers him
in his actual condition, and through this becomes to him the
Word of God. No man can rightly believe that he is a sinner
1 2 Cor. x. 5 (R.V.).
205
 {

MAN IN REVOLT

unless when that is said to him he equates his own actual

state with this predicate ‘being a sinner,’ so that—as Paul
describes it—he is ‘convicted,’! as one who is accused ina
law court who had previously obstinately denied his guilt
is ‘convicted’ by the flawless evidence of the prosecuting
aith always means being convicted ; this means that
the soul feels that its true“state has been LSSOSTOR Siege VAT
‘nomentatwhich | feel that I have’ been ‘discovered, when
I say: ‘Yes, that is what I really am,” and the moment at
which I believe, is one and the samter The operation of the
Word and the Spirit of God in me, who am affected by it,
consists in this conviction. To know that one has thus oe
touched, the consciousness that the judgement of the Bible
touches me here, where I really am, this sense of having been
discovered, is not, it is true, the whole of faith; but it is an
essential element of faith, apart from which faith would be
merely a fides historica, a heteronomous acceptance of an article_
of doctrine imposed upon me from without. The Word of God
does not lay claims on me which ignore |theTeality cae“actual
att“first of. all“makes me see my actual state,
“experience, but it
insuch way that I know that 1now I amsseeing
5.ir
as itreallyis,
ue experience
in“really.am. ‘This means that the. true
myself as]
aan
sae aa eT
are indis-_
of God ar
of my actual state and.faith in the “Word of
all
at ;
solubly intertwined. 2" cannot see my actual |condition at
save in the ight of the Word of “cannot believe
of God, and: Tar
“Gn the Word of.God save.Soir anes. to.me my actual con- Li
Stancil edPaO RAN PEA A ama mI

1 1 Cor. xiv. 24 ff.

2 Something right too has been killed by the slogan: the ‘theology of
experience.’ Faith is not based upon experience, but upon the Word of
God. alone, upon Jesus Christ, and the promises of grace which run counter
to all experience. But this: being ‘based upon’ the Word, in the sense of
being apprehended by the Word, and saying ‘Yes’ to the Word, this faith
is certainly also experience, experience of the Holy Spirit. ‘No one can
rightly understand God or the Word of God save through the Holy Spirit.
But no one can have the Holy Spirit unless he experiences, and is aware,
and in the same experience the Holy Spirit teaches as in His own school
outside of which nothing can be taught save unreal words and talk’ (Luther,
WA. 7, 546). He who removes the dialectic of faith in favour of the
objective or the subjective aspects destroys—whether in an orthodox or a
pietistic way—the mystery of faith. Cf. the chapter Glaube als Erfahrung in
Loewenich: Luthers theologia crucis.
206
 Se "
OBJECTIONS TO THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE )~
dition, The Word: of God must ‘strike the conscience,’ as
“Luther says, in order that it may lead to real faith. The process
by means of which the sinful, actual self is discovered by the
Word of God, the iviivledee that one is discovered and
convicted, is repentance, the consent of the heart to the
judgement of God which pronounces me guilty. This is the
act in ‘which the Word and my actual state are identified.
The Christian message does not endeavour to evade this |
experience of reality ; on the contrary,it se ks it In this se e:
Sa
eepa PUD OA LARS

faith must become experience—it must be “Eny’ ffaith, thefaith|

of the heart, no mere intellectual belief—otherwise it is merely ee
———

theory.t Thus in this sense faith and the experience of reality

are the same; in this sense, also for Christian doctrine, the |
postulate of critical experience remains valid. However far |
the promise of the Word of God may go beyond all that is |
experienced, faith in.this promise can “on “come through |
man’s discover fhhis actual self based
be Tone Wort 7 “|
“torent nosite ‘Teasons
re the rationalist, to _whom the |
reason is the supreme ¢court
urt of
f appeal, may object to
to0theabove |
EONS a

statement. He willssay: ‘theChristian anthropology —is based |

upon such 1 rrationa assumptions. “that,
th without waiting to 4
shat it to the touchstone of experience, I cannot accept,
Fe ee

_it., Moreover, he feels it, so to speak, beneath his dignity

to subject the statements of the Christian doctrine to the test
of experience at all. He ‘knows,’ regardlessoff experience,
that the Christian faith is false because it“contradicts his
reasoning. The Christian doctrine is based upon the ‘absurd,
srinolonca? presuppositions of the Creation and the Fall,
and further, upon the no less ‘absurd’ presupposition of the
personality of God, and finally—this is the most crude of all—
upon the ‘absurd mythology’ of the Divine Incarnation. An
educated and philosophically trained person of the present
day cannot possibly consider a doctrine of this kind.

1 Cf. my booklet, Vom Werk des Heiligen Geistes, pp. 28 ff.; Luther, [bi
explora animum tuum an credas Deum esse tuum patrem (WA. 43, 243). ‘Should,
however, a terror of conscience be suppressed . . . a divine power must
belong to that, and not a thought, there must be something else within
thee, that he (Satan) may find a power within thee which is too strong
for him. . .? (WA. 33, 226).
207
 MAN IN REVOLT

\ Against this rationalism nothing can be said but that, it is SPORE aN Pg ESET SLRS PANNA NEES TOSS aa

Lan — highest degree ‘uncritical. It begins, for instance, with

eae HN AS
fi Ve é

but which the

aaron
it regards as an axiom,
NT Kate SAN Nea OTT

° a statement which
Christian faith maintains is false; the Semen namely, that
the self-sufficient _reason,..complete _within itself, is the. final
court of appeal where truth is concerned. It is hs kind of
rationalism that Christian doctrine describes as the apérov
- fedSos, as the Fall of. reason, which separates reason from
truth, instead of leading it to it. The quintessence of the
Christian anthropology is that it denies this.self-sufficient
ed
upon itself, renderi=" ng account
which
reason, this SLreason1 isbas : 7 oaea,

to itself,as indeed we have already pointed out in

War O
onl
“the previous chapters of this book. Christian anthropology also
aj STINT EN

toprove achieved
undertakescannot thisdenial. This proof,
why it must makéthe reason TY SSS TINE PI

h
isalready
RSTO CORI AR

whic
+

within
a

however, be
thus severeding from the Word of God, but only within that
of reason which starts from the ‘Word of God.
nders
of the rationalis
Bat in this rool’ of the falsityindicatio t
axiom the Fe anon

Christian doctrine includes the n of the human reality.

Thus it summons the rationalist to examine his axioin
m, the
t of his examination
the result
¢ ofreality, and prophesies tha
‘will be apnini Tating. But it Also tells him that he can only see
his actual state in the light of the Word of God.
The point,how eve which both reas
atr, on
and exper ience
meet with faith—in such a way indeed that the meeting is NR POET RTE TIA AC

actually a collision—is responsibility. Neither the rationalist,

PED ARNO ree RICHINS esreA
ee faee=nesDeesace
eH AERPSLII TN SNL IENTE

Thor the empiricist, nor the believer denies responsibility. On

1 The point at which a Christian and theological anthropology and a
non-Christian ‘natural’ anthropology come into contact with one another
is that which Luther calls ‘law-repentance,’ which he defends against the
Antinomians as a necessary preliminary stage on the way to the repentance
each
of faith. The Disputations in connexion with the Visitations show on
has the cure of souls in face of the
side the concern of the pastor who
doctrinaire attitude of his ultra-Reformation opponents, who maintain
and not the preaching of the
that only the preaching of grace is necessary
law. In that Luther turns against this error (for instance Drews, pp. 326,
330, etc.) and at the same time maintains the argument that the lex is
integral to the state of man (e.g. pp. 312, 328, and elsewhere), he defends
the point of contact with natural self-knowledge as a necessary methodus of
all pastoral care and preaching. Cf. the Appendix II, p. 516.
208
 OBJECTIONS TO THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
the POR aT a must all recognize it. Thus the question
can only be: wl eS oblem.of responsibility, ‘that
that
who |‘speak “about responsibility in a way which isin
AONE with thé actual factsof the situation? Negatively,” 3
“this means, who will speak about ‘Tesponsibility irIn a way which
+ will not do violence to the facts? The SHRED doctrine of
man is simply a doctrine. of responsibility, S
the Word afa alone makes visible the fact of Bes otahhity:
(without adulteration, or ideology, or concealment. )It is.
impossible to pass judgement on this claim by ignoring it—
unless someone believes that for once he has ‘the right to be
uncritical and from the outset to use the demonstrandum as a
demonstratio. If, however, he accepts the postulate of criticism
in the light of experience, he will cease, at least at first, to
declare that the presuppositions of the Cliisian doctrine of
man are an impossible mythology; he will have to take the
an doctrine from the point_
trouble to controvert the Christian
of view of experience.
Attthe
the present. day_this still seems. to.be easy to agood many
people. And in point of factit was easy so long as ‘the Christian
doctrine was wrapped up _inn‘itsits historical cloak. This “record”
of the Creation and the Fallcert
certainly could not possibly be
combined with the facts of history and of natural science. Just
as little as the Biblical account of the world being made in
six days, understood as an historical record, can be brought
into harmony with the cosmogony of natural science, can the
story of Paradise, of the first human beings, and their Fall,
be combined with the facts as we know them to-day. But from
the scientific point of view what is there to be said against
‘what the poet who wrote the 139th Psalm says about the fact
that God created him in his mother’s womb? Here, while the
empirical knowledge of man is fully maintained, a statement
is made about the background of that which can be known
empirically which eludes all empirical verification. In so far,
however, as the religious statement, which belongstoanother
pabicireneeciinnien

dimension, entirely different

oR Se GRULORN ETT from that of.‘empirical knowledge,a
eoapensinkateeeenpacen
also extends into the rea Ityyof expxperience—since it says,, for
example, that just “because man is God’s creation Ae. is a
RE ITT srr ms

‘T’See above, p. 50.

209
 MAN IN REVOLT

responsible being, and as a responsible being he also exists

and is aspect
experienced—this SMITE of the religious statement_is_
represen
>
certainly not opposed to any scientific statement; on the
YS RABED SAE Se NAOTg AO TIERS tN ACER - il
or
REMANYGSS
way peace
aR

contrary, 1t Situatio
describes. TNAaNINE NEA
which,TE eS
nIN ETE in’ sOme SSAA
eN ATTEN STTRTONNT
access nscee
another, even the non-believer must recogniz e, and one which aoe elma
os 7

t. } 2
MESH CECI TE

interpre
NH

he too 1s striving, with more or lessCoeaaasuccess,Fae SRO to

LESTER SO a APNE NT

SS APgRURT ENR NRNEESNOU

historic al. form, ofthe Christian doctrine

Pra a EAT ai i * Pot i na Sas a
RSet
theer
But even aft
for intellect
thanoper ual
mange sete EE

has been abandone d—for seme eereligious rather rs PERT Set ag

ev ptheperu
which,
op be Faso ivcswrade
ial
reasons
Tuy pera a
certs ses pa r
e still remain a number of objections
ofphilosophy..or from. that_of science,
side.r
on

he
from the
ERAN) FREHLEY TPIS NEMA TER H NS

whet
NLN ETERS Jt aS GT SESSA POR Oe pace i PPR 2 RY NSC eeiHeyen
APA

MUIR ARNE MOSHI

the Christian doctrine. For instance, some

are raised against
object that this doctrine assigns to man a special position in the
cosmos, a view which, in the light of the facts which we now
know—in contradistinction to the ancient view of the universe
—can no longer be held. Others maintain that the Christian
conception of man contradicts the history of mankind as we
have learned to know it in recent days. One objectiois n that
the assertion of the Creation and the Fall does not take sufficient
w

“a cc ou
of nt
thefact sof individual alideve
and”igenervmay ent,
lopmlai
h ars essly
that whic appe to be hopel sly divcd 2g
be
d e
exp d ned cI EES

after closer study, much more simply and rationally as along

DTH
APESN

‘story of development. Some claim that the Christian faith

spirit, which
ander
represents a dualism of body and soul, matt
‘can no longer ‘be brought into harmony with the present-day
truths of psycho-physical life and anatomy and biology. Others
say that the Christian doctrine SE schematiz
.
eslenis man, and
.
_com- DGS RSIeSistaenne come SMELT INA

difference
sree sseeees Lis ASL SERENE LN

pletely ignores the wide and_ deep individual

nwhich makes a doctrine of man appear
Ei ACs ein anemic AEE MI IAIARE On RENN 20Ae Sys

bet wee
human beings,
artifical and
n Christian
iSthatbeathe worthless abstraction. Again, it is said
doctrine of man heightens the value of the
individual to such an extent that it is opposed to the collective-
generic form of man as one life-form among others. It gives
him a freedom which he does not possess—this is the reproach —
from the one side: it makes him an enslaved being, whose
responsibility is indeed asserted but is actually denied—this
itis_main-
is the reproach from the other side. And finally,
tained that the Christian doctrine conceives man far too much
as a personali ty, whereas in reality he is farmore Me resultant
SINT NEA

most_varied forces; or again, this view destroys the

w Nae
weeny ggyy1s at RAEN ENS ete

of the
210
 OBJECTIONS TO THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

unity of man and makes every healthy human being a

schizophrenic.
Behind all these objections there are reflections and ideas
which are undoubtedly very important; they raise problems
with which a Christian doctrine of man would have to grapple
manne AGU RERAS SgISS TaagetSectcR RI
MRCALMUR NNL E cuejupedaay velahipiamngmaetadon

evenif it had not to deal with them as opposing opinions, for

Sas ek tein CNR na : mM . RieMgnas

they are questions which continua Meese for the Christian

and which we meet therefore
“in his own struggle forfaith,
again and again in the history of Christian thought as well as
in the history of Christian evangelization and pastoral work.
Hence the description which has been given up to this point
of the main features of a Christian anthropology does not
exhaust what may, rightly, be expected of us. What we must
now do is to take these fundamental principles and to examine
them further in connexion with some of the more important
problems, choosing only those which are more urgent than
ever before.
We shall deal with all these questions which have been
raised in order; only we shall follow the converse order. It
“wil l
soon become clear why we are obliged to take this line.
It is our opinion that this more detailed exposition of the
fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith already includes
within itself the elements of truth in these objections; this
makes it unnecessary to enter into a particular polemical
discussion. It will only be necessary to deal with the opposing
opinions at all in order to bring out quite clearly the actual
meaning of the Christian doctrine itself. Thus the second main
section of this book will deal in greater detail with that which
could only be sketched in outline in the first part; only by
doing this will it be possible to show clearly the meaningof |
the fact that man has been created inthe Image of God, that
sinh“he has fallen away from. this_origin,.and.that.in
‘throug
so doing with
he has come into confl himself. The first part
ict
‘of this book can only be fully understood in the light of the
second part.

2I1
 ‘ :

;
ee =

~ fa
a 2

ee;

"

od

in

‘
1 ite owe 5

a ‘i

oy
 4 d Z
Shon
lp aaragetens + aa uiipneneealae .
"9 oaoln
Maes. = ; eh bys oe
iteracem
4 gaye”
; Ra
sf: Se “9dno NAS vtmh tigd
Ais S4iiy,
Fn? ae
‘ “ aa c .
ee Styrene Sant Se Neen
th

Sa
Ves oui 8
 CHAPTER Ix

THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

I. THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY

Every anthropology must deal with the question
of the unity
of personality; in one sense or another itmust begin with this
as a fact. But the method of treatment will vary considerably.
The obvious starting-point is the unity of the physical organism.
But even this unity, which distinguishes the organism from a
conglomerate mass, is a problem for which a purely mechanistic,
atomistic conception seems inadequate. The riddle of the
_ organic structural unity already points beyond the visible
S towards an invisible sphere, to a structural principle
= unity, an entelechy, a dominant,or whatever we may call
this ‘X’ which co-ordinates the parts into a whole. It is possible,
-as in American Behaviourism, to refuse to inquire into the
basis of this unity and to confine our attention to the unified
expression, the ‘behaviour’ of this given totality.1 But even
the most realistic, matter-of-fact observer cannot overlook the
fact that this being, called man, reacts in a way in which
other living beings do not react—or rather that he ‘acts,’ and_
does not simply re-act; to turn from the outward to the inward
is seen to be inevitable. From the time of Aristotle we have
been accustomed, even in scientific thought,
to call’ this ‘inner’
‘entity the ‘soul.”? But here again we are confronted by the
‘same question: Is it a unity, or is the ‘soul’ only a collective
name for a variety of psychical elements? Does ‘the soul’ really
1 From the most “extreme point of view: Watson, Psychology from the
Standpoint of the Behaviourist. More moderate and therefore more instructive:
Thorndike, Educational Psychology.
2 The significance of Aristotle’s De anima for the whole of European
psychology is incalculable (cf. Siebeck, Geschichte der Psychologie; Dessoir,
Abriss einer Geschichte der Psychologie). From the outset, too, this Aristotelianism
has been at home in the theology of the Church. Tertullian, it is true, is
more inclined to follow the Stoics, but the Greek Fathers have all learned
from Aristotle. Psychology as a whole is one of the gates through which
ancient thought entered into Christian doctrine. As such it is all the more
important, since its influence was exerted more or less unconsciously, and
was not supervised at all. Cf. Appendix I (pp. 499 ff.).
215
 MAN IN REVOLT

exist_at,all?. Again and again, in spite of all atomistic efforts

to the contrary, it has been recognized that wemust atleast _
assume something which cannot be further divided,” and is
therefore’ an “inexplicable unity. We must do this partly in
order to understand the unity of the organism, and partly in
order to be able to understand the cohesion of the psychical
processes themselves, both conscious and unconscious. Even
the inquirer who has no use for metaphysics is forced to such
an idea of unity, simply from the standpoint of purely psycho-
logical observation. Within modern psychology the most
illuminating attempt, undertaken solely under the pressure
of psychological necessity, seems to be that which tries to
understand the whole of the psychical life from the one fun-
damental impulse of the libido. In so doing, of course, the
necessity of distinguishing different kinds of /ebido immediately
became evident.?
Ultimately, however, this psychological method of approach
proves inadequate. The very science one employs in this
approach cannot itself be understood simply as a psychological
phenomenon, as an expression of the libido, and so on. It is
itself based upon the distinction between valid and invalid,
true and false statements. From the psychological way of
approaching the problems there emerges the néetic, from the
‘soul’ there arises the Nous, the reason, the mind, as the
capacity to grasp truth, to demand and to produce that which
is valid and in accordance with a norm, to perceive ideas, and
through them to bring order into a chaotic mass of impressions,
sensations, and instincts. Once more the movement goes a
step further, either inwards or upwards. We perceive a unity
‘behind’ the psychical plane, a_principle of unity, which
realm into_a structural
thepsychical (mentioned
co-ordinates whole, just
principle
as the structural above?) co-ordinates the
organism of the body: this ‘unity’ is the mind, Here all mere
observation ceases. We do not reach this mind,its thought and .

creativity, save as we identify our thought and creativity with

im an . . Cher
Ne erancanertigmeaccgtint

it. The philosophy of the mind penetrates behind psychology

1 A powerful influence which counterbalances psychological atomism is
provided by the Gestalt Psychology and by the Wiirzburg School, which
is akin to it (Wertheimer, Koffka, Kiilpe, Messer, etc.). 2 P, 215.
216
 THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

in order to be able to pierce to the heart of the highest unity

of man, or in man, which dominates everything else. But it
has scarcely set itself this task than it transcends the mind of
manlane,itself, and is directed towards a unity on. a still higher
a unity which must not only be capable of explaining
05 agreement of the individual minds of men in one truth,
or one idea, but, above all, which must be capable of explaining
the valid truth comprehended according to its own unity.1 So_
faras the definition of this ultimate unity is concerned |, however, » eae RI i

this unity which is enthroned above the minds of men, this

A feoCEA aN ais ginticty eres te Amseinonratinjcsyaii
° °

all-inclusive principle of all truth and validity, of all meaning

and relevance, men’s views are ho elessly at variance, and have ca A ina SORT

been so for nearly three thousand years, ever since the problem
i ‘

was first raised. In order to know what is the unity in man,

we would have to know what is the attitude of the ‘mind’ to
the ‘minds’ of men, how it; the mind, regards the totality of
being, above all of material being, in which man participates
through his body, and how, from that standpoint, the relation
between body and mind, soul and mind should be understood.
It is precisely this question of the unity in man which has
given rise to all the problems of philosophy, and it seems as
though they can never be settled. —
Even the latest attempt to understand the unity of human
existence as ‘objective existence-in-the-world,’ and in so doing
as ‘anxiéty’ and ‘existence-for-death,’ important and instructive
as it is, is far from being a satisfactory answer to the question: |
in what does the unity of man consist, on what is it based,
it extend? Perhaps its greatest advantage —
and how far does
“consi sts_in
thé fact that itTeads us back to that which the
simple man, who knows nothing of philosophy orscience, knows
of his own unity.? The simple human being solves the problem /
1 From Plato onwards these problems dominate philosophy; the necessity
for this enlargment of the horizon can be perceived especially clearly in
the most recent times in the development of phenomenology.
2 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. With the concept of Dasein (‘existence’)
Heidegger develops what is intended to be a formal structural anthropology,
but he leaves a large number of the fundamental questions of anthropology
entirely unanswered.
(On Dasein, cf. Nicolas Berdyaev, Solitude and Society, pp. 41-8, 51-2,
154.— Translator.)
217
 MAN IN REVOLT

| with the two words: ‘I myself.’ That is the unity of personality

in which he lives, of which, without reflecting upon it, he is
|aware, and perhaps knows more about than when he begins
| to think about it. And yet—who then is this ‘I Myself’? What
\ do these two enigmatic, pregnant words mean? Do they mean
the same, or, if not, what is their relation to one another?
)We seek the .answer to this question not in philosophy and
ftnot in1 psychology—little as we desire to depreciate> the truth
‘which we learn from both—butinthe Word of God. ~~
0) aaa ~ We | shall never. “understand “the unity. “man,
“Ope the enigma
¢ fimh the.ae
of Pes 1e light ¢
T-Seif,”. save. in the 1
of man’s Creation 1in and for
Cr
AS OV eg theWord of| God.‘Man . has been ‘created |by God as a ‘psycho- ;
1
phy sical ‘unity. This duality—(with the exact meaning of which
oSrai deal later on)—cannot and ought not to be removed,
neither by materialism, nor by Idealism, nor by any theory
of identity. But this does not mean that if we are Christian
believers we cannot or ought not to understand man as a
unity. We should and may know him as a unity, only not from
himself or in himself, but solely from the truth of the Divine
Creation. Here, too, is the basis of his ‘hierarchical’ con-
“stitution. Since God has created man in His image He has
created him as person. It is not the mind. nor!the soul but
the pyr hysical whole,the person ‘man’ whom God _has
create is Ownm. image. The unity of man is the unity of
his ot being. “But we can only perceive his personal being
through faith, in the light of the Word of God, namely, as
the creature which has been called to communion with God,
‘and thus to responsibillity-in-love. ‘That is the ‘Scriptural basis
of the understanding of the ‘I-Self.’
Man is in the Image of God, his personality derives
from God’s, yet just because it is from God his person
is different from God’s. God—the God known to us in
His Word—is the unconditioned, the underived, the eternally
self-sustained person, on no side limited, and, save from
Himself, by naught determined, absolute and, to Himself,
absolutely transparent Spirit. Yet this designation ‘abso-
lute Spirit? would forthwith land us in the bottomless and
impersonal could we not at once add a second: He is to Himself
self-related, one knowing and willing Himself in love, the
218
 THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

Triune God, Wherefore, only the Triune God is genuinely

personal, for He is within Himself self-related, willing, knowing,
loving Himself. The God not_known in His Trinity—which
is to say, not from the revelation in Jesus Christ—is not the
God who within Himself If isisloving, | therefore also not a God
vot INTEGRA
SADR VRIES RRA TEIESSSH CAAA ANAS

who within Himself is person. ‘This ‘riune personal being of |

God is the original image >according to which and for which
man has been created. This Trinityisthe basis of both facts:
first, Me
Bc that man, ilike CGod, 1sperson, and, “secondly, tthat.he JSi
erson in quite a “different ‘way from “theWay in which “God Go
is Person,? God, the Primal Word, is creative, self-existent,and.
self-sufficing ere man has beenencreated by God
Goc as a responsive,
reflexive love, that is, a love whose content is
outside itself.
With God, the ‘I’ of man has its ‘Self? in the Word of God.
In Himself God is love,* but man can only be love from God
and unto. “God, His love can only be of the kind” indicated” ‘
in the words: ‘Let us love Him, for He has first loved us.’
Whenever man tries to love by his own efforts, or to love |
himself, in the same way as the Triune God loves, he distorts|
himself and splits his personality. Only in the love of God |
/
can man be loving, and therefore be. himself. The ‘factthat |
the love of God1sthe content of his being i
is the point
T at which
he resembles” God. “In this he“is the reflection ‘of God. ‘But

1 Augustine’s profound ee into the relation between the Divine

Trinity and the structure of human personality—in his work De Trinitate—
have never been rightly understood by Protestant theologians, because
these theologians saw in them merely the danger of a speculative argument
for belief in the Trinity. Yet in the mind of Augustine they were not
intended primarily—if at all—as apologetics, but as Christian ontology. In
this study Augustine is concerned with the question: How is the personal
being of God related to the personal being of man? Thus understood, the
work De Trinitate is an inexhaustible mine, and research in this direction
is far more useful than any general observations on the theme of the
analogia entis—which has a vogue at the present time; in my opinion, up
to the present this line of thought has produced confusion rather than
clarity.
2 Nygren raises the extremely important question: Does the Fourth
Gospel, by its emphasis upon love within the Trinity, weaken the contrast
between the Agape of the New Testament (groundless love) and the Platonic
Eros (love for that which is worthy of love)? (Eros and Agape, pp. 128 ff.).
In any case the problem should be noted.
219
 MAN IN REVOLT

we all with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of

the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to
glory. pe But the fact that man has this content and meaning
not in himself but in the Word of God, which gives him the
love of God, means that he is hpeaintcly unlike God, he is
a creature. In the fact that, like God, he can sane als 2he resembles ‘
God; but as soon’as 1
he“truly <
“desires 1
to say ‘I“myself,” he must
th ground }of his selfhood,
himself to God as the
“immediately refer himself
ToT
‘to whom hie responssible; 1in.this‘respect he is. bsolutely
st be resp
¢ must.
unlike.Go
When eee speak of the ‘I’ of man, aaa pa with
‘knowing’ instead of with ‘love,’ this is a relic of Greek thought,
_ and is abstract and unscriptural. Love is the unity of willing,
\ knowing and feeling, the sole total”act. “of“the person. tence
also the nature ofthe ‘I’must_not be defined._from. t point.
of view “of “knowing,
kr .
‘nor- from ‘that.Kot “knowledge, ‘but
‘fromthat of God-givivenresponsive love, ol Tes Euan
shebanoanvet A
janet

love. The final ground of personality is not to be found in

cesarean.
self-consciousness, nor even in the act of will; to begin there
means to desire to understand man severed from God as
person, and that means, to fall a prey to that primal misunder-
standing about oneself. In contrast to all rational definitions
of the Self the right religious self-consciousness of man is this:
man becomes conscious of hiniselfin the Word of God. The
“isolated _self-consciousness,the cogito
gito ergo sum, is the result of
apostasy. The "self-consciousness of man is ‘theological’ because
man is a ‘theological’ being. The ‘I’ with whieh the philoso-
phers tend to begin is, like the ‘I’ of God, an independent
entity; this is why the ‘IT’
’ philosophy, iin some way |orother,
always leads to self- deification.2 = ee
“Tt is the same with self-determination. It is true, of course,
that self-determination belongs to the nature of person as
person. But the self-determination properto an original personal
beingcreated_ “by God can only« ‘consist in ‘being
b determined
by God, as Kierkegaard finely puts it: “The formula wt
which
describes the state of the Self, when despair has been completely
eliminated: in the attitude to oneself, and since it wills to be
itself, the self bases itself transparently upon the power which
1 2 Cor. iii. 18. See above p. 96. 2 Cf. on this Sannwald, op. cit.
220
 THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

created it.’* But this ‘power’ is simply the love of the Creator,
and to ‘base oneself transparently upon it’ must simply mean
that we gratefully say ‘Yes’ to this love, which we call the
love of God or faith in God.2 Thus even when the Self has
been harmonized, when its faculties are in order, and all is
quiet within, it is not dependent _upon itself, but it rests in
God_ and depends utterly upon Him; and thus it Enews the
‘peace of God, which passeth all understanding.’ 8
Jo be person is to be in relation to someone; the Divine .
Being is in relation ‘toHimself; mar n’s being iis“a elation to
_ himself based on his relation to
toGod,This concept of personality _
can only be gained from love,“and not from the subject of
_the processes of knowledge. It is “because natural knowledge
“does not and cannot know this—for one can| only know this
in the Word of God—that there issuch an absolute gulf
“between the intellect“and love in the natural understanding
of man. When the effort is made to understand man from the
point of view of‘the intellect, an an abstract ¢conceptionn of © the —
ex

from ‘the“Thou’ is developed, a-monological, indeed

_L_severed fri
a monomaniac “intellectuality, whose first result is solipsism,
1S €X oressed_
an abstract, heartless, cold reason, where - personality is
in almost |mathematical or Togical terms. When, on the other
hand, love ismade the point of departure, because there is
still an idea that man is pre-eminently a being who wills love,
then—owing to the fact that neither the origin nor the content
of love is known—the result is an unintelligent and irrational
idea of libido which conceives personality in biological or
psychological terms. _
It is the same with the relation to the ‘Thou,’ which is

1 Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode, p. 11.

2 Nygren is particularly clear on the relation between faith and love.
He shows how Paul has substituted the concept of faith for the Synoptic .
idea of love to God (op. cit., pp. 106 ff.) because he wants to make it plain
that faith is receptive and love is that which gives. On the other hand,
Luther, in his Sermon on Good Works, has shown how inseparable are faith
and the love of God. ‘Indeed, when we look at it aright, love is the first
or is at the same time with faith. For I would not trust God if I had not
thought that He would be favourable and gracious towards me, by which
again I am moved to respond to Him with a heartfelt trust, and to ascribe
all good to Him’ (WA. 6, 210). 3 Phil. iv. 7.
221
 MAN IN REVOLT

originally posited in the nature of the human personality.

Rightly understood concrete, personal being? is always the same
as. ‘being-in-community, a__responsible —“eéxistenc e-in-love.’
Where man’ Sorigin is not known the person is either falsely
SSE ESPEN lemmepeaeenmned
isolated_in_an_ abstract. intellectual —individualism—the self-
nd inde-
d and.
sufficient, autonomous rational ‘I’;5100 the unified
1 into “purely ‘vitalistic relations.
pendent ‘personalitybreaks Up ages URED

‘At’ the one extreme, man is a god, sufficient unto himself;

at the other, man is a member of a species, the animal homo
sapiens in the human herd.
Of all the thinkers who do not take their stand upon the
Christian revelation. probably Kant and Plato<re_those who
‘come nearest to the Christian view, the one through his concept
oftthe person asthat ‘oft
"responsible being, and the’other
th through ©
his ‘understanding ‘of.man from the point ‘of view of the Eros.
we
The comparison between the Kantian conception of personality
and ‘that of Christianity is most instructive. Since Kant, in
accordance with his conception of reason, may not start from
the divine love as the ground of personal responsibility, he
defines his concept ofresponsibility as relation to the practical
weedy
law of reason. This produces the following parallels and
contrasts : “Personal being?
is understood, it istrue, ass being
consisting in relations, bi
but these Telations Ee
they are related tc
to_the. Taw «of,reason and therefore ultimately
“so faras motive and content are concerned—they are
impersonal: self-respect_as_the _motive, and a universal rule ter

ix
as the content. Personal being is based, it true,
is inakind ay

“of
calling;
this calling, however, is not the gift of the Creator
pl
:

but pure obligation; hence > personality cannot realize _

itself in 4
seta
toaaeaeaee
ik
ay
*

1 The word ‘person’ itself presents a complicated historical problem. ©

(Cf. Hirzel, Die Person. Begriff und Name derselben im Altertum, Munich, 1914,
Sitzungsbericht der bayrischen Akademie; Rheinfelder, Das Wort persona, Geschichte
seiner Bedeutungen, 1928.) The allusion to the ‘mask’ should be used very
cautiously, and the etymology personare should no longer be used.
2 Kant has various conceptions of personality: psychological, moral, and
that of the theory of knowledge. They are nowhere combined into a unity.
But his conception of personality as the ‘freedom of a rational being
according to moral laws,’ and, based upon that, ‘freedom and independence
of the mechanism of the whole nature,’ is decisive. (Kehrbach, Kritik der
praktischen Vernunft, p. 105.)
222
 THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

love, but only in obedience; hence, also, there is no connexion

with the bodily nature and its inclinations. Body and mind
are separated in a dualistic manner. Kant does recognize a
claim on man which makes him person; but in the last resort
this claim comes from himself, namely, rational self-respect,
and thus leaves man without any relation to the ‘Thou. pe be
place of the ‘Thou,’ both Divine and human, there is abstract
humanity as an Tdeet ta hee second section of this book we
shall see that this fundamental difference has also resulted-in
a profound difference in his conception of Evil.
Plato’s conception of man is higher than that of the philo-
sopher of Konigsberg inn the relation it establishes between
spirit (Geist) and Eros, but it falls below it on the question of
responsibility. it_is more comprehensive than that of Kant,
but it is less ersonal. The concept of Eros connects the»Spit
(Geist) with nature, reason with emotion (Affekt), even with
corporeality. But this connexion is only achieved by means
¥ oa typically Greek conception of kadonayabia, that is,
he predominance |of the aesthetic element in the under-
aoe of the spirit (Geist) or of the relation to the divine
Idea.? In this concept of the Idea-Eros the complete contrast
between Platonism and the Christian faith comes out most
plainly. Plato cannot say: ‘Let us love, for He has first loved
s’; for his “Idea of the Good’ does not love, the loving is
exclusively on the side of man, and is therefore different in
character; it is not that of grateful humble obedience, but
it is a sublimated form of human love: enjoyment of the
eternal.
The libido theory of the latest modern psychology also presents
an aspect which is both related and opposed to the Christian
_ conception. Since it is attained entirely from the consideration
of the emotional life it is very near to human life as it is actually
lived; but then it is forced to leave the original-creation
element and the sinful-fallen element side by side, undistin-
guished and unseparated, in an absolutely unexplained concept
of libido-love, by which we-may understand anything which
' See above, p. 190.
Similarly Schiller’s attempt to overcome the Kantian dualism by the
aesthetic element. (Die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen.)
gag.”
 MAN IN REVOLT ;

has a positive relation to instinct or will. But as a testimony

to the disintegration of human unity the view of this school
is of particular value. This becomes plain when we study more
closely the concept in which the Bible expresses its view of
ee personal existence of man in its central unity. This concept
: the heart. Where tthe Bible speaks of man as a whole, and
sige neg tenement enero

a) indeed.from the“pointt of view of personal unity, it;speaksof

L*the e
heart.”
|
Ue ‘From the point of view of the Bible the ‘heart’? isprimarily||
‘theunified centre of allthefundamental functions ‘oftthe psyche.
Whatever’a person. }willswholly that he does from | ‘the heart,? |
Bae nae

Jo
whom one loves, to him one gives one’s heart,’ and oacthas|
him in one’s heart. The heart knows,® or perceives, under-
stands,* ponders,’ the heartis the ‘seeeeole ber of all that
is heard and experienced’ ;§ ‘they utter words out of their
heart,’® to the heart are ascribed ‘all degrees of pain, joy,
dissatisfaction from anxiety to despair. 10 The unity of will,
thought and feeling ‘as fully conscious means to be of one}
heart.’11 But likewise me heart is the ‘centresof the. moral dis-
man’s relation. to..God,, ‘the source and the
_Position | ‘andof
“starting-point of all — and evil,’ of the love of God and
of self-deifying arrogance.!8 The law of God is written! in the
heart of all men; it is the ‘field for the seed of the Divine
Word," it is the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit.16 It is ‘the
quiet chamber of secret communion with God,’?” ‘the central)
point of the whole man, the bearer of the personal conscious:
1 The following quotations are taken from the Biblische Psychologie by
Delitzsch (pp. 204 ff.), which indeed provides the most exhaustive and the
best account of the significance of the heart in the Old and the New
Testament, at any rate of anything which has been published on the
subject down to the present time. The actual quotations are all from
Delitzsch. (Cf. also Schlatter, Herz und Gehirn im ersten Jahrhundert. Studien
zur systematischen Theologie, Theodor v. Haering zum 70. Geburtstag, 1918,
pp. 86 ff.)
2 Rom. vi. 17. 3 Prov. xxiii. 7. 4 Phil. i. 7; 2 Cor. vii. 3:
5 Deut. xxix. 4. 8 Isa. xxxii. 4. 7 Luke ii. 19.
8 Luke i. 66. 9 Job viii. 10.
10 Acts ii. 46; John xvi. 6; James iii. 143 Acts vii. 54; Eccl. ii. 20.
11 Jer. xxxii. 39; Acts iv. 32. 12 Matt. xil. 34.
18 Ezek. xxviii, 2, 5. 14 Rom. ii. 15. 15 Matt. xiii. 19 ff.
16 Eph, iii. 17; 2 Cor. i. 22. 17 Eph. v. 19.
224
 THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

ness,’'! it ‘is the medium of all relations and actions, both on

the intellectual and on the physical side, in so far as they are)
due to self-consciousness and freedom of action.’2 In a word,
in the Bible the ‘heart’ isthat. which we have described as|
SPUR UIe tomsoneseats
ue.

as
the unity of ersonality ;the
1¢incomparable significance ascribed |
to it.in the
h BibleBible :as awhole is the clea:
c earest proofof theiupper |
___| tance of the idea of personal unity w Christian doctrine )
of man,
“Tn “the light of the Divine origin of man the heart is the |
rece tive and _re--acting centre of the Word. of ‘God and_ the |
love of God. ‘Therefore ‘with the heart one "believes, 3 with er
‘the whole heart’ we are to love God,* even as ‘the love of)
God is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost.’
The heart which is thus determined is the human being as
God intends him to be; this is the self as it ‘bases itself peat
parently upon the power which created it’; this is the Biblical |
concept of personality. Hence, too, it istheheart which sevesevers
|
itself from. God, which falls1“nteleg ‘the curse of sin andof the |
aw; to it accordingly the saving grace ofGod appealsiin the|
message0!t repentance a
‘and reconciliation. — RE
As the ‘heart’ is the subject of unified personal being, so
_the grateful love which responds, faith, is the total act of this
“subject in harmony wit with its origin. Forthis _very Teason ‘the
actuality «of ‘human
abet ON
hi on the
selfhood iis no actuspurus, but actus ¢
basis of a Passio, :an actus relativus. For man receives before he A
re-acts. He receives his being in, and from, and unto, the love’
of God through the Word of Goa ; he receives at first in
i faith
before he can answer by responsive love; or rather, the ‘Yes’
of the faith which gratefully accepts is indissolubly united with 3bi
responsive love. The fact that the love of man begins with this
believing and gratefuul act of reception distinguishesiit_Pro-
oT om e Platonic Eros. The fact that the ‘I’ receives
ts Self, ‘before it‘posits‘itself in’self--knowledge and self-deter-
1
j
ae distinguishes this Af? from, the ‘I’ of transcendental
| _philosophy.
j
The fact that love as an actual living human
possibility comes from God, and that its responsive tendency
towards God is also derived from this origin, distinguishes this
1 Deut. iv. 29;
9 vi. 55. ? Biblische Psychologie,
y p. 207. * Rom. x. 10,
4 Matt. xxii, 37. 5 Rom. v. 5.
225
 MAN IN REVOLT

love from the libido of the psychologists. In this love, but in

it only, there is included, besides will, perception and feeling
—the higher life of the mind and spirit—also the ‘soul’ as a
whole, indeed, in a certain sense, even the realm of the
unconscious. Here, therefore—and here alone—it is the whole
HAUL AIE, Abi NeFide PSR NER Ts OA ee TIE LEANED. “

mar, who answers,

eatin aes NEAR A ass eA

This responsive love (this ‘heartfelt faith’) isprimarily.an.act

ct..of under-
God.is_received.,..an..aved
of perception.,.che.word plishofed,
tandingis accom the mind has percei the Divine
meaning. The love of God is perceived, and in it the meaning
¢ am’

and the basis of our existence. In this act of perception, which

is so simple that even a child can perform it, and in the
performance of which the wisest of men has no advantage over
‘ the simplest, is disclosed the secret which the philosophers of
all ages have tried in vain to penetrate. It is an act of the
highest metaphysical dignity. The mystery of God—of the
Triune God, the person who in Himself is Love—and the
secret of man, of his origin, his nature and his end, disclose
themselves in it. In comparison with this, all other knowledge
e
is thought,
is secondary. Lov but it is an_act.of thought
which in the strict sense of thePrem word is_reflection,..re
» a
ceptiveie
Paes
THAD A
MEA O AMCMIT DIRS gO re RNR
CWB Shree ETL LIT
; forac its
thought ews cont is election, its form_is_
PNRTVAIO
gratitude.
RSAC
sigma AA ANGITE 26 ER PEA
is the most complete form ofthought.
:
Thanking
(Zi Secondly isanact of will. God manifests His will
this Tove,
to man in wills for him,
He
is Word, first of all that which
the basis of the former—what He wills from
“and then—upon
him. The love of God is the will of God, His free sovereign
will as Lord, His Fatherly will which incomprehensibly imparts
itself to us. Hence itis impossible to receive the will of God
save by being
ED,
drawn
gas
into‘this
eras
‘will 2 ‘as one otwhoees wills it after
ey

im, and unites fin his human will with _the Divine will,
Fa enact PRAIRIE ST TT COR ATS OT NCTA
Love
ve

is the only voluntary act;thusit is the only ‘will whichis

entiwil. relyWilling obedience is that form of human freedom
which is harmony with man’s origin.1 This love is self-deter-
mination. It Sives a uniform direction to the whole life, and
STROM RAN MAN
igDARHT
IORI TAN) vit i ERROR.

it gives it_wholly. and.ntirely 5 it does not take anything away

from it. This pomt may be compared with the words used
1 It is thus that Paul expresses the aim of his whole missionary activity:
sent forth “‘for obedience to the faith among all nations’ (Rom. i. 5).
226
 -

THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

by Archimedes : dés por od orm; for the content _of this will

not out of lifebut only into life. It is therefore 4pure “will,”

w me
moved by reasons from below, and yet it is not abstract or
cold, but is a concrete and ‘heartfelt’ will. Its object is not
an ‘it,’ neither of nature nor of the intellect; but it is the
‘Than’ of God and of the neighbour, and all that is ‘it’ is
only means and instrument. But this self-determination is not,
like the Self of Fichte’s philosophy, the act of self-creation;
it is the act of self-reception. —
Hence thirdly, this lo . The contrast between
feeling and intellect which Gharacteries European thought
about the higher life of the mind is not part of man’s origin,
but it is a product of his apostasy. Feeling therefore has’ its
rightful placedin man’s ‘experience’ of his relation with God,
because this ‘experience’ is something which man has received,
and not something which he has himself created. To be
apprehended by the love of God, means to be smitten.1 inthe ¥
very centre of
of o
one’s being, to ‘suffer it, not as pain, but as the
supreme joy,
iDy, as happiness ‘and peace; that is, the Self knows”
that
it is ‘at home’ in God, and that the T and the ‘Self?
have become one. This does notymean that in love, understood
as
as being |loved and Joving iin return, feeling is
i the first or the
‘most important
imp element.
¢
cpenny
Here, too, it isplainly the“second ;
it follows the acts of perceeption an
and _acce
a tance. but itfollows
f
them so swiiftly“that ¢one might almost :say that It 1s included.
_in them, For in the moment at which the love of God is truly
‘discovered’ joy is already present. Indeed, should we not say
that the character of a erception isprecisely this that it
is a discovery-in-joy: ewise thisj
joy‘follows 1the act
ofwilling
obedience, |and yet is acleder in itas that which characterizes
eae mee
voluntary act of will. What is the love of God other than
rejoicing in God? —
What Calvin says of faith, namely, that it ‘moves the proy
foundest depths of the cart. 1 is also true here. The ‘root’
of the heart, however, is oe ‘soul’ or the psychical realm,
which eueuns down into the unconscious and thence pene-|
trates the whole organism. “When I awake I speak of Thee’ ;?
Institutio, ‘I, 2, 36. EAS ‘roots.’— Translator. 4 Psa.' Waai.o7!
227
 MAN IN REVOLT

[_sshe rig man of the Old Testament even his sleep is

rest_1 True union with God penetrates into the realm
of the unconscious, just as the unrest of the heart and the
division of the personality in sin penetrates into the unconscious,
and expresses itself not only in the face and in various gestures, _
but also in illness and in physical decline. The expression.
‘heart’ as_a picture of the unityofthe personal even though
ity,
it is only not been chosen. casually ; it is an image
pictorial, has
Itsenc
outyof experi
“which springs naturall n isto
intentioe.
express the ofper-
truth that the life-centre and thecentre
are one.) Man’s relation with God, his origin,
ARPT W eis
sonality
7
is on
a higher plane than that of the antithesis between the intellect
and the ‘vital’ principle, and there is no need for Christian
theology to absorb this antithesis—which has dominated
philosophy from the time of Plato—into itself. The Bible
always thinks of faith as something which penetrates the ‘joint
and the marrow,’ and causes such suffering that the physical
heart is broThis
ken us back to the point from which
brings.?
we started: God has created man.as_ a. psycho-physiunity,
cal
order, whichcan.only,.be..understood
in a certain hierarchical
_in the light of‘a higher sphere, higher too than his own mind
punsign Se INSTR
ANI SRE EE RSENRT HORII

nd spirit.
pear rcp eee

2: THE DECAY OF PERSONAL UNITY

ae(SPER: mid@enws
. reanecere met, meas dan ed

of the original relation

In what sense does the destruction
ween
‘betthe the Fall mean the
Creator andthe creaturey?byAnd,
destruction of the of“personalit in what sense_unity
_does it not mean this? Theconcept of the ‘heart,’ in particular,
which is used, both by the godless person and by the person
who is united with God, to describe its unity and totality,
ymakes this question necessary. Have. .we any right. to speak
‘des
‘about thethe sinner
|,“even ofpersonality by sin, "whe
oftheunitytion
truc
may be described bythis personal unity desig-_
nated “the “heart Tt is not said that through sin man loses
CAH
TEREeen

‘fis heart, but that sin has its seat even in the heart.? Thus |
shinhe

the first point to note is that in a certain sense unity of SETI NIN EIRP

mk ‘personality still-exists.” The question therefore can only be put

in this way: Is it true to say that it can be lost in any sense?
Nese
NNESS PREPS

1 Heb. iv, 12; Jer. xxiil. 9. 2 Matt. xii. 34; Rom. i. 24.
228
 THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

and if so, how are the unity

of personality which still remains,
and that whic has h
been lost, related to oneanother? Is the.
man who is living in sin as fully ‘person’ as he was when living |
in relation
tohts Origin? Or in what sense ispersonality Tost
This is the first question to which we must now turn.
Just as personality is constituted at the centre, so also the
disintegration of the unity of personality starts from the centre.
Through
eI: the
CUUNER Fall manloses
lpm Doreen
a eae the conten
:
ofthis personal being,
ater
€xistence
in the love of God, What remains over for himof |
the OriSource,
gin is the
al form” of his existence as man,
personalbeing and human existence as structure ;but this form
is filled with a
sit texones
content which is the very opposite of the content
Ledeayaueneenld
en sada ee
which
miles tana
it
eh
originally
SYS MEALS CRED EBT TiMtiirna
contained.
oA RAKE hag

ie te eS SER LA SSS aMaH

“The desire of the flesh is enmity
against God,! the cor incurvatum
ARBRE EO *
« é
in se, the 619‘I’ which
°
seeks itself.
°

Man is still related to God, he still possesses responsibility;

o a

but this relation to God has turned into enmity towards God |
and flight from God. Man’s being is still responsible being;); >.
but this. responsibility has become a legal demand. Through] }Baplen
RANA E LR SHRED PATA INCA PEMA M AAEM KE SW rial LARS eC BON STAI

sin man does not become an animal, he remains humanus ;\ 9

ERIM ras SIVAN oe :

but with the loss of the divine love and of

existence in love
Wear tosres Swain

he loses the distinctive content_ ofhumanity.

All that remains)
to him of hisoriginal humanity isthe formal element: creative,
power in virtue of the perception of ‘ideas, self-consciousness|
and self-determination, as characteristics of man’s being which|
cannot be lost. ; is
Through the Fall the unity of being and destiny, or of 30 ee
‘T and the ‘Self,’ has been lost. Hence sinf
man is
ulforced ~~
continually to seek his Self or himself. Instead of circling
round God the human life-movement now circles round the
Self—lost and therefore sought. Hence the cor incurvatum in Se.
ipsum. This fundamental egoism is both the manifestation of
Original Sin and a fresh expression of it in concrete terms.
This separation between the ‘I’ and the ‘Self? is the central|

is that despair which Kierkegaard, in his Sickn

unto
essDeath,
describes as the state of fallen man in theological rot the
and psychology, as the decay of the original unity of the
original elements of human existence.
| 1 Rom. viii. 7.
| 229
 )

MAN IN REVOLT

The first result of the divided personality is the severance

of areein
responsibility from Tove. Obligation” and.desir
Nine opposition to one another. Since man has lost his being-in-_
2 Firelores CORRENTE js severed from Him by his being-in-guilt
nA? "| and under the wrath of God—lost indeed, in such a way that
‘9 «no return to the Divine Origin is possible—his relation with
ist -< "God only exists in the form of a sense of obligation. The other
we aspect of sin, as we have already seen, is ‘standing under the
1 Law.’ In theological terms, this is the most exact description
\4 of the sinner’s condition. He is not simply severed from the
-.\ will of God; he now knows the will of God only as law, as
_ a demand, as an obligation. This obligation is the theological
4 side, the aspect of formal personality which is related to God,
which remains of man’s original state even after the Fall. The
reason on which humanity is based has, as its present centre,
the divine law—even if this is not very clear. The practical
: relation with God of the ‘natural’ man_is legalism. "That is~
._» “the“common denominator of all non-Christian re igions, and
PEAR NDR PATRONee

of all corruptionsof the Christian faith. Legalism, however,

TST EMIT
5 .

©
jy) Ys-also the character
ofthe non-Chrisuan_ ethical relation. to
—_ eemiate

One’s fellow-man. The contrast between law andinclination

NPT AESET,

) inene peaeia eee Galaga a eA

1s the logical expression

7, : : itn aug

-- upon which the Kantian ethic 1s based,

eral ee all
wer

= @ human existence which lives no longer in the love od

. pba wy é oA GIES a 1 IN MLL Rh OCI STR lide? AONE, sige
/ f
be eaten oh ee TPT A NRENR PIRES IN SLI DE NTN
menses

ut only in the law, : pr 7 <

Se
The
eee
negative aspect_of this aioe
legalism
religious and ethical NSiCRRRONCSeiniew Seta

+
° °
4, is lawless desire, love which has become
+ eee
odless. But the anarchy
ae AN produced ; by man’s apostasy ‘means that this very desire is split
4 * . up and torn in several directions. On the one hand there
“arise desire sa directed towards oneself, self-seeking, greedy
desfor ire oneself, being in love with oneself, narcissism. The
self-will which should be embedded in the will of God now |
stands forth naked and unashamed. It sets the ‘I’ in the place
Lets an ultimate end, and the central point™
of God,itmakes itself
of all desire and activity; it is self-glorification, the cor
incurvatum in se ipsum in its concrete direct form. But since
_Sy the human. ‘I’.is.not. constituted. for..the.L’but.fo EP
7
3salways seeking_
~

seeks, God,, buthimself,

‘. é
retro laa ear
e

no Jonger,
‘man who fHenc
A Att Hannes 9
READ
Fe)

at tiieSAGiG ee ee
Log the void, ust.do one things: ‘either he must
of two os eesinas iAH AORTA A
3

Wa, a
Val ° °
Intensity himself
°
in Mensa SSfantastic waygi Meswell
phere
himself out. to. the
Monn ner Nene on Ae resi AGES TOE
SoD
ABT scalaueals Se eT OUI ory:
quammencemneittt BHU Mele
f
;3 BASS
230
H
 THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

dimensions of a god, or he mustfill the.empty ‘I’with.wor

material, rst process is “accomplished in all forms of
metaphysical, religious, mystical self-deification. The desire
to be like God becomes the concrete content of life, not merely,
as in the Fall itself, the final presupposition in the packeround,
throws itself
‘Thesecond way is far more usual, the empty ‘I’ tl
upon the world. At firstthis also takes place in religious‘form:
the deification of nature and of the world, paganism. The
honour due to the Creator is transferred to the creature.+ But
from this deification of the world there springs, further, the
the world. This is so very usual that
quite common greed for the
the natural man only knowssin in this form. The result of
this greed for the world, however, is that the ‘I’ loses itself
in the world; above all, it loses its freedom. In the Divine
Lovet ceed oneselfisthe same thing;
te ieee
but in this greed for the world these two aspects become divided
and then conflict with one another. Hence the man who has
thrown himself upon the world, or is ready to do so, must _
continually withdraw himself from the world—and this is the © /
content of all natural ethics:? self-control and self-assertion /
over against the world to the point of renunciation of the -
world—asceticism. Thus man is torn hither and_ thither, by
two opposing currents—he iss_drawn.inwards to himself and
then nee to. the world 3.he ; is tol torn1
between the desire
for independence and the lon longing >tcto
o abandon ‘himself wholly
to the things of this we world, “especially to those which minister
to his pleasure ; he is torn
eibenicen arrogant and selfish isolation
and self-abandonment to the world around him.
Man’s relation to the other, in particular,
isaffected1 by this _
possessive attitude of his aneied personality. Love. which is
no longerr understood responsibility,
as even where it is‘directed
towards other human beings, becomes a passion which seeks |
‘to enjoy. -and tto.‘dominate: either ‘adesire to dominate the _
other in possessive autocratic ways, or an abandonment which |
1 Rom. i. a1 ff.
2 The Aristotelian ethic is the classical example of this. Its individualistic-
ethical principle is that of self-preservation; its social-ethical principle is
that of justice. Friendship 1is only for the man who is worthy of it. (Nik.
Ethik, 1156b.)
231
 MAN IN REVOLT

becomes enslavement of oneself to the other. Mongsicea

howeve r, theresik paaeiaie _
stands the moral Jaw, which, reg) ulates _the
ATEN
_relation to one’s neighbour “with ‘more _
less_
orl SUCCESS, or at
“least correctsit, and, as the overcoming off the anarchy of
rarer
PTT

takes.
(impulse, produces a ruder or a finer order. Above all, this
ey |
ace through the principle o f justice, the main. “principle ‘of. ARR AS

makes the
SAR RB eminent ead

ethics, which at_ ane same time

4 é f

egalistic social
beings.s abstract. and_impersonal,and
NG EERE ERAT I

relation s
inaainigonyasiabiint ey
etween ‘human
OED IEP
Sees OATES

their attitude to one another self-righteous and loveless.

ener

At
which
But it 1s not ‘only.‘the union of love and responsibility.
POSUERE55st mye

} ..
. has been broken, but also the unity of the fundamental
|
psychoNogical functio , though and feeling.Even the _
ns: “will LOTT ROTI

man
greens pictet moo ied,PROTONS TREE
disintegrated sinful,fallen life. i be spirit,
has an iinner life.
“or rather to-be-spirit-asswell, is an essential par of the state
part
of man as humanus, of the formal personal ity which he still
retains. But the inner lifehe which has beenA TCEsevered from RAPTlove,
mt ‘
MOO MI a SEARO LS
sonal,
ANE NTN

the
from hadar e perso nal Wo.td_of God, is “neces sarily imper
ir
‘Yegalistic, abstract. The plume, the highest which it can
eos toeteeiaaal me
i

2
attain, 1s the real im ofAdeas. A ‘inner life’ which consists"
in the possession o ‘high ideals ae from God, and legalistic
reason, ee to one another. The will of God becomes the_
, Idea_of the Good, or the, immanent_ ‘law_of “practical reason ;
the self hidden in God becomes ‘my divine self’; instead of
‘I in God’ we have est Deus in nobis. The Divine. ‘Thou’.
disappears in the abstract, Spirit, _just. as“the human_ “Thow’
isappears 1 ‘the idea “of ‘universal ‘humanity and of the
Roi NTMESHES
APE SIE

“nivel rational self. Likewise nature and spirit now break

y into_an_ irrevocablee contradiction, into” a’ Contradiction
aie can only be < removed’ by some falsification either of
ythe spirit or of nature; and to this ismetaphysical contradiction
M there corresponds |the ‘alienati on of thought from_ the basis of
life, to which there corresponds the division “between sense
impressions and thought. ‘energie
apes
its purely rational
Thought, the more uaniptramnnn
to life;“desire
coset!
'
ahs 2a becomes
aspect is develo
cesses
increasin ly
gly hosti
hostile FN» SA MES LR I vt OTANI eee tr ae
assiaseanmmenne- tatesibaa

The spirit | yecomes

sek lean

the ‘vita “element become chaotic.

Heaeitess: and the heart has no vision.
The same is true in the sphere of the will. The will which cao inns eabibes Ca ehibisidlath bh
the more powerful
NOL WL ANT OF

has ‘broken away from thew

id IDI LoINNYAR creo

it.Ts in,“itself, the more NNit ‘becomes “willed, blind

‘arbitrary, selPowi
pal RARE RANI RIEL ERTS BIER
Dhtier Eis LS thetWSA yBD |NIE

232
 THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

to the truth, a harshly assertive will, which treads feeling

ruthlessly ame foot. All thatthewMicares about is itself,
that is, power. ‘Will to power’ is the correct formula for the
will. which has become. _godless, just;as the_self-deification ‘of
will
reason ‘is theaim ofemancipation of thought. |Not theatheism
‘of
oftt
thought, but
bi the atheism of the will, is the real antithesis
to
to faith, It is this which says, ‘If there were gods, who would
hesitate to become a god?’ (Nietzsche). It comes very close
to the devilish Hybris which summons God to a contest .as
though between equals.1 But where the will loses even this
impulse towards higher things, negative though it may be, it
becomes merely the lust for power; and it is only the peculiar
futility of its lawless and capricious character which distin-
guishes it from ordinary greed for sensual and worldly pleasures.
Here is the source of the cruelty of the man whose one aim
is to carry out his _own will at all costs. Finally,where the will
ne

unites with reason, it becomes, it is true, powerful in moulding

events, but inhuman in
itss tigid addherence 1‘toprinciples.
Fiat
Justitia, pereat mundus!
The same.is true of
offeeling. Originally pleasure was spiritually
connected with joy in God; through the Fall it has been, on
the one hand, disconnected, and on the other, transformed
into its opposite. The severance of pleasure |from God means
that_it_is abandoned to the world _of the_senses ; for in the
abstract life of reason there is little scope for it. it is indeed
true that the Platonic Eros, the spiritual joy in creation and
the delight of the vision of the Ideas is the proof that feeling
and the higher life of the mind have not been wholly separated.
But this Platonic vos is itself more of an Idea than a reality,
at least in actual life it is usually coupled with a shadowy
partner. Indeed, in man’s deepest being, where man seeks to
find his way
wey back to his—lost—Divine Origin, by. thought or
vision, we find that a very different feeling from that ofpleasure
predominates; itiis rather melancholy, sorrow over existence
A NOONE

and
cn
over
naar
eee
man’s ‘destiny, or sometimes it is a passionate longing

1 “This wretched God of Christian monotono-Theism! This hybrid

decadent picture of nothing, concept and contradiction, in which all the
instincts of decadence, all the cowardices and fatigues of the soul have their
sanction’ (Nietzsche, Antichrist, Nr. 19).
233
 MAN IN REVOLT

for the ‘moment’ which might be seized with the cry: ‘Abide
with us! Thou art so beautiful!’ Or it may express itself in
a tragic sense of division, or in that protest against the. evil,
godless world and the meaninglessness of fate which has always
been characteristic of those who have tried to pierce the
' mystery of human life. The loud and forced peans of pleasure,
with which the modern atheist protests against this pessimism
about the pain of the world, scarcely avail to drown these
deeper notes. The fundamental. feeling of the existence
separated from God 3
SH profound Sorrow 2and unrest.
Behind this "Sorrow.; there - lies, on the one hand, _disappoint-
ment over the fact that the meaning of life cannot eS discovered
and how can it be found ifthe love of God bee ignored ?>—
_and, _on_ the other. hand, the bad conscience, the anxiety of
“podlesshiess ‘which is still cimly. aware thatitis wrong. In both
man feels himself abandoned, helpless, ‘thrown’ into existence
(Heidegger). Feeling does not participate in the _personal
self-determination, which is otherwise still “characteristic of
1
“sinful | fallen man. In “his feeling he is “completely passive ; he 2gedaan:

has no powert over his feeling, the |disharmony of his existence

‘comes out in his feeling, against his will, ‘while in thought
and will, to some renter at least, he iseable to go beyond
himself. Hiss_feeling. _as_a.whole_is. the total balance.of. his
existence which iis drawn up and presented to him without his
will; no skilfulintellectual speculation and no deliberate positing
ce end for his will can alter this. This unstilled_longing
for life, thiss negative balance of life, is therefore in the Bible
wick ater

everywhere the most ‘Important point of contact for the Gospel

message: ‘If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink.”’?
This, then, isthe
condition of the unity of personality in
man’s fallen state. Certainly, in sofar as thedisintegration
has not taken the extreme form, in the pathological sense of
the divided personality and the loss of the sense of unity in
man is still aae unity
self-consciousness of insanity,? rarer formal
in the time
‘, se LAR GRDELances tyie

1 John vii. 37.

2 Cf. the division of personality and the phenomena of dual and multiple
personality which have been described by Ribot (Les Maladies de la
personnalité) and Osterreich (Die Phénomenologie des Ich nach ihren Grund-
problemen).
234
 THE UNITY OF PERSONALITY AND ITS DECAY

_ sense of self-consciousness and of self-determination. But this

Shell of formal"personality
has no uniform content; on the
contrary, it is extremely
contradictory, The individual functions~
have formed different centres, and they develop like the
different centres of government which exist at the same time
in a civil war, each one at the cost of the others. It is true of
course that all these centres are included in a uniform ‘I will,’
‘I think,’ ‘I feel,’ which has not yet been disintegrated. It is
still possible to recognize at least _a comparative unity of
ersonality in the ‘heart.’ But it is the heart which is torn,~
divided, contradictory.
Itisthe heart which feels the disharmony
of existence in its ‘sorrow-of-heart.’? The heart is divided into
an upper and a lower sphere; impot
itstrains
ently after what
ought to be, and yet it is dragged downwards b an opposing
fcorce, blind
b and
powerful.? Out of the heart come thoughts
ATT

good and bad, hence in the heart also there is waged that
conflict of mutual accusation and defence which, according
to Paul, manifests both the presence and the powerlessness of
the ‘law which is written in the heart.’?
Unity of personality—yes; but it is the unity of the person
who has lost personal being and yet is ever seeking to recover
it. Humanity, the being of man as the content of this
personality—yes; but a human existence which Jacks the
distinctively human element, which always has a trace, and
sometimes all the horror of inhumanity about it. Unity— ego
but _theunity of that which at bottom is inordespair.
inward unity which still exists we call spiritual
This
psychological
‘health’ or ‘normality,’ to distinguish it from madness, or
insanity. Yet all this health is in itself mad and insane. To
place the central point of existence outside God, who is the
true Centre, in the ‘I’ and the world, is madness; for it cannot
be a real centre; the world cannot provide any resting-place_
forInsanity—for
the Self; sinit isonlythey_malmakes itoscillate
il ate hither andand thither.
hither
product of an insane idea—the insanity
thither. _
of independence which has got rid of God and cannot help
producing insanity, namely, allthe substitute gods of a baser_
or_a_ higher kind, substitutes for that happiness and peace
1 Rom. vii. 14 ff.
? Rom. ii. 14 ff.; cf. Rom. vii.
235 \
 MAN IN REVOLT

which spring from being in the truth, all the substitute.aims_

_with which the empty soul tries to fill the ‘aching void.”
of the original unity and of the
' “Hence we can only speak
| decay of unity because, and in so far as in the midst of fallen
| existence unity is once more granted to us; this takes place
- in the fact that the Word of the Origin, which we have lost
and cannot find for ourselves, comes to us once more, appre-
ee hends us in faith, once more gives us the love which we had
~~
lost, and thus restores man’s original state./But we cannot
“pursue this subject any further at this point.

236
 |
at CHAPTER X ess
|
|

| THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON

| | I. THE SPIRIT OF GOD AND THE SPIRIT OF MAN
Man can be person because and in so far as he has spirit.
| Personal being is “founded” in the spirit; the spirit is, so to
| speak, thesubstratum, the element of personal. being. But
| what is spirit? And of what nature is this ‘founding’ of per-
| sonality in spirit? The question of the spirit is, so it seems, a
| philosophical one, the problem of the spirit is the real subject
of all serious philosophy. Having arrived at’this point, then,
Yee ee

are we to cease to inquire and to think in a theological manner?

that means, to cease to inquire and to think from the point
of view of God—the God who reveals Himself to us in His
Word—and do a little philosophy for a change? We have no
desire to depreciate the work of philosophy, or to set philo-
sophy and theology against one another. Philosophers have
not thought in vain, even for those who make faith their
starting-point. But if it be true that man has been created in
the image of God and thus—both in his original and in his
fallen existence—can only understand himself from the point
of view of God, and in God, then we must have the courage
to approach theproblem of the spirit as theologians, and we
must _use our philosophical knowleto dge help us to see and
understand our Biblical message better, and the
to apply
n
it Tt_willbecome evident that the question of the spirit will
aspect
assume a diffe rentwhen we Jook at it from the point.
of view of God, and not from that of man—in accordance ~
<I with our basic idea that man is ‘hierarchically’ constituted,
and thus that he can only be understood from ‘above’ and not
from ‘below.’
_ ‘God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship ,
Him in spirit and in truth.’} God Spirit,
is man has Spirit. |
God is actus purus. He has no nature.? He is not ‘founded,’ ~
1 John iv. 24.
2 It is the aim of Gnosis to discover some kind of ‘nature’ in God ;
nature in God is alsc the theme in the writings of Jacob Béhme, Oetinger,

a5)
 MAN IN REVOLT

posited, based on anything save Himself. He posits Himself,

‘land is therefore completely transparent to Himself. But we
are posited by Him, even as spirit; man receives spirit from
ora_
the Creator. But he receives his spirit from the Creat1p
ifferent way from that ‘inwhi receives his body. When
hech
‘we féad’ in the childlik e narrati ve in Genesis that ‘the Lord
God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, the statement suggests the
truth which is the main view of the Bible, and also indicates
the way in which the thought of the Bible is radically circum-
scribed in two directions. The spiritofman.is not to be under-|
stood from_below, but ‘from above,’ the human spirit has a
man ne
“perrelatio nt
with the Divine Spibut rit itis;not the
The spirit is not si
‘Divine Spirit. y the ‘power to think
and and
will feel THisneta sychological concep oftspirit
justice to the nature of spirit. Every
es notdo
Oo decent system |
philosophy is aware of ‘this, since it distinguishes the spirit |
of
a
froma all that can beunderstood in psychol ogicalexistingfunctional
sphere
relating it to somethin
nse
‘seby g beyond. the like. ‘Spirit, in
the Log
Idea, the os,
Law, Value or the
n that ‘whichis merely functional and
from
_-contradistinctio
‘transcending’
» psychical, can only be understood as something one abs
ond
the ordinary level, aspiring after something ‘beythe self,
‘yan original actuality.2 We may say indeed that spirit is that
“Which thinks, wills, and feels, but the element of spirit 1s
thought in contradistinction from mere imagination, willing
in contradistinction to impulse, feeling in contradistinction
to the mere sensation of pleasure or pain, and this difference
springs from a consciousness of being adjusted and related to
something valid, normative, something which ought to be,
‘meaning, logos. The type of law which obtains in the realm
"of spirit isdifferent from that which holds good in the psychical
‘sphere; it is not a law governing sequence but the realm.of
and of
‘meani ng’ im.Terauentg
“norms.” ‘Spirit only exists
Schelling, and—to mention a new and brilliant champion of this idea—in
Berdyaev, for instance, in Die Bestimmung des Menschen (pp. 41 ff.).
1 On Gen. ii. 7, cf. p. 99 and the Appendix on the Idea of Humanity in
the Ancient World.
2 See above Luther’s conception of the spirit, p. 173, note 1.
238 ,
 THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON

meaning, or—as modern philosophy prefers to call it (in my |

opinion wrongly)—to ‘Value.’ Hence a decent philosophy
can never avoid forming the concept of ‘meaning within the
meaningful,’ of a ‘norm of all norms,’ of a basis of value, or
the like, in order to understand the spirit as spirit. It.is this. eters

reference to a Beyond, the process of ‘transcending,’ wh

distinguishes the’sspirit ‘and the spiritua
from l
thepsyche and
HEARERS er Ce rT

‘the psychic
psychical. "The highest concept which G reekPhilosophy
forms to describe this transcendental unity, in reference’ to
which alone.‘the‘spirit. as spirit can ‘either act or exist, isthat
of the divine nous or logos or the Idea of the Ideas.
~"We claim that ‘this final
inal point ofteference, for which and
from which our spirit as
animal
4S
Spirit exists, is‘the. God who reveals aoe
‘Himself to us in His Word. And, more than ‘this, |it is the
Spirit of God who r
reveals Himself to us in His Word, and ‘in
it creates us as spirit. This is the point from which we must
start if we wish to understand ‘the spirit in general’ or ‘the
spiritual.’ If even the philosophical concept of spirit is not
purely psychological but one that can only be understood in
‘transcending,”® this is still more true of the theological con-
cept. In some way or another we must take account of the
truths which philosophy perceives, the relation to the Idea,
to value, norm, and law, and we must make room for them;
but all this cannot be the final point of reference for the being
of spirit. For the moment, in order to have a starting- point
here and now we may say: in| Spite of the fact that the spirit
#430

is relation to Idea, norm, value and- Taw, it

it is above all, and
“first of alil,relatedness to God, as He reveals ‘Himself SHY
Word, ‘and i
indeed relatedness to ‘the “Word iin which and for
which
which
Pe we . havebeen created. pik e spirit, in contrast. to._the
aoe certey!

1 Cf. the Value theories of Rickert, Scheler, N. Hartmann.

* Jaspers rightly lays decisive emphasis upon this ‘transcending,’ which
lies in the nature of the human mind; but his point of view (Sicht-von-
unten: lit. ‘sight or view from below.’ I have expanded this expression to
give its meaning. Cf. Contemporary German Philosophy. Werner Brock,
p. 106.—Translator)—which looks at the Ultimate, but from below, and clings
to the given data in such a way that it does not reach the real transcendent
—does not allow him to draw theological inferences from it. The case is
different with Heinrich Barth, Ontologie und Idealismus, Zwischen den Zeiten,
1929, pp. 511 ff.
239
 Al f
MAN IN REVOLT

person, is that by means of which we ‘relate’ ourselves in

y\ if
L

thought, will, and feeling to thealWord of God. That is why

being is
we said that person founded’ in spirit. By means
of the spirit, in acts of the spirit, that relation to the Word of
God which makes us persons, is accomplished. By means of
the spirit we perceive the Word of God, by means of the
spirit we believe and we love.
The language of the: Bible about the ‘spirit? of man is
ambiguous ~Pau l,
who here toois the actual fashioner ‘offorms
of thought, speaks both of the “human nous and of the human
‘pneuma as the organ.which receives the Divine Word. Where
‘the is dealing with the revelation of the Creation in the Works
of God he uses the word nous. That manifestation of God in
His Works becomes voovpeva kafoparas,* just as in the Epistle
to the Hebrews the Creation of the world by the Divine Word
is shown as a noumenon, as something which is to be grasped
by the mous in the act of faith,? and as in the Book of Revela-
tion it is the nous to which the hidden wisdom makes itself
known.? But where Paul speaks of the renewing revelation by
the Holy Spirit he says that the Holy Spirit bears witness
with our spirit (avedua) that we are the children of God.*
Both, however, are also mentioned together in the expression
that man is renewed in the spirit of the nous.6 Through further
reflections we hope to be able to throw light upon this differen-
tiation ;for the mome itisntenough to state, that,in. the Bible
the spirit—whether the nous or the pneof man—in.its.acts
.

uma
Pas TN
ECE TIRES OTE

js the organ which receives the Divine Word, the Divine Spirit.
of man to God is accomplished in spiritual acts ;/
The relation
act therefore, faith and love should also
as a wholly spiritual
‘be understood. | 1 eagere cae
““his raises two questions. If we are to understand the spirit
of man from his relation to the Divine Spirit as He reveals
Himself in His Word, what then is the relation between the
idea of God which our spirit—our reason—evolves_by yits own
faith? And how is the spirit,
ofd
efforts, to the ideaofGo
h understood as the means of
Whicis man’s relation to God,
the inward life as a whole—which is not directly concerned
1 Rom. 1. 20. 2 Heb. xi. 3. 8 Rev. xiii. 18; xvil. 9.
4 Rom. viii. 16. 5 Eph. iv. 23.
240
 THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON

with the Idea of God—to be understood? The first question is

identical with that of the relation between reason and revela-
tion; here, however, we shall only develop its subjective and
anthropological aspect, and not its objective and theological
aspect.

2. THE RATIONAL IDEA OF GOD

Apart from any special revelation, and indeed from a kind
of inner necessity, thehuman spirit formulatesthe Idea of
God, or something similar—the Idea of the Absolute, of a
transcendental unity, and the like. Now whereas rationalism
of all grades understa
and estimates
nds the revelation in the
Word of God from the point of view of this ‘rational and
immanent’ idea of God, the Christian faith,
on the other
. ie
hand, regards
aa oe
this rational, immanental
eo RE Raa RI ERINI IOI IEE A
idea of God" as an /,
5 a
. ae
indication of man’s lost origin, ofthe original relation between /
peigmahabble plan: tee Tabsdes pier ate te oe
ee tee kee eee eae ais Liev

the Word of God and the human spirit. The fact that man,
whether he.will or no, whether he believes or not, necessarily
RR NEA ead spent

forms this idea of the Absolute, is a sign that even fallen man.
—in virtue of the fact that the Spiri
ofGodtstillremains near\
to him, even when he, man, has become alienated from God
A

Sh gyre |
'
—is still’relat
toed
God. God holds him fast in the fact that he
aX Ait

is obliged to think of the Unconditioned. At the same time,

however, the abstraand ct sterile characte of this“idéa
r of f,
PATS.

God”"is 2 signof the alienation of man from his personal ,

«

Creator." In this alienation from the livingpersonal God the —

A he29m %

human spirit is that which we now know as the ‘human reason.’

‘Tenet ReONRNSICA}

Rational thought necessarily produces an abstract idea of

God, but for that very reason it never reaches the living per="
‘sonalGod.” For this thought remains confined within itself;
* Cf. above p. 103, and also my Religionsphilosophie protestantischer Theologie
in Baumler’s Handbuch.
2 Cf. my book, Gott und Mensch, the first part. The customary contempt
for thought which we find at the present time, even in theology, probably
has more to do with the irrationalism of the tendencies of the day than
with the truth of Christianity. Hence too the view that everything in
Augustine which is Platonist or Neo-platonist is, for that very reason and
for no other, un-scriptural, is erroneous. It is true Augustine will have
been aware why it was that he gave up his Neo-platonism in the last period
of his development, but not the truths which he had gained from Plato
241
 MAN IN REVOLT

it is a monologue. ‘The two signs of rational thought, the close

reasoning of a logical connexion, and autonomy, understood
as autarchy, are the two aspects of this one situation. That
which we think ‘rational’ must be within a logical connexion,
it must be a statement rigidly based upon a closely reasoned
argument. Reason itself can make no distinction between the
ane 0S ARS EGOS
NANFA om
oun ateih nacre --

irrational and the supra-rational. And, on the other hand, the

knowledge of the reason recognizes nothing “from the outside’;
IONONET HAP atageceaag mista NAS Anni uacrticien
gpsbanSRt
RREND

it wl and must remain within the sphere of immanence.”

2 amerainn i D srg anhNRRTSTHAIIEA fev

/ “Hence it recognizes onl y n within the limits of pure

a ‘religio
reason.” Thus rational theology wishes to bring God into the
reason, instead of bringing the reason into God and sub-
ordinating it to God. It identifies God with incontrovertible |
truth. The very Alpha and Omega of faith, the fact that God
and man confront one another, the personal word of the
personal God which creates persons, is a great stumbling-
block to reason. Nowhere do we see so clearly as in Kant’s
posthumous metaphysical writings how a thinker, who knows
that he is under an obligation to this demand of reason, and
yet from his historical background knows the Christian idea
of God, and cannot entirely escape from it, 1s affled
‘dilemma: Fai orth Reason as the Ultimate. He thinks the
God of thé Christia n faith, but he wants to think Him according
to reason, and he does not want to believe in Him. Because
~~ “his will to thought gets the upper hand he is ultimately forced
The
to abandon the Christian idea of God.t dem of réason
and

ciple-ot the‘uniof tythought,the transcendental methodof

thought—destroys the content of the C ristian conception of —
age St
nz

LIN IFSP TNE ENE A = ETE

Se SNS OR vie Pia SOU URIM

God. For this content canno e€ conceived -as a rational

content; it. can only be believed. as a revelation. In reason

gman_rem ains by himself, shut_up_within_the self-sufficient
in faith, however, he isapproached by the self-revealing
reason ; NRT PEROPPGAEISEE SPAS HERERO oRTE . %
eae TOMES
and Plotinus. The fact that he, even as a Pauline Christian, still dares to
philosophize is for many a sufficient reason to reproach him with betrayal
of the faith. This false separation of theology and philosophy is rightly
levelled at us as a reproach by the Catholics. (Cf. Gilson, L’esprit de la
philosophie médiévale, Chap. 1.)
1 Kants opus postumum, published by Adickes: Kantstudien, 1920, fourth
part, second section, pp. 776 ff.
242
 THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON

*Thou’ who addresses him ‘from without.’ The rational God

; iilir-“senmcninncemnniatnielie
daileaeen CT eating
is the God whom I construct for myself; the revealed God 1s
the God who speaks to me, This truth of a God who speaks
to me ‘from the outside,’ this One who is the ‘Thou’ ‘over
against me’ is seriously meant, in dead earnest, so that it is
impossible to claim that in the last resort this ‘I Which speaks
to myself’ and the ‘Divine Thou which says something to me’
are the same. That is why we said: the autonomous reason is
the spirit which remains shut up within itself, closed “against
the Divine revelation, and what it calls ‘transcendent’ is only
a boundary which it has itself drawn, beyond which it recog-
nizes nothing, because it has not been posited as rational
by itself.

3. GOD AND IDEAS

It is from this point of view then that we are to understand
the second question, that of the relation of the spirit to ideas.
What is the meaning of those terms which that philosophical
thought which knows nothing of revela positstion
as the final”
point of reference of the spirit, within our theological under-
standing of the spirit? And how much truth do they contain?
Can philosophical Idealism, as patristic theology assumed from
the time of Justin Martyr onwards, beincorporainto
tedthe
Christian understandinof g Godand become interwoven with
it intoa whole? Or is there here an Either-Or? Is it possible |
that there should be any ‘Either-Or’ here at all? Can we, for
instance, understand the spirit without ideas, norms, values,
laws of thought, /ogos? Is not the spirit distinguished from the
psyche by this very relation? How. can we think at all unless”
we formulate the concepts: true, valid, good, beautiful? _
In point of fact, we cannot do so; and no Christian theolo-
gian would dream of thinking do without this
that he could
“Idealism.” Were he to do so, what he in thesi denies in praxi
he would be doing continually, unless he were to give up
thinking altogether. The question is not whether we can get
through without these terms, but how we are toincorporate rev = Teme

them, and what final dignity we give tothem.

Even in a definitely Christian theological anthropology
there can never be any question of depreciating the reason,
243
 MAN IN REVOLT

of hostility to reason, or of setting up a plea for irrationalism.

If we must choose between two evils, then without stopping
to reflect for a moment we would choose to be rationalists
rather than irrationalists. The reason, ‘the power of the idea’ eR

Poe is, even according to Luther’sa ‘statement, ‘the ore:

greatest _
gilt
of
fCod
Goc that we possess. '1 The question is only whether
OF bs0d th none
w we
ue wish to understand God from the point ofview of the reason,
put

or,
- the reason from the point of view of God. But asthisques-
eR DUT SI oS
tion has. ‘already been. answered, “this means that it is our
+ task to keep on reason within its own bounds, yet to give it
0. its full rights within these bounds. It is not the reason as such
which is inopposition to faith, but ‘only the“self-sufficient
reason ;“and this means, the reason which setsitself up in the
place of God, the reason which wills to understand God in
itself instead of itself in God, the arrogant self-willed reason.
There is war to the knife “between |faith and rationalism, but
there e is. eason ;“by ‘rationalism’
we mean, not merely the superficial©‘rationalism’ of the
eighteenth century, which usually bears this name, but also
that titanic system of rational thought which is knowti as
German Idealism, and that rationalism which we have in-
herited from Greek philosophy. The reason is right wherever
it listens to the Word of God, and does not think that it is able
to proclaim the divine truth to itself.
Reason is the abstract way of thinking which is concerned
with argument; this is its character in so far as it refers to
idea, law, value and norm. These abstract conceptions are
not an ultimate for faith, but they are a pen-ultimate, without
which we human beings cannot even approach the ultimate,
or, more exactly, without which the Ultimate, namely, the
1 ‘Tt is beyond doubt that the reason is far and away the most important
and the best of all things in this life, indeed that it is something divine.
And after Adam’s Fall God has not taken this glory away from reason,
but rather He has confirmed it. Yet reason does not know of itself that it
is such a majestic force but only from experience.’ (Luther, according to
WA. 39, T., p. 175.) ‘Man is especially endowed with the glorious light
of reason and intelligence, so that men have conceived and invented so
many noble arts, whether it be wisdom, agility, cleverness, and all this
comes from this Light or from the Word which was the life of men’ (WA.
46, 562).

244
 THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON
Word of God itself, cannot approach us. Even the Word of
God is Logos, ‘meaning,’ which must be understood by us;
that is, it must be received by us as something which has
been thought, but not as that which has been produced by
our own thinking. In all that is said to us in the Word of
God which is true, good and beautiful, we always go beyond
the words, cleaving in faith to the Person who is speaking to
us, and in faith we open our hearts to receive what He has
to say. The truth, conceived in an abstract way, separated
from the Personof the God who speaks, is not the ultimate imate.,
“put the
SH BA AN NO LEE RSPAS NGEs SIN ENO TO Te AT PV NSP EA ESS ie A ERT RN RENLR Oy oe

z .
necessary pen-ultimate. which however, is based upon
ety Prcrencsensrry neato siti sna sreinascan ePrice shemeshancesoebenea anaes
and proceeds from the ultimate. Our nous therefore is the
vessel but not the source of the |Word of God. Where it receives
the Word of God it is called:faith. Diba: bd. Rist,
When this isperceived, in principle the right integration
YH

of idehas
as been achieved. AT “truth is divine truth, all good >
is
divine good, all value is posited and given by God, all law
is His law, every norm is the expression of His thought and
will. But while the Person of the God who speaks disappears
from our sight when we withdraw ourselves from His Word
by setting up our own thoughts and acting in self-will, the
truth which He posits, the values which He gives, the laws
and norms which express His will do not entirely disappear.
On the contrary, what was said of the central truth, of the
attitude towards the Good, with certain alterations is true
of the spirit as a whole: out
man sid
faith
Law. To him the law, which was a penultime
stands under the
ate, has becom
wins

an_ultimate;
he isnow at the mercy of the law, and stands
undthe er
curse of the law. Abstract legalism
abstract truth,
,
abstract values and norms, are now all that he still knows
about God;? and-in this he experiences the perversion and
the curse of legalism. The law itself however—and with that
the idea—is divine and good. Indeed, it is the only represen-
1 Not only Zwingli, but Luther and Calvin as well, have recognized
that through the light of reason God’ has shown much truth to the heathen
and that God is the Source of all reason. In support they adduce passages
like John i. 4 and i. g (see above p. 79, n. 2). :
* On the truth as abstraction, cf. Buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, and
Grisebach’s conception of truth as the identity of the thinking ‘I’ with
itself.

245
 ie MAN IN REVOLT
tative of God for fallen man. The ‘curse’ does not consist in
the fact that the law exists, but that man is shut up to it,
that for him
cane eee ae So
itaria
is now the ultimate. The
mnt MTC CTRLNOE ETN eR CR
Moral
Law iba ociiapea
is the will_
of God severed from the erson_ Of. Goyd, from His gracious
speech to us. It is left to us, it is implanted in our spirit. It is
the marrow of the moral reason. Through the law God main-
tains fallen humanity for faith and redemption.! The law is
to be taken so seriously that God Himself only gives us His
grace anew through the fulfilment of the law, that no human
being returns to God, save by being broken down by the law
and its demands.

4. THE CREATURELY ASPECT OF REASON

With the law as the norm of the will the heart of reason has
_been laid bare, Our rational thought is necessarily legalistic.
legalistic character is its strictness, that which distinguishes
RENEE I Sere

“Its
thought from mere imagination and fantasy. Only that which _
has been thoughtin accordance with law with a norm, has
arepeaey Po dinss oraanatleciee Wao maa emannie
Apt ale ei a tad STN SLAP Ra PN DRADER
ESE Gt SADA ep yO Lit...

been actually thought. Behind the mora BK of reason there

mS! siren giants rat ian Neds spreeresem. ° e
stands logic. Without a logical law there is also no moral
reason. Even theological thought is logical thought, or it
would not be thought but mere babble. tadeat even prayer
comes under this rule of law. It too is rational speech with
God, just as faith is a rational answer to the Word of God.?
Butthe logical element is here in the service
of another; it is
not ‘something said to oneself’ but ‘allowing something to be
said to oneself?’ In faith the monologue of thinking confined
within the self is interrupted byhearing the Word frombeyond
ourselves; faith clings to the belief that the truth which is
said
tome is said to me by God, really said, and not invented
sairypsner Oy unrcae Oy eemrOHNg HEGREiy Sat" ecient aetna miami ala aainteseed ia
roma "

‘by me, The truth of faith, therefore, in contradistinction to

ofreason, is “truth which is imparted,” “from above,’
mask heepauanes y ou

the truth
Wa IE Sian, icignquaannan yma yee eeNS
Sk NECROSS EDA NAA TE ELON oe:

not “from within.’ Here in faith, therefore, the turning from

1 Rom. vii. 12; Rom. ii. 14; Gal. iii. 23 ff.
2 Cf. 1 Cor. xiv. 15 ff. And Luther: Sic etiam ratio serves faith so that it
reflects on a thing quando est illustrata; sed sine fide nihil prodest nec potest ratio.
.. . Ratio autem illustra takes all thoughts from the verbo. Substantia remains,
vanitas declines, quando illustratur ratio a Spirttu (Luther, Tischreden, WA. I,
p. 191).
246
 ea

THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON

the law to grace is achieved. Faith is the reason which is
opened to that which lies beyond reason. == =——SsS
But thinking confine aan the self, so far as it goes, does —
not know this ESET ; it marches forward under the
“steady guidanceof the law of validi
Thé legitima
ty.te sphere’
of such thinking can only be indicated negatively: all that
does not concern God Himself, but the world ‘in itself,’ and
man ‘in himself.’ This ‘in itself,’ however, is not an isolated
sphere, for there is nothiwhich
ng is not relate
it is to be understood as a limited sphere. All beingtothat
God;dbut
is not
God, has, as ¢reaturely existence, a ‘relative being’ of its own,
and can therefore be recognized in this being ‘in itself” that
is, in its relative, creaturely independence. The astronomer —
as astronomer need not study theology, «although it is quite
certain that what he observes and calculates is God’s Creation.
But he grasps it first of all not as the Divine Creation but as
the world. If he is a believer, however, he knows that this
world is God’s Creation, and he understands the laws which
govern it as God’s laws.! A natural scientist like Kepler, who
is also a believer in God, relates that which he knows as
scientist with that which he knows as a believer from the
Word of God; indeed, he is in a position to recognize God
the Creator in His Works; for vootueva xaboparat, says Paul
of the majesty of the Creator. Thus also man himself, in his
history, in his culture, in his bodily, mental and spiritual
nature, is a creature, and thus a comparatively independent
being, and therefore a being to be known in his distinctive
nature. There is acompletely legitimate, rational anthropology
which is partly based on natural science and partly on’the _
humanities. ‘For who among men knoweth the things of a
man (ra Tov avOpwov), save the spirit of the man which is
in him?’? and this is explicitly distinguished from the Spirit
of God, who makes known ‘the things of God.’ The creature,
in its creaturely independence, in its own creaturely being,
can be known by the human reason. This belongs to the right
of dominion which has been granted to it. Where, however,
ersonal being is concerned, the freedom and the responsibility
of man, Sclentiic neutrality ceases; there it 1s the whole that
Serre ee PALEY (Ge:ahaa ass Sidi haa gsi gente 9 Bye mole thai

oman an

1 Cf, Calvin, opp. 22, 23, 100.

Be oe

* 1 Cor. il. 11 (RVG)

247
 MAN IN REVOLT

matters, the truth, for which no specialists aare competent,the.

_ truth which only‘becomes evident in the act of decision for or
‘Weteessnits occ Sic pure
against the Word ‘of God, the truth whichis inevitably missed~
Bere te Dimeatt
the reason which desires to have the last word to say to itself.
The more therefore that we are >concerned with the* ersonal
1eart’ of|
human existence,
ice, theless sure
sure isreason, themore imited a ALL
is the autonomy which can an be‘ascribed to it, ‘the more
me sinister
i ‘becomes its self-sufficient attitude and its “aim.‘to
0 recognition.

5: THE VALUES AND THE CREATIVE ELEMENT

‘Man has been endowed by God in such a way that he
himself can know and.experience. ¥vhat he nee for life, ‘what
isof advantage to him and what is harmful, what alsois‘useful
and harmful for the life of human beings in all their relations
with one another. He can form the concept of ‘goods,’ and
through ideation he is able to“grasp the idea. ‘of the ‘values’
esick amen

peut pevay corey ee TAAL regen gk

which lie behind them. He can and ought to try to make clear
SOT Re aE SR CSTE
tohimself that spiritual being in ideas and ideals which can
be grasped from the standpoint of his reason. But the ‘higher’
we ascend in this scale, the nearer we come tto the “sphere «of
‘that which iis ‘connected
wanmegane none Se OO RRO
‘with ‘the ‘personal.|being. of God and_
RTCENTRO

of man, which _can no longer beperceived by reason but only

‘aeeecinninbausonn cone semcrareiais® wed adumesens

by faith, the more we shall see that the selfsufficient reason

is a sourceof error. ines Die
Cultureis fundamentally the domain of the rational spirit.
Its ultimate meaning, its ground, itslimits and its dangers
en Le — PADRE

Reet cnc rE ee

can only be “understood in faith; but its immanent laws, its

“immanent meaning is to be Tinderstood ‘also by the human
spirit as that which has been brought forth by or is being
brought forth by the human spirit. The der power which creates
unereinniuss bats CUS Tt i th
€ Sete is mgt faith but_the
but
era
SS
rationalIst
spirit.ae MENA
eeeem
18 agrees wi
lat was said abovefrom the opposite point of view about
fail personal being, which has not been destroyed by sin.
In principle this is the situation; but in practice the reason_ Bea RENEE

an
is continuall
Hwee YIAa
exceeding
ARIAL CEN i)
its rights in sinful arrogance
referee ras Niesatee Wher
and
sentogtr ‘

forgetfuness of God,
onal a
and, as the creator of culture,er arti
siemens its creations into idols. whe creative
cular, it ma es Taye
power of man. 1s one of the chief causes of sin in1 the realm. of
m4 NAleee th

and spirit.The spirit which

nichthinks creatively leads man
248 /
| |
 THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON

astray into self-deification, into a confusion between the Spirit

of God and the spirit of man.
The creative element in man, in the narrower, more usual
sense of the word,isnot so much abstract. thought guided ‘by_
the laws of logic, as imagination, thepower of freely creating
_both inwardly andoutwardly, Even the most rigid thought is”
not_without_this element,, even the most arid conclusion is
not possible without imagination, without understanding, with-
out creative intuition. But this element is here assigned rigid
limits. It_isdeveloped nmost freely in poetry and works of art.
Here the—purely formal—similarity between the divine ‘Spirit
and the human spirit is greatest. For here man approaches
existence in the freest way and creates something new, some-
thing which has never been there before. Here the spiritdraws
upon the depths _of the unconscious and. the richness. ‘of.the.
emotional life,
By means_
m ofthis creative spirit mann builds uy
for himself
a worldof.
« his own, alongside that which hasbeen
created. Hence_ ‘also_thiscreative “capacity _is “exposed ir
ore acman
in a
special way to ‘sinful misuse, and is a special occasion for“self=~
enencen. «is

glorification. Man makes use of this ‘spiritual world’ to escape _

from the real world, and as a means of evading its claims, for
the concealment of his sinful perversity and poverty, and for
self-deception about his own true situation. The prohibition
of images in the Old Testament should not be understood
only in its immediate sense, in its connexion with the cultus.
It is a warning to the self-sufficient human being, pointing out
to him where the very richness of his endowments may lead
him astray, and where he may end in making self and the
world his idols¢ “The> pagan ¢creation of myth and artistic poetic :
symbolism are
are closely connected, and it is more than poetic
icence when even modern poets so often play seriously with
the world of the gods. Here the pantheistic deification of the |
self and of the world clothes and conceals itself in magical |
and deceptive garmentsThe higher the creative spirit of man sf
ine the more Ssurelalymiaaud he is not restrained by {faith, he
h ]Wf) A
falls into the insanity of self--deification. si gee “
1 This serious and dangerous game with the prlysbiciatic myth is played
chiefly by Hdlderlin; the magic of his language ought not to conceal from
us the fact that here the most audacious self-deification is being carried on,

249
 MAN IN REVOLT

(6. THE INTELLECT

_But man is also threatened by danger at the opposite end.

Thespirit which turns away from the Ultimate, the Uncon-
ditioned, which turns towards the external world—in itself
unavoidably and rightly—falls only too easily a prey to the
temptation to venture to interpret existence as a whole from
this narrow basis. As scientific intelligence it hasbeen able
ina definite, way to master the world of things... here.a.certain
way of t inkin has proved _successful, why then should not
this"“wayof “Tatar be the one which 1s comect ace whole, ©
“which isbe valid? A narrow intellectualism
and a
poverty-stricken positivism, if not indeed the most stupid of
all ‘world-views,’ materialism, ‘prove’
ana hento us that eethere is
nothing Wigner.Fines rrr eato ‘be.higher’. are
Iere ely fantasy pictures ofour imagination. |‘Man—not to
mention the heart—has become so unintelligent that he
announces this ‘world-view’ with all the force of absolute
truth and moral necessity, without even noting the opposition
between formal absolutism and the material denial of the
Absolute. But even behind this erroneousway of thinking _
RH
RAM AIS stn elhnr ALORS
SaRIHE ani ag ie se ie rea IR om Ukr
there is a minute grain oftruth; in view of an arrogant hybrid
Idealism even materialism has some justification; and even
an arid positivistic intellectualism has a certain right, as a
corrective, when confronted by sweeping, undisciplined
speculation.
_ For the rest we will recognize that even the most ordinary
common sense is God’s gift. Where ordinary daily life is con-
cerned, ordinary common sense is in place. A deeply religious
outlook may be combined with this highly practical way of
thinking, which will not allow any confusion between an X
alwaysa
and a U. Depreciation of the intellect as such is
sign of lack of"adaptation to ‘the.“creaturely character
chara __of our_
existence. 1! The intellect iis the power |of" perceivi ‘iving the finite,
PPT TATRA ype Ne ea ERLE Se MSTTEMLET ALEC#Os

1 Magnificent and true as is much in Fichte’s protest against his

bourgeois contemporaries (Grundziige des gegenwartigen Zeitalters), yet the
sentiment and the Pharisaism with which the accusations are made can
only be understood from the point of view of a thinker who at the same
time advances the view that ‘in reference to the doctrine of religion the
positing of a Creation is the first criterion of its error . . . the denial of
250
 THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON

especial y the world of things and the like, and, with

the aid _
rantknowledge
the power to live and act in this finite world_
. Ina practical way The Bible is full of respect for such astute-
ness, for such intelligence is needed by every human being in
order to grasp the concrete purpose of his life. God’s wisdom
and love have more to do with this everyday practical sense,
which understands how to make good and nourishing bread,
than with all the highbrow speculations of great minds. But
faith does not easily conflict even with the scientific intelligence
which carefully observes the actual world, collects facts and_
_Inquiresinto thelawsof events down to the very foundation. |
It_is not natural science, nor empirical psychology, which
leads us into opposition to that which God’s word saysto us, -
but the ar ogance of a ‘scientific’ philosophy of life and of a
pacers alah Sicce i Gdasndacenny mre Nsanerghenp ysnrarmeee Sak Teens tig: imepcinaeety Mma «on ae

(7. FEELING AND MYSTICISM

A special word is re ured about the relation be een spirit

and feeling, which is too often neglected. When we remember
‘what was said in the last chapter about the ‘heart’ as the
centre of the person, it is obvious that we cannot accept the _
usual contrast between feeling and spirit. Feeling is related _ (2
to the pleasure-pain sensation as the will is related to instinct, )tA
and thought to mere imagination. Genuine feeling, as for
instance sorrow or joy, is not possible without spirit. For ~
such feelings arise only out of or in spiritual connexions. A
good meal does not arouse joy; it merely gives pleasure; if I
eat with joy it is because my spirit is turned in acertain
direction, to that which is true, or good,or beautiful, which
is connected with the act of eating, as indeed the Apostle is
able to say: ‘whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of
God.’? Through joy pleasure is lifted to a higher plane since
its subject is understood in a larger context.
The values, as their objective correlates, correspond to the
feelings. We feelthe values, but to feel value is never done
such a view is the first criterion of truth’ (V, 191). Similar observations
could be made about the Romantic contempt for the bourgeois element
in general. 1 1 Cor. x. 31.
251
 MAN IN REVOLT

without thought, in which the meaning of the value is grasped.!

Feeling accompanies the spiritual act; it is not itself, however,
an act, it is a passive state in which the personality is deter-
mined by the content of that which is disclosed in the spiritual
act. But—and comparatively speaking, this is the real point in
the contrast between feeling and spirit—feelin always _per-
poe MLA the personal situation as awhole. there are. therefore
“feelings
gs of very. ‘varied. depth,“which “may ¢exist alongside, or,
toput it better, inside one. another. at the. same time. A person
may be very happy about something *on the surface,’ and at
the same time in the depth of his soul there may be a sense
of profound sadness and suffering. This iswhy, constantly
and involuntarily, feeling unites the different spheres—the
centre ofBersenality. the different levels of the:spiritual
‘ Tife—

‘them to penetrate one another.

; TERME Les
“For those of us whose relation to God is determined posi-
tively by faith, and negatively by sin, there. is no occasion to
a
ascribe any | special. significance..to, feeling i
capapcerians peamenee
in. connexion with
_Ian’s relation,to. God. Feeling accompanies but.does not_
determine faith. It is true of course that faith is “not ‘only —
an act of understanding and will but that it is also a ‘passion,’
and love in particular ¢
cannot be
be> thought of
of apart from feeling.
But feeling is not the distinctive element, mR dominant and
determining factor,adil merely _accompanies
Uaear ea aE
es faith. In mnystical
PALI IE pr i

religion, on. the. other hanc

nd1,feeling. plays th
the. decisive part.
The experience of union with the Infinite, with
w hthe ie|All, the
fusion the
tk divinity with man als “sought 1
in| mysticism pre- |
‘cisely in
1 .feeling. \For objectivity isdistinctive of thought and |
will ; for tthought and will there is something objective to be |
thought and willed. Union, fusion, cannot be attained in |
such acts, it must be experienced as a ‘state.’ This ‘can’ only
happen in feeling, that is, this is the significance ascribed to
1 The ‘Christian’ conception of God as the ‘Supreme Good’ always has
something of Eudaemonism about it, which comes from the ancient doctrine
of Eros and the mystical love of God; hence the Bible avoids it.
2 That faith is also ‘passion’ has been taught us once more by Kierke-
gaard above all. Cf. Fear and Trembling and Unscientific Postscript. Faith is
‘the objective uncertainty, in the appropriation of the most passionate
inwardness.’ (Postscript I, p. 278, German edition.)
252
 THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON
feeling ; a definite emotional ex | erience iisinterpreted as the
rare
experience of union wit This ex perience _Isecstasy, an.
emotional state in_W uch all definite consciousness, al ob
tive thinking and feeling is drowned _in a sea of emotion,
where all the boundaries which separate the Self from the
Other who stands ‘over against’ him disappear beneath this
tide of feeling. It is
15imPO to deny the reality of this
emotional. state,“or_the
possibility‘ofsuch
an experie ; the NRTA eer

uestion oni
AA SASL
: what iis the significance. ofthis experience? _
LIAL REE OE eoaEES
ow much reality does it contain? Faith opposes the mystical
interpretation ik a sharp, plain ‘No.’ The living God is not
‘experienced’ in such a way, whatever the content of this _
experience may be. The _jiying God. reveals..Himself.
Word through sau not in ecstasy. But it is not our “business
at this point to outline any theory of mysticism; all we wish
to do is to make plain where we differ from ik

8. THE SPIRIT OF MAN AND EVIL

In conclusion a word about: ‘the_relationof(the spirit to
evil, unbeliefan orcas ,
ely. Idealism maintains that
Scr acCTSA
evil sprin; SOout of our, ‘lo ver 1 ue out of our sense life, out
of the fact that spirit is not present, wand thes that edie
really something negative. It reaches this position because for
it the spirit as such, quite apart from its actual determination
or tendency, the spirit _as Possibility, in the formal sense, is
Tadllaie Reverie.

divine in its nature. To have spirit, to have reason is “the

same as, participating in the divine Being, the divine Reason.
| iene eer eee

The Christian faith counters this argument with the statement as ROA Hingrites gah
that even evil, sin, “unbeliet ‘ have their seat and thei r_orl
in the spirit of man, hence that the more spirit there is =
greater will be thesin. Idealism—often Idealism in the shape
of Christian ticle a quite wrongly appealed’ to the)
Biblical antithesis between spirit ‘and ash ;forinthe Bible
evil and sin are _certainly c nne tedwith
ATSIC Asia NOS
ne flesh ;
; but the
1 1 Cor. xiv. and 2 Cor. xii, as well as other passages in the New
Testament, show that even the ecstatic element is not foreign to the Christian
lifeas a whole; but itnot
is the basisnorthe aim |ofman ’s relation to God. |
“Pie.if 1 cond see the whole, evilwould have nobeing, < SadWouldbe |
non-being.— Translator. /

253
wnt nvr iat «ie Ye fd i h> baths J a ¢ ahi MA ale 1s RARER DS (Lier olRte ES a NY A AEE

Gilles a thy Adare Aislieclon.,

MAN IN REVOLT

|Bible means something quite different from the ‘capacity for

| base desire,’ the sense nature, the instinctive forces turned
eas the ‘lower,’ that is, the material sphere. This idea of_
the ‘lower nature’ indeed is foreign to the thought. of. ‘the
\Bible
Bible
as
asa whole, ‘Flesh’!
is.rather; the. creaturel ‘
Pen_contradistinction to thee.Creator—that is,that which in
litself is impotent—or “creatureliness in a false independence —
of the Creator. Hence sin is both: fleshly,‘and yet at the same
ee time_ the act ‘of tthe‘spirit. In the. Bible sin.is never anything
is other than at
a total act,
a of the person, namely, ‘self-determination
whichis“opposed tto man’s real destiny, disobedience to the
will of God.
This negative self-de
self-determination is called ‘flesh’ in order
that it| may be characterized i‘Inits nothingness,assomething
s -
“ending’in death; then further because this self-determination
against the ae of God necessarily entails the handing over
of the person to the desires of the senses, to the world, to
instinct, as its result; and finally, because it brings with it the
loss of freedom, namely, essential freedom, freedom in the
material, not in the formal sense of the word. ‘Whoso com-
mitteth sin is the servant of sin.’ The following chapter will
deal with this point in greater detail.
In so far
ar as, f from the standpoint of theWord of God, we
are “always ssinners, the whole of our “higher _ life’ is fainted
with this ‘fleleshly’ character. “The central point of
ofthis
us“fleshly’
“f
or ‘carnal’_hnature isthat “sell-sufficient, ‘autonomous, _emanci-
en
patedreason, “that reason against _“which. Luther strove. Our
reason, apart from its restoration through -the Word of grace,
is always sinfully self-sufficient, a reason infected with rational-
ism and unbelief. This is so even, and particularly, where it
produces an irrationalistic philosophy. ‘By nature,’ that is,
apart from redemption, we are always human beings who in
their thinking cannot be and do not even wish to be open

1 The concept of ‘flesh,’ odpé, in the New Testament presents us with

an extremely difficult problem; it is a question whether Paul, who is the
writer who uses this expression most, is completely unambiguous in his
language. Cf. Gutbrod, Die paulinische Anthropologie, p. 153: ‘As odp& man
is defined as sinful, precisely because it, which is his nature, through his
sin is itself sinful.’ Cf. also Schott, Fleisch und Geist nach Luthers Lehre.

254
 THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN REASON

to the Divine Word. Our wish to be our own masters clothes

itself in the noble garment of ‘autonomous’ thought or reason,
by means of which we reject the revealed claim of the Divine
Word as a temptation to irrationalism. In our treatment of
the question of Humanism we shall be dealing with this self-
defence of the self-sufficient reason in greater detail.
The more closely we are concerned with the centre,
cea gMAMC tthe ARISE SNE ASNT EL oc a
with
ges

rel
_ man’s; personal T relation and man’s
withh God and man’s personal ¢ being,ole
the greater will be the influence of unbelief upon the hi her__
The further we move away from_
Te
eeapeatlew
abe eee ae ee ena

life of the mind and spirit.

this central point the Tess evident does it become, and. it is
therefore still more difficult torecognize it, If a person studies
anatomy or p ysics it will be impossible to tell from his
scientific work, pure and simple, whether he is a Christian or
an unbeliever. But his faith or his unbelief will come out
very clearly in his way of thought and life as a man. The
more that knowledge has to do with the world as world, the
further it is removed from the sphere of sin, and therefore the
more ‘neutral’ it becomes. But the will, which is always per-
cted
sonal,isstill connewith it, even where the trifles ofevery-
day life are concerned. Thus if we had eyes to see, even in
feeling we would discover the effect of sin as a fundamental
joylessness, which always lies concealed under all other feelings,
as ‘un-peace’ which, apart from the ‘peace of God,’ always
dwells in us. But we have practised the art of concealment to
such purpose that we have ourselves fallen victims to it.
Without being fully aware of it we use the rich treasures and
possibilities of our spirit in order to deceive ourselves about
this inmost un-peace. The creative spirit in particular gives
of its inexhaustible reserves for this end; but we shall be able
to understand this best in relation to the problem of freedom.

255
 CHAPTER XI

‘THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM

to THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM _AND |UNFREEDOM_

THE problem of frefreedom _is peculiarly '‘the’ problem of human

existence, for freedom. is the original element of personal—
|
Being. Freedom is the specifically human characteristic. The
| Bible, too, is concerned with freedom: ‘Where the Spirit of
| the Lord is,
% there is liberty.’ ‘Ye, brethren, were called for
| freedom.”2 “Tf the Son shall make you free ye shall be free
_ indeed.’ In Humanism freedom is the chief concern. It knows
_ that in fighting for freedom it iss fighting for the humanum.
Freedom therefore ought to be the common ground on which _
fpnero porerieteest

_the Biblical and the Humanistic thought .of man should meet.
Ee ner

| In point of fact it is in the problem of freedom that they _

differ_mc
most widely from_oneanother. Just as freedom is the: -
| quintessence of man’s being, sc
SO) unfreedom is the quintessence
| of sin. ‘Everyone that committethsin isthe bondservant ‘OLsim. =
| Sin is the opposite of freedom. Where the idea of sinstands in
|he contreofthe understanding of man, there human un-free-
dom, the seroum arbitrium, is the theme of anthropology.JCan
such a view possibly give sufficient weight to the concern of
os humanity for freedom? Will it be able to do it so adequately
that it will become evident that the Humanist’s protest is due
to a misunderstanding?
Just as Augustine, in his Christian doctrine of freedom, was
obliged to carry on a campaign on two fronts: against the
fatalistic determinism of the Manichaeans with their false
denial of freedom, on the one hand, and against a false asser-
tion of freedom by Pelagian Humanism on the other, we also
are obliged to do the same. Indeed, we may say that to- day
the denial of human freedom bby a reataralee he determinism is
acmore characteristic osthe ]present ‘Spirit _o!
of theage’ than /
e humanistic theory “of freedom. “Thus to-day, the dri
ane determinism, which our Reformers in their struggle
1 9" Cor. il. 17. * Gal Vols.
3 John viii. 36. ¢ John viii. 34.
256
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM

against their sole opponents—the open liberalism of the

Humanists and the disguised liberalism of Catholic theology—
to some extent. allowed to go unpunished, has become a far_
more serious matter. To-day our slogan must be: No deter- |
minism, on_any account! For ‘it_m akes of | _
all understanding
man as man impossible. If Luther had been obliged to grapple |
of this kind, he would never have written |
with a determinism
his “De servo arbitrio’ as he did—and possibly had to do— |
when faced by the liberalism of his own day.* we |
Naturalism, especially in its crass, materialistic form, sees |
in“man only the object, the “cerebrating-animal,” a living |
creature which is only distinguished from other creatures by |
the degree of differentiation of its organism, especially of is |
central nervous system. Whether naturalism actually interpre
the life of nature in a materialistic manner or not, does not
make any difference, so far as our question is concerned.
Although man, like all other living creatures, and perhaps in
a higher degree than they, may have a certain spontaneity,
yet this vital spontaneity is still regarded as a given fact of _
nature, as a definite energy of a particular kind. In any case,
man is a product of nature, both as individual and as species 5
his nature is wholl and clearly determined by the forces
oflife,
inhisexpressi
which have shaped him, and onshis_|
so-called actionshe |
, is equally clearly determined by the forces
which compose_his ‘constitution,’ Even when the extreme
formula, L’homme machine, is avoided, it is still assumed that
man is as fixed by his nature as the function of the machine
is determined by its construction and its mass, and the energy
supplied to it. This structure by which man is determined is
called the ‘character’ ;2 it is itself, however, the resultant of
the forces which have created it. It is curious to note how this
absolutely deterministic metaphysic is combined, in many
minds, with an equally indeterministic ethic, which is abso-
lutely and irreconcilably opposed to the metaphysical basis.
In so far, however, as this contradiction is avoided, that is,
1 Cf. Pfister, Die Willensfreiheit; Zickendraht, Der Streit zwischen Erasmus
und Luther tiber die Willensfretheit.
Chap. XIII,
2 Thus Kretschmer, Kérperbau und Charakter. See also below,
on the problem of Character.
257
 MAN IN REVOLT

in so far as man continues to think further and logically along

<=.
.,: _ the linesofthis
arrive
deterministic
metaphysic, he cannot fail to
at a.complete denial of responsibility. Man acts indeed,
as he must, just as a machine functions in accordanc
A BREET

with e
its
construction..lo this type of mind it does not matter in the
least to what factors the resultant ‘character,’ and the human
behaviour proceeding from its activity, be attributed, whether
to heredity or to environment, to general or to particular
influences. In neither case can there be any question of respon-
sibility. But
if respo
bensibi
eliminated the whole
lity meaning
of human existence disappears. Though the intelligent human
animal may live differently from other animals, though owing
to the complexity of his structure, which brings with it a
certain vulnerability, he may need special measures of pro-
tection called ‘civilization’ and ‘culture’; though, owing to
the particular arrangement of his brain and his nervous system,
he may be able to aspire far beyond the actual level of his life
in daring wish-fantasies—yet after all, dreams are only dreams,
and biological measures of protection remain bound to their
biological ends. The phantasmagoria of a so-called ‘spiritual
life’ have no real meaning, they are bubbles which appear
for a moment on the surface of the ocean of natural events and
then vanish once more, without aim or meaning. It may be
“impossible to prove freedom;
in any case themeaninglessness_
ofan un-free existence
can beproved. By most of the champions
of this determin ismno proof. From the very outset
it needs |
||
they refuse to consider the question of ‘meaning’ at all—
evidently regarding it as futile.
Idealistic Humanism presents a far more beautiful picture |
of human _reality than that offered by the comfortless theory
which we have just outlined. Man is free, because he isspirit,meena |
because he is ie Just as being ‘object’ implies, essentially, |
the state of “being determined’—“‘forcible compulsion’ (Spitteler)
ncaa at setae sa SINISE
at VinthagSFL sang pester i e
—to such an extent that “being object’ can actually be defined)
}

by this, so freedom belongs to the being of the subject, of the _

spirit, of the ‘I,’ to such an extent that both can be define
by each other. “Object’ is that which is what it is as the resul
* Cf. my ethics, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 21 ff. (English: The
Divine Imperative, pp. 36 ff.)
258
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM

tant of combined forces. ¢

Subject’. is that which
RUDE
_is
i as it deter- | {

mines itself, in which connexion, however, ‘self-determination®

is as much an act of thought as it is an act of will. To be | f
‘spirit’ is the antithesis of being ‘a thing’; it is the exact opposite“
of all “being object’ which is conceived on ‘thing’ analogies.
Perhaps—and on this point there is no uniform view in the
idealism of freedom1—there ‘isa
iis a middle 1term betweenREN ‘being-_
NSor ne
ee
r( Z )
2 object _and_being-subject,. for inst
instance, the. spontaneity which ~
is peculiar to all life, 2s. something midway between fifreedom
: and UecesaysBnd within this vital spontaneity again a series
egrees, middle terms, which lead from the zero-point of
ocd in the thing by way of the spontaneity of the more
highly organized animals to the plane of human freedom. If_
this were so, then inany case thisphenomenon would have
to be understood: “from above’ and not ‘from below,”that is,
‘the whole scale of freedom would have to be understood from
the point of view of freedom as the scale of reduced freedom, |
not from the point of view of un-freedom. For indeed it is 1)
possible to reach un-freedom by the decrease of freedom, but| Ser ee
Se
A)
it is not possible to reverse the process and to attain freedom
from necessity by a process of increase or intensification—of
what? Strange as this may seem to us to-day, it is an incon-
trovertible fact that if we are ever to understand it at all, we
must understand thee animal ffrom the point of view of man,
and not man from the oint, ‘of of.view of“the animal.?. 'TThe |
animal, the sub-human |life as ‘a
a whole, is“only 1 ‘upon‘the way |
towards’ freedom ; the stages of this way describe the different |
Stages” of this eexistence which is not yet human existence
according to the graded order of their distance from man._
There might be at the same time graded orders of partici-
pation in being spirit. Yet this is a problem which has remained
1 Dilthey distinguishes the idealism of freedom (op. cit., pp. 348 ff.)
from another kind which might be called objective idealism, or the idealism
of ‘‘Kultur,’’ which tends rather to Pantheism.
2 Thus Schelling’s natural philosophy, and also Schleiermacher in his
philosophical ethics. The idea of ordered stages also dominates the Aristo-
telian and the Plotinian philosophy; in the one case it is optimistic
and rational, in the other pessimistic and religious. The former has
determined, in the main, medieval scholasticism, and the latter medieval
mysticism.
259
 MAN IN REVOLT

controversial in Idealism from the days of Plato and Aristotle

down to the present time. .
In the€ spirit alone
al isfreedom. ‘Through 1e
the spiritman can
detach himself fro:
from his present existence, as it is attthis moment.
He has the € power of ideas, he is able to measure his existence
seen rhic “ought to es “his ‘imperfections ‘bythe Perfect,
eir impurity by the purity of the idea or
the p jenomena in thei
of the ideal. But man cannot merely think this idea as an
ideal but unreal complementation of his actual being*—for
if this were so the materialistic conception of the idea as mere
imagination would be correct—he can also make this idea
operative in his life. He can decide in the light of the idea, he
can give shape and form to the idea, he can transform _the-
The spirit proves itself as an
ideainto the actual stuff of life. ‘I
operative principle, and_in this.‘eflectiveness man “experiences
his freedom: the free shaping «of that which d does ‘not yet. exist
‘intothe. sphere
seoreatsreqmecnetetni
m
ben |by means
of being
re of “of the ‘free activi y. ofthe_|
PRROARS
IAaTITER RENE OPES CERDS ARES ZOE

irit,
spancpeseee

eT his certainly produces a quite different picture of the

possibilities of human existence. From the very outset it has a
‘meaning, that is, in this ideal possibility which is given by the
idea. On the one hand, even thegrasping of the idea as such, Paige SOREAD a

the vision,isa. realization of‘meaning which i1S far 1 more | S

signifi-
cantt than aany | ere vitalistic course of life ‘could: ‘be. Then,
‘mere
further, ‘there isthe possibility _¢ of‘introducingie this 1 meaning
mi erial reality
which has been perceived iinto_ the Sphere of material
by means of artistically ( creative ‘action; this means:
sthically c
up of a human
‘by the creation of works and’ by the ‘building up
community shaped by spirit, and finally, by the ideal develop-
ment of the individual: person into a spiritual personality.
But the primal element_of this wholespirit-existence is:
freedom.
ver, must. tak e deter-
Even the idealism of freedom, however,,
ministic factors intoaccount, factors ‘which limit freedom, not
merely _ the limitations_imposed, “by matter, the material of
> freedom—for this limitation is at the same time ‘the possibility |
of creation, of giving form to matter—but rather the limita-
1 Thus in Friedrich Albert Lange, in his Geschichte des Materialismus, and
in Vaihinger’s Als-O6 philosophy.
260
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM [
:
tions which lie in the acting subject itself and are all due to |
the fact that the subject in an enigmatic manner is bound up \]
with an object, the body. For the idealism of freedom, there- |
is astumbling- -
fore, corporeality, as the limitation of freedom, )
block, something which should not be, that troublesome . > Ys

with the spirit is not only a

‘double’_whose_co-existence |—
o@pa-
theoretical embarrassment, but a practical difficulty, |
ojua, the body a tomb! It is thatin us which is not dis- |
tinctively human, the lower, baser, earthly part; itis that aspect |
of man which is ignored when we are speaking of man’s real |
being, his destiny and his meaning. Here, then, in the bodily
nature of man, the centre and source of those limitations of
the truly free, spiritual life, ‘evil’ as a whole, which the Chris- |
tian calls ‘sin,’ is to be sought. For these restrictions cannot \<
be derived from the spirit as freedom. Hence they do not
really touch me myself, but rather ‘me as not myself,’ that
strange element in me which does not really form part of ‘me’
at all. Hence we ought not to lay too much emphasis upon these
limitations. ee a,
—

2. THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF FREEDOM f ae

e freedom is far, |
—It is obvious that the Christian doctrinof
néa theviewof Idealism than it is to that of material-
toter
“istic determinism—a fact that has been freely admittedby
the great teachers of the Church in all ages, by Kierkegaard,
Calvin and Luther no less than by Augustine and Athanasius;
and this fact ought not to be ignored, however strongly we
may be opposed to this Idealistic view of freedom. In this
view man’s being may be wrongly defined, yet it is defined as Es
human; the meaning of life may be misinterpreted, but it is_ EN
a
i

admitted that life has_meanin g, We have no righ to t _

ignore
this fundamental affinity, however great may be the difference_ ae
ee

in every other direction. Indeed, in so doing, the contrast is

not weakened but is intensified. The great contrasts do not
appear in a realm denuded of spirit, but in the spirit itself.
There can be contrast only where there is some measure of
likeness. The thinkers of the Church have never entered into
1 ‘We are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in its shell,’ says Plato
in the Phaedrus, 250c.
261
 CR Mw MAN IN REVOLT
a serious discuaem of the materialistic conception of man
because to them it seemed too remote from sense to be taken
seriously But the conflict with Idealism is so shar
arp because it
contains so many. elements of 0f truth that even,
1itserrors become_
dangerous. | am
ristian thought, freedom as well as man as a whole,
is considered from three different aspects: those of the Origin,
the Fall, and the contradiction, and finally from that of
restoration to our origin and of the final consummation. But
\ & the standpoint from which these three aspects are derived is
always the same: the revelation of the Word of God. The
- doctrine of freedom as well as the doctrine of personality and
of the spirit, must be developed from the centre of the Christian
_ Faith, from Jesus Christ Himself.
i) ~The freedom from which,in which and forwhich man has
been created is freedom-in-responsibility, “freedom-in-and-for-
Jove. Tnstating
this we have already defined
the decisive —
difference between the Christian and the humanistic under-
standing of freedom; this, however, is only the case when we
understand this term ‘created’ in the actuality in which it has
already been presented in this book. Pelagian Liberalism has
grown out of a false, Deistic conception of the Creation, and
still does so—though less in Idealism than in the iadetearunimn
of “common sense.’ The original being of man isnot anything
which exists by itseli
If it_is_not,
Is substantial, “but. it isalways
‘derived
from God and directed to God. It is never an inde-
pendent ¢existence; on the contrary, it is the achievement of
dependence. In this fact, and not in any quantitative dis-
tinction, lies the difference between the freedom of the creature
and the freedom of the Creator. The being of God alone
isunconditioned, absolute freedom; that of the ‘cr
creatureis
conditioned, “relative. freedom -freedon
reedom _
_in_de pendence, ‘The
Th
more that any view of freedom ignores this primal fact
“of man’s
n’s permanent _dependence—up to the extreme case
SPasitinateceenesica
aus
where man regards himself as the
he unconditionally fre
reee, world-
MCRL
At NS Ast
RT

creative Self—the more disastrous will ‘the. misunderstanding

Baran scp awancanPONSDEN
hie IBMTLAR ATES TEN ONCE A a ALLA EIS OO

become. 1
GATORS | a

1 The Greek-Humanistic idea of freedom is therefore different from that

of the Christian idea, because it does not know God as the absolutely free,
262
 THE PROBLEM ‘OF FREEDOM '

The seeming paradox, namely, that man’s freedom is based A

upon his dependence upon God, exists only’ so long as one |
holds the deistic conception of the divinely-created ‘I’ or the
pantheistic idea of the divine ‘I.’ Certainly to the extent in|
which the truth—this truth of our dependence upon God—'
seems alien to our reason, the Christian doctrine of freedom |
is a ‘paradox.’ For faith the paradox has disappeared. If the |
‘TP of man is the one who has been called by God to respon- _
sibility, and in this call is ever being created anew, then the
misunderstanding of an ‘I’ which is based tpon itself, of an
independent substantia cogitans, falls away; man recognizes F
himself as the being who, in contrast to all substantial exis- |
tence, remains in actuality, namely, in the actus of God and
in his own act of response. aireart
Because the being of man is actually based upon man’s ©
dependence upon God, upon the Call of God which chooses
him and gives him responsibility, his freedom 1 is
is only..com- |
lete where he remains in this _dependence, hhence—to express
this for once in ‘quantitative terms—the maximum of his; - _
dependence on God is at the same time the maximum of his |)KA f
freedom, and his freedom decreases with his degree of distance) . pes:
from the place of his origin, from God.)As a planet can shed
warmth around itself in proportion as‘it is nearer the sun, so
the nearer man isto.,God the more freedom he will have,
Yet heree all
all. quantitative and
a dynamic 1
images ;are dangerous ;
;
for here
we arenotconcerned with a more or. less, but with >
theEither-Or,
Jr, namely, with being iin God.or bein
ing-separated a.
from Cod. We <are concerned with the Primitive State and the .
Fall. The son who takes his share of the inheritance from his
father does not linger about in the neighbourhood of his home,
he ‘goes into a far country.’* He has gone away, not more or
less far away, but simply far away from home; the door has
been shut behind him; there is no going back.

sovereign Lord, and because it misunderstands the spirit of man as particula

divinitatis. Cf. the Appendix on the Idea of Humanity in Antiquity (p. 547)-
1 Hence Fichte’s vehement protest against the idea of Creatign. On the
other hand, from this rejection of the idea of Creation alone do we perceive
what he nieans by the relation between the human and the absolute self.
2 Luke xv. 11 ff.
263
 MAN IN REVOLT

/” Ofwhat kind, then, isthe freedom, whichgrois unded in

dependence u rod? Certa velleedom of the will,freedom_
reedom ee ¥ES...0F,, freedom, to be
20. “This fre
able to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No, points to an imperfection in the 9
Primitive State in contrast to the perfection of the End.
The freedom peculiar to the Primitive State_was—according
Augustine’s
to profound distinction—the freedor fthe oa
_peccare posse; the freedom which belongs to the final state of
“eternal blissJs the.freedom of the non-posse peccare ;‘it shares in
the divine freedom itself. In contrast with the latter the freedom
of the origin isgenuinely « creatureely...
a limited freedom, pre-—
cisely iin that. which seems to make it especially ‘free, “the fact
that it ‘can’ do something. There is a kind of Shier to do
“something which is not a sign of freedom, but of the limitation
of freedom, of imperfection. Man orriginal ally | pase not
merely the power of decision but thenecessity for decision—
this could not be the distinguishing ‘element in “the tate of
eternal bliss.
It is
i not only freedom of decision, however, but also—and
this is
i a further determination—a double pcos t forpESPOD-
sibility. Man cannot do otherwise than say either ‘yes’ or ‘no. -
repeater onions

Whether heisa sinner or not, he must always keep on deciding.|

The evasion of decision does not help him in the least, for the
very refusal to decide is decision. Inescapable—far more so
than the law that he must breathe—is the law that man must
decide, as long as he lives, and at every moment of his life.
Nothing can alter this save a powerful act of God which
alters the constitution of man—that mighty act which we call
perfecting in eternal life, or that which we call damnation.
Then alone does the necessity for decision, as well as the
power to make decisions, cease. Then there will devolve upon
man the negative or the positive faculty of decision, either
necessity without any possibility of hope; or freedom without
necessity for hope, eternal death or eternal life. Here, how-
ever, on this side of that ultimate state, at every moment
man must decide, whether he will or not. He has not the
» freedométo decide cor ‘not to decide, but only that of say
saying
7 f he
es’ Or ‘No,’For o our Tater"definition ofunfreedom »this will RENEE RTS
_ be of the greatest importance.
|
in
264.
EMT
MRT ITE I FS

wr
int
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM

Freedom, however, is limite by responsibility in a further

way.:.the call.to.responsibilit is clearr_callcall toto atlove.
the
Man is
famous |
not only confront a choice, like Hercules
parting of the ways, but he is called to God, clearly, uncon-
ditionally, categorically. Only this destiny which has been
clearly determined for him is placed before him as a choice,
and is not, as in a natural being, wrung from him by com-
pulsion. At this point also the narrative of the Fall is theolo-
gically accurate. God does not say to Adam, “Thou canst now
do this or that,’ but He gives him, quite plainly, his destiny,
him against disobedience—which
and_merely warns possibility. is cer-
tainly regarded as a This is something quite different
from Hercules at the parting of the ways, because here the.
‘main point is not the free decision for goodor_evil—the hiberum
arbitrium indifferentiae is well symbolized in the picture of
Hercules—but the call, the election to communion with God,
the destiny given by the Creator to man, and not left to his
manmis defined not. asthe.
own judgement. In this freedo
life, but clearly
his own.outset
master_ofFrom asa servant whohehas. a
man is the property of God; does
rice PNAENED graee

master. the
not become God’s property first of all by his self-determination.
Self-determination ought only to accept that which already is,
that which already exists. It is the Creation itself which is
fulfilled in this call. In this call indeed man receives his human.
then his
‘life; he does notalready possessit,..so. destiny is
that
something secondary
_added_to_it,When asexistence destiny
. Creation anda rational-
are one. and destiny are separated,
istic distortion of truth has already taken place; that deistic
view of the independence of human existence is already in
operation; man stands, where he thinks like this, already on
this side of the Fall, where the call of God appears to be a
mere obligation, which leaves man the choice between good
and evil. Freedom of the will as freedom of choice in the
sense of the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae is just as mistaken an
understanding of freedom as determinism is a mistaken view
of dependence. Genuine freedom is notthat freedom of choice. /
2 A rationalistic and individualistic element lingers within the classical
ecclesiastical doctrine of the Primitive State, and even in that of the
Reformed Church, in consequence of the erroneous conception of the idea
265
 MAN IN REVOLT

conceived in a rationalistic manner, but willing obedience.

‘to the God™ who calls us to’ communion with Himself. The _
‘knowledge of good and evil’ as twoo_possibilities which
ar
‘ enisinteen died teenie —semeeees RE
EAE NSO SET ei aeaaeriaeamiaanilinials aes ire anid
PAAR —AMIRNTIRRER
LR *

which lie
before me, between, sre Ihavetochoose—that
is the
knowledge’ ieaeegjenemenn
“a;
ofoTthe -man who has become sinful. 1 This ‘know-_
NE TEIN ARMANI ANT
e disappears in faith;1; we experience “faith?_when we
Sala ated nate: sbeebs
ledge?
Know ‘that. Go dt has regained control over our “lives, that
reason has been captured by obedience.? —
But this threefold limitation. of freedom which marks the
PATS tae el ms FAR ss re ATERA TEEN ARETE ARNT DRS = prac
_' boundary between. the Creator, and. ‘thecreature, does not
x
“T
ogfeca umieomo
ife its
|
aarHisy BESS

human. _meanin
the creature receives its relative in epen ence is comes
Outinthe fact that even in fallen<empirical man, where this
limitation is not recognized, man is not aware of his per-
sonality and allows his own life to be merged either mystical
_ in the divine or naturalistically in nature. This limitation gives
Py,| shape and form to life. Through itthe human
‘TI’ isset over
«against the divine ‘Thou,’ and it rec at the same sit its -4“|
boundary
|
and_“independe
be iesteres Oe

nce over against ‘the human

SPOR
a Ine n

“Thou.”
“T eR re

or seman Lg VERNON HRCA acy TRAITS NARS

'
SG HRMS
Freedom
pada
in_ responsibility freedom fo
or love? is the personal’
meaning of human existence. Wheree freedom 1s. re
Nil nenaubenreoge:
jal]
pieced hac reatt pata a
essentially as creative. capacity, it necessar y works
‘ks out imper- |
sonally. Creative capacity has little to do withpe
eee
Genius is not personal, but it is a natural power of man’s
spirit. Just as the man of genius as such thinks of God as
creative Nature and not as loving Person, so also he has no
interest in the nature of human personality but only in the
of the Jmago due to Irenaeus. Adam before the Fall has indeed not absolutely
the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae (dependebat enim a Deo, Heppe, op. cit.,
P-
p. 177); but the foedus operum is described in such a way that-very little
more is seen of this dependentia (Heppe, 204 ff.). The idea of the original
nature of Adam works out in the Lutheran doctrine of the Primitive State;
in the same way it gives to man as quality what can only be rightly
understood as relation. The scholastic expression, the Justitia originalis is
only accidens and not substantia, is also an additional factor. Cf. Schmidt,
Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (pp. 158 ff. ). ;
1 Gen, iii. 5. 2 2 Cor.x. 5
8 Love is here always understood in the strict sense of the love of one’s
neighbour. Since the Symposium of Plato we know that the creative capacity
is always connected with Eros.
266
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM

is ethical, but the man

fact of individuality. Personal being
who simply wants to be creative regards. the.“ethical simply
as a tiresome restriction. The claims of his neighbour cut
across his creative activity, responsibility in the sight of God
narrows the circle of that which is aesthetically possible,
brings an ‘Either-Or’ into a life of possibilities in which all is
still fluid, and turns the vague possibility of doing “This’ or
‘That’ into the plain demand that something definite should
considers the ethical _
alwayss (con
be done. The aesthetic person always
element ‘narrow-minded.’ ‘This “‘narrow-mindedness’ aispre=
eleme “the limitation of_myyy_otherwise.
cisely ‘the “personal “element,
unrestricted possibincs by“the *Thou.’ As the Eros in “itself
is unrestricted and only through marriage—this narrow-
minded monogamy !—finds its limits, so the free life of genius
| this alone,
is limited by the claims of persons, and in. ts
personal meaning. Unrestricted Eros belongs to the natural
order; only as monogamy, where it becomes responsible, does
it become truly personal.
The spiritual value of our life is always reached through
limitation. ‘ofthe infinite possibilities
Thinking 1S limitation o
limitation oftheiinfinite possi-_
of mere imagination 3 ‘willing is.
bilities ‘ofdesire; artistic creation is a limitation by ‘selection ;
it is a process of elimination. Spirit means discipline: logical
discipline, aesthetic discipline, ethical discipline.The highest
discipline is that of belonging | to God. Here all self-will is
il
f
‘taken away from ‘man, and inti thisalone.does;|he.> become. truly
spiritual,ggenuine | personality. “This is the kind of freedom
which God gives to man; in this alone does He make him
really human. Deo servire liberias.
~

3. THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF Teco NaS

“The first statement with which a Christian doctrine of un-.
freedom must begin—if it is not to try to drive out the devil
of a false freedom by the Beelzeboul of determinism—is this, that
the un-freedom, into which man falls through si sin,is“unfree
com.in freedom. It is true ofcourse thatithe who ‘committet!
ndseryant, ofsin’ ;but he neyyer commits sin other-
ee hhisownactofdecision, On thispoint Augustine’s
1 This is the theme of Either-Or by Kierkegaard.
267
 MAN IN REVOLT

teaching is more accurate and careful than that of the Reformers

—for the very reason that the determinism of the Manichees
had shown him the danger of a false doctrine of freedom.
‘With free decision has God created me; if I have sinned, I
have sinned. . . . It is Jwho have sinned, not Fate, not accident,
not Satan because he has forced me into it, but J have con-
sented to his transgression.’ “Who of us, however, would like
to assert that through the sin of the first man free decision
has disappeared from the human race? . Free decision.
has been so_ little lost in the sinner that it is
igpreciecly. by its
aid that.men sin,’“Thus -they vwere “‘free in regard to righteous- _
ness” “(Rom. vi. 20) only through the decision of the will.”
Even the sinner is a human being, not an animal, not a thing;
_the form of his divinely-created ¢existence, existence-in-decision,_
as not been ‘destroyed, It is not sufficient to “speak ‘of mere_
desire asthe R
will. We shall be speaking directly of the negative, e
qualifi- Spniesnninitie tS

cation “of.
of this freedom of | the will, but it is onl
nly possible ree
speak _ of. this after. Hi eereactcic “misunderstanding |has
been, excluded. 3
Indeed, it is possible to state categorically : with one. exce )-
tion, only—a new limitation which is certainly of centra
importance,
i seem and one whose character still- has to “be:defined -
—in principle at Jeast, ma:
man _has
has retained freedom in every.
form.* is thought, his activity,
y, his spiritual life, do not lack
‘that element of freedom which distinguishes the spiritual as
‘such from the natural. Only by means of this freedom is he
‘able to create art and science, civilization and culture, law
and the State, and to produce the family, marriage, friend-
ship, custom, and a moral order. He is still always a subject,
with the capacity to detach himself from the given, he still has
reason, and with that the power of grasping the idea and of
measuring what exists by that as a norm. Since even as sinner }
1 On this cf. the excellent presentation and exposition of Heinrich Barth, |
Die Fretheit der Entscheidung im Denken Augustins, to which I am indebted
for some essential help. The passages from Augustine which have been
quoted above are in Barth, pp. 78, 82.
= Migne, 37> 37> 1938. : Migne, 44; 552-
4 Cf. J. Gerhard (Loci v. 201), in peaen omnibus aliquam arbitrii libertatem
in homine superesse dicimus.
268
 ~~

THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM \

he still has that which the Reformers call the justitia civilts, so
also he has retained a Jibertas civilis, that freedom which freai\
time immemorial has been known as ‘formal’ freedom. This|
‘form’ whichisinseparablefrom_ human existence, the structure LID

of human _existence_ as” “existence- -in-decision, has. ‘not been.

destroyed by $)
sin.
Perhaps it would be more correct to say: itches not been |
destroyed in
in principle. For certainly the effect of sin penetrates...
into_the sphere of ‘that which characterizes man_as human. ste

The man who drinks$s himself ‘into a state of uncons¢ Ss

can scarcely be
be addressed as ahuman being»‘while heis
i in.‘this dD
drunkenn_state) iin the language of the law he is no longer
‘accountable.’ Even in the empirical sphere sin has an effect
which destroys freedom and humanity. Even the creative
faculties of a man may
be inhibited andd_annihilated_ ‘by sin—
“not only iin the extreme formof “physical injury
i as the result
of vice, but also by the perversion of thought and will, by
psychological cconflicts, by the “decadence’ of the conception
of culture, by award. repressions of all kinds. How many
creative forces and how many creative works have been
spoiled or destroyed by the sinful disintegration of the unity
of personality and of ehpan
In spite of this, inprin ciple we are bound to say.t! that even
si
thesinful.“human. being |has a free.will; ree
free will is the pre-
uppositionn and‘the essence of his human existencet, From the
eaters of theChristian faith this cannot and ought not to
be denied. If Christian teachers often say otherwise, this is due
to two causes: first, because to one whose thinking is controlled
by the truth of man’s relation to God, to whom God comes
first, and everything else takes a second place, freedom of this
kind seems insignificant compared with the freedom which
has been lost; secondly, because this very loss of freedom is
not perceived by the thought of the ‘natural man’; hence it
must be emphasized with vigour, and, if necessary, in a quite
one-sided way./What, then, is this lost ‘freedom? We
In_a word, it is the freedom which is ‘based upon com-
munion with God as such, Which consists in that alone, and
indeed is identicalwith it.Since man has separated” himsell
by sin, as “wehave already seen, with the alteration
from God
269 /

ey
 MAN IN REVOLT

of his attitude towards God there has also come a change in

his nature. He lives no longer in God, but against God; he
no longer has God for him but against him. He has been
detached and alienated from his Creator, the Source of his
life, from the Good, from love, which is his original life. He
now possesses this Good no longer as a gift but only as an
obligation; that is, he has it no longer, he merely ought to
have it. The task of his life is now the hopeless one of squaring
the circle; he ought to'do the Good willingly, which, as a
, duty, cannot be done willingly at all. The Good which can
only be done in the natural spirit of love has now become a
legalistic demand! He ought—to love.! This nonsense is the
result of the perversion of life’s meaning and of man’s relation
with God. Man can only do that which is. truly Good when
he comes to it from
ec HG TRAE SRARENAE
“God; now he has to doiit while he is
ENF OTTT
aspiring after God. He ae to do good before he zs good, or
indeed, to put it still more sharply, he who is now bad must
do good. S
~~ That is the fatal decision which has been made irrevocably:
by falling away from God man has indeed fallen away from
ae good. Through sin he has become a sinner. [he sinner _ |
ought to do good! The godless man, the enemy of Go d, ought |
‘to love od!!This he cannot do ;not only «does this mean that
he. cannot doiit wholly or ‘perfectly 5 he cannot do it
‘it atall.
‘This |
As so because 1cites
_Bresupposition isJacking, existence in_
‘thelove ‘of CGod. How could he who is not in love, love? Just.
| aS a personnwho is no longer iin the water cannot swim, or a
| person who is not in the air cannot fly, so a person who:iis no
_ longer in love, cannot love. If, however, he aan love—love|
__as one loves in God—then he can no "Tonger |fulfil the mn
meaning|
“of his life that»“which gives“to
ro his 1
life its genuinely human
WE datariCne

“character, He can no longer fulfil the divine meaning of his |:

life, not only in part but not at all; and not only for a time,
until he has regained it, but never again. The eye which has

1 Kant: ‘For a command that one should do something willingly is in | |

itself contradictory’ ;Krittk der praktischen Vernunft, p. 101 (Kehrbach). That
is the extreme limit of the ethic of duty which Schiller came up against,
and which he tried to get round by means of the aesthetic element, that is,
through a return to the Platonic Eros (Die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen).
270

sk
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM

once been blinded can never see again; the connexion with |
God once broken cannot be reunited; the love of God which,
has been lost cannot be regained. And even if one ‘could’ do
so, one may not. The Gate of Paradise is guarded by the
Cherubim with the flaming sword. Above the gate there stand
in flaming letters the words: guilt, the wrath of God, the
curse of the law. Only he who has fulfilled the whole law is
allowed to pass through the gate and enter Paradise, and even
the very beginning of this fulfilment is impossible because the
‘initial letter,’ being-in-the-love-of-God, is absent. How can
man as sinner be in the love of God? and how can man love |.“
God and his neighbour without beingin the love of God?|-
But how can one cee before God. ‘without Joving C God < and | |
one’s neighbour? ’That is
isthe vicious circle into which lifehas
been drawn by sin. And ¢thisds‘the 1un-freedom with which 4
fice en ‘concerned, PEA cre Me ABT ife
it is €
the unfreeddom of the non-posse non-peccare, the impossi
| bility
lity | of not cin, a sinner, This impossibility isabsolute,
hot relative, freedom has been unconditionally, ay
‘Tost.But this Genal is the real freedom, for it is that which
decides the eternal meaning or non-meaning, the divine
destiny of man. Where the divine meaning of existence is
known, certainly, compared with the loss of this freedom, |
whatever freedom remains. counts for sO little that—in spite)
wealth
of its ‘wealth _ of secular “content —it_As Ke SHELL
as
ae a ae

‘But the freedom whicha cleme

still has, even as a “sinner, Ps
not suffice to save him from final disaster, from the Judgement
and Eternal Death. What meaning is this, which ends in the

ea So_our. first judgément is xreversed.We noo longer say: Seine

ev kind ¢offreedom isleft to man save one . . but we now

say: man has lost is real freedom. The. very none. that he is
ay human 1being qualifies this negation, it is_freedom _to
es itis freedom 1|for.eternal death,
In faceihoahieaicae
Siimasa oui
of thisKies
ssituation, the fact thaterieman not only Ihas ie
eh
capacity to. create.cata but also that he can. still
Ode OTe aA
do eae ANT SEN SNE

which
OT
ile SN COA
1s morally good, is, in the lastresort, _ meaningless. For
CO TAPER
or ERENT NTR ween

271 '
 } ites 5 i. Y See ~~ UR Ay * he

ae ila \
oh pW

MAN IN REVOLT

this morally use _

good, even though it may be of the greatest
for the ordering of human|relations, does not_come_under
consideration ‘before God,’ inv‘the._presence “of the final court
‘of appeal. Sin, indeed, as we have seen, includes “both, the.
morally good :and the morally” bad. The inmostheart of per-
th God, ‘has
‘has become corrupted,
; zodless9 cor “incurvatum in Se 1 sum. Moralit
“gc
ceaetreewerteta eke Pe ST RNP ene AIN MBO I SI IS sey’does
not change this situation ‘in_the least, And if it finally alters —
nothing, then “ultimately, it means—noth ing. It means nothin
which alters the negative verdict in the judgement. No ‘right-
in
eousness of works’ availsthe.‘sight, of God.) This one thin
‘s
must be “expressed [before all else, incomparably before all
else, as that which faith, and it alone, sees. But it must not be
said untruly; it must not be said in such a way that what
the actual man really sees and knows to be true is denied.
How can good spring from exaggeration, how can untruth
help the truth of God? But in any case it must be said so
strongly that that particular misunderstanding will be ex-
cluded in which the original fall is continually repeated:
the liberalistic _misunderstanding of human freedom.
c
“For this conception 1 ¢of freedom, _which, ispeculiar to sinful
with _theessence of sin that in_
te
geesat

7
f A} man. 1s SO . closely «
aa"
‘connected _v
nding of.
Memoemee

‘touching it one “touches.

t
sin ‘itself. The false.
ma| freedom
cee

is the very, quintessenceof 0:“sin, Sin is the desire for ;

freedomand the illusion that _it 1s_possible..to. be free,a
is ;
| *
is ‘this “which.
God. Ttt is ‘const tly g
gives. sin its mo ang
man to
OWET, for it gives _ it a spiritual imprint, itTeads |
imagine ‘that he is obliged 1to defend one of the supreme goods:
of humanity against the inhumanity of religion. The seduc-
“tion ofsin springs from the liberalistic understanding of free-
dom; the humanistic misunderstanding |of freedom is based_
nee. elthe“opinion that ‘in“the autonomous Treason. and in
EL EIT NT

1 Of course we are not spenlang here of political See rales and its
justifiable fight for certain rights of liberty. The liberalistic misunderstanding
is that of Pelagianism. Its central statement has been formulated thus by
Pelagius: posse hominem sine peccato esse et dei mandata facile custodire, si vellit
(Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, III, 178). Kant expresses the same idea in
very much the same way ; ‘It is still his duty to improve himself and thus
he must be able to do so.’ (Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft,
p. 42).
272
 }

THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM

at

reedom the meaning of human existence, humanity, isbeing | \

1 defen ence the anthropological question
is so important, so> central, because in this self-understanding |
of man sin reaches its zenith. The most sinful thing in sin is |\
the liberalistic, humanistic illusion of“freedom! Fr rom it there
- springs the self-justification of ssinful man in the name of the
spirit. In the question of freedom, therefore, the decision is
made between faith and godlessness; or, interpreted on the
side of weakness, in the humanistic understanding offreedomRSS Wo Faenreranarecs

man hideshi himself from. the “claim1 andthe judgement,of God.

For this very
very reason ‘itis
is sO
s ) important ‘not
3 to provide him with
a weapon by a_
“falseconception of the.‘idea_ofv
un-freedom;
for nothing ‘makes evil so strong as injustice in fighting against
it. On this point a great deal of harm has been done by the
Church, and especially by the Reformed Churches, and the
same fault is being repeated to-day. The religious truth of the
unfreedom_of sin is not. served by the demial of ‘moral and
creative freedom.

4) THE HUMANISTIC OBJECTIONS |

The main argument of humanism against the Christian.
doctrine of unfree om is that |itrobs
r¢ 1 man of
of his
isresponsibility
If that were true, then at any cost “we
we would all become
humanists. For where responsibility is concerned, man and
human existence as a whole is at stake. But this reproach is_
very wide of the
the :mark; the converse indeed is true: it is the
that iinthe last "resorttakes responsibility —
ith alone t
Christian Faith
seriously.In support of this statement we would appeal to all”
that has already been said in this book. From beginning to
end the Christian understanding of man is simply the doctrine
of responsibility, and this can be said of the Christian under- ;
1 It comes to a head in Cicero’s saying: ‘One will never thank God for
a virtue as though he had‘ received it,’ to which the Pauline ‘what hast
thou that thou didst not receive?’ is exactly opposed.
2 Pelagius says: s7 (peccatum) necessitatis est, peccatum non est, si voluntatis,
vitari potest. Iterum quaerendum est, utrumne debeat homo sine peccato esse. Procul
dubio debet.Si debet, potest, si non potest, ergo non. debet (in Gieseler, Kirchen-
geschichte, 1, 2, p. 11 5). here 1s emaoubtetty “logic in the thought of
N. Dianintaus namely, that in the interest of freedom (understood in Pats
manner) atheism issues as a postulate.

273
 MAN IN REVOLT

_ standing of man alone. But through th the Christian doctrine

doct of
)
_unfreedom
unfreedom certainly the idea ofrressponsibility gains
ga. ana ne
new ‘and_
_sinister
sinister meaning
Meaning:: guilt, The |
fact.
t that ‘all that man does in
|his present state makess him. guilty in in|the sight
it of God does
|‘not.‘Temove the. fact.of res
esponsibility, _ It only shows how _
rave
ve the.whole question ofof"responsibility. is. e are respon-
sible tor e fact that we are what we are: sinners. We are
responsible for the division which is the incurable’ disease
jwhich affects our whole life; we areresponsible for
for the judge-
ment which is passed upon us Usher Tae IS
r e second. ar ument_of Humanism
H against Christianity is
DEALS te
RTRSY
| as follows : if man’s situation really were what Christians say
MSS
et iN

| itis, then all his actions _would..have.no. value at all.

If he _
| can do nothing but,_sin—whattis the, good.of anything. that
“he.
¢ does?‘What shall we say in reply? We affirm the premises
“and deny the conclusion. Certainly, apart from God man
é _ can do nothing but sin—per dejinitionem. But t
there is some-
| ‘thing else that he can do, and this he ought to do—he can
\ [ | _and should believe, that is, turn away from his false freedom
V ‘and returnto union with God.? Thatisthe content of the
| Word of God which in“Jesus: Christ is addressed to him.? It
|is a Word calling him to repentance, to turn away from his
false independence, and to return to the divine love offered
} to him in this Word. Within the godless state, it is
is
true, there
is no other_alternative, sin
sin is
s inevitable; but there is the
ae alternative of returning to God infaith. The situation in which
‘. ,(\ the Christian message places us is not thatthere is no>)other
hae alternative, butthat the alternative iis: sin or faith; it is no
' longer virtue or vice, iexisgood or evil in the “ante sense of
. the word. The factt nas sinner Se
still en
hasearat
existence-
| In-decision comes. ¢out.hinted in the fact that man is claimed
_ for the Word of God, that faith is not possible save through
the decision of man. In
inspiteof the fact that faith is the gift Hab
TSAETO!
of God, it isalso true>that faith 1
Recht Ha
is;also ‘human decision," and
LA ene ite STRELA IUE NCS re a

|. 1 Luke xv. 18.

2 The ability to believe may not be severed from the Word which creates
this ability, nor denied by the reflection that this ability has been given.
Cf. Appendix III, pp. 527 ff. Faith is indeed in itself the recognition that
all that we are able to do comes from God.
274 )
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM Sor
|

indeed decision pure and simple, given by God, but_a decision /

iven_by God through Hisclaim on the human will
ott
” We |
shall be dealing further with this point later on.
The third argument of the Humanistic doctrine of freedom
against the Christian doctrine of unfreedom is this: through
in man, above allin
_it the Good that is in all, and espe.cial y ‘This assertion
his spiritual life, is depreciated rests upon a
misunderstanding. The truth that we are sinners does not in ~
_ any way exclude the truth‘that there 1s much good inhuman _ |
‘life, ma physically and spiritually as well as morally.1 The
reproach which is levelled at us by the Bible is not that we
“4 . PA LRT Ae IdarTP RASA tr PH aR f

value this good but that we do not understand that it is the

we
gift of the Creator, and that we do not see that by our sin
— spoilit. The man who interprets his freedom in a humanistic
sense is not a true protector and preserver of that Good, but»
one who destroys it.His false will for independence sows the
seeds ofdisintegration in all therelationships of life, Through ~ EAR PRICED

his severance from the will of God culture becomes an idol, the
spirit becomes abstract and impersonal, desire becomes spirit-—
ead

less and lawless, the erotic —— demonic force and

destroys marriage at its roots. In quite a different fashion from
the emancipated human being the man who lives in the love
of God would be in a position. to make the earth subject to
him, to order life, and to bring meaning and unity into the
whole of the spiritual and cultural life of man. It is true that_
the culture we know is always impregnated with sin and
. therefore the judgement
AS of God Aeh SR But. thisno
fall upon it.
must rns
of God as faith
does not mean that from the pointof view
knows Him, culture, creative life, the life of the mind and
isdenied.
spirit, |
The final argument returns. to,the beginning: the Christian
doctrineof unfreedom destroys the dignity of man. In point _
‘of isthe exactoppositeThe
fact the truth . Christian faith, or
rather Christ grasped by faith, restores the human dignity
which had been destroyed by sin. Certainly, ifhuman dignity _
the same.
isChristian as. independenceof God, then of course the
faith destroys human dignity from toptobottom.
But that isonly a false dignity, arrogance based upon a Te,
TMS . ‘ ‘ “t sang
LOS NO NEN TO NE DONT AS EET

2S iin na taaee AL

Good (justitia civilis) see above Pp. 153.

2 On the recognition of a moral
275
||which
|
MAN IN REVOLT

always necessarily produces as its counterpart, as a

| reaction—cynicism. There is no other human dignity than_
|this, that we are ¢called to be ‘the “children ‘of God. Where this_
“vocation is“accepted in faith, there arrogance ce and cynicism
cease, there man receives a new pride and a new humility at
the same time, the pride and the humility of one to whom
God’s love is given and who is called to communion with
God. And in this he receives a new freedom, the ‘glorious
liberty of
irate
ofthechildren ofGod.”! —

5. POINTS OF DIVERGENCE FROM THE TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE

But even if QeRARLeLIN
REANIM:
the objections of Humanism do not _touch the
UPI
substance oft
Begurcteaen
the Christian faith,“stillthey are
ite gk Mga
re partially)justified é
itof ‘the historic “form, of the Christian doctrine. f
The way ‘in which the Church has spoken aboutsin and un-
freedom is not altogether free from the blame imputed to it
in the never-ceasing protest of Humanism. By this I do not
mean merely the occasional deflection of thecdoctrine of un-
freedom into deterministic. formulas, “as haappened
ened| especially
with “the Reformers “when
n they |were ‘writing ‘against Human-
‘ism,‘but the soclesiasticaldoctrine o
ofOriginal Sin as awhole.
W a
aera its izing. form, by which Adam and the man
of thepresent_aes 1 spiteof the Opposite intention—were
‘severed from each other, and by its logical emphasis upon
the jidea of‘heredity, the Christian doctrine has been. coloured.
ute. ane
The ambiguous idea of ‘nature’ has also
helped to foster this way of thinking. The idea of ‘sinful nature,’ _
rightly understood the same _as Sinful beine,ng,’received
teccivedaan an_
additional naturalistic meaning; which -greatl obscured the
character of sin asdecision. To be a sinner fell into the sphere
of natural categories, and in so doing lost the plain meaning
which it has in the Bible, that of being-in-decision. The
Reformers were aware of this difficulty, and continually, by
the idea of the sinful person and by the indication of our co-
responsibility for the act of Adam, restored their Biblical
content to the words ‘sin’ and ‘sinner’; but for the reasons
1 Rom. viii. 21.

276
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM

which have been mentioned above they were not wholly

successful.
The present tendency to re-emphasize the most massive
formulas of the ecclesiastical tradition does not help us to
deal adequately with the task which is set before us to-day.
The immense influence which is being wielded to-day by
deterministic thought lays upon us the sacred duty of finding
a form forthe ideaof un-freedom which will not be openn to”
i _¢
“determinism,
the charge off having s‘slipped “Into
‘the IT do not
venture to thinkthat in this book I have been. completely
successful in this attempt; rather I believe that this can only
succeed with the co-operation of the best forces at our disposal.
It is already a great thing that at least we see clearly what
should be done and that we admit it frankly.

277
 CHAPTER XII

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY

I. INDIVIDUAL AND INDIVIDUALITY

WE are mainly aware of the problem of the ‘individual and
the community’ as a problem of ethics.1 In the midst of the
welter of practical problems at the present day, the following
questions are central :Is individualism or collectivism to prevail,
the1¢right ¢of the individual‘persc
pe orvality ‘the.Tight“of.the social
‘entities: the State, the family, society? ‘The freedom and
-*independence _ of the individual, or the higher auauthority of
“the ‘whole,’ ..to. ‘which ‘the individual” mustsubmit? These
questions are at the heart of all our modern problems, in
politics and economics as well as in the sphere of private and
personal life; everywhere they raise passionate discussion, and
cause ee conflict and suffering. But behind the ethical and
practical problems there lie anthropological views, “doctrines, ~
and axioms. It is from them t‘that the practical postulates are
inferred. Behind Socialism or Communism, as well as behind
the Totalitarianism of the State, and the programme of the
Corporative State, there lie definite views of man from which
the practical demands derive their power and justification.
Is man essentially an individual or a collective being? Is his
‘destiny, his ‘dignity, his value, collective and social, or is it
rather individual and personal? This is thequestion with which
this chapter will deal; the ethical implications of this subject,
although, indirectly, they give special point and force to our
question, do not come under our purview. Does a characteristic
view of the relation of the individual to the community arise
from the standpoint of the Christian Faith? Or, to put it more
exactly, Is there a characteristically Christian
Chri view of individual
and_social_ existence? “Once again we must start from the
highest point, from Jesus Christ, from the creation of man in
the Word of God, in order that we may outline a doctrine
of the relation between the individual and the community
1 Cf. my ethics, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 277 ff. (English version:
The Divine Imperative, pp. 293 ff.)
278
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY,

which is not based on side-issues, but upon fundamental

Christian truth. See
Man has been createdin and for the Word-of God, and this
_makeseshi
him the being:1who iIs
isresponsible. *Thisfact unmistakably
“determines man as an individual. Responsibility isi that which.
sets the individual as individual.1apart and. makes him iinde-
dendent. “Masses, collectives, Species... hhave.no_responsibility ;
a
they are not capable of assuming responsibility. The individual
alone can decide in a responsible manner; in the strict sense
of the word, the individual alone can be made responsible for
anything. Evencollective responsibilities _ are based_upon the_
responsibilities ‘of
ofiindividuals. It is no doubt possible to extract
a pledge from a“community, but in the last resort this rests
on individual guarantors. No romantic theory of the supra-
personal subject—the ‘spirit of a people,’ the ‘soul of a nation,’
etc.—can blind our eyes to the fact that where decisions have
to be made it is always the individual person alone who is
concerned; his mind, his will is the source of all decisions.
To the extent in which the Christian faith intensifies the content
and the value of responsibility, as compared with the ordinary
idea of responsibility, the content and the value of individual
existence is also intensified.
At first sightin
individual. existence, or.‘being aan individual,’ MSS 2,

een sheep. ‘which form one feck “or ‘individual “stones

in a wall, or, individual 1molecules in an atom, “aswell as”
‘Individual hun sen“beings. TIndividual existence, in contradis-
“tinction from individual distinctiveness, which will be discussed
in the next chapter,} that is, the fact that ‘this’ is not the same
as ‘that,’ the fact that two things are not the same in contrast
to the fact that they are not alike, is primarily a definition
of all that exists, of all that is actual, in contrast to all that
is merely thought. We think of all atomsofhydrogen as the
same, yet each<one isseparated from. the other by. the fact
that, _although_ it is not_ different,, is ‘still: another. ‘The
‘difference between unlike and like is a relative difference, that
1 In order to prevent the confusion of that which is not the same with
that which is not like, Natorp has introduced the concept of individuation;
unfortunately this has not been taken up.

279
 MAN IN REVOLT

between not the same and the same is an absolute difference.

‘This’ is absolutely not ‘that,’ neither more nor less. Thus this
exclusive identity with itself, this unconditioned self-sameness,
seems to refer, without any distinction, both to the realm of
things and to that of spiritual existence. It was this thought
which led Democritus to describe the atom with the conception
with which we describe the independently existent as such:
in-dividuum, aropov.
And yet selfsameness, or the fact that ‘this is I and not
another,’ that ‘I alone among all these billions of individuals
of all kinds am myself, identical with nothing but myself,’ this
fact that no human being can be exchanged for or confused
with any other, has a quite different meaning in man from
that which it has anywhere else; and only in the Christian
faith, in existence in the Word of God, ae, this idea gain
Gu dellicbntent:
Even an atom of hydrogen or a proton is ‘this’ particular
atom, and no other. But it does not itself know that it cannot
be exchanged for any other; the gulf between it and the other,
the exclusive selfsameness and non-identity with any other,
does not become actual. Also, so far as its content is concerned,
it is entirely unimportant. What does the difference between
atom number one and atom number two matter? What value
has the difference between oak-leaf a and oak-leaf 5? The fact
that one cannot be exchanged for another plays no part in
this, neither objectively nor subjectively. But_as soon as con-
_sclousness and will of some. kind are added to mere being, d
‘the 4 faact that_‘t
“this” cannot bbe cconfused with ‘that’ ‘begins to
“matter. It is importanttothis particular sparrow that he, and_
not that fellow over there, should. be able to carry off,this
_tasty -crumb! He pushes the other aside. It is true that this.
atom here pushes_ the other aside; in spatial reality there is
no interpenetration, That which is ‘here’ is not ‘there,’ and
that which is ‘there’ is not ‘here.’ The fact that this is here
prevents the other from being here too. But this ‘pushing aside’
is unconscious and unimportant. Itgainss importance, ‘only. when
Aepouuisaguanneiiui
et
It 1s conscious, and it becomes conscious only when it is
important. Sparrow a does not allow himself to be confused
with sparrow 8; he ‘protests’ if he cannot get ‘his’ due.
280
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY <

But not only does this knowledge of exclusive identity with

oneself bec
become fully conscious in man alone, and therefore
“fully determines the will to_self-existence, but 1]
here both gain tal
_an “entirely |new content, ‘which makes the gulf which separates _ |
‘me-here’ from ‘you-there’” infinitely more profound. From the |
oint of view _of man all| that cannot be exchanged in the |
“Tower” ‘order
order of|
‘being s
seemsas unimportant, because itisvalueless. /
“The value resides in the fact that it is so, not that it is ‘this-here.’
It_does not matter _to_me_wwhether 1the gardener cuts this ros e|oa oie

or that or me, if‘the one e18as‘beaut ulas theother. Just a

jt is a matter of indifference to me which particular copy of
a particular book the bookseller gives me—all, as machine-
products, are completely alike—so is it ultimately with all
‘thing’-existence and ‘natural’ existence. In so far as we are
not concerned with individual differences, non-identity plays
no part. The individual members of thesame, species can be
exanged for one ky another; t fact _
‘the that -y have. ‘no _meta-
Lee espace surat
2 ysical exc hangeability, which 3is not_ denied, is unimportant.
hey are examples in which the species alone counts. The
sheep a, b, c, are examples of the herd, of the whole species.
So long as the condition is fulfilled that they belong to the
species of sheep which are ‘beautiful, fat, have plenty of wool,
etc.,’ the individual sheep does not count.
Only in man is it different. In so far indeed_as_aa_human
being stands ououtabove others by his talents or his genius, we
are still on the natural plane, although here, ‘through the
differentiation of individualization, classes shrivel up into
individuals. A genius like Rubens only occurs once, although
Rubens is not the highest type of genius. But this kind of
uniqueness 3is only relative, as we see at once in “the case of
mere ‘talent.’ ‘Talents’are possessed by all kinds of people.
But the transition from talent to genius is a relative one; thus
the fact that the genius cannot be exchanged for any ‘other
is also something relative. The value of genius is a value of
Sater bra

individualit ds" connected. with

hence it isrelative, dike. all thatris
Brrr

ndividuality.*1

1 The next chapter deals with this more fully.

281
 MAN IN REVOLT

2. THE GROUND OF SELF-VALUE

Where personal value is cconcerned. the situation is.quite
se CA This 1
1s absolute. ss“makes no_difference to the
gardener
ener 1if1dlesire “one“of bhisTOSeS. * Buttifte_go “to
to a father
and say that.I desire ‘one« hisdaughters’ f formy. ie eearae
“they. are all the same to.me,’ the father, “and above alleach
of the daughters, has a ‘right“to be offended !‘The human
‘person, as person, cannot possibly be exchanged for anyone
else; the person is not an example of a species, he is uncon-
ditionally this_p tson, and no one «else, To the manufacturer,
it is true, it is a matter of indifferencewho tends the machine,
if only the person who does so does his job properly; he is
exchangeable. The manufacturer, as manufacturer, has no
personal relation with the man who tends the machine; for
him, this workman is simply—to use the honest English phrase
—a ‘hand.’ But while the workman may possibly accept this
position so far as his labour-relation is concerned, yet, so long
as he still has a spark of human dignity, as a human being
he does not admit in the slightest that he could be ‘exchanged’
for anyone else. He knows this: ‘as a human being I cannot |
be exchanged for any other, although as a “hand’’ I may be’; |
them me, the more itisrecognized ;
that one human. being cannot be ‘exchanged’ for another. ‘No—~
PRT OSI
EATOEMS

one is indispensable’ is the language of impersonal thinking.

‘No one can be replaced,’ is the language of personal thinking.
As person man is unconditionally and exclusively this particular
person and no other.
But what is the deepest, reason ffor, and the full content of,
this truth. that persons ‘cannot be
‘be exchanged: of this uncon-
ditional, “non-relative“value of the. "set? The ‘natural man”
0 : ny answer to this question: He appeals~
“tothe idea of personal being, of personal human existence;
but he cannot adduce any reason why self-existence should
be unconditional; for it is not derived from the idea of reason
as such.? If man is person only as the bearer of reason, or as

1 In his idea of the monads Leibniz made this absolute distinction of

one individual from another as such the fundamental principle of his
metaphysic. It is no accident that Greek philosophy does not know this
282
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY

self-conscious mind, then his being as person is not} selfness

_which cannot be uae ath all that matters is ‘spirit in
at
vi
hi
*hilosophy ‘of reasor
on,for
wast Hegel, we see how.little>_sigmificance is ascribed _
ersonal self-existence, This consciousness of the uncon-
Ties value of the person as person cannot be derived from
any rational philosophy. Where, however, there is some feeling
for this, there is—though more potential than actual—a
recollection of the Origin in the Creation. ——
lama self, I, as this particular.
pone eee
person, cannot be> exchanged
hiner
for any other,simplyand solely because God, the Self-personal, tin romaine

knows me, this person. ‘as this_Person, AERTS He ‘called me

by my name,’? when He created me, because He loves me,
tt a eee

_not as an ~€xamp le of a ‘species, but’as thisparticular human :

He ENA deg MN mR P
“being, from all eternity, and destines me, not humanity as a
LON BF

whole, for an etern

rnal goal, “nnamely, for a personal end, for
communion with Himself, the Creator, becausé He SPITS
a i atm

unconditionally and ‘will never exchange me for any other,

because He never confuses me with any other, nor depreciates
me at the cost of someone else, because He gives me this
supremely personal life in His supremely personal Word of
election. In the electing word of God I have my person, m
self. The divine eternal election is the ground, and indeed the Armee erent

sole and sufficient ground, | of my unconditional ~self-value.

seetennes
ett ABLLA
There is no personal value in itself,> but the value of the person
idea; it is only possible from the point of view of the Christian conception
of personality, even though in the thought of Leibniz it has not the full
content of the Christian idea of personality.
1 The whole of Idealism, from Plato down to Hegel, has not been able
to give a metaphysical basis for the individual personality as such. Leibniz
is an exception; but in his system the distinctive element of personality is
made questionable by the idea of continuity—the merely relative distinction
of the human personal-monad and the sub-human atom-monad. This
cannot be otherwise because Leibniz does not start from the personal will
of God as love, but from ‘the mere consciousness or ‘imagination.’
mee xl. 1; xlv.4. 8 Psa. cxxxix. 13 ff. 4 Gal. i. 15.
’ Nygren is justified in objecting to Harnack’s doctrine of the ‘infinite
walue of the human soul,’ because it suggests that it is this ‘value’ which is
the object of the love of God (Eros und Agape, p. 62). But it is true to say
that through the divine love the human soul gains this infinite value.
283
 MAN IN REVOLT

Fa
as person is based upon the fact that man has been created
in the personal word of God/ This alone is the reason why
I am not an example of a species, a number, but that in the
unconditional sense I am an individual. The metaphysical
self-sameness which is also ascribed to the atom only becomes
the self-sameness of the person where,its value is unconditional
and its consciousness absolute: in the value posited by God
and in God’s consciousness. ‘What is man that Thou art
mindful of him? And the son of man that Thou visitest him???
Through. this. personal. call of God, however, our respon-
_/ Sibility_ also becomes unconditional, and in the consciousness
“of this unconditional ‘responsibility |our personal being, the
_ unique character of our existence, becomes clear to us. That_
to which ‘God ‘calls me from all eternity, He has not called
another ; and to that, in alleternity, He will not call another.
‘He gives me an unconditional ‘calling’ which cannot be
exchanged for any other; that which through His gift is
my task? no other person, in even the very least degree,
can take away from me. Neither the Platonist nor the Stoic
nor the Neo-platonist philosophy knows this independence.*®
This independence, this impossibility of exchanging the task
appointed for one’s life, is the correlate of the Christian idea
of Election and Creation; thus we see that where the Christian
faith declines, this sense of value which cannot be exchanged
for any other, and this sense of responsibility which pees
be handed over to anyone else, also disappears. The fact that
J,unconditionally, must remain, at my post, and tkat.nl0o other.
‘can
n take my place—even when in the toon sense of the
‘word there are plenty of competent people who would be well
able to replace me—this sense of the seriousness of my calling |
_canonly
be understood from the pointofview
the
of personal|
“call:of God. This independence, this absolute
in
impossibility of
a Pal Viii.
2 The usual play on the words Gabe (gift) and Aufgabe (task).—Translator.
3 Plato clearly recognizes a certain differentiation among human beings;
it lies at the basis of his order of classes. But it is at the same time a meta-
physical inequality in value. The Stoics remove this inequality in value in
the concept of Reason which is everywhere the same, but with it there
disappears the differentiation of the life-calling in an abstract, non-historical
idea of humanity.
284
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY

being exchanged for anyone else, creates an absolute isolation.

.. This emerges, above all, in the idea that I must come before
the Judge ofofthe world quite 2alone. “There,re, as
as Kierkegaard
‘puts it, all corporate life ceases “and I am unconditionally :
this individual. Here is absolute, eternal, fathomless solitude,
here too no Christian eae is any Eepsowes do not a
for the dead !—here am I, quite alone, in the presence of God,|
face to face; alone. As” remyself must believe, must decide, 7
as I myself Gast hear the electing Word, the Call of God— |
and no Church, no priest, no Pope, and indeed no word of |
the Bible can take from me my responsibility for listening to |
this call—so I myself must stand before the Judge; and no |
other can take my place—none save Himself, the merciful God,
who Himself provides the ‘Advocate.’? So solitary, so absolutely
independent does the Christian faith make us. ea
3. SELF-RESPONSIBILITY AND ITS NEGATION
It is not only in faith that man possesses this self-respon-
sibility. As we have already said, whether he will or no man
must always answer for himself. Even if he evades his respon-
sibility, even ifhe throws responsibility on to the shoulders
of other people, :even |when he says, ‘I do not _know_ what the -
situation is—the priest,, theChurch, the Pope, ‘must decide this
‘else‘will _
0 Fate, or the.future, or death, or ‘something |
for “me, or
decide it,’ yet it is he himself who pene thus; and in the
Judgement he himself will have to bear the responsibility for
ba tener ignpeaieaicniice

‘this decision. No_ONE C: can escape from his.Fesponsibility, not

His denial of responsibility isi a respon-
ean SRE VON ET OE

even. when he
| denies,esit.
it.
“sible ‘action; it is ‘up.to him’ to see whether he can really be
responsible for it! Man must take a position, and he does so} aac wean

even when he refuses to take one. Even his refusal is his

Dosition. * Even when - he hides ‘himself |behind collectives, 2and
hands over his responsibility _to them, “he does this upon his/
own responsibility. 3 He must be responsible for it at the last
eae ttemARTAIOE

2 Catholic doctrine, and still more

‘t Catholic practice, does not dare to
place the individual over against God Himself; hence the mediators and
mediations; hence too their prayers for the dead.
2 1 John ii. 1.
3 No one has said this so urgently as Kierkegaard (cf. now: Buber, Die
Frage an den Einzelnen). This has no connexion with either individualism or
285
 MAN IN REVOLT

judgement; he must be responsible for it every day of his

life before the God who has created and called him, even when
he denies Him and will not listen to His Call. Just as the
factory whistle calls the lazy and careless worker who does
not wish to hear it—and he is held responsible even when
he asserts that he did not hear it—so also the call to respon-
sibility comes to every human being, and it is ‘reckoned’ to
him even when he ignores it.!
Zhisresponsibility is the basis of our freedom.
No one can _
rob me of this power
of deciding
for myself. No one can force
me to say ‘yes’; the Power which alone could do so will not
do so, because He waits for my personal answer. No human
being, no creature has any power over my decision; to. me
alone has God given this power ofpersonal decision ;? He has
given me this power through the Creation, and He continually
gives it to me afresh through His Call to responsibility. The _
moment that I could
no longer hear the Call of God, when the
knowledge
of the law of God would be ‘completely eliminated,
T would ease to be a human being at all..1 would stillbe,
itis true,
an example of the species homo sapiens, but I would
no longer be humanus. The peculiar element, the’ specific
element of the species homo sapiens is this, that it is not a species
in which the individual is an example, but humanitas, in which
the individual is person. It belongs therefore to the peculiarity
of this ‘species’ that the individual is able to abandon it and
to deny it, that—at least within certain limits—he can become
an ‘in-human’ human being. That is the dangerous freedom
which belongs to this independence.
Humanly speaking—must not the hand of God have trembled
subjectivism;for to this certainty of the individual there belong as correlates
afi
Oe seal
the objective revelation and the community. It is true that in the thought
of Kierkegaard the idea of ‘community’ does not get a fair deal, but in
principle it is included in his category of ‘the individual.’
1 Rom. i. 21; ii. 14 ff.
? The dutegovavoy plays a great part in the doctrine of the Early Church;
but as a rule it is understood in a rationalistic and individualistic way,
from the point of view of the rational imago-concept (Justin, Apol., Tl, i143
Tren., IV, 4.3; Tertullian, c. Marc., Il, 5; Joh. Damasc., II, 12). Cf.
Engelhardt, Die Gottesbildlichkeit des Menschen in Fahrbiicher Suir deutsche
Theologie, 1870, p. 31.
286
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY |

when He created man with this independence? For—apart

from the angels, of whom we know practically nothing from
experience, and very little more from the Bible1—it_is_ the
most dangerous, and indeed the only dangerous element. one
God as created.” He He_created that by means of whichf
Creation, alt ough not destroyed, ‘could’ ‘still be ‘spoilt _TT
‘distorted. The fact that man has been made in the image of.
God has really ‘gone to the head’ of the man who decides
independently, and has made him mad. Man has. turned the,
Some

word of the Creator, “You. must-yourself’ say”“yes”; I will not

force you,’ into, _ ‘I can say “‘yes” or ‘‘no,”’ just as I will.
“has turned, ‘you can ‘and you ought to decide,’ into, ‘I can
myself determine.’ Man turns the independence checked by
God’s determination into an independence which _knows., no_
bounds ;; thus he turns genuine responsibility into ; a sham respon-
sibility, or_self-responsibility. “In modern man, in particular,
this sin reappears in its original form; genuine |responsibility
is replaced _by self-responsibility, the idea that mesaowe. it to
m self? *Man only owes himself anything because he alone owes
imself to God. at
The ‘misunderstanding of the reason with itself,’ the primal
sin, i
is the. misunderstanding. of independence. This misunder-
“standing comes out as a misunderstanding and a lie in the
fact that through this presumptuous.independence man does _
fot become tree or "independent, but, onthe contrary, he |~
becomes “enslavec and “dependent.t. Promethean defiance See
man either into ‘madness, or into the most wretched bondage |
to the world and. to_men, or into both at the same time? In
the last resort how Talse: was the prophetic independence of
Nietzsche! How even this Titan longed, in his solitude, for
human recognition; how easily his pride was offended, and
1 On the doctrine of Angels, see below, p. 414 (n. 2).
2 In this emphasis upon the freedom of “‘being made in the Image
of God” lies the point of greatest nearness and at the same time of contrast
to Berdyaev’s profound Christian Gnosticism; his doctrine of the ‘eternal
birth of God out of groundlessness’ (Bestimmung des Menschen, p. 47), of
‘uncreated freedom,’ of the non-being which precedes being (p. 80), and
the emphasis upon the creative element as that which is distinctively
human (p. 51), show the typically Gnostic-dualistic features which mar
what is otherwise a deeply Christian view.
287
 MAN IN REVOLT

how unhappy was his solitude! And yet he was a rare and
exceptional case. For the majority of men break away from
their connexion with God in order to give themselves up to
some pleasure or ambition, to the satisfaction of strangely
inhuman, enslaving passions, or to some kind of infatuation.
Schiller’s saying, “Tremble before the slave when he breaks
_his fetters, but not before the free man,’ is _deeper_ ‘than’ he
“knew. This revolt of the slave is the sin of emancipation. ~ But
the only free man, whom there is no need to fear, is the man
Tiving in
3 man’s ‘Origin, the man who possesses a truly royal
freedom, whom humanity has beheld once, and once only.
| The man who has become alienated from God lost his true
_independence when he Tost his self which was “made 1in the
zimage of God.! His independence, in the strict sense of tthe
. word ‘exaggerated? independence, the ‘desire to stand ‘indepen-
|dently ove
over against God,’ actually makes ‘him “dependent.t. He
falls a prey to the world, he becomes the slave
of human beings;
| =thisis true evenwhen he appears. to ‘rise above th
‘them andto
dominate ‘and control them, pai apparently" Independent,
Sore

‘dominating man can no more exist without thosev

whom he
dominates than. the herd-man. “without the herd:~ The ‘free
spirits have always been ‘dependent iin the highest degree on
the recognition of an élite. The love of fame and the vanity
of ‘independent’ people, of geniuses and individualists, is well
known. Most people, however, live in dependence on the
collective body, on ‘one’? in all its? forms, on the spirit of the
age, on the fashion, on that which ‘one’ says, thinks and wills.
But the moment that a human being begins to live with God,
he first awakens to independence, to his own responsibility,
to his own powers of thought and will. This, too, is the moment
when he begins to know the true meaning of community.
———

4. VARIOUS FORMS OF ASSOCIATION: COMMUNITY

_For thisis thee paradox. of the Christian-idea of independence:
the same
me things °which._give.man. his, -absolute..value
lue as a.Soha
1 Rom. vi. 16, 20; vii. 14. 2 Cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 126 ff.
3 By ‘man’ (‘one’ or ‘they’) Heidegger means the easy, shallow life of
the average society or business man in Western civilization during a period
of prosperity.— Translator.
288
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY

. and iin so doing make

m him an individual, in 2an individualization_
not becompared
with any.other,
also place him just,
_.as_absolutel
as a incommunity, and give. him an incomparable.
“association
‘as with cothers.
“All thatactually exists, in spite of the gulf which lies between
‘this and | “that,” is; connected _ex:
een Pa
existence. The atom is ‘here
and not ‘there, it is true; and where it is, there is no other.
And yet, in a coincidentia oppositorum which can never be com-
pletely understood, the opposite also holds good; the atom is
always there, where it is not, and ‘that’ is also where ‘this’
is. ‘This isthemystery ofmutual influence, the invisible bond
which |binds that which is ‘separated ‘through -the _separation
“of space.! Even the hard pebble which lies beside its neighbour
thas a remnant of association, a force of attraction, which,
however minute it may be, foeeae from the one to the Sthent
But apart from this minimum we distinguish the living from
the dead by the fact that they are outside one another, not in
one another, and not with one another. om
in the living organism 1 there is the mysterious interconnexion
of. parts,the union of all. to form the whole. By a similar,
although far
far looser bond, living iindividuals also are connected
with ‘each other by community, of blood. The hen defends
‘her chickens as her own blood, every mammal watches jealously
over her brood, she is bound up with it in the community of
life. The animal only knows real community with another
being under the influence of man. Man alone knows the union
which extends beyond the biological | relation of procreation >
and community of blood, the union. of free choice,ealOTT i
through free decision. does
es living together bbecome- community, :
just as only; through ‘thevow of fidelity do two lovers become ~
a married couple. From the point of view of human community —
all that nature knows as unity may be described as non-
community. Community is a specifically human phenomenon.
Now whatis the basis of genuinely human, genuinely social
community? ‘It is not sympathy 5. for sympathy,. while it. is
certainly a powerful element, is also an unstable and‘partisan’
“element, which is “only "able to create an unstable, arbitrary
vr
u Tt 3is well known that for Lotze it is this enigma of mutual influence
which is the metaphysical place of his Idea of God.
289
 MAN IN REVOLT

ARN pe ES TOO

community, Reason may, itis true, create higher ‘communities_

‘with a special aim in view,’ ideal associations, cultural societies
and States, but their purpose is not so much union withother
persons as the common furtherance of a spiritual | cause. “The
fact. that fpersons come together to do this is a very secondary
“matter. Greek philosophy regards friendship? as the distinctive
element in, and, at the same time, the model of community.
But owing to the fact that friendship is conditioned by ‘value’
and by sympathy, on the one hand, and to its exclusiveness
on the other, it cannot be taken as the realization of absolute
communityUnconditional community iis union through that
which the New
SEE i sees EMS
Testament calls ‘‘love.’
HINTON ION

5. BASIS OF GENUINE COMMUNITY

God has created man to be a self, an individual, but He

did not create him to be alone, to live for and by himself.
In the same fact in which He gives him his selfhood, He also
gives him his being-in-community: that is, in calling him to
His love. God. has created _man primarily _ and_chiefly for
communion 1 with,Him, ‘theCreator. Hence in his Origin man
is never alone, even nen he is ‘solitary.’ He is always in
J
converse with his Creator. Intercourse with God, genuine
prayer, is the vital act of man in his Origin. Prayer is the
final and sole confutation of of s.
solipsism. That which makes man
©
“truly
ly independent isi precisely communion with God, just as
communion with God only exists in complete Sidetentleaies
Only in communion with God can man realize his indepen-
dence, his self, for indeed he has his self in God. Thus the
tesiization of the self is identical with complete dependence
upon God. “God is our nearest relation,’ is a profound saying
of Pestalozzi.
' Existence in God, however, as existence in the love of God,
is also necessarily existence in love to the whole creation. He
who affirms the divine will of the Creator cannot do otherwise
* Cf. Max Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie and Der Formalismus
in der Ethik. The boundary of the personalism of Scheler (of that period !)
is his idea of God and of love determined by Neo-platonism (Eros).
* Typical of this is the Aristotelian conception ofore Above p. 231.

290
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY

a love God’s creatures, because God loves them. God has hone ahaimebemtin

created man not onlyfor. communion with Himself,

,
“but0 ea
also —

ed ures, He has created man,

rom thee very ‘outset, not only as an individual, but as a member
of the most comprehensive human community. Election, as _
the call out of the world to Himself, is at the same time ae
“which calls human beings together, the «Afjous is necessarily
connected with the ‘éxkAnoia, its correlate.! The goal to which
God calls the individual, and to which one comes only as ree
re

an ‘individual,’ as one who is responsible for himself, as one

who answers for himself, is the Kingdom of God. Thus the
obverse of Divinely given responsibility is the most universal
and absolute community which we can imagine. Responsible
i
xistence iis commun al existence; } existen
tence connected * with
‘community ; love, in the New.‘Testament meaning of lové:?” q \ |eh
ik
xis
eee
TT =
{

. COMMUNITY AND SELF-EXISTENCE

Accordingly, man can only be fully ‘himself? when he lives
inTee Ont
lya
in love
Te does
eS mat dowhat
hedocsquite willingly.
Apart ffrom love he is always. under :som 1 compulsi
ither of natural law or moral law. There are many kinds
“oh compulsion, even of spiritual compulsion; from the com-
pulsion of physiological automatisms to the compulsion of
passion, of the artistic or scientific desire to create, of the
emotional experience of ecstasy. But none of these varieties
of compulsion is accompanied by complete willingness ; likewise
in none of these varieties of compulsion is the action and
REN Ra nha iang wei, eS
existence of man ful ly personal. ‘Love alone ‘is “completely”
willing compulsion, :and therefore fully personal existence and
-action.. ‘In obedience I always felt my soul most beautifully
free,’ says Iphigenia in Goethe’s poem. But only in the love
of God, which lays hold of us in Christ, is this love which
is wholly obedient and wholly free. “Where the Spirit of the
Lord is there is liberty’ ;3 but this spirit is the Holy Spirit,
1 Therefore in his Genesis lecture Luther makes the Church begin in
Paradise (WA. 42, 72).
2 The Christian idea of agape is as different from every other idea of
love as the message of the Cross is different from all mythology and
philosophy. 3 2 Cor. iii. 17.
2g1
 MAN IN REVOLT

the love of God which is shed abroad in our hearts.! It is the

same Spirit who creates the ‘Christian community,’ that kind
of union in which alone it is fully true that one member suffers
and rejoices with the other,* because they are all joined to one
another and to the Head in a living whole,? where individuals.
grow |like the branches In the Vine! in Him ‘who gives tthem. i
the common qe —
All that is human is disposed for this community by the
_ Creator. God has created man in such a way that the individual —
an only become <I’ th the ‘o al. that the.Tl can.only _
become the ‘?? through the ‘Thou.’ Ape husband can only
“become truly husband. through his wife, the child gives paternal__,}
, character to the father.® It is only because we are made for
one another that the values of the individual differences
develop in such a fashion that the peculiar quality of the
individual members is determined by their functions for the
organism as a whole. Human life isintended to be a mutual
exchange in giving. and “receiving ;it is thus that it is con-
summated when man lives in contact with his Divine Origin,
hence, too, it is consummated in the ‘communion of saints.’
This is oo communio sanctorum, which is also a participatio
omnium bonorum. Onlyin1such community ¢cantrue
ne ad ER
ue independence
be developed.¢ Wr
hat is the basis of that fundamental law of the Gospel
which sounds such a paradox: ‘For whosoever would save his his _
life shall lose it 5 and whosoever shall lose his life for My
M ssake
shall find Bits panna “and sacrifice, and indeed, self-
ceiiaimennead

“Ge cher: “Let charitatem not be such a mean thing, quia charitas is
God Himself. . . . Hence he who has love must have God and be full of
Him’ (WA. 36, 422, 427). Love is the Holy Spirit Himself: Rbr. II, 140,
20 ff.
2 1 Cor. xii. 26. 3 Eph. iv. 15. 4 John xv. 4.
5 This dependence on the other is not Gogarten’s discovery, it is true—
for Buber and Ebner preceded him in this—but it was first perceived in
its significance for the whole Christian message by Gogarten in his book,
Ich glaube an den dreieinigen Gott, and still more clearly in Glaube und Wirk-
lichkett. Cf. Cullberg, op. cit., p. 74.
§ Luther: ‘I believe that in this community or Christendom all things
are common, and each one owns the other’s goods and no one has anything
of his own’ (WA.:7, 219; WA. 6, 131). In Althaus, Communio sanctorum.
7 Matt. xvi. 25.
292
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY

sacrifice, belong to one another. The only authentic expo-

sition of the real nature of love.is that which was given by
Him who desired nothing for Himself, and gave His life ‘a
ransom for many.’ ‘True independence realized
is in_ self-
denial. But true self-den
jas eee “be
confused with the
morbid desire for suffering (masochism). Genuine love is
characterized by a strict sobriety, which challenges the one
for whose sake one makes the sacrifice, summoning him to
follow and to repent. _Self--denial does not mean throwing
ee
oneself awa Eatis
is not renunciation. yf the Vv. OL One S ,OWN. :
SS CaS TST
even,
n the. value of one’s physical. existence. Love
seeks not. her_o
own, but ‘the good “of her neighbour’; yet she
does _not ‘throw._away. ‘her. own.’;
ce are She. does not defor it as |
justice does, since the latter measures its claims according |to
‘a rational secre: “or equality ; JsheYéalizes her own when |
“of her own free will, in view of the divine End, she goes forth |
to meet the other to the very limits of selbemptying. She does |
not make a rigid line of demarcation between what belongs
to herself and to the other, but she lives in the other, as a_|
member_of the body in which she 1¢_herself i
is a, member. She |
“knows no other sacrifice than that which takes place iin truth, |
and for the sake of truth, which also includes the “Thou.’ Love
combines the strictest sobriety with supreme emphasis upon
personality.
Hence love is the opposite of “being in love.’ Those on
_are “in love’ are Possessive 5 this state 1s an ecstatic form ‘of
self-love. To be ‘inlove’ means ‘the. loss _of independence,
whereas ‘love
lo is precisely. its assertion. ‘Being iin love’ is to be
enslaved;it is abinding dependence, upon the other,
r,but love
is free self-positing in perceiving the claim ood which meets
us in the other. Love is the highest act of the spiritual per-
sonality, but ‘being-in-love’ is being enslaved to the other by |
instinct. a gale
7. COLLECTIVISM
SFA AMEE CAEN a REEL MRT UNDt
Just as the destin for selfhooddmay aL
De imisunderstood,
a ai
so
also 1 tiny ffo ommunity
RORAEHa:
™ay be misunderstood. A
‘misunderstanding «of this kind 1s CO ectivism in all its orms,
“the”
the subordinating of"personal _being” “to “natural or abstract
293
 cab IN REVOLT

spiritual forces. Cillecaaten.§is a perversion of the hierarchical

“divine orderof being, which subordinates everything, the
natural and the spiritual, to personal being. The possibility
of such perversion consists in the fact that man has both a
bodily and a spiritual nature. This nature—the spiritual as
well as the physical—places him within a supra-individual
context which constitutes the basis of his personal existence,
which is its presupposition, but, as such, is subordinate to it.
The individual human being comes into existence in connexion
with the life of nature, and especially in connexion with the
life of the human species. Through vital connexions, through
sexual union, the family, the clan, the people and the race,
the individual existence ascends towards its personal destiny.
As person the individual frees himself from these ties of blood.
Where this process of emancipation is hindered or arrested
by the super-ordination of that which is subordinate, by the
elevation of that which is a means to be a self-end, the personal
is swallowed up in the natural existence; community becomes
natural collectivism. Something similar occurs where the arti-
ficial ties which have b en,.and must. be, created for the preser-
vation ‘Of life n€, associations of civ: lization,_the economic _
order and society, are> turned from means
me ; Intosuper-ordinated —
‘ends, where personal community —is. subordinated -“to” or
sacrificed to the impersonal process of socialization. A’ ‘kind
‘of collectivism also arises where human personal life is
subordinated to its spiritual means, its culture and the
institutions which serve it, where the individual is regarded
rel ch,.compost.to enrich the“cultural dungcheap.?
This occurs in. the_mo _dangerous jmanner_
n where the most
| Bese of all _forms.of. community,...the State—in_ whose
formation both spirit and nature participate equally, which
arises equally out of vital and spiritual connexions, the associa-
tions of blood as well as of ideas—claims to be theself-end_of—
_human existence ;that is, where ‘man becomes "ammere instrument,
for the purpose of the “State. The State has the power “to
to crush
the personal life utterly. ‘As an absolute state it misuses the
sovereign power which is granted to it for the protection of
1 Cf. Berdyaev’s ‘idolization of the ee in Fate of Man in the
Modern World, pp. iii ff.
294
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY

the personal life, to annihilate it. But we must not forgetthat_

itis always man who wills a collective of this kind. The State
‘is not a natural product but an historical entity ; it is the fruit
of human decision and human action. It is never a disastrous
Fate without being at thesame time disastrous. Bim y intl
a however, ‘than. “this. injurious. demonic.
influence over the: community by the State, is the danger to
‘the
the soul from. the.‘side.of t rch. ‘In the New Testament
the Church is neverr anything other than the community of
believers, based upon the divine election, and granted to man
in his effective calling. Est autem ecclesia communio sanctorum.
Hence in the Zoning, Church nothingand no one has, authority
PRA RAGS AeA in i

save ‘theHead,’ Jesus. Chris t, His own spirit, His own Word;
‘No priest, and ZS no synod, no confession or dogma, not even
the Holy Scriptures; the latter has authority only in so far
as it is the Word of God, not in itself, and therefore never as
an entity which is at tke disposal of theology or ecclesiastical
law. Clericalism, however, makes the means which Jesus Chri
uses to rule His Church in elf-su TCcientid lola ho ritles :
anier=thioce’ or 2 sacerdotalEsoficientac ‘or of a dogmatic
orthodoxy. Theyset_upan interim-court taking the place of
the Word. “Of, God. ‘but clothed with,diyiine authority—a Pope,
‘4 a—by which necessarily the Church becc
becomes acollective
rather. a.community, which suysuppresses
eS OFr spoils the
order of the Holy Spirit in
1 order to make room for the secular
laws of an ecclesiastical code and a scientific theology. It_is
not the ecclesiasticaloffice, nor the function of the Credo which
we uestion, but ‘the
tl fact
{ that.‘they are. clothed with ‘absolute
_divine authority, ‘binding on the conscience. Wh
A natREIRSON
this takes
place the correlation of the individual and ‘the.Ke mmunity ‘Is
destroyed, and itsplace. is taken by a's ation of |the_
individual t collect: ‘ivepower of t Church. This isthe
most terrible thing that can ever happen; the sanctuary itself
has been defiled; it has been infected with the demonic.

8. THE UNDERSTANDING OF COMMUNITY OUTSIDE THE CHRISTIAN

FAITH .
Now fromthis point of view it isalso possible to perceive
the alternatives tc
tothe Christian ‘understanding «of self-existence
295
 4 MAN IN REVOLT

and _existence-in-community iiin all their extent and significance.

‘Naturalism _ in all its forms knows n
nooSndependence, of ane
individual
ae
at all.
esheets a)
Toit the categoryof ‘the individu al’ is
closed book, for it knows man only as a member of a “ene
Humanity is only a branch on the Tree of Life as a whole,
a special zoological species. Naturalism does not. possess the
ofaself-existence, namely,
tion for the recognition
Oe ere

_pre-supposi
‘Knowledge ooffreedom, of spo
il
ea In place of the recog-
SANE peerlnancta rane Wt ER

nition of the sel nce of the individual it sets individuality,

as, indeed, individuality is that which is characteristic of all
natural existence. Individuality, however, is the correlate to
the universal which characterizes the species.
Hence Naturalism. understands man’s being, essentially, as
a collective entity. As in animal life, so here to0, in.the life
of.man, ever thing 1s isdirected. “towards the.presers ation of the
species. The individual ‘has no self-end, his end is absorbe
ins‘thee purp:
p eof the species. The meaning oflife isadaptation
to biological and other existing conditions, mainly the adapta-
tion of the needs of the individual to the needs of the species.
_Morality—in
so far as thisisconsidered at all—law, civilization,
and culture are said to be derived from_ this source. Tie
conscience and the religious consciousness are regarded as the
hypostatization of this purpose of the species. Actually, however,
the product of such a view will be neither morality, nor culture,
nor religion ; at_its
its best it would only produce a utilitarian
kind of civilization. The exposure of the individual and
NaBH EUSA NMED wrens TREN
his”
independence _to_an extrémély sterile collectivism_‘would’ Be
unavoidable.
In Idealism the problem | isposed quite differently. The mera erchee neti NN nish eererrne mn

main ‘thought of Idealism gives rise to very differentt possibilities 1)eS PULTE

“aterelating ‘the individual and the community to each other;

as indeed in Plato we have already seen the development of
two
two different‘ideals of life,an. individualistic and a collectivistic,
PONTE Ae AHO RA ad

ear gradation. ss
i RAS

“alongside
pelebent
«
of one
itaod antisense
another,
aie Reveal ace
even. ‘though iin a
@
Souci
There is a Idealism of frecdom, ii
in.“which ‘the 3independence TYASREE MUSENRETTOTee

of the individual as the bearer of spiritissthehigherend. Its con-

ception of ‘personality, gained from the moral law, is ‘sufficient
to serve as a basis for and to postulate a claim of this kind
1 Cf. Groethuysen, op. cit., p. 29, Die beiden anthropologischen Typen.
296
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY

for the individual personality. Thus there arises the view of

life of idealistic individualism. The individual as the. bearer
of reason contains within for a.
himself all that is essential other,
human existe nce
Inthe . he has
last resort no.n of
eed the
auton

The sage, to whom the vision of the divine Ideas is the real
content of life, or the free spiritual personality which shapes
itself and its life according to the commands of reason, has
no primary necessary relation to community, but on the
contrary, as Plato’s Phaedo shows, the tendency. towards _
isolation, the desire to bealone.* The creative artist, as such,
also has no need_of. ‘community. *X™talentis cultivatedin
quietness,’ the creative person is not directly connected with
others in his work itself. But through his creative work the
creative human being always emerges from his solitude, his
“work means publicity, he needs others to look at and enjoy
“Above all, however, to the extent in which the ethical law
sear eere

becomes prominent, our relation to our fellow-man becom

import _A he commmunity is“here represented in the idea_of
he corr
a
‘kingdom of
rec yyy the law of reason, of a fPIC
reason.’ And yet here, too, there 1s no real understanding of
community. This ethical idealism knows ‘justice’ it is true;
the individ uala isap connect ed with hisHOEfellows but
by respect;OH GOS .

genuine community. For the individua

ROA NSREINGE NDR ROOT oh Sh HH psa RETRO
fi ja pt

here, too, there. 1s.no.

pai puylongveesl

persons as such—not merely as bearers of the rational self— .

are not really united to one another; love is lacking. In the
system of the idealism of freedom there is no room for love.?
sage «
1 In Plato the link between the purely spiritual existence of the
is the fact that human life is condition ed by the senses and
and the State
, is the
the body. The State, however, for Plato, as for later Hellenism
one which is
proper community, the only necessary community, the only
to be taken quite seriously. As a purely spiritual communit y, the only one
for this was the school based upon the philosoph ical
that could qualify
case. Man
Eros or the circle of friends. Yet in Plato this was scarcely the
is solitary.
as a spiritual being is one who beholds the Ideas, and as such he
2 How little Kant’s ‘kingdom of ends’ (Kehrbach, Grundlegung zur
regarded as
Metaphysik der Sitten, second section, p. 70) is really to be
n of
community comes out already in the definition ‘systematic associatio
beings through social laws’; ‘it is thus that man neces-
different rational
sarily imagines his own existence . . . and it is thus that every other
rational being imagines his existence . . .’ (p. 65). Man is not man by

297
 MAN IN REVOLT

Different again 3 is the relation of the individual _to ithe - ne

@ community in thes system of objective Ideal __Here it is“not
aie ‘idea of freecdom. “which __ pre lominates, fonethat off the
‘universal life of Spirit,of ‘the ‘obj ctve Dirit.
Spir, T he subject
1S only—in itself an Insignificant—bearer and producer of this
spiritual development. Theessential bearer of this spiritual
being is not the indiyidual “but.the
State; but the State ‘from
‘the’“spiritual point of view, Over against the ideal of the
solitary sage, Plato sets the idea of his State, from which,
however, it follows, in the logic of his thought, that in the
last resort the State exists for the sake of the sage, and not
the sage for the sake of the State. To Platothe community
of the State isof less value than the individual’s.ccontemplation.
of ‘the “Tdeas. “In Hi reliit,_is
is quite. plain tthat the
Latah
niversal
en ar
outweighs the personal. ‘The personal lifeis subordinated to
the abstract forces of Spirit. In his system of Idealism, ‘culture’?
does not exist for the sake of man, but man for ee sake of |
“culture,” and indeed above all for ‘the sake of that form of [
eater: in which also the vital element is brought under the/
domination of Spirit: for the sake of the State.2 No attempt
is made to conceal the fact that the individual life is inferior.
Its value is to be measured by the contribution itmakes to
Wiener eesti enyaeysiane

the development of ‘culture’; its significance within spirit as _

_ a _whole is subordinate, _and _ultimately—in ‘theeschatology _
of this idealism—transitory.. Only ‘Spirit,’ not the individual—
peeeinesesinee nes tenie imianieeael anaes,
person, has eternal value and eternal continuance. In objective
Idealism there is neither a.truly” personal nor a truly social
5 nai neeEDINA PH LFO :

Se eadeaieiels

existence. Both are absorbed in an abstractly” impersonal and_

ovine me rem
‘non-social
ial_ “spirituality. Common participation in a ‘culture’

relation to the other, but through the reason which dwells in him, especially
through its law. The dependence of the Thou—and thus of the community
—moreover becomes plain in Fichte. ‘The concept of the Thou arises out
of the association of the “It” and the “I”? (Werke, III, p. 86); in this
derivation no further attention is paid to the Thou. Only later is the Thou
understood as a practical postulate of the I. (Cf. Cullberg, op. cit., p. 26.)
1 Kultur.
* ‘All that man is he owes to the State; in that alone he has his being.
All value that man has, all spiritual reality, he has alone through the
State,’ for the divine element in the State is the moral idea as it exists
upon earth (Hegel, Werke, ed. Lasson, vol. viii, pp. go ff.).
298
( \

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY

of this kind is not community but—understood as an aim—

spiritual unity. Unity, however, is not the consummation but
the antithesis of community. This idea of unity corresponds
to the monistic fundamental conception: the final reality is,
the One Spirit, not the ‘over- -againstness’ oem
O divine person.
and of human ”*creaturely” persons. Objective Idealism is
pantheism or monism of the spirit, which knows no personal
Other confronting it, but only the merging of all in one Spirit.
Here above all it becomes plain that personal being and
existence-in-community belong together. As the God of Hegel’s
philosophy iis ultimately impersonal Spirit, so also there is no
communion with Him and through Him, but only the. dis-
appearance of allthatis nthis All-Spirit, excreta
is personal ix
= personal selfhood only exist through the fact that the
personal God, who in Himself is Person, the Triune God, calls
His creatures whom He has created by His word of love—
through this word of love—to communion with Himself, and
in so doing gives them a community existence, as fellowship with
one another, through this love.

299
 CHAPTER XIII

CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

I. CHARACTER AS ACT
PERSONAL being, spirit and freedom are definitions whichh apply
to man as man; one participates in each throughthe mere
“fact that one has been created a human being. And yet all
three are of such a kind that they exclude pure existence.
Person, spirit and freedom are only real in actu. They include
self-knowledge and self-determination. Where we speak of
man as ‘person,’ who has spirit and freedom, we speak of him
as of one who necessarily exists in decision. This means that
Sliseilalina acs arta epee ea
we can take the ja i ofdecision 1
for gra de‘the wa in whicl
‘this takes
1 s place and the contentt of this decision is still open. _
“Sincewe have related these three fundamental conceptions
of human existence to the contrast between Creation and Sin,
the all-important question ‘what’ and ‘how’ to decide is
already implied in the merely formal fact of decision. Personal
_being is not an unlimited possibility ; on the contrary, it is
Pao
‘limited iin_two directions, by the twofold| destiny 0’ofCreation
and Sin, in the same\way in “which we saw the same process
at work in the conception of the ‘un-freedom of the free human
being.’ Man is still ‘in decision’ or he would no Jonger be
man; but behind his present act of decision _lies“the
“that: “the> fundamental or primal decision has already _been ~
‘made. The quality of this primal decision, its content and its
‘character, is the abiding element in all hisfurther decisions.
That i1s ‘the content of the idea of peccatum origins. “Both the
Divine image which has been imprinted upon man by the
Creator, and its destruction by sin, together constitute—with-
out ceasing to be ‘act’—the primal act which determines all
that follows and the primal imprint of man’s nature.
* Kant distinguishes between the empirical character, which is the
object of perception, and as such strictly causally determined, and the
intelligible character which ‘indeed can never be known directly because
we can perceive nothing save in so far as it appears, but yet must be
thought in accordance with the empirical character’ (Kehrbach, Kritik der
300
 a a AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

But thisine is common to all men; every manaacsanseiccnasinsiaane

is ‘Adam,’ ecu anas
the creature who has been made in the image of God, and
has fallen away from God. But if we pursue this thought further
and are confronted by the great variety
ty in human beings,
then, as we know from experience, it is fatally easy to leap”
directly from
f the realm of spirit ‘into that of“nature, and to
conceive thatwhich.distinguishes. men—who are all.‘Adam’. -=
“from one
one another,,simply as the differentiation of the iatural
_individuality. “In so doing, however, not only is an important
middie term ignored, but the personal being of the actual man
is denuded of its concreteness. The individual. human. being.
ui
ELAS REAPREELS,
be, on the one hand, from the point of view of
Being made wor
e image “of G ‘sinner, and
Vee occ ence a
—ee
on other hand, rom _‘the |point,“of Vi
vi w_of mai natural
“Individuality. . Thus
‘a mere existence, and the actual, decisive element
ps sige “to a.ener above that of concrete historical Vege
- A
existence and its present, actual decisions. The middle term.
which is missing isthat of character.
~ Character. is certainly “not.a, directly theological category;—
indeed in the Bible it isnot re
regarded as of supreme importance.
The |Bible, it is_‘true, both _in_its
i narrative and_its. teaching,
evinces a clear grasp of that which distinguishes human beings
fromoneanother ascharacters..There is not much in world
literature which can be compared with the Old Testament
for power of characterization. We need only think of the story
of Joseph and his brothers, or the narrative of King David,
to be certain that what we mean by the Greek concept of
‘character’ is not alien to the thought of the Bible. Also there_
is no doubt that the Bible is aware of the connexionn between
character and spirit, freedom and personality, and that it does
not confuse character with individuality, as a naturalistic type /

reinen Vernunft, p. 433). Whether by this Kant means something similar

to the thought of Schopenhauer, for whom the intelligible character is
‘an act of will outside time, and therefore indivisible and unalterable,’
which appears in the empirical character, is doubtful. A clear defini-
tion of the relation between intelligible and empirical personal being is
excluded by the whole structure of the critique of reason. The idea of
Schopenhauer, however, breaks down on the fact that he makes the
empirical and historical life of man into a mechanism.
301
 MAN IN REVOLT

of thought, especially that of our own day, tends to do. But

the fundamental distinction—for or against _ God, faith and
sin, originn
and contradiction—is so prominent in the thought
“of. the Bible that it is true to say that the differentiation of~
human beings from the point of view of character recedes | into”
‘the background. The Bible has no special iinterest in thequestion ;
of character. The following pages will show why this is so.
a If we still consider this question, in spite of the fact that the
Bible does not lay any particular stress upon it, we are not
doing so simply because, as ‘moderns,’ we are interested in
those elements which characterize and differentiate human
beings from one another; were this our attitude it would mean
that we had abandoned our fundamental position to enter the
sphere of philosophical anthropology in general. No, we are
Studyi ng_ this question _ because_it is only through the illu-—
iddle term. ‘that we can fully clarify ‘those
*fundamental ideas, Creation and Sin; we do so, “further,
“pecause only thus is it possible to "ect man as we now
know him with his twofold primal destiny. For the actual
empirical human being, whom we know here and now, is
understood from the point of view of spiritual decision:
character. Character. isi the empirical ee ofman_as_act, n
understood _ as a“unified act ofdecision. : . 7
y character we understand, first of all, that which distin-
guishes human beings from one another, not however. merely
‘natural’ differences—or differences of individuality—but those
which are due to self-determination, to the imprint which is
_ due to a man’s own reaction to life as a whole. Individuality
is inborn, but character is not. It is true that character, like
individuality, is something which precedes and determines the
particular act. Action in the form of a single act springs from
character. But the character itself is the product of an act,
and indeed not merely in the sense of a final gathering up
of all constituent elements, as a river delta is the result of
affluvium, or as a habit grows out of constant practice, but
in the sense of a systematic unity, of a ‘constitution.’ Character
is the product of self-dettermination. In what sense, and within
‘what ram we shall be sstudying in closer detail, Primarily,
we are concerned with ascribing character. essentially to the —
nishNE RITA SE ES Ln em ae enn nh PS AlSNE AT RE DTT NIPN toRVLRO EO cg em Dk WR

302
 CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

pirit, to freedom, to personality, and in so doing to distinguish

it from all mere rratural existence. In ng this we do not *
deny that “character _has certain. re!‘lation to the._natural gods

Even ee we ignore the Ultimate, the _background «of the _

imago and thethe _peccatum
f originis, and thus remain in the sphere
“of the “empirical andthe rel itive, every human being. Is a
‘totality. with a special _imprint.’ Even a person who is said
to be ‘without character’ has his own imprint, namely, the
fact that he is unreliable and capricious. We can rely upon
the fact that he is unreliable. But the fact that we actually
speak of a person as having ‘no character’ certainly points to
the fact that this totality cannot be taken for granted,? that
it comes into existence through an act, which—at least appa-
rently—could be omitted. Character _is_a constitution of the GS
self; it is a deliberate choice o it is self-_,
rtain direction ;_
ir_purpose; and indeed it is
‘determination for some _particular
constitutive’ fundamental, self-decision. Character—even if
_only in a relative sense—is a total act; it is, to put it more ““*.<...
“correctly, the ‘constitution’ which comes into being through ~~
a total act of this kind, out of which1 spring ‘as a result’ further.
acts which are less ‘total”in character. s—i“‘(i‘<;2XC
is fact has ‘seldom been seen aright; rather it has tempted
even deep thinkers into the sphere of determinism. Deter-_
mination is certainly present here, and, indeed, in a double a
SALT ad

_Sense. NAAN
Character oH
is both tthatwhich. det
ORPHANS
etermines and that which
SE Peent sfraon una aieee PEAR CEN SSRN EH a

1 The anthropology which is based upon natural science has the right
to conceive character first of all and primarily in.a purely biological and
deterministic fashion, as for instance Kretschmer does in his Kérperbau und
Charakter; only the natural scientist must not forget that in so doing he is
only stressing one aspect, namely, that which we describe by the word
‘individuality.’ Thus we analyse the ‘imprint’ of character into that which
already exists by nature and that which is due to personal self-determina-
tion. The vinculum substantiale (Leibniz) will always remain a mystery to
us. According to Kant, character is ‘the practical and logical way of
thinking in accordance with unchangeable maxims’ (Kehrbach, Kritik der
praktischen Vernunft, p. 182).
2 In anthropology Kant uses the idea of character both in the sense of
positive valuation as well as in the neutral sense; but he always means by
this ‘not that which nature makes of man, but what man makes of himself’
(Anthropologie, § 94).
393
 gt MAN IN REVOLT

“is determined. It is a determinant in the fact that actions

(_ follow from it with a certain necessity. But they donot ‘follow’
«~~ causally or ‘logically. What is meant is a relation su generis:
, namely, the result of the individual act of the will springing
“aif “) out of the fundamental tendency of the will; likewise it is the
>, @&result of the individual view springing out of the fundamental
view. This determination is the exact opposite of the causal
kind; what it means is the power of freedom to force the
individual to come under it, to work itself out in the manifold
stuff of life as a synthetic force creating unity. It is the power
of synthesis over against associative isolation, and over against
the isolating of moments of time, durée réelle, thought and will
as a force creating unity. Ittis determination
d from the point
of view _of personal existence and not from that of natural
“existence, similar to the ‘determination’ exercised by” a king
epee RILETT Sere
’ Cy »” But characterisalso determination in the sense of that which
~~ | is determined: character is not that which posits itself but it
be oP is that which is posited; but this takes place in such a way
that the two can scarcely be distinguished, or at any rate they
are not to be separated. A pseudo-deterministic, causal idea
is operative where this fundamental view, this self-direction
is ascribed to any natural element. When this happens it means
that the nature of freedom, which is the original element in
- character, has been misunderstood.\Character is created by
f 2) freedom; it springs from the will which »cannot ‘be derived fi
from
BBN, further source. Always on the assumption that we are
ry 0. remainingon the middle plane of the relative and the empirical,
LAs 6 the statement of Fichte is correct: man is what he loves. Butwhy |
1
~ he loves.this.rather_than that—that is t € irrational primal
foe kf datum oof the will) Derivation from natural causes, for example
«Vf from bodily dispositions, is a complete petaBaats ets GAAO yevos,
a gross error of thought; but insaying thiswe do not in| any
_Way, wish. to.deny,.the,close.relation to such physical facts.7, we
1 According to our present knowledge of natural science we might just
as well say that the type is a function of the character as the opposite
(cf. v. Monakow’s discoveries in neurological research).

304
 CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

2. CHARACTER AS A MIDDLE TERM

The concept of character, as has already been suggested by
the phenomenon of ‘lack of character’ which we have men-
tioned in passing, is not an obvious quality, it is something
relative and fluid. Such ‘totality’ and suchactive quality of
= Hoh totes
character varies in degree; sometimes it is“more, sometimes
weesticular imprint. Further.there. jsnefixed. bou
less. There are human beings with little or 2 Pe no par- Jn
ndany between.
ye’
ul a von a_decisiion... - may indeed
“follow” from “0h a character that one acts in a par-
ticular way; in spite of this, however, this action does not
‘follow’ as a clap of thunder follows a flash of lightning; the
manner in which the action is accomplished is rather that in
which we perform our less important actions, as for instance,
when a subordinate carries out the orders of his superior, and
yet, when he so acts, he is not acting like a machine but like
a person, who wills and decides, even though in this case his
freedom for decision is restricted. There are many middle terms
between. the individual action and the character as a whole,
No individual action is absolutely_‘individual,’ and_ no
nf character is
is;
an
n absolute tote
totality. Both conceptions are signposts
“rather thanentitles which c: ly..defined. This 1s
connected with the further fact that character is notanabsolute
~ unity, but only an approximate unity. There are degrees of
totality, from the individual act to the total act which is
character; but, as we shall see, it belongs to the very essence
of character itself that it cannot be an absolute but only_
a relative unity. The degrees of totality are at the same time
levels of personal depth. But personality itself is always far | ,
dee er than character; for personality. it
tse determined. by!
1g0 D none. by 10
the eect origins, al not in the!
ed. by....ch aracter,”_OF by any. merely...Auman. dis-
tinctions.
A classic instance of the nature and the limitations of
character is that famous phrase from Aichard III: ‘... 1am}
determined to prove a villain.’ It is not ‘something’ that
Richard decides at this moment—as when we decide to do
395
 MAN IN REVOLT

or not to do this or that trifle, here and now, or when

| we decide to carry out this or that important act or not, at
this moment. Rather, at this moment Richard determines his
| ‘constitution,’ from which his further actions will follow with
| a certain necessity. The ‘depth’ of this fundamental decision, acd a gid aula vz

which touches the very being, is quite d fferent from that of

Aiccuaabace TAU sah einen vente aa
of erhalten ig org
to one ripley NEN amon inn Wi ian RA
Hl yas eka y a RoR Berrys3 CRU sige. SS.

those ‘consecutive’ decisions. eta This depth determines the ‘range,’

a

Paneer eennets init ESTE SIsVRC

ANS AN seta eycaea ot AME ee ANU TL AALS nahi
nied arsemt NLR
‘the extent of the decision which is made here and now. It also
SN Ssh 2 bo HE ETNA RS UT pad SHEATHHS ereAT 1 SSRN ACSI PUSH ALVA ERAS RATL NO ES

affects _athird element: the permanence of the i print _on .

character. The more fleeting and superficial are the decisions

to ‘do’ this
or that, the more easily can they be reversed. But
if a person has decided, liké Richard, “to be a villain, he
we eo “reverse ti oy
cannot reverse sion at the next momen
this. €cision. | i t e next momenti with ce at
vith a mere
wave of his hand. It 1er ly— hhabit whi €s a. permanent
im Fint to-character, butitis alsothe.depthofthedecision.
tthe character which has been thus ‘chosen’—within certain
\"fimits which will be mentioned shortly—is Destiny.1 Something
has been fixed which abides. Richard is now a villain. His
eh: decision has a fateful result.
t is true, of course, that the process here indicated by
Shakespeare could not ever be actually observed as a psycho-
logical fact. What the poet here shows us is seen through a
reversed time-lens, as it were, greatly foreshortened from the
point of view of time, and therefore at the same time in a
certain schematic abstraction. Self-determination of character
°
is not so ‘simple’ as this; for one reason,
Gris) 9 aay , ey
Richard is not Sac
° e $
a
himself out of nothing,
for even in‘Richard before this decision
there was something which moved him to decide in this way,
and in no> other.
other. |We saay, rightly, that a decision ‘ripens’ ; this
~» decision
ecision. of Richard,
ol too has
Kichard, too, ripened; this means, however,
reat
that it seigathers up many
5
decisions
patter tecokcet MY iat aaRe RST A Ny eean meee entree
de at various moments.
c pea

But this schematic representation has the advantage of making

Sy m a AAS
vatahite ni
aca
if ARIES TRIER AR to ctetRA NI ext Jb ic ee

_ | | s/the nature of the process itself plain to us, namely, that

~" “character is based upon decision, and indeed upon ‘fundamental
Bap eee. epee se wees gig paaee be tier i acta epiei acy 3
sg decision.’ The psychological refinement of the escription must
wt not obscure this fundamental fact—as is usually the case.
an : saa
fe igs But just as it is necessaryto contrast character as fundamental
| -» 1 *HO0¢ dvOpdz0v daluwyr, ‘character is the destiny of man,’ says
.J<° Heraclitus (Diels, Fr. 119).
yy, [ai 306
 CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

decision with ‘consecutive’ or ‘partial’ decisions, especially with

those which lie wholly upon the surface, so also it is necessary
are concerned only with
‘torecognize thatin character_we
something which is relatively ‘total’ _and_.relatively..‘fun-.
ity..of the decision..which is.attainable ~
“us by the Creation ~
empirically is limited in. two. directions:
and by Original Sin. First, by the Creation; man can only ~
“determine himself within the limits which have been appointed
by the Creator. He cannot determine to be something other
than a human being—as the magic which operates in myths
and fairy-tales maintains he can. Hence he cannot decide to
refrain from deciding, to flee from the actuality
of‘being
obliged to decide;even the flight into passivity is not an escape
from the sphere of decision; it only means that one slips away
from the brightly lit centre of decision into the dim circum-
ference of the sphere of decision, into a twilight condition of
languid decision, which, however, as a human state, always
retains the quality of responsibility, and therefore itself still
bears decision within itself.1 Nor can man decideto be God,
although in his madness andillusion he may imagine some-
thing like this, and thus aspire far beyond himself. In so doing
he cannot burst the creaturely bounds of his personality ;even /
in his arrogant desire to ‘deify’ himself he remains a mortal
anersncm enerieHar me
|
creature, conditioned. by.a thousand :accidental elements.
~ Man’s empirical freedom ofdecision is, secondly, also limited.
by the negative decision which has already been made, which
als Jinythe
decom benstered
Shaglin Geman Glespreamici
empirical realm. Perhaps Richard can really decide to be a
villain;for the villain is a definite type of sinner. But he cannot__
decide that he will not. be a. sinner, that is, that he will be teary

1s not primarilySiwily d decision, but the

“o sie mapa. RSE aiena
ai
which
.
a saint—save inPN faith,
Fr

eae peat onan SAE LOSaylt SESE LEMME©.Pr

reception of a decision which has already been made, apart

- sd ee
artes TEATS LRA Y

“from us. Thisis ddoes not lie within the realm of empirical-human
henna ie
bagreatiig RN

possibilities ; it is rather the Divine possibility, which, from

our human point of view, is an impossibility. This decision
to besinless, pleasing to God, ‘righteous’ in the Biblical sense
of the word, has become impossible for us owing to Original
Sin. Indeed, the doctrine of the peccatum originis means pre-
1 Cf. Rev. iii. 15.
307
 MAN IN REVOLT

cisely this, that this possibility, which, from the point of view
of Creation, is the one intended by God to be distinctive of
humanity, has been taken from us, and that this is not due
to Fate or Destiny, but to that original decision which has
already been made, once for all. Thus empirically, iin the sense
the
of fundamental decision of character, an onlydecide
‘within ‘thespace whichisbounded -‘by Cre ion and Original
Sin,
“But, just as we said about Richard III, this statement must
not be regarded as an abstraction; it must be translated into
the concrete terms of psychology ae physiology ;we have not
only been created as ‘man,’ in the general sense of the word,
but also as individually different, and therefore definite hopin
beings. The Creation is embedded in our empirical growth.
Nor should original sin be conceived in an abstract, schematic
manner; it too is mediated empirically. Historical hee physical
imhoeaeds historical and natural influences mediate to us
both that which comes from God’s creation, and also that
abalienation which is due to the solidarity of humanity. But
this does not mean that all freedom of decision has been taken
away from man—neither the freedom of the surface, individual
decision, nor the freedom to determine character in the sense
of Richard I11—but only that our freedom is limited by these
factors.

3. THE AMBIGUITY OF CHARACTER

Now it is inherent in the limitations set up within the
empirical sphere as such, that even a fundamental decision
in which we ‘ourselves’ decide, as. Richar
a villain, can never be atotal. ‘decision S1
contradiction
AANA
between “Creation1
and in we are already
divided. To put itrather bluntly,we sear oameeea total
““Uieanesnunasasalitios
act; we are incapable of doing so. It is indeed characteristic
i of the nature of the sinner, as sinner, that he i1salways divided
ay \ in himself;af Paul’s description, in a classic|
passage, is “always
true of him, namely, that he is always in conflict with himself,
since his ‘spirit’ wants something different from his ‘flesh,’ since
the divine law, which is written upon his heart, and therefore
| always in some way or another helps to determine his will,
( 308
 -—~

CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

ree
Se
is opposed to his fleshly, self-centred will. Man is despairing,? s
he is always divided, even when he does not know this himself. Yes “~~
The Strongest expression of this despair, of this ‘division,’ is the -<-~ a
incapacity to will am thing |
wholly. peng Tans
Tre, nace 4

It is true, of course, that we often say: I will this or that

‘with my whole heart’; this is correct within the limits of this
‘something’ ;but it is impossible to will ‘something’ ‘with one’s
whole heart.’ The whole heart cannot be concentrated upon.
one point,
it never
ever has one
on e point «only.2 We© always want several ,
“contradictory things at the same time, even when we are not
ully aware of the fact. This is true in evil as well as in good.
God’s_ preserying..grace..does..not. -allow us to desire evil with
_all our heart. The doctrine of the Church maintains that this *
“js the privilege of the devil; experience, in any case, teaches ot db
us, in agreement with the Bible, that man cannot simply_..4/ 4
become devil, even if he wishes to do so. In this earthly life, 46 4.4
in any case, this extreme negative possibility is denied him
by divine grace, even though the Bible reminds us, by expres-
sions like ‘the sin against the Holy Ghost,’ ‘which will not be
forgiven,’ the ‘hardening’ of the heart, or ‘sin unto death,’
that even in this temporal experience there is a negative
definitivum as an extreme instance.® Nor isit
it empirically possible
for us—by our own efforts, apart “from _the redeeming action _
of God—to decide with our whole heart for the Good; for our
heart issevil, although |there isthat room for«
decision ‘between
“good and evil irintherelative sense, to “which we have already
alluded. If we were able to will the Good ‘with our whole heart,’
we would be redeemed. The fact that we have to be redtemed
means that this possibility does not actually exist for us. We are
human beings with divided and not with whole hearts, who can
never will good and evil ‘wholly’ but only half-heartedly.*
1 Ver-zwei-felt: a play on words here, containing the idea of being
‘divided’ in ‘two,’ or ‘torn in two.’—Translator.
2 This is, of course, not opposed to the central Scriptural statement of
the evil heart of man; for the evil heart is precisely the divided heart.
3 Jer. v. 6; Heb. iii. 13; Matt. xii. 31 ff.; 1 John v. 16.
4 ‘He who wills one thing which is not the Good does not really will
one thing; it is a deception, an illusion, a self-deception that he wills one
thing; for in his innermost soul he is and must be divided’ (Kierkegaard,
Purity of Heart, an address for a Day of Penitence).
399
 ome MAN IN REVOLT

Even Richard III cannot decide with his whole heart to

be a villain. Hence that monologue has a certain quaint,
almost amusing flavour about it. Rumpelstilzchen alone, in
the fairy-tale, was able to tear himself into two pieces. We
ordinary mortals, Richard III included, cannot do this. Even
| the villain in his evil existence is still vulnerable at certain
points; at some apaeven he is like a child who would rather
Vv be naughty/ Apart.from the extreme instance of complete
) ‘hardening of the heart,’ man remains ‘ambiguous’ and thus
/ plastic. “The whole Richard’ was not involved. He, too, still
wt A had an unquiet heart, in him too, however hidden, there was
still the unrest of conscience and the longing for something
better.
»«& Hence, becau here these
claim to totality, which lies in all
“4 i self-determination _of character, istc ne_extent fictitious,
Age wndeed,
belongs to character
as such.an. elemen
of deception,
t
of deliberate self-deception, or pose. As soon as
» human being becomes aware of his character and deliberately
maintains his character, then necessarily he becomes a poseur.
haracter_becomes.a.kindof mask, which one assumes; even
ichard TI we do not fail to feel this: it is a ‘part which
one is playing. One plays it with seriousness and constancy,
indeed for life or death; and yet one is not completely honest
, about it. Every human being, in all that he deliberately wills
| and for which he strives, in that which he most seriously
determines to be, has something of this poseur, of this mask
of the persona; even the most genuine people are no exceptions
.; to this rule; for instance, did not most people feel that Goethe
»’. \ was playing a part all the time? ‘And is not the same true of
_).9 {\ Napoleon? And even he who imagines that he wants to be
pli / I visimply himself, to be as ‘real’ as he can, is no exception to this
~~ 6 | rule; he too, poses as the natural, undivided human being
_»” “9. who is in harmony with himself.1
© \ This means nothing less than that character is in itself
\ecessarily ambiguous. Man
\ Gere TET) ° Se aT aR
is not a sufficiently natural being
RW GI DB caesar soapTeSRINE nA oRDND 0" shes ea

* That which Jung calls the persona (for instance, in Die Beziehungen
zwischen dem Ich und dem Unbewussten, pp. 63 ff.) has some affinity with what
I mean here, save that I would see persona of this kind, where Jung already
sees ‘actual individuality,’ or the Self (p. 64).
310
 CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

to be able to be what he naturally is in accordance with the

given order. For his being ‘man’ and his having a ‘man’s’ ravePoi
destiny is part of this given order. No self-chosen attitude 4, » Loyy
towards lifesets us free from Creationand sin. On the other ©, »
hand,man is not ‘sufficiently free actually to make himself ©!»
what he can inwardly wholly affirm. For he could only ‘wholly Si f

affirm’ his original divine destiny, and this he cannot do A». Hy

because he is a sinner. The ambiguity..of character consists Pree
_in the fact that we cannot.‘avoid _trying to” order our lives ‘in
“accordance” “with |‘something,”_in accordance._with- n..some..idea
some
“of
of what ought to0. be,_oor of that which issuitable for us, and «~ /
yetsin prevents us from actually caary] g out the aim we have :
set_bet ore.
f ourse ves.Not.
Not only hahas all character. something” ‘of
Dose’ about it,but italso
also |
has something
ng;sstrained and
and feverish ; :
das explains why some peopple give
give‘up a attempts. to
to achieve f*
any distinctive character at all. But such a proceeding is not
so honest nor so free from ‘pose’ and strain as people sometimes
imagine.
Why is it that character has. this
isambiguity? Because it is he* Ay
a substitute, a uman “SUITO; rate for our God-given destiny.usd Fe
pose or strain would be a. person “who
A ‘character without pr 4 Ae;
realizes in his divinely-given individuality” “the _universally —
Pir
ee
uman destiny oflove. If a person were to live in the love
of God, at the place appointed to him in accordance with his
individuality, he would not play a ‘part’ any longer, he would
cease to have a ‘character.’ In point of fact—what sort of
‘character’ has Jesus, the Christ? From the point of view of
the divine destiny every character not only has that ambiguity,
but it also contains an element of caricature. We feel that
distinctly in people who are ‘characters,’ they lend them-
selves easily to caricature, because their one-sidedness, which
emphasizes some particular element in them, makes them
caricatures. But this is true of every character save that which
would no longer be any character at all, because here self-
decision would fully harmonize with the divine determination.
Hence here, too, we would point out that faith,to the extent
in which it eatl determines mann by. love iselement
jos remo\ jesthis
of ‘cari ature,” “and‘also of. ‘character, re “ing
lac ;t the latter by
love, the completely “individual personality, or—and this is
3II Px Ae
egaot ot Boe
 MAN IN REVOLT

: pf “the same—the completely personalized

_incdividuality,..which
pw"
a2
binds itself wholl y ‘with that -which_alr
uch already exists by nature.
call Men and women inn whom. Christ has taken form victoriously!
fant no longer possess a| striking type oof¢
character ; the only ‘striking’
» “thing about them is their. naturalness. Inorder, toilluminate.
alenanaeinl

What has j ust_ been. saidWE. ma Ns“assumeSeton

ju thatann we
aaareach this _
amsaRtpene
ok faith only b

drt
A i fee asis upon eee and crieear ah rdest mask
to lay aside—and this is in the nature of the case— .
; the Pharisee in the New ‘Testament is not simpl
or but the droxpiTns, ‘the actor, who seriously veer
‘a pious part."This brings us to the ee n ofvarieties”of
‘character.
oe VARIETIES OFor cuanacren
Character is the result of a fun amen ecision made by
_This_ ‘something’ about which
man may make a ecision_may, _ iindeed1,vary ary greatly; but this
Possibilities is not unlimited
ove Sitapreniecsaiecau yfIN pdagurser ot

i ; on the contrary,
rRES it is
limited, Although humanity has a rn of
possibilities of character, its actual stock-in-trade of ‘theatrical
producer’s properties’ is not unlimited; in contrast to the
infinite variety
ofdivinely-created |individualities it can atleast
be quickly’ Surveyedin a schematic manner, with th
the assistance
of tw schemata, oneofwhich II will call the horizontal and
the other the vertical. TSC 1, the horizontal,
“consists "ina”different *‘blending’ of
. the
t fundamental ‘elements
e
_of man’s being in self-determination ; this variety is a parallel
“tothat of the natural te
temperaments, with this difference, that
there the blending is one which is already given to us, while
here it is self-made, and indeed has come into being through
a decision made byite Self. The vertical schema on theother
“hand, is a _graded_ order, corresponding to
to.‘the.
tl “height” of the
“something’ at
a which. one is aiming; in so doing th
the measure
r..) of the ‘height’ is taken to be the cifiecence: between spirit and
(a) nature,
5 Tt is this second element with which T propose to deal
1 Gal. iv. 19.
312
 CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

first of all, but in order to avoid misunderstanding, I would

again remind the reader off my re remarks iin the earlier part.of
the book
nook about
aboutthe ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’«
dominant, f
“Every
very human being exercises self- determination, more or
less consciously, for some purpose. He makes a picture in his
mind of what he ‘really’ isand _‘really” ‘desires. Thén, more
‘or‘less logically, he
heplays “this
t ; part, while his.‘Teal. ‘selfand
‘indeed not only his natural ‘individuality but.‘his._will—plays. ak
‘a_second unofficial part inthe shadow, of the._semi-conscious,
‘and this, too, in a more or less logical manner. This con- oS
tradiction, which is simply the incapacity of the unredeemed
man to Berawhole, 1
eee A US
now creates a whole multitude ‘of.‘special :
pues ‘of character, which are very attractive to the poet,
“but of nofurther interest for us. For us it is sufficient to have
satan out this difference between the conscious ‘official’ aim
and the semi-conscious or unconscious ‘unofficial’ aim in
order that what follows should not incur the reproach of a
non-psychological abstractness and remoteness from reality.*
The vertical schema, the graded order of characters, results
from the fact that man, since he determines himself with a
particular end in view, determines himself either in the sense
of natural or of spiritual being. The characteristic forms of
“fife which result I have described elsewhere in some detail ;?
here I must confine myself to a few illustrative remarks. ___
For instance, a man’s aim may be merely that of. self-
reservation 3.
; thisbeing sO, his life,“and also he himself, will
RNID
_ a_purely _utilitarian civilization ; ‘all his
erg the stamp “of
SDE

powers of thought and will are concentrated on securing what

he needs for his external life; hence he is enmeshed in the
net of the finite. Tillich aptly describes this character, that of
the thoroughgoing ‘Philistine,’ as “finitude based upon itself.’
Only here we ought to note that no human 1 being issimply
what he determines tobe; there still remains operative within
1 Heidegger’s (cf. Translator’s note on p. 19, see op. cit., pp. 306 ff.)
contrast between FEigentlichkeit and man goes back to the freedom
concept of Fichte and of the Stoics, only here it is provided with a
negative sign. _
2 Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 6 ff. (English version: The Divine
Imperative, pp. 21 ff.)
343
 MAN IN REVOLT

a
Ne
him something of the original divine determination, and also
of original sin. No human being is merely a Philistine, as ‘man’
he is always far more, both for Good and for Evil; even if
this ‘more’ may be only operative in a hidden manner, in
feelings that are either unconscious or not understood. Another
sv
+
example, again, is that of the man who regards himselffrom
the poe of view of ‘spirit’ and determi les to live inaccordance
with this ; he leads a ‘spiritual existence’; but this. spiritual
existence ismerely understood in an aesthetic. manner. It is
“merely playing with spirit; it ends in the. category ‘of that which
is interesting, creative, and beautiful. This character bears the
stamp of aesthetic spirituality; such people are usually either
amiable and unreliable, or splendid and irresponsible. This
kind of character always sees possibilities, any of which might
well be chosen; the character has not yet been stiffened by,the_
Sat

challenge, SO ‘limited? to “such. “minds, of ethical | decision :

Wither—Or, ‘Here.“man _“still
ill_rregards. himself. as 0one with.call
that ishigh and 1
noble,and in indeed with the ‘supreme, ‘without
‘noticing that he does. not really 1live on this plane at “all,“but
that he merely has a vision of it, in admiration |and ecstasy.
Thisaesthetic ‘spirituality, -
erereiore has as its unconfessed,
denied, dim ‘second self’ a purely instinctive, wholly unspiritual
element alongside of itself, which is only with difficulty con-
cealed by the aesthetic facade. And behind all, or below all,
there lies that cor inquietum, a secret awareness that ‘all this’
is not enough.
We could make similar observations about the character
based on ‘sensible infinity—the “daemonic’!—or about the |
moral, or the mystical character, each of which _occupies_a |
‘quite -definite~plane “in life“and “one “which can be clearly |
“defined; here,however, we must cease to study this question|
in greater detail. One thing only should be added: from the |
Christian point of Vview the conception of a ‘higher’ plane_is |
aa dialectical one; ‘that is, that at any particular moment the |
*higher™ “plane may indeed; on the one hand, be a closer |
approach to the original purpose of Creation, to man’s divine
destiny, while, on the other hand, as a misunderstanding of |
the claim of the spirit, it may also constitute a dangerous |
1 The Divine Imperative, p. 23.—Translator.

314
 ‘|
Yemen
CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

divergence from man’s true purpose. The primitive man—as

the Biblical view of the child shows—is in a certain sense
closer to the original divine order than all that is ‘higher’;
although, on the other hand, he is remote from it, ants to
the absence of the spiritual clement cera!
The fact that every picture of character of this kind repre-
sents a certain abstraction has already been indicated by the
Tact that this first, vertical, schema may and must
be completed _
by the second, horizontal, one. Here the variety of characters DNATA Oe
Thon1by the fact that ‘cach
ez 1isconceivedas an
eee ae
a1 exa eration
or one-sided
nr
“ASELEN ohon one of the basic €
crenrealipre Petree rena ea anne,
uman “

nature, thus, as — as hypertrophy and atrophy,

as caricature.
Kierkegaard has outlined this characterology in his book
entitled Sickness unio Death, with the help of categories ‘such
‘as: the finite and the aanidite, freedom and necessity, con-
sciousness and unconsciousness, in a way that surpasses all
that already has been attempted in this sphere, Deepest of all
perhaps—to take one of the most important examples—is his
inquiry into the “despair at not willing to be oneself’—despair
as weakness—and ‘despair at willing to be oneself ’—despair
as defiance, that is, the ‘despairing misuse of the eternal in
the Self. . . . But just because it is despair about the eternal
the True lies very near to it; and just because the True lies
very close to it, it is infinitely far away from it. . . . In order
to will in desperation to be oneself there must be consciousness
of an infinite self. . . . By the aid of this infinite form, the self
in desperation wills to dispose of his own self, or to create
his own self, to make his own self into that self which he
desires to be, to determine what he will admit and what he
will not admit as a constituent of his concrete self. ... he will
not clothe himself in his own self, will not see his task indicated
in the self that is given him, he will construct it for himself by
the aid of the infinite form.’2
1 Cf. the excellent survey in the Charakterologie by Seifert, in Baumler’s
Handbuch der Philosophie.
2 Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode, pp. 65 ff. Cf. Lowrie, Kierke-
gaard, p. 124.—Translator.

315
 MAN IN REVOLT

)
5. THE OVERCOMING OF CHARACTER IN FAITH
This whole characterology of Kierkegaard is based upon the
Christian understanding of man; all these characters, these
caricatures of real human existence, are measured by that
self-existence which ‘is transparently based upon the Power
which created it.) Kierkegaard has not himself drawn the)
“conclusion, but it isObvious : character iis always and
moaatncpUeS A estat
necessarily |\ \

ambiguous, strained, and ‘posing’ so long as the element of |

SR INSEE LEV OI +}

‘character’ has not been <overcome and replaced by 1 the- purely |

human, namely, that_man. instead..of. giving himself a Self, |
Teceives itfr hands ofthe Creator, and thus is a believer. |
‘We are ‘characters’ “only so ane as, and iin so far as, we are |

od, instea
as
ah raeg it,to.>himself, the. feverish,.cHort and the |
of the man who 1is pla in 2 part ceases. Compared with f
s of ch:aracter are irrelevant. No part p bs
by centile emma ra aRia ind_ yet $0. 3
ac ETE 1S alt, an Seeso far trom it, as
“that of the Pharisee, one, who. plays, the “of the moral and
religious man, eathst ain.and effort, and aEEN artificiality,
and
otic
“serious conviction; yet behind an
' thingtl
there 1is an. — of“falsity. As Richard III was ‘deter-
mined to prove a ‘villain,’so this pious man decides in his own
strength that he will be a man who is well-pleasing to God.
He does not notice that.to.do this ‘in his own strength’ is _
fundamentally. opposed to hisdivine destiny mn
;
;“thus he does not
spay ntceameeaA EIE
I ous. itt may kbe,
oe
is included in original sin,‘and is indeed its hig est expression.
And yet he has some sense of this, for he is continually inten-
sifying his efforts to overcome his inner unrest, until he reaches
a climax, either in resignation and compromise, or in despair,
or—through the stage of despair—in faith. Faith, however,
consists in the fact that man recognizes that his desire to do
everything _‘by his own efforts issin; he sees ‘that.‘his.religious
_and ethical character is merely an assumed réle, and thus that
“itis hypocrisy ;EH 4throws away his mask and becomes honest
Nenerryperserre aryeyv4 thr

Pe in the sight of God and man, accepts the Divinedecision. upon food

himself iin place of his own decision for God, ‘and thus-SasahIES
316
 CHARACTER, AND VARIETIES OF CHARACTER

his Self from the hand of God as a gift. This is what Paul ertdtenreiced [5

callss the ‘righteousness «of ffaith. a.

Sy cee SED)
“Now alone do we perceive why the concept of character
a is not a directh y_ theo ogical one, and “yet,
ye | or the sake “OL
theological definitions, must not beleft out of account. Th
describes,s simply the different forms
for inwhichthesinner a ears,
“In
n which men
m are different fro
romone another, Tot. as seer
“but as sinful beings. In a purely secular ethic, and therefore
in practical everyday thinking, character has a relative right,

to.the
to sphere of the justia civilis, to that midd e sphere where,
Fee PMG
sinful human existence, thereis‘a difference —
NLR NOE EI 2 AS CR

es ‘the od anc the d, where one can ‘speak ofpeople

who are less good and lessevil in various degrees, which every
description of human life takes into account. From all that
has already been said it is evident why character must not i TERE
ey

be confused with individuality,which is an “endowment given

y creation. Character 1s something which is destined to_
ne
: disappear, lying as it: lO ay tbetween the two conceptions
c _
of man’s being : being iinthe i
image of God and sinful being,$ _ i
on the onehand, and natural individuality. on the other.—
Individuality ae Fg
wever,in. so.
DEEL y,
Pret
sc far as it is the God-given, na
BRR
natural
basis of man’s being, “will not be_ extinguished, "even in
Now we must turn tothe consideration of this ‘natural
eR SENG MEN BMW EAS
eternity.
endowment.
1 Cf. my book, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, Chap. VIII. (English version:
The Divine Tebyatine. )

ar |
 = ar<

ssi: CHAPTER XIV

INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

I. THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY

TuE problem of individuality, the question of the significance

.

of f individual peculiarity, and especially cially the stress Iaid upon this
individual distinctiveness of man, is characteristic of modern
thought in the realm of anthropology, As a rule the thinkers
of antiquity and of the Middle
Ages paid littleattention-to
“this question. It was not until the Renaissance that it became
“prominent;! to-day it dominates the thought of man to such
an extent that the element common to humanity as a whole
is almost completely concealed. In the consciousness of nation-
ality, and in the-nationalism based upon it, it has become a
supreme force which is moulding history. If all the signs of
‘the present day aré not décéptive, this question will affect the
future still more strongly, in the form of the race problem.
As the question of personal individuality, and of the signifi-
cance of the difference between the sexes, it stands in the
very centre of the present interests of psychology. How is that_
which distinguishes human beings from one another related_
to that which is common to them all? Thus our question must
be: Does the Bible and the Christian revelation provide us
with a particular solution of this problem?
The ancient statement, principium individuationis est materia,
must
bealtered, from the point of view of the Christan faith,
to Principrum individuationtest
s volunias Det creatoris.. ‘Isa
great ou een these two statements. The first statement
is essentially pantheistic and monistic. Behind it there lies the
view that being as such is universal being. The essential is the
same as the general—a view which dominates our’thought all
the more that as a rule we are not conscious of it at all. It is
the fundamental thought of Greek philosophy that real being
is ideal being, a_general spiritual existence and_a_ spiritual
* Cf. Dilthey, Menschenkunde und Theorie der Lebensfiihrung im Zeitalier der
» Renaissance und Reformation, op. cit., p. 423.
318
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY
universal existence. * Matter is then a principle of individua-
tion. as..a. on, as a limitati ate sense of depreciationoe
10st Ul being is the actual, the dvrws ov.
e less“universal,,
the less being. The extreme limit of this
universal being, the boundary towards non-being is1 then the
individual, that which no longer participates in the universal.
The individual element, from this. point ofview,_is the non-
essential, that which is accidental and insignificant, that with
which it is not worth while occupying oneself. .
Faith in the Divine Creation? confronts this whole ontology _
with the followingg_Statement:
statement: /All that is actual, as created, ~
is individual. _Individuality _ is the sign «
‘of ‘created, “creaturely
—but not material—a.l—actuality.. All that is created ee not only
been created as ‘individual, as ‘this’ which is not ‘that,’ of
which we spoke in Chapter XII, but also as individuality, as
‘this’ which is different from ‘that.’ The difference in indivi-
duality, the difference between like and ‘unlike (other) «does
not go so deep as the difference between identityand non-_
identity. Identity and non-identity is acontradictory antithesis ;
eing like and unlike is merely a contrary antithesis. Wherever
the antithesis is merely contrary, not contradictory, there are
transitions, a sliding scale from a maximum of unlikeness or
likeness to zero. The non-identical cannot be exchanged for
anything else, the unlike is only more or less inexchangeable
down to the extreme instance of non-distinguishability.
All actual isAndividual being, it has individuali
e see how misleadi ng isthe statement that ‘matter is the
principle of individuation’ in the fact that themore a bein
approaches the material realm the less individual it is. The
boundary of individual differentiation isdoubtless the being
of the material ‘atom.’ Two atoms of hydrogen—or two
rotons—have only an_extremely minute minimum. of ‘dis-|
tinctive ‘imprint, The |higher we recede in the scale of being
the more significance does individuality gain. Mammals are
1 Cf. Zeller on Aristotle, op. cit., II, 2, pp. 312 ff.
2 Here too we see the necessity for a Christian ontology, determined by
the Biblical idea of the Creator and the creature.
8 Hence Bergson’s derivation of the nothing out of the Other is a
complete reversal (Evolution créatrice, pp. 295 ff.).
oy
 MAN IN REVOLT

far more highly individualized than infusorians. Jadividuali-

zation onl L ESAs Msmaximum in personal being, , inIn“personal
ial
ity,” It is. ne iter. that. indiyiduaalzes ut, life,
and still moreethan life,
life,“the sp irit. The moree spiritual people are
the less can hey be“exchanged ~ for_anyone 2CIs. the more
“distinctive imprint,
i do they possess. PO RROERE
“Hence it is also questionable whether we have any right to
regard individuality simply as a natural endowment. In con- _
trast to personality, certainly, individuality is that in wh ich —
man simply finds himself where, at first sight, the reedom of
his self-determination has no. influence. This ¢ comes out most
plainly” in”‘physical ii
individuality. I am either blue-eyed or
dark-eyed, either tall or short, either ‘pyknic’ or ‘athletic’
(Kretschmer), or however these physical types may be de-
scribed; my freedom has nothing to do with this kind of
pices type; it is simply given to me as a matter of fact.1
This applies also
also to
to mmy psychical ;structure.
The psychical type
and the psychical |peculiarity do not belong to my own sphere
of self-determination ; I ‘am what I am’ as I have been created.
Here there is a Hien which precedes all the variable
elements which are determined by the decision of the Self as
psychical material for spiritual determination.
This applies, _thirdly, to the ‘spiritual or
or mental aptitude,”
Talents, spiritual capacities, areinborn,
and absolutely given,
and the fact that they have been bestowed upon us from the
very outset means that they form the fixed capital with which
the personality can, and indeed must, carry on its affairs.
This inborn physical, psychical and spiritual endowment as
a whole is given to every individual human being as some-
thing different, something peculiar to himself. We may indeed
sum up these differences, these individualities in types; that -
is, we may group together points of non-resemblance in
resemblances of a lower grade, but within such a type there are
an unlimited number of individual - differences, No. oak-leaf
éxactly resembles any other; still less resemblances is there
between two human beings of the same physical or psychical
or spiritual type! Actually, hereitis never possible to exchange
one for the other; it is only the superficial glance which does
1 Matt. vi. 27.
320
 he INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

not see the distinctive element in each person. Twins whom

the stranger cannot distinguish from one another are never
confused with one another by their family or their friends.
Although this isquite true, it is not the whole truth, The
individualit eveen. thespiritual individuality, is, |it is true, in
‘some way or another—the more exact meaning we still have
_to seek—absolutely g iven an
and posited by the Creator, but it is.
“not thata eee same time a product of history.
€ see
see this“most ‘clearly iin the ‘individuality which is deter-
mined in anegative sense. There are degenerate individualities
pn ec cn!

in whom we can still see clearly the factor dependent on Se

ener eae ee ey
human_action which lies Jin.personal” decision. A” special
familiar ‘and. ‘sad instance is that of the drunkard’ Sschild, a
particular type of individuality, which has its origin in the
human act, the father’s abuse of the enjoyment of alcoholic
drinks, and certainly not in the will of the Creator. As man
is able to breed varieties at will, so the historical life possesses
this possibility, both positive and negative, of breeding for
its own purposes.! The will and the thought of man enter into
the circle offactors.
'§ which. determine
¢ the individuality which
is absolutely. iven. tc
tothe individual. ‘The history of the aris-
“‘tocracy, of urban families, and also of euleieer civilizations
and religions, provides a Rrealch of instances of such deter-
mination of individuality by the human will, by human action
and omission.
Seah eae alien AD en cneonatta eterno

decision of the individual themselves ee he ERAGE

The free decision c
of man
ma ass person may, within certain limits,
re-grou] ) the existing relations between the psychical and
ritual elements which form the individuality at its outset.
Te influences temperament, which is the psychical”
mechanism of reaction included in the elements composing
the individuality with which we have been endowed by nature.
The various typical temperaments, the ‘psychological types,’
alter with the personal development of a human being, for
instance, with his outlook on life as a whole, with his faith or
1 A. Huxley’s Brave New World gives the horrible picture of a future in
which human individualities (and even characters!) are manufactured by
a systematic treatment of the embryos.
321
 MAN IN REVOLT

his unbelief. The stronger the personal element in a human_

_ being becomes, ‘the more does the. natural, ‘individual. pecu-.
Hs at gta nc:
“Tiarity n him recede, but it does not disappear alto
together.
“The mre life operates, by. to ng down th e natural aspect
‘of
REC IECCAN
SeneeRLRURoMN
RA aia ae Ser
and byonsen
intensifying its ioe al aspect. These
Garett
reflections may preserve us from hastily describing “‘Individu-
ality as a natural matter, and also from connecting it too
plainly with the Creation. Sin, too, has a share in individuality.
What, however, is the significance of individuality from the
point of view of the idea of Creation? This remains true:
the Creator creates an individualized 1 creature, individuality
is‘the: token of.
of the creature_as such, But what is the meaning
‘of this? When we reflect upon the Divine ‘revelation, instead”
of receiving a plain answer we receive several answers. The
first meaning of the individualized creation. is that «of the
EG J WP War ann a eae ane Fis. crete ipa bet
_manifestation vine Creator Spirit In Fis ric ness
ss and
MER Cf ARNE En NMEA KDE
God creates what
He wills, great and small,
power an “weak, simple and ‘complicated, eiGaantiaiie
variety of species and kinds, sub-species and varieties;? He
creates also the still more infinite variety of individualities in
the narrowest and most rigid sense of the word, because He
wills to do so. This individual creation is for us absolutely
‘contingent, ’ accidental, in the sense that we cannot see its
meaning. In it the Creator proves His freedom and the in- ee tPA OREO ee
exhaustible_ nature of.His ‘‘invention.’ The difference between
‘the gift of the Creator which has been granted to us and His
Creator-Spirit is made visible in the infinite number of His
created works. The variety of human individualities also shares
in this irrational variety of the created world.
The second point which I wish to emphasize is connected
with what has already been said about the being of the
individual as individual. God_the Creator does not. create
SE PNA EDP cena aiaaeeamiaaa

humanity, but He creates eachHRT

individual
a He congas)
human
‘separately, He has
has |“called ‘thee by thy name,’
ic.4
He knows you
Ale Cah pe

eer ‘specially.’ Hence .you_are not an in example but PRINT TATION RP prrereeyttn

a_person, a self which cannot be exchanged for any other.

The Creator knows you as this particular person. This is the
1 Thus in Psa. civ. 24 ff. 2 Gen. i. 21 ff.
3 Psa. cxlviii. 4 Isa. xliii.t.
322
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

basis of our identity, for ever. God would know us, and He
would not confuse us with any other even if we were all com-
pletely alike. For Him our selfness, the fact that we cannot be
exchanged for anyone else, also means that each one of us is
distinctive, that one cannot be confused with another. But
He wishes to carry this distinction and uniqueness out into
the sphere of human relations, He clothes. our. selfness with sais

cm individuality, inorder that we may know

.
|each other as dis-
CNN AP AER LOM ER GIS ESHRE NDEI NVA
tinct indivi uals. ‘I
Thus individuality, ‘the fact that we are not
all alike, becomes the form in which selfness, the fact that we
are not the same, appears. Individuality is the garment_of
on ersonal independence. Hence It 1sSOTA oa

j mportant; vwe should be aware of it, but we should not lay

= much stress upon it. It is that which exists of itself if
personal being is in right condition. Hence it grows with the
personal self and yet is re-absorbed into the personal self.
The more we are person,the less emphasis will we lay upon
individuality, ” the more, however, -will we. have <an individual
imprint.
The third consideration concerns the connexion between
the self and the community.. God has. created the self for
_self-existence in1.community, as a ‘non-self-sufficient ‘self,
: which = /5
“ought not to exist for itself, and cannot existfor itself. This is --/ es
why God gives us such individuality which fforces us to depend le
sc € may complement each
ee one anotherthat we . other. The —
“most 1
important, it
instance of this
1s sex-individuality, man and
woman. Here . individuality contains not only the natural
‘meaning’ of reproduction, but also the personal meaning of
‘two-ness,’ as an indication of community of life.? It is im-
planted so
so d
deeply in
in human life in order that man _may not
misinterpret
misinterpret |himself as aself-sufficient being. Tf, inspite, of
everything, hhe.does ‘this,then the sex nature ‘above :
all.revenges
itself upon such. exaggeration. The human being who confuses
‘himself with God is reminded of his creatureliness, of the fact
that he is not intended to be alone, by nothing so much as
by his sexuality. The basis for the two sexes is stated in the
1 Gal. iti. 28; Col. iii. 11.
2 Gen. ii. 18. And also the parable of the body and its members in
1 Cor. xii.
323
 MAN IN REVOLT

phrase, ‘it is not good for man to be alone.’! But all human
individuality is in this sense an education for community.
It is because human beings are so different that they can, and
must, complement each other, and thus share a common life.
Only through this differentiation of individualities can they.be
united int
into one ‘body. °2 The organism requires differentia-
tion of the organs and the functions. The one body of human-
ity, seen in the light of the origin, is composed of differentiated
“organs, in which its particular function ds_appointed_ to each.
Individuality of being is the presupposition. of the peculiarity
‘ofthe personal calling, or, to put it more “exactly, the pre-
supposition 1 of the concrete realization of the special calling.
Thus in the origin individuality and the personal calling
become one. But individuality must not be understood merely
in the sense of natural differentiation ; it must also be under-
stood in the sense of historical differentiation. Nature and
history, in respect of individuality as well as of the calling,
must be thought of together, as indeed we have already seen
that de facto they cannot be separated.?
Only now do we perceive that the Christian understanding
of individuality’iscompletely different from that of Idealistic
‘Pantheism. Idealism, which is dominated by. the eaof the
cemencs aoe ieeve
universal, -canonly understand ‘indivi uality as.‘a tiresome
resets a PSA NSTRE UME Re
a Han ee ol
limitation spiritual being, asissomething
LN
negative :
( reation, “however, understands it
it positively, both in
‘View of Coa timer and inview of the beingof man. Cer-
tainly individuality is the characteristic of that which is
creaturely and limited—God Himself has no individuality—
but it is only a ‘tiresome limitation,’ a negative determination,
for one who ‘cannot endure not to be a god’ (Nietzsche).
From the point of view of the personal creature individuality
is, on the one hand, emphasis upon the selfness of the person,
and on the other, on the fact that the personal life is related
to the community. Only as. individualities, as persons, which
are ist gushed from each other as individuals, are we really—
“selves?
selves’;ate € same time, |
however,”“it's this which forces_us
eos SOD OMERINER: ApredaM Ue oem ore

1 Gen. ii. 18, and also 1 Cor.vii. ye 5. 2-1 Cor. xii. 4 ff.
3 1 Cor. vii. 20 ff. The Pauline parable of the body makes no distinction
between the natural and the historical individuality.
324
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

tode
depen on one _ another, and thus makes us capable ¢of
—— we ‘we, were
were all alike,‘how co Bie ea

each other? Individuality is

another and givetoeac is fulfilment
of our creation as persons ‘destined for community.

2. THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF HUMANITY

_ From this point ofview, then, how are we to understand _
the element. which iis common to Il human beings, ‘that of |
humanity?It_c
“cannot
be taken for granted that this element
exists, but it is a “truth which
| is only gained through history,
which might perhaps even be lost again after it has been
perceived. Where man understands himself as a purely natural
being, there is little occasion for the formation of the concept
of that which is ‘common to all mankind.’ Looked at from
the point of view of the physical nature of man, the distinc-
tiveness and unity of the human race, the element which is
common to all human beings, and to them alone, is not
particularly striking. The idea of humanity does not grow so,
much out of the physical asas out of the spiritual ;and personal
aspect of man’s ; being. Butitwould be an.error tobelieve that”
the idea ofhumanityassuch is a specifically 3
|Christian 3 idea.
It was there before Christianity, and it is powerful also cout-
side the sphere influenced by the thought of the Bible and
of Christianity. Outside Christianity we know it above all in —

the form of the thought of antiquity, especially the Stoic

doctrine of humanity. Here for the first time? it is both fully
formed and firmly established. But boththe. basis and the Sac, Se rr NN

content of this ancient philosophical idea of humanity is very

different from that of the Christian faith, in spite of the fact
that it has _m:
many points ; |of contact with it...
The ancient idea of humanity? iis, naturally, based on the
philosophy of religion. The Greek is too clear a thinker not to.
be aware of the transcendental. content ofthis idea. There
1 Still it would be well to inquire whether and to what extent here (as
for instance in Posidonius) there has already been a certain amount of
Jewish influence.
2 Cf. the Appendix on the Idea of Humanity in the Ancient World (p. 547):
How far even Plato was from a universal idea of humanity can be seen in
his Republic.
325
 MAN IN REVOLT

can only be humanity, a humanum, where there is a divinity,

a divinum. But ancient Humanism bases the connexion between _
bot
on“a rational
h doctrine of immanence, namely, on_ the
idea of 4divine-hum anthedivine-human Logos.
Reason,
Man, in virtue of his reason, has a share in the divine Logos.
The spiritual being of man is based upon the immanence
of —
the Transcendent, of the Divine. It is true of course that in
many of its expressions Stoic Pantheism comes very near to
the personalistic Biblical idea of God; but the rational origin
of the idea of humanity, or of the Logos, always prevents it
from gaining a truly personal idea of God. The truly personal
idea of God cannot be found through thought, it can only
be given in revelation through faith. In the last resort, the God
to whom we attain by way of our own thought is necessarily
impersonal.
The same is true of the understanding of humanity which
is always the correof
late
the understand
of God.
ing Like the
“immanent God of human reason, so also the man who through
his reason has a share in the divine existence is ultimately
conceived impersonally. His deepest ground is not individual
and personal, but universal ‘rational "being, “the universal
Logos-Spirit. In this Logos, or spirit, which indwells us and is
“universal, in this Divine Reason—as we have already seen2—
according to the conception of Humanism, the human exis-
tence has its ground, both its being as self and also its being
as humanity. The humanum is based upon participation in the
Divine Logos,
in the Divine Reason. It is t amen The
‘man above the animals, which ispeculiar to him as man, and
therefore also binds all human beings to one another, Through
this indwelling Divine Reason human beings are related to_
“one another, although otherwise, from the point of view of
‘race, they may be foreign to one another.
The Greek ration al,
idea, of huma by.nity
which Western
.
Humanism is determined
is, therefore, abstract in a threefold
sense. Firstly, it creates no fellow-man
ou.” Our relation to our positive relation 10 the other as
* “ RP ASARAS Hl) WailiaCs hited pues, 44 sendaaaclone
cate nia ee ae

is based on the idea

‘thatthe Other also is a bearer of the same Reason as I am
* Cf. my book, Gott und Mensch, first paper.
* See above, pp. 258 ff.
326
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

myself; thus between him and me there exists a relation of

identity in view of the essential, to which there corresponds,
subjectively, respect but not love. Unity may exist between.
us it is true—unity in the one igereea eons as not per-_
sonal communi , loveto.the ‘Thou’ of the “Other. Secondly, ~
it is abstract, in the sense
asethat itis
3 is nott related to
1 )the emotional_
aspect of human nature ; ‘the,tational ide idea |of Humanity is
without personal wimgt For the duatemortesen and
emotion is
is unavoidable, where the purely rational concept
of humanity is logically thought out. The Stoic’s contempt.
for all thatisaffective 2and emotional _(ataraxia) is typicalof
this.‘Thirdly it is abstract, in the sense that it srovidees tO.
vility for a.positive valuation of the individual element
Oo that “which
_ iis peculiar tothe individual. It is egali-
eer poe everyone on the same ev . All human beings
_are essentially alike; their unlikeness isthe accidental, unim-
portant gna
e <a individual difference isto be ¢Stmated
as a limitation and restriction of the one identical reason in
a wholly negative way. On the other hand, the strong side of,
this concept of Humanity is its_understanding :for all mental.
and spiritual achievement, for ;
all that reason brings forth, for
ears and all that promotes culture, for the tasks of the
domination of Nature, for superiority over Nature, manifested
both in knowledge and in creative achievements, in short,
for all that we have previously described as ‘formal’ Humanity.
It_is ‘formal’ spirituality
which constitutes
the basis of this
‘Humanity.’
There is not a great deal more to say about the Christian
understanding of hutaanity~in general—since all that has
already been said about ‘man,’ both of his selfhood and of his
being-in-community, was simply the development of this
humanum. In summing up we would only draw. attention to _
thisone point. In contrast to rational
al Humanism. the (
Christian
idea
idea of humanity, because it‘starts from the “personal “and.

1 We call it ‘formal’ in so far as it is only the presupposition of spiritual

acts of decision and thought, and is thus not yet determined materially by
such acts. Of course this is the modern use of the word ‘formal,’ which is
very different from that of the Thomist and Aristotelian use of it, and is
not the scholastic and medieval use of the word.
327
 MAN IN REVOLT

social determination of Creation, ASIS pacers

is ea orientated .érom_ the
ARRAST IEE
“materi al’ and not
2:5
fro
om. th ‘forma l’ point ‘of \ view.Here the
eleanor sone shaders erat hie
content of humanity is not the creative nature of man as
such, nor his superiority over nature as such, but that which
has been entrusted to us as a gift and a task, as the ultimate
meaning of the being of man, who is endowed with these
creative powers: the material aim, namely, responsibility-in- 2 icons dia

love, community, ‘being in

Ro NS ae God, and union with
weasel eng isssanileara nae sa fal one SATE wees

one another
cena eect ca
throu
LER
ugh thislove.
Seca AUAN
The decisive ‘point is1S ‘not
ptascesieonbeseonmin
1 t
the
rene
fact that man_is self-conscious mind, and. that he creates
culture, but how he lives as self-conscious mind, what he-
desires to create in his creation of ‘culture,’ and to what goal
SO NASER SIS

“he directs his existence as self-conscious med and his creation -

of culture, his self-existence and his creative existence, as their
end. Self-conscious s mind as such does not make him ‘human’ ;
indeed, even if he is a genius he may use hismenta Ss
in an ‘in-human’ way. Measured by this content the whole
potential power to create culture shows itself first of all as a
possibility and not as an actuality of human existence, all
cultural realization only as a presupposition, framework, an
Se ee - Ps es nrownsted

means, but not yet as the content of human eexistence. For the
Idea istto.Be ‘spirit,”"as such, is already the Divine; in the
Oe iepamiinicteatiebicinciae pane. levee nna grargmrencen Sa tinictangy,
owever, to pirit_ means being’ as open to
ceieaamiianal molesrae PPE OSA ESOS rp Kin reORIN PIMCICAr

‘the satanic yossibilit as to the Divine. The_ deepest contrast _

not.
Js ‘that which lies between spirit_and_ nature but that
aS CR nh NAS NN ouecssremoriengnmtcomirerti

‘which liesbetween ‘the use of the spirit | in

in harmony with or
in opposition to God; By the very use of thatwhich’ distin-
guishes humanity from the rest of the creation—by means of
reason, the spirit, culture, spiritual achievement—man_ has
the power of utterly denying the meaning of human existence,
and of destroying the image of man and making it unrecog-
nizable. Indeed, not only can man do this, but he does so,
and is continually occupied in carrying on this work of
destruction. Hence as a Christian one cannot be enthusiastic
about humanity, and Speak with enthusiasm abou humanity
and its possibilities, since immediatel ne. ‘memory_of. aoe
enemies rooms

misuse of all” these possibilities arises in our minds, reminding

us of all those influences which tear humanity in pieces,
instead of uniting it, which allow conflicts to break out within
328
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

mankind which are unknown in every other part of the

creation, conflicts in which mankind can achieve complete
mutual annihilation. In point of fact, a high degree of abstrac-
tion would be required if—in spite of all this—we were to
work up any enthusiasm for the word ‘humanity’! Enthu-
siasm for humanity disappears when we remember what man
can accomplish in the way of madness, lies and destruction—
and all this not by means of his instincts, but by means of his

Nevertheless, thereisa genuine, Scriptural and Christian

Humanism, and an idea of humwhich ani ty
springs directly
‘out of the centre of the Christian faith: the idea the
of unity _
_of the human race in its origin and its “goal which is based

perceived in the Incarnation of the Son of God, and created

anew through the Divine Redemption.1 In Jesus Christ we
see not only the picture of the true (ideal) man, but also the
origin and the goai of the humanity created by God, and
destined by Him for communion with Him and with one
both the revelation—
isty
another. The revelation of true divini
and the basis of true humanity, of man’s true being and of
true mankind. The loss of man’s true being through sin does AM

not cancel the divine plan for the creation of ahumanity

San I Sn, Reneeieeiont reoe eT eile

escuirerat

1 To support this statement with individual passages from the Bible

would be as unnecessary as it is impossible; we would need to write out
the whole Bible. In the Old Testament the idea of the unity of all men
based upon the divine Creation and plan for the Kingdom only gradually
gains definite and clear expression; the history of the people of Israel
stands in the foreground. In the New Testament the vision of unity which
was only begun or suggested in the Old Testament is fulfilled. The New
Testament is concerned with the old and the new Adam, with ‘man’ and
with ‘all men.’ They have all been created by God after His image, they
have all become sinners, the message of redemption is intended for them
all—whether they accept it and thus participate in it or not. The aim of
redemption is absolutely universal and for all mankind, and in view of
this all other differentiations fall out of sight. ‘Ye are all one in Christ
Jesus.’ It has one limitation only, namely, that which it contains itself:
that one does not accept it although it is offered, that one does not believe.
From this one goal of redemption the gaze is directed back to the Origin,
to the unity of the Creation-Logos for all. On Him the unity of mankind
is based, as through Him it is revealed. (Eph. i. 9 ff.)
39
 MAN IN REVOLT
founded on and unified in Christ. Each human being has
= “been created for this humanitas; this ground of creation, which
is at the same time the goal of creation, defines every human
being as humanus, even in the midst of the contradiction of
sin, and mankind as a whole, in spite of all its conflicts, as the
one humanitas. It is only from thepoint of view of this absolute
common elethat
men the conflicts
t due to sin, and the differ-
ences ofindiviwhich
dua arelit
based y
upon thecreation and
upon sin, can be rightly understood. Yet this will come out
most clearly in view of theparticular problems of individuality.
There are two reasons which make it necessary to discuss
some particular problems of individuality: first, because they
are urgent practical problems, and secondly, because the truth
of the Christian idea of humanity can be clearly brought
out only in wrestling with these problems. The two are very
closely connected. At the present day there are certain definite
practical tendencies which, in'a quite general way, raise doubts
in people's minds about the truth of any “idea of humanity,”
either Christian or Idealistic. The will to build up human
communities on definite narrow lines is so strong that in order
to achieve its own ends it ruthlessly pushes aside all that
humanity has learned about its unity in the course of history.
Certainly, in order to complete this statement, we ought to
add that, conversely, this practical anti-humanism only has
such a powerful influence because for a century past a crude
naturalism had undermined every kind of belief in a special,
higher destiny of man. As in all other spheres, so here too
theoretical and practical unbelief go hand in hand. Out of
the great_variety of theproblems ofindividuality which are
<specially urgent at the present day—and are indeed always
very important—we will choose some as illustrations ;certainly
they are the most important: the problems of race, mass
civilization, personal individuality, and, finally, in a special
chapter owing to its special difficulty, the problem of the sexes.

3. RACE. AND-HUMANITY
ealda tamer -swiceulad
he modern race problem hasa twofold ori in. It springs
first from instinct and emotion, out of a_half-unconscious
a Se i OES SBEROREHIAN Wl Hage LEMOS RSPR Seieeionnierinineicianieaeininmiaane
knowledge and recoil from a different race, which when it
cee et ee ee a
a PERI, 19 DAE DL BETTS
NIN GEO SPO LEAS CRITI EN ictelaaaseeanerienii ina pieiemeieeentaer
i

330
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

becomes conscious, seeks to give legitimate_reason for

this
recoil ; secondly, | from _a_ romantic _ and aesthetic ‘theoryof .
individuality, which
w makes use of certain modern biological
discoveries, and then condenses them into a pseudo-scientific
philosophy of race-values. Contact with a human being wl who
does_ not belong to one’s own race arouses.a.natural instinct
SAO See Teen

of
repulsion,
f
repulsion, a feeling which might be thus expressed
in rational
' terms, “This is a human creature of a different kind from
myself; I do not want to have anything to do with him, and
I ought not to have anything to do with him either.’ This
feeling of repulsion is, of course, mixed with otherr
feelings:
curiosity, amusement, fear and a_sense of‘something uuncanny,
etc. ‘What
Wha ‘is_the
is signs ie aoftthese. ‘natural _feelings? And.
“how far are they spiritually justified? aed
~The first point to note is this, that ‘we must use the concept —
of race very cautiously because we are still in the dark about
the origin of the various races in nature, with their many
variations in type.’ ‘Race is a concept of natural science and
not of historical science.’* Secondly, it is a fact which can be
proved that the race-instinct, that feeling of repulsion, varies
a good deal among ‘races’ which from the point of view of
‘blood’ are very nearly related, as for instance the Jews and
the Arabs. Here it would seem as though historical, rather
than racial and blood characteristics and attitudes were
operative. Thirdly, we must distinguish between facts which
can be established by natural science, and a wild mythology
of race, springing from a source which is very far from scien-
tific, but which apes the appearance of science;? as a rule it
is the latter which hardens into political slogans, programmes
and actions. The practical. problems _do..not..arise..so..much,..in......
the facts
at of race itself_as in that romantici¢_race-philosophy zand_.
‘mythologsy which has just “been me oned; it is this which—
ae , however, with fundamental torical facts, at least
inx Bie sphere of ‘white’ civilization—creates practical problems.
What then, from. thepointof view of the Biblical knowledge
of God, are we
we tothink o
of the rz
race ‘problem?
1 W. Classen, in Religion in Casehichte aid Gegenwart, IV, col. 1704.
2 According to the view of the experts, Giinther’s well-known work,
Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, belongs to this category.
33!
 ' MAN IN REVOLT

So far as the actual empirical situation isconcerned,.in.this,.

as in other questions ofNatural sscience, we must not expect
mney
to.find_am
any special doctrine in the Bible, We must be quite
prepared for the possibility that, as a result of scientific
research, it might be established that the human race is not
a unity, that indeed it may have had a plural and not a single
origin;1 although, until the present day, certainly, very little
has been proved to have been established as ‘truth’ by science.
Neither in this nor in other questions which affect the growth
of man? may we conduct an apologetic for the Biblical
narratives ; and we must not allow ourselves to be led astray
by the fact that the New Testament,® in this as in other
cosmological questions, simply follows the Old Testament.
It is from science and not from the Bible that we must learn
about the racial origin of peoples and races, with their blood-
relationships and their empirical qualities.
_But so far as the significance of these facts—which have been
ascertained _empirically_ and _scientifically—is concerned, “the
: whole situationisquite ¢ different. Although we are not justified
in “deducing any kind of palaeontological anthropological
science from the Bible, it is clear, on the other hand, that the _
view of the human race as a unity is afundamental cca
eines

‘absolute“dogma” ‘ofthe-faith | based on“the Scriptures. All ae

chief Christian doctrines which concern man, beginning with
the central dogma of the Incarnation of Gene in Jesus Christ,
by which the whole human race, with all its races, is included
in the redemption, the doctrine of the IJniago Dei and the
peccatum originis, either have no validity at all, or have absolute
validity, which means that they exclude every kind of racial
discrimination. ‘In Christ’ there is not only ‘neither Jew nor
Greek, Barbarian nor Scythian,! but also ‘there__ “is_neither
‘black nor white nor yellow. From the very outset the Christian
Church has held this view in its missionary practice, and since
1 Cf. the informing report on the latest anthropological research in the
sphere of natural science by Titius, Natur und Gott, pp. 538 ff. Also Bavink,
| Ergebnisse und Probleme der Naturwissenschaften, fifth edition, pp. 468 ff. ‘Man
stands indubitably in the line of descent from the animal world’ (p. 477),
put ‘real religion has nothing to do with this question of man’s genealogy’
(p. 478). "2 Cf. Chap. XVII.
3 Cf. Acts xvii. 26; Rom. v. 12, 18. £ Colfaii- oer.

3a
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

then it has never beeni

in any ¢
doubt about it for a moment.
The question is only: what is the relation between the two
Views,
,_which
which seem
SeemaOtEEE0 beopposed to one another, of
the unity and non-unity of‘the
t |human race? And what |are
the consequences, especially “the practical consequences, of
each of them?
To_ this question we_must reply first, that the religious
belief iin the nmeoftthehhuman race through ttheCreation,
“In an the Divine ‘image, is completely “independent «of
all biological, palacontological, sc
scientific. te The story
of Adam in Genesis expresses, in historical form, it is true, a
fact which in itself is super-empirical and super-historical;
the biological ‘enealogical question. has very little to do with
‘beliefin the unity ofthe creation. That which is a unity from
the one point of view may, or may not, from the other point
of view, be a non-unity. We declare, as those who take their
point of view from the truth of the Bible, that we are com-
pletely indifferent to the question of biological genealogy.
The unity of the divine creation of man lies upon a. quite
different plane. Humanity is not “necessarily a unity from the
“zoological point _ of view; it may indeed be composed of —
ifferent species of differing origin or it may not. It is, how-
ever, beyond all doubta unity, a humanitas, through
through ithe=
Jumanum, its one origin and its one destiny iinerener
'$ creative
Word and ‘plan of salvation, “spiritually given to man by
samc: a
This does not mean that all races or all peoples—however
the concept of the ‘people *(Volk)mayy be more exactly defined,
and the origin of a nation (people) be conceived—haye the
same mental and spiritual endowments. The one and_ the
S ame humanum, the fact of beingcreated in and for the image
of
of God, <and the fact that man has fallen aw
away from God
‘through. ssin, is undoubtedl: y differentiated and. graduated, in.
‘different ways
w in individual groups. “Speaking quite generally,
there are races and peoples which are more or less highly
endowed than others, just as there are more or less gifted
individuals. There is thus a general differentiation and grada-
tion of talents. To this we must add at once, however, that
there are also|
differences in
in the types of gifts and talents and.
333
 MAN IN REVOLT

that the distribution of these again ismore or less ‘accidental’

‘andirrational. The Greeks are not in everyrespect
the most
highly gifted people in world history; the white and the
yellow races are not superior to the black in every respect.
Not only is there a racial, and perhaps also to a certain
extent a’ national, differentiation of cultural gifts, but there —
may possibly be also a different ‘average endowment’ in the
_moral and religious sphere. “But this differentiation t akess place
‘entirely iin the relative realm, that of the ‘‘more or less.’ The
elements which compose the ‘humanum are blended differently, .
and they are represented in a different degree. But the essential
elements are never wholly absent, and they _ are everywhere
‘limited, “They bear a ‘different | imprint, , but at bottom they
fee id
in common that which is essential and fundamental.
\ Every race is capable of civilization and of culture, though
not to thé same extent, nor in the same way. Every human
being, to whatever race he may belong,shares in the common
treasureof th1 humanums he is able _ to understand all thatis
essentia human ; there is a common
on human. ‘understanding.
ser concepts like joy, fidelity, well--doing, justice, of course
also of all logical.‘categories—and_ of valuation, The decisive
“point, however, is this—for here alone lies the origin of being-
a-self and of being-for--community, of the materially human
pues“(_fithat_no no race
race ar
and no people isunable to understand the
Ved a
_Message
essage of Jesus.
Jesus (Christ,
C of
ofthe1Divine _plan of salvation.
RY SATE TE
The missionary “work
_ of
of the ¢Church proves. this athousand
times_over.} * None of the languages ‘of the negro peoples, not
even the most primitive, has proved unsuitable for the trans-
lation of the Bible; in no race and no tribe has the Church in
the mission-field met with a hopelessly closed mind to the
message of God, the Creator and Redeemer. However great
the initial difficulties may have been, yet missionary zeal and
effort, supported by the love of Christ, have always and
everywhere been rewarded by indubitable success, sometimes
amazingly great and sometimes modest. This means that no
kind of race or people forms a definite hindrance to the true
1 Cf. for instance Warneck, The Living Forces of the Gospel, and the paper
on Race Problems in Missionary Work in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart,
IV, col. 1706 ff., and Oldham, Christianity and the Race Problem.

334
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

Biblical-Christian self-understanding of man. On the contrary,

in this decisive fact—in comparison with which all cultural
differences fade into insignificance, one point stands out above
all others (and this has beenproved repeatedly),), namely, that
eto

the true evelopment o of man

1 as man, which “springs from the
‘original being of man in n accordance with
w the aim of the.
Creation, is com letely inde
in endent of his ‘intellectual ‘culture.
c
the.
The tace,
race diferentiation,L_whchads

of essential humanity. Asal the black orones‘yellow or the

white races are more capable of faith and love in the sense of
the Gospel, and thus of genuine human existence, is a question
which may be shelved as a misunderstanding, both from the
point of view of experience and of that of the fundamental
truths of Creation and Redemption. Ever _one who bears.
the human. ce..can_be..addressed by theD
Divi
vine...
ospel, whereas in principle, and also fromthe explicit state-
ment of the Bible, the animal cannot be thus addressed. The
only limitation which we know is not that of race, but that
of the completely pathological individual nature, on the one
hand, and, on the other, the mystery of the divine and the
human personal decision of which we can never have any
final knowledge.

4. THE PSYCHICAL AND MENTAL INDIVIDUALITY OF

THE INDIVIDUAL

The individual psychical .and _mental distinctiveness of the

_individual ‘human being isi the.favourite anthropological 1
Meer
theme
“of ‘modern.
mode inc ividualistic 3man, out. of all proportion to the
“objective ‘importance 0of.‘this question. All that the human
being who has forgotten the real point of human life knows
of the fact that ‘everything does not come to the same in the
end’ is this unimportant point: all human beings are not alike,
' but are unlike. For our part, however, we must not, fall into _
the opposite error ‘and. treat ‘individual diffe rentiation. ;as a
reansinnquantity. That would beiin “Opposition to our view
of the significance of individuality which ‘we gained from the
idea of the Creation. But from the outset we must bring “the
question into “proportion with others. The individual differ-
335
 MAN IN REVOLT

ence is not unimportant, but it is a secondary fact, not only

for anthropology in general, but also for every individual
human being. We cannot regard it as ultimately very impor-
tant, but we can only regard it as of second-rate
and even
third-rate importance. Within
Witl this clear delimitation, how-
_ever, it must not be ignored, because were we to do. ‘so it
ould certainly feel obliged to exaggerate its importance by
SaaS the relative ee ince it does possess.

<Cs Since the Charities ‘of, Thesonrateae ‘and the eons

of the ‘temperaments’ of Hippocrates and Galen, and, in
particular, since the characterological efforts of the Renais-
sance psychologists, the distinction betweentypical individual
differences has been a favourite theme off psychology. Hippo-
“crates’ theory of “the four temperaments is an attempt—still
worthy of respect at the present day+—to understand the
differences in human beings from their emotional reactions.
There may be more psycho-physical wisdom in his theory of
the relation between ‘temperament’ and ‘body-juices’ than in
recent times one has been willing to admit. But in any case
this is not the only possibility of psychological formation of
types. At _the present time, in particular, Jung’s attempt to
create ‘a new
ew psychological _typology has rightly ‘gained | con-
sideration.’ The distinction between the introvert. and. “the
_extravert, the
t types of‘feeling, thought, emotion and intuition,
and the recognition |“of the ‘complementary ‘spheres of the
‘conscious’ and the ‘unconscious,” with all the variety of
cross-possibilities to which this gives rise, actually provides an
Anstructive schema for the andetncn es the countless
"varieties of psychical typés:On the shee “hand, in Jung
‘especially, we see how difficult it is not to confuse psychical
individuality with the results of personal decision. Psychical
individuality must primarily—in spite of fluid Hanctoe ne
distinguished |from personal character. A man has his psychical _
ty e from. tthe day of his birth, but not his’character. AA man
- tPA NEEE AeTRiy elt rene ei Sacto vodinaiianainal

1 The fact that a thinker like Kant paid great attention to this theory
(cf. his Anthropologie) is decidedly in its favour.
2 C. G. Jung, Psychologische Typen.

336
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

or woman is born with a definite ‘temperament,’ but not

with a definite attitude towards life.
Now, however, it becomes evident that in the light of the
‘temperaments,’ as well as in that of modern psychological
types, a person’s ‘psychological make-up’ has somee
relation _
to.
to the spiritual and personal aspect of his nature.. An extremely
‘sanguine’ temperament, “for example, or an extreme type of
extravert, is incompatible with a ‘deeper’ fundamental per-
sonal aptende: This cannot mean that_a human |being. of this
kind would nott be.capable. of a deeper attitude; it can only
mean tl
‘the exact opposite, namely, |thatentrance ‘into faith, and
livingin faith, will have a Tetrospective ¢
action upon ‘the innate _
'Psychical ty
type, and will transform it. ‘The innate element, %s
‘therefore, isi not absolutel unchangeable. ‘The inborn typical
‘or individual element is only a relative constant. It will, it is
true, remain operative as an initial constant through all
personal changes, but it will always be one which will never be
perceived from the outset, nor will it ever be definitely grasped.
We have already pointed out that the rigid contours with
which the psychical types are distinguished from one another
in the state of nature are dimmed by a strongly personal and
spiritual life, and are replaced, or, to put it more correctly,
superimposed by an imprint of a quite different kind and
one which is not natural. Thus the effect_of the spiritual life
on the one-sidedness of temperament and on psychical pecu-
liarities, isthat itsmooths out differences. The more a human
“being “has.‘a
a genuinely |personal life, ‘the more that he-lives 1in
NRA AB) PRASAD AAN TH PNA SEN
faian
faith andlove,
and | the less ‘will one perceive ia him: ‘of3a
aspecial
“temperament or ofa.“pronounced psychologicaltype, while
POA tay

he now has far more ‘personality’ of a distinctive kind than he

had when he did not possess this personal element. His inborn
individuality has been fused, it is true, with this personalimprint;
but in being fused it has also been transformed. On the other
hand, development in the other direction, that 1s, sin, causes’
the harsher aspects ‘of the “natural ‘psychical pecu larities to.
stand out more plainly, and, as we saw in the previous chapter,
‘it turns them into characters which are almost caricatures. This
could be easily illustrated bv pictureslikethose of Daumuer.
In the psychical type, in the psychical individuality, per-
337
 MAN IN REVOLT

sonal differences are as it were dimly pre-formed; every

psychical peculiarity, |every psychical type has, so to speak, |
an affinity with a definite spiritual attitude. “But this
is affinity
‘must not bemisunderstood as an absolutely” ‘determining
fase ceded ems aren om

‘factor.
The person is concealed withinthis”psychical form;
it_may identif itself with. it,it
it 7may come ‘completely under
“its sway—it then ‘always becomes something different, namely
a definite character—but it is not obliged to do so, The attitude
expressed in the phrase,UNGALT ewhear I am! implying
that there is no hope of alteration, is always a sinful, mis-
understanding of man, a denial of his personal self. Only an
animal would have the right to say this; but the animal does
not say so because it knows nothing about it. The psychical
individual disposition is always detached from the person not
only by faith, but also, even if in a different way, by sin.
Even the unbeliever has the possibility of ‘moulding’ himself,
of altering the general tendency of his life with which he was
born. But in faith alone does man gain the right relation to
this natural psychical tendency. He makes a fundamental
distinction between the nature which is derived from the
Creation and nature which has been influenced by sin; he —
does not deny that which exists by nature, but he also does
not absolutely.iidentify himse
himself
elf with” it. He understands this
Nature of his as a world connected with his existence, and
indeed specially ordered for it, which is for him, as for every-.
one else, both a gift and a task, something which has to be
moulded and transformed, something to be accepted with
gratitude, and yet at the same time in penitent obedience to
be rejected. He does not rebel, like the man who regards
himself wrongly as a purely spiritual being, |against _ his
“creaturely being, which iis what it1s, and cannot be altered ;
‘but_he also. does not “capitulate to it,like the man “WHS
regards himself, wrongly,
wr as a mere "prodnct of nature. But
“how he does either the one or the other belongstothe sphere
of ethical rather than of anthropological problems.
5. GENIUS AND THE “AVERAGE MAN”
Genius is a kind of spiritual individuality. The spiritual
endowment which, “when atTeaches itss highest form,, is called
338
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

genius, is, as the words ‘gifted’ and ‘genius’ Suggest, something

given by nature, something which one receives at birth. In
our post-ermaene age it is particularly necessary to emphasize
the relative character of the distinction between genius and
non-genius, or as in romantic arrogance it is expressed :genius
versus the ‘average man.’ Genius is a special degree of mental
endowment, so great that it may even appear to be a new
quality. In reality every human being, to a certain degree,
and in some particular direction, ‘has genius, and especially
“every child. The creative ‘endowment may be very “great or _
very small, but to acertain extent every human. being possesses
ap POII
Jit, Hence there is no.fixed ‘boundary between, the man who.
‘has genius and the man who has not. In cases where there
seems to be a complete absence of every spark of creative
power, this is always due to either the loveless superficiality
of our vision or to a lack of opportunity for the development
of dormant faculties. The teacher in special classes for back-
ward children knows something of the wealth of creative
ability—even if of a very modest kind—in the most dull and
backward children. Yet there is a boundary line which is also
the boundarycof all human existence. known to us: the idiot.
The element of truth in the romantic concept of genius as
a special quality, is this, that genius is not so much a wealth_
ALA Ee hd mean
of gifts, and not even a supreme measure of one “particular.
gift, but—in contrastto. reat talent—an_ all-round? Spiritual
mf _alertness, a general qu ality “of.originality irin_Seeing and in
thinking. Yet even this 1s
1 relative, It exists certainly in a “great.
number of degrees and grades, and it is not lacking in any
.a rnene

‘normal’ human. being as a whole. Every human being who

has not become rigidly fixed within systems of convention and
training, thus every person who has remained natural, every
human being in whom the child has not wholly died out
under the artificialities of civilization and culture, has some-
thing original, which is connected with genius, Geniuses and
children _ love one another. The most important _element.
¢ of .
genius is icy: naturalness which cannot be dragooned. Here,
however, we are particularly concerned with this question:
What has this question of the degree of mind, of its quantum,
or the degree of originality of vital intellectual power to do
339
 MAN IN REVOLT

with man, with personal being in the sense of the Christian

faith?
It_is clear that where humanity is measured by cultural —
rather. than personal standards, genius mustbe_ immensely
over-estimated. The genius is then pre-eminenttly ‘ man,’ and
‘the 1non-genius is a kind of ‘throw-out.’! This aesthetic nce
point makes us, as we know, ignore the essential element of
humanity. The genius may be reallyinhuman,
ir while a _very
simple 5person.
without genius may be truly|human. The ‘degree
‘of mental endowment has nothing to do with the distinctively
human element. It is merely a dynamic sign of human or
non-human existence. If the man of genius is truly human,
in the sense_of personal. being... then. certainly his humanity
will be something far more impressive and powerful, and
‘historically
more effective than that ofthe man without genius.
Hence—and this is the other side of the question—we must
always _make_aa distinction”“between that whichids remarkable i

‘isdue to tthe fact that he isa genius. The estimate of person-

“alities who have been prominent in ‘the history of Christianity
is very often obscured by the confusion of the two standards.
A man may play an influential part in the history of the
“Church __because_his faith was combined with great genius,
without. his faith having | been at all extraordinary. Kierke-
gaard, in particular, has pointed out the possibilities of error
which lie in this situation. In his own person he learned to
know the difference between ‘an apostle and a genius’? in all
its range and existential depth, and he brought this out very
clearly with humility and passion.
1 Cf. Lucka, Grenzen der Seele, second part, p. 191: ‘Genius... is a
higher synthesis of nature and freedom, it is a superlative, an ideal of the
human, it is the necessary man, to whom there clings no longer anything
accidental. In the genius there comes before our eyes a fortunate solution
of the tragedy of humanity.’ This is the necessary consequence of the
conception: ‘Human nature in the highest sense is productivity; and so
the maximum of the human can only lie in unconditional productivity’
(p. 192). 4
* Kierkegaard, Das Buch iiber Adler and Uber den Unterschied zwischen einem
Apostle und einem Genie, edited and translated by Th. Haecker under the
title Der Begriff des Auserwahlten.

340
 INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY

On the other hand, however, the fact of idiocy shows us that,

we have no right to make a dualistic distinction between
the being of man and his intellectual endowments. Without. ;
a eee
a certain measure of intellectual gifts itisiimpossible tobe
human. Without that mind which at its zenith is called genius,
‘man cannot even understand the fact that he is man, and he
cannot make decisions in the sense of personality. The mind, anaemia ts ote

_as we pas already said, is the basis of being person. One does
WrosenHeprenee ae Sot aeRO
HI eR

“not need to have a great mind to be a person who truly believes

and loves; but if one has no mind—as an idiot—one cannot _ BELINDA RD

_even | believe.“The resu sition for1

the.‘understanding. of the
RADA ace

“Word of God.is_understanding in general, the understanding _

of words, in the general,purely human. sense. What that
sit den peices Ao aa % ee
pooreee)

creature which, in the extreme case, so far as we know, |has

‘not a spark of intelligence means in the Family of God, we. |
‘do not know; we only know that it is inaccessible to the —
Oot rea maa eT,
message«of — “Word of God, thus that in this life it cannot
ere ONC

become a believer, because it cannot understand human speech.

It is, however, more than probable that even the most vacant _
mooie teeta: Eo nt
idiot can beapproached iin sore way or another by real love,
‘and thusis not withouta‘glimmer of personal being. In spite
ah RefRETCINK Sashes os

ASEAN DPE SELLE

“of this, such cases are extreme instances, whose significance

we cannot understand.}
A man CTSAShad RI
is ‘born’ either as a genius or a non-genius. No
dn PR St St yh Datasets

schooling, cultivation, “discipline, labour, either of his own or

of someone else, can make the man who is not a genius into
a genius. Thecapital of mental capacity which isat our
ornate nner Hetenons oe

disposal for‘life cannot

ot be created by human effort or even
“be increased |by it. On the other hand, it can either be de-
_stroyed,or
more orless “cultivated, that is,developed. Human
ee ip eALOSatene

Teulues are far less limited on the negative than on the positive
side. As we are able to annihilate life but not to create it, so
1 Since the Bible clearly presupposes the nous of man as the place and
organ of faith, and the meta-noein is contained in the process of faith itself,
it is not permissible to emphasize the creative power of the preached Word
of God to such an extent that the relation to the receiving nous and to the
understanding act of the thought of man is left out of account, in order
not to be obliged to admit that there is a point of contact. The point of
contact is indeed precisely characterized as a dialectical one by the
meta-noein. Cf. Appendix III.
34!
 MAN IN REVOLT

also we are able to destroy mind but not to create it, The
vicious man may for ever ruin his genius, his intellectual ace
artistic powers. But there is also the opposite _possibilit
developing, these gifts., ‘The sum-total of that which we.
the ability to do, in order to develop the creative a SP
which we possess, we call ‘education.’ It is possible, by mental
practice, by the absorption of influences outside ourselves, by
the active use of our faculties, to promote, to a high degree,
mental capacity and vigour, just as, on the other hand, it is
possible to allow it to wither away by ignoring it. But this does
not alter the fact that the endowments themselves, as such,
“are not in our hands at all We can only cultivate Thac whol
is already there; cultivation is not creation. Through culti-
vation one becomes “Cultivated, but not_aa genius.
Even the
highest cultivation can never popiace genius, just as the con-
verse also is true. Both, close as they are to one another, are
incommensurable. aN
A ence Carlyle’ s contention,’ that genius and __personal
humanity are
ar ultimately 1the same thing, that thegreat man,
in the sense of the genius, must also be a truly great human
person, contradicts the truth, as indeed it is contradicted by
the actual experience of life. Through personal self-deter-
mination, through character and the content of humanity,
an endowment or a genius may gain a definite tendency, but
it is itself independent of it. It is and remains a mental natural
power, a quantum, which man cannot increase by his own
efforts. And yet between the two there is at least an 1 analogous
and indirect relation. Genuine love has something” of an
:affinity with ger
genius, _in'its own way itiscreative. ‘Love makes
“us inventive’ is said even of natural love. The phrase iis still
more applicable if we refer to it that love ‘which is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.? For this love touches
the roots of the personal life; indeed it is its deepest root—of
that Self which is hidden for us in the Word of God. Not.in
vain does the New Testament call this love ‘living water,’
describing it as the beginning of eternal life. Through |faith
we participate in the Divine life, and thus ay some way “we
also. participate in a creative Ate;
Wet ees

2 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship. * Rom. v.'5. $ John vii. 38.
342
 INDIVIDUALITY: AND HUMANITY

It is true, of course, that no one becomes a mathematician

or an artist or a thinker of genius simply because he is a
genuine believer. But when he becomes a believer powers
-are released which he did not know he possessed _before. If
‘in
in Jesus “Christ ‘all the treasures of wisdom are hidden,! the
believer gains a perception which, without beingo onthat aa en

‘account ‘genius,’ pierces “more deeply iinto._truth, ‘and ssoars

pats haealla “wisdor
om and ‘philosophy. Through
‘Tove, above ahe receives kind
a of alertness about
all that
concerns human existence. which.
h amounts to
to genius,,:an alert-—
“hess about all that concerns the personal life, or his neighbour,
a keen and profound insight for that hicks his fellow-man
‘really’ is, and what he needs most desperately and what he
lacks ; a wisdom which in its absolutely original, unschematic,
unique, individual and personal character Presents _a remark-
able analogy to genius. Through faith man is set free from
all that islegalistic—in such a way that this freedom, con-
versely, is a standard of faith—and in this experience is set
free from much that prevents the truly natural, truly creat-
urely life from natural development. Through faith therefore.
human beingswith a very modest
m oes
outfittofintellectual | |powers
ea

mental ‘independence ‘and. “freedom _of“spirit,ERECT

“clearness, compared ‘with which a far greaterrintellectual
ability ‘looks meagre. “The fine phrase of Schiller: ‘Man grows
with his great ends,’ here gains a wonderful confirmation upon
a higher plane—presupposing always that here, where the
highest ‘aim’ of all is concerned, he is really, and with all his
heart and soul, concerned with the ‘one thing needful.’
This, however, cannot be our final word, but rather that
‘what is foolishness in the sight of the world, that God has
chosen to confound the wise.’ The ‘wisdom which is from
above’ and the ‘wisdom of the world’ ;areof two kinds, although
even the latter has_its ground in. the Divine ‘Speer nee — is
not forus to pay special attention to ‘the fact that faith ‘may
thus in some way or another make us far more intelligent’—
if anyone were to strive after this he would be bitterly dis-
appointed—our aim rather should be to see that through
1 Col. ii. 3. 2 1 Cor, i. 27.
343
 MAN IN REVOLT

faith, and through it alone, we return to the divine destiny

of man, which in our own wisdom we are continually leaving,
that faith isi only given to those who perceive the nothingness
of all human
h gifts in view of the one thing that matters, and
who jjoin in the act of praise of the Lord Himself: ‘I praise
Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hidden
these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes. Yea, Father, for so.it seemed good in Thy
sight.’?
——
* * * * *

Thus there is a Christian Humanism,’ by which we do

not me an that “combination of ancient Humanism with the
Christian faith whose _ patron and example _is Erasmus of
“Rotterdam, but the ‘knowledge of and insistence on the unity
“of humanity, and’ of” Particular dignity and ‘divine dis-
tinctiveness of man’s being which is based 7upon ‘the centre
‘of the Biblical revelation. Genuine Christian Humanism “is
“based 1 upon ‘the fact of the Incarnation of the Son of God,
which, for its part, points back to the creation of man in the
image of God. Even sin—and in the counterpart ‘of the Divine
revelation: the Cross of Christ—does not alter the fact but
rather confirms it, that man is singled out by the Creator in
an unparalleled way as the one in whom the Creation has
reached its summit, whose redemption, therefore, is also the
aim and the meaning of the whole of history. Man—not the
Aryan, not the male, not the civilized man, not the bearer
of spiritual values, not the superman of the future—but_all
who bear the human face. There is only one distinction which
isdecisive, this indeed decides for time and eternity: ‘that
all who believe on Him should not perish, but should have
everlasting life.2 In the end, the only differentiation which
matters is this:whether man returnsto“his ¢originin orremains
in his alienation, in his opposition to the Word in. which he
‘has_been
-en_created, It is notthe formal humanity upon, which —
Humanism _ suilds, but ‘this content
c which 1is decisive; hence —
the 1meaning ‘of man’s being iis not securedin something which
cannot be altered, but it is a matter for decision.
—
1 Matt. xi. 25. 2 John iii. 16.

344
 CHAPTER XV

e MAN AND WOMAN

I, THE SEX DIFFERENCE AS CREATION

Tue problem of the sexes and of sexuality is primarily one _
ofthe >_phenomena. o of‘the.“problem, of individuality. A human
“being iis individualized just as much by the fact of being male
or female as by the fact that he or she belongs to a particular
race, or has a peculiar psychical ‘make-up,’ or by his or her
intellectual endowments; the human element is differentiated
in a definite way by the fact of belonging: to the male or the
female sex. In spite of this, however, we are not dealing with
this question in that context; the reasonis that the sex
“difference | penetratessffarmore
me “deeply |
‘than “all
Ilindividuality,
‘and that the - problem _‘of “sexuality _is far more funda-
mental than | that of individual characteristics. We cannot
say that humanity is divided into the ‘sanguine’ and the
‘choleric’ temperament, into extraverts and introverts, into
white or colovred races, into geniuses and non-geniuses; but
humanity certainly is divided into men and women, and this
distinction goes down to the very roots of our personal exis-
tence,, and penetrates into the deepest ‘metaphysical’ grounds
of our personality and our destiny. Just as the problem of
marriage is the crucial point and the fateful question in ethics,
so is the problem of the sexes in anthropology. And the sex
difference has this fateful significance not only for the philo-
sophers, who from the very outset only have ‘man’ in view—
and as a rule this means the male—but for the poets of all

1 Still philosophers like Schelling, and especially Wilhelm von Humboldt,

have said some valuable things about sex as an anthropological problem
(cf. the work by the latter entitled Uber die méannliche und weibliche Form,
Werke, vol. 1). It is well known that Goethe’s thought from beginning to
end continually revolves round this problem, and that it is determinative
in Dante’s vision of the world. In Plato it is indicated, and after him it
scarcely plays’ any part in ancient philosophy. (In Posidonius it is at
least mentioned, in connexion with cosmic sympathy, Reinhardt, op. cit.,
p--127.)
345 —
 5

MAN IN REVOLT

ages and all kinds, for the folk-soul which forms myths, that
is, for the living ‘natural man’ as such. Has the Bible anything
distinctive to say about this problem?
‘So God created man in His own image, in the image of
God created He him; male and female created He them.’!
That is the immense double statement, of a lapidary sim-
plicity, so simple indeed that we hardly realize that with it
a vast world of myth and Gnostic speculation, of cynicism
and asceticism, of the deification of sexuality and fear of sex
completely disappears. It seems so incredibly naive to couple
the statement that ‘man was made in the image of God’ with
thestatement’
that Cod ‘created them, one man and one
woman. And yet in the whole long history of man’s under-
“standing of himself this statement has only been made once
and at this point. Otherwise, in a hundred different ways,
man has always said something else which contradicts this
statement; sometimes he says too little and sometimes too
much ; sometimes one aspect or another of the problem has
been over-emphasized ; at other times men have cursed the
fact that it exists at all. On account of this one statement alone
the Bible shines out among all other books in the world as
the Word of God. So there is a connexion between these two
statements: God created man in His image, and, He created
him as man and woman. It will be worth while thinking deeply
about this, that we too may say neither too much nor too
little about it.
- It is well known that it is not correct to say that bi-sexuality
is characteristic of all natural life. There is life which is not
sexually differentiated, there are asexual creatures which are
reproduced by division into cells, and there are bi-sexual
creatures which have the sex differentiation in themselves.
It is not a foregone conclusion that man should not belong to
these creatures but to those which pair. To use zoological
terms, for once, man
is the one perfect mammal, since that
tendency which we recognize in the mammalian species the
more highly it develops as its biological idea is expressed quite
clearly in man alone; I_mean, the fact that the partners
1 Gen. i. 27. For this whole chapter see the important book by Otto
Piper, Sinn und Geheimnis der Geschlechter.
346
 MAN AND WOMAN

remain together, and

an that the young remain with their ‘Parents;
permanent pairing andpermanent
p provision for the young.
In man, however, marriage and the family turns out to be
something which cannot be realized on the natural plane, ee
but is only possible as an ethical institution. Only in the on

_personal relation of marriage is the biological meaning of the?

_natural pairingfulfilled’ Even from this one fact we perceive \ |
“that the. sexuality of man is not a ‘merely -natural|factpambe.
biological sense of the word.
~~ Certainlyman isprimarilyasex-being in the sense of natural
disposition and function. But this sexual disposition.isnot...
something purely natural—as po for “instance, the. “digestive
_system. It cee mine the “whole. psych ical‘and, even
the spiritual nature ‘of.the man “and 1the woman. Just as the
whole ‘physical nature of man is connected with and indeed
penetrated by the organic sex function, so also is his psychical
and spiritual being. Conversely, the.spiritual and psychical
human quality. permeatesthe sexual.function, sothat we may
er rr j
/

even venture to say that man does not know the animal Sex
instinct. The sexuality of man_ is always, in some way or Rh

another, connected with love,! and it is the love element. a \ me

Ks aay

which characterizes it as either Spiritual ‘OF: demonic. The

animal does not know love, because it has no ideas, and
above all, because it can khow nothing of love as beeonal
fellowship. On the other hand, even so-called ‘primitive’
people know nothing of animal sexuality; in some form or
another their sexuality always contains an ethical, personal
element. The complete elimination of the personal love ele-
ment and of the personal ethical element is not characteristic
of human nature; it is a phenomenon of a decadent civiliza-
tion. But we would be sentimentally romantic about nature
and shut our eyes to facts if we were to believe in a condition
of pure ‘nature,’ for instance, among primitive peoples. Just.
asthespecifically human element iis never completely absent_
from_t]the _sexuality “of man, “everywhere. there can be found—
‘something of that unnatural ‘demonic deformation of sexuality
which_ is_acking in the_animal, as well as the distinctively
pe Or OL ORE
EAT ETO

: Giant Erotik. The meaning of this term is fully discussed in Eros

und Liebe by Emil Brunner.— Translator.
347
 MAN IN REVOLT

human element.? But the more that man comes to conscious-

ness of himself the more he feels his sexuality as a problem,
as an experience in which pleasure and pain, light and dark-
ness, freedom and slavery are mysteriously intertwined. Here
too the_experience of man himself forces us_to lay emphasis
upon ‘the twofold. point of view : Cr n_and sin,
Tierae SHES

2. THE RENT, SHAME AND LONGING

The statement that God created them, man and woman,
implies that the myth of the androgynes is an impossibility for
Christian thought. This ought to be specially emphasized
because—as has happened frequently in the past—there is at
the present day a Gnostic tendency which represents the fact
of the two sexes as a result of the Fall. This view is of Greek
and pagan, not of Biblicai origin.? But we do not deny the
important truths which lie behind this old Gnostic doctrine.
The sexuality which we know from human experience does
in pint of fact bear witness to a vast rent which runs right
through human nature, and comes out in thisparticular sphere
‘withspecial |poignancy. “There are two facts which accompany
‘all ‘Tove’
‘Ic -and especially ,all genuinely “human ‘love’ —in the
sense of sex attraction: a shame which cannot be¢overcome,
andalonging which cannot be satisfied. Sexual shameis not,
‘asa superficial |materialism would suggest, something which
is artificially produced, something added, but it isa genuine _
human feeling, founded deeply in human nature. To know
nothing of this sense of shame is not a sign of a specially high
kind of humanity, but is a token of perversion. Man is not
merely ashamed of the sexuality which is forbidden to him
morally, but shame accompanies him even into the com-
pletely personal ‘sex-relation i
in marriage, and indeed the more
“he determines himself as person, the more spiritual his exis-
tence, the more is he aware of this. We cannot think of our
Lord as married, although we are not in the least jarred by
the fact that He ate and drank like the rest of mankind. Even

1 It is enough to recall the story of the destruction of Sodom (Gen. xix).

2 The most important champion of the Gnostic myth of the androgynes
in modern times is Berdyaev. Cf. his Destiny of Man (German translation,
pp. 89 ff.).
348
 MAN AND WOMAN

the doctrine of the Virgin Birth points in this direction—

whatever we may think about it from other points of view.
It_would appear that in sexuality there is something which
is
pA fundamentally ar
and irreparably out oforder, thatis, out of
the divine o
order.
But_the immense Jonging, the longing which cannot be
stilled, which iss expressed in the love lyrics of all ages and
peoples, also points to this fundamental rent. Certainly, it is
first of_ all Jonging for the_ beloved, for full union with him
or her. But is that all? Does there not lie behind all fulfilment,
and indeed within it, that longing for something more com- __
| plete? Ts itnot true that here the phrase ‘enough is not enough’
is very apt? Thus is there not here a division which no intimate
communion with one another can overcome, even if neither
the physical nor the mental and spiritual element of union
be lacking? Finally, may it not be possible that the myth
which teaches how wrong it is to say that man and woman
are two, when they really should be regarded as one, may
have some truth in it? Is it perhaps the case that sexual polarity
is a cosmic potency far beyond all sex experience, a meta-
physical principle of duality which indicates a metaphysical
division at the very source of life itself?
The Bible says, however, in the simplestand plainest lan- SNARE
Suage tthat one can “imagine: “God created them, man and
woman. “Then what is the meaning of this duality? And from —
thispointof
c view how are we to understand that complex. of aerate
facts which leads so many—even ‘Christian—thinkers to the
tnyth of the androgynes? The first question we can best answer
in the negative. The desire for the overcoming of sex duality
belongs to an (openly or:
orhiddenly monistic) way of thinking. —
“In“the Platonist idealism of the Spirit the thought of the
_androgynes 1Jsfully justified ;)
;1 in the thought of the Bible it is
1 Plato concesils his own view eta the poetical and ‘mythol ees —
speech of Aristophanes in the Symposium; but the fact that in this way he
suggests the myth of the androgynes is more than a merely poetic whim.
The theme recurs in W. v. Humboldt in his ‘idea of pure and sexless
humanity’ (Uber die mannliche und weibliche Form, Werke, 1, p. 351). Through
the revival of the interpretation of myths by Bachofen, and the neo-romantic
philosophy of the ‘cosmogonal Eros’ of Klages, this has once more become a
subject of ardent philosophical discussion.

349
 MAN IN REVOLT

not. Why? The argument from the fact of nature as such we

refuse to employ. God could have used both ways and means
to fit man out in such a way that his species could have
been handed on without the apparatus common to all mam-
mals, without procreation through pairing, just as God has
actually freed man from many of the laws to which the animal
series is subject. It was not to be so, He willed it otherwise,
somehow more humblingly for man. It_is not a necessity of
nature, but His will, which is the reason for this state of affairs;
and we may reverently make the attempt to understand this
will from the Scriptures as a whole. God creates us as finite,
creaturely beings, dependenupon each other,
t unable toexist
by ourselves, not asautonomous, self-sufficient beings. Pre-
‘dsely in this function, in which the Creator most fullyallows
us to share in His creative work, we are to experience this
fact, thatWeare made for and depend upon one another:
“Tfis
not good for man to be alone.” It is good for him, in view
of the constant danger of confusing himself with the Creative
Spirit, that, as a creature, he should have a part in that
arrangement which most fundamentally binds two beings to
one another, and thus makes each one dependent upon, and
“ needing to be supplemented by the other. The arrogant idea
of the self-sufficient individual person is here most effectively
reg aS EH TT
eliminated. PPE Tyr ene

Then what is the source of shame and paeing! To this the

answer of the Bible comes quite explicitly an plainly ;the
Fall. ‘The first effect of the Fall on the pair of human beings “~

created by God was: shame.? It is only now, after man and

. NS woman have sinned, that a rent goes right through their sex
nature and makes them ashamed of themselves. It is not their
sexuality
in itself which is the reasonfor their shame—before
. Mere
wparecniN ee 2

the Fall we are told explicitly ‘they were not ashamed’3—

but the nakedness unveiled by sin, which previously, like the
terrible majestyof God, was veiled from them by God’s loving
-, Word which united them. This does not mean that sexuality,
the sexual difference, and thepola of man~and
rity woman,
re
4s sin, but thatsin has entered into the sex relation in sucha
way that the sex nature and the personal life, sexuality and
1 Gen. ii. 18. 2 Gen, iii. 7. 3 Gen. ii. 25.
359
 MAN AND WOMAN ee
spiritual destiny, the sex creature and the spiritual creature
have become separated. Shame isthe «
expression of thissepara- * .
Ra that manis both the one and the .
‘other. Man now feels, and rightly, that the personal-spiritual “- ““”‘ ;
element and the sexuality which he now has are incompatible, pe vi
Af AX
and thus he feels that from the point 0:
of view of personal _7/’
existence sex does not aera TET
him; it 1 is low, and“pase, et? hea
humiliating animal nature. In shame, however, There is also,
with the feeling of surprise, the fear of something uncanny
and at the same time a curious desire for it.
This forms the bridge to the second element, to longing.
‘And thy desire shall be to thy husband’!—that is ‘the ‘cur:
curse
which follows the ‘Fall. Tt is not the sexual desire in itself
“which is regarded in “this light—the suggestion that husband
and wife should cleave unto one another, and that they should
become ‘one flesh’ comes before the story of the Fall?—but
what is wrong is greedy |desire and unsatisfied longing. Long-
ing, by its very nature, is unquenchable, whereas the natural
instinct can be satisfied. Man alone, by means of his spiritual
nature, knows what longing is. The relation between the sexes
which has fallenn_away from geenuine love, from. ‘the.‘realm, ofi
_the “personal, caicannot satisfy 3,it leaves a profound desire un-
satisfied, not the aspiration after.union, _but the desire for true Hy ,
‘community. In the actual union “itself tthere is division, caused empad
by sin, hence it does not satisfy, but leaves behind it an un- ~aod fy bs
satisfied desire. Butman,as sinner, is not capable of rightlyy U
interpreting this desire, and sin isso ‘deeply rooted in his
nature, that even the
correct interpretation alone would not
help. Only the complete return to love could banish_this,
division; but this return cannot t take place
p fully in
i anyy¢earthly-
historical “lie,since man, éven.
éven as a_believer, remains atthe
same t
time a sinner, since even in the believer that disinte-
Bration,, that.‘separation |‘between| personal |being and sexuality,
isstill to some extent
nt present.
~The whole complex of problems connected with the question
ofsexisbased upon this dualism ofperson and sex; the imper-
_sonality ‘of
0 ‘sexuality is
isthat which causes man so much trouble; —
erm

AN bein oo

atthe same> time It ‘Is tha’

at“which aarouses his desire because _it
eene toedheleee nee arn A Fern rc mut
1 Gen. iii. 16. : "2 Gen. ii. 24.

351
 MAN IN REVOLT

seems
non mysterious
SSIS a
and_
pees
rather
aS
frighteni
RIC eS RTL ace
andng, yet attractive.
oa ote Tc SeSiGiKS eeneeabioniaieRabeea

When he Eros has become. fully perso

=

(Di et case _this nal

mysterious
rabble SY TERA TANEN CE ETM S tno SORTS Ta ON
attraction,
ores
with its URAL
almost magical. appeal, disappears. That
pea es aoa AN aA sr le aT Ne
Perera
is why the prostitute makes herself as impersonal as possible,
that is why sex desire ‘needs’ depersonalizing secrecies and
obscurities in order to be effective. The Venusberg is lighted
with artificial light, the sexual deities are night-deities; this
whole sinfully-depersonalized Eros seeks the clair-obscur of the
semi-conscious and derives its force from this region. The
struggle arises between the Light God ‘Apollo’ and_ the
‘chthonic’! deities,? between the brightness of the spirit and
the darkness of passion, a struggle which, from the point of
view of man, can never end, because even the spirit is no
longer originally personal, but it has become abstract, part
of the realm of mere ideas. Neither Apollo nor the dim earth-
gods are ‘right,’ for this rationality lacks warmth, just as that
hot atmosphere lacks light. The severance of spirit and nature
by sin has now become above all the separation between
spirit and sex.

3. THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE NATURE

The depth of this division shows how deeply sexuality has
been implanted in the nature of man by the Creation. Man is |
not a sex being in addition to that which he is otherwise, but
oc nab anne a
/ the_sex_ difference penetrates and determines the whole of
human existence. The man is not only man in his sexual _
function, but he is man in all his thought and feeling. The
same_is true of the woman in her existence as woman. The
/ differentiation of the biological sexual function in the man
and the woman has its exact counterpart in the mental and
spiritual? nature of both sexes, although—in accordance with
what has already been said about the relation between indi-
Se
aamnEe

viduality and genius in a previous chapter—it recedes in

1 Deities dwelling in the interior of the earth.—Translator.
* Bachofen’s Das Mutterrecht (1861) was a first brilliant attempt to take »
this mythical contrast seriously ; but it needed the force of Nietzsche (Geburt
\ der Tragédie) and his theory of the ‘Apollinische? and the ‘Dionysische’
to bring out and set in the right light the—rather different—theory of
Bachofen.
8 i.e. the ‘psychological make-up.’— Translator.

352
 MAN AND WOMAN

‘personal s irit_in particular, becomes strong. Within this

limitation it may be said ‘thatial
also spiritually the man expresses ,—
the productive principle and the woman expresses the prin-
ciple of bearing, tending and nourishing.1 The man turns
more to the outside world, the woman turns more to the inner
realm; the man inclines to be objective, the woman to be
subjective; the man seeks the new, the woman preserves the
old; the man roams about, the woman makes a home.
Onn result of this particular
kind of differentiation is that
the man’s connexion with the natural sex. function | }penetrates
‘Tess deeply than with the woman. The -woman, ‘through her
natural calling as wife and mother, carries a far heavier
sade thanthe man does, as husband and father. The growth
of the new human being forms part of the life of the woman
far more than it forms part of the life of the man. The wife
must give her heart’s blood to the new being; she must bear
it, she must bring it into the world not only with pain, but
with danger to life itself, and she must nourish at her own
breast that which she has brought into the world. By this
natural determination she is far more closely connected with <
o>
the natural process of life, impregnated with it, restricted, but
also preserved by it. Far less than her husband can she order -
9 mn
i ae a

her_own_ life as she wouldlike; but this is not her husband’s~

‘doing; it is simply due to the fact of her motherhood. This
difference penetrates into the very depths of her nature.
Man and woman are both sinners, just as both have been a
a
created in the image of God: But they are sinners in ‘different
‘ways. Their otherness gives even their sinfulness a different
stamp. The man, the one who roams about freely, sins above
all on the side of freedom he is arbitrary, dominating, master-
ful, arrogant ; he cannot brook any interference, he will not
accept ties, he is presumptuous ; che does not lose himself so
much in nature as in his own creations, “his culture and his
ie ennai ra

1 Cf. Humboldt’s delicate characterization of the sexes in his paper,

Uber die mannliche und die weibliche Form (Werke, vol. 1, pp. 335 ff.). It is in
accordance with Humboldt’s harmonistic view that he sees rather the
positive and complementary aspectsof the question than the negative and
contradictory.
: 309
 MAN IN REVOLT

civilization; he not only makes things objective but he makes

everything an object. He brutalizes the creature and treads it
under foot; he places himself in an arrogant manner above
its ordinances and imposes on it his arbitrary order. He is the
one_who imposes
his will by force and he is the destroyer.
But he does notlightly forget that he is destined for freedom,
that he is called to make the earth subject to him. Even when
he is fettered by the senses, he does not easily yield to their
domination, he does not accept this simply .as his destiny.
The sin of theman.is.generally
speaking so violent and obvious
that he has less difficulty than the woman in admitting that _
he is a sinner. of
-—~" The woman, .er_hand, will not so easily deny and
destroy the creaturely bond. She remains closer to the creation
“as a given fact,
fact, and she tends topreserve this relation ; but
her sin is that she often forgets and inwardly abandons the
f YSN ORR rr ine = a ORAS RTNT SLT OO
freedom which so often she does not possess outwardly. She
adapts herself, she does notrebel against evil; she sinks down
renee seem ery meen gS WH Pt tS SI nS RT Na ae IRANPah tse BD rare dl abit rehearse oor

into her natural calling, she does not rise above the level of
ordinary existence, she loses herself in nature-mysticism, she
A umm cass meni selene
N DEAS MANU i ND

emphasizes the sex relation in her existence. For her the

relation between husband and wife is far more central than OANA

‘it_is for her husband;

in this she loses
her universal human
destiny,
her spiritual task, ‘she allows herself to bepersuaded_
by her husband that she ‘belongs to the home and has no
other responsibintics Guise_ She Jays far more emphasis
upon the fact of sex, she is far more sexual than the man,
although the instinct within her, from the purely organic
point of view, is not so acute and passionate. If thehusband is
falsely free she is falsely bound ; and if the husband is impersonal
“and tteliectinl she tends to be personal and natural in a
wrong way.
Such a theory of sex types is, of course, like all such theories,
to be accepted with alldue reserve. The modérn woman,in
particular, will not see her own portrait in this picture. But
she may be asked not to forget that we are not speaking of
woman since the year 1850, but of woman since ‘the days of
Adam,’ of woman among primitive peoples, in antiquity, in
the Middle Ages, of the Eastern woman, of the unemanci-
354 :
 “MAN AND WOMAN
pated woman of the present day, who still represents more
than nine-tenths of the women who are alive at the present
time. The emancipated woman of the_present_ day generally
tends To Tegan THETExMiocene —insofar-asitisunalterable __
=as a purely biological matter, while she regards the p sychical
and spiritual differentiation partly as a mere figment ofthe
imagination, and partly as the result of education under male
domination. She will not allow that the same difference of
structure which is evident in the physical sphere is also found
in the psycho-spiritual nature of woman, and that this is due
to nature, and is not the result of education. This is the exag-
gerated one-sidedness which colours all movements for the
emancipation ofwoman. This modern ]psychology of woman
ETNA

is not tenable in ‘the light of the testimony of

of history and of _
the literature of all countries.
But behind this view there is a concernfor truth which
ht not to be overlooked. In point of f
fact, man, as the
ly domi g er_of history,cul the conditions
“ofthe law and of public education, from selfish and short-
sighted motives, has artificially riveted woman to her natural _
destiny, and has hindered the free “development of ] her.minda:
and spirit, to which she, as well as the man, as one ‘who has_
been made in the image of God, has fecn called. He has
shaped her according to his desire ne what woman should be
“Even at the present — and to a far greater degree thanwe
usually realize, woman is still the slave of man, even the
woman in the higher classes, even the educated woman. Hence
her real nature cannot yet beclearlydiscerned. It is still
concealed behind the picture of woman as man wants her to
be, and by the woman who is the product of the masterful
will of the man. The right of woman’s emancipation is not
got rid of by a cheap allusion to its exaggerated forms and —
extravagances; woman has still a long way to go before she
attains her real freedom. At the present day we can only say
what woman ‘really’ is in a very cursory manner and with
reserve. ane man_ has had everyopportunity | to oe what _
he ‘really is; hehasindeed—and thisis apart o self-
“manifestation—shown.
ec
what he is in the ve
ea
very fact that 3 ‘has
deprived woman of the same possibility.
355
 MAN IN REVOLT

4. SEX AND HUMANITY

The man could not do this without first
first of all outlining a
theory of the nature of woman 1 which made his action legiti-
mate. This is the
e theory of
0 “themetaphysical,essentially inferior
value of the woman.! Tt is connected withthat misunder-
oe of man about himself, it is part of that falsely abstract
conception of the nature of the spiritual which we have
already described. If, as the man usually does, we expound
of his power to create
human existence from the point ofof view of
ARIE

culture, of “his creative capacities, thus as ‘formal’ and not as

0ergs An nashneghOr Denre BH

‘material’ humanity,, then certainly the woman

eaiingerintelaaanele pate
we 1s less human
than the man. For the woman's mindis less creative. than
“that of man. This has a deep connexion ‘with her natural
mere BPD rem
destiny. In the contrast between ‘Apollo: and the ‘gods who
dwell in the interior of the earth,’ the man is undubitably
more on the side of Apollo and the woman on the side of the
earth-gods. As we have already said, however, the struggle
between these two deities, these genuine idols, is endless,
because it is a conflict caused by sin. For it exactly reflects
that misunderstanding of the life of the mind which deals
only in abstractions, which is concerned with culture and
work, and not with persons, and makes this the standard of the
life of the mind and the spirit.
If, however, we start from the Biblical concept of spirit,
from‘the ‘material ‘concept. of humanity, which understands
Aare ieee ARIAS

“the meaning ofexistence not as impersonal culture, but as

“being-in-love, “being-in- community,
2eearU PEON
then our viewof the
relation of the sexes to the destiny of humanitybecomes quite”
1 There is an explicitly misogynous tradition in philosophy. By this I do
not mean the ‘Apollonian’ rational thought of the man, which takes for
granted the depreciation of woman, and the quite open contempt for
woman which appears in Greek philosophy from Socrates onwards, but
the strongly emotionally emphasized, in part passionate suspicion and
caricature of the feminine element, which in some way or another is
connected with personal suffering due to the sex problem. Schopenhauer’s
cynical misogyny belongs less to this tendency than does a book like that
of Weiniger—a book which is at once brilliant and absurd—Geschlecht und
Charakter; the work of Strindberg; certain often quoted expressions of
Nietzsche, and also similar ones by Kierkegaard (cf. Geismar, Séren Kierke-
gaard, the chapter Mann und Weib, pp. 585 ff.).
356
 MAN AND WOMAN

different. Instead of a difference of degree we have a difference

of kind; instead_of thinkingin terms of stages we think in _
n a different ——
arallel terms. Woman is human and inhumain
Fac sdb SALES

.
_ . cadhaen dale eee EMAL AL DY CD RESEORS DAKAR RR EERE
‘ Be Tt a cocina

way, from the man,

: %
but ts she isahno
ae en
less
aK NAL
human than the man,
PRADA IPR INEEIA RITES FLOWERS Auk he

Her personal existence is less ‘intellectual’ but also, for that

very reason, it is less abstract than that of the man. Her
erand
anger neterror is that of being on the merely psychical,
aneher
“plane, while the man’s danger is that,.of leading .a.merely
self-willed and rational intellectual existence. The ‘Apollonian’
masculine principle is just as much a deviation from the will
of the Creator as the ‘chthonic’ feminine principle; the abstract
and concrete intellectuality CEE — 2
the _
of the man is just_as sinfasul
unintellectual concreteness of the woman and her narrowly
ERS ETNIES IDSA ETE ASTE RRa RL

personal nature.
Hence, because there is right and wrong on both sides,
there is the eternal struggle between man and woman, which
is waged on both sides with passion, but by very different
methods. The man fights against the woman by trying to
dominate and tyrannize over her ; the woman fights against the.
‘entangling’ ‘him. This struggle, far more
man by fettering and
mighty than all the warsof which we hear in world history,
operates further as a ‘breeding factor’ ;moreover, it stamps the
character of the man and of the woman with one-sidedness ES Sanit po

and a false differentiation. The man develops his masterfulness”

‘still further, and theas woman develops her typical feminine,
arts which she uses her weapons; she becomes more and
more the kind of woman who as a slave dominates her lord;
she develops her effective defence tactics. She conquers in
being conquered and is defeated in the fact of this victory.
She revenges herself upon man for the inferiority which is
ascribed to her by accepting this masculine picture of woman,
and thus she becomes for him the ‘dangerous female.’
It is not only sin which is at work in this sphere, but also
the divine original destiny of man, the Imago Dei. Man

Tnever loses the idea of the ‘true man.’ Even in the midst of
his sinful masterfulness, by means of which man subjects
woman to his will, man knows that there is more in woman
than that which his sin shows him as something to be both
357
 MAN IN REVOLT

desired and feared. This idea of the true woman is somehow

operative in his longing, and never allows him to find satis-
faction in the woman whom he desires and who satisfies his
desires. Alongside of the type of Eve the temptress, there is the
e of Mary the
1¢ holy’ Maid. It was not only for woman, but
above all for man, that the picture of Mary was introduced
into the cult of the Catholic Church. The ascetic ideal of
chastity and monasticism was developed by man and not by
woman. In this we see, even though in a fresh perversion,
the
the Original ideal.
a

5. THE PROBLEM OF ORDER

The primal truth, however, is this: God created man in
His“own
own image; male ‘and ‘female“created
He them. This
truth
cuts away the ground from,
_ all belief in
in‘thee inferior
value of woman. The Creator has created man and woman
not with different values but of different kinds, dependent
upon one another, a difference in kind which means that
each complements. the other. “Together with their different
natural destiny——which as an original Creation should be
taken seriously and not regarded as a secondary matter—man
_~and_woman have receiyed.a.different stamp as human beings,
$ persons, which. _extends.to their. existence-for-community,
Both arerecalled to bepersons, to live in love, in the same degree,
but indifferent -
ways. The man is the one
me who produces, Heiis”
the leader; the woman is receptive, and she preserves life;
it is the man’s duty to shape the new; it is the woman’s duty
to unite it and adapt it to that which already exists. The man _

1 It can scarcely be contested that the low view of woman which prevailed
in pre-Christian Judaism casts a certain shadow over the New Testament
as well. The expressions used by Paul in 1 Cor. xi. 3 ff. cannot be explained
merely by speaking of a differentiation between the sexes, and therefore
that the leadership is put in the hands of the man. It is undeniable that
here there is a certain element of depreciation of woman. Along with other
elements this forms part of the garment of the times in which the message
of the New Testament is clothed. But it is a disappearing element. It is
not only overcome by the truth of Gal. iii. 28, but even in the missionary
practice of Paul it plays scarcely any part. The way in which Paul speaks
in his letters of and to his women fellow workers bears scarcely any traces
of the metaphysic of 1 Cor. xi.
358
 MAN AND WOMAN

has to go forth and make the earth subject to him, the woman.
Jooks within and uards
the hidden unity. The man must be
objective and generalize, the woman must be subjective and
individualize; the man must build, the woman adorns; the
man must conquer, the woman must tend; the man must
comprehend all with his mind, the woman must impregnate
all with the life of her soul. It is the duty of the man to plan
and to master, of the woman to understand and to unite.
_In these distinctive qualities there lies _a certain super- and
sub-ordination; but it is a purely functional difference, nota +—
Se eee ,itteis
ieact
not aascale
scale of
ofvalues.t
3 The special
call to serve where love is perceived as the meaning of life, is
rather a privilege than a humiliation. This different attitude
is maintained in the Bible, even in the Creation narrative. A
‘helpmeet’?_ is_given to man. In our corrupted
world that
_Means ‘a subordinate, dedep
pendent, Tessimportant
person,’ but
originally this was_not_the intention ; ‘this is howit is inter-
preted by masterful people who want to be like God, positively
by the man, and negatively by the woman. For mutual service
is the supreme proof of fully mature and well-developed human
life. From this centre there should issue transformation
a of —
all values, derived from Him who came ‘not to be ministered.
kahit SABIE EAR AAI
ad ssrA OTIS NORMAL TPO

unto but to minister, ®and whoby that very fact has revealed.
elena laine ar bene emt

the meaning of human life. | ;

As husband and wife—with their different structure and
their different functions—are one in the physical fact of sexual
union, so they ought to be one in all their life together;
1 The fact that in the New Testament the function of leadership does
not denote masterfulness or dominium, but a ministerium, may be deduced
from the whole context of that very passage which for many is the greatest
stumbling-block at the present day, Eph. v. 22 ff. The way in which the
man is to have the leadership in marriage and in the Church, is determined
by the Christian community, through the example of the relation between
Christ and the Church. Christ rules by love; He rules only through the
call to freedom, in the creation of personal responsibility. We see from the
Letter to Philemon how Paul transforms the master-relation of a slave owner
into a personal relation of community; how much more then here! The
historical limits of this idea have been indicated above. On the whole
question see my book, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 358 ff, (English:
The Divine Imperative, pp. 356 ff.)
2 Gen. ii. 18. 8 Mark x. 45.

359
 MAN IN REVOLT

through all the differences of mind and spirit, they should

be one in all they do and are, for one another, and for their
whole environment. The husband, for instance, simply because
he enters into contact with the outside world, is not the only
one who is related to the whole. Just as the wife is of equal
value_as a member of the Church, of the community
of the”
faithful, so .she“also, like her.Grbac ‘should. bring..her..own
“contribution to the ele of the nation, and_of humanity a!as
aa whole
ole. Onlyherrcontribution will always
2 be
be more intimate,
Tessevident_to.
e ‘the outside
outs y world, “more hidden_and ‘individual
“than that ‘of the man, Bi our “analysis ‘be ‘correct, then both
_ extremes are>equally ‘wrong
w : ‘complete. ‘equality’ inpublic |life,
“and the ‘private’ life to which woman_has been relegated iin
the past. If woman is to giveher best, and is to make her
specific contribution, there must be, even in her public service,
some measure of differentiation from man’s way of doing
things, some space for the more intimate and personal element.
There will come a time when allthesehese questions of
of differ-
a
entiation, and the.problems. to. -which.. they.give. Tise,“will
amnecrocnseetanae ls

_disappear_ entirely. ‘They shall be asthe angels in heaven,’?

hatsuper- and sub- ordination of man and woman is destined
for the period of this world, not foreternity.For ‘in Christ
there is neither male nor female. *2 We must make a distinction
between the original Creation and the aim of redemption.
Even the divinely good origin, the divine Creation, is not the
divine and blessed End. All that is gradually being prepared
here, within the sphere of history, for the final End, shall
there be perfected. Hence Jesus Christ
st, the Redeemer, has
nothingto do with the whole question of the. difference between
‘the
sexes.
xes.He isnot shown to_us as an ideal and honourable
husband, but. as.s One iin whose. -Person_the.end_ of all_things,
the end even of all orders which are intended for this earthly
- world, atid-also are good and néecéssary for them, the end of ~
the order of marriage and of the family is foreshadowed.
\ Marriage anc
and the family and the whole ofsexualityis related
to the process “of becoming, but not to that of fulfilment.
Sexualityisthe divinely ‘willed manner in which humanity is
permitted to come into being, to give us all existence. This
1 Matt. xxii. go. 2 Gal. iii. 28.
360
 MAN AND WOMAN

growth will come to an end one day, and with it sexuality and
its differentiation of existence and of function. The sex element
belongs to the sphere of earth, not to that of heaven, to the
temporal, not to the eternal. Therefore even the most perfect
possible order of the relations between the sexes is only a
penultimate, not an ultimate matter.

361.
 CHAPTER XVI

/ sou AND BODY /

— at
I. SOUL AND SPIRIT
As personal being is rooted in the mind, so also mental existence
is rooted in the soul.“The.
1 _mental_ life is composed_of soul-_
material. ‘As such, this ‘soul’ or psychical element is not a
‘special “subject of Christian anthropology, any more than the
body, as such. The one fact of decisive importance is this,
that man is a whole consisting of body, ssoul and spirit. So resseed

‘far as the soulisconcerned, this is expressed iin the fact that

[cheBible very often uses ‘soul’ and ‘spirit,’ ‘soul’ and ‘heart’
| as equivalent expressions. This again is only possible because
the Bibledoes not. take the ‘soul’into account,
as itdiffers_
| from the.-spirit—that
Se
sp’
eeenety
is,
i it takes no account of the ‘psychical —
material’; it regards the ‘soul’ only from the point of view
of the spirit or the person. In this sense. the Bible, both the
Old.and
the New. Testament,isnot.in the least psychological;
the psychical element as such is almost unknown, or at least
it is regarded as entirely uninteresting,
The following question has often been discussed: Is the
thought of the Bible a dichotomy or a trichotomy? That is,
Is there only one principle outside the body, namely, the
soul?—which is, in some way or another, bearer of the spirit—
or are there two principles, soul and spirit, soul and reason,
which should be regarded as constituting the nature of man?
The question is insoluble so long as one fails to note the way
in which soul and spirit are related to one another.! The soul,
1 The question of dichotomy or trichotomy has only been able to play
such a large part in the theology of the Church because already the
Biblical view of personality had been obscured by the influence of a
Platonic dualism through the interest in the anima immortalis. Certainly
_ the Platonic trichotomy encouraged this interest, since it set the spirit,
as the higher, the immortal soul, against the psychical vital function.
The idea of an anima rationalis is fused with that of the natura rationalis
(Irenaeus) into a unity in that of the anime immortalis, which in death
becomes separated from the body. The soul which after death ascends
up to heaven, that is, after its’ severance from the body, is that Platonic
362
 t

—— SOUL AND BODY LNrt

in and for itself,
Sa is that which inheres in all that,lives; it is /» re
not the distinctiy 1cof :man.as man... the specifi-.
esi human element is mi ind and spirit,The relation between. ls

_the two, however, is complicated by.‘the.fact that the soul is

_Tegarded “a
nee
fi
{ f
as both thé basis“of the |spiritand as one with. it..
he soulisthe substratum of the spirit; “the spirit is the
H
Maa gaat ay emi ES
1}
|
i| soul, determined “by sesense-acts. The spirit theref
| in which therelation totheLogos,to.God,-and.to_all that.is
:

| Truth, Law, Norm, etc., operates; the soul, onthe other: *

'\hand, is that which connects.all that lives,as such, even the bushi
pa

\ living body. 2 Indeed, the soul is itself’the life-pri nciple of

of‘the _ cat
body, just as the soul is the ife-principle_ of thespirit. Asa 2b
Ete eT

ible does not distinguish between these two aspects

of the soul: that which is turned towards the spirit, and that
which is turned towards the natural life. The question of
dichotomy or trichotomy is therefore an idle one. So far as
the human soul as such—in contrast to the animal—is under-
stood from the very outset as disposed for acts of the spirit,
outside the body there is only one element: the soul, the
Suse
“pearer of theacts of the spirit, and through them of the whole |
personal lifé; In86 far, however, as the ‘Spiritual act
a as“such is
is
distinguished |from the - psychical—that iis, so far as the specifi-
cally human element isconcerned—of course even inthe Bible
element which has penetrated most deeply into the faith of the (Church—.
and not only into its theology; even to-day it is the predominating meta-
physic. If, on the contrary, we start from the Biblical idea of personality,
then the question: dichotomy versus trichotomy becomes pointless. The same
human being who has been created by God has physical, psychical and
spiritual functions, which as such are absolutely distinguishable, but which
cannot be distinguished metaphysically. There is no anima immortalis, but
only a personality, destined by God for eternity, a person who is body-
soul-spirit, who dies as a whole, and is raised as a whole. The corporeal
personal existence characterizes human creatureliness, not the mortal in con-
trast to the immortal, nor the ‘lower’ part in contrast with a ‘higher’ part.
Cf. on this point the excellent observations of Gutbrod: op. cit., pp. 31 ff.
1 Geist, here taken in its broadest sense.—Translator.
2 Cf. Luther’s famous Magnificat passage: ‘The Scripture divides men
into three parts . . . and each of these three together with the whole
man is also divided in another way into two parts. . . . The other, the
soul, is the same spirit according to nature, but yet in another work.’
The spirit is ‘the house wherein dwells faith and the Word of God,’ the
soul is that ‘which makes the body alive’ (WA. 7, 550).
363
 MAN IN REVOLT

[aa threefold nature is recognized: the body, the soul, which _ ones

| man has along ;

with all ‘that lives, and the sspiritual or" personal
. ‘element, _thereason. and the ‘heart.’
| ~Tn this connexion the constitution of the soul is only relevant
| —like the constitution of the body—in so far as it concerns the
| personality as a whole. The fact that our spiritual acts and
our lives as persons consist of psychical elements stamps them
_ as creaturely. God has.no,soul,.the ;absolute .personali ty has no
1
gh
: 5
psychical constitution ;> Jteis spure. “actuality. The psychical
My oy}lenement, however, “determines. our spi
~~
puiatens

al existence at the
sesncteterremerstentcemt

same. time as a natural ‘existence. ‘Our. will has as.

A TINS SORES
a TS 3basis, ‘> Fi i

- Impulse, our_thought it, sense-perceptionand imagination, « our BS. A

—p
S| emotion, the feeling of pleasure and pain, proper to all the
higher ‘animals.
anim “Thus it is always possible for
for man
m to neglect Resins
naeire
‘ie / “or ignore
ore_that_
th spiritual life“for which hedestined.
is When
\/‘this happens he immediatelyy relapses iinto o the animal |and
\ peneal op isiag The spirit always c
comes into being by rising
/ ove the merely psychical existence, by ‘work.” Indolence,
pee eeND a

SEES to work, the failure to rise above the inward:

existence, is, so to spade the ‘natural state of equilibrium.’
This q qualification as the ‘natural’ is, however, ’ only yi correct’
when seen ‘from below’; when seen ‘from above,’ that is,
from the point of view of divine destiny and of responsibility,
from that of true human existence, it can only be understood
as apostasy, as self-alienation. From the point of view of
pe inertness is evident, and needs no explanation, while
» motion is the problem; from the point of view of the mind the
situation is the very opposite, because the mind is activity,
“pa is inertness.1 Hence the mind—ultimately the ‘I,:. the
person—must ‘awaken’ the soul to its mental activity; left to
itself, it sleeps. Severed from mental activity the soul sinks
down into animal,a
andd even ir
into. re
cggetable passivity,
sama ‘that is,
1s,
into a lower kind of ac
activity, “which, although it does not lack
spontaneity, lacks that spontaneity which we call freedom.
1 The idea of Fichte, that indolence is the primal sin, is typically Ideal-
istic ;from the point of view of the Bible we should rather say that indolence
is one of the effects and phenomena of sin, that is, of the destroyed union
with God. Where the ‘heart’ is not united with God, it falls a prey either
to abstract spirituality or to the sense-life.
364
 SOUL AND BODY

Hence It is easy to
understand, why the mind has been,
called the ‘adversary of the soul’ and made responsible for all
evil.1 In point of fact, the mind and italone is
isresponsible :
for
all evil. But this is not to say that the fact that the mind, or a
freedom, exists, is an evil; what is evil is the fact that ‘the ney on
mind, or rather the person, hasmade a false use of freedom. ap Eger Zax
The determinative element, the iryeuovuxdy, whether false or |
true, is always the spirit, the ‘heart,’ the ‘I.’ But the element.
of truth in that romantic theory of the mind asthe adversary
Dac OwE

‘Of the soul is this: that the mind, ‘when it determines itself
"sinfully, also corrupts$
the soul, “and: indeed that it isprecisely
the soul which is rendered ineffective and is not allowed to
come to life. That which is peculiar to the ‘soul’ is its connexion
with the creaturely life as a whole. | | fn se

The soul unites man with the world ofnature and. ofthings, ae
by means of thealae
which, directlyconnects the person with |.
the world. The :
sense im}pressions;and[the i
inner
et pues which
wh

~all other living creatures isnot only of this external, objective

character, but it is also accomplished in a quite different
way—it is sympathetic and instinctive. The conscious is only a
~small part, it is like the summit? of the iceberg
g which emerges
emerges” |
from theocean, whereas1 the>other
r ten-elevenths remain 1 hidden. |
“in
in the ocea
ocean of theunconscious. — “Through ¢! the unconscious |
the pz
past is
is. resent.
senttoour minds, both to that ofthe individual |
1) “as
as well
wellasi
as—in1|ways.; which are still little known—to_ the 1whole \
“human race;
race; and indeed, perhaps, iin some way or another, |
even to that of the whole of living nature. The conscious
mental life is only that part of the soul asa whole which is
“illuminated by the “I,” which “otherwise loses itselfin the’
collectives just as the lower partoftheindividual mountain | “~
loses itself in the mountain chain, and in the ‘skeleton of the |
earth’ as a whole. Bodily indepenndence,’ the detachment of |
_the_animalorganism from itsenvironment, easily |
LNA
a SAREE
deceives 1us, |
and makes us forget that we are not only ‘of the earth earthy,’|
in_all our life and. soul, tothe life and sourT
x Klages: Der Geist als Widersacher der Sesle se
2 Lit. ‘eleventh part.’— Translator.

365
 MAN IN REVOLT

\ of the whole; the discovery of the ‘collective unconscious’ by

“mea
of psycho-analysis
ns has explicitly reminded us of this
_bond with the world of creatures, although in itself it has
_ been a well-known fact for a long time. Although the question,
‘How is our conscious life connected with this unconscious
psychical life?’ is undoubtedly of great importance, it is still
only part of the larger question: How is our personal life as
a whole conditioned by the psychical element? And how does
, this react upon the latter?
y he mind as ‘the adversa
ofthe ry
soul’ isthe mind which
~. | alienates the soul from its twofold original destiny in Creation,
pt
““» restor
the ation
of the connexion betwéén personal life” and
gD) ff “created life as a whole. In accordance with the purpose of the
pve. €reation man is embedded _in the incredibly rich soil of the
fr4wy) eteaturely world, not in order to sink down into it, butin
oe “order to draw from it the forces for-
his own personal life, and
to_give back’to the creature that whichithas taken from. it,
&: __re-moulded by the spirit. In this connexion with the
_ natural life the human life ought to work out its own laws,
/ which are different from the life of nature, and yet them-
| selves ‘natural,’ with a different rhythm and in quite other
| dimensions, and yet still in contact with the rhythm of the
life of nature as a whole. Here, in these unconscious depths,
the human creator-spirit should have a fathomless provision
of insights and awarenesses, he should secretly listen to the
secret of the divine work of creation, and gaze, as it were,
into the divine workshop, in order that he himself, as God’s
apprentice, is his own small way may exercise his own activi
in the way in which God works.2 The human spiritshould)

1 Jung’s theory of the collective-unconscious and of the ‘arche-types’

(cf. Die Beziehung zwischen dem Ich und dem Unbewussten) is still at a ten-
tative stage and cannot therefore be simply accepted; but it points to
situations which have always been seen as, for instance, by I. H. Fichte,
Schubert, Carus, which we might indicate by the phrase ‘cosmic-psychical
connex.’ Semon’s Mneme, the racial memory, also belongs to this context.
* That is the justifiable concern of theologians like Oetinger, Auberlen
and more recently Kéberle (Die Seele des Christentums). The Bible directs
us towards and does not warn us off the study of the wisdom and the will
of God even in the natural orders, which He has created, not in order that
we may base our faith upon them, but in order to recognize God in His
366
 SOUL AND BODY a
reach down thither with the unconscious roots of his soul in
“order to bring this obscure element out into the spiritual” ||.
light, and express it freely inintellect orartistic
ual terms,or \r"
in practical forms of work and service. The command ‘make |
the earth subject unto you’
is not to be understoo
as that.
d |
violent act of domination which seeks in all that is ‘not I’
only ‘material’ for the active Self; man was placed in the
Garden of Eden, not in order to brutalize the created world,
but in order to ‘cultivate and preserve it,’ and in order to_}
give to each one of these creatures its own name.! The intimate.
connexion between man and the creatures is not only a dream
of romantic people who are weary of culture, and disappointed
with life; it is an original destiny;appointed by the Creator,
This is how man’s human existence should
be; and would be,
if rightly ordered. We perceive this truth only when it is
contradicted, that is, when we see how human life is injured
when this is not the case.
We have already spoken frequently of the abstract character
of human personal and spiritual life which is the result of that
original perversion of man’s nature. We see this in its most
extreme form when man is regarded as a ‘cerebrating animal,’
that is, the man in whom the ‘brain’ has been developed at
the cost of the ‘heart.’ We do not mean this primarily physio-
logically, but pictorially. Yet it is difficult to translate this
picture into conceptual terms. False abstractness, which is the_
result of man’s emancipation
from, the Creator, works out,
above all in the fact that the soul _in the function in which it
unites us with the creaturely element as_a whole, becomes
rs ° ; ; eR ante renee were rey

works and to respect His Ordinances. In Romans i. 19 ff., Paul is not

saying anything new; it is all familiar to every reader of the Old Testa- '
ment. It is just as irreligious as it is unscriptural to ignore this revelation,
and to maintain that God can and will speak to us only through the
revelation in the Word (cf. Eichrodt: Theologie des Alten Testaments, II,
pp. 52ff.; L. Kéhler: the same, pp. 84ff.; Dillmann, the same, II,
pp. 285 ff.).
1.Gen. ii. 15; ii. 19. Aliud in Adamo lumen fuit, qui statim, ut inspexit animal
totam ejus naturam et vires habuit cognitas (Luther, WA. 42, p. 90). In this
connexion perhaps it should be noted that the primitive man has an
intimate knowledge of nature which is no longer at the disposal of the
civilized human being. (Cf. Lévy-Bruhl: L’éme primitive.)
367
 ft ee Bop,. a ; 8 Beene ;\ U

MAN IN REVOLT

unconscious, ."To look|atthe mind first of all, 6 SE EEE

May expressssitself in different ways. The mind becomes arid,\
_c4’goncept and view are severed; the purely conceptual, in its|
eS Vextreme form, the reckoning” feemedt the empty logically |
mathematical form, remains without, the irrational.1 living |
content, There remains naked
a brutal willwithout feeling, |
Without sentiment. Thought becomes rigid, since it lacks |
creative imagination; the will becomes hard, since it lacks the |
softness and_ vitality. of z ; :
“objective way, and as ‘the final product of this objective way
of thinking he produces the idea of a world mechanism in
which he himself no longer has any meaning, and a technical
civilization which robs life of all spontaneity. ‘The ‘cerebrating —
animal’ can do no more than build machines and see mechan-
{i isms. The man who has ‘forgotten that he also is a creature
(- \_galong with other creatures, to whom the creature is only a
>, thing, an object, must necessarily also dominate it. To him
~~‘indeed the creature is only material, a quarry for his own
creations. He is himself caught in his own illusion of reason;
the final product of this elimination of the ‘soul’ and the
(paneer
etehoes

‘creaturely” element from the sphere of mind is is always such an

‘objectivity’ that man forgetsthat he issubject,andmakes himself
a

an object, that is,_ materialism both iin cng and practice.

“Romanticismis“alwaysjustified © in protesting against the
mind, the dominating tyrant. It always defends the relative
Tieht of motherhood against the arrogant father, the right of
the night chthonic deities against the all too bright Sun god
Apollo, whose rays, if received directly, singe all living things.
The inhabitant of the city of iron and concrete is not without
reason a lover of the East and one who longs for Nirvana.
The mind which denies its creaturely origin necessarily becomes
poor in_its angularity —‘and its insistence on principles CLES
;
rationality destroys life and corrupts‘instinct. ‘The human per-
“sonal life must be filled with vital force, ‘or else it will become

1 That is an idea which has been championed of late especially by

Martin Buber both passionately and competently. Cf. his paper with the
title: Die Kreatur. And also Berdyaev’s Cing méditations sur Lexistence.
(English translation, Society and Solitude.)
368
 SOUL AND BODY

a mere phantom. The Creator has not made man to have a

reason for everything that he does; it is not intended that he
should make a clear diagram beforchand of all that he plans
and wills to do. The spirit of c it_of
are enemies; the creative aculty: and the extreme “brightness AS

_of conceptual c larity do not a ree. ‘God the Lord, who has
made us body and mind, also wi Isthat the soul, the€
creature-
cre
Iiness which is turned Towards ‘the higher. lifeof the» mind, ;and
ee

the mind which is turned towards nature, should come ‘into ’

“their rights. Ifis not necessary to fall a prey to a romanticism
of
‘blood and soil’ which is hostile to the mind, to recognize
the danger of a one-sided intellectualism. What will become
of marriage if men have no longer a healthy instinct? What
will become of our orders of life as a whole if man is no longer :
“aware
of the sécrét rhythm, the. beatingheart,and thee pulsing
¢ of nature? Even if it be proclaimedathousand times
" over, it is still untrue to say that the Bible forbids us to seek
the will of God even in the orders which the Creator has
given to nature.* We are bidden to ‘consider !’—and not to
refrain from ‘considering —‘th
the lilies «of
of thefield.” He who
has given us a living soul also wills that we should observe the
laws of all that lives, the laws of creation of all living existence.
The separation between the life of the mind and nature, even
if it be achieved by theologians, and based upon theological
grounds, is to despise the will of the Creator. It necessarily
reveals its opposition to the Creation in the fact that it pro-
duces a theology which is without heart or real sentiment,
which makes human beings heartless and hard.?
1 That which is against nature is for Paul also against the will of
God. and therefore it is sin (Rom. i. 26 ff.); the fundamental order of
marriage is based upon the natural fact that we have been created for
each other (Gen. ii. 24) and this order of creation is explicitly dis-
tinguished from the Mosaic Law which is connected with sin (Matt. xix.

- rete is a pseudo-logical misunderstanding of ‘the Word of God’

just as there is a pseudo-dynamic one. The Bible stands above this contrast.
The same Christ who is called the Word of God is also called the Life,
and the connexion with Him is described not only by ‘faith in the Word’
but also in the simile of the Vine and the branches, the Head and the
body, the Spirit and the temple, which point to an indwelling power, etc.
This throws light upon the meaning of the Sacraments.
369
 —
oe MAN IN REVOLT

oe But_the soul
wul_which hhas beenforcibly _suppressed i
in this
pe 3 Hsway. revenges itself
3 upon
1 |the mind which exerts thispr
—
/ upon it by
b the‘fact.that it_tyrannizes |over man all the more SE SPE
ATA STA re INHERENT St

| from oe
place tto which it has been banished, namely, from
the Unconscious. The result “of that_over-cultivation of the
intellectual element, of the abstractly intellectual, is an un-
controllable activity of the unconscious and of psychic activity.
The lunatic asylum, the nursing home for nerve cases, the
host of nerve specialists and the endless number of nerve
‘cures’ of all kinds, are evidently the fruit of our soulless
rationality. The ‘creaturely_ naturewhichhas beenovercome
has not been.killed, “but only ‘suppressed,’
and n
nowitt ¢Expresses
“itself quite ‘rrationall and obscurely. ‘The emotional and
instinctive life in particular iis most Taypie to this in-
vasion from the unconscious. A_highl
A y developed abstract
_intellectuality. ha Sinister, . Opposite ole. a moorbidly —
sensitive sexuality, a wildly erotic world of “instinct ane
i, imagination anh either breaks into the conscious life
a ieee ore .
agitates it with its symbols.
The more the intellectual lif
life isinvigorated and nourished’
_bythe soul, and the more. itpenetrates
into and ‘absorbs ‘the
|
soul, the less will therebe. of these phenomena
esereesiterebeenitiiar ea iobaby
of division
and repression. It is the sig
sign ‘of the ‘natural intellectual life
in the good sense of the word, that it is not aie disturbed
and destroyed by complexes arising from the unconscious.
Rose But this extreme case is merely an idea, not a reality. This
Mn | natural’ intellectual lifedoes not exist, because we are.
reall
_ “sinners, _Rather “among
2 us a ‘there exists a co iparative—
S. greater or-smaller—separation bbetween. theee
mi the soul,
CF ys “and therefore a state of complex, unconscious-conscious
ee. psychical disturbance of the intellectual life. The danger for
the soul is not the fact that the mind develops, but that in_
sinful human beings the mind_ necessarily develops sinfully,
Steen NA IRINA AS pone eh ce! caheImOMICRON NALIN é sn so

1 “The present eccentric preponderance of the life of the brain is, on

the one hand, the result of a one-sided intellectual progress, by means of
which we have far outstripped the ancient world, on the other hand, of
a one-sidedness of mental and spiritual life by means of which we have
fallen far behind the ancient world.’ That is the view of Delitzsch on the
basis of his Old Testament study (op. cit., 220).
370
 ; SOUL AND BODY
in a _one-sided manner, in a false abstractness ; that is the os
danger which is atleast perceived and—even if falsely inter- |
preted—defined as a problem in the slogan ‘the mind the :
adversary of the soul.’
_Only. through a misunderstanding, however,.can one speak
of an essentzal contradiction
tion between. soul and mind. Originally,
in the purpose of the Creation “the.“soul is i as “much there for |
homens
the as the body
torreis there fo:
for the soul ;thesoul is disposed |:
Se the mind. As ineee the process
rocess of development the life of the™
spirit arises out of the purely psychical life, in a creative
act of freedom which cannot be explained, without on that
account setting itself in opposition to the latter, so ought the
relation of soul and mind as a whole to be one of reciprocal
orientation. The animal and psychical element_in.man_is
disposed for ‘thelife of the spirit, forthee personal, just _ as the
life of theSpirit,
sp! , the personal, needs istheanimal
; 2and ‘psychical
element foriits realization.
re Human instinctmust become will,
imagination must become thought, perception must become \
feeling; will, thought and feeling, however, are dependent
upon the fact that instinct, imagination and perception exist. |
i

Certainly there arises in theen element throughthe |

coming into being of the m in “somethinng hlike_an
“an alienation,
}
} i

| _a_division. The childlike, naive, “spontaneous, “is broken up __ ae

“and divided into thought and Will, in’the mentalprocess”of he
| maturing and “deveSoon just as“the husk is burst ‘by the Ae
fruit. The process “whereby the unconscious becomes conscious, _ «’
and the process of the taming and moulding of the primeval
savage element, will never seem wholly a gain but also a loss. :
‘Progress’ from a primitive stage of existence to a higher «~~».
culture, from the natural-psychical plane to that of the per- e
sonal, will always also involve a loss of vitality, vigour and
in itself,
elemental fullness.1 But this is not due to the> process tm
to the _wrongly” intellectual manner, _the arbitrary and
_but_
_ way in which the mind takes the natural existence
“one-sided|
1 That is the relatively justifiable element in the saying of Rousseau:
Retour a la nature, in all vitalistic philooophy—even in that of Nietzsche—in
Bergson’ s contrast between instinct-intuition and intelligence, and in a
word, in the romantic reaction against intellectualism. The vitalism of
the present day is the reaction against European-American rationalism.
371
 MAN IN REVOLT

in hand as its material and shapes it. The intellectual develop-

PEL ODE TEE IATOEM aNASMP DINE AOS
ment of the genius may serve as an indication of the fact. to
how small an extent intellectual ability and psychical fullness
/_.» and vigour are necessarily mutually exclusive. The genius is”
J) + & man whose mind comes to maturit LY,without Wwit losing the
“original naturalulvitality of the psyche ;in whom, on the con-
( >trary; intellectual - maturity brings with it an increase of {
psychical vitality. Fromthis illustration
we can dimly guess
what was ‘originally ix
intended’ : how the mind shou help the
soul €6°Come into its own, how in _the higher life of the mind '
thesoul
ul should develop a a fullness and power whichneither
can have alone,
alone,) The human ‘being who is most fully developed—
devel
“In mind and ‘spirit, that is, a real person, will also be most full
of soul. The soul can only ‘become complete as eanty that is,
in the totality of personal being.*
\,.-.. © This means, however, that in principia represents |the
Ry A original unity of mind Sard soul. For here that self-sufficient
intellectuality which wrongly _elevates itself above the level
of existence i is abandoned; man 1 once more accepts his
‘creaturely’ status; he Mosaic onke everything uf
upon his
‘intelléctual “activity,, he also
allows
for that which
is” sity
simply
«there, “whi
“whick
ASTbeen transmitted to him,
he is "passively
{
receptive Inactivity
ir “ardactive in his“receptivity, 1 Hence,
although ffaith is an ac “the mind, it is that act which, since
_it_receives personal being from. fhe.hand “of God; takes~it
into and_ allows ittooperate right down ‘ into the roots of the
heart? (Ca
RRNA PRETCEH Ne RU ERY
(Calvin), deeep down
dow: into ‘the ‘soul,” even into the
“unconscious. “Faith re-integrates” “the “personality ~ which’ is
“divided in
in mind and soul; through faith the mind which has
lost contact with the soul can be re-invigorated. In anthro-
pological terms, faith is the quickening and interpenetration
of mind and soul. Faith therefore penetrates into the
,he depths
_of the soul, which neither.“philosophical nor.scientific thought,
Nor_artistic creation, can reach. Hence the operation of the Shige nSnaar Feenstra weal
“Hol; S} iritTat itself 7 eee upon the igher leve levels of
(PSMA AM saci. NSA

of
was ae YAN ne

enomena w
RHE ATH

are not.
a

not
not known to
en peeyarn

‘ulead ue
ith in
bd. Suaactedrbad ir nia
to the
sceancemate— valet bank Venema
normal consciousness and
— etlinneaieeeaneaatiibidel 0p ALY ADRSPEEL SRT
the norma “experience.
DISETBoe
ce. Paul iis not szauihuatnonnctemeencnnds

1 Hence it is no accident that the Bible describes the ‘heart’? and not |
the ‘head’ as the centre of the person.

372
 SOUL AND BODY

using language which belongs to the realm of ‘primitive’

thought when he recognizes the ‘gift of ton ues’ in the Early ~
Church as a manifestation of the life of Christ both in the
Church and in the individual; he is uttering words of profound
wisdom when he_recognizes_that_this..‘gift?_is.ofdivine. origin ;
at the same time, he warns the Christian. community against
‘over-emphasizingitsimportance. Again, throughoutthe Bible
it is taken for granted that faith should produce healing
miracles; it is regarded as a normal effect of the new life that
personal and spiritual power should extend its influence into
the natural physical sphere.1 In this restoration of the con-
nexion between the soul and the mind, the particula vert of the
magical view of existence disappear: in the Bible miracle is
regarded as the obvious or natural result ofthe new life, “and
or
this refers especially to miracles of healing, This shows the
original continuity between the soul and the mind, and between
the soul and the body.

2. THE BODY
If we cannot expect to find a special Christian doctrine of.
the constitutionof the soul, still less can we expect to find a_
doctrine_of the physical constitu.man,? The Bible is _
tion.of
_only concerned with the integration of the body and of the
Tm AE INe “5

l The _
“corporeal nature into the whole of the personalife.
the sense thatit teaches the
stic
Christian faith is dualiin
inevitable ‘two-ness’ of mind and body The mind is notto
as a modification of, or emanation from, the
beunderstood

1 In Pauline thought it is the one life-creating Spirit of God who creates

the miracle of faith and the miracle of the charismata of the most varied
kinds, and both are inseparably united. Cf. Gunkel: Die Wirkungen des
Heiligen Geisies.
2 How much significance may be ascribed to the Biblical doctrine of
the physical powers, which Delitzsch develops, may be left an open ques-
tion; it seems to me that here theosophical speculation is mingled with
genuine insight into the Bible.
_ 8 This is true, in spite of what was said above (Note on p. 362) about
the totality of the person. Ontologically manis a unity, phenomeno-
logically, mind and d.nature, and especially mind and body, are to iie be
“Sirieily distinguishe scamming lieecangenneslataeenes tatliapaananinnnmteasa ansaarsstnsstenisiaare

373
 MAN IN REVOLT

body, nordoes the body emanate from themind. God, the

“Creator, took : a clod of earth ‘from.
| ‘the soil,and out of it He
formed the human body into which He breathed the spirit
and thus formed it into a living personal being.! This childlike
age point of view expresses a fourfold truth: body and mind
pr, 3 belong e€ ually to the nature cofman, neither is to be deduced —
View” — from a other, thespiritis“from above’ and the bod
‘ftom below’—and, this is the most. important, they are both
estined for e2
each other, and inn a definite way adapted to one
another. _ EATEN NNROENNREerneRaaeaaETeES
‘hebody is the meanss through which man communicates
with the world, by which
he
he iss connected with1 it
it, adapted to
it, and conditioned by iit. Therefore the body is the most
Solid ancimpressive manifestation‘of the sreaturely character
WPL A LARUPT UNRELATED
EoD HO Aa BEGR ean AY RE

of nsman
eaeetic
DE.
at which has a body, in any case, is not God and
_—whatever else it may be—itis a finite creature, localized in
this world of time and space, ‘at this point, not there,
now and not “then,deel by its ‘environment,’ both in
the temporal and ‘spatial, as well as the causal sense. Man is
a product, a structure of the natural process, and at the same
time he is a piece or element of it. The body therefore iis not
. , merely the means of communicationa with.‘the ‘wor
“ih a a ae
¥ rid; ameans orld, ai 5
of expression for the mind in the world, an organ of the mind’s
contact with the external world; butthe body is at the same
4
time a limitation both of man over agai
aN
ainstGod, and of indi-
ATR ARNENTH aSi een
| yidual human beings from one another. “Perhaps ‘there exists ieee

| acreaturely boundarywithoutc
ee: but in any
any cas
Case |
are the body -is-the-boundary wvhich cannot, be ignored
ored;; it is so
~» “solid that it forces itselfupon our attention. Therefore it 1s
“Estwhich moto
offensive to the human being wh vants
(, ) é like God; it isthat which he wants to get rid of and
Sea as hough it did not belong to him; therefore, conversely,
IM4 in the Bible—where to wish to be like Godiis
sthesin
sin,
par excellence
—there isno depreciation _of, or contem t for, the
he physical
| nature.
oes: Hostility tto the body—which si
since _ days of Nietzsche
many regard as a token of Christianity—penetrated into the _
Church from late Hellenistic
thought, and is wholly foreign
4 1 Gen. ii. 7.
ee * Upon the world of angels, see below p. 414.
374
 SOUL AND BODY Z aa

to the thought of the Bible,* so foreign it

indeed that the man
oftheBible stil thinks of eternal Ilife in
3 nbodily te
terms, which
jeads to tthe resurrection of the body.” ‘Christian thought is4 so
‘materialistic,’ because for it the body as well as the mindiis |
_ God’s good _creation, although at the same time the body is .
that which is intended to distinguish the being of the creature |
from the Being of the Creator, unto all eternity. oe

3. THEORIES OF THE RELATION BETWEEN BO]py“kND-sOUL:

SANS ANEADL a A IUD i ARR AEANf SSR ENT

The inter-connexion of body and soul, the vinculum substantiale

for ever remain for us EST
an ALD
‘enigma.
we could see through ould belikeGe e Impos-
sibility of understandingman’s constitution isanoe ie)
of the creatur rely character
che LATIN RUof
SONY
human existence. Hence all the
theories of the relation between 1 body” rand soul which esperar
eck ne Dacca
haveince
“been evolved down to the present time have been unable to
TEE »only“pointto onee aspect of
solve the riddle. Each man
this relation, The ‘materialistic denial of the independence of,
the mind_points to“the fact that’ the physical - nature is an
independent form of existence alongside the life of the mind,
and it also See to the other fact that the physical element
is the underlying basis of the life of the mind, that the soul
Sees y_func ea Duiecal, ‘basis. Man,
‘and not merely his body, consists of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, etc. Man, and not merely his
body, weighs so many ounces and pounds, and has a volume
of so many cubic centimetres. The, physical and_material.
element is not merely a case or a frameworkk
which contains
r
the real. pans pee aethe material element extends right <
into. the ce the mind itself, The modern discovery of
eran “eran us with a fresh example of the delicacy
and depth of the connexion between the mental and the
chemico-physical element in man. These elements of our
material body, so minute in size, which have only been more
fully known in recent years, and are chemically so highly
1 The view of the body as the prison of the soul is also completely remote
from the thought of Paul. He too knows a prison-house of man—but this is
—the Law (Gal. iii. 23), a kind of divine ‘protective custody’ for the sinful
human being.
375
 a MAN IN REVOLT
complicated, determine the life of the soul and mind as well
as the purely physical life. The removal of the sex-glands—_
that is, the sex hormones—from the organismasa _whole_
ters not only the sexu
but al
also the whole mental life of a
2s SUA iP gd sigsnag iACh
lS RRS ET Bhar Mse 2 2 eee eee
- SauinneN
Man uenmer
or seecaeeee
woman. Inevitably menBS trySats
to.aexplain—from this
eee re 5
standpoint—the whole mental and spiritual nature as a purely
ep

chemical matte
4 r ante

and
r;
enrages

this view is bound to reappear from

iSARAH RESET NNO RISEEAL SD ats RUM EN laa Ee OE SiS —

‘Sh CIE IY chalet

time to time. It is equally evident, however, that this attempt
° °

is bound to fail, owing to the peculiar character of the mental

processes which belong to a totally different dimension, of
which physics and chemistry have no idea. Since they are
non-spatialthey cannot be explainein spatial
d terms, close as.
the relations between the two may be. Materialism”as a total”
aeinine eee itan
view of human existence is the nearest and shortest blind alley
ee Fearne: ‘ni ‘ eae °

in which human interpretation can lose itself.

Idealism takes the « pposite line, which is a arently more
Sheres
De ery “msse tege
mse n
IN IG ph VION h
RITES b
IE
TOPO
dik ET rar :
nd RRA 1 mlesabat aaadyms oe

Pronusing2,d¥ regards
SAAN ented -

the bodily andmaterial elemen

as a_
t
degraded, reduced existenc
of the espirit, or ev asen
a mere
illusion towhichthe spirit falls prey. Doe notsthe latest
development of physics actually provide the best basis for
this more daring attempt at interpretation? If energy and
ot substance isthelast word in physics,if a heavy mass and
an inert mass are expressions of one and the same fact, if
electricity, or something like it, is the final element of physical
reality which can be discovered—then was not Leibniz right,
as against all materialism, when he conceived the so-called
material atom as the least spiritual and the least free, the
most lacking in spontaneity, but still always as a spiritual
monad? Was not Plotinus right who represented the whole :
realm of being as ahierarchyofdecre
Spirituality whose one positive pole had to asingand increasing
be the pure spirit-_
_uality of the Deity and whose other negative pole“was empty _
ee

space? _Materiality and spirituality therefo

re “are merely
“Felative concepts, opposite termini of cont
a inuoseries
us of
ascents, whereby certainly only the life of the spirit would be
the real, and its absence would be simply the minus coefficient
of reality.
1 Cf. Medicus: Die Freiheit des Willens und ihre Grenze; Eddingt
on: The
Nature of the Physical World, pp. 293 ff.

376
 SOUL AND BODY

It is evident that from this point of view it is impossible to

estimate the value of corporeality. But
it isplain that this
theory breaks down whenever lt_is; confronted by the irrevo-
‘cablele
boundary
b betweenr
materialland psycho-spiritual exi
cer
Inany
any case.
rane minimum. “of
f spirit, which we call‘matter,
CLEA AMER SAR LPC PTH

ZEIT A

all.“we can1say“about.
a it.‘It exists as the material bodily nature
‘ofman which can never be resolved into non-material actuality.
In whatever way te May mayinterpret the body, it isthere as
something other than
TW Ow:e min eist)asa form of existence
which 1s alien to the mind, impenetrable, and impossible to
master by thought.
eet
The main
al theory, that of psycho-pl reece parallelism
—as a rule connected with a pantl eistic philosophy of life—
starts from_the fact that the physical nature always has its
counterpart in the life c
of the mind, and vice
vice versa, “thus from
the fact that material and mental processes ¢correspon
pond to 6one
another, Its favourite illustration is that of the physiognomy
_and the work of art 2 spirit, which appearsin a material form,
matterr_which
_w. expresses “spirit, “visible soul and. “ensouled””
matter. In the last resort is not all existence like the expression
on a human face, that is, both psychical and material, so that
_every material process corresponds to a psychical process, and
vice versa? The strongest argumentf
for this theory is a negative
one: the impossibility ©of conceiving the influence of the non-
ees
spatial upon the spatial or of the spatial upon the non-spatial.
How can mind affect matter? How can it do so, since the
_effectupon| matter can only be of a material kind? Could[any
a
“part
Part.oof e affected by
by anything
anything 'ssave ‘that.which comes
into actual contact with it? And can that with which itcomes
into contact be anything other than something in its vicinity,
that is, Pion material? And conversely: how could a
Spatial. section of a mass. affect something
sc non-saeau ior
_dnstance,.a..th ubject and
object be bridged?? To-day, however, in the age of wave
1 Cf. the chapter The Sacramental Universe in the valuable Gifford lectures
of the Archbishop of York, W. Temple: Nature, Man and God, pp. 473 ff.
2 On the problem of body and soul there is an immense literature.
Cf. Busse: Geist und Kérper, Seele und Leib, and the article: Lezb und Seele by
ova
 MAN IN REVOLT

physics, these arguments are not so convincing as in the period

when the classic theory of atoms was accepted, and direct
dail observation of the—unintelligible _ it_is. _true—mutual ,
influuence, of mind and body always allows the fourth view,
i common-sense ‘theory «
ofmu tual influence, finally to §ainnthe
er hand,
Oy=e away which we cannot understand the mind influences
‘the “material body, and ‘through “it the material world as a
whole; and, conversely, the world of objects, through ‘the |
-body, influences the mind. The simplest example ofthe former
_is the arbitrary movement 0 the muscle, of th
Ke
the Tatter that of
AGRO aRTAT Peace:

_sense- perception... The mind commands. the ‘arm. to.“lift itself

in a certain Way 5 the worldii
impresses upon.‘the.
1 mind this or
~ that to be Seen.or..} neard. Common sense will continually
Bs amiactiaieaaals

pretation, which is, however, the one which does most justice
to the facts of the actual situation, although naturally it does
not solve the problem. But, on the other hand, this hypothesis
expresses more naturally than any 0Otherer tthe tworold‘situation,
the fact of mutual dependence which experience forces upon
_us. We do not write a letter or a book because our nerves are
. ‘itching to do so in a certain manner, but because our ‘thought
imposes upon the hand which writes this movement and no
other, And weé hear the. crashing of the“thunder, not because
‘through some mental association we are ready to hear a clap
of thunder, but because the contingent happening, outside
in the material world, penetrates through the gates of our
sense apparatus, breaking into the process of our thought and
disturbing it. How this happens we do not know—ignoramus
ignorabimus.1 All the refinements with which the processes on
both sides have been pictured have not made the gulf between
within and without any smaller, not even by the width of a ray
of light. It remains the gulfwhich separates subject and| object.
Titius in Religion in Geschichte und ‘Gegenwart, III, col. 1545 ff.,“with an
ample bibliography. The Bible teaches that which springs naturally from
the idea of personality: that the physical, mental and spiritual elements
are absolutely interwoven with one another.
1 Cf. with Du Bois-Reymond’s famous Ignoramus, ignorabimus the Ges-
chichte des Materialismus of F. A, Lange, vol. II, p. 196 ff., observations which
are still quite relevant.
378
 SOUL AND BODY

On the other hand, in a different sense, a certainapproxi-

_mation has tal cen
enplace. After aa period of extremely mechanistic
“experiment we “perceive “possibllymore clearly than ever “the
as RHONA FHL mre

non-mechanical character of the or , on the other

hand, we have earned to see tra nic _.wholeness ,
VS AHR ETTORE AD TS anic
aoe

_even in that ‘which 11s apparently non-organic, namely, iin the

LEA ALTTTY: IRE non Pe
a atte ees

‘atom ‘itself. The humann

PUN ere,
organism, like every other organism, Pe

cannot be constituted — snechanically by a number of separate

pieces, but it is a functional whole, and indeed, in contra-,
diction to the STOTT ETT functional
TOTES
nallnee srt sienna eh ERT TOE TUT TORT TO
whole where, in.
RESET Past
principle,everyr |part is resents the whole.
is an represents me,
.Eve
Every human SITAR I

7eD) part ‘of

“cell,? indeed every chromosome, every the heart. of
“every cell, has‘aspecial human|character. The whole is present
in every part, which at least in the lower stages of life~is
expressed by an almost boundless power of regeneration of
the individual organs. Hence the wonder of the whole is not
to be explained through the structure—which in itself is not
a whole—out of sectional pieces, but each part, each section
of protoplasm contains somehow the unity of form of the whole
in itself. Here, however, we have no desire to identify ourselves
too closely with views which are still open to scientific criticism.
But, from the standpoint of a Christian doctrine of personality,|. snl
A eA Ne in ggAA Lagla Sous Nant

we can never :speak about_ ‘the human body in terms of a soeieldeieeacea” teAceEatotaen tia kines re Merennr aera
slag
machine. achinewhich as been invented by man,
csi he m

and can ‘be“anata tood by man, is not sufficient to explain

the diviinewonder of creation of the living body. Indeed, at
the present dayit“Tooks as; though the mechanistic conception
cannot hold the field even in physics. So much at any rate is
certain: to-day even the purely1material happening looks far
more mysterious
and is far more l | than.
‘in
the daysofDemocritus, or in the days of the great meta-
ENP
E

physicians at the beginning of the modern period.

4. THE MEANING OF THE BODY IN THE LIGHT OF THE CREATION
It would be the task of a Christian ontology to inquire into
the different spheres of being according to the special mystery
of creation which they contain, the special manner in which
1 Cf, the amazing results of Driesch’s experiments on the egg of the
sea-urchin; Titius, op. cit., pp. 468 ff.; Bavink, op. cit., pp. 528 ff.
379
 MAN IN REVOLT

they contain the divine Presence, so far as this is possible for

us, from the standpoint of faith, but at the same time con-
tinually taking experience into account. We have confined
ourselves to the one supreme and innermost sphere: human
personal being. We have treated the second sphere, that of
spiritual being in general, very indirectly from the point of
view of theology; and we have not attempted to study the
psychical, the organic or even the physico-material existence
in its special relation to God. But of all existence. ‘it is, trues
even if in different ways, that God’s <‘omnipotence, ‘God’ S|
‘working is present in it.1Even in the being
of the atom we
come upon_the mystery “of.
_ the ‘divine Presence “and power.
Hence, _because_t!there isabsolutely no existence outside God,
‘there
is no
10 existencee_ without 1mystery y;;therefore behind every
form of being, even that of a simple atom of hydrogen or of
an electron, there lies the whole mystery of the Divine
Omnipotence. ‘Thou hast beset me behind and _ before.’?
The resistance which my foot experiences from a simple stone
in the gravel is a resistance which God’s will opposes to me;
how much more is the mysterious power which shapes the
organism of my body, and combines its parts into a whole,
power which springs from the omnipotence of God.
The Meaning of the body is a god-given possibility of
expressing “spirit and of realizing will. Someone who is «com-
pletely paralysed, who has no possibility of making himself
known to the world, of taking part in its activity, will realize
the force of this truth better than anyone else. It would not be
correct to say that he is condemned to pure passivity, for he
might have a very active mind; but he is certainly condemned
to an inactive, non-creative life. The connexion between him
and the world has been broken, because the connexion between
his mind and his body, the motor nervous system, has been
destroyed. The fact that I can ‘command’ my hand, my foot,
my tongue, , tomove in one way and not inanother, ‘So that it

1 Calvin: Fateor quidem pie hoc posse dici, modo a pio animo proficiscatur,
Naturam esse Deum; but he immediately perceives the danger of this doc-
trine: Potius Natura sit ordo a Deo praescriptus (Institutio I, 5, 5). Similarly
Luther’s phrase: ‘All creatures are masks of God’ (WA. 40, 1, 174).
2 Psa. CXxxix. 5.
380
 SOUL AND BODY

expr esses
esses my mind, ¢or an alteration of the world willed by me
takes place, this is the}great ‘gift. which we have received from
_the hand of tthe Creator as an incomprehensible wonder. It
‘may indeed be true ‘that our “spirit iis the real source of the
creative element \
within us; but without the body the work
“which the mind see
seesisnot actual,it remains merelya.thought, |
“undifferentiated from mere phantasy. Work and act spring
from the spirit, it is true, but—mediated through the psyche—
they are accomplished by means of the body.
It would be strange if a Christian anthropology should not
point to the special element, the endowment of the human
body which corresponds to the wealth of the spirit. Present-
day research—apart from all questions of origin‘—here sees
far more plainly and simply than that of earlier generations
the
peculiarity
of the human organism ascompared with the
ee ane ih toboseg tami ae?fact peculiar to _
man of the grip with opposing thumbs mean? or the fact that
man alone has a supporting foot which makes it possible to
walk upright? above all, however, the immense development
of the central nervous system and-of the brain, upon which is
1s
based physiologically the possibility of mental and “spiritual
s —
activity! Thepphysical nature of man is in ‘a
a wonderful way
adapted to his personal existence, as on the other hand it is
also an expression of it. At least in passing it may be noted
that the human organism, of all mammal organisms, is that
which, from the biological point. of:VIEW, is.the least.one-sidedly
specialized, and thus is the richest in possibilities.? All these
aré facts which, from the point of view of faith, certainly
are _
not without significance, although
it is certain that they would
‘not
sufficient
be to form a basis for this faith or to serve as a
proof for it. Even in the organism, in the corporeal aspect of
man, his special position, his special destiny is indicated
beforehand. How much more is this true of the psychical
mechanisms which. serveas a “basis.for thé Tifé<of hismind” and
“spirit, and serve as direct material for it. aes
“Yet here too we see theeffects ofthe rentwhich goes through
RE eh EMA RS

1 See Chapter III (p. 40).

2 Thus Dacqué: Urwelt, Sage und Menschheit, p. 64. Also Riifner: Die
Natur und der Mensch in ihr, pp. 75 ff.
381
 MAN IN REVOLT

the whole of human nature, Indeed, here and here in parti-

cular, they are soclearly perceptible that the human intellect
constantly falls into the habit of regarding the dualism of
body and mind as the reason for, and the starting-point of,
all the troublesome contradictions which man meets in the -
course of his ordinary experience. ‘Through sin we all have a _
_body which |does not willingly. obey the mi
“to have its owncode of laws, aor mae trouble about the
“meaning of the higher. life of the mind and spirit. And we
é Os have a mind which often seems to have no power over the
pa ( _ body, but which experiences its impotence in the bodily sphere
lige re in particular. Within that fundamental original mutual relation
~“- _.* «of body and mind there ate ofdivisio
is this state n,
which means
| & "that
body and m
mind are regarded either as parallel (but. never
ig meeting), or as in opposition to one ‘another ; and it is this
“distortion of the original relation which gives us so much
trouble. We see our mind and spirit exposed to the accidental
- elements of the structure and the functions of the body, and
its ‘freely creative’ activity hindered by some glandular dis-
turbance. We see our disposition affected by disturbances of
the muscles of the heart, the secretion of the liver, and the
activity of the kidneys. Above all, we see those facts which
might give us cause—wron gly— “to-make the body responsible —
for all the ‘moral
ral ddisorder _iin.life: _the exaggerated desire for
_pleasure «of <
allkinds, ;a ‘greediness, an impossibility of satisfying
_the senses in the sphere |of sex, at least in the direction of a
“constant desire for change, unknown among the lower animals.
Which of us does not understand what Plato says in the
Phaedot when he expresses the view that if the mind could get
rid of this tiresome partner, the body, it could and would
give itself to the undisturbed contemplation of the Ideas:
eternal Truth, Beauty, and Goodness?
And yet this is an illusion! We say, indeed, that itis the
“~ body"whichgivesus so ‘much trouble, butin
7reality it
it is
isthe
A ALK Anind “which. gives.the body so m trouble, For this
disin-
ay fof tegration starts from, the mind and not from the body, Sin
)* " w. does not issue from the bodily instinct and thenenter into the
+ pre mind and spirit, but it comes from the mind and enters into”
1 Plato, 64E, 67A.
382
 SOUL AND BODY

the bodily instinct. Once again, this argument that it isthe

I
mind which is the real adversary
versary and disturber of BL the peace
and aistur) EC
is true. Only this does not mean that there is a constitutional
opposition between mind and body though
—as it were ofthe —Ss>_,
the mind to disturb. thefunctions of thebody—but 5, /*"
itbutmeans that the mind does not hold fast its God-given destiny, =“.
Sue eR
DA Wits
tiple cansrsin rs oN okie ALLAN a n Cetpeninnas: paleo A mas

‘ . ere se zs % waa nishtle oA ss rns 51 oe of

chooses its own destiny in addition. The ‘pre-established ““* ~_«0”

a . 7" Re Cerne EER vssisersiticle = seen eens ve
3

‘harmony’ of body and mind en ‘sturbed by the false <“ tut J

self-determination of the mind and spirit, and in so doing the _- pee
useage earumiieenens Sanmeare SOERRRIEEILT ct iemetemnaiel REE Heme Teneae dae ai esterase aie rg "

bodily function itself is disintegrated. But this disturbance 7, “

should not be conceived merely asan individual act, asthough ~~
every individual were simply and solely responsible for the
relative disintegration of his organism. Here if anywhere we
have to come back to the fact of Original Sin in the most solid
sense of the word.
The problem of heredity stands to-day in the centre of
scientific research,! and in spite
of all that is hypothetical
in
“this rather new science, itis possible to speak of Certain definitely
new truths which were not at the disposalofearlier generations.
“In particular
the Mendelian laws which were discovered
by
a purely inductive process, after many experiments, methodi-
cally carried out, and on the other hand, researches into the
nature of chromosomes, carried out with the aid of the micro-
scope, have thrown a great deal of light on this sphere, which
was formerly so obscure. Christian theology has no right to
ignore these discoveries. The result_of scientific research
merely confirms, however—even if only in its most_general
features—the
Biblical view, namely, the great importance of
the factor of heredity
in thedeterminationof the human
‘individuality. For instance, the teaching of modern research’ ,
into the problem of heredity on the basis of inquiries into
identical twins, about ‘crime as destiny,’2 sounds like a scien-. |
tific paraphrase of the words of the Bible: ‘who visits the sins_
of thefathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
eneration.*Earlier inquiries into the
descendantsofinebriates ¢ ’
‘broughtoutthesame truth with appalling clarity.
1 Titius, op. cit., pp. 483 ff., gives a very detailed account of the position
of the natural science theory of heredity.
2 Bavink: op cit., pp. 348 ff. 3 Exod. xx. 5.
383
 MAN IN REVOLT

And yet, as we have already pointed out, it would be wrong

to draw deterministic conclusions from these facts. We must
not forget that the Biblical phrase about the ‘third and fourth
generation’ adds, ‘of them that hate Me.’ It is not the physical
inheritance which is the absolutely determining element, but
it simply gives a pre-disposition in that direction; the indivi-
duality, even the moral individuality, is only one side of
- character. So Jong as man is still man, the fact remains that
man’s existence is existence-in-decision. Character-r-dispositions
“may be inherited, but never the characteritself. Where physical
“Inheritance through the transmission of the genes by means
of procreation is concerned, there too—even upon the basis
of the scientific knowledge of the present day—the deter-
mination is not unconditioned, but it is always very limited,
that is, it is one which in no way excludes an element of
freedom. In so far as the peccatum originis—as in the classic
doctrine—is brought into direct connexion with the fact of
heredity, the Zwinglian modification is more correct than the
strictly orthodox conception." So far as the inherited disposition
isconcerned, the individual has quite as much freedom
as he
thas ‘the pre--disposition to be influencedbyit
“it. No"one born
is
with the drunkard’s fate hanging overr_himassomething he
cannot escape; > his ‘4
‘heredity’ means ‘thatt_over-indulgence
over iin
Strong drink will “be- his part
particular "temptation. "The" fact that
“the “peccatum originis cannot_be. evaded diss
Ii upon a_different
plane. from that. of the empirical inheritance of qualities which
t former is an
‘can be proved, although it is certain ‘that the
‘important. indication of the latter.
This truth can indeed be proved positively, as well as
negatively, although—for the reasons which have just been
mentioned—it will never be possible to show quite plainly
the connexion between sinn_and.“bodily disorder, Faith eso
‘a new basis to 7 personal existence, _that is, the will of the
1 Zwingli bases his doctrine (as will"shortly be proved by a Ziirich
dissertation) upon an exegesis of Rom. v. 12 ff., which is freed from the
ecclesiastical traditions, and his view certainly, is nearer to the present
system of exegesis than is the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin. The
Pauline 0dvatog corresponds to his ‘inherited malady.’ The idea2of
ofinherited
guilt cannot be proved with any certainty from the Bible any more than
that |of inherited sin.‘See above, p. 119. » Pe
384
 SOUL AND BODY

Creator, and we see how this alters the whole situation; fre-
quently, as a result, not only but_ physical 3
psychological
troubles disappear completely.
in a personality being re-united;
Thus we see divided elements
a new beginning has been %)). y- y4
made for that harmony of body and mind intended by the L4-y
tase

Creator; we see too that the believer is able to control his

é
* ga ff

appetites in a way not known to the unbeliever; all these “ ,.

LS
4

ed
up in Paul’s daring words: ‘Even
f ee

experiences may be summ

A pa a a pba dE: =
L ~-L

so reckon ye yourselves to be dead unto sin.’ The dominance

of physical appetite, which as a rule the ‘natural man’ finds
it impossible to overcome, can be overcome by faith, once the
far more deeply rooted sin, false independence and distrust
of God, has been overcome.”
But this does not mean that we hold the view thatonly |
through faith can the hum mind ancontrol the instincts which
ed and indépende nt. It is precisely
OA EA feSPER ANNT Cian rene

hav @ bbecome ; uncontroll

_this part of ethics which is also accessible to the rational”
eMC MES as id tH Nea NE im ONTO GPO LST RATT NE Ry Se a esWOR any,
Sco” coca rns anal cs” el eal” Daae SOON STEIN

moralist or the stoic sage. His independe nce of ‘the desires of ID

OE
as As GEOEA
ee en
his dominion over the body is
eypitnstig Aa semua Se
his instinctive nature and
precisely that in which he—supposedly—experiences the
‘ivinity ‘of his spirit and upon which his whole ethic’ of self
redemption is built.* There are bodily difficulties, there isa.
“fleshliness’ from which even the man who knows nothing of
the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ can become free,
just as, on the other hand, there are bodily disturbances which
no amount of Christian faith can overcome. Here we are
moving in the sphere of the relative, and at the same time in
1 Rom. vi. 11.
2 The fact that the Church takes too little account of the healing power
of the Holy Spirit should be clear to us once for all when we remember
the teaching and experience of the Blumhardts, father and son; this has
also been a limitation of the Reformation doctrine of the new life. On
this cf, Ellwein’s informative synoptic presentation of the teaching of the
Humanists and Reformers: Vom neuen Leben.
is of
2 In all the ethical teaching of the Stoics the idea of progress
importan ce, which is to be understo od in this sense, ‘that the
central
but
Stoics have never denied the possibility of moral perfection in theory,
ls and
were convinced that the same .. . has been attained by individua
Ethik
that in principle it could be attained by everyone.’ Bonhéffer: Die
Epictets, p. 148.
385
 MAN IN REVOLT

the sphere where the fate of the individual and of humanity

are indissolubly united.

5. NATURE AND CREATION

Here also, therefore, the content of the idea of ‘the natural’
ee eee we
receives a special definition.Not
0 t onl} the C nic motalists but
also theStoicst use the phrase: Naturalia non sunt turpia. But
the=question is
iS,_what are
usar mnninedtina si
- naturalia? mar by Nature we mean our
present Pipsis then from the point | of view of the Christian
faith, the statement is certainly false, because nature itself is
; oof disturbed and thrown into confusion by that which is un-
AMmie* eatiatural, by the contradiction which comes from the mind and
Sy” Spirit of man. Our nature has become un-natural. Not culture
Ae pean) (in general, but our culture, not intellect in general, but our
“intellect, has sinned against nature and made us all ‘un-
natural.’ Every civilized human being is a little perverse, and
a 48 every {further step 1into the intellectual realm—we
we being 1
what
jw we are—makes us to some extent more un-natural. Even the
intellectuality of the believer does not fully escape
pe from this, —
because it is the” intellectuality” of a believing human being as
Seiden
eaee een

‘sinner, although in principle true faithbrings with it the

right attitude towards the bodily nature. What seems natural
to us over-cultivated human beings in our natural existence
is indeed not always a divine order of creation, and the good-
ness of the Creator, but it is frequently absolutely opposed to
nature. The history of religious as well as of secular move-
ments brings this out very clearly. The ‘emancipation of _
Nature’ at theRenaissance and the Enlightenment led to much
“unnatural perversity, and many a religious movement which
Se Christian led to sheer denial of
the purpose of the Creation. aoa it is asSapemaeeete
difficult to dis-
cover what iis truly natural, as it is cult to find out what is
truly spiritual or Tricllcerual: To meee God-created nature
and physical existence can only occur to one who knows
nothing of the rent which runs right through the whole
Creation.
Therefore we must be on our guard when we relate physic
sical
ESCADA
BITE Le)edad ONS

1
: On the rapprochement between the later Stoics and the Cynics, ci.
Zeller, op. cit., iv, p. 751.
386
 SOUL AND BODY

existence—for instance, the bodily organism—and_the Divine.

Creston to one set but at the same time we must never ae Ay
cease to do so. aised_in.His works.of Beet ied
reation, es TI alsoibe,
in. of lishuman
h creation. To, ee ee
‘Tay so much stress on sin that
we refuse
to § raise.’ ~~
rom the |Creation
ion,and to assertaes
| even we |who know His
“will from His revelation, candiscover nothing « aan
ae setiieacmalad-uaan teat

Creation, is a very strange way of showing our fidelity to.

the Bible!2Indeed, such an attitude seems to be more in
armony with typically modern agnosticism than with the
Christian faith and with the Bible. Even the idea of sin finally -
becomes wholly abstract,
atte
and therefore empty, when we 1no
eeprnesz ucivon A Sie gen basta eas RESON
onger measure sin by the order o reation and renounce t e
—

dehnitio n of both. In any case the Bible gives

of thé toritént
us the opposite example. Certain things it names as ‘against
nature’? and in so-doing stamps them as at the same time
contrary to God. In point of fact, in this sense the Stoic phrase
‘naturalia non turpia’ is valid, only here a concept of nature
is used determined by the revealed faith and therefore always
orientated by the Creation, which is suitable for an ethical
norm.?
This brings us back to the centre of the Biblical doctrine of
_man, to the idea of the Imago Dez. Force
centuries commentators RNR aaa

n Genesis he
1, 26
2 ff.
fr. have argued whether the fact that man
ELLIERUNES

was made in
in the._image of
Godd applies only tto his soul or
also to his body. The purely spiritua conception of God of —
UNC tint eS Nyywee web tit

pean renee
“the N ew, Testament seems to decide the question in a negative _
sense.? In reality.‘thiss negative decision _was not ‘due to the
WINES De
a NS AEP EIA

1 How little in this matter we can “appeal to the Reformers “it spite
of Luther’s expressions about the ‘Madensack’ (‘wretched carcase’)—let
Calvin himself say: In spite of his sinful corruption man is eximium quoddam
inter alias creaturas divinae sapientiae, justitiae et bonitatis specimen: ut merito
a veteribus dictus sit utxpdKoopos (opp. 23, 25). In spite of sin manere adhuc
aliquid residuum, ut praestet non parva dignitate homo (ibid., p. 147).
2 Rom. i. 26 ff. Also Rom. ii. 14.
8 An example of how little we can do without the conception of the
order of creation in the ethic of marriage for instance is given by Thurney-
sen’s excellent observations on the question of birth-control in the
Mitteilungen des Schweizerischen Pfarrervereins.
* Ecclesiastical exegesis in general is guided by the endeavour to divert
interest from the corporeal understanding of the imago, which in view of
387
 MAN IN REVOLT

realisticthought of the Bible but to the abstract+t_.thought of

Greece. _ Actually, "3man _in his
I “psycho-physical totalityis an
image ofGod. Even in his.“bodily nature something of “his
|
‘special’ destiny which the Creator has given _ him_ has been
ex ressed. Man, who does not crawl on the ground ‘like the
Spasanimals, but holds himself upright, and therefore goes
through the world holding his head high, with a wide horizon
and a free outlook, man whose whole physical quality points
symbolically to his personal existence, and serves as an instru-
ment for it, has ‘been created in the image of God,’ although
we certainly would not ascribe to God a corporeal nature, as
do some Christian Theosophists. Even man’s body expresses
the ‘hierarchical’ structure of his nature, and this can be
understood solely from the fact that his created nature is in
the image of God. His blood-relationship with the ape may
be an actual fact or not; the first and the chief impression
which the sight of a healthy human being makes upon us is
not this relation, but, on the contrary, the complete difference
of man from all other zoa.* One«only needs to see man to know
that this being has a different species ‘and ay from that
of any animal.
“At
the same time, however, our present bodily nature is a
clear expression of the transitory character and themortality
- “of our sinfulexistence.
The greatest abstraction which Greek
thought “achieved, in order to be able to maintain its enthu-
siasm for man, was the ignoring of death. These glorious
bodies which to it were objects of divine reverence have all
decayed; the youthful athlete who served as a model for
Praxiteles died, perhaps after a long period of weakness, as
an aged man bowed down with the. weight of years. To
isolate one element in life always betokens lack of vision; it
is always a sign of a sinful lack of vision to dwell on the marvel
of the body without fear of death, and all that belongs to
preparation for death. It is not without significance that the
the impossibility of a corporeal conception of God is justified, but which
obscures the symbolical significance of the human body, which undoubtedly
is also intended in the Old Testament (cf. Eichrodt, op. cit., p. 60).
1 Heraclitus: “The most beautiful monkey is ugly in comparision with
the human species.’ Diels, Fr., 82.
388
 SOUL AND BODY

picture of a dying man is the sacred sign of Christendom. It

is not beautiful, but it is a true picture. The Man of Sorrows
shows us in a ‘counter-picture’ the significance of the fact
that we have been made in the image of God, not only for
our spiritual, but also for our bodily life. The word ‘death’
Mescribes the final stage of our human pilgrimage along the
roads of earth—and it is with this ‘that we are concerned ;
where man refuses to look at this ‘final stage’ in our earthly
existence, he fails to see the reality of human life at all; in
its stead he beholds a—more beautiful—abstraction.

389
 CHAPTER XVII

THE GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE

OF EVOLUTION
I. os THREE FORMS OF THE _IDEA OF EVOLUTION |

Christian doctrine of man, “especially. ifhis traininghas been

~on
on the Tines_of ‘modern scienc
Aversa thisdifficulty 2
arises _Inairily
from or
one-idea,which he. has ‘come 1toregard nmore or less as
— ill_more. _important—which _has becomea
“habit of thought, 1amely, the Opinion that allthat2s can be
_best_understood _from. mes_point of view.of it
its growth. This
“This _
“genetic.“thinking, quite»alien to
t the
i ught “offeearlierr |genera-
“tions, Is one of thechief ne of the modern mind.! Apebareyneiran tire
eer ter thegenetic ‘postulate has almost become an
axiom and a dogma is not without reason. In point of fact,
especially in the sphere of the natural FI seor not only
there—this key has unlocked many <doors of knowl edge, and
has brought ‘with
errr REET

w it an immense enrichment of our knowledge.

The category of growth or development has therefore, in
several spheres of knowledge, been set up as the standard, SO
that ‘to
‘to comprehend something’ and to ‘understandd something ‘
in its genesis”have become identical ‘notions.The geologist
“who ‘understands’ ssomething <of the structure of the earth’s
surface of a country or of a continent, does so by ‘explaining’
by what processes of folding and fruiting the present structure
has come into existence. The doctor of medicine diagnoses a
disease by reconstructing the process—of the infection for
instance—by means of which the present condition has deve-
loped out of an earlier one. Genetic thought iis a great attempt
to grasp the unity of all being. The iimpressiveness of this idea
1 The idea of development is indeed not wholly foreign to the thought
of antiquity; but, on the one hand, as a principle of explanation, and, on
the other hand, as the integration of all that happens into the time-series,
it was not known to Heraclitus, nor to Empedocles, nor to Aristotle. It is
the product of the secularization of the Christian view of history. From
Christianity comes the idea of a time-series extended in one direction.
398
 GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

of understanding what exists from the processes of growth,

comes out, among other things, in the fact that it has proved.
itself independent of the fundamental metaphysical tendencies
ofvarious philosophies of Te, and mm each of them has been
“Idealistic anda Naturalistic theory of development, ‘and even
the Romantic pantheistic tendency of thought, especially of
in aform peculiar to itself.
late, has accepted this
The naturalistic theory of evolution tries to grasp all that
now is as a product of a causal process, w
ma wines ost RUHR ORR PALE TB
beginning with /
cea cipal
din ND SBI EAS Absorption
nie

the
,
simple
ee
and elementary
caste seiueiaemasabiaint’
lis Windintr needs
asee the
a
originalac existence,
rs ee le eel
through
7
the operation of the natural laws of physics and chemistry,
has led to the differentiation of the present variety of dead
and living bodies. The Idealistic theory of evolution under-
stands all that which now exists In the converse direction
from the. endRgnN
~~ASRRAEUESAAeec
for-which it develops,
tg tah eN NAR
teleolo gically,
SS AT OORRIEisd tg AON NAR HP
asa develop-
ment of spirit which at first is only latent, as a gradual
development of spirit. The Romantic theory of evolution ©
finally tries to penetrate to the heartof the mystery of reality
by the introduction of a semi-spiritual, semi-natural principle
of formation, as the theory of évolutioncréatrice,t which is in
harmony with the universal character of the fundamental idea
of Romantic pantheismn.
All these three forms of the idea of evolution are not only
metaphysical hypotheses, but they have proved themselves
to.
be fruitful working principles, and indeed, each of them in a
ifferent sphere, the first principally in the sphere
of astro-_
physics, geology and—within certain Jimits—of biology; the
Second within thesphere ofthought; the third is on the point.
of replacing the purely causal in the sphere of the living. In
‘each sphere an attempt
has also been made with the two
others, but with less success; the causal theory of evolution
has not accomplished much more in the sphere of history than
the Idealistic view has achieved in that of research in natural
science.
1 Bergson’s idea of the évolution créatrice goes back to Schelling. The
emphasis on the time factor—of the durée réelle—distinguishes Bergson’s
metaphysic from that of Neo-Platonism, with which otherwise it has
many affinities.
39t
 MAN IN REVOLT

It is obvious that man as a microcosm, as one who|belongs

to both, or to all three, worlds, has also become an object. Lo
“the thice theories ‘of evolution. Even in connexion with man
“each of these three forms of the idea of evolution has proved
fruitful, leading to real knowledge, whether applied to the
individual human being in his individual growth, or to
humanity as a whole. Here, however, it is impossible to state
in a general way what we should regard as knowledge, and
what as hypothesis ;but we must beware of two errors: first,
that of regarding real. knowledge _ as_mere> hypothesis, and,
“secondly, that of regarding mere hypothesis -
as real knowledge.

2. HYPOTHESIS AND KNOWLEDGE

_It_is_real_ new knowledge and not mere hypothesis—and
_indeed _knowledge which has its “own. significance” “for the
“problems of Christian” ‘theology—that every human being
“comes from_a male sperm and a female ovum. For centuries
‘nothing was known of the latter, because it is so minute;
hence the réle of the wife, in the process of procreation, was
conceived as merely passive, receptive and fostering, which,
in view of the question of the equal value of the sexes, makes
a good deal of difference.1 To-day we know all the phases and
stages of bodily development through which the human
embryo passes to the point of birth, and we are able to estimate
these phases from the point of view of comparative anatomy
in a way unknown to earlier generations. The connexion of
these individual phases of development with the stages of the
development of man as a whole is evident to everyone who
has studied the subject. In spite of this, to-day we are not quite_
so confident as in the days of Haeckel that_we can speak of a
‘fundamental biogenetic Taw, “namely, that “ontogeny
‘ recapi-__
_tulate
tes; phylogeny’ ; hence, it was argued, each individual
~
phase of developrient has its phylogenetic counterpart, so that
the one course of development could be reconstructed from
the other. a

1 The fact that this view also formed a presupposition for the early
Christian view of the Virgin Birth of Jesus is evident. The mother of Christ
is the purely passive vessel containing the divine Seed of the Spirit.
392
 GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

But even the mere fact that there is a development of the _

species as well as of the individual, and that this also in some ;
"way orothemust r begin with theprimitive and the elementary
(i.e. in itself, and apart from any more exact definition of this
beginning and this series of development), was_a truth of
revolutionary significance in anthropologyThe . champions
of the Christian theological doctrine, in particular , resisted _
these conclusions with might and main,Forthis theoryseemed”
to shake the very foundation of Biblical and ecclesiastical
anthropology, of that which the Church had taught from time
immemorial about the Primitive State and the Fall. If
‘Darwinism’ they asked,—understanding the word in the
widest sense—is right, what will become of both those doc-
trines which are so fundamental for the whole of Christian
dogma? The Church’s attempt to refute this theory took the
form of the distinction—in itself necessary—between a meta-
physical hypothesis and scientific knowledge. But the longer
this went on the more it became evident to those who were
familiar with the subject that in this struggle the Church was
the loser.! What at first seemed to be hypothesis transformed —
“itself_moréand mor intoe stable knowledg e,it
and made
“increasingly evident that the Biblical narrative ofParadi and_
se
the Primitive State was untenable. Historical science too
‘became the ally of natural science; palaeontology or pre-
history could elevate the ‘hypothesis’ of a primitive, a-historical
period preceding the historical life of man to the rank of an
indubitable certainty. To-day two facts are firmly established
which bring us into irreconcilable conflict with the traditional
form of theological anthropology: historical man, with whom
alone the ecclesiastical doctrine reckons, has a long pre-
history, covering thousands of years, and this pre-history shows
us a human being who, the further we delve into the past,
1 An instance of such an apologetic is Zéckler’s book: Die Lehre vom
Urstand des Menschen. Roman Catholic dogmatics still follows these lines.
Cf. Bartmann: Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, para. 73. A sentence like this: “The
age of mankind is now reckoned by Catholic theologians . . . as at least
ten thousand years,’ shows plainly the old kind of apologetic—but in
retreat. On the other hand, since the time of Schlatter and v. Oettingen
Protestant dogmatics, with its Biblical emphasis, has been fairly free from
this apologetic tendency.
393
 MAN IN REVOLT

resembles still less the man of the present day, and indeed—
this is the decisive point—in the sense of becoming more and
more ‘primitive,’ that is, he is less clearly differentiated from
sub-human creatures. Christian theology must come to terms
with these fact
justs,
asit 1adree
ha to adjust
Sor A ca Ri gs

tot
: apis I
TCHitsélf
to the
tO Co
maeyernican
Lhe C
upheaval,and the vastly enlarged picture of time an s pace
given to us by the newer astro-physics and geology. In this_
Pictureof development (which is nota hypothesis) derived
from established truths of historical and natural science, there
“is no longer any room for the traditional view of the Church
"ofthe temporal beginning of the human race. That
‘which the theology which centres in the Bible is a situation
has never yet
squarely faced.
On.the other hand, the distinction between hypothesis and
scientific discovery remains in force; again and again we see
“how necessary it is to recognize the formation of hypotheses
proceeding from natural and historical science as such, and
to remind ‘scientific anthropology’ of its limitations. To-day
it is certain that the pedigrees of the human race, by means
of which it was believed that we could trace the descent of
man back to the amoeba, were over-hasty hypotheses, which
could not stand the process of critical examination, that the
physical and psychological pictures which were drawn of
primitive man were derived rather from a monistic dogma of
development than from exact research into facts, that to-day —
we knowfar less about the pedigree of the human race than the
generation before us believed it did, that to a great extent pheno-
typic analogies were taken for relations to hereditary characters.
Even if we cannot regard the picture of the genesis of mankind
which has been sketched by Dacqué—a man who was both
learned and the possessor of a fertile imagination—which
departs to a very large extent from that of accepted science,1
1 It would be absolutely prejudicial to theology to contend with the
theories of Dacqué against the Doctrine of Descent. For that which Dacqué
finally comes to is at bottom only a variant, even if a veiled one, of the
Doctrine of Descent. His ‘Adamite human being’ would be ‘according to
his own expressed opinion outwardly quite like an amphibious creature
or a higher mammal; . . . It is a private pleasure of Dacqué’s to describe
such creatures as human beings because their great grandchildren became
such later.’ (Bavink, op. cit,, 483.) On the whole problem of evolution

oe
 GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

_ as an established result of scientific research, yet it remains

important as a warning against too swift an acceptance of
hypotheses, which often proceed more from prejudice than
from strict lines of scientific enquiry. We must indeed be on
_our guard against decrying the Doctrine of Descent as a
of 1 materialism, |but we_e also.have no reason to accept
a luct of
formas an esta
it simpl y in its presentf ed ri of sciel
“so long as$_it_is still. so largely _hypothet ical,and “the ‘meta-
physical prejudices..of most..of. its... defenders. are so. evident.
But even if through further research it will become unshakable
certainty, have we as Christians any occasion to be uneasy
about this? This question leads us to some fundamental
considerations.

3. THE
SEA SSN EL
LIMITS
NLL
OF GENETIC
LAI SSE MELEE LRN AILSA
THOUGHT
NILSEN SEIN EERE,

Firs
irst of all, we must remember |that
at the
the significance «of every
geneticoaex amen tae limits, ‘and that
hat the dif
different kinds —
of genetic explanationmutually limit. each othe
other. ‘J
This
This may be
illustrated by a simple | example. ' The co
wert!
coming ‘into
ir being of a_
work ‘of art, asfor instance that of the Moses of.
f Michelangelo,
is
‘Is doubtless c
open to a. -causal-genetic ‘explanation. With the
‘aid of
the causal idea used in physics we can ‘explain’ ‘how
Moses came into being’: how the block of marble was
hewn out of the quarry at Carrara, how by mechanical
mech: means
‘itwas transported, set up in the studio and there fashioned
with hammer and chisel, that is, was reduced in ‘adefinite
way. An absolutely accurate report of the mechanical causal
events leads from the first stroke of the hammer to the com-
pletion of the work of art, and.thus ‘explains’ ‘how the Moses
of Michelangelo came into being.’ This account of the
process by which this work of art came into being is no different
in principle from that which describes the way in which a
sand-dune has come into being, or from a geological descrip-
tion of the formation of a particular ‘folding’ in a mountain
range. It leaves out nothing save the one point which interests
wag5:
2 namely, how the_work of art,“the “meaningful ‘structure, ks
AR
SNS AOI AAA eB AESPt AERTS CEN

from the point of view of natural science cf. Tschulok: Deszendentlchte,

an objective presentation of the average view which is accepted at the
present time and the arguments for it.

395
 MAN IN REVOLT

the manifestation of the idea, ‘Michelangelo’s Moses’ came_

‘into.‘being: emanate
“For the understanding of this ‘object,’ or of this aspect of
the same object, the Idealistic view of development is far more
significant. The “Moses of Michelangelo _has grown out of
“the inner picture out of the-idea of the artist. This it was
which led him to the marblequ quarry, it was this which deter-
mined his choice of the block of marble, which guided his
hand, which moved the hammer towards the chisel; this was
‘the cause’—and yet something quite different from that which
the student of physics means by ‘cause’—of this piece of
sculpture, which is one of the most precious treasures of
civilized humanity. The ‘development’ of thispiece of reality
can only be explained fi
from the idea, nott from. physical «causes.
“We do not understand awork of art, a scientific book, a work
of technics, or even an association, a society or a community
from the causal scheme of development, but from the final
end, not from causes, but from ends or formative ideas. et
we cannot understand even the development _of an organism
simply from mechanical causes,1 but only with the aid of a
principle of another kind,namely,
n of that third idea offdevelop-
ment, which we called the romantic: through the idea of the |
“organic totality, oftheshaping and ccreative potentiality which
isoperativeinnature itself,of the *‘entelechy,” or whatever we
o
may wish to call this may eerous ‘something” which co-ordinates
_the
the parts into a coherent whole, and gives to each’part of‘this
~‘pre-forming” whole iitsplaceand
a itsfunction." 3
~ Hence we must always look at man in the light of different
ideas of development. There is certainly more to be learned
about the growth of European culture from Hegel than from
Darwin, although certain principles of development of the
natural science which works on causal lines—as, for example,
to take the most important, that of selection—can also be
usefully applied even here. Wherever we are concerned with
something which has spiritual meaning there both.
b the. causal
i ASIN TCH

1 Titius, op. cit., pp. 503 ff., describes the limits of the mechankte
doctrine of evolution pecomatzed to-day. The arguments which Bergson
_ brought forward against the mechanistic evolutionary theory were of
epoch-making importance.
396
 GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

and the romantic ideas of development break down; where_

we are concerned with an organic, planned structure, there_
_the latter particular
in throwsmost
ost light upon t
thequestion.
“Secondly, not only do the different theories of development
limit each other mutually, but they are also all limited by
other ideas. Mathematics, logic, ethics, etc., may either make
no use at all of the idea of development or at least only in a
very indirect manner. For the P:erception ofof the.meaningful
as full of meaning, of that which is in harmony “with the norm _
colnet
as normal, of the. understanding ofthe beautifulas beautiful, —
pele oye CUEETECTSood, of theTrue astrue, of the Holy as “holy, |
the genetic idea cannot help us. I do not learn, what art JS
i
or at lee
Teast certainly not in aany essential “way—from_ its growth ;;
on
on the cont rary, in order to understand thetenddevelopment_of
mance Aen

cart,‘andto interest me in it, I must first ofall know what art,

is, And I shall certainly not learn this from the study of the
“most primitive beginnings of art, but only by immersing
myself in the study of the most finished works of the most
mature kind of art. To try to come to terms with such things
with the aid of the idea of development—of any variety—is
an absolute perversion of thought. No human being would |
imagine that he could learn the nature of mathematics “from
the beginnings ‘of mathematics
m among primitive ‘peoples, «or in
the study of the child. We learn from the “great mathematicians
what mathematics is. Thus only one who has himself no
original understanding “of religion will want to«explain the ©
TTT
NS gee
mystery of religion in an evolutionistic way.“Indeed we may
pretencnsy
ao
say—though - ‘with a certain exaggeration—only where the \
}

subject is itself not understood do we begin to study its genesis.

The meaningful, in any case, is not understood from its genesis
eo ene tna AnENS Cortera
nee Rees.
but from its meaning, from. ts logos.
Thirdly, we must not not confuse
se_development. with history.
Develop ment, or the account of a _process | of _growth, ‘may
“he. but need not
be,~historical. In the strict sense of the word
man alone has hore and it is misleading to speak of ‘natural
history,’ for example, of the ‘history of the mammal.’ The
mammal as animal has no history. This point will be dealt
with in the following chapter. The essential element in histo
‘isnot ‘becoming’ but action, The
historian
true will not report.
397
 MAN IN REVOLT

how things have ‘become what they are—that is already an

evolutionary falsification of real history—but how they were,
how they happened. He reports the deeds of men, not their _
development. The fact thathistory
has becom
so genetic
e at
‘the present day does not belong to the essence ofhistory, but
Sede
tothemodern mind, and i shows the power of the
“genetic
idea. Even history has taken possession of it, certainly
“notto its own advantage. History, instead of being a scientific
‘arrative—as it ought to be—has become an explanatory
. narrative, by which it is falsified. The fact that the genuinely
historical is not ‘becoming’ as such is due to its unique character.
Growth, however, is continuous, and is not unique. The
Idealistic, the Naturalistic, or the Romantic idea of develop-
ment, if it is to become a dominating conception instead of
being merely a subordinate idea, will inevitably spoil every
historical presentation. It is the duty of the historian, as
a Thucydides and Tacitus knew: to report and not to explain.
PATS THON NPE TT SERENA

4. EVOLUTION, CREATION AND SIN

These preliminary considerations were necessary in order
TITER MP

_to_answer
the question: what significance
haye the truths of
Jnodern. genetic research for the understanding ofman? or,
to put it more exactly, in what way do they affect or modify
the Christian understanding of man? In order to answer this
question, we shall once more divide the Christian anthro-
pology into its two main statements, and contemplate each
in turn.
From the assertion that God created man in a definite way,
namely, as one who has been determined by the Divine image,
and thus has been created good, there arises the question:
what is the relation between this good creation and the fact
of growth? This question forces us to leave the statement
about the
Creat quite
ion uncomplicated, leaving out of account
the various stages inthe growth of mankind. The man who
has been create by God
d as good is not the Neanderthal man, :
nor the Heidelberg man, nor the Peking man, nor the homo
sapiens, but simply ‘‘man”’ in general, As Christian theologians
we have no special knowledge of the growth of man, neither
individual nor general, which the natural scientist or the -
398
 GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

historian for instance would have to take over from us. The
actual, spatio-temporal i an _ar a
faith but of natural—scientific—experience. But what
we learn
about man from experience is interpreted by the perception
of faith in a definite way; its meaning and its relation to the
Sal sutimete ton Sho is unveiled by the revealed know-
ledge of God, as the Psalmist! brings into the light of the
thought of Creation the fact which everyone knows—the pagan ;
as well as the Hebrew—of the growth of the embryo. The
Bible cannot claim to impart a special, revealed knowledge
_of the growth of humanityin empirical
however,
the sense; conversely,
the empirical science of the growth of human beings
cannot solve the riddle of the growth of persons—either |Vos, ype ~
individually or generally. It can only describe the individual 74%“ \</
—
=

phases through which this process of

human growth passes. 2.
The same must be said of the second main statement of the
Christian faith, namely, that man who was created good by
God has ‘fallen’ through sin. The Fall, too, is not an event in
| the story of the growth of human itisity;
no more an empirical
event aT the Creation; it lies SaanReTs above the empirical —
| plane. The antithesis between ‘created good—fallen’ has ae,
nothing to do with the difference between ‘earlier (in the
empirical time-series) or later.’ Abraham is no nearer the:good
Creation and the event of the Fall than I am, because he
lived at an earlier time. To trace the story of the growth of
humanity back into the past does not bring us finally to the
Fall and the Creation. The difference between ‘primitive’ and
‘developed’ has no more connexion with the content of the
Christian statements than the difference between the child and
the grown man. In so far as the child is a human being, it
has a share both in the Creation in the image of God and in
the Fall; and the same is true of the ‘primitive’ human being
who lives in our own day, or who lived before us.
So ion_of the relation between the pre-historic
eriod and the Primitive State and the Fall of Man can only
be answered negatively. The doctrine of the original human
mo

existence and of the Fall has no special relation to the pre-_

historic period, any more than the individual sin has a special
1 Psa. cxxxix; see above, p. 89.
399
 MAN IN REVOLT

relation to childhood. Even in childhood, from the very

moment that the child in the actual sense of the words is a
human being, sinis already present, but not in a special
explicit way as ‘the
athe Eee Fall’ ;! not in an explicit
and precisely
eee =
way, but only ina rudimentary and dim way. The same is
h child-s tage of humanity as a whole. We shall not
true of the
expect any illumination on the nature of original human
existence and of the Fall from the prehistoric period. On the
contrary, we shall give up all attempts to discover somewhere
in that field the event of the Fall, and after that of Paradise,
the way of life of the original man. Rather we may say that
both the child and the peive human_being, our original
ancestor, back to the Peking man or the Java man, are further
removed from Original and Fallen man than we are. .
“This makes it clear that the idea of development should
-not be used for the explanation of Christian concepts, nor
should it be set up in opposition to them. Ihe former is what
todo; the
has triedcher,
‘modern theology, since Schleierma
‘second was the opinion both of the opponents and of the
defenders of the doctrine of the Early Church. We have
already become familiar with the essential thought ofSchicier-
macher. He tried_to conceive the meaning of the ecclesiastical —
doctrine_of Original Sin in evolutionary terms by applying
the idea of the after-effects of ‘the earlier stages of evolution
to the present stage ofevolution.” It is not our intention to
oes

as
deny this fact such nor todepreciate its importance.
Genetic individual psychology shows us in an impressive way,
,’ actual existence of such
in the example of ‘infantilismthe
after-of s stage ofdevelopment;
a more primitive
effect like-
enough instances—provided by paleontological
wise there are
research—of physical_and_ps j i ri of
developm« of ‘atavistic’ elements which have _been_left
behind. So also the history of custom. shows us how some old
1 In his work, The Concept of Dread, Kierkegaard seems to wish to
ascribe a very special significance to the first sin of the individual, as if
this itself were the Fall of Man. This would be a psychological misunder-
standing, which would be on a level with the historical misunderstanding
against which he is contending.
2 For further details see my book, Die Mystik und das Wort, Chapter X;
Die Siinde als Atavismus und als Schuld.
400
 GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

- custom or tradition may be handed on for

for centuries without
being understood, long after its meaning has disappeared and
een forgotten. F inally, too, psychological research into the
‘collective-unconscious,’ and the archaic types which appear
in the latter, also point in the same direction. The actua
fact which lies behind Schleiermacher’s theory must
‘admitted. Still more:even its relation to sin ought not to be
|3denied. |in all sin ‘there is something of atavism or archaism
eateries

hat we know to-day about our ‘past from

_ the empirical scientific point of view is not without significance.
for our knowledge of sin. But it does not explain sin,, neither
the common sin of humanity as a whole, nor individual ‘sins.’
|To explain sin causally in
i such %a way ee mean oaaneneoS
|it_alto ether. The actual situation of atavism or infantilism
‘isa psychological element of the concrete fact of sin, but it
is not its origin; for this lies in decision, in a s iitual act of
self-determination, not in sychical ccauses. Sin, as Kierkegaard
discusses it in his Concept ofDread, is ‘something new ;In contra-
distinction from all genetic psychological conditions 7 is a leap;
it is that element in decision which cannot be explained. 1 Thus
the fact that infantile or atavistic tendencies are in operation
in the nature of man at the present day iis not to be contested.
But they only become sin when man in his moral decision, in
his self-determination, makes room for them, or allows them _
to remain. Thus our knowledge of the growth of humanity —
or of the single human being may possibly enrich our con-
ception of the actual, concrete forms of sin, but they can
never in the slightest degree make any contribution to our
knowledge of the nature of sin itself, the fact of the sinful
decision as such. Both man’s creation in theimage
i of God, pparcimnsnniieiins
and also his ‘contradiction,’ are “facts ‘which |do_not. tie_upon
the empirical }plane, butt through thee ¢
genulinely_ historical they
impinge upon it,and manifest themselves
elves within it.
This also clears away the secondaig oat Faroenamely,
the view that the doctrine of the|Origin and Fall of Man is in
opposition to the-facts of human development 1maintained by
science. This opinion, as is well known, is held not only by
Nene test

orthodox Christian theologians but also by orthodox Darwinian

1 Kierkegaard: Begriff der Angst, p. 25.
401
 MAN IN REVOLT

natural scientists and their still more orthodox pupils: ‘either

Moses or Darwin,’ ‘either the Christian Faith or the idea of
evolution.’ It is true of course that there certainly is an irre-
concilable opposition between the ancient ecclesiastical form
of the doctrine and the idea of evolution. But purely from
religious considerations we have already rejectedthis traditional
Wows arehanrach

form of the doctrine as a fatalmisunderstanding,ascorruption

a
‘of thereal ‘thought. of the Bible.
‘The theologically purified doctrine of the Origin and of the
_Fall,on the othéf Hand,
can neitherr proved
be nor dis proved
_ by the findingsofem arical science. For the Creation and the
Fall are happenings ‘which cannot be introduced into any
empirico-historical picture, thus they cannot be affected by
any changes in ee empirical picture of growth. The genetic
icture_ of the humanity or of the indie Rae
being may show jr the specifically, hum:
human element, whether
inthe. positive or in the negative sense,
se, eitheren
as image
ge of |
God or as sin,begins to appearon the plane of that which can
be empirically perceived. It may perhaps describe the begin-
nings of human existence—so far as we can trace them; but it
cannot explain personal existence as such, nor that negative
element by which it is determined—sin. It merely shows us:
from this point of view we see living creatures with the perhaps
still very dim and primitive characteristics of that which is
distinctively human; but how ersonal existence and sin come
to be lies beyond ali that em rica I genetic, . description and
research into causes can prove. Equall little, however, can the~
theological
gical statement ;<about the Origin and the Fall
ofMan
contain
in an
an element ‘whichh prejudices _ the pi
picture of the s
story
of the growth of.
‘of.man, It ‘merely says that wherever there are
human beings there too you will always find both the divine
Origin of Man and his Fall: the image of God and its destruc-
tion, that is, ‘man in contradiction.’
Thus the Christian doctrine of Original Sin and of the Fall,
rightly understood, is no more opposed to the fact of evolution
than the beauty or the ugliness of a picture is opposed to the
chemical qualities of its material—the canvas or the colours.
The beauty or the ugliness of a picture has certain chemical
substances as its substratum. It is not beautiful or ugly without
402
GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

these chemical elements, but it is not beautiful or ugly because

of them, but only ‘through’ them. This may serve as an analogy
for the disparity between the statements which concern growth
and those which concern personal being, thus Creation and
Sin. The specifically human element, personal being, is not a
fact which can be proved either empirically or rationally, in
either its positive or its negative aspect. aan view of man A AREA A i Si
which does not start fom the Word of God and from _respon-_
sibi ty must ay: mre cisely the essentia I element of human i
existence its character ofdecision. ‘So also every the ory of
eloprr the Idealistic, theRomantic or omar pee

the N aturalistic, ‘must also ignore it. How man comes to be,
so far as this real element is concerned, has no essential
importance for that which he is, unless we understand by its
‘growth’ his growth from God and from his decision in
opposition to God. But this is not what is usually called
‘srowth.’ That has far more to do with his history than with
his development. A later chapter will deal with this question.

5. GROWTH AND SPIRITUAL BEING

Human. existence,the fact that man has been created in
the image of God, ‘and thefact that he has set himself in
Opposition to od, cannot ] € “understoodd from.
1the Fact of
ofhi
his_

which has been created by God—that it is not there from the

very outset, but that it grows. There is no theological reason
why we should regard the process of growth as such—birth
and growth—as something which ought not to be, as some-
thing which is contrary to the purpose of the Creation. Even
the process of growth with which we are familiar participates_
in the Creation as well as in sin. ~The ‘suspicion
su n of the process
of development as ungodly in itself, as something which
ETS AEGIS with the ears Good, is an idea of
Greek Idealism, not of the faith of the Bible. It isrooted |
1 By the equation Urzeit gleich Endzeit, which Heim sets up in the
first edition of his Glaube und Denken (p. 387) and which is based upon the
identification of the Fall and an objective, temporal world-form (p. 379),
growth is opposed to the act of creation; in spite of all modifications, this

403
 MAN IN REVOLT

ultimately in the protest against creaturely-finite existence

as such, in the rebellion of man who wants to be God, against
the fact that he has been created at all. From the being of
God certainly, all growth, all possibility of growth or necessity
for growth is excluded; but growth belongs to the nature of —
the creature
as such. The necessity for development is a
fundamental destiny of all, also of human creatureliness. The
Biblical narrative of the Creation takes into account the human
process of reproduction, and therefore it regards the pro-
creation of children and the process of birth as a law of the
good Creation, not of the Fall.! The fact of being unfinished
which belongs to the process of growth
as such—ought not
to be regarded as a manifestation of evil. From the very
outset a process of human growth and development has
always been taken for granted.
We know this human growth of man primarily as a fact of
the individual life. The specifically human element in man is
not there Tropa. eneery outset—in theinfant
embryo, in ‘the fertilize ovum—but
CRIT even
in the
PRIEST
it developsin connexion
with _and in_a certain parallel to bodily and psycho-physical
PRES A ROR CATO

development. Even the Bible takes account of the fact that

man is firstof all a puyueds and not a mvevparixds,? that is,
ert ne

that the fully human element isnot present from the outset _
but that it is added to that which first existed.? The infant,
- c

ERM
LS NEL ETTORE MANNE LIER RIA 0 RRR
TC Wat NCR os yp seme EAN MIAN

is the idea of the Fall due to Plato and to Origen, with the consequence
that Redemption does not bring in anything new, as against the Original
Creation, thus that the whole of history can begin anew. The Augustinian
distinction :posse non mori and non posse mori is here abandoned, and in so
doing time which was going in one direction has again become a cycle.
That is the ‘Achilles’ heel’ of Heim’s presentation which is otherwise so
fine. ;
1 Gen. i. 28. 2 Cor. xv. 45 ff.
° Whether Rom. vii. 7-9 has this biographical meaning or not is ques-
tionable. Zwingli understood the passage in this sense, whereas most
modern commentators see here a parallel to Rom. v. 14, that is, not an
autobiographical reflection at all but one which is concerned with the
history of humanity. It is beyond doubt that Jesus Himself takes into
consideration a relative innocence on the part of the child (Matt. xviii. 33
xix. 14). The Church has not kept to the lines laid down by the Bible
when it has regarded the infant as a sinner, although it is quite right to
insist that every human being to whom the Word is proclaimed is a sinner.

404
 GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

_ just as he is not able to use human speech, is not capable of

“understanding the Word ofGod, This human’ element in man,
whether in the formal or in in the material sense, is “indeed.
never to be understood by the‘idea “of development; on the =

other |hand iit is something which vwe |

earn to know only in the _
‘process _ of development. Not only in the “sphere ‘of the body, :
but also in that of the mind and the spirit, do we see the
process of growth in human life; man grows as long as he lives.
Even of our Saviour itwas said: ‘He increased in wisdom and
‘in_stature.’! Growth is characteristic, not of sinful existence,
but of the earthly world and the earthly existence.
But just as certainly as we can observe this fact of growth,
register and describe its stages and phases, so also we lack all
insight into the connexion between human growth and the
being of man.
man. The1 |growth of even
e the simplest. logical funda-
mental
enta conceptior
ion,for instance,
e,the idea of ‘where’ or ‘what’
is an enigma to us. For. these categories are notcconstructed
oa ree ‘thus: ‘they cannot be. analysed or-fitted
“together; but “suddenly they
t 2are. there, at one bound, so to
“Speak. “It Hashes upon us what this means: ‘why,’ ‘who,’
‘where,’ ‘what,’ etc. No one can tell another; each person
must see it for himself, and he must see it in a Bach. And yet.
actually it does nothappen ‘in a flash,’ and the teacher, the
the
one who imparts, pla S$ aninindispensable € partinthisp process.
Ten a eT ove all the brain, must be prepared for
the psychical functions, so must the latter also be prepared
for the mental and then again for the personal act. This
preparation requires time,in it_ developmennt_takes place;; the.
act itself, however, “happens,
hay ns,¥ when it ha ens, § suddenl
ddenly, in
such a way thatwe can only iyconceive its relation to time in
a negative manner. Ut comes. in.time, indeedeven with time,
and yet is itself, by its very nature, above time,SE: comes with
growth, in the process of orn, "and yet “it_is_ itself either.
») wholly there or not at all. We cannot ‘understand’ the question
“of ‘why’ in part—half or three-quarters for instance—we
either understand it all at once or not at all.
What is true of the formal structure of the mind is also true
of material personal existence. Responsible _self-determination.
1 Luke ii. 52.

405
 MAN IN REVOLT

cannot ‘grow.’ It is or it is not. Love happens or it does not

happen,
And yet that which itself cannot grow happens in the
process of growth and takes a share in growth. Just as the
question ‘why,’ although it is an indivisible whole, may be
thought more or less powerfully or profoundly, so also man
may accomplish the personal act of responsible self-decision
more or less powerfully and ‘decidedly.’ There is a personality
which is childlike, and another which is masculine, there is a
childlike faith and a vigorous masculine faith, a childlike and
a masculine way of committing sin. To deny this state of
affairs is just as dangerous as to over-estimate its psychological
importance. Even the spiritual life, even man’s relation to
God, is embedded in the process of growth, both in its negative
and in its positive form. There is a development
in sin and _
faith,
in Jnspite of the fact that man is ther wholly a.beigyr
or whollya sinner. "Thetwo aspects Mmust_be
held by us con-
tinually side by side, and can never be equated with one
“another-—the logical aspect of the ‘wholly’ “total” inwhichwhichknowsthe _
no “more or less,” and thepsychological aspect,
‘more
or less,’ the ‘ever more’ and the ‘ever less’ are the
standard.1 But as we shall never be able to understand how it
is that body and mind exist together, so also we shall never
be able to discover that which, in the nature of the case, cannot
be fitted together, but while it is an indivisible whole, at the
same time can be something which grows. It must be enough
for ushails
cease
to know
te
that this is the case,«cfr
ae nc nen
and that
sis dtd
bothShale
theseRAAT
Nmreanrtes wr two
oints of view are justified.
We are not aware, however, merely of the fact of an
individual growth of man, but—and this is the new element
as compared with previous generations—also of a general -
1 This is why the question whether faith is to be conceived psycho-
logically or not can neither be answered with No nor with Yes, but can
only be answered with both No and Yes. It is therefore not right to place
faith on its psychological side as something comparatively immaterial.
In theology pseudo-logic is as bad as pseudo-psychology. This must be
said against my own observations in Die Mystik und das Wort (pp. 18 ff.),
which only emphasize one side. Faith stands above the opposition between
Logos and Dynamis. It is a looking away from oneself but ‘a whole-hearted
looking at Christ’ and therefore the ‘growth’ of faith plays such a large
part in the New Testament.
406
 GROWTH OF MAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

process of growth. The human race as a whole, as a human

race, is not simply from the beginning there, finished; it too
like the individual human _being, has grown out of primitive
origins. Here again we must accept a certain parallel between
the physical and the mental. The meagre—but significant—
documents of the mental life of the more primitive stages of
humanity, which testify to early human civilization, art and
religion, are, it is true, not sufficient to give us a picture of the
mental life of man in his earlier days; but they do give us a
right to extend the parallel between the bodily and the mental
development which we know from individual experience to
humanity as a whole. The study of the ‘primitive’ life of the
present day, in order to supplement our knowledge about the
origin of mankind, has been continually shown to be justified
by the study of palacontology, although a good deal which at
first sight looks ‘primitive’ in reality is not ‘primitive’ at all,
but is a product of degeneration.
Why, then, should not Christian theology boldly admit the
fact that even mankind as a whole—like tthe individual—has
developed not only physically —‘but also” “mentally _out. “of.
embryonic’ human conditions to “childlike human existence,
and en that to historical human « existence? This fact was
Christian Church for so long
not admitted on the side of the
because on both sides there was misunderstanding and con- Ser
To
fusion. admi t mental development from primitiveorigins.
thatws.
does _notmean. that
————
fromthese, origins...
Iife fror
we explain mena
as
well
Individuallyy as|generally,t mai
ng ofman_as
eing human.
is a divine newcreation, andcan no more beexplained from
ph NNT

in more detail further on—

its antecedents—as will ee shown
“than the mental can be explained from the psychical or the
psychical from the physical. The fact that the mental, both
Eee
individually and generally, runs. parallel. with. ‘the.
development oes not in SFr ti: the other factct, that.
it is something completely new, Why should not that which,
in_ principle is new appear only gradually, |by degrees? Even
the most striking and clear proof of the way in which man
has developed out of the animal series would not alter the .
with |allother creatures,
fact inthe least that man, as compared v
n "something which cannot be deduced fom
is something new,
407
 MAN IN REVOLT

and understood in the light of it, but that man is a being

sui generis. Up to the present time science has not yet provided
such a proof, although the ‘missing link’ has become ever
shorter, and not a great deal is now lacking to make the strict
proof possible. No Christian ought to deny to-day, on account
of his Christian faith, the extreme probability of the Doctrine
of Descent, and no theologian ought to deny it on account of
his theology. The controversy which on the side of theology |has
been carried
on against the theory of evolution is certainly
nothing”“to
be proud of in the history of Christian theology,
andat has ‘done a_great dealtto” “shake~people’s‘S’ faith inthe
“genuine ‘truthfulness
tr of the teachers oft
the Church. Tf
geared eeree ere eet) if it has
pleased God the Creator to allow mankind to develop
velop out
of the _animal sseries,3 just _as He allows the human individual
2to. develop out of a fertilized _ovum—why -‘should we rebel
against |this? Does thisalter anything in the special significance
“ofthe creation of man? What does it alter in thestatementof
the Bible, that.Mman_has been created in.
in ‘the image oof God.and
thrrough sin. Has fallenawayoom Him?
Him?

408
 CHAPTER XVIII

MAN IN THE COSMOS

r =

/l. THE THREEFOLD BOUNDARY

YA ovistincTIvE feature of the Christian understanding of
|existence is the fact that in it not only is the boundary between _
| God and the world, God and man maintained, but also that _
| the distinction between man and the world is kept very clear
z

and sharp, as something which must never be allowed to

blurred. Manis not a bit of the world; he stands <
ppn
a ~
become
over against all creaturely existence as something special, as —“ ~
a new dimension, It is not due to naiveté, but is the necessary
consequence of the Biblical idea of God that the Biblical
picture of the world is absolutely anthropocentric, to such an
extent indeed that in the Bible the world and man are fre-
quently interchangeable ideas. The world of which the Bible
speaks is always the world for man, the world in which the
fate of man is of supreme importance. Man is in thecentre \
of the world, in spite of the fact that God is His Creator and |
Lord, as He is the Creator and Lord of the world.Godhas |
placed man as lord over the creatures, He has ordered the |
world for him. In this respect the Bible is in opposition to |
iscFa TT GON AG SCE poeteneie (CeO ATE, le Shic -

both the ancient and themoderidea n of the cosmos, where | <

man is integrated into the cosmos as a dependent element.)
nts
Since God appoiman lord of CRATE GOR TITTGRETTT MOETg
all things under his feet,’1 He places him over against the
1 Psa. viii. 7. This central position of man is not removed by the
New Testament interpretation of the Psalm as applied to Christ; it is only
made still clearer: only through the Logos, the Christ, ‘in whom are
gathered together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven
and which are on earth’ (Eph. i. 10), has man a part in this centre of the
world; but for that very reason he has a part in it, and his part in it is
due to the Christ. The tendency to deny this special position of man,
plainly expressed in Barth’s Credo, where (p. 30) it is said that it is seemly
for man as a creature ‘to recognize his own insignificance and smallness
also within the sphere of creation,’ is non-Scriptural. On the other hand
Augustine may stand as the representative of the view of the Church as
a whole: In homine omnis propemodum creatura; breviter, creationis et naturae
centrum est (quoted in J. Gerhard, op. cit., TV, 239).
409
 MAN IN REVOLT
world, makes him the goal and the purpose of the whole
creation. This ‘anthropocentric’ idea
of the world, however,
_is inopposition both tospeculative Idealism
and to mysticism, —
which ultimately equate the spirit of man with the Divine
Spirit, the human reason with the divine Reason, with the
idea of the correlation of God and man, which the Cherubinic
Wanderer, a singer supposed to be Christian, expresses so
bluntly :
That God so holy is, and lives without desire
He has received from me, as I from Him,
I am as great as God, He is as small as I,
No higher I than He, nor I than He less high.1

Here the three dimensions are not distinguished from one

another, here the absolute boundary between God and man,
and also that between the world and man, has become fluid.
The mysticism
which sees God and man as a unity, since
itis
pantheistic, necessarily also regards God and the world, and
man and the world, as a unity.
Reem ctementar the Bibiek idea of the world is
this, that man, for whom the world is ordered as its summit,
its goal and its end, is also himself God’s creature, servant and
not master; one who receives and not one who sends; a
reflection, not an original light; a dependent and not an
independent being. It is the creaturely being, man, who has
been created out of nothing, who is not eternal, not uncon-
ditioned, who is wholly dependent, whom God makes lord
over His Creation. Man is master of the world because and
in so far as God makes him so, because through the fact that
God creates him only in His own image, He allows him to
have the privilege of being subject and being spirit, of freedom
and of creative activity, and endows him with those powers
by means of which man can actually ‘make subject unto him’
‘that which is under him.’
The fact that man has been created in the Divine. lm:
page
singles him out from all other creatures; bymeans of this’
1 The Cherubinic Wanderer is a long poem by Angelus Silesius (Johannes
Scheffler), 1562-1677.— Translator.
410
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

quality, which is assigned to man alone, among all the creatures

with which we are familiar, he is a dimension of his own. By
means of this Divine image, through the Word of God, which
is the ground of his personal being, he participates in the
manner of the divine being—that is, in being subject, in which
the sub-human creation, the world, has no part. He alone is |
erson, even if—incontrast_to_ the Creator Himself—h, Leis a
person — 1S not“unconditioned but conditioned, “not-auto-.
nomous and _ self-sufficient,
ent, but
but. wholly de chen on the
positing of God. It is through
geen his hie pereonality that, in virtue’ |
of the divine positing, he is lord of all the other creatures, and
is the meaning and the end of the Creation.1 For he_alone,.
|
who is created as person, can give back to the Creator with a ;|
self-actuated, loving response the Jove with which hehasbeen |
oved. The Creator, whose]power is inall that«exists, ‘and who yy AN Pe LUy,
“preserves all in existence, can be in communion with man” ie
alone. Man has this special position in the created cosmos in
spite of his fall from God and the perversion of his nature.?
Even as sinner man does not cease to be subject, to be person,
in contrast to all else that exists. He remains, even as sinner,
in a distinctive, even if negative relation to God; before and
afterwards alike, even if in another, that is, an altered sense,
namely, changed by sin and law, he remains responsible.
Hence even as sinner he still remains 0over a ainst the world, . < th
knowing it and
acting in it, “making iit, theoretically “2
and” edly
} ae an object.He dominates it, “he. ‘makes it subject. /
to himself,* even though in "a_way. hich, is not in “harmony
doen

with ‘theedidivine will, but in one which is contrary;

to it, which
“leads finally to the "fact that he himself becomes domina ed.
But even his tyrannical and brutal way of making his fellow-
creatures subject to himself is a proof of his original exceptional
position, just as it is also a proof of his fall into sin.

1 J. Gerhard thus sums up what Christian theologians—except Karl .

Barth—have always taught: Sicut factus homo propter Deum, ut Deo serviret;
ita mundus factus propter hominem ut homine serviret, 1V, 239.
2 This dominium is regarded by the earlier theologians, including Luther,
as spoilt indeed, but not as lost, and Bees in this they see that ‘relic’
of the image of God.

ALI
 MAN IN REVOLT

2. MAN IN THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD

Through his double attitude to theworld, namely, that, on

Itas a“bodily creature, and that,
the one hand, he isset _within
a spiritual
on the other ‘hand, he stands over against it as a
personal bein man, as “even th ere lest. theologians
oticed, occupies a urious position mid wa between ‘heaven’
and ‘earth,te “is somehow the pivotofthe creation; his
a is not only his own, but it also determines that of the
created world as a whole. The world around him, according
to the Biblical view, does not seem so objectively independent
as the naive realism of common sense—often wrongly appealing
to the word of the Bible—assumes. The manner in which the
world exists which man ‘has’ is somehow ‘covariant’ with his
own manner of existence, with his attitude to God; according
to the Biblical view the counterpart of the sinful existence of
man is a world which is very different from human existence
as originally created by God.
Primarily
man is a1_microcosm, a being in whose structure
all the stages of existence of the world can be seen: the
‘inorganic, the organic, the vital, the ‘animal’ element. The
‘human body, like every body honrene ‘occupies space, is com-
posed of protons, atoms, molecules, and crystals; his body,
like every organic structure, is a totality with ‘self-direction,’
a vegetative structure, which nourishes itself by assimilation,
grows through the division of cells and differentiates itself;
from the point of view of comparative anatomy he belongs to
the mammal species of the vertebrates, with whom he has in
common not only the main features of the morphological
structure but also most of the biological functions. Thus man,
in spite of his distinctiveness, is primarily also a compendium
of the whole created world.
But, as has already been emphasized_by Gregory of Nyssa,
Jpnmemmsemmnenen
there is noo Spece. reason to extolMan _as a microcosm ;- for he
sce paenaeinamas

shares t
shares t
quality with‘every mouse.22 The pre-Christian
PEED ealeiaatabimanraeiites)

1 Thus er to the usual conception of the meaning of Rom. viii.

20. Here too Schlatter and others certainly understand xtiowg as said of
man, namely, of the unbeliever, in contradistinction to the children of God.
2 Thus Gregory of Nyssa, De hom. opif, c. 16. Luther: Nam in ceteris
creaturis cognoscitur Deus ceu in vestigio, in homine autem, praesertim in Adamo,
vere cognoscitur . . . ut recte dicatur utxpdxoopoc (WA. 42, 51).
412
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

Greek thinkers laid so much stress upon the idea of the

microcosm because for them the cosmos was divine, and thus
in their conception of ‘microcosm’ they intended to express
the fact that man had a share in the divine existence. Within
Christian1 thought 1itmerely expresses the fact that the higher _
state of existence always.tincludes. within itself. thelower, |but—
_is_not_contained in it. We may 1 ‘understand the.lower ‘stage
“from the higher, “but. ‘theopposite is not.the.“case, although
genetically the higher stage develops out of the lower. We can
understand repose as the extreme limit of motion, but we
cannot reverse the order and understand motion as springing
from repose. We may regard the dead as the limit of the
living, but we cannot reverse the order and understand the
living from the dead. Thus we may also understand the
irrational life of the psyche from the rational life of the psyche
but not the other way round. That which is rich in dimension
helps us to understand that which is less rich in dimension, but
not vice versa. For the new ‘dimension’ is not the result of an
increaseor combination «of|
previous. dimensions, but isindeed
something which in_itselfisinexplicably new. The fact. that
this new dimension“only
ly gradually emerges out of the realm_
“ofthe previous one, beginning withaminimum, may“lead
| a
superficial _ mind_to thinkthat the new dimension. can be.
explained from the{ previous one _and ‘thus.ey a mere “trans-
‘formationof the old. Precisely ‘this, however, is the sign of the
new ‘dimension, that this possibility of transformation does
not exist. The new quality cannot be attained by any new
combination or increase of that which_
“previously, existed. It.
1s a new “creation, although ‘the new may fit smoothly to the
“old
' ;just
j as the points which switch over to the other line are
connected so harmoniously that the transition is easy. A
mechanistic theory of evolution has to a large extent obscured
insight into this situation, and in so doing has raised a host of
problems which are not real problems at all, but could be
solved with a right exercitium logicum.
This significant idea_of the graded orderof being, which
cannot be reversed, is; already expressed1in the
.e]Biblical narrative
of the Creation. The fundamental truth that all, the dead and
the living, the higher and the lower, are equally creatures,
created beings, dependent entities, does not rule out the other
413
 \

MAN IN REVOLT

truth that this created existence is an organic whole which

has been created by stages, whose summit isman the creature
which has been endowed with reason or~spirit.The fact that
alongside
of this Biblical doctrine there is also a Neo-Platonist
and Aristotelian doctrine of the graded order of being, which
was combined by Thomas Aquinas with the Christian idea
of Creation, and made into a central idea of scholastic philo-
sophy and theology, does not mean that we need reject the
simple idea of the Bible itself. It is not the idea itself, but the
use of the scholastic argument which is dangerous. According
_to the teaching of the Bible, in hispersonal being nman is the
“summit
of an hierarchically ordered
0 world “of
of creation,> whereas _
“his_material; his organic and his aanimal existence connects
SANG
him with the‘whole of.“the rest ofthe created \world, , ; gives;
INTROS
him RE:
a share In ‘its
;existence, “whether material. or biological. ' This
“summit
SES sia howeray towers above the sphere of the created
once
wor tis nerenat a as we have
ave seen, 1S ‘only to_be
be
understood
Ret as as being-in-the-word-ofof-C
God,as responsible being.
~The Bible indeed suggests that notPonty man but also other
beings endowed with reason have a share in this distinctive
position, created spirits, which do not belong to the life of
earth; but the Bible tells us so little about the ‘angels’ that in
any case it is not sufficient to give us any clear knowledge
about these beings whom we meet neither in our natural nor
in our religious experience.” What the Church has taught on
1 The Aristotelian scala naturae (dead matter—plants—lower animals—
higher animals—man) is first of all simply that which every thinking
human being perceives; but it is combined with his metaphysic of nous
and fyle in such a way that it is in opposition to the Christian idea of
Creation. The ‘lower’ is for Aristotle a product of the limitation of the
spirit, even as in Neo-Platonism it is a depreciation of existence. Cf.
Zeller, III, pp. 426 ff. Scholasticism has tried to weave all three motifs
into a unity; hence the Catholic ethic is determined by the contrast
between the ‘lower’ and the ‘higher,’ which is completely absent from the
thought of the Bible.
* Whether the following statement of Schlatter: ‘for those who speak to
us in the Scriptures, man did not stand at the summit of creation, but |
above him they saw a manifold kingdom of spirits’ (Das christliche Dogma,
p- 92) is tenable in view of such passages as 1 Cor. vi. 3; 1 Pet. i. 12;
Heb, ii. 16, is extremely questionable. On the other hand, we gladly agree
with him that the idea ‘makes clear to us the glory of God.’ The specu-
414
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

this subject from time immemorial should rightly belong rather

to the realm of speculative imagination than to that of the
truths of faith. In any case there is no occasion for us to give
any more attention to this subject in a doctrine of man; the
mere fact that it has been mentioned will be sufficient.
Although man is not the centre, heis zn the centre of theae;
cosmos, because he has ‘een ‘created in the.Word. ‘of, God. is i -C¢é

The Word tt > beginning’? "| \

of God,reatRetthe Logos ‘which was. in‘the
‘and ‘through “whom | all
I has been. created,” suites Son who |
“upholds all‘things by 1the
i
he word |of His power,’® ‘for ‘whom all |
a4 reoge nan ea
was “created, and ‘in wheomn all things
t cohere’ 5 is ‘the centre
of the world. He is also the ‘true Light which.
whic a ;
i
every man®—the Word of God,aapart from whom1 uld
_not E man, and would not be a.responsib
res ag
his participation inthisWord—which sin does not Le
although it corrupts it—man is capable of placing himself
over against the world and of making his fellow-creatures
Sires ease
or a.
inaright 01
subject unto him. Hence, because man—whether i caunseica ecuisndiilrabes

wrong relation, whether saved or doomed- 3 tthis

ashare in
he himself, though indeed not the centre of the world,
“Word, each ses euuts

“Is a the centreor the world. Hence wecannot imagine any

other world, and we do not know of any other world, save
that which is ‘for us,’ the subject of our knowledge, and the
object of our domination.
We express the same truth from the opposite angle when we
remind ourselves _tr at Go d ecame man a
a_and not an animal.
Tt is not an arbitrary fact that God revealsHimself to us as
man and not as an animal. It is contrary to the revealed
meaning of the Creation when it is asserted that God could
have revealed Himself just as well as animal as man. The fact Reset baie braica

lations about the angels which are such a favourite theme in scholastic,
and also in Protestant, theology (cf. J. Gerhard, all the nineteen chapters)
are in strange contrast to the relative unimportance of this theme in the
New Testament.
1 John i. 1. 2 John i. 3. 8 Heb. i. 3.
AOolesil 162: 5 Col. i. 17.
8 John i. 9. When Luther says of man that he is praestantior creatura quam
coelum, quam terra et omnia, quae in eis sunt (WA. 42, 87), that is to be under-
stood, like all Luther’s thought on creation and man, of existence in the
Word of God.
415
 MAN IN REVOLT
that God became man, and the fact that man alone has been
created in the image of God, are inseparably connected. In_
the light of.the first_we perceive the second. Only from the
standpoint of the Incarnation do weperceive that this is the
case with man; but in the light of the Incarnation we perceive
that this connexion with man is due to the Creation, that this
distinctiveness has been given to man, which not even the Fall
destroys, indeed that even the Fall itself—even if in the negative
form—can only re-emphasize it. The Incarnation takes place
—not only but also—in order to restore the picture which
has been destroyed; the Divine Incarnation—not only, but .
also, and necessarily—isthe renewal of thatwhich took place
‘in the creation
of man in the image of God. Human personal
being alone isa suitable means of revealing the personal Being
of God. ‘The revelation of the Divine person in the God-Man
a "RNR ATES) Neil ecm)

is at the same ]
“

time the revelation

GOOE eS RE MAI

SARS TARE AST A TOR

of the originally true,
NRG YAS SAAR ASEAN STERNDE AHS SUNTAN NARHA ITIL

~ God reveals Himself to us in Jesus Christ as the Man-God,

as the “God for man,’ just as He reveals Himself to us as the
‘Man from God and for God.’ The Incarnation of the Son of
God is both the revelation of God who is the Centre, and of
' man, who through the creation of God has a share in this
. centre; it reveals to us, as the divine goal for the cosmos, a
theanthropic end, the divine end, which is at the same time
the end of man.? The Rule of God which is the purpose of
God is at the same time the Redemption and the consummation
of man, which is the purpose for man. In His revelation God
confesses Himself on the side of man
PR as the aim, and therefore
tABSLV
TEETER AAS enerereras: ete

? Luther: Et tamen, quia est conditus ad imaginem invisibilis Dei, occulte per
hoc significatur, sicut audiemus, Deum se revelaturum mundo in homine Christo
(WA. 42, 66). It is one and the same revealed will of God which lies
behind the creation of man in the image of God and the Incarnation of
the Son of God in the Man Christ Jesus. Cf. Rom. viii. 29 and Eph. i. ro.
.? Thus Luther, speaking explicitly of present, fallen man, classes together
the creation of man and the aim of the Kingdom of God, since he calls
men. the highest and best creatures of God, for whose sake all has been
created and to whom God has given all, and indeed whom He has
appointed to be His children and His heirs (cf. Késtlin: Luthers Theologie,
II, p. 97). In the New Testament the Kingdom of God is always first of
all perfected communion between God and humanity.
416
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

also as the central point, of His creation. Ultimately everything

turns on the destiny o man. Even the dumb creation waits
“for the revealing of the sons of God.’! The whole cosmos is _
only a framework for the history of mankind, “which has its.
“central point in ‘the God-Man.. € Cosmos PHOUES,. as it were,
in harmony» ‘with the history of mankind—in destruction as
well as in restoration and consummation. The history of man-
kind, from the very outset, is connected with a cosmic and
super-cosmic dimension, because it is based in the God who
is in Himself the Loving One, and thus the One who wills
community, the Triune God. If it be true that God is Love, |
that this one Word alone can fully and Tightly _express_ tl
the
nature “of God,? then ‘this means
me: that God is a God-Man,, and.
iiderocexescuanenitiise Sb EF Fe aa Sr iN Nu EL NkSat:NRA MUG thee nner ta

‘His creation isa “creation1 for “the ike of man. “Hence inn the
‘Bible there is so little about the world of nature, the sub-
human world. The Bible is concerned with God’s dominion
over man—as the meaning and end of the.‘whole cosmos. This
truth must be“strongly emph jasized because at the present day
even theology shows a tendency to depreciate man as much -
as possible—supposedly for the sake of the glory of God, of
the God who reveals His plan for the world as a plan for
humanity, and who in order to reveal Himself became man!
This Biblical idea of the relation of the cosmos to man is
\ quite foreign to the modern mind; the whole conception_is
regarded aas a relic of bygone ages, when man, in1
his naive
ay oni. al1 fantastic, idea_of his own Amportance, ‘fostered
{ _by
s_‘myth- forming imagination,’ projecting as It were the
cosmos into this view of himself. But the ‘imagination which
creates myths,’ which is supposed to “be the cause of this oe
—
.

anthropocentric ideaof the world, does “precisely “what the5. ee

Bible, when it
it"speaks0 of 1 man, never | oes: it ‘elinminates the |
yetween._ man_and mature, man and ‘things, -|
and the animal creation, whereas the Bible alwaways maintains
this boundary inviolate. ‘The ‘myth-forming imagination’ leads
to the Pantheistic, but certainly not to the Christian, idea of
1 Rom. viii. 19.
2 John iv. 16. Also Luther: Immo deus est aliud nihil quam charitas . . . Qui
deum cognoscit iratum, inimicum . . . ille non cognoscit deum, quia non cognoscit
charitatem in deo (WA. 20, 755).
417
 MAN IN REVOLT

God and the world. For the Bible the unconditional separation _
of the three dimensions, and their strictly categorical relation
to each other, is characteristic; the relations between God,
the World, and Man cannot be altered: Hence, the derivation
C. % )
a
of the Biblical idea of the cosmos from_tt
‘the.“‘mnyth--formling
imagination’ is “untenable. On, the other. hand, there_is a
“second1 question “whichought. to.be faced: has the alteration rR Sauersemaine

“of our view of the world by science, above.a

of the descent of man f
from.n.the.animals,.a he. nment
of the geocentric, and even of the .¢heliocentric picture ¢of‘the
‘world, made the Biblical ‘viewof 1
A ee: neneensatrentianrs nts
man for ever impossible?oo cdSY ape tee eaarraeererrs PVE

Gs MAN AND THE ANIMALS /

The discussion of the question of the fo yiuiceue of man
has made us familiar with the idea that even man is to be
co-ordinated into the great continuum of the development
of life. In spite of the famous ‘missing-link’ between man and
the primates, the fact of a continuity between man and the
animals cannot to-to-day b
be leftIn
in any, doubt at all. The difference
between man and the highest kind of mammal, from the
morphological and physiological point of view, is far less than
that which exists between a higher and a lower mammal, not
to mention that between a mammal and a living creature
of the lowest kind of organism, such as a jelly-fish or even an
moeba, MWe. must also admit that these differences do not
refer. merely to.
to.‘the
nephysical ¢organism.1.The idea of Descartes
“that only man ‘has - ey“psyche,” and
2 that animals have none,?
has pi
proved "wholly untenable. Everyone who “knows animals
knows how differentiated is the _psychical experience>— of a
SEH

eae omer

higher animal—as
animal— for.instance, adog. Even the long-established
distinction between animal instinct and human intelligence,
the singling out of man as the oe Jaber, has proved impossible
to carry through completely.Atthe present_daywe have
some experimental knowledgeof the intelligence of animals. RRENON MOM DMR An
In any case_the boundary. between _man cand the_ animals
cannot be ‘sought ;at this point. mA
The boundary _lies rather where _the Bible seesSit
it: atte
in
fact that man has been created in thei
image of God,» in
In the
the
1 Cf. Windelband: “Lehrbuch der Geschichte der——
Py P- 344.
— 418
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

spiritually-responsible personalbeing of man. It is. mole.

' intellect, but the spirit related to God,
God, which distinguishes
_man from ‘the animal. Even the ‘ighest animal anin does not show” \,
a trace of spirit, that is, of the possibility of ideation, of the
transcending of that tick ich exists In experience byso.something
unconditioned, normative, perfect. In the animal we do no
see even the smallest beginning of a tendency to seek truth for
truth’s sake, to shape beauty for the sake of beauty, to promote
righteousness for the sake of righteousness, to reverence the
Holy for the sake of its holiness. Here too all attempts to main-
tain the principle of continuity prove to be misrepresentations,
whether of the non-spiritual as the spiritual, or of the spiritual
as the non-spiritual. The unconditional _self-end_of the spirit,
the spiritual norm, and decision in
i
in accordance. with the
1¢sspiritual
norm, is
is something “which is wholly|and entirelyforeign |to the
animal. €_animal knowss nothing ‘above’ its “immediate
“sphere «of existence, nothing by which it measures or tests its
existence. Montaigne, 2 one of the first who thought ithis duty
7to depreciate man_to the glory of God, was simply being witty
when he said that when man plays with his cat he cannot be
sure that his cat is not playing with him. We cannot penetrate
into the soul of a cat, it is true, but all spiritual existence
expresses itself in spiritual act {s irit has as its eC eacary it
form
of expression, culture, humanity, religion. Of all this, a
life, even upon its highest levels, does not show the least
trace. We may assign to the animal a minimum amount of a
certain kind of civilization, especially technical,the use of the
artificial tool for the “satisfaction of Biologically existing
ex needs ;:
“to be. faber, ‘tool-user,’ is not the exclusive privilege of man.
1 The results of the later psychology of animals is thus summed up by
Titius: ‘that every action according to general principles or even according
to ideas, as it finds its universally human and simplest expression in the
creation and observance of customs, law and religion, goes absolutely
beyond anything which can be observed in animals,’ etc. (op. cit., p. 566).
2 Montaigne, Essais, II, 12. The comparison of Montaigne and Eccle-
siastes in Vischer’s book certainly has something to be said for it, but,
like the whole ‘wisdom of the Preacher,’ certainly does not indicate the
essential-element in that which the Bible has to tell us about man (W.
Vischer: Der Prediger Salomo im Spiegel Michel de Montaignes, Jahrbuch der
theologischen Schule Bethel, vol. 4). ;
419
 ee MAN IN REVOLT

But culture, the creation of significant works, which; are

intended to manifest, and d
do_manifest,t_the spirit, 3is alien to
the animal, and is unconditionally characteristic of man as
man. Man alone, and every man, even though in different
degrees, knows this possibility and this need. The same might
be said of speech. The animal may indeed make signs to the
members of the same species, but he cannot talk with them,
he cannot exchange ideas with them. If the animal had mind
he would be obliged to express it, he would be impelled to
create culture. Instead of this we see that even animals with
the highest forms of organization use their intelligence to
maintain their own life and the life of those like themselves.
All that goes beyond this belongs to animal fables; it is a
pantheistic or materialistic removal of the boundary which
the Creator has set between man and beast, since He has
created man—and man alone—after His image. To-day, after
two hundred years of the most intensive effort to remove it,
this boundary is as sharp and clear as ever. The difference ©
between man.and.beast_amounts to_a whole dimension. of
existence,1 just as that between the living and the dead amounts
to a whole dimension of being. The fact that this new element,
this special element, is often present in such a slight degree
that it is almost nil—when, for instance, the mind is weak to
the very extreme of having almost none at all—only provides
the apparent possibility of turning the actual stage into a
continuum. There-is still a vast difference between ‘having
very little mind’ and ‘having no.mind at all.’ The most empty-
headed human being 1isentirely different from|the most intelli-
‘gent ‘animal. The sinner, too, is not a _middle. ‘term between
the animal and the true Tera being—sin ¢as atavism—but
he is wholly a human being, justas much. as the perfect saint,
althou h he is a perverted human_ being. Sin does
does not
not consi
consist
ae
e fact that man becomes animal—this confusion
ETN
TE RTE TIME
ofthought
ry
thoug]
areMNOS

does ‘injustice
ceboth
| tothe animal and to man—but it‘consists PITAL

“Inthe fact that the specifically |human element i

is ‘determined
RUEROAS
RUC cas

negatively instead of"Positively. An Snhuman’ person: is not

an animal, and an animal is not ‘inhuman.’ It is indeed_
eharicteretie of man that he can perverth his nature, that he
1 Cf. Th. Haecker: Was i
ist
tder .Mensch? an ‘order’ of being, p. 9. -
420
 “.

MAN IN THE COSMOS copie

can become ‘inhuman.’ There are no foxes and geese wh OSE

nature is perverted in this way, but there are ‘inhuman’
beings—and it is precisely this, sin—which is the fixed gulf
D man any . Indeed, this gulf between non-
personal and personal being is greater than any other difference
within the created universe. There.is.o i e which
is_ greater still, that between the created universe and the |
—
—
a

unereated reator Himself. Because the Bible regards this |

difference as such, as the greatest within the created universe,
it also perceives the special position of man in the cosmos: |
namely, that all creatures are subject to man, that all that is /
not personal is subject to the personal, The basis for this dis- /
tinctive position, however, is that which makes us responsible: _
eee of the human person to the Divine Person, the |
fact that man has been made in the image of God. ae |

4. MAN IN INFINITE SPACE

But oppositionto the Biblical idea of the cosmos does not
only and primarily arise from the idea of
evolution,
but from__
that SvOnTon in cosmology which is connected with the ,
names of Copernicus an jordano Bruno. The “anthropo-.
centricism
of the Bible, so it.is.said,1s_.connected..with its.
Seocentric attitude,
but geocentricism was once for allannihi-
ated in the year 1543..Thus_anthropocentricismalso, the
ludicrous arroganceof puny man, with his belief that he is_
point of the world, must also fall to the
thecentral ground.
The cosmos of the ancient world was, so to speak, a ‘homely’
dwelling for the human race, which corresponded to the
proportions of man. The cosmos of modern astrophysics and
geology, both from the point of view of time and of space,
has become essentially an ‘unhomely’! world. Is it not -
ness when man, this tiny speck of the dust of the earth,in the
SELLE PEALE IODA SRNLEI SIE OPERAPORN AL 9A PIED Don
ve
“midst of a world in ait even the solar system is a minute
RE. wali

> cin ° a EST ALA ALDED i re ata cas ao ~

point, asserts that the. world has been “created for his sake,
at the Incarnation of the Son of.God and the history of man
is thereal meaning
of the universe, when the history of man,
¥ , A OTR ce My AN TE (APOLLO
PT

Me A RAROE IE 4 Behar SR LATS AA PLEAD ener =

1 There is a play on words here; ‘heimlich’ = ‘homely, familiar’; ‘un-

heimlich’ = ‘weird, uncanny,’ something which makes one feel uneasy.—
Translator.
421
 MAN IN REVOLT

from the temporal point of view, has become merely a second

‘In cosmic time? What a comic figure man cuts within this
world which has become so infinite from the temporal and
spatial point of view, man who maintains that he is a matter
of such great concern to the Creator of the world! It is quite
evident that this ‘removal of the roof of the world’—to use.
Karl Heim’s vivid phrase! describing the Copernican revolu-
‘tion—has made, and is still making, a very deep impression
upon modern man, filling him with that awe and fear of the
Infinite first expressed by Pascal, more eloquently than by
anyone else who has come after him!? For the modern man
the new view.of
the cosmic infinity ofspace and time consti-
tutes a serious obstacle to faith and is a powerful cause of
doubt; wetheologians
in particular ought to be quite clear
about this, and we ought to take it into account.
Yet all this uneasiness is simply a sign of panic, a kind of
cosmic giddiness which prevents us from seeing things clearly.
In this matter.a great deal could be learned from Kant.? In _
roportionas man decreases
as object, and loses significance —
as part of the world, he increases as subject, ecause
his cosmos
‘becomes larger.
For it is man who. measures this universe, itis
man who inquires “into. its laws, it is|the world of man which |
he now finds so strange and ‘un-homely.’ Still, as in the days
of Thales, itis man who comprehends the cosmos with his
mind, and reflects upon it. It is indeed true that he reflects
‘upon it,’ for the world is beneath him, as an ‘object,’ ‘cast
at his feet.’ There is no need to proclaim all this aloud with
the sentiments of a Fichte, but it is true nevertheless. Onl
the man who seeks his greatness_in the s atial dimension has
become a_ludicrous.figure—unspeakably ludicrous; and this
is the comic element in our own day, that, while it perceives
with consternation the hopeless disappearance of man in space,
it seeks its triumphs mainly in the overcoming of spatial dis-
1 K. Heim: Glaube und Denken, second edition, p. 39.
? Pascal: Qu’est-ce qu’un homme dans l’infini? . . . Pensées. Fr. 72.
3 The most important attempt to make this second Copernican up-
heaval fruitful for a Biblical theology is that of Karl Heim in his Glaube
und Denken. The Kantian idea (we always see only ‘our’ world) is here
' fused with a philosophy of existence and the Christian belief in Creation
into a magnificant synthesis.
422
| er a / Zhu bore teteOey of gFfho .
Ie Lied
LS he ato ; y é
, Le f a
otis : oa CANCtI
é
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

tances—like someone who has not caught the express train

and runs after it for a bit, as if he could still catch it up. Truly
such a person is hopelessly ludicrous!
But who has told man that he should seek hisgreatness_in_
s ace? an 1as_dimensions. vwhich _
the universe,
_ with1 all its dB
cosmic proportions, does not and“never.will possess, even if _al
acne
it enlar,
en larged a million times. Man as a piece of the world. *””
“has really b
seers= nothing ;
; b but has the’ man who by theWord of
_God has been ca ed to
o communion
comn n with |
the‘Creator, as person,
as made intheimage
of God, been inanyway<
affectedomthe
_enlargement_ofthestructure
of the‘world? On the contrary is
“eames
not the situation?
: Is it notbecause he has forgotten what
it means to be man, created in the image of God, that the
Copernican enlargement of the cosmos has made him afraid,
and has made the universe so strange and ‘un-homely’? ? It is not
due to Copernicus that he has lost his home,but it isbecause he.
has lost his home. thatt the discovery ‘of
«of Copernicus has
h ‘been too_
much for him. It is because he has no firm standing {ground tl
that
esl age dscemopynalc reales SAN ARS
he
he becomess giddy \when he looks vat
aittthevastness of the universe.
NR mR

5. THE WORLD AND ITS MEANING

Certainly, with the ancient view of the world the Biblical

_view too has gone for ever. But the ancient, view, of the world
_is only the al shabet in. which..the man. of. €, . hac
“no other, had to write down. the. Word, revealed by God, :
no longer. use. this alphabet of the ancient cosmography;we
have a_ne
a_new
>w_alphabet, with. Tetters_ inserted by _ Copernicus,
‘Newtonand Einstein. But whata fool2
anyonewould be to
“think
think that when the old alphabet. was destroyed th he Divine
revelation - was destroyed _as well. Tt willg
give us a cretedeal
_oftrouble to“make right use ofthe newalphabet in order to
proclaim
proclai m the oldtruth ofrevelation in a new way. Theologians,
panini

"preachers |and believers as a _whole st far t

and how cann theyhel elpit?—to ‘the historical “picture
| “of
« the
“Creation c
“of
f the \World ;and the Fall of Man. T. They are still
trying to do something impossible, to fitcosmic hi ry into
‘this historico-chronological history«
of “mankind and thus to _
_include ‘billions of years _‘within thousands ‘of
Pyears.‘Once for
“all, this apologetic business has becomeq quite hopeless. There
423
 MAN IN REVOLT

was a time when people believed that the history of mankind

and cosmic history were co-extensive. All the Biblical authors
had this restricted view of time and space. This view has been
destroyed for ever. With the disappearance from the scene of
the geocentric picture of space the anthropocentric picture
also has gone for ever. As rman is an insignificant |point in
world space, so also his history is a minute fragn ient ofworld-
‘time. In point of fact, to disturb this equation means to turn
the wheel of history backwards, to ignore the revolutionary
movement of knowledge of the last four hundred years—a
quixotic act which would expose one to hopeless ridicule!
And more than this! The God who has created this vastworld
of time and 5 ACE, “and whotthrough science places this
th ‘vastness
massrnenern scfore our.cyyes, iS]nothonoure if we stand still
{will not:
move away from an earlier, more limite picture
“of time ‘and space. “He expects ‘that in
i thesegr
greater expanses _
tf Creation we, shall alsole
learn
rnto
| adore Him as Creator. Let_
‘us broaden our “imagination! It “cannot_do our faith any
harm, it can “neither diminish nor increase it
it. It can scarcely
be right to say that through this expansion God becomes
‘greater’ for us; for what has the Greatness of God to do with
ways of measuring space? Nor is it true that the personal
being of God will be injured thereby, as though the Lord of
so great a world were less sovereign in consequence. The
personal being of God and of man has nothing at allto do
with the staandards oof
f measurement ¢of.the wo
world of time and
space, any more. than. themeanin ofEs‘word Is i altered
alterec bytthe
fact_that it is_
is written
n_ with.
wi smal ler_«Or ‘larger _lette
letters, The
dimension of ‘significance,’ ‘meaning,’ ‘Logos,’ is untouched
by changes within the dimension of time and space. ‘For a
thousand years in Thy sight are but as esterday when_ it is
FRE CTT tand the same is true of
millions of years. Eternity transcends a thousand millions of
years, just.as much as a thousand years; the Word of God, the
eternal original picture of the creation of man cannot be
affected by changes in our ideas of time and space.? .
1 Psa xcn4:
2 Cf. Karl Heim, op. cit.; the chapter: Das Problem der Transzendenz
and Die Uberwindung der Alleinherrschaft des gegenstandlichen Weltbildes.

424
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

Hence the content of our human existence is independent

environment. “What
elec
uli ORME

in our ‘temporal and_spatial |

ofF changes i
“does it matter to us that the astronomers calculate time in
billions of years! Does this alter the fact of our personal respon-
y one1iota? Does this in the very least affect the
sibilitby
contrast between ‘personal and impersonal, subject and object,
love and hate, meaning and meaninglessness, human and
inhuman? In ‘short, is anything which concerns either our
relation with God or our relations with one another affected
by all this? If we reflect upon these questions quietly for a
little while we then become aware of the truly insane panic
of numbers into which modern_man has allowed himself to
1 ofcosmic fear of space;
fall. He has fallen a prey to a2 kind.
notbecause the universe has expanded sO greatly, but because
he: has‘lost the real standing-ground of his human existence.
‘For the man who knows no other standing-ground than that
of the world of time and space, certainly the effect of the
knowledge of the extension of the world is a catastrophe. It
absolutely annihilates him._A humanity which is tied tothe
_external world 3is hopelessly lost in| the ex nal“world. as we
now know itthrough. ‘the ttelescopes 0 Mount Wilson. FBut,let
the’moment
celve> ourselves—th is “humanity was lostt
‘us not dece
“that it became tied to theexternal I world. Man as a piece of
the world, even in the supposedly ‘homely’ structure of the
world, did not cut a very dashing figure, even the man in
the ancient world felt uneasy, not ‘at home.’ We only need a
little solitude in the High Alps to be convinced of our nothing- |
ness; we°do not need the calculations of the astronomers to
make us feel this. Man as a piece of the world is in any case
a nonentity.

6. THE HISTORICAL AND THE NON-HISTORICAL VIEW OF

THE UNIVERSE
But man, who has been created in and for the Word of
God, who has his sel 1not iin himself. but iin the Eternal Son,
in
is “above-the world and in the centre of the world, whether
this world is the smallsscale of the. ancient world
1s measured by t
or by |the.gigantic one oftthe”modern' view of the universe. In
this transitory world of time “and space this Word has been
425
 MAN IN REVOLT

revealed; our changed view of the world of time and space

does not in the least alter the significance of ‘saving history.’4
The fact that man stands in the light of this history, whose
meaning
.
is eternity, lift
himright
s above alltemporal happen-
ings—not into a timeless Platonic world, where there are no
events, where being alone exists—but into a history of another
Kind, a history which takes place between God and man,
= Been cea,

which cannot_beinserte
ry

d_inany
to system _of chronology,
AReSDHLD:

ancient or modern.?
me ee

From Plato “onwards Idealism

has been dimly aware that
man, as one whoparticipates
inthe Logos,isabove the cosmos.
Hence even in modern times Idealism has he ped a good
many people over the shattering effects of the Copernican
revolution. From the point ofview’ of Idealism existence in
Space and time is indeed only apparent, whereas true existence
s above time and space. But to the extent in whichIdealism
frees man. from. bondage. to the cosmos_it also severs him
from history, and in so doing destroys
the decisive character
of human life. The eternal life which for the Christian is a
“divine gift, which man must receive in the decision. of the
obedience of faith, is to the Idealist that which already is in
being, that which in itself is true, in contrast to mere appear-
ance, which man only needs to perceive through the process
of thought. Idealism rescues the_ conten
of eternity
t of human
life from.cosmic nothingness by sacrificing history ; the Christan
faith, “however, conceives.theete meaningrna of human
llife
in the fact that in it history becomes decisio
“Jesus Christ, the decision has been made ; heren. itInbecome
history, in
s for
me, what it is there, through the decision of the obedience
of
faith. This history, howeyver—the Aistory of salvation and the
history of faith—is not part of the cosmic time-series,
hes
pimaebambenenulesus Lif aaa bee but it
is a qualific
aan:
DAN
ation
Daa WK saiioeoo
of the cosmological
in etait. Nerenent aon

rapes mo-pmy emmersn

aa Par
es reeee time-series from a point
neinene SL
which, while it lies within it, derives its special arene hens Ud
«Santa Geta alt Fray cathe character from
another sphere, from that point where eternity became time
erential eed Rtn ST Nra rat a teeta be ateatag

and time became eternity. From this point of view all other
1 Heilsgeschichte: lit. ‘history of salvation..—Translator.
* Cf. the important paper on Zeit und Ewigkeit by K. Heim
in the work:
Glaube und Leben, pp. 539 ff., and his critical discussion of
H. W. Schmidt’s
book Zeit und Ewigkeit in Glaube und Denken, pp. 381 ff.
426
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

points can be perceived which determine the plane of faith as

such: Creation and the Fall, Reconciliation and Redemption.
They all—in contrast to the Idealistic conception—describe Ta
_real
real happenin and indeed
deed aa happening which is related to er SPR Lynas
“our world of time and space,
‘space, and yyet“does not. Tiee upon the
plane of space-time events, We have really been created to’
enter into this world of sspace and time—but we have not been
created within it; we are really sinners in this world of time
and space—but we did not become sinners at any given point
of time in the history of the world; the Son of God really
became man in this temporal world, ane was crucified ‘under
‘Pontius Pilate’*—but. that which tool becomes
sass then ‘only |
redemption to me because it confronts me as a present |
fact;
and Imakemy
Ata zat
n dec ision_of faith, “upon.‘thisearth and within.
Sess

this time--series—in the seventy or eighty years which, even if

we live so long, | are granted to us—and this decision is made
for eternity; but it is made anew at every moment, and in
such a way that the ‘decisive element’is not the moment at
“which it ismadé, but the decision which ismade for me in
eternity. 1The redemption and consummation is the redemption
and consummation of this world in which we are now living,
but it is promised as one in which ‘heaven and earth will pass
away,” and ‘God’s Word’ alone will ‘not pass away.’? Thus
the Divine sven although it affects. this. cosmic world,..affects
pie A.Way..that the meaning and content oftheevent
lie beyond aie world of
of time and sspace, ‘there, not here,’ “in
the Eternal Word, iin the Eternal Son, in the eternal election,
in the mystery of the Triune God, in the divine plan for the
world which is fulfilled in the consummatio mundi,_in a. ‘new.
Jeayenand a new earth.”?
“We human beings. are players in this cosmic world-theatre
of time and space, formed of the stuff of this earthly world,
and the stage is this infinite cosmos with its mysterious systems
—like the Milky Way—as they hurry along with their billions
of years. But the light in which we stand and play our part
does not come from this cosmos, and the piece which we play
cannot be understood from the point of view of the cosmos.
In the world of time and space we are ‘playing’ ‘aheavenly_
2 Mark Xili, 31. 2 9 Pet. iii. FR.
ey
 N

MAN IN REVOLT

drama’—a drama of heaven and hell, a drama which, just

because it means the decision of heaven and
an hell, 31ss not
Se rea
“a
play at all but is the only ‘thing that matters. That whic
which —
ROSE Tnecaine “cannot be truly * serious, because it
can have no meaning. There is one point about wien we must
be quite clear: the sole meaning which the cosmic element
has as such, is death, nothing
recite Bice
ingness, |absolute_meaninaiglessness.
(ire orld passeth aworrent the lust thereof”? The meaning
the 2 | comes from the world beyond, but it is not only” in
n the world
ot beyond. The senator. of
3 God is not of this’world,
Id, but
put it ‘has
ha
‘come into this worl Rudd STON IN ere A BORE TS
Nec
it ismeant to fulfil -the meani
m ng of
‘this worlc
\ d, just asJesu Totti who is not of this world, has come
‘Into this world, in order that we, like Him and iecen Him,
may become amntcd to the eternal Ged) as He is united with Him,
Thus the fact that our life has asignificance, an origin and
Wecaicuin
a_goal
Jie RENNER
RCN Ee
which springNB from
Eee EPIOYBEOTAMIT
Co } IHRE a tao RH A the world _beyond, makes
TLIA PRINCE eRTART ONNE NE STINE us
ae | Jstrangers’ 2 in _this cc smos. In point of factwe are ‘behind the
times
es’ as Nietzsche. Says mockingly iin his Karathustra. 3 In this
‘behind’ the meaning, the only possible meaning, of human
life, is preserved. But this meaning must be worked out in the
world. The meaning ofthe “star performance” is that we are
FeO abl
ae coeee
een
to “produce it’? in this temporal world as that which has its
origin and its destiny ‘there,’ not ‘here,’ and we, the players,
out of God’s love, have been created a the divine love. The
‘back ground’ —the
pS eternal
hovers
word of the ‘Triune God—has been
oN
brought into the foregrou: iar AA arta
rist. The background
is"continually b being brought. into ‘the-foreground where men
in faith come.t elong. to.this.
1is. Christ, where that 1responsibility”
which is always the background of human existence is realized
through communion with God and men.
But what willorate
BEATER TORINO eer
happen to PITRE
the NINES
cosmossas as such we do not know.
_Heaven and earth v will pass away ‘but My My y
words will not pas:
pass”
away. This cosmos is not 80solid”as itlooks. It too has its
background in the Word of God<and is“upheld by His divine
“Word.” ft too “coheres? in ‘Him,’ in the eternal Son, and in
His Word.
W > In spite of the fact that while we are plate our
1 1 John ii..17. * Heb. xi, 18.
® Nietzsche: Zarathustra, Von den Hinterweltlern, Ausg. Kroner, Pp. 41.
4 Matt. xxiv. 35. £ Col. 127,
428
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

partin the cosmic drama it seems an independentreality, and

must appear so, with an infinity of time and space which
_frightens us and threatens to swallow
Ww US UD,..in, realit “it is
not an independent. entity, but it is
isthere
th ‘for eae
the best philosophers have said aboutthhe phenomenal char-
acter of the world is—even from the point of view of the
Bible—no fantasy. We know absolutely nothing of a ‘world
in itself’? or of the ‘thing in itself,’ We onlyknow that this _
stage with itsinfinite spacesand_itsbillions. off years. belongs ei
to ourr play
ay,What ‘this3
stage is ‘in ‘itself, apartfrom ow
ourr play,
Ssemamuoncern as aca all we know 1s thier even tis
world of time and space, this cosmos, precisely in its infinity,
which makes us shrink into insignificance,is given to
to us
us as
as a_
stage by God, and therefore, just as it has its ‘beginning i in
God, it also has_an_endiiin“God—a ‘beginning aand an end
which cannot enter into its” ow! system of time cand |space.
“The stage, to
whose empirical nature itbelongs to have no
beginning and no end, will, together with this infinity, come
‘to an end. But this‘coming to_an end’ will not be a ‘cosmic’
event, but—if I may repeat ataiate=a have said~already-acs
heol
theologica. I event. “We hail be ‘like unto them that dream’ ;
this. oe world-stage will be no more, but there will be ia ese HiRSED

‘new heaven and a new earth,’? This is all we can.‘say, butt tthis
LAs 3
all that is require
r d._

7. THE MQDERN MYTH

- But all this has carried us far beyond our proper subject:
man as he actually is. We were obliged to do so, for the cosmos
is the environment of the actual man. It is part of the destiny
of man as he actually is, that he belongs on the one hand to
the supra-cosmic plane of Creation, while on the other hand,
he is profoundly involved in the cosmos, and in the travail of
the cosmos. ‘In the world you shall have tribulation?—but be
of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’* Our subject is
the man who has’as yet no share in this victory, even though
1 Psa, cxxvi. 1. 2 9 Pet, ili. 13.
3 The German word is Angst; possibly the English word ‘anguish’
would be the best rendering in this context.— Translator.
4 John xvi. 33.
429
 MAN IN REVOLT

we can only see this man from the point of view of that victory.
The actual man in the cosmos is the one who is at the mercy
of the cosmos. Fear of the world is no new sensation, it is as-
his 2 Eetieisnee iss “ a
old as humanity. It comes out most clearly in the pagan
religions. The whole of m thology...is penetrated. with this.:
cosmic panies
= and is indeed derived
ene
it. Pagan man
fromse has
ES SAY RARER MBN
ARATE
RS RNENAMR IRAE AWAY has Chek
ain

no standing ground, above this world. because his gods or his

divinity are not, themselyes above. the Jevel of the world.
Shey are themselves_int cosmic, process....Lhe
with theerwoven .
mythological Pantheon, like the myth itself, is a cosmic pro-
ectionofthe pagan fear of the world—a shattering confir-
mation of the word ofChiist?"
the In
world ye have tribu-
er
The ratio ofthe modern man has
aa faeteorie'cigieg 4.nie Bee 7H

indeed made an end of

_this myth and this mythological world
east

of the gods;
but ithas
not been able to get rid of the fear of the world. It impels men
A i ER APIHARALSON REIT[aag
ARR

to set up
e

a s" stem. of Securities

lle d 8 eye Hon.

Called Civilization,
nu r

by means
een

of whichaeany theiesintell
oyreves
igent
human
SIAN la ARS RTA CO
being
mee
thinkshe ca iba COPA nese epironT a
Ea ree
cosmic
ec
forcesA geecm
RPT rie ASIDE
of PRde tiny. But the fear itself he cannot banish,
HILT CURRAN BAHN CEA
and new myths take he place of the old. What is themodern i

antheistic philosophy—we might rather speak of a pantheistic

of
life—other than the myth of the de-personalized
God,1 the myth of the deification of nature which brings God
down to the level of Nature? It is believed that the impersonal
Idea of God fits more easily into the view of the world which
has been created by modern science. In reality behind it there_
lies the old pagan idea of the identit of God and Nature, the
naturalistic idea of the pagan conception of God.The fact
that the abstract reason inclines to this de-personalized idea
of God is true; but to allow the abstract reason ‘to
go too far
is the mp&rov edSos. The abstract reason is that which. is —
already severed from God, the falsely autonomous, falsely
independent reason, the reason of the man whose self has
become isolated. All this has as little to do with science as has
the Homeric world of the gods. Neither making reason into
an absolute, nor the deification of nature, is necessarily con-
nected with the truth which modern research has disclosed to
* Cf. my book Der Mitiler (English, The Mediator), Chapter XIV,
Appendix: On Christian Mythology.
430
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

us. The connexion is purely psychological, it is not concrete

at all; it simply means the extension of the sphere domi-
nated by human rational knowledge from the conditioned
to the unconditioned. Rational metaphysics—so we see from
the standpoint of faith—is not a whit better
than irrational
“mythology. From the scientific point of view the claim that eaten

reason is the supreme court of appeal iis an axiom,1

which .
cannott be
be proved ;from tthe€ point
nt OfVview
w of faith it
it means the,
arrogance of‘the man
m who has “severed ‘himself from C
Pty TR Ps ORL TN eANr PLEOMe 08
God.
The result of this modern amythology—of” wakes {ORONO TEM I

physics of every shade, from the doctrine of‘speculative Ideal-

ism, that “all is“Spirit, down ‘totheci
crudest 1materialism, to the
Acbidiaian ani

deification of the atom—is necessarily theweakening ofhuman

responsibility, Neitherin1 pantheism 1nor in materialism isthere
“any real responsibility left to man. To whom should he give an
answer? To what court is he responsible? ‘Lhe annihilation of
the personal in the idea of God brings with it“necessarily ‘the
-annihilation of the personal element in the idea of man, and ~
“with this, as the theoretically necessary but practically gare
admitted consequence, the denial ofresponsibility. Perhaps,
however, this causal series | should ‘be.reversed ;man will have
emanated

"
no lord over him because hi
NISRA
he himself desires to be master. He
tie api
cc ahi ot apttotao
sb nateal eae lendeiasibitlete tan pastes %

Wishes to give an account

ofhimself ‘to no one but himself;
he
will not be res ponsible. ‘If there were gods who would not
‘be a god? Thus there are no gods’ (Nietzsche). A very modern
thinker has called this ‘postulatory atheism.’ He must have
touched the deepest motive of all impersonal metaphysics:
for the sake of his ‘freedom,’ because he desires to be free not
merely in a creaturely, co
conditional “way,,.
w: but“unconditionally, —
there shall be no od. Forit is true to say : either God or Man
“can be unconditionally free, but not both.

8. PANTHEISM AND RESPONSIBILITY

But the idea that the impersonal view of the world of
rationalistic metaphysics is far more worthy of the intellec-
tually developed human being than the ‘somewhat primitive,’
‘somewhat childlike’ idea of a personal God, the mystery of
the world, the All, the World-soul—or however we may
express this divine J/—is ‘more,’ ‘greater,’ ‘more divine’ than
431
 MAN IN REVOLT

the Biblical Lord God, this idea! which is supposed to be so

modern and so superior, is simply the evasion of responsibility
and the arrogance of reason. It_is so much more comfortable
to have a pantheistic philosophy of life than “to believe in a
Lord God, because a pantheistic philosophy does not commit |
in the Lord God means obedience
you ‘to.any hing, but faith
days of Elijah it was far easier to
_toHis will; just as in “the day
serve‘Baal,’ a nature-deity, than the Lord God of Israel,
because it was possible to placate the gods’ with sacrifices; but
this was not the case with Yahweh.
A God who is neuter makes no claims; He simply allows
Himself to be looked at. A ‘philosophy of. life’ instead of faith
tic_enjoyment instead of obedience. The world-
means aesthetic
world, does not desire anything from
‘soul, the mystery; of the
me, it does not intervene in my life in a masterful way. Modern
pantheism—the sul substitute for faith—allows us to evade decision—
in_an aesthetic manner, and in so doing it asserts that_it has
0 a.higher “Cultivation.
adv ntage of
the advantage « For it is so much more
“intellectual. to,‘ old a view’ than t
to obey. That is the secret
of the supposed expansion of the idea of God into the Imper-
sonal: the extension of the conscience into the unlimited, the
transformation of the ethical into the aesthetical.
But this evasion of decision. works Out itsCERES
ownSARA revenge.
SNF oa
TheER
f existence open is
aire ‘this 0]pen “universe
ut “swallows ‘me ‘up. t robs existence
_of its “Meaning—all meaning is‘limitation; of seriousness—all _
a challenge |to“decide” for or againsst; of
“Seriousness presents ‘a
its goal—for a goal is something clear; and in so doing it Sat
us of hope. Pantheism proves its afin with pagan m th-
ology in the Fact.that in it_t
In i 00 ultimately all haappeningsS are
too
cyclic : eternal 1 recurrence.. Nothing actually happens, the
‘infinite. ocean of the All seethes and tosses upand down, its
th happens sinks again down into
waves riseand fall, ‘but all‘that
same,SSE
the All-One, always the: eet p-
eabap
pened has no significance, for what comes afterwards is the
same as that which was before. The decisions of life have no
eternal content. The practical consequence of the ‘All-is-One’
1 For the usual philosophical arguments against the personality of God
see D. F. Strauss : Die christliche Claubenslehre, p. 33. Von der Persénlichkeit Gottes.
432
 MAN IN THE COSMOS

doctrine means that_eyerything

comes out to the same thing
_ (SSrerietcereeneeneeenee
in the end.

_ THE ELEMENT OF DECISION

‘
gin.the end’
ae if life has a genuine quality of
ofSORTif it is concerned +
with an ultimate Either-Or. Only then in the strict sense of
the word can we speak CePt and of meaning. Both
e.realm of theeternal.
That exists only if my life must answer a personal claim, a
God is not ‘It’ but my Lord, if the final truth is not im
mpersonal_
but personal the “Supreme and finalcourt of appeal, if it is
not the cosmos which includes the Logos, but the Logos which
includes the cosmos, if the Word is not finally subordinated to
a neutral element, but if it is the eternal Word of God, who
from eternity is personal Person, that is, love. To have one’s
existence in this Word means to be _responsible. . To decide
against this Word means to ‘be. a sinner, to be seized ‘and
_
re-created by
by this
this Word ‘mear
means to>believe. “And of this faith
alone is Pos
it “it overcometh the world’\—that world in
which we have ee
_Kear_of the world, world-panic,
is theresultof the sever-_
ance of man’s conne eons the. Wor God, ‘As the
‘disobedient child who, in spite of the fatherly Dremibition,
could not resist breaking away from the peaceful environment
of the paternal estate into ‘freedom,’ now in the midst of this
strange outside world suddenly feels afraid, because he feels
that he is at the mercy of this ‘unchartered freedom,’ so is it
with the man who would like to have more
‘freedom’ than is.
_fittin for the creature,, and »thanitis
isable
al
bleto
to bear,who wants
“to be free of the father’s restraints,
nts, and now in the infinite
extent of the world is at thee
mercy of itsmeaninglessness. The
meaning of the world is identical with the will of God Betaach
establishes limits. Unlimited existence is for God alone. The
creature which, attracted by the glamour of unbounded and
unrestrained freedom, steps over the boundary falls a hopeless
prey to the dizzy sense of the cosmos, the fear of the universe,
All now becomes ‘uncanny,’ God and the world, the All and
1 1 John v. 4.

433
 MAN IN REVOLT

human existence. This uneasiness cannot be overcome by any-

thing—this is shown by the history of religions and philosophies.
The way back is blocked, not merely lost. It cannot be re-
discovered ; it must be reopened. The fact that this has taken
place is the Christian message of Redemption.

434
 CHAPTER XIX

MAN IN HISTORY |

I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THE CHRISTIAN |

UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY
‘Tuer is no Christian philosophy of history,1 but there is a
an understanding of
Christian ofhistory. Indeed the ‘special under-
standingof history is so interwoven with the nature of the
stan
pee faith that we ae well say: the Christian faithis
mar
eculiar understanding of history, the. understan ding of man_
_as historical. If we are to understand man from the Biblical.
saint of view it is essential to understand him historically.
“Dot
The Bible does not regard _ man_as an isolated individual or
as a member Of a species; it sees “the individual human1 being .
as “ as
the “history” of ‘mankind “as”a
part of “the On. ‘the.other,
whole. (
as panin thisview history isneither aa mere §succession of ¢cause
andeffectt nor 1
an ideal
ior an ; ofFevolution ;thus itdoes not
process_of
. as, the spher
velopmentbut e
ofpersonal
decision ames on_a_ Divine act of revelation. The Christian
p
idea. “the Person |and. the Christian idea ofAistory 2are com-_
the other. Indeed, in the lastresort,
planner each requires t!
they_are_ identical, since the historical event,. Jesus.Christ, is I
seer

both the revelation of and the basisforthe true , personality |

of man’s beingand
of true history.
er EL Ian

ding of man from the ratio, the rational J

The understandin 0805,
Lo
is essentially, and necessarily, non-historical. 2° Tt must and will
1 Troeltsch in Der Historismus und seine Probleme saw that Augustine was
not a philosophical historian ;but when he classes him among the ‘compilers
and dogmatic writers’ who ‘sketch a framework for all that happens, which
is composed of miracles and of the historical scholastic convention of
antiquity’ (p. 15), he merely shows how little understanding he had for the
magnificent unity and distinctiveness of Augustine’s view of history, which
in essentials was derived from Paul (cf. Schrenk, Die Geschichtsanschauung
des Paulus auf dem Hinte~grund seines Zeitalters in the Jahrbuch der theologischen
Schule Bethel, vol. iii).
2 Post-Christian philosophy shows the influence of Christianity in the
very fact that—in contrast to pre-Christian and non-Christian philosophy—
it finds history, in some way or another, a problem. A (certainly somewhat
435
 MAN IN REVOLT

derive all that is changeable from the unchanging, all that is

moving from the stable, all that is merely factual from prin-
ciple. The irrationality of the absolutely factual, and the
conformity to logical laws which is everything to thought, are
hostile to one another. At the same time—so far as history is
concerned—it does not matter whether this conformity which
thought seeks is teleological or normative, the value-essence, the
idea, or the causal law. Whether man is understood, Idealis-
tically, from the point.
of view of the Idea, or causally from
thatofNature:ineach caseheisunderstood non-historically.
He is integrated into an order of being—whether of a spiritual
or a natural kind—whose laws are the essential thing, whereas |
that which cannot be summ up under
edthis must be regarded
hate panera Ail Bemeenatee coos ane re in mr NE RIE UREA Oe oa

as ‘accidental,’
and therefore of little account. In neither order
is there any room for the really vital element in history: the
deed thedecision:
deed, the
decision.
, Tt’slips Testips throughthrough the
provides for the grasping of reality: meshes. which thought
the meshes
g
the historical event, the
‘stuff of which history is made,” eludes ‘the thought which is
; ying tanetgeiasagaiibile, balgceamiibite puigig a5.9s 2s ass aadrape eaacaes ans
controlled
UO CC bytyabstract principles, Leshunless itis transformed1
SEAS STEELS byitinto
development. evelopment
in the sense
of the causal process, or
in thesense of ideal development ; these
a

are the twocategories with

Diiggrsonertes a “fav pine NN Ae TRAEDS ea ere =

‘which rati thought

onal tries to master history. Both omit the
Ray

essentially historical element in history :the deed, the decision.

i as main ed a ey NETHER RNS

antiquated) survey of the history of the philosophy of history is presented

by de Rougemont, Les Deux Cités (2 vols.), which, however, loses sight
frequently of the real subject, and the first volume of Rocholl’s Philosophie
der Geschichte. Troeltsch’s brilliant work only deals with the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
* In his monumental work Troeltsch has provided a complete typology
of the various modern views of the philosophy of history, which would be
suitable to illustrate that which has only been briefly indicated above,
as for instance the pointed description of the positivistic conception of
history as histoire sans noms, soit de personnes soit de peuples (p. 406), the
justified criticism of the Hegelian dialectic, which ‘makes the attempt to
rationalize the dynamic of the Historical and of existence as a whole’
(p. 273), the deviation of the Marxist dialectic from that of Hegel by its
‘connexion with . . . revolutionary prophecy’ (p. 433), its naturalization
(p. 339), its connexion with the economic sphere (p. 342), and ‘the
dissolution of the logical contrasts . . . into actual and materially interested
contrasts of life’ (p. 350). Troeltsch himself failed to achieve the impossible:
to conceive the properly historical in a philosophical way.

436
 MAN IN HISTORY

Very closely connected with this is the fact that the rational
Aebif ofmind, whter Wscontrolled byprinciples, cannot con- —
ceive man as a social being. Community is the second funda-
mental element of historical life. I he matvidual human being,
in so far as one tries to understand him from the point of view
of reason, becomes either the object or the subject of this
universal reason. In both instances he is incorporated into a
larger context, but this larger whole is not community but
unity. In the one case it is the larger context of the realm of
Nature; man is incorporated into the world of nature as a
dependent member of it, as its product, and at the same time
as one of its many phenomena. Man stands in the context
of nature, but the context of nature is not community, but_
causal unity, In the other instance man is understood as the
bearer or manifestation of the world of the Idea, of Spirit, of
the One, eternal reason. The individual human being is not
isolated, he is connected with all rational creatures through
the one reason,
common tothemall,Man stands in the
context
of Spirit. But that tooisnot community butunity ; that which
isessential
in the one human beingisessentialin the other. _
ne Re a

_This one essential element, therefore, in the last resort, makes

the one independent oftheother. He can always
what the other could tell him. He has no need
‘tellhimself
of the other.
The unity of
reason is ultimately a principle of independence,
of self-sufficiency; to it, to be dependent upon others and
connected with others seems to be something accidental or
transient. Thus community is not established. The Spirit
understood as Reason does not create community, but unity
of agreement, the unity of the identity of that which has
been thought.
From a third point. of. view,
aema
also, we see the non-historical
Valiegagomaneex
aise ae Pama MOON ORPnte
t_based on abstract principles, of rational
thought, which depends upon itself alone. Thought wills unzly,
~ $iaiag aE ae to Tesolve een ERE this means, however,
that the result it desires to achieve is this: that which at first
sight appears contradictory is finally recognized as a unity.
Thusthought
tries to prove_that
the contradictions are not
real, and to dissolve them into merely apparent contradictions.
The contradictions are to disappear under the influence of the
437
 MAN IN REVOLT

systematic nature of thought. Thought itself is the-dissolution

of contradictions, they do not need any dissohlution in act, in
‘actuality.. The system of the ‘thinker |
takes theplacee«ofhistory;
thatis,
of that history which actually either reso
esolves - aea
contradictions which cannot be resolved “byreason in act, or
‘shows that they are insoluble. The thinker ‘who starts his
process
of thought from the ultimate principles of the ratio,
transforms the real dialectic of historical reality. into..a merely.
logical sham dialectic: of concepts.1 The real movement_of
history, which
ch passes _ through act and. decision, is presented
to
‘0the rational| interpretati on of‘history, as..sa. logical m:
1ovement,
ERTS
in StS , nothing i
is sone, because every-
“thing
ng “was alt
a readly there frrom the outset. It does not matter
whether it was already ‘there’ in a teleological or in a causal
sense. In both casesssomething _ which was already there is
; inevitably unrolled like :a map which has.been rolled up, OF
¢ a:
filmwhich
aR
was already complete. Here there is no room, for—
the element of real’Aistory, forthe ‘solution of contradictions
“in act.and decision... oneesieeenpenaeninruneanpemanionn.
~The: Christian . understanding of history
Gearanwisest
is of a totally different
character. “2 Heree€ we are not concerned with any kindof apriori —
_idea,which ‘is ‘ly ma de*concrete, |or, as itwere, il
illustrative
“in, history 3 history as a“Tey of picture-book illustrating the
“formulae of thought is an idea of the Lessing period of the
philosophy of the Enlightenment, which, in a more profound
form, was repeated in the Hegelian parallels between logic
and the philosophy of history. No, inthe Christian view, we
-are dealing with historyitself,inall its
i ‘reality
and its;
mystery—
which it is not for us to construct “ourselves—which does not

1 Cf. the powerful destructive criticism of the most impressive of all ©

philosophies of history, the Hegelian, in Kierkegaard’s Unscientific Postscript
2 vols.).
; a Cf. ‘es penetrating work Geschichte und Existenz by H. Thielicke, which,
in spite of several deviations in detail, is close to the view which is presented
above; further, Hirsch’s Grundlegung einer christlichen Geschichtsphilosophie,
which is strongly influenced by Idealism; Schrenk, op. cit., Lilje, Luthers |
Geschichtsanschauung; Scholz, Glaube und Unstouke in der Weltgeschichte (on
Augustine’s Civitas Dei); Althaus, Die Gestalt dieser Welt und die Siinde, in
Theologische Aufsatze II; my paper Das Einmalige und der Existenzcharakter, in
Blatter fiir deutsche Philosophie, 1929, pp. 265 ff.
438
 MAN IN HISTORY bY.
symbolize or illustrate an eternal truth, but in which the actual ~
and the |”
contradiction between the temporal-sinful world
events. To the extent in which the contradiction is seen as ~| ©
something real, as something which can neyer pesolved Be ea
ought, by regarding it as a mere illusion—as sin, whic
really separates man from God—the overcoming of the con-
tradiction, redemption, can only be sought in a real event,
which is not merely the remova of an error, namely, in the
real divine Act of redemption in Jesus Christ./Itisnot the idea
of redemption, but redemption itself, which has actually
happened, as an event, which is the content of the Christian
message. The content of the Christian faith—what an offence
to everyone who has the Greek habit of mind !—is an ‘acci-
dental truth of history’ (Lessing), a genuine external fact which
can and must be fixed chronologically, a fact which could
very well be the subject of a police report: Jesus of Nazareth,
‘crucified under Pontius Pilate.’ That is, indeed, ‘to the Greeks
foolishness.’ But this is not all. Not only is the content of faith
an historical event of this kind, but the manner
yut the which ) we
manner inin which
attain this knowledgeof faith is wholly historical : the hearing -
of amessage,
of e, tth€ announcement of this event, apart fro
which there is no possibility of being a Christian. The Bible
_ gathers up both these elements, namely, the historical content,
that a real act of redemption has taken place, and the way of
knowing it, that it is the hearing of an historical report, in one
phrase: faith in the Good News, the «t-ayyeAwyv. It unites
them also in such a way that it calls Jesus Christ ‘the Word
Hate fesh and says that through Him ‘came the truth.
.come-int
haswhich
Truth o that isindeed the rockof |
being;
s. Hence there is no |.
offence at which Greek thought stumble
Christian philosophyof histo y—i sonfar as philoso hy can
upon historical facts—
ial
etader
ae

only be based upon principles and not

valet mae ni r ERNE CEERI

there 8.2.Chasen. understandingot history, which starts

EET Hat TOE ET
ere Mp

pat
gr * * 2,

from an historical fact and relates ceva to this one Fact,

to the Diyin esh. It is from this point of view
that we must understand both the historical character of
personal being and the personalistic character of history.
1 Rom, x. 14 ff. 2 John i. 17.

439
 MAN IN REVOLT :

Gorn PERSON AS HISTORICAL

The Romans,that nation of the ancient world which had
the most historical sense, invented for that which we call
history the apt expression: res gestae. By that they mean action
as the element of history. The characteristic element in history _
is notthat. something happens—even
in the clouds allkinds
of things happen, but there is no history there—but that -
something is done. We must express still more clearly what the _
Romans meant by their distinction between the idea of action
and the happenings of nature. So we
say; History is made
where decisions are made. It is thedecisions which give the
character of uniqueness and unrepeatablenessto tl
in contradistinct fromion
the happenings of nature.) D
ty ARGUES OF.
1 1g]
separates the historical element from that rhythmical, cyclic
process of nature ever returning to itself, where nothing really
happens, because the end always returns to the beginning.
Decision separates definitely that which took place afterwards
from that which took place before. The fact that events cannot
be reversed is absent from
f nature—
iture—seed-fruit, fruit-seed
ruit-seed, |
summer-winter, winter-summer—because in it no decisions |
‘are made, It is these which give to thehistorical’element
that |
clearness of direction which leads from ‘before’to‘after.’ |
“Tacta est alea—Caesar knows what history is; where ‘the die
has been cast,’ there, and there alone, does history take place.
Thus the historical quality of existence must be the same as
the quality of decision.
Hence the Christian understanding of the person is_his-
torical. Here the person is not thoughtof as a beiningthe
_sense of that which is eternally, that which is in repose, nor yet—
in the sense of that which grows naturally, as organisms grow;
it is not dynamis, an element in the play of forces, or a poten-
tiality, the source of creative possibilities of development.
Person _is understood as being-in-decision ; human lifeis a
ecisive answer to a desti full
nyofresponsibility. This gravity
ofdecision of the Christian idea of ‘person’ comes out very
clearly in its attitude towards the past. For the Greek thinker
the past is nothing. Since it is past it no longer exists nor has
Rc hie es ls INTE BUM ISIC IN ES
ee

SS
Rate NRTA RR si eI

1 Cf. my paper Das Einmalige und der Existenzcharakter, loc. cit.

440
 MAN IN HISTORY

it any meaning. For the Christian the past is the guiltv

schich | .
I bear. I am now determined by mypast, because the “past has | oS
decided, and the decision is not a mere nothing;it iseverything. |
One who does not take the past seriously always thinks that |
= he can continually re-start from the beginning; thus he does.
not believein the ‘seriousness of decision. To_ take the: past
‘seriously yas
: guilt,for which I am now “responsible, which is
not ae one element in my life, but which irrevocably deter-
mines my present existence, shows the, seriousness. of the
decision,and thus shows the seriousness of irrevocable history.}
“TE the Christian does not despair about this’ fatality of his \
existence,about ‘the irrevocable fact of guilt, it is due ‘solely |
_to the fact that he knows. of a second decision which removes
“that first fatal
ASR
‘decision. It is not a decision which he makes
AASPRE Werte ped

mself—for in so doing he would be presuming to decide his - ¥%

Lt LO A
life twice over, and thus would infringe the seriousness of the; em y,
decision which has already been made; but it is a counter-- e
decision against his decision, decreed by 1that authority against, |~
“which his first decision was taken. The human decision which | hie
is called sin and is fixed as guilt, is answered by the divine t
decision, which is called forgiveness, and is also fixed as decision
cruci-isfixus, the divine acquittal through the reconciliation Thich |
has taken place, as an actual event. \Paul has expressed the~cr

twofold character of this decision in a wonderful way-: Christ

has forgiven us all our sins, in the fact that He has nailed the.
accusation against us to the Cross, and in so doing has annulled |
it.2 Our decision has been ‘fixed’ in the accusation; but since|
this accusation has been ‘fixed’ in a new way, it ie at the|
same time been rendered null and void. The decision Est |
was made there has been wiped out by the decision which has|
been made here. So we may begin afresh, » without any danger |
that this new beginning will minimize the seriousness ofout |
guilt. But this newbeginning, ¢on the basis of the decision ma
in Christ, is once again a decision which cannot be reversed:
a decision for Christ, and for the will of God which has been
revealed in Him. That is the new, _ the Messianic quality of
decision of the Christian life. :
1h my pamphlet, Vom Werk des Heiligen Geistes, pp. 11 ff.
2 Col. ii. 14.

441
 MAN IN REVOLT

What Christ has done governs the perspective of all that

: ; becomes the subject: of Christian thought. From
om the ‘point of
a, view of 1
this world-decision alone does the whole of human
: life gain;
itsquality of decision. The idea, ofsomething “unique,
‘which
memati
cannot be repeated’? is a concept which is not taken™
_seriously y outside Christian: y.Strictly speaking there is no
“such thing” ‘as an event which takes place once for all, for
‘there is nothing new under the sun’ ;? everything, in some
way oranother, has already been there before. The historical, ~
understood in the usual sense, is characterized by a relative
uniqueness _ but not by an absolute novelty or uniqueness.
Within the sphere of empirical happenings there are no final
decisions. lacta est alea—yes, but the die will still be cast many
a time, long after the departure of Caesar from the scene;
even during the lifetime of Caesar it will have been cast several
times. What are usually called ‘historical decisions’ are rela-
tively irreversible, relatively unique, relatively decisive events.
Sux, Decision must be a aappening., _an_eyent, which _Separates
; world history iinto a ‘before’ and an ‘after,’an event in which
+ not_merely ‘something’i ecided but everything! ‘Strictly tly
ae ee _speaki king nothing |oo the name of “decision” save _an
PM) ye absolute reversal of the order of the world. In.this sense ‘the t
; Christian | faith alone can “speak. of one decision, namely, _the
eae

uA? versal of the world orderin Jesus Christ, in whom not only
we ‘as pce ‘history but also all that happens, “from its beginning
"derived from’ eternity and its end in eternity, eternally receives
its centre, and in this centre its qualification—the event which
Nasa Fcc

the witnesses in the New Testament expressly testify has taken

place ‘once for all.’ All that stands outside this one thing is
qualified as negative, all that is within it is positive. Indeed
it is only from this centre that the beginning and the end
themselves gain their meaning, and indeed their absolutely
unchangeable meaning, which excludes all idea of an ‘eternal
return.’ Only through this decisive event is itimpossible to
turn Time ‘into’ a “myth,” ‘and the idea of ‘eternal cycles” is
RAN Nets

1 Das ‘Einmalige’: that which only eee once ; can never be repeated.
Cf. The Mediator, p- 25, n. 1.—Translator.
2 Eccles. i. 9.
3 Cf. Rom. vi. 10; Heb. vii. 28, ix. 12, x. 10.
442
 MAN IN HISTORY

eliminated. The last prophet of this ‘cyclic’ theory knew this,

“and that is why he described himself as Antichrist.
Through our relation to this unique and. decisive event, our
Pastis plainly, stamped as guilt;
gu but italso stamps our present.
asa period of free and the future. asthat,whichis
“decided the J
‘onlyete our sceencat to the decisionin n Jesus Haltdoes “- @
it become clear that responsibility cannot be severed from
ultimate decision. So longas the idea of responsibility iis still
free from
m_the idea of the Last Judgement, it is still ‘harmless,
_it_is merely a_dream of responsibilitlity. It only gains its full
“weight ffrom. the ‘thought »
of the. divine decision for or against
_us. The idea of judgement is certainly known outside Christi-
“anity; but where it occurs elsewhere—as for instance in
Zarathustra or in Plato’s Gorgias\—the division in man has
not yet been perceived; it is not yet understood that, so far
as man is concerned, he has already made a negative decision,
and therefore that judgement, in a negative sense, ought to
have been passed upon him already. The Christian faith alone
can look at everything at once: the negative decision upon
our side, the positive decision of God for us, who are judged;
and finally: the new decisive quality of our present decision
(derived from this), as decision in the obedience of faith, as
a share in the Messianic world-decision.
We have said that one element of history is
iis decision, | and
_that the second‘3s
is community. The i
individual as_individual_h:
has
no_history.
no. ‘History consists in the fact that my existence is
_interwoven_ with the existence of others. History is a com-
“munity of destiny as much as it is a community of decision.
Where a people, acting together, receives the fruit of its com-
mon action in a common solidarity, there is history. We might
call that the relatively historical character of existence. An
essential element_of historyin this sense is the continuity
MRNA
Naang BNA

“between the generations, » the historicalIheritage—whether in

Spans
rine aap

1 The fact that the conception of judgement in Plato’s teaching springs

rather from the Orphic religious tradition than from his Theory of Ideas
may be assumed to be generally accepted at the present day (in spite of
Zeller’s protest ;op. cit., II, p. 708). (Cf. Rohde, Psyche, II, pp. 275 ff.)
€2 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, pp. 22 ff.
443
 MAN IN REVOLT

the form of an inherited blessing or an inherited curse. No

historical consciousness arises without a strong sense of tradi-
tion; the tradition, however, is simply the sense of the con-
nexion between the generations. One who disowns his own
past will take still less account of the past of earlier generations.
Conversely :individualism, the habit of thinking of oneself as
an_ isolated, individual, Inust “necessarily also_destroy the his-
torical sense, the understanding of oneself as “historical. Y"The So

“meaning of being historical is: solidarity.

In this sense Christian. ‘thought alone iis completely historical.
It overcomes individualismn by the absolute sol solidariity ofmar
man-
‘kind in creation “andinsin. We aareall thesamee Adam, and
indeed the ‘Adam’ who_ has ‘been created by God_asswellas
the ‘Adam’ who has become ‘sinful, We know that we are
united in a solidarity of guilt not only with those human
- beings who are now alive upon this earth, but also with all
the generations which were before us, as far as human beings
in time and space ever existed—and now exist. ‘All one in
Christ Jesus.’* The doctrine of Original Sin expressed_ this
powerfully, although in a dubious manner, In Christ we |
confess ourselves to be a society of debtors who are all united
in their indebtedness. We do not make any attempt toseparate
ourselves as individualsIs from one another by singling out our
individual share of guilt. From the very outset we renounce
“this individualistic calculation because it is as impossible as
it is pharisaical. Sin is, it is true, an individual matter, but it
isalso_an_ affair and anact.of the community. To know this a SABER

‘means to think historically, and to think historically simply

‘means this. At least this kind of thinking alone should be
called ‘unconditionally historical, while certainly alongside of
this there is a relatively historical way of thinking which
knows nothing of this idea of unconditional solidarity.
But just as the seriousness of man’s knowledge of guilt is
confronted by the divine decision as forgiveness, so also the
solidarity of cued
is matched _by_the solidarity of SET tion.
‘Not
Not. only “%
in “are we
Ww one, but above ‘all = irist.’
PN SIONAL a NEst WOR lain

1 An Captanlinalainstance is ‘tke Dilosdphy. ofthe Bulichiereht whose

lack of historical sense is as striking as its rationalism and its individualism.
2 Gal. iii. 28.
444
 MAN IN HISTORY

Even that negative perception of truth was only possible from

the standpoint of this positive truth. Only in the light of
Christ do we become aware
of our solidarity in guilt, “where
SORTER

RETA
we perceive otour Ss
solid:
darity in r ,
his positive truth“of our solidarity, however, also works.
itself ‘out “practically iu. uncondit onal -willingness _ for_com-
euler meson
en te
“munity, in the new responsibility in “love over against every.
eI
Ranae ncn
other human being. Radical historical thought necessarily leads“
not only to a humanistic point of view, but also to a human “/
ethos. We are united _with every other human being, garoueh.VAN =

_love; not by our

our love—how. could wiwe “be.capable <
of th
his Dut
f 4)
through the love of Christ, “That isthe marvellous meaning of
that much abused phrase ‘for Christ’s sake.’ Decision for the
Christ means practically:being present for, and at the
the disposal. ;
of,| everyone > |who needs us. This practical Fa ethical position
ee As Se —

In the community is therefore also the proof whether the

historical character, that is, the character of decision, of
existence, is taken seriously or—height of nonsense—whether
the decisive character of existence is merely a beautiful theory!

3. THE PERSONAL MEANING OF HISTORY

‘The theme of history as the object of thought isremote

fromthe philosophy ©ofthe ¢ancient pagan world,
worl and even in
“religion—with the one ‘exception. ‘of Zoroastrianism!—history
plays no part. In Greek thought, whose incomparable energy
otherwise mastered practically all subjects worthy of study, as
Windelband says, the predominance of the idea of physis and
of the cosmos was so strong ‘that the temporal course of events
was always treated as something merely secondary, in which
there was no real metaphysical interest. At the same time
Greek thought regarded not only the individual human being,
but also the whole human race, with all its destinies, deeds,
‘and sufferings, as an ‘episode, as a passing, transitory particular
ner A AD rn La

phenomenon, of the cyclic world process which takes place

fermen. according to the same laws. The question¢ ofa mean-
ing for the historyrof humanity. as a whole, of a systematic “plan
behind 1the course of historical development, was never raised
as
as such; still less did it occur to any of the ancient thinkers
1 Cf. abovep. 191.
445
 MAN IN REVOLT

to regard this as the real nature of the world.’ It is Christianity

which has forced the recognition of this subject on thought,
tettce tab nahCA Lee

and has indeed given it historical direction? as a whole.

The eminent writer of the history of philosophy who has
just been mentioned does not only rightly lay emphasis upon
the fact as such, but he also gives the reason for it : “Christianity
found, from the very outset, the nature of the whole course et
the world ‘inthe experiences of personalities; to it external
nature was only the stage upon which the relation of pperson ;
to ‘person, ‘and above all that of the finite spirit to the ‘divinity
“was played. To that was added a further determinative prin-
“ciple: theprinciple of love, the consciousness of the solidarity
of ‘the human |race,the deen conviction of.universal sinfulness

‘that the story of the Fall and of Refemption was regarded

as the true metaphysical content of the world-reality, and
that instead of an everlasting process of nature the drama of
world history as a temporal course of freely willed activities
became the content of the Christian metaphysic.’$
There is a vital connexion between the personal and history.
cabegsenntine! Na RL Ca Eat otNA
Where, ‘as in recent times, the sense of the ‘personal begins to
pe
MTR RAYS,

fade, in place of"genuine historical understanding comes the

transformation of the interpretation of history by the two
fundamental” schemata” ‘of our thought: causality and the
development: of meaning. The product of historical thought —
“influenced by Christianity, and the non-historical character of
the natural ratio, is evolutionism, whether of themechanistic _
and _naturalistic kind or of ne “idealistic .teleological..kkind,
PERL Ne

‘Darwin’ or “Hegel.” “Mechanistic or causal evolutionism, the

Darwinistic’ philosophy of history, understands history as a
course of events determined by causes, on the analogy of the
geological process of ‘folding,’ or of the formation of valleys
by erosion; the idealistic teleological view understands it as a
1 Windelband, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, p. 212.
2 After what has been said above (p. 440) it is not surprising that it was
the Roman Cicero—certainly no philosophical genius—through whom the
‘value of the Historical for the first time attained full philosophical
valuation’ (Windelband, op. cit., p. 147). It is the Roman and the statesman
who, so to say, forces this subject upon the attention of philosophy. But
that is true only within the limits of that which has been said above.
8 Windelband, ibid.

446
 MAN IN HISTORY

logical process of the development of ideas, like the coming

into being of a book or a work of art. In both cases? man. ds.
the point of transition and the means «of an.1.impersonal process,
a “one.“which has “no meaning at all,as in the iret
FL PLIEP ERNE

instance, or one “which ‘has its meaning “outside.therealm. of

Ba
care

the _personaal in.2an abstract. spiritual goal.

n. instructive arallel_to this isprovided. by...the. pagan...
myth.. IIn contra distinction 1 f from rational philosophy the myth
“knows the category of personal. happening. Indeed, the hap-
ICAUAEX

“pening itself seems to be its proper element. Indeed, is it not.

full of action, of surprising and sensational events? But if we
examine it more narrowly we find that the actual events are
not so seriously meant as would appear at first sight. It is
true that all kinds of things are going on; gods enter into
time and act and suffer, the heavenly world manifests itself
within the world of earth, there is an unbroken process of
coming and going from above to below and from below to
above. But the striking thing about this process is that again
and again itbegins from the; beginning, and that even in the
“most exciting happenings—as related in the myths of Adonis
or Osiris—nothing results which had not been there already.
In the last resort the myth does not take ‘really seriously the
heavenly-earthly, the divine-human happenings, which it
narrates, or it takes them seriously in a relative sense only, as
incidents within a process, which finally returns to the starting-
point. In spite of many important revelations and deliverances
—in the end, according to its own view—it stands precisely
where it stood at the outset. History has gone round in a circle
and begins anew. Eternalrecurrence,repetition, the reflection
of the rhythmical process -ofnature, the circle as the essential
and inclusive symbol, the end, which again becomes the
_beginning, the non-unique, the non-historical—_that is the
essence of the myth. ‘This is so because here too, in spiteofall
Neeru oene

d This is. of course an over-simplification of the possibilities of the

philosophy of history when it is measured by the wealth of the typology
of a man like Troeltsch; but it is a simplification which does not omit
anything which is essential for what is here said on this question. A detailed
study of the possibilities detailed by Troeltsch would have to show on the
other hand precisely that ‘ultimately’ everything falls into these two main
categories—the causal and the logical—at the best their romantic synthesis
—the organic principle.

* 447
 MAN IN REVOLT

the plastic. anthropomorphic character of the actors, the truly

‘personal is
is lacking.?
A PAS j
"~~ Itwas3 the
> people of Israel which from its very beginning—
al a if4
since it was created by epee revelation of God—under-
/
/
- _stood its elation to God as historical, _and its history as the —
we
“result of itsare
r elaation.
ion to God,
ion Go 1e Covenant
‘Yahweh isthe.
Aprile paahhan
C God,
An et the covenant of God with Israel and for ieraer ath, Vahwel
is the content of its history. History isthat which. takess_place
between the personalGod and His ; people. No other nation,
either before or after Israel,ever understood its history in this
way. In accordance with this truth, therefore, even at the stage
of the early Mosaic revelation,? the life of the people of Israel
was conceived in personal terms. In the national life of Israel
the main concern was not with culture, civvilization, technique,
~world--conquest or political power—although these motives
“certainly _ often _ predominated very strongly in actual fact—
but with one thing: only: the obedience of the nation to its”
‘God, and ‘the union of the members of the nation to one
another inthe ‘community, based upon this relation to God.
‘From the very outset the ethos of Israel is strictly personal
_and ‘social. The opposition between good and evil is not sought
“inthe two metaphysical principles of sense and spirit, but iin
the relation to one’s fellow-man, in the contrast between right
and wrong, lovelessness and the brotherly spirit, obedience or
disobedience to the will of God. The great twofold command-
ment stands already in the Old Testament: ‘Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God,’® and ‘thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself.’* Thus too, more and more, in.view of the non-realized
will of God, the whole of life comes to be seen sub specie JSuturi—
or as we more correctly say in German, in the light of the
Ku-kunft:® the real Divine Covenant still waits to be realized:
SE nen Ae RH

* On this cf. Frick, Das Evangelium und die Religionen; and my own work,
Die Christusbotschaft im Kampf mit den Religionen.
* Cf. Martin Buber, Kénigtum Gottes (second edition), a book which
shows what history isi better than any philosophy of history.
3 Deut. vi. 5. * ewixix. ar.
’ In my article already mentioned on Das Einmalige I have called
attention to the fact that the German word Zu-kunfi (future) was originally
the translation of parousia, the Return of Jesus Christ, and that, in
contradistinction from futurum, it is an historical eschatological word.

4.48
 MAN IN HISTORY
the unity between God and the nation and the members of |
the nation themselves, ;and “indeed | of the world of nations “as
awhole, is the final| IMessianic goal, iin which alone the«
‘divine 9
lan of tet inthe Creation will be fulfilled,A
But this ersonalunderstanding
- «of. history, li
like the whole
of the knowledge of
God of the Old Testament, isonly com-.-
letely fulfille in and ‘through |
‘Jesus Christ.” History
F does not
only mean the history of a people with ‘God, but a history of
humanity derived from God and going to God, in which
every individual is a fully qualified member of the whole, and
where the decision of each individual alone incorporates him
into the whole, as a ‘member’ in the ‘body.’ This ‘people of
God’? is no longer bound to any presuppositions of natural
contact, and every appearance of bondage to a collectives
destiny, or of the opposite, has been finally dispelled. it
is not
a kind of final cosmic catastrophe which brings in “the new .
‘way of existence, but a historical personality, Jesus of Nazareth,
\
bySarenaiee erie Pontius Pilate.’ His act of Tove, His obedienec™ }
and His sacrifice |is.‘the foundatic n of the New Covenant. Aa
Him; in His judging and forgiving, in His condescension and
His championship of the Divine honour, the holy loving will
of God, the divine plan of world redemption is revealed,
which at the same time includes the consummation of the
divine work of the creation of the world. He Himself, Jesus
Christ, is the Word of God, History and Eternity have become
one in Him, just as in Him Humanity and Divinity have,
become one. In Him, the Eternal, Son, there is shown to us.
both the
1€ origin of
« theworld. and the ‘goal ofthe world; the
Logos, ‘in whom, ‘through whom and for whom the world has
een created,’* He, the ‘Son of His love,”* is the meaning of |
pein, and He is 3a Person, 1not ar
an abstractt principle, |not an_
Idea. In His love, which He gives tothosewho believe in Him,|
communion benveen God and man, and of all human beings |
among themselves, is realized. This recapitulatio, this ‘gathering |
up into one head’ by means of which ‘all that is in heaven \
1 Cf. the remarks of L. Kohler, Fahwe der Geschichtsgott, op. cit., pp. 62 ff.,
and of Eichrodt, Gottes Eingehen in die Geschichte, in contrast to mythology,
abstraction and individualism, op. cit., I, p. 266.
2-11° Petsiie(9. 3 Col. i. 16. 4 Col. i. 13.
449
 p MAN IN REVOLT

| and upon the earth’! becomes one body: that is the goalies which
| is disclosed in Him, and indeed in principle is already realized in
| Him, towards which the whole history of humanity and of the
|cosmos is tending.? A human life—the only human life in which
the personal meaning of the person, love, has really been lived—
is not only the disclosure of, but at the same time the foundation
of, the actual realization of the meaning and the end ofallhistory.
! f+ The fact thata ddefinitee
event. within. history 1s understood
rey Po AN
sf as the turning-point tin theIhistory «of tthe world, ‘and a
asthe
an
‘ PSV
A
fi rtef

Wy centre of history, which divides the whole ‘of history into a

be of human “happenings
“‘b efore’ and an. ‘afterwards,’ ‘determines the direction not only
but of all happenings.”“The cycleof
eternal recurrence has beenbroken, ‘the line of time isextended,?
ach ‘it has aa beginning -and an end; this end,1
moreover, is areal
end, a serious one—it isnot the: starting-point of a new cycle—
“but it is-a goal which’ is ‘an end, a final“goal;~the=“fulness* of
the time’ in eternity. Between. this Ultimate End and _the
_present lies the
1¢,Judge nt, that event which closes the period
“in which life isthe ‘period of decision,’ which fixes the decision
and makes it ‘definitive.’ All that lies beyond this point is not
decision; it has been decided.
The meaning of world history is Jesus Christ and_the
_Kingdom of God, whichis; grounded ‘in Him; in the eternal
Son, the Son of His love. That is history understood in the
personal sei
sense. To this, however, another el ement_must, be
added, one inwhich both the personal meaning of history
“and the historica: “meaning 0:off personality ‘coincide, namely;
faith. It is only in the light of this which has ‘been “finally
“decided, by the decision of faith or unbelief® in the message
a
TLS
§94h kp ORAEREEY MERA INEPT RES AIT MIMO
RTMEETS ei UICne EE

1 Eph. i. 10.
2 The first great outline of a theology of history, that of Irenaeus, is,
more plainly than that of Augustine, determined by the thought of
recapitulatio in Christo (cf. Harnack, op. cit., I, p. 562).
3 Even modern physics is aware of the ‘one-way property of time,’ of
‘time’s arrow’ (Eddington, op. cit., pp. 75 ff.) in connexion with the law
of entropy—an extremely gloomy etchatoloey of final ‘chaotic changeless-
ness,’ and thus of a cosmic repose silent as the grave.
* Gal. iv. 4; Eph. i. 1o.
5 Scholz has rightly connected his presentation of Augustine’s Civitas Dei
with Glaube und Unglaube in der Weligeschichte, for that is its theme.

459
 — MAN IN HISTORY

| of Christ, that human time is qualified as ‘high time,’ as the

€ssianic time of decision. A time of growth, a time of maturing,
_ of education, is not ‘high time,’ just as it is not truly personal
| time. “High time’ only exists where heaven and hell are decided.
| Only where each individual personally, by becoming a member
_of the body of Christ, by being” incorporated into the Messiani¢
“Kingdom, ‘becomes
6 Se TE In ‘the full”‘sense “of the—
word, is he, the. individual, tru
POO TERN ERAN aire een
erson, and his time is trul
“Eistomeat “Tt is true that life ub pesthe Christian “revelation
aecnnlcenn does not lack a wealth of individuality, originality and spon-
taneity; but it lacks the tension of decision, and it lacks the
breadth of horizon of world history. ‘In Christ’ life gains both
these elements, in the true responsibility which is eraeaed
seen in Him alone.

4..WORLD HISTORY AND REDEMPTION

If the meaning of history is that which is revealed to us in
the Biblical” history of the Old and the New Testament, then
“what is’the” meaning of non-Biblical1_history—of the bul ers
of the Pyramids iin Egypt, and ofthe wise Emperors of China,
and of all world history down to Napoleon and Lenin? What
is the connexion between the history of the civitas terrena and
the civitas Dei? If the meaning of all history is the Kingdom
of God, that is, the rise, the extension, and the consummation
of the fellowship of believers in eternal life, then what is the
meaning of that history which has no relation with the Biblical
knowledge of God, or whose relation is merely negative? The
following points seem to me relevant for any attempt to answer
this question. First,we must distinguish between three forms
1 That is the statement of the problem in Augustine’s De Civitate Dei.
His solution of the problem, in spite of its grandeur, cannot satisfy us
to-day; on this point we must admit that Troeltsch is right. But we are
not satisfied with Augustine’s solution, not because he seeks it in the
Christian faith, but first of all because—as a dogmatic theologian—he sees
the whole question in too simple a manner, and further, because his
knowledge of history is too fragmentary and his view too uncritical. But
the question he raises is still waiting for our answer; we need urgently a
Christian doctrine of history. There are important rudiments of such a
theory—in addition to those mentioned on p. 455—in the work of the
Roman Catholic writer, Th. Haecker, Der Christ und die Geschichte.

451
 MAN IN REVOLT

of existence: first of all, the distinction between an existence

which is
1s before Christ, acide of Christ, and hostile to,Christ;
secondly, we
w should note the fact that even the etieide
‘whois hostile to or outside of Christ is still one who.has.been
by the God whom he does not know, or will not know;
thirdly, there is the fact that history iis not only decision, but
that there is a kind of history which is not history proper—the
growth of the responsible subject, the history of the presup-
‘positions of actual history—and finally, that likewise, just as
there is a great variety of created individualities, a variety
which, from our point of view, seems wholly irrational, so also
there is a completely irrational variety of historical actualities.
All we can do here is to develop these points quite briefly ;
their application to the concrete material of history must be
reserved for a Christian doctrine of history.
We will begin with the point which was mentioned last.
The Christian _understanding of history takes into account
thatwhich is absolutely obscure in two ways. The. firstthing
tt |
which we cannot understand is the variety ‘ofEe
t e HOURScreated
QTY

‘universe as such, even inthe ‘sphere o

of
fhistory. Faith cannot
explain why aall” ‘thatexists andhappens i
in history exists at all,
“any more than |réason can explain it. We do not understanc
‘how all this isordered for the divine End; Christian faith
knows the fact of the divine rule of the worlds; it knows also
of the final End towards which all that happens is directed,
but it does not know ‘the ways of God’ in detail. This Divine
rule, however, isbased upon the fact that God isboth Creator
and Redeemer. The mysterious variety of the historical creation,
like that of the> physical .creation, is the work of the sam > God _
whi
ho.
0 hasrevealed to us Hisisplan « ‘aredempti n and{of fulfilment
EY
hrist. That i
isval we know. The second point p towhich
aith directs our attention. =~
"Is aan ‘irrationa
rarenerac
er ‘tor er |
‘kind: evil. We do not understand why evil exists, particularly
those manifestations fe) “which. fill|the actual historical
PR MRCS a
f life,
‘Any more.
“than vwe “understan the variet' In creation.
. What

0€S “teachts “us 1S that evil is due to man %S ‘sin,“that at i i

| oom‘does
‘spring
ngs. from disobedience to BUG Will of ‘God. But _we_are
wen Papas

_either wholly, or to a very large extent, ignorant of the1

tite emia

reason Ss
why human beings are disobedient, “and especially why they
452 |
 MAN IN HISTORY |

are disobedient in these particular ways which we see in |

history. There are, however, two things which we know in _ |
faith: first, that, so far as our experience extends, evil is that
7 which is contrary to meaning par excellence ; secondly, we know..
that God is able to make use of this evilwhich. is contrary
to all meaning and sense fcor His‘purpose, iin a way which we {
cannot_possibl nderstand. )The most meaningless event in
world history, the death of Phicist; through the divine wisdom
has become the most meaningful, indeed the revelation of,
- and realization of the final divine goal. But this paradox does
not make it possible for us to give paradoxical interpretations
of history in detail. Thecertainty‘that to those who love God
all things work together for good,’ "1 is not a principle of a
Christian logic ofhistory which ‘can be applied to all cases.”
Tf‘therewere a convincing “theodicy of history’? for thought,
even for Christian thought—we would not need redemption.
Feor then the contradictions of existence “would be> resolved by _
TD PRAT VET
ne

thought,and
t, we would not need to“wait for their solutioneaby
ree

1 Rom. viii. 28.

2 The appeal to a hidden decree of God which would contain something
different from the revealed decree of salvation, and the subsumption of
both decrees under the concept of the glory of God—so that God wills to
be glorified in Hell as well as in the Kingdom of God—is an idea which,
in spite of Calvin, is foreign to the Bible, and is one which destroys the
unity of the divine nature, in spite of all assertions to the contrary. If we
would teach, with Calvin, that from all eternity God has predestined and
created some for eternal life and others for eternal damnation (Jnstitutio, III,
21, 5), then logically we would have to teach that there is in the nature
of God alongside of love a Primal Wrath, as has been done by certain
Gnostics. The Biblical doctrine of the hiddenness of God in the course of
human history has nothing to do with this; the will of God is not hidden,
but what is concealed is the way in which that which is contrary to sense,
that which is opposed to the aim of His Kingdom, is used as a means for
His revealed aim. (Rom. xi. 33.)
8 Th. Haecker, in his beautiful book Schépfer und Schépfung, has ventured
to make an ‘attempt at a Theodicy’ (pp. 24-87); I have very little to say
against his ideas, only for my part I would maintain that all this is not a
theodicy. He who makes faith in the God who acts, in love, in an un-
fathomable way, whose rule of love in history can only become intelligible
beyond history,
his central point has in so doing ceased to regard it as
allowable to construct a theodicy. The ‘nevertheless’ of faith means that
we give up all attempts to ‘justify the ways of God to men,’
453
 MAN IN REVOLT
-

the divine redeeming action, Either theodicy or eschatology !

oeehaslony the certaintyof the future consummation of
redemption and of the eternal consummation of all things in
the Kingdom of God, is the sole Christian theodicy; this
means, however, that we do not know. how..theirrational
is
incorpor:
erated inte divine.pl
poration solely andche lan, but, we look for this incor-
simply from. the Divine action. The ‘system’
, will only
be disclosed in eternity. I ,.we only see so much
of the divine meaning
inactual life as isnecessary
, in obedience. to God.
for action
3 .
he second point! is the recognition of a subordinate his-
torical element, growth as the preparationforthe personal-
ig ie eaten cece an eet NP
ES Seb cs herentene
AUG 5 Sch On foekb Re RONEN isSYSEIN TotW ST
iA DOSRRO AR aneeARROR
eNO “an PSO : a :
rermngpecn eens
T
samcwondauies = dst aR lettin
sty Wheresrt eaten eld it a

ae
historical. The child
en ae ee CANUTE
for instance,
CNTY ee YONA
TG HA
before itREE SIMbecomes a person oat
: HITT OTA Ser ae NOTE

who thinks and acts for himself,

has no proper history
but a
growth of man is not the theme of history but of pre-history. It
is no accident that the Bible showsus thebeginn
ofing
history
not as a growth
but as adecision. The story of growth is always
‘quietly presupposed behind the Bible narrative. Only legend,
not the Biblical message itself, has for instance an interest in the
growth of Jesus.* But this story of growth is recognized as some-
thing willed by the CreThe atoBible itself,
r. which tells us so
little aboutchildrenhas
, given a special dignity to the child.
The history ofmanisembe
is not itself historicain
inadded
natural process, which
l character. But, further, the whole
“historical life is accomplished,so to speak, within non-historical
material, which also has its own logic, as a something which
lies midway between nature and history, between the realm
of nature and personal being.? The whole of civilization and
of culture is not itself histbut
Naeoucugsesiien tiie
oricit is the
al,sediment of
1 Point three on p. 452.—Translator.
We must recognize as the result of criticism that precisely Luke ii. 42 fF.
does not contradict this.
* This conception has some affinity with the argument of Rickert, that
historical science as research into and presentation of history has to do
with the Einmalige (the unique and the non-recurrent) (cf. Die Grenzen der
naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung); but because in an idealistic way he
relates this ‘unique’ element to a system of abstract values by which alone
the unique gains significance, the idea of ‘uniqueness’ does not gain its full
significance. Cf. also Hildegard Astholz, Das Problem Geschichte untersucht
bei F. G. Droysen, 1933.

454
 MAN IN HISTORY

history, and the means of expression of historical man,

“Civilization
and Culture are, so to speak, the fingerprints and
footprints of historical man. They have therefore a ‘history’.
of their own kind. We can only speak very loosely” and incor-
rectly ofa‘history
ry ofart,” or of 'a ‘history 0
of culture,’ or even
of ‘history
a of technique and science.’ “Its.“elation tohistory _
proper, avec
to the actsTRAEofILS man
TRL
asman ispurely in
instrumental.
~ These two facts stand in a context which Ican merely
indicate here. The process throu h which man becomes human,
his |development to spiritual maturity, takes place. by means
_ofcivilization, and culture, and conversely, it is ‘precisely this_
maturity ofman as manim which manifests itself “civilization —
4 Hence here there exists a~continuity which
that of organic growth. Here, in fa
issomething which we may describe as ‘progress. ‘The more
we are concerned with that which is only instrumental the
more we can speak about ‘progress.’ The history of technique
for instance is the history of an indubitable march forward.
One generation makes use of the discoveries and inventions
‘of another, There arises a “cumulation of technical possibilities
“which ‘develops’ in an almost unbroken line from the first
stone tool to the modern technique of steel and concrete, on
the analogy of the development of a child to a man. The _
more, however, that the means and forms of expression OF i
Peet PEE
personal bebeing are personal,” the more we are concerned with
culture and not with civilization, with that which cannot be
handed on, the less can we speak of ‘ progress.At the historical |
Fe pple piaa Ogtaie ia igang
itself,in psone, decision _the’conncept ¢ ‘of ‘p ss’ becomes
_meaning ess.“Progress only exists to the ae a ‘which there
“Js growth « or transference
4s or cumulation, thus progress is
excluded to the extent in which there is personal decision.
Since, however, the historical life is wholly. embeddedin this_
natural element, on1the one hand, and in the ‘instrumental oon
“the other hand, it is not possible to separate the ‘sphere’ of
rogress from the ‘sphere’ where there can ‘be noprogress.?
This natural growth and technical progress accompany history,
without themselves being history.
The third and the fourth points*—(in the preceding enumera-
1 Cf. the chapter on Success and Progress in The Divine Imperative,
pp. 280 ff. 2 On p. 452.
455
 MAN IN REVOLT

tion the second and the first)—are_directly theological. Every

Juman _being isis God’s creature, whether he believes it or not,
‘whether he
heds
i a.Christian or not,. Every.human bbeicing, ‘there-_
th
fore, owing _to_the fact of his creation through ththe_ Word, is is_I|
related to_ God, and. istherefore responsible. It is upon “this
that his personal being is based, it is for this that his historical
character is intended, But it belongs to the nature of the
; ‘natural’ man—of the man who is outside the sphere of
the
i

f OM, Biblical revelation of ~God—that his knowledge of Godis —

gi perverted by sin, and therefore that his personal being itself
Ny is also perverted. He is indeed person, but as we have fre-
+ quently explained—impersonal person ; heestanis still_a
/ being, it is true, but his existence is not.fully ‘human:
‘human™
human’ an
and
“personal,” “Sin, 1S “being yuman ‘in an _ink juman1way,
way, it is”
impersonal personal. (AER So also man’s historical bein |
not truly his
historical. Before Christ man is indeed a REPLI
RENG
|
_but he is not“fully responsible. “Pre-Christian,
| and in the strict
sense Of theword, non--Christian “history—for instance, the
historical existence of a Red Indian before the advent of
Columbus—is called inthe Bible ‘the times of ignorance which
_God has overlooked,’ zy‘although eeven there responsibilityexists.
as i
“History, in the proper, strict sense of the word, has onl
existed since, and by means of, Jesus Christ. one since He
sf x came has fiien time become time of decision, in the full
4 grave sense of the word, because only since He came is there
Ps the possibility of deciding in view of the challenge to decision
ae with which we are confronted. The pre-Christian period, when
__.o compared with this character of existence, has something
“" _»relatively ‘simple’ about it; the pre-_Christian human being is
(not yet fully awake, he cannot be fully ‘serious,’ because in
~~” his world there is nothing pre-eminently serious—or at least
7 not in the full sense. Thepre-Christian human being is not
personal in the same sense©as
as the post-Christian _ human being,
\ Vy because he doesnot know of personal being in the same way,
just as he has not a fully historical existence because he isnot
_aware of the hist orical? 1in the same fullsense.
Through |Jesus. “Christ. alone. _has the. _world become...an|
aS ee ALIMENT

1 Acts xvii. 30; Rom. iii. 25; Acts xiv. 16.

* Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death: “Hence the selfishness of paganism
. is not nearly so qualified as that of Christendom, even though there

456
 MAN IN HISTORY

historical world, in the fullsense of the word. Hence this

|
“alteration of ‘historical existence affects not merely believers.
¢
‘but.‘unbelievers, Through Jesus Christ something has susie |
‘which affects even those who do not believe on Him. This |
can already be seen in the fact that to-day everyone, whether/
believer or unbeliever, asks about the meaning of the world
process as a whole, and isaware of the existence of world ”
ent

history. This question, this category, ‘unknown to the pre- “

Christian period, cannot now be removed from the mind of
man. It is there; whether one believes in Christ or not does
not alter this fact. We cannot help thinking in terms. of world-
history—and no amount of Nationalism in the present day
alters this one jot—and_we cannot help thinking of humanity.
as a whole. In theory we may ‘deny this wholeness, but it is
there, spiritually as well as in the technical and economic
sense. It is there as a recognized task as well as a. fact. It is
known as a task in a different way from the way in which it
is known as a fact, but both are irrevocable.
With Jesus Christ, wherever His Word, or the news about
Him, has come, directly or indirectly, there a new conscious-
ness of existence has begun, both for believers and unbelievers.
The man who has heard the message of Jesus Christ can only|
or for‘Him,
th things: “he can decide against Him o
do one=of two
beh
ineSha

AMPS
FAL OeRG Aye R
a Reon aw ACSI REE

but he cannot ignore Him -without making a decision. . =

Spineless ai

the manner of eee the aubeliever‘or of the man who

believes ‘something other. thar r has no longer that|
comparative. h:harmlessness. of the,mec heathen. —
in its negative “form this existence is burdened with the serious-
ness of the decision of the Bible. The atheism_of the present,
isalways at the same time
day is not merely a-theistic, but it is
‘anti-theistic > 3; non--Christian existence is anti-Christian, pagan-
ism is not naive, butitisconsciously and aggressively pagan.
But also in a positive sense we may speak of an influence of
the message of Christ upon non-Christian “humanity—a fact
‘which has often been noted. A great part of our heritage of

too there is selfishness; for the pagan does not see his Self over against
God? (p. 78 in German translation). ‘Greek intellectuality was too happy,
too naive, too aesthetic, too ironical, too witty, too sinful, to be able to
conceive that anyone could deliberately refrain from doing the Good’
(ibid., p. 87).
47
 MAN IN REVOLT

intellectual culture which everyone uses, whether believer or

unbeliever, is of Christian origin; it is secularized Christianity;_
A 4 T-series eceerecrienill
even the unbelieving man uses Biblical-Christian concepts,
views, Categories, forms of expression, which by way of Augus-
a fa eee aa Oa Sate POSE A wr anti ey ig eT Ft Ll aga RAEN NEEL
DRM NSC ES

tine, scholasticism and the Reformation, especially through

the translation of the Bible, have become the common possession
of Western man. The. non-Chman
ristia
bears a Christian
WASTE ya
n.
febE) Vins

imprint, whether
he likes it or not, and this imprint is a |
character indelebilis.1 Indeed, not only the Western man but also |
the Eastern
man whoconsciously
rejects Christianity, uncon-
sciously absorbs Christian influences into himself, A Buddhism
which founds ‘Young Men’s Associations’ on the model of the
Y.M.C.A. is Christianized, even though in other ways it may —
behave in orthodox Buddhist fashion; an Indian Woman’s
Movement, even though quite Hindu in character, is due to
the influence of the New Testament. Through a thousand |
hidden channels there flows into humanity down the centuries _
a way of thinking, willing and feeling which is derived from
the message of the Gospel, without anyone necessarily being
conscious of the fact. Above all, however, humanity cannot_
get. rid of one thing: the Christian idea of personality, the
‘Christian idea ofhumanity.It is still alive in the most anti-
‘Christian’ Communism; it is this which gives to modern”
atheism “its particular sharpness and passion. Neither Marx
nor Nietzsche can be imagined without the Bible. From it
they drew most of their strength to combat Christianity. Of
course,
we
eecanesic must not overlook the fact that the inherite
i
* Here we are not merely concerned with the fact that man since Christ,
even if he is not a Christian, has ‘all kinds of Christian ideas,’ but that his
understanding of himself, his sense of personality—even if it were in
extreme opposition to it—is only possible from the point of view of the
message of Christ. The liberalistic sense of freedom of Renaissance Human-
ism and of German Idealism truly is not Christian (cf. the excellent
observations on this point by Gogarten in the epilogue to his edition of
Luther’s Vom unfreien Willen), but it is not possible without the emancipation
from bondage to the cosmos, which determines the whole of humanity in
the ancient world, which has taken place through Jesus Christ. Between
the Kantian—Fichte and the Platonist concept of the Self—even if we can
speak of such a thing at all—there stands the Christian message of the
God-Man. Fichte’s philosophy of the Self is far more titanic than that of
the ancient world owing to its opposition to Jesus Christ.

458
 MAN IN HISTORY |
Christian capital is not inexhaustible. The feeling for for the
personal and the human whichis the fruittoffaith may "outlive
for a time“the death of the roots from which it has grown,
“but thiss.cannot lastt verylong. As a rule the decay of religior
“works out in the second generation as moral rigidity, and in
the third generation as the breakdown of all morality.
Humanity without religion has never been an historical force
capable of resistance. Even to-day, severance from the Chris- bin) 2LX
tian faith, wherever it has been of some duration, works out <.~
in the dehumanization of all human conditions. “The wine utp
of life has been poured out’; the dregs alone remain.
On the other hand, fich which is to-day regarded as a
specialsign of |Christianity would reveal itself on closer exami-
nation as the “product _ of a ‘spirit ‘which
v is remote from. that,
of the
th Bible. Even the Church has “alien and still more alien’
‘stuff‘imposed upon it.’ The stream of the life which has sprung
from the Gospel has carried along with it much of the his-
torical soil through which it has flowed. In saying this we are
not thinking only of the history of the Catholic Church but
also of the Protestant Church. Not only the so-called ‘visible
Church,’ but also the actual norms by means of which the
‘empirical’ and the ‘true’ Church have always been distin-
guished from one another, are permeated _with a spirit which _
has been influenced by Platonism, Stoicism, Neo-Platoni 1
and also by_‘the Roman, “Germanic, and "Romance spirit,
‘that even devout Bible reading never takes place solely under
the influence of the Holy Spirit, but also under that of the
‘spirit of the age,’ which is ‘the spirit of men themselves.’ I
do not imagine that this book is any exception to the rule.
Hence for us the problem of the civitas Det and the civitas
terrena has become much more complicated than it was for the
great Father of the Church. There is.a great deal of heathenism
even in Christian speech and doctrine, and there is |
i also much |
Christianity in the ‘most godless anti-Christianity.1 This does
1 Again and again Christendom has forgotten that to believe in a
Christian doctrine does not mean that one is a Christian believer, and
that, on the other hand, much real faith in Christ may be hidden behind
a doctrine which may be theologically quite incorrect. That is the grain
of truth in Rothe’s questionable theory of ‘unconscious Christianity.’
459
 MAN IN REVOLT

not mean that even to-day the ‘Yea’ to Christ is not a ‘Yea’
nor the ‘No’ a ‘No,’ nor that even to- day one can only become
a member of the Christian community by the genuine ‘Yea’
of faith and in no other way, and that without this ‘Yea’—
whether by saying nothing or by saying ‘No’—one places
oneself outside the Christian community. But a is a reminder]
that itis not so easy to distinguish the genuine ‘Yea’from the
‘false.one, andd that often the ‘No’ lies nearer to itthan would
appear.The parable of Jesus of the ‘paradoxical
world Judge-—
ment upon the unbelieving believers and the believing un-
believers remains as a warning, above all confessionsand |
‘creeds, and as a reminder of the hidden judgement of ‘God,
above all unbelief.1 The Kingdom of God is indeed imvinble
in the midst of the godless world; and even of the godless|
world it is said that ‘God so loved the world. . . .? Even there, |
_when the veil is drawn — the first will ecbane the last |
and the last first.
_But
But in
in fundamentals this does not alter anything; the fact
remains
mains that the Kingdom of God in” the-midst of time is
‘theré—even if concealed and struggling—where . Jesus Christ
Ls
is with “His Word and Spirit, in the faith, Tove, and hope of
‘His true Church. But it is essential to the Kingdom ‘of God as
it grows within time, that where it is, it is only in the way
of decision, and has not yet been decided, “Wherefore let him
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest. he’‘fall. S°'The fact
‘that the ecclesia iscalled militans does not mean primarily that
it must defend itself against the world around, but that every
one of its members is permanently engaged in a struggle with
himself. The Christian is not only, as Luther says, always |
growing, ‘but he is always making decisions.* ‘To liveTiveby his |
_ faith’ means to live in decision. But as a believer he
h is; not|
“alone, he is a member of.the Body of.‘which ~Christ_is
Ch is_the |
Head. To believe means to be in fellowship, “in that com- |
rae :
1 Matt. xxv. 37 ff. 2 John iii. 16. 3 1 Cor. x. 12.
4 Stomps (op. cit., p. 126) rightly lays emphasis upon the fact that the
Lutheran semper horke est in non esse, in fieri does not mean a growth in the
sense of development, of progress, but that it means actuality absolutely;
but it is an actuality which is connected with that which is not yet completed,
with that which is destined for death, and thus with faith as distinguished
from sight.
460
 MAN IN HISTORY 5

munity or fellowship which is the meaning of all history.

‘The Kingdom in which we are citizens is in the heavens.’} i
The meaning of history lies where history itself has been
overcome and fulfilled.
1 Phil. iii. 20 (following German version).— Translator.

461
 = CHAPTER XX
MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH

I. THE NATURAL UNDERSTANDING OF DEATH AND OF

ETERNAL DESTINY
ae
Oe
an
el
We cannot think rightly about man as he actually is without
“continually reminding ourselves of the | fact thatman musttdie,
that the character of this whole existence | istem) oral and
an
transitory. ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’
|“The whole of human existence is an ‘existence unto death’;?
| as a whole it is shadowed by death; as a river rushes towards
the cataract, so human life is flowing towards death; by death
| is it attracted and moved. We can judge whether a doctrine
| of man is realistic or merely in the clouds by the way in which
| it sees and emphasizes this fact.
) Butwe do not understand this mortality of human life, this_
‘existenceeffordea ifwe. do not also. emphasize ‘the claim on
eternity as.‘an essential |characteristicof human life, which,
‘in some way or other—how will be shown a little later—belongs
to the life of man as a spiritual being, and is continually
re-asserting itself as part of this spiritual being. The contra-
diction which we have recognized as the characteristic of the
actual empirical human existence comes out in a peculiarly
painful and shattering way in the fact that man doesnot die
as other creatures die, and that his life,which 1s destined ‘for r
te DESMA a

oe =F
My ie
: death, ‘also.‘contains within.
vate ita desire -to“disbelieve
ean eee
in death,
meas ee

revolt against death, even a desire_to “escape death,“which

pl in | ‘a
1
mn"cannot be explained “simply by saying ; 1that it is due to the
‘Instinct ofself-preservation known to every living being. Even,
a
1 Gen. iii. 19.
* It is Heidegger’s merit that, unlike most modern philosophers, he has
taken the problem of death seriously, and indeed that he has set it in the
centre of his thought; only we must not imagine that his understanding of
death is a kind of ‘neutral ontology’ or even—which is something different
—that of the simple human being. It is rather a pessimistic metaphysic of
death, a view like that of Fichte transformed into the negative, Eigentlich-
keit (see Translator’s Note on p. 19) understood as ‘resolution for death.’
462
 MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH

and especially, in face of death man cannot simply place

himself on a level with the other creatures. There is within
him something which revolts _against this equation with the—
eat

rest of creation, and at the same time something which makes -

his dying so much ffiore terrible thanthat ofany of the other
“creatures. For man is not simply part of the world, he is not
“simply a living creature; he Knows that
as aabearerofspirit,
“as subject,as person, he hasa ‘soul’ ofa different kind Cay
from that of all other ‘ensouled’ creatures.1 However he may
explain this to himself, he is aware of the fact, even if he
denies it in theory. Even though he may deny it time after
time, he can never feel his death as something ‘natural’; he
feels dimly that there is a real difference between the death
of a human being and the death of an animal. Creatures
come to an end; man dies. But then can a person, can_that PEIN NCL

which isspiritual, die? The ‘mystery.of his personal being

PRN wi dalara irae nie RNID ADEE
AS SE TA BERIN s See Vae eiaraeNh

breaks out inthe myster of

Semen
ying, ‘in
i the fact that he’
can never console himself by ‘thinking that now all is ‘over.’
This contradiction reveals itself also iin the fact that to man _
Eom

dit
_death is an enigma,,
which hecan never solve, and which. he
has tried to solve in very different ways.” The. ‘simplest’. ‘solu-.
_tion isto forget the spiritaltogether ; man manages—at least »
in theory—to forget entirely that the being of a person is
something different from that of the being of any other creature.
In some way or other he succeeds in repressing his inner -
knowledge which tells him the opposite 5 having doneso, he
FD
ro sect?
believes: that he ‘ancan aaccept death as something quite'
“natural,”
and as a ‘matter of course’ ; this means that he succeeds in
regarding himself as an object, and in transferring to himself
the experience which he makes of all that is objective in the
world. If man is simply one organism alongside of all the
1 The imperfection of the Old Testament shows itself especially in the
way in which, in contrast to the New Testament, it speaks of man’s death.
Cf. Koehler, op. cit., pp. 134 ff.
2 Cf. Rohde’s Psyche. There is the idea of a shadowy continuation of life
in the underworld ; all kinds of ideas of the Beyond, the doctrine of re-birth
and of final redemption into Nirvana (which probably no non-Indian will
ever understand). In the text we take into account only the actual
alternatives to the Christian faith which are now operative among us, the
‘Epicurean’ and the ‘Platonic.’
463
 MAN IN REVOLT

others then there is no enigma in death. For in all organisms,

once their life-force has been expended, the process of growing
old will reach its acute and final stage, and the gradual failure
of strength will become complete decay; rigidity and dissolu-
tion then reaches its highest point and causes the destruction
of the living unity of the individual. ‘Death isthe natural end
of a development which starts even with the beginning of life.’?
And then? What shall be ‘then’? When a beautiful soap-
bubble has burst do we ask what has happened to ‘it itself’?
Man was, and now he is no more. As a totality he has been
dispersed in the elements out of which he was composed.
These elements will perhaps be used again for the upbuilding
of a living whole, perhaps even of a human being. ‘Death is Pe heen aes
ae =

the stratagem.o
of Nature to have much life’(Goethe). “Tm-
perious Caesar,’ so philosophizes the ‘cynical grave-digger in
Hamlet, ‘dead and turned to clay,’ ‘Might stop a hole to keep
ee wind away.’
Then is the personal life of humanity nothing more than
a poor ‘Tittle soap-bubble which shimmers for a year or
! ‘two with wonderful colours and then one _day. bursts. and dis-Fara en

‘solves into nothing? iesicpinlapapeneme

Then iaiceiate is the spirit
of man nothing more
i
ui

) yd wg PR OARS
1 than,2D ‘epiphenomenon, |a|phenomenonon which _accompanies
organic processes? ‘Then is the subject nothing more than
certain
‘a aspect of‘the object, is man simply part of the world
“and. nothing more? Because this _answer—in spite of the
undeniable fact of death and the corruption of the human
body—is so evidently false that everyone who has preserved
ae glimmer |of knowledge of personal being cannot believe
“in it, the humann._spirit,.has..gone to the other extreme and
NAT EIR NTT RCT AT >
acl
claims
SBEthat
TEMESdeathTARY i
is not the _destruction. of man;
nonon the con-
the con-
(vay
Ven
a’ W\.). | _trary, that it is a release, the. ‘emancipation of.the soul from
‘the ‘prison.1of‘the
1 body, the setting free of the soul from the
‘burden of itsbase material partner. In this phenomenon it is
——
execs
not death which is the important thing, but the immortality
oe of the soul, which it manifests and expresses.
Sm
This idea of the immortality of the soul was born not of
philosophy but of mystical religion,” but it was eagerly seized
and appropriated by philosophy, which was more profound.
1 Article on Death in the Grosse Brockhaus. 2 Rohde, Psyche.
464
 MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH =|
Plato.was the first to combine philosophy, his theory ofIdeas, |
“with the. the immortal soul,as he knew it from the|
Orphic tradition, and to weld them into a wonderful unity. .
Scareely any other |ideaee
in a had such an effect _
as this. Nothing shows miore clearly ower “of this idea
“than the fact that it was able not.‘only. to _penetrate. into
wistianity, Dut that tor Thearly tw ener years it was —
‘regarded “as a Christian |idea, a gh, as we shall show |
‘directly, it 1IS.‘alien
n to the genuine ‘thought .
of the.Bible. ‘
It is not very easy to answer the question: how did Plato:
think of the Immortality of the Soul, and upon what did he
base his view?! but so much is catia, that according to
Plato, immortality is regarded as|belonging tc to the natureor
“essence
of the soul, that ithas itsbasis in itsspecial relation —
‘to
to_the
the world <of Ideas, especial ly. to the “Idea of the Good,
‘that for thatvery reason it is indissolubly connected with the
idea of the eternal pre-existence of the soul, and that it mani-
fests itself in the anammnesis-character of the ideal knowledge._
Accordingly, the immortality of the Soul, as Plato understands —
it, must not be confused either with the Biblical idea of Creation
or with the Neo-Platonist pantheistic idea of emanation. For
the rest, the fact that Plato deliberately clothed his ideas |
about immortality in the form of myth makes it impossible to
give a clear answer to all the questions which Plato’s thought
is bound to raise in the mind of the critical philosopher or the |
Christian theologian.
According to the Platonic conception the soul is an entity |
whichpaseo
is inesto opposition to the bodily ee
epercaion
existence,
ae
which
_ could |
only come into this existence
| PSEA
nce by 1meanssof a F all,32from which .|
RELEUR EAEYAODB HIATT SHATTER SH SIL eAIUerseep me nie

1 Zeller (op. cit., p. 697) rightly calls attention to the lack of unity of
the Platonic doctrine of Immortality, and to the impossibility of abstracting the
pure philosophical kernel from the husk of myth. But the main lines of thought
are clear. ‘Life belongs to the nature of the soul. Thus it cannot allow any
approach of the contrary, death; it is therefore immortal and incorruptible.’
2 Most drastically in the Phaedrus. The metaphysical doctrine of Immor-
tality should further be distinguished from the ethical existential doctrine
of dying, whose distinctiveness against all speculative theories Bultmann
rightly emphasizes (article on @dvatog in Kittel’s Wérterhuch, pp. 10, 12).
His doctrine of Judgement, which does not fit in with his metaphysic of
the soul, is connected with the latter. See above, p. 170.
465
 . MAN IN REVOLT
it must and can only be set free by the Tight. knowledge, by _
\ the philosophical ”‘way of life, by a progressive detachment
from all thati is of the sense life, and ‘hon-spiritual. ‘Only ‘that
| part ‘of the soul therefore isimmortal which is turned towards
| the world of Ideas, or, to use Kantian terminology: reason as
_ the ‘power of the idea.’ It is this rational, spiritual being of
the soul by means of which it is immortal, pre-existent, gifted
_ with the power of anamnesis, and capable of self-redemption.
| By its higher being, by that through which it is in opposition
_ to corporeality, it is immortal. This idea was varied in many
_ ways_in later Greek _philosophy, in early and laterStoicism,
“in the syncretistic philosophy influenced by “the thought of
| the East, in the popular philosophy impregnated with the
' Roman spirit, in Gnosticism and in Neo-eae But
through all these variations the’ decisive element remains: the ~
Ik immortality” of the soul’ is its very nature, 2 ‘unchangeable
oe | Inetaphysical «essence. Even in its connexion with the Biblical
As . idea of ‘Creation, ‘which begins _with the earliest Christian
J/~. _ “theologians, ‘this.“fundamental idea remains: “the” ‘soul
is im-
ee‘mortal]
in. virtueof its nature—even it is hot an
an eternally
| pre-“existent but a c
omabrency oemS
divinely. created being.‘This idea is intimately _
. “connected with the doctrine of the Imago. De. _The Imago Dei,
distinguished from the similitudo, understood as an essential
similarity to God, has as its most peice or characteristic, and
_ one which it can never lose: immortality.}
This synthesis _ of the Platonic. doctrine of the, soul and the
Christian doctrine of Creation dominates the’whole of patristic
literature, was developed _ still further in Scholasticism with
_ the aid of Aristotelian concepts, and passed on, with only
‘slight modifications, into the early Protestant | ‘theology ; it
\ has not only dominated the development of theological
thought in the narrower sense of the word, but it_has
also become an integral part of the ‘piety | of th
the‘Church, 0
of

1 The doctrine of an imago which cannot be lost—alongside of the

similitudo which can be and has been lost—brings into the statements of
the Fathers a certain fluctuation with regard to immortality. On the whole,
however, the view prevails that immortality belongs to the nature of the
imago which cannot be lost, which for its part, however, is regarded as a
gift of the divine grace of Creation.
466
 MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH

preaching, religious instruction, the liturgy, and ecclesiastical

hymnology.
2. THE ETERNAL DESTINY
| .There can be no doubt at all to-day that the Bible? does
not contain this idea of a metaphysical immortality grounded |
jin
fit the 1nature of the essence. of.the.soul, Its fundamental view
‘of.
| ‘man as a divinely created unity ofbody. and soul, on the
| one hand, 2
as also its fundamental view of the. actual eeiudlaban
|of personal ‘being in the creating Word of God, on the other.
hand, cannot |be combined with this doctrine. “of the essential 2 4"
| immortality of the human. spirit, and of the emancipation of
| the spirit from its prison, the body, any more than it can be
' combined with the former naturalistic theory which wholly
| forgets the special being of man as person.? It is certainly no
/ mere accident that the Christian idea has continually been
linked with the Platonic doctrine, but never with the Epicurean’
| theory—artificial and dangerous as that synthesis may have
:
been.
The destiny of man as something |special |is determined by_.
) the ‘special nature of his being. If man is that which we have
|
et
:
“recognized him to be from the teaching of the Bible: personal
:i being founded in the Word of God, being-in-responsibility,
being-for-love, then also the perversion which has taken place,
|| through sin, in the original created human nature cannot
(|i result in the fact that man dies just like any other creature.
The error of Idealism is not that it brings man, on account
of his spirit, into relation with eternal being; what is wrong
:
is the way in which it does this; that is, that it attributes
eternal being substantially, naturally, or essentially to man as
the manner of his spiritual being, that it regards eternity as
something which can be taken for granted, as part of the
spiritual being of man, as the result of his divine kind of being. -

1 Cf. the discussion between Althaus and Stange, especially with regard
to Luther (Althaus, Unsterblichkeit und ewiges Leben bei Luther, 1930, and the
bibliography there).
2 Althaus rightly protests against a tendency in the theology of the
present day to deny the distinctiveness of man’s being which is supposed
to be ‘to the greater glory of the Christian faith’ (Die letzten Dinge, p. 102).
467
 ee
a a MAN IN REVOLT

Originally—so the Bible tells us—man was not destined for _

deathh but. for eternalI being. Death iIs “something foreign to
“this,“original ‘destiny iin the creation, something added_and_
hostile, it is an intruder\1,The man who is. destined by. the
_Creator
for communion with Himself, the Eternal, in so doing
is himself destined for eternal life. This destiny is the telos,
which. the Creator has given him, and without this telos the
nature of man cannot be imagined ;the telos, the destiny, and
the being of man are, itis true, not the sam -—the ‘ecclesiastical
doctrine has “expressed this rightly from the days of St.
Augustine, in the distinction it makes between the posse non
mort and the non posse mori, that is, the destiny for a Eternal
in contradistinction from eternal being—but_ne r_can be
severed from the other, as if being were soretnine “by ‘itself,
mbricealentie

and destiny something by.itself. The eternal destiny iiss impressed

upon the being of ma vith the gift “Pp | being, to such
an extent indeed} that, just like personal being, it does not
simply disappear even with man’s hostile self-determination
| God. /
.-Luther—just as he separated the doctrine of the Imago from
its idealistic form with a sure feeling for the original Biblical —
~“idea—has also ‘wonderfully clearly distinguishedthis idea from
‘the ecclesiastical and idealistic idea of immortality,, and has
seen both the eternal character of man’s destiny and its
complete dependence upon the will and the word of God.
“Where, however, or with whom, ‘God speaks, ‘whether in
wrath or in grace, the same is certainly immortal. The Person
of God who speaks, and the Word of God show that we are
creatures with whom God wills to speak even unto eternity
and in an immortal manner.” ‘And because the divine Majesty
speaks with man alone (cum solo homine), and man alone recog-
nizes God (agnoscit) and perceives Him, so it follows necessarily
__that there is another life after this life. °3
The eternal does not t reside in
ina Spiritual nature, in a neutral
_and impersonal spiiritual being,, but iin the Word <of"God ‘and
in. ‘thepersonal. destiny—wrathor grace—which itcontains.
rythis being in the Word of God is the being of man, whether
1 Rom. v. 12, 14; Rom. vi. 23; 1 Cor. xv. 26.
3 According to WA. 43, 481. 3 According to WA. 42, 61.
468
 MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH —..

he be a believer or an unredeemed sinner, thus whether he

is standing under the wrath or under the grace of God; he
may be in the Word of God in a perverted way and he then
stands ‘under
then) eprbe
“wrath ;“but it is impossible for him not to be in” ~
the Word of God atall.Just as his being is always an actual —
“being-responsible’ so also it is always an existence in the
Word of God, whether in the Word of grace or of wrath.
_Beingunder the word |of ‘wrath, however—and so the circle
ree ee nen nese an euemnieneneestiimmeeambeiaicremeeeneiiiatenaaidaenaest eames

1S ‘closed—is the same as being under the law, which once

“again isan ‘existence-for-death,’ but now an existence for-
‘eternal death, an existence in condemnation.
Luther does not consider that the ‘unbelieving man ceases
to exist at death, any more than does the New Testament.?
The fact that man, even when he dies, does not simply cease
to be, but that then in particular the perversion of his being,
sin, comes out, is not merely an inference, but a necessary
element in the Lutheran—and that means also in the Biblical
—understanding of personality. . The fact that man’s being 1is
decision gains its final and its most serious expression in this_
SRLS
From this, too, we see why it is that the man who does not,
eehtpseren. — Neen
Fee MACE
wey oo
really ‘know’ God, who only ‘knows’ Him in an idolatrous
“way, and who therefore does not sce himself aright (either as
he is in his true nature or as he actually is) isuncertain about
the significance of death, and oscillates between
the natural-
jstic-nihilistic understanding of death and the Idealistic-
sentimental view of it. This also makes it clear why it is that
the actual facts of human life are such that they may lend
colour first to one interpretation and then to the other, so
bigs as man has not penetrated through all questionings to
1 Althaus, in his presentation of the Biblical doctrine, rightly lays stress
on the fact that we must make a distinction between relation to God and
' communion with God. Stange’s contrary assertion, in spite of Luke xiv. 14,
' cannot be regarded as the view of the Bible. On the contrary, we must
admit that in the New Testament a continuation of human existence
beyond death is expressed without an explicit mention of the resurrection;
for instance, Luke xvi. 23; Rom. ii. 5-13. On the other hand, ‘the idea oF
the sleeping soul is foreign to the thought of the New Testament,’ whilst
to some extent the Old Testament view of Sheol is developed further
(article on Hades in Kittel’s Worterbuch).
L—_— 469
Se
 MAN IN REVOLT

the fundamental truth of his origin, of his being in the Word

Hh. | of God.
On the one hand, spiritual being, which indeed even fallen
/
J Via
/
oh ak
‘man ‘knows, points to the Eternal. We cannot think of ‘the
“spiritual as such absolutely together with ‘death.’ Plato was
not simply giving rein to his imagination in a phantasy when
he calls the world of Ideas an eternal existence, but he saw
something essential. Behind the Ideas stands the divine Truth,
and in the act of grasping ideas man does not remain. simply
imprisoned within himself but he participates indivine Truth.
Indeed the act of thinking—in the broadest sense of the word,
of the grasping of ideas—is itself, although it is certainly
immersed in time, also something timeless; in the act of
synthesis the distracting effect of time ceases—otherwise the
‘synthesis’ would never be reached, no thought would ever
~ be formulated. Hence the fundamental law of all thinking,
A ‘of all mental activity in general, is.the Law of Identity, which
constitutes the boundary between the psychological current
! Pat rv
V

Ag} ‘
of life and intellectual truth or meaning. The act which rasps
5 HfCz " Kh

_truth and _meaning participates in the timelessness. of truth ;*

that sseloucictnaimasekbenSe
‘Is e relalataative truthof Idealism. | re
J

ie Dest

“4
3. MORTALITY AND EXISTENCE-UNTO-DEATH
On the other hand, however, to infer the eternityof our
beingfrom. this.‘timelessness
nele ofathe ‘IdeaisS th t paralogism?
upon -which Kant
K has Tightly -
poured scorn, the ‘confusion of
‘our human«“existence—or_ ‘soul’—with theContent
c of thought.
Our
Our spiritual life participates both. in the eternity
et er
and
and iin the ttransitoriness of creaturely existence. No ‘Law of
Identity helps us out of the misery of forgetfulness, which is
indeed the clearest proof of the fact that our spiritual existence
is deeply embedded in ‘the world which passeth away.’ There
is certainly a deep meaning in the fact that the Greeks described
the truth as °A-A7jea,? as not-forgetting. Forgetting is tran-_

1 See above, pp. 243 ff.

2 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Von den Paralogismen. d.r.V.
8 dAnGera means first of all the act of not concealing; the connection
with Lethe may not belong to the etymology, but it belongs to the spirit
of the Greek language.
470
 MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH

sitoriness in knowledge, death beforehand, so far as it affects ;

the mental life, the non-durée-réelle, perpetual dispersion, the
tearing apart of that which should be united. Death in the
mental life, however, takes on the most. varied forms: mental
_indolence, dullness of mind, susceptibility to illusions of all
kinds, ‘forgetfulness*“in’ not holding fast the truth which is
already known, in the assertion of contradictory statements
and the like.
But far more importa nt
than all this, is that which does not
affect thespiri t “the spiritual,” but_that.which,
inabstracto,
affects the person. That is the theme which is treated in the
Bible;! it has to do with man, not with ‘the spiritual’ or with
‘spiritual being’ in itself. The Bible does so by co-ordinating,
strictly and indissolubly, the three fundamental concepts
which characterize the existenceof manouts redeeming _
theide
revelation : Sin, law and death, so"that ‘these three very nearly |
‘become interchangeable ideas. The severance of man from
living union with God is expressed as a state of being ‘fallen’
under the power of death, and at the same time as a state
of having fallen under the law. ‘Death’—this death, the death
of human beings, which is both curse and damnation, is
‘the wages of sin.’ ‘The sting of death is sin, but the power
as_a,
of sin is the law.’ Here death is no longer regarded
natural eyvent—the question of the origin of this purely
creaturely death appears at the most on the verge of Biblical
thought, in a characteristically ‘human’ light*—but_ death is |
closely connected with wrath and judgement. ©
“human fear, andnot creaturely fear—is connected
with this view of death. The thought of this death cannotbe
separated from the thought of the wrath of God. ‘For we are
consumed in Thine anger, and in Thy wrath are we troubled.
Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in
the light of Thy countenance. For all our days are passed away
in Thy wrath.’> This fear is the effect of the ‘sting of sin.’
Without this sting possibly death would be something ‘natural’
—perhaps simply a ‘going to sleep.’ We do not know. We
1 Cf. the excellent article on 0dvatoc¢ by Bultmann (op. cit.).
2 Rom. vi. 23. 8 1 Cor. xv. 56.
¢ Rom. viii. 20. 5 Psa, xc. 7 ff.

471
 MAN IN REVOLT

" OHly know that as sinners we are aware of this‘

‘sting ¢ofdeath,”
and therefore that the cdeathof manissomething quite ‘different,
¢
something far more terrible than that of any other creature.
Behind this fear there lies, as we have heard, fear of the God
“who judge 5 man.* The’ evil conscience and the fear ofdeath
_cannot be kept apart. from one another. Sin, thebad con-
“science, ‘Taw—that is, the God who makes anicdlese demands—
and the wrath of God are inseparably and Sn con-
nected.
_/ It is peculiar to man that because he has spirit, he antici-
. kKa pates death.‘Even the animal that is led to the slaughter—so—
' “the peasants assure us—has some dim suspicion of the terrible
thing towards which it goes. Its whole life is orientated towards
self-preservation, towards keeping death at bay. Within the -
Jimits ofitssubject-existence eyen the animal anticipates eal
“But it has ‘no cnowledge | of the Eternal, itknows ; nothing =
responsibili
‘decaaniancsdbist iii 2
bility, of ruilt‘and si
sin, nothing sesbeing ‘destined for
“God-"“But man knows all this, even as sinner—even if his
knowledge is perverted. Hichce his ‘being-in-sin’ and _ his
‘being-under-the-law’ is also a ‘being-unto-death,’ which is
certainly not exhaustively defined in the platitude: ‘all finite
existence is transitory.’ Fear of death permeates the whole of
human life. Fear of life1
is always fear of death. ‘In the world
ye have tribulation’ or ‘fear,? namely, of death; but this
does not simply mean the fac of fading out or of ceasing to
| be, but still more, the fear of not fading out and of not ceasing
L to be.
“But death has not only rooted itself to this extent within
_the“subject of the”person. It dominates the whole of personal ~
existence. The undying honour which humanism seeks..as_
‘compensation _ for death is indeed a feeble gesture: of protest,
a ‘phrase, Just |like the talk about ‘immortal works.” “What do
‘two centuries or even a thousand” years matter which some
1 The phenomenon of ‘dread’ in its connexion with death, sin and the
bad conscience has never been so clearly grasped by anyone as by Luther.
Cf. his description of the terror of death of the first human beings after
the Fall (WA. 42, 137 ff.).
2 John xvi. 33. Humanity stands under the influence of death, due to
wrath, through its godlessness (Rom. i. 20 ff.); the sorrow of the world is
standing in the shadow of death (2 Cor. vii. 10; cf. Bultmann, op. cit.).
472
 MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH

supreme human achievements attain in the opinion and

understanding of posterity! The history of humanity is a
symphony—or a cacophony—on this theme with variations:
all that exists is worthy of destruction. ‘All is vanity.” The
Preacher certainly sees human life in a one-sided manner,
but what he says is true. His reminder of the nothingness off.
all that man does and creates cannot be refutted,.‘History as a
“wholeis a ‘mixture of error and force’; ‘vain,’ however, also
—apart from the hope of redemption—is the individual
human life.
It is true, of course, that much*‘that is wonderful, rat:
glorious, amazing and beneficial has been produced by human
‘beings in the course of human history, and what we call”
‘ordinary life’ still produces it daily. That picture of history
which modern Idealism has outlined, that happy vision of a
world of spirit gradually maturing towards its fulfilment of
meaning, of a- humanity which gradually finds itself, and
gradually unveils its human countenance, is not, any more
than the idea of timelessness, a purely insubstantial vision.
The idea of history as the ‘becoming human’ of man is no
mere phantasy, although it is far from being the truth. In corres RE

the midst of the actual fallen world it is a trace,which can

“still be discerned, of the _original meaning of history—of the
individual, as of ‘Kumanity as a whole: this earthly life as a
time of growth, as time which is being fulfilled. Here and
there in the history of mankind or in the history of an indi-
vidual human being something of this meaning suddenly
shines out for a moment, like a flash of lightning, and it seems
as though it could be seized. But then we turn over the next
_page in the book of history ‘and—it
isgone, this meaning,
“hidden, buried, destroyed” by utter ‘nonsense. But the quint-
“essence. of utter non-sense is—death, nothingness as the com-
mon heritage of all that lives, the final goal of all ‘meaningful’

1 This view of history has been possibly most clearly outlined by Herder
and Humboldt. Kant’s judgement was essentially a more sober one. ‘The
history of nature begins with the Good, for that is the work of God, the
history of freedom from evil, for that is the work of man.’ Still he believes
in infinite progress. (Mutmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte, Ausgabe
Cassirer, vol. iv, p. 334-)
473
 MAN IN REVOLT

developments, the fruit of all maturity—this terrible ‘Nothing.’

Hence. the final conclusion is this: so far as we are concerned, |
ithe‘result of this human lifeis that ‘‘we bring |our yearsto an ~
end as a talethat iis told.’} Alliis vanity. : 1;
o
4. ETERNAL DEATH ;
ut faith, in its.‘seriousness, knows something more, than
this: death ; means falling uunder the Divinee Judgement. ‘It is
ca fea ful thing to fall into ‘the. hands of the_living God.?2
“'Thereforeindeed aChristianisaa particularly ‘miserable creature,
above all that can be called wretched, . . . and always he
must have a frightened, weak, trembling heart as often as
the thought comes to him of death and the severe judgement
of God’ ;while others die ‘as though a cow had died’ (Luther).®
‘Existence-for-death’ reveals itself as an existence for eternal
death. The Christian “understanding of death is the most
serious—and thus the most_ terrible. ‘there is—because_ rie
“alone iis ‘truly. ‘personal. Tt_does not treat ‘death li
lightly, ‘in
either the naturalistic or in the idealistic sense of the word—
in_the sense, of. simply. ceasing. to, be,.or of henceforward bein
.
:‘divine, The. serious..way.. in. which. Christianity treats death |
shows its serious view of personal responsibility. Death is \
tenn
‘neither the negative nor the positive metaphysical event, but |
it is the personal event, in which the perversion of the personal |
attitude of man over against the Creator is finally manifested
—in so far indeed as man sees himself under the aspect of his
perversion, that is, in so far as he stands knowingly under the |
law. “The law worketh wrath.” ‘It is the law’ which, in point. )
of fact, |‘works death’; ‘its letter kills, so ‘that the office of the
‘law is the service of death.’5 For the legalistic will is the ‘way |
of the man who wants to live by himself instead of in depen-
dence on God.’* Thus the believer understands existence in. PEE

Wegoutes ‘under wrath,’ ‘under the Law,’ in sin: as_ ‘being |lost.
e)
2: THE CONQUEST’ OF DEATH
anf BAR SEM TPAPNINTE

‘But.this is not theonly thing and not the main thing chat
the.
1¢_Christian” ‘Knows about death.”‘It isthus that he under-—
se arearmneartTnTOTP (RIESE

1 Ps. xc. 9. “2 Heb. x. 31. 5 WA. 36, 538.

¢ Rom. iv. 15. © Bultmann, op. cit. § Bultmann, op. cit., p. 16.
474
 MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH at

stands his existence as that of an unbeliever, as a human being

“who knows the ‘Word of God only as "a word ‘of wrath and
not as a_word |of
Oo grace, as a word which corresponds tothe
Law and not to the Gospel, as a word which causes wrath
and not as a word which dispenses life. Faith, however, may
take that Word ‘which the Person of God speaks’ as a word
of grace. There, where, for the sinner, death stands as the
sign of the divine wrath, stands for the believer the Cross of
_Jesus_(Christ, as the‘Sign.of the Divine ‘Mercy, : nd of the Deen
newly |granted share |in eternal life.‘Tf human “death—in
nr

the divine wrath, that is, of man’s perverted relation to God,

then conversely, theconsequence of the newly established.
communion with God in in Christ_isthe Te-establishment of —
‘existence-unto-eternal-life.
Pe aR RT RIOTS steno
PS
e. Jesus“Chri
SESE eT
“the great Trans-
RARER Ae
former;
sacama laws He.Teyerses s t
the
e perverted
p meaning ofhuman. existence
aencanine ,

‘and once more gives it its original meaning, the meaning

which
it had in the inténtion’of the Creation. Thisis‘precisely
the ‘significance of His death upon the Cross. As the coming
of God into the curse of our sinful existence! not only reveals
to the sinner the unconditional love of God, but also provides
a new ground of existence, so also His acceptance of death
and His passage through it in the Resurrection is not only
revelation, but it also constitutes the new possibility for every
believer, the beginning of the realization of eternal life. ‘He _
that_believeth_on. Me, though he die, yet shall he liye??
“We know that we have passed from death unto -life’ ;Pade
aree again, united with our Origin, in ‘existence-for-eternal _
life,” ‘through 1 the. fact‘that _we_
we are once more, in theright
sense, In
n theWord. of God, ‘that iis, ‘through f:
faith, “The point
here is not merely that fhrcugh Jesus Christ the Christian
receives the certainty of eternal life, nor thac through Jesus _
Christ his immortality is assured afresh; it is rather that Jesus | —
Christ is the Saviour from death, and that faith in Him is “_
already the beginning, the ‘dawn’ of Eternal Life.
Even Christians must die; outward death confronts them,
too, and this ‘dying willIlbe
be a ‘dying of
of.the. whole man
ma 12and
ind nc
not a

“merely of
oe
c theet The whole man must passss through al
an |
1 Rom. viii. 2. 2 John xi. 25. 3 1 John iii. 14.
a
 MAN IN REVOLT

experience of annihilation which affects the whole man! since _

the whole man is a sinner. It would be Stianec if the spirit in
particular, the personal centre, the ‘heart,’ which, just because
it is the centre of the personality is also the seat of sin, did
not feel the effect of sin. Man owes this death to God. But
through Christ this death _has lost its sting, for indeedd_the
sting of death _a _sin, anc this has b n_ rem oved b Jesus
Christ; it standsno lonnger.‘between }me. and GGod. ‘The power of ©
freee ee: eAarbi PRORP HN ere

this sting was the law; but. Hue law

lasIhasbeen reremoved by. race.
Man’s relation to CGod As
iis now no
no Tonger_
| a'Tegalistic one
or ; ‘but iin
faith man lives againonthe generous love of God, the ecleaing
love which God Himself pours out upon us, out of His fullness.
Hence. the fear ofdeath has been removed. ‘This terrible
death, which the Scripture ‘calls the second death, is now
taken away from believers by Christ, and is swallowed up in
et

ren when a Christian “dies ‘according toRS ‘flesh.°2 Such _

a death is sweeter and better than any life upon earth. For_
all the life, the goods, pleasures and joys ofthisworld cannot
‘make us so happy as to die with a good conscience,incertain Hep

_faith ¢and comfort of eternal life” (Luther).* ‘O. Death, where

is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? But thanks be to
God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”4
‘Having the desire to depart and to be with Christ.’ Thus
‘understood, death becomes thé happy event, the stepping over
“the threshold which liesbetween this transitory suffering world,
which is full of death, and that world of eternal life, as ae
mystics and the Platonists call it; and yet here we mean
something quite different. "ARR
It eenisei oe
Eps
in_eaevirtue
eo AL
of something .
which is in the human soul, but in virtue of the Christ, in
LL ln gee slaitiiteaiieaiianiamnier seme

virtue of the divine saving ‘act

t_that_man_ gainss_eternal. ife.
There is a fight, and indeed afight
a inwhichitis not the
spirit of man which conquers, but God.® Hence. it.is..not..the
1 Schlatter: “We rise again, but only after our self has come to an end’
(quoted by Althaus, op. cit., p. 108). 2 EA. 9, p. 154.
3 Ibid. (cf. W.A., 41, p. 372). 4 1 Cor. xv. 55. pb Phils 129%
6 ‘Tt was a wondrous battle,
When death and life did strive,
But life has been victorious,
It swallowed death alive,’ sings Luther (WA. 35, 444).

476
 MAN IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE; AND DEATH
cat
entrance into a world which is ‘all. spirit,’ but the entrance
into perfect communion with God and His creatures.
~ Tn any case, both for the believer and for the unbeliever,
whether one knows it or not, recognizes it or not, deathis the
decisive sign of human life—either my own death as the final”
stage, the sign of nothingness, or the death of Christ as the _
sign of positive fulfilment. Without faith man cannot cometo
terms with death. He cannot look
it in the face. Either man
“must forget that he is any more than a beast, or he must forget
that he is something other than a god, in order to be able to
endure death. It is not merely difficult actually to die as man;
but it is literally, in the exact sense of the word, impossible.
There are human beings who die bravely, who refuse even in
death to have any illusions. But they do not really ‘pull it
off’; they all die in an illusion which makes death harmless.
For the only possibility of not making death harmless, but
of seeing it as it is, and yet of not going mad with terror, is
faith in Him who in His death has revealed the whole horror
of death, and at the same time the still greater glory and
power of the divine love. peers

477
 Bre EPILOGUE
j

|THE, REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION

|BETWEEN MAN AS HE ACTUALLY IS, AND
}
7
MAN AS HE IS INTENDED TO BE

As we look back over the road we have travelled, we see that

,_( | the theme of this book was man as he actually is; that is, man
(sae’ {an the contradiction between Creation and Sin. This contra-
ae ~ji'diction_is not ‘something in’ the actual man}; it is himself.
stb |, Only in the light of this contradictiondo we see man as he
eat | actually is; then, too, we see how he differs from all other
fom living creatures. Only he who understands this contradiction
understands man as he actually is, and only he who compre-
hends the depth of this. contradiction comprehends the depth
of man as he actually is.
. | Up _to this point we have emphasized two truths: first,
f Al that this contradiction cannot be understood from the point
_\ “of view of an. aprior philosophy, but only from the standpoint
_ ©. of faith; that is, that in order to look into ‘these depths we
“"_ must take up that position above man which would be impos-.
_ sibleto us in our own. strength, namely, in the Word of God.
This position is given to us by the Incarnation of the Son of
,,. God and by the Spirit of God; to take up this position means
px to believe. From the point of view of faith we can understand
_.. the contradiction in man in such a way that we see him as
| ei Ul he-really-is; namely, as one who stands between the creation
in the image of God, the original union with God, and sin,
t «| the false independence of man. That was the first point.
ee
i j
The second was the proof, worked
LR LEA acca enten Raer aLSE HANNEnie 2S
out in detail, that solely _
CR ORN ZEIT
from this standpoint can
a en RENT
H we see aright—that is, without
| distortion—-the TAC
- CO Rg nat ve noes manana STS ANIMA IT AT ANS

of human existence, about the

ay ki Rae Wl Narr es

pcs ALA NE ttlcerneanan dA creak

interpretation of which religion and philosophy have always
else asc Ream aah yaaa

been concerned; thus we have endeavoure to show

d that the
Christian view of man is the only realistic one, and that eve
other view, in some way or other, distorts or conceals the _
Picture of man ashe actually is,
478
 REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION

Having gone so far, we might consider that our task had

been completed. From the point of view of the Bible there.
_would still be a great deal to saya
about _m:
man: “about. Atone-.
ment, Restoration and the final “consummation. But_that_is
no > Tonger the
the doctrine off1man,, |butthe doctrine ofJesus Christ
‘and His atoning and redeeming work. ‘This 4would bring us
to the real central theme cof Christian doctrine, to ‘the Gospel
_of the.e Kingdolom ofGod. But this does not belong to the sphere
of our present inquiry. To speak of that at all adequately we
would need to develop the whole of Christian doctrine,
whereas all that we intended to do in this book was to deal
with a definite section of Christian doctrine, the subject of _
which is the pre-supposition for the Message itself. And yet to|
break off our presentation of thesubject at this point would__|
ir the danger ofa_terrible_mi sunderstanding;_ in. |
‘to_incur
_be to
“conclusion we must speak of that other truth which lies be-
‘yond_our. “present fieldof vision.This wedo for the following
reasons.
~ The truth of the actual man, as a truth of faith, is not Wa
PSA ENT

something ‘objective, _neutral,. it is_not_one. which h_offers a

itself, but it is to the highest_ extent
icture which speaks for it
i
sub] ective, that SURE one er ccane ‘only ‘be
is in_the
be “gained in
existential |decision. of faith. As a realistic war report can only
be given by a war ‘correspondent who himself enters into the
war zone and exposes himself personally to the danger of
death in the trenches, so the report of the actual man, which
the Christian gives, is only gained by the fact that one sur-
renders oneself to the decision of faith. Further the perc eption
of the actual man 1is even an integral element in faith roa
‘without—in the 1main—secing “him-
No one can be a believer »
self as we him_ in ‘this book. This view is a
have “described _hi
decision of faith, and ‘thedecision of faith is this view. In {
9)“
other words: of the sick, divided man
this View _0: is also the | AAs

beginningof the process

fF ess «of
ofhealing ;
‘.
“and the beginning of the
process of “healing of the sick man is precisely this view of
himself. Hence we must not take this truth out of the context.
in which alone it can be attained—otherwise we would.
immediately turn it into something else; it is part of the
‘optical experimental condition’ without which this pieture: |
479
 ae MAN IN REVOLT
cannot exist: the seeing is part of the struggle, of the process
of healing, of the process of recovery. |
We said that this view of ‘man-in-contradiction’is only
possiblele| to faith. But faith ‘itself emerges _ from. this
his contra-
_ diction. Faith is itself’ the power to say ‘yes,’ and to feel
yw impelled _to
to say‘‘yes,’ once more, to the _originally-creative,
Bak EO TAVEASIRR

| th N | einaeciestiatrom sana mie

ti Word of God.
eeaind
Faith is not at ‘view’ =
DOCSIS ULNA ILIA DOLE
aes (Anschauung) or. “opinion” ;> it does not mean regar ing ‘some-
/7* | thing’’as true, it is not a theoretical attitude; but! faith is iain

baying *yes’ to the Word of God as the existential decision,Ljit

ji
eae
man’ ’sreturn from. his _enmity against Gorid‘tohis Origin Sat
;
od, Je means ; resolving the contradiction by saying ‘yes’ to the Primal
ugh PWord: Faith is the ‘No’ to the contradiction, the ‘No’ td sin.
ot It is not virtue which is the opposite of sin, but faith, just as
**. . it is not vice which is the essence of sin, but unbelief. The
>
* original ground and the original nature of sin is the severance
AS, of man from his origin, from the loving, gracious and generous
~~ Word of God, which makes him free while it binds him, which
\|_ gives him life in the very act of requiring it from him.
| In his insane desire to be independent and autonomous,
- man denies this “dependence. The autonomous reason, the
a.” te| man who makes himself autonomous in hisre reason, ‘captain
-<@° | of his soul,’ this proclamation of his own glory, and of reason
“as the final court of appeal, - is the realcore of sin, the secret
pa heart of the contradiction in the nature of man.For i
in point
of fact the reason is not. autonomous ; Jman, even in his reason,
‘Isnot equal with. God, he is not his own Creator and Master,
and above all he does: not gain freedom ‘but the opposite when
he severs himself from the “ground of his freedom, from the
Word |of.‘God. This freedom is a lie, and this lie manifests
itselfinthe contradiction in his nature.
Because this is what sin means, faith is able to. overcome
ats Faith is reason “subject to the Tae of God, reason as per-
pe
‘ception, the return to. obedience, to the Word of God, and

ee ake whole of igsmore recent ‘History of philosophy—indeed, the whole

history of the modern mind—is the parable of the Prodigal Son, as told by
André Gide: the son who severs his relation with the Father, because he
wants at last to become independent, free, and thus a human being, without
noticing that in so doing he falls into falsity and misery.
480
 REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION

trust in the grace of God which is ‘sufficient,’! that is, that in

it all life is included and guaranteed. Distrust, indeed file fear
of missing something, the view that one must help oneself to
a full and satisfying life, is the source of sin, that whisper of
the serpent, that God, by binding man to Himself, wills to
deprive him of something: Both the distrustwhich springs— A)

from fear, which leads us to try to help. ourselves, and the Aaa a j

renunciation of_‘obedience... and. sof dependence upon God,

which springs from | arr
arrogance, aare.inseparably connected. So
‘tooin
in_faith—which is is“opposition to the contradiction—two
things _ are inseparably cconnected : trust. in“the - life-giving —
ae

Word, ‘and. willing ar

Jeeccaladinianenaie and_jo
d_jo
joyful | obedience ‘to‘the.bond which Let
|
}

_it contains, to the willofthe Creator, ae

But this faith is
iisquite>diifferent {
faith of the origin
from that whichthe simple
n would have |been. It means the elimination.
|
‘of the contradiction between the ‘Origin’ and the ‘Now’; it
is remorse, repentance, the sense of sin and guilt. The ‘sinner _
cannot come back to the beginning as though nothing. had
happened. “Hence
1 faith iis a twofold movement; first of all one
must. retrace ‘the whole false path to. the begin ling, 2and then
“obey tthe ‘original VWord of God. That is the ‘No’ to the ‘No’
before it_can. ‘become the.-*Yea’ to the Yea.’ It is mortificatio
before it can be vivificatio. ‘T will arise and go to my Father and
will say unto Him: I am not worthy to be called thy son.”2
Faith does not allow the past to be treated as nothing. The
past lies like a block of stone in the way between God and
me. I could not go back, even if I wanted to, unless this block
were removed out of the way. My past is so closely connected
with me, that there is no new present and no new future for
me unless this past is annulled. =
But_I cannot possibly find the way back by myself. My
repentance cannot annulnul the: past. My repentance only has
meaning as the recognition of the truth that by His forgive-
ness God wipes out the past. God’s primal word of love comes |
to me as a new event, by means of which God wipes out my ~ ic
past as though it had never happened, through His act of ..
reconciliation. It is not I who go all the way back but God;
PaTeDire wo wee nanaeeinrremre manatees Tiree een mt

‘He takes the whole consequence of my falling away upon __

1 2 Cor. xii. 9. 2 Luke xv. 18.
481
 a | MAN IN REVOLT
Himself. God comes, so to speak, towards me, through all
my apostasy, laden with the whole burden. of my falling
away, suffering from the whole curse which my fall has caused
as an objective fact. My faith, therefore, can only go back the
| whole way because God’s Word comes to me in this way:
| in Jesus Christ the Crucified, in God’s act of atonement which
| blots out my past, my guilt. Hence faith is now no longer the
| simple childlike acceptance of the ‘man made in the divine
. Image,’ but it is first of all a painful process, in which I have
|t to say ‘No’ before
ss
I can s say ‘Yes’; that is, LyI teria
must Aaa acknow-
RRR ORE TIE
_
| ledge me guilt'and my
q 4 "y Angi Pode LRA faze
sin, and I must admit the necessity
SSA NET AT Ro sa
ae ssi ere

_ jor the Divine Atonement. We can only perceive in this Divine

| light what we really are; it is only in the Word of the Cross, -
which actually brings out our contradiction to our Origin—
| just as the Origin is actually present within it—that we see
_ ourselves in our true light. ,
i
This shows
aa Hag
how seriously
Ae MOTT ee
God treatsRa tAus.i at He
ene SR Ha ete chp
does
aT SN
not treat
NaN
our past as nothing—which in virtue of His Omnipotence
He can overlook—over which He leads us swiftly back to the
beginning. The contradiction has weight, not only for us, but_
also for Him. It isbecause
God takes usseriously, even in our
contradiction, that the Word of the Origin comes to us bur-
dened with the whole weight of the contradiction. The less a
being has significance, the less importance has his past. The
more a man takes his life seriously, the more seriously he takes
( his past. But God takes us more seriously than we take our-
selves, hence He takes our past absolutely seriously. The Cross
& ee
' __of Christ shows us howseriously Hetakes our past, and thus how
J ae
4
** seriously He regards us, ourselves.
It is only because He takes us so seriously that we also can |
do
thisonourside. Only infaithin Jesus Clnist treUianed—
Cs jo’ as_the eternal” Word” of God, can ‘we perceive and know the’
: full weight of our guilt, can we thus also perceive the contrast
_. “Between our Origin and_our opposition to it; that is, can we |
_know ourselves.Only thus can our false autonomy be broken. |
, - The Word of the Cross is foolishness and an offence. This
Ah v“folly’ and this ‘offence’ correspond exactly to our arrogance
fe ‘ : ° é
a’ ‘of autonomy and our insane pretensions to it. The_
The more self-
assurance and self-confidence
we haye, the more is the Cross —
482 3
 REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION ©
$

“because only thus can our1rpride al

fe
“reason be brok
ee because only tthus do we perceive. our \_
contradiction, ta
take back our past, and. regain |our origin. The // (fore.
Cross of Christ is the objective point at which the contra- un
diction between the 1true and the
he actual 1
‘manis“concentrated ;<i
hence for the ‘actual ‘man—until the miracle of conversion ~<) = %
takes
akes place—it iisthat which ]he hates the most. What he hates
in it is the truth about himself, about his estrangement from
God. xs
But where the miracle of return to God takes place, this is
what happens: man allows himself to be told his real state,
he goes back to his Origin, in the ‘recapitulation,’ in the
objective ‘anamnesis’ of this past, in the Cross of Christ.? In. Wee, ~

thisfaith, man_finally renounces sovereignty over himself, self 2). dig =e

5;

assertion, and all trust. in ‘his own efforts ; in. this faith he ao“a
‘accepts “tite
lif “purely a:
asa gift. He accepts it as the word of LAN oa
Yeconciliation with the God who stretches out His hand to
him, the rebel, ignoring his rebellion, and setting him once
again at the place for which he was created. The nature of
man is—this was our main thesis—identical with his attitude |
to God. If man is once more united with God, then he is
restored ; the rent has been healed, the contradiction has been
set aside, the original intention has become the new reality.) .
The Truth and the Actuality of man have once more become rie
a unity. In Jesus Christ, the God-Man, the original image“),
has been restored, in faith in Christ this restoration is con-
tinually being reflected. This faith is the restitutco tmaginis.®
Faith is the re-birth of man out of a ‘carnal’ state—that is,
the effort to achieve self-realization in one’s own strength— hath An
into a ‘spiritual’ one, that is, one which lives on and in the (74,
Word of God. ——
To see oneself as a sinner, the perception. of the contra-
Ne
tala ESTAS

1 Cf. Goethe’ s observations on the Cross during hisj

journey in Italy.
2 Away from God—back to God, that is the Platonic and Neo-Platonic
way of the soul; the movement is thereby exclusively on the side of the
soul. The Gospel: through the Incarnation of the Son of God estranged
humanity is ‘brought back,’ and at the same time God’s work is completed.
8 Col. iii. 10; Eph. iv. 24. Nec sane aliud est regeneratio piorum, quam
reformatio imaginis Dei in illis (Calvin, 51, 208).

483
 MAN IN REVOLT
is the negative element _in_this restoration. The
restoration ‘is above |alla process of breaking down;
3 Sea ANi
haan el a aa a ie sai oe

_tl
the
esarro;
gant anc lent.indepen: ence
ce of
thSTE ecmwill _— of the autonomous reason, This
‘breaking down’
down’ does not actually take place anywhere save
‘in Christ.’ It is true of course that mysticism attempts some-
thing similar: the self must be wholly ‘emptied’ in order to
receive the divine life. But because mysticism is never con-__
cerned with1.guilt, but. only with: becoming |ike God, it never.
"reallly succeeds in. ‘breaking —down’ man’s arro ant. self-will ;
for it never perceives the conflict between the Origin andman’s
opposition to it. The mystic never takes upon himself the
burden of his past. He seeks to find the wa back by himself,
and to effect this reconciliation
by
by his
his ownMarat
that he still cherishes the insane illusion of independence,
_
characteristic of the autonomous self.
Eyen thePlatonist has perceived something of this contra-.
diction, and ti _to
o find|
his way back to the Origin. But he
‘too will not take the past upon himself—even he, likethe_
mystic, only in a more rational way—wishes tcto find_ the way
back to the divine primal existence, by hin
himself. Even he will
‘not allow himself to be humbled by the knowledge that God
alone can take back the past, through forgiveness and recon-
ciliation. It is true, of course, that even the Idealistic philo-
sophy speaks of a ‘recongiliation of the contradiction’ as the
theme of the whole of world history. But this reconciliation is
not the taking of guilt upon oneself, therefore it is not the
divine act and gift, but it is the human spirit trying to find
its way back to the Origin through thought. Here too man is _
spared humiliation and the arrogance of his autonomy is s not
broken, Say
eo” a
This is the reason why ‘m dern. man’ does not wish to. know
ah
* scaunrthing.about the Chistian faith. He does not want to give _
Bed ?
é “up his autonomy, |
he does not wish to pass ‘through the Caudine
Forks ofthee Cross, he does not. want. to bend andtake upon_
himself his pastpast as guilt which
asguil ich. he cannot‘annot re Itiis
repair. It is tr
true, o f rx
course, that in some way or other he sees the ‘contradiction irin
human nature—how indeed_could anyone overlook it it!But
he tries to interpret it as “simply _ as possible, __so_that 1
the RITA erent ner

484
 i
j : REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION
vexatiously humbling words ‘guilt,’ ‘expiation,’ ‘forgiveness,’
*Cross,” may be avoided. He may perhaps desire to have God
“in some fashion, but he has no desire at all to accept his life
as God’s generous gift of grace. He is indeed willing to be
‘responsible,’ and yet he does not perceive that the only real
responsibility consists in responding to generous love with
responsive love. He doesnot see the connexion between the
Jovelessness which he ‘too00 would. dike
Ii] to, “condemn. ‘andthe
independence which hedoes. hot, want to giveRs FFew people
are as clear-sighted and as honest as1 Nietzsche. e saw Clearly
‘to
9 the bottom | of the modern desire for”r autonomy, and ‘stood _
for it as cone of ‘the very few.“people \who "are entirely logical
“and radical. ‘He did not—like the majority of modern folk—
deny the Christian faith and affirm Christian love, but he
perceived the’ connexion between the Cross and self-denying
love; therefore he spurned bothwith
ith|the saa
samee hate and
a’ scorn.
Indeed,he. even. ventured to0 mock a
at conscience and toTegard
the sense of"responsibility
- a
as the fundamer il.His ‘trans-
valuation of all values’ is an attack on the Christian ideal of
love, and on all bonds imposed by the claims of the other.
Hence he calls himself, knowing what he is doing, Antichrist.
TheWord«ofGod approaches man_as a
call to repentance
and as a promise=of‘rescue
1 andffulfilment, as
as a Word which
punishes and breaks man, and as One ieee woos and redeems
him. Above all, however ir comes to him as the Word of the
Origin, the Word which was in the beginning, in which all
has been created. He came to His own. property, to His_
Own.? If He is rejected <as a stranger—‘His |own received Him
r
not’—it is not because He is a stranger, but because ‘His
|
f
\ own’ have become alienated from Him, and wish to remain JStenet

so. But the opposite may happen—they may ‘receive Him,”

they may perceive that they have become strangers, and they |
may recognize His right of ownership over them. Hence faith,
5 OS
eee
_this return.to man’s, origin, is never a new beginning out of.
sorte

nothing,
but it is a renovatioimaginis, a re-storation. But when / rae
STD

‘ the Word really reaches man through ‘the proclamation of|

Jesus Christ and the revealing activity of the Holy Spirit,|
1 John 1. 1-3. 2 John i. 11.
3 Col. i. 21; Eph. ii. 12. 4 John i. 12.
485
 MAN IN REVOLT E

then in Him man really perceives the Word of his origin, in

| which he finds his true self, and the meaning and content of
| his life. Then follows: his return to the pages of God,
| and his restoration to Him.
. Faith is a miracle, but it is not_magic. Where word and
understanding are concerned, there may be miracle, but there
«Cannot be magic. Here, in this centralquestion—Miracle or
| |apagic i ths confessions.part “company.”The opere operato,
ysically operative grace, is magic; the. grace which is grasped
|"and appropriated in the Knowledge
and ‘the obedience of faith
‘is miracle. But even where in the act of faith man 1s made —
into a mere object, to whom grace is applied, the miracle of
grace is misunderstood as the magic of grace. Even in faith
man is still man, not to be compared with anything else; he is
responsible subject, person.! It is his personal centre, his
‘heart,’ which receives the Word of ofGod;
God ; it 1shis spirit which.
understands it,since it.is“the
the Spirit of
of"God __who_ makes him
understand. What “elseisfaith save this, “that in God’s Word
the heart of man learns to know the Pound and the meaning
a of his life? As itis the heart which turns away from God in
wya
v
‘sin, so_also or
tis
isthe.heart—the same heart iin1 which 1the divine
ACER A PACA Vhs nan
EGEis engraved—upon_
€ which tthe divine ‘seed of the word is
‘sown, it ‘hears and understands,® it‘isthe heart inwhich
“Christ;dwells by faith, into which God has_ poured the Holy |
Spirit,>
in which the peace of God rules, in which the light
of Christ shines forth,’? in which the love of God is shed abroad
by the Holy Spirit. It is with the heart that we say ‘Yes’ to
the Word of God, ‘for with the heart man believeth’®—just as
unbelief has its seat and its source in the heart.
~ Faith iis the personal act throughwhich the ‘I’ knows itself _
andd_recognizes
_ré itself in” theWord _of
of God. .In faith—to use
“Kierkegaard’s formula once more—‘the self bases itself trans-
| parently upon the power which created it.’ Faith is life on the
et
| _ Word of God, life in the reception and the acceptance of the
divine love, complete freedom from self-seeking, dependence
1 See the Appendix III, pp. 527 ff. 2 Matt. xiii. 19.
3 Matt. xiii, 23. Eph. ior,
5 2 Cor. i. 22. 6: Col. iis 15. 7 2 Cor. iv. 6.
8 Rom. v. 5. ® Rom. x. 10.
486
 REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION. yx*% “> LH
upon the God who seeks us. In faith our original destiny is
realized as life-from-God. Faith therefore is both the renun-—
ciation of autonomousindependence, and in so doing being y,
set free from the Law. Man lives under the law, because, and _ 4
so long as, he does not live on the generous love of God. Faith Hie
dares to make union with God the starting-point cf life, not the _
roal to be attained |;
; faith ‘dares to begin with God, to see the ~
selfinGod’s Word, #
thus outside oneself instead ofin oneself.
Nostra theologia ponit nos extra nos.' In faith man ventures to be
most daring, to identify himself with“Christ, “because Christ
ae

identifies Himself with him.?\Faith ventures to take God’s

gracious Word seriously: “thou art acceptable in My sight,’
in spite of all experience to the contrary; faith dares to regard
the true being in Christ as the only valid being which can be
set against man’s actual existence, his existence in contra-
diction, not in virtue of his own aspirations, but in virtue of
doing
the condescension of Christ to man. ‘In so) the Christian
receives a self-consciousness which is “wholly -independent_of _
se “introst ection.’=e Non debeo niti in mea conscientia, sensuali
‘all[ self-i
persona, opere, sed in “promissione diwina.* Through faith the new | ~
person is constituted—the person which was created by God
in the origin, whose content is the divine loving. ‘I have been
crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer [, |but Dnaanequnmpbeenaneiece ee |
Christ liveth in me; te that life” cto ine in the flesh |
Tiive in faith, the Meath which is in the Son of God, who loved |
me, and gave Himself up for me.’5 bea fe fi
Faith, therefore, is the threshold of love, or perhaps it would~ a2
be more correct to say that it is the act of stepping into the hyoe f
divine love. In faith man, since he takes his life from the hands | ev sabhak
of God, doesnot desire aanythitng more0 of his own,but only
that which
wk God wills. But thewill ofGod i is;love.8Love ‘Is the
beh LEANER GA ASIII OOH OS Slat
a haillclniad,

1 Luther, WA. 40, 1, 589. 2 Gal. ii. 20.

3 Schott, Geist und Fleisch in Luthers Theologie, p. 39.
4 Luther, WA. 40, 1, 589. 5 Gal. ii. 20.
8 Luther, Immo proprie sola charitati tribuit Apostolus presentiam simul et
donationem spiritus cum ipsa. (Luther on Rom. v. 5. Ficker, II, 140.) I quote
once more: ‘let charitatem also not be such a small thing, quia charitas is God
Himself. That is right, quid sit charitas . . . qui diligit habet deum, qui deum
habet, habet omnia’ (WA. 36, 422). “Hence he who has love must have God
too and be full of Him’ (ibid., 427).
487
 MAN IN REVOLT

fimeaning of the revelation of Christ ;therefore love is the content

“of the existence of the believer. Love..ts. therefore “greater”
faith eaee
than fe ON is Toye,> but.‘He 3is F
not faith.Faith is
tothe d divine-love...The act.of sayingx|‘Yes’ is not.
yes’ to
saying ‘Yes’
life, Faith takes the
1 reception ¢of the li
parcaife itself, but‘itisthe-
fivine life which is love, and in so doing gains love as the
content of human life. Through faith man receives his original
position over against God, the one which was destined for him
_,at the Creation, and in so doing he gains his own genuinely
por“human life. Through this, _then, res is realized as_
esponsibility
} pe life in community, _ life -in service. _ But faith ‘and1 love can
; for to say Yes’ joyfully andd gratefully
be separated [;
“scarcely be
to the Word of God who gives us life, is this faith in God, or
the love of God? Is there anything else wherewith God’s love
could be received thanby res ve love?
~ We can only. “make a dist action._between faith and love to.
nee aE

this extent, that faith is always the ‘yes’ of sinful man to the
for. ‘iving <aad loving God. Here is the limitation of the state-
ment that faith is the restoration of the image of God. It is
true, certainly, that in Christ faith grasps the primal image,
the divine ground of creation of his existence: he says ‘Yes’
to the Original word, and in this ‘yes’ the division is healed.
Man becomes sound and whole in this ‘Yes,’ he has once
_more found his position-in"God-"The ‘Spirit © God, of one
“naturewith the Word of God, is the power of the new life.
All this—this_ integration of the unity of the _Personality—
w
“takes place, truly, in faith. But thewhole man is not faith;
“faith struggles to free itself from unbelief, from sin, it : strives
| to wring union with God out of the contradiction, the new
nature out of the old nature, the ‘Yes’ out of the ‘No.’ The _
| _actuality of faith is the new man; yetthe eggshells of the old
nature still cling to him as something which has been over- —
come, _‘but still also as something which has to be overcome _
againA atic_again The old nature was not “merely, actuality, —
but 1t made itself substantial as ‘flesh’; its movement was
arrested; in the act of tearing itself away it became rigidly
fixed as habitus. As peccatum originale indeed, it was no longer
merely act, but it was at the same time something which had
1 1 Cor. xili. 13.
488
 REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION

become rigidly fixed; it was an actual state of being united QE

with sinful humanity as a whole. The decision, however, sr 4
which has been made in Christ is total and universal. It is a hf
=

whole reconciliation, and reconciliation for all; but the decision

by mearis of which we appropriate that Christ-decision IN Cane
faith, by which, as it were, we take it over, is not in this sense * ¢c...«
total, not definitiv e,itis a process which. isstill going,
but
"on, and is not yet complete d.life ofdecisi
The finished,
isnoton.
Christ is ‘finished’; as believers
as the act of reconciliation by
we are still growing, the factum there is here only a fer,
the perfectum prateritum there is here a perfectum praesens, a
continual ‘I have said yes,’ which lasts as long as life itself
The new nature, which is the conquest of the contradiction, |
consistssnthe struggle against the old nature, and through |
“this the contradictionin,the old nature becomes particularly
acute, Not only do Christ. and
faith make the contradictionin |
the old nature explicit and evident, but Chr ist
also brings it.
“to that state of crisis, to a head, in which it fully breaks out | |
“at the very moment at which it is overcome. Faith alone | |
creates the crisis in the ‘sickness unto death’; only through it |
indeed does the sickness break out fully; but this total out-.
process ofhealing.1 It is—
break is alteady the beginning of thecontradic
not merely that through Christ the tion in humanity
becomes accentuated—before Christ there was no Nietzsche—
but it is also that in the individual Christian, through faith
alone, or rather in conflict with faith, evil gains a depth which
it did not previously possess. Chrisius facit nos peccatores: this
truth, of course, is not on the same plane as the other truth
that Christ makes us free from sin; but it is also true. The
Chri is menacednby adanger
stia of sin ofwhich the pagan
has no idea. The sin of the pagan is still too dull to be quite
“serious .2not yet stand in the full sense in the presence.
He does
‘of God, hence he cann in the same way as the Christian.
sinot
Still, we must not forget that when the Christian sins, he does.
bet ees

1 Kierkegaard: ‘despair is . . . the disease of which it is true that it is |

the greatest misfortune never to have had it, a real gift of God to gain it, |
although it is the most dangerous illness of all’ (Sickness unto Death, p. 23). |
The ‘gain of infinity will never be attained save through despair’ (p. 24).
2 See above, p. 456.
489
 MAN IN REVOLT

not do so_as_a believer, but as an1 unbelicver, as_¢

one who falls_
away |from.Christ. reece ‘the simul justus et peccator is not to
Ll ‘be understood to mean that nothing happens to sin save
wv, that it is recognized and forgiven; it is also overcome, set
wy + [ aside, even this real conquest _ of sin is one which. is
i ys.
tN A
Onl just beginning, one wwhich. iin.this,_life isnever, ended.*
The Christian _is_a new creature, i although ‘the.eggshells of —
the old nature still
illcling
clin to}
him,
partic watts yt e Spirit and no
in the flesh,? even if again and again he is in conflict with the
flesh and that means with self-will and a false independence—
.@jand must renew the struggle again and again. The contra-
‘diction has been overcome? even if it is always ready to break
i) | out afresh. For
or_participation in the wictory
victor 2ofChristisnot.
. merely ‘believing init? but standing and 1iving in it—evenn
if
_«s* as such it is at the same time a resistance-to- evil, a fight.
Integration of personality 1s1 an actual fact, even if it is not
yet completed, but is being continually orien by the con-
tradiction, and is therefore still imperfect.
Faith we said—is different from love. Faith is a con-
tinually renewed effort of love againstlovelessness, but it does
not proceed ‘from the law,’ from mere demand, but from the
new life, from the Spirit of God. Love—pure, perfect love,
would be an existence_without conifer Ttwould bee Riear
/ natural and unbroken fellowship wit od and with our
2 neighbour,r, Whereas while faith must break out ii such 1
love,
. the point isthat iit must break
TEL EEERRATAIND
¢ out. A trueChristian actually
has a quite different way of living with his neighbour from a
non-Christian; but this new way of living is constant] checked
and obscured by‘the.old nature, so that we are forced to as
again and again whether it Teally is a new way of life, or
merely a new form of development of the old nature. This
. imperfection cofthe new existence, of the wholeness and sound-—
ness of the new ife, belongs to.the ‘stateof faith’ ; as
as Oopposed
tou!‘sight.’4 As the new skin forms under burnt skin—and yet
even it is not finally clean, it too will peel off, it too has scars of
the burns—so also the neww integrated man of faith, who is being
TT AT
formed under the old nnature, As one who ts
1
Is only b
being formed.
ESQ WOLsVviet 7. 2 Rom. viii. 1, 9, viii. 4.
8 1 John iii. 14; John v. 24. 49 Cor. vio #7
ey
 my
wy
REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION

SS}'AS*
_the manner in which the contradiction i
is overcome in faith LAS
Pee eensrae
jul Atonement. \Atonement ‘Means:the »_re-discovery
of
of
rebrss

restored
ed_posit pin. God, {This UU
‘status 1s expressed as acondition
orstate; but only the status,
not the state, is completed. The knight has been dubbed
knight, his
iepatent ot
of nobility 1 has been issued, “but the knight
is_ still, in_his condition, a ‘commoner,’ “his nobilit has not
et_permeated_ his whole nature ; redemption is not to
separated from atouement, it is sce but it is not yet com-
pleted. Man still awaits the consummation of Reedemption.,
_this consummation would meanan_the
t ‘transition
tr from faith to.
sight complete deliverance from this “body oof ‘death,’
de 1 from
all that is contradictory in our
present state, from that partici-
pation in the curse which even the man who has been reconciled
to God still bears; for as a member of the human race he
shares in the sin of all. Redemption therefore can only be
consummated on the other side of thissearthly €x
existence. Death;~
which st
stamps its mark upon this ‘earthly life, ‘doesnot belong
to that life for which we have been created. This death must
cease, there must be a form of existence which no longer, like
this one, is controlled by the goal of death, and indeed in all
its movements is moved by the approach of death. Life in
communion..with God is intended to be eternal life. Complete
“redemption means being set free from all that_cc contradicts the-:
“eternal and theperfect. Eternal life is life as pure simultaneity._
~~ He.who.st
He who.staz
ands. in_faith, knows. s omething
of thepure simul-
u
taneity of life. That life in the Spirit, in love, “the new life into
which we are born again by the Word of God, is simultaneity ;
for it is ‘peace with God.’? We are unable to to live in
i thepresent
because we,are weighed,
down with the guiltofthe past.and,
anxiety. for
fo the future. The power
rer which robs life of its com-
‘plete simultaneity, and makes” it ‘something _
which, is
i half in.
the past and
a _halfi ip the
ae isun-peace, which proceeds.

‘whichiis
‘h thet 0 for. which. her‘mourn s and ‘which “oppresses
‘him, something fatal,_which always. makes his present. already
_seem old, outlived, _pre-determined, in which, so to speak, the
EEu Rent. Vil. 24. 2 Rom. v. 1.
491
 MAN IN REVOLT
past merely continues to roll on farther; or,
it is ‘not_
a yet,’
an everlastingplanning and ‘hoping, longing < and _expecting,—
straining after a goal, springing from branch to branch without _
stopping anywhere. In every present moment one is already ©
ahead, one isalready no longer there, because one is already
at the next
ext_step.The onl thing v
which would
woul be real
“z life
the full
If, tranquil _present—thai 1is absent. It has been crushed
tito powder between the upper and the nether millstone of
the past and the future until nothing remains. The dream of
Faust that he ‘would like to say to the passing moment, stay
awhile .. .’ never becomes reality. The wine is turned imme-
diately into vinegar, one does not like it any more, almost
before the present has arrived, one is tired of it. But all this
is changed where a soul has found God ar
and ‘has“peace - with —
Him,’ And this “peace brings joy in its train. Hence ‘the
“Kingdom of God is peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’? It is
only | the sick who wants to be different; only he who is. not
at home suffers from homesickness. But he who has
as found | God
ds indeed at home. Hencé too hé is present f
e has time for.‘him, he can bear with him. Just as a mother
can be at
the bedside of her child without wanting anything
else save simply to be there, so too genuine love can. ‘hold _
out’ with hisneighbourwithout wanting to hurry away me
mustindeed no longer seek oneself. The Sancti has
been turned in upon itself and closed has been opened for
the ‘Thou.’ Not only has one peace with God, but also peace
with man, and this ‘peace which passeth all understanding’? is
pure simultaneit
tein Foomts
Si 5
yw of “But—this_p. eace_is constantly _ threatenedby un-peace,
it
has
Seoto stru
wupele ar
again _and
an |again torisee above the conflict rari
“does n
not yetexzst, but it iscoming. intobeing. Hencethe believer La eno Morro

‘Js
aware ofhis own
o imperfection ; therefore helooks for a final eee,

end where. the.struggle. will.cease_and the victory be assured,

where the present is a nunc aeternum: not standing» still, |but
the full release and movement of life ;‘love which wells up and
springs forth’ (Luther).? For it is not the struggle with death
which is full life; but only beyond thisconflict will life be full
and_complete.. The fight with death ishalf life. But the man
ocd beset

yo Rou xiv. 17. aPP hile iv; 73 3 WA. 36, 352 ff.
~e] 492
 REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION

who is separated from Go dis able to deceive himselftosuch.

an extent that he im agines _that this actual struggle be
between,
“Tife and deathisthe “true life.He does not believe that lifeis
all the more living, the less it is affected by the contradiction.
He confuses the tension which comes from the contradiction
with the tension which is peculiar to life itself as such. Is then
the sick man most alive because he is struggling with death?
Does the artist create most freely who has too struggle most of
‘all with his” medium? What
Sl

fhat_a_coward
a ly ie—to_ Tegard the
frustration of lifeBoas
; _hhecessary
essary _for life! Love is_life,,_.Which_
needs no contradiction to express1 in life, it‘isfastream.
itself i
of living water.’ vine love-is not the longing of <a1needy Be
soul for fulfilment—that As eros, not agape. DivinThe love
e is.
the”ewelling ujup_of
of -the Perfect. Ttis the love of the Triune God
‘which needs no other in order to love because in Himself He
is all-sufficient love.
For this love, for this eternal Life man_is destined, Only
where thisiislove—which no longer ‘knows| any contradiction—
a
realizes
ssitself, i
1S themeaning, the ttruth ofman, realized. ‘Hence
“this love is not the goal of the individual but of humanity,
the tinal
as the final goal
goal ofthe divine Creation as a whole,
anodes wearin’
as the per-
Enetiet Beatie isl al
pees
fect Kingdom of. God, the
of regnumn Gloriae, The ttrue_man 1s not
he re
an individual qua 3individual, but he is only an|individual in
‘an races
in
sct_communion 1 |with 1 the ther creatures through com-
erfect
munion with ‘the Creator ‘Himself. Jesus Christ has not only
grounded and revealed anew true man but true humanity.
He is not only the Redeemer of the individual but He is the
Head of the Body, the Church. By this ismeant not an abstract
idea of humanity, but the _concrete community off humanity
ity. Christ iis not the
“as both ac“universal and a personal1reality.
ue humanity embodied, but He is the personal
“idea of the true
‘Founder of the true communityof real human beings. He
PSN einge6oo

"removes the antithesis between actuality and truth by removing

the antithesis between the individual and humanity. ForSthis
is the Divine plan of Creation and of Redemption: ‘to sum
up all things in Christ as Head, the things in the heavens and
the things upon the earth.’1/Omnia instaurare in Christo—‘that
they all may be one.’?
1 Eph. i. 10. 2 John xvii. 21.
493
 MAN IN REVOLT

F aith in
i Jesus Christ
etihasayeun
C is not an interpretation.
NaH ORS:of the world, _

but it
Shani
ae i1S in an event: in something which has”
Setar snd Laren FREI UAVS Neg re care RNa seatise

pened, which
whic s happening, and which _Js going1
‘tohappen
The
ese“three di
dimensions of. time. are in faith. indissolubl con-_
PAS
B
nected, butthey. a not, one,. We are not yet.‘living in the
eternal Now; even as believers we are still living in this time-
era where the past, the present and the future fall apart.
But we live in faith in the future and in the light which streams
to us from the future which will be an eternal Now. We do
not only believe in eternal life; in faith we already have our
share in it. But we have our ‘part in it only,in ‘the strict s
sense
‘of the word, |for the moment. In faith we have part in it in
so far as faith is really life in the Word of God, a new way of
living, not merely a new view of the world and life. Faith
is real communion with the Creator, hence it is not merely
a direction towards something future, but it is also a fulfilled
present; for the love of God has been shed abroad in our
hearts through the Holy Spirit. But this love is the ‘substance’__
out ofwhich eternal life is_made, the ‘essential nature of that
mune aeternum.. ‘But we have this treasure in earthen vessels? —
ence faith is not merely present communion, but it is the
expectation and the certainty of the final consummation of
communion with God.
Love which is self-imparting is the content of that Primal
j
Word
‘ord. which wasisin the.“beginning, |in1 _which we have “been
“created,d, in which we 1
have our life. This love iislife. Itis not
_an at it 3it is ‘life ‘itsel
cn bate added to life.‘but it ailure to love is —
“failuretolive. We know gradations of life from the natural
point of view: even a plant lives, but it does not live in the
same way as a living creature whose proper characteristic is
spontaneity. Then does man live more like an animal? The
answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Everyone recognizes that in man a
higher degree of spontaneity is present, that freedom of the
spirit by which he rises above and confronts all that exists,
understands and determines himself.
But we hesitate to ascribe to man a higher kind of vitality
because in man death has permeated life in a way which no
other creature knows. Man is the only being who lives in
1 Rom. v. 5. BL 2nCordiveny.

494
 REMOVAL OF THE CONTRADICTION is)

conflict with himself, and is, so to speak, in a state of perpetual |

self-destruction. This destructive element arises at the same
point where the special vitality of man arises: in his relation
to God, upon which his freedom is based. The self-destroying
use of freedom is that which the Bible calls sin. It is therefore
in league with death, it is destruction of life. But it is so owing
to the fact that it has turned the meaning of life into its opposite.
Out of the life which delights to share, it has produced the |
greedy spirit; out of surrender, self-assertion; out of giving,
taking; out of confidence, anxiety and the fear of life;
out of the wonderful circle ‘from God to the neighbour,’ to the |
‘arrested development’ of the self-centred, which indeed is no |
life but only death in life.
God _alone is life in the atk sense of the,word: ‘He
‘who2 only hath jimmortaliey

Caachi

ae ‘ofhisown nature. ne also in them. ae

do not know that unfathomable love is self-giving. They may
seek life in God; but they do not know that the truly divine
Jifecan only be.‘reached when God Himself gives it to sinfu
man. They do notknow this, because they do not know what —
“has happened. It has only happened in Jesus Christ, and
therefore one can only know it in Him. Through Him, how-_., ~|
ever, it began alone to act in us. We are still living ‘in the
Nee
;
flesh,’ in a way of existence which is determined byseparation
“from God, which faith,
in in prinae but not in itsactual,
consequences, “has
| Been oy overcome. . Death still clings to_us; it
stillwaits for us; we ‘stillhave. to’ pass
ass through it. The absolute
living
living life can’ mitt“be where death, ‘andall that ds connected
with death, has been — ‘purged away. ‘The last enemy that )
shall
be abolished isdeath-® ‘And death shall be no more ;
neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any
more; the first things are passed away.” “That God may be
all in all.’ ‘For of Him and through Him and unto Him are
all things. To Him be the glory for ever.’
1 y Tim. vi. 16. 2 1 John iv. 16. 3 x Cor. xv. 26.
4 Acts xxi. 4. 5 1 Cor. xv. 28. 6 Rom. xi. 36.

495 ia
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Bo PREGRE ea ie

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Apna habeas ARRON
f 4 ¥ “a — vy

Ae Se NR On peg
 APPENDIX I

THE IMAGE OF GOD IN THE TEACHING OF THE

BIBLE AND THE CHURCH

~ (1)Tre doctrine of OeImago Dei, if one equatest

the phrase. Widig

with the.
e_truth for.
r whic it st di es not playa: very m on
tant part in the Bible.sy
T is: true, however
how ,not only of t
the
Imago d.
doctrine iin particular, |but ofthe
tl
hedoctrine of
0 the>Primitive,
State as awhole. The allusions to the PrimitiveState in the
Old Testament are few, and even in the New Testament cd
are not very striking. For the, New. Testament, however, We
may claim that, like the « doctrine of Creation, it is a rane
presupposition. “Every Christian recognized the Canon of the
Old Testament, which begins with the narrative of the Creation
and of Paradise, as the Word of God. The objective significance
of the doctrine of the Primitive State—and also that of the
Imago—must be measured by the fact that the message of
Redemption of the whole of the New Testament is retrospective
in character; although Redemption“is
1 not only restoration, it
is always also, and primarily, re-storation, renewal. The tact
‘that God “created man good and that man is now evil: these
two statements are the presupposition of the message of the
New Testament, a presupposition which can never be removed
from New Testament thought, and one which is always
operative.

(2) The doctrine of the Jmago in the Old Testament is

explicitly stated only in the following three passages: Gen. i.
26 ff.; v. 1; ix. 6; to them we must add two references in the
Anpoapha: Wisdom ii. 23, and Ecclesiasticus xvii. 3: In all
these passages the Imago Dei describes a dignity conferred on
man, one which is somehow like God (kidemutenu), which distin-
euiishes man from all other creatures. Whether this ‘dignity
is loosely defined as the ‘Elohim-nature which is proper to
man,’ the fact that man ‘is a creature whose nature does not
originate from below,’ a reflection of the divine glory (cf. Rad
on etxév in Kittel’s Wérterbuch), or whether it means the self-
499
 MAN IN REVOLT

conscious, self-determined personality, the free ‘I,’ the

dignity
of man as man (thus Dillmann, Oehler, Kénig, and
recently
Eichrodt in their works on the theology of the Old Testam
ent),
or whether it says nothing at all about the nature of man,
but
merely about his power of dominion and his dominating
position
in the realm of nature (K6hler in his Alttestamentliche
Theologie)
is not a matter of decisive importance for our proble
m. For,
so far as I can see, all modern expositors of the Old Testam
ent
are agreed in this, namely, that the Imago Dei describ
es man
as he now is, and that it is never applied to a way
of human
existence lost through the Fall of Man. The doctri
ne of the
Reformation cannot appeal to the Old Testament,
while the
Catholic doctrine, on the other hand, at least so
far as its
exposition of imago = Kalem is concerned, has the Old
Testa-
ment more for it than against it. ‘The Old Testament
knows
nothing of the idea that henceforth the image of God
in man
has been lost’ (v. Rad, Op. cit., p. 390). Likewise there
seems
to be general agreement in the view that the fact
that man
has been made in the Image of God, is primarily
expressed—
even if it does not consist in this—in man’s positio
n of pre-
eminence which he now holds in the created world
(now—
empirically—) as is expressed in Psalm viii (so also
Cremer
RE? 5, 114). Luther too—although he himself
created a
different idea of the Imago Dei—had recognized this
state of
affairs (see below, p. 503). Judaism, also, interp
reted the
passages in question in this sense, although among
the Rabbis
it was debated whether individual human beings might
have
lost the Jmago through special wickedness (Kittel
in his
Worterbuch, p. 391).

(3) The Imago is also mentioned in the New Testa

ment in
a similar sense in two passages: 1 Cor. xi. 7 and James
iii. 9.
‘The man,’ whether a Christian or not, is the bearer
of the
Imago—‘the image and glory of God? (1 Cor.)—and
for that
reason man should never be cursed (Jas.). Indeed, in
Acts xvii.
28, Paul even summons the heathen as witnesses to this
relation
with God of all human beings; for in point of fact, the Imago
Dei, understood in this sense, is the most important
testimony
to the revelation of the Creation, and—since, as such,
it is not
500
 eo APPENDIX I
destroyed—is the starting-point for a ‘natural’ knowledge of
God. In the New Testament, however, in addition to these
passages there are some others which are of decisive importance,
which give an entirely new meaning to the idea of the Jmago.
The most definite are the following: Rom. viii. 29; 2 Cor. iii.
18; Eph. iv. 24; Col. iii. ro. In this connexion Cremer (op. cit.)
rightly points also to the passages in the New Testament where
sonship to God is spoken of as likeness to God, of the ‘imitation’
of God, of ‘being holy as He is holy.’ Thus, with the idea of
‘sonship,’ or of being ‘children of God,’ the Imago doctrine,
especially in connexion with the doctrine of the original ‘son-
ship’ of Jesus Christ, comes into the very centre of the New
Testament message. “To be like Him’ (1 John iii. 2) becomes
absolutely the sum-total of the hope of salvation, and thus of
the message of the New Testament as a whole. From this point
of view alone, therefore, can we understand why the concept
of the Imago has gained such an outstanding position in Christian
doctrine, and especially in that of the theologians of the
Reformation: In_the New Testament—as has already been _
Shown above, in the hetetext—through _the relation. of the Imago.
_to
‘totl
thePrimalalImago, Jesus (
Christ, to.the Word.of. God,-and thus
“tofaith, the
the>
concept of theImago is torn out of itsOld Testament
‘structural or morphological rigidity, and the dynamic under-
standing of -
‘the
the Imago, as_being-in-the-Word-of-God_through
faith, is established, which
w i
is the basic idea of my \
whole work.
In my detailed exposition of Cor.
2 iii. 18 (above, eae96), I
think that I have made the Biblical basis of my view quite
clear. :

(4) Now the presupposition of this new doctrine of the Jmago

—that is, the doctrine of the New Testament—in contrast to
that of the Old Testament, is the following: the fact that man
has been created in the Image of God has been lost, that it
must be renewed in man, so that the whole work of Jesus Christ
in reconciliation and redemption may be summed up in this
central conception of the renewal and consummation of the
Divine Image in man.
The contrast, however, which certainly exists between the
understanding of this truth in the Old Testament and in the
501
 MAN IN REVOLT

New—which, as we have seen, is even continued into the New

Testament itself—makes two things clear:

(a) that here, as elsewhere, a Fundamentalist appeal to the

Bible, such as 15“being renewed to-day, will not help us;
for the Catholic¢ doctrine, :SO.‘far
r_as_the doctrine
ne of na
Imago isconcerned, has as ich right tobe called a
~ Biblical ‘doctrine, in” thissense,
as the doctrine of the
Reformation ;
(d) that
at already iin the Bible itself the problem _ with which
we are wrestling iin a systematic manner,r,lies there un-—
solved :how, namely, the Imago Det, in Te ‘formal sense,
(this is Nod von Oettingen, before me, describes in ins
Dogmatik, II, Part I, p. 385, the Old Testament con-
ception and the patristic and Catholic conception of the
Imago respectively), that is, in the sense of the special
endowments of human nature, as they can be perceived
even in the sinful human being (personal being, dominion
over the other creatures, reason, free choice in the moral
sense) is to be related to the Jmago in the material sense,
that is, in the sense of the fact that life is determined
by the Word of God, in the sense of the justitia originalis,
to which man is renewed by Jesus Christ, which will only
be consummated by the final Redemption.
Even in the thought of Paul, as we have seen, the ideas lie
alongside of one another, disconnected, or at least not clearly
connected. Even Luther perceived the difference between the
two ways of putting this truth in the Scriptures. In what he
dictated for his Lectures on Genesis, on Gen. i. 26, he writes:
“Duplex est similitudo: publica et privata. Paulus loguitur de simili-
tudine privata, sed textus videtur sonare de publica: similem nobis
ze. scil. in gubernandis rebus. Haec similitudo manet sub peccato
adhuc, non abstulit eam similitudinem ab Adam. But Paul goes
further: eam similitudinem abstulit peccatum, scil bonitatem, justi-
tiam. Ego autem proprie puto logur Mosen de similitudine publica.
A woman is like our Lord God, but she is like Him not with
breasts or navel, sed quod habet dominium in familiam. De hac
imagine loquitur Paulus in Cor: vir est gloria et imago Dei. In
502
 APPENDIX I

summa hic locus vult, fish, bird, etc., ought to have a master,
but the same should not be a fish or a bird sed homo. Sicut
ego sum deus et dominus hominum et nihil habeo illarum rerum quas
ipst habent, have no noses, eyes, etc.” (WA. 42, 51).
Later expositors have not had the same feeling for exegesis
and the same courage as Luther: henceforth Imago must
always mean in the Bible what dogmatic orthodoxy chooses.
Therefore it is also incorrect to say that the later differences
‘have their basis in the fact that the doctrine of the nature of
man as made in the image of God involuntarily became the
doctrine of the Primitive State’ (Cremer, op. cit.); for the
connexion with the Primitive State is also present in the dis-
tinctively New Testament doctrine of the Jmago. Here we are
really concerned with ‘regaining the image of God in accord-
ance with the Creation’ as ‘identical with the restoration of
communion with Christ’ (Kittel, op. cit.). Thus the problem
can neither be solved nor shelved by an appeal to the Bible,
it is rather a standard example of the oe forsystematic.
cea
theology alongsidee of“Biblical theology ae
ete illheiietcessisbode SABLE jase Sb re,

(5) We cannot go into the question of the development of

the Imago doctrine down to Irenaeus in any detail. The material
for this has been fully collected and well sifted in Struker:
Die Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen in der urchristlichen Literatur
der ersten zwei Fahrhunderte, 1913. Its strong point is that it brings
in Gnostic and Jewish literature; its weak point is the view
that philosophical ideas only become operative in Christian
literature after Irenaeus (p. 2). I would simply call attention
to the following four points in this book:
(a) The concept of the Jmago has not yet any place in the
body of doctrine as a whole, and—apart from the
Gnostics—is not often mentioned.
(b) It is used almost exclusively in the formal sense, zmago =
the humanum (reason, freedom, speech, special position
of man, etc.). The extreme on this side is repre-
sented by a sentence in Melito: Deus autem omni tempore
vivens currit in mente tua; mens enim tua est ipsa eius stmilrtudo
(essentially based upon the invisibility of the spirit),
593
 MAN IN REVOLT

Apol., c. 6, in Struker, p. 42. The comment of Struker,

‘The idea Deus currit etc. has some resemblance to the
formulae of Stoicism,’ is a very mild term to apply to
a state of affairs which is not to the liking of a Catholic
author.
(c) At the opposite extreme stands that which is said about
the Imago in the Epistle to Diognetus; it is related entirely
to the self-imparting love of God. Struker, p. 14.
(d) The distinction between the Imago and the Similitudo
which appears henceforth, from the time of Irenaeus
onwards, and becomes the standard, springs from Valen-
tinian Gnosticism (but in Irenaeus it is otherwise inter-
preted). It also plays a part in the Pseudo-Clementines.

(6) The creator of the doctrine of the Imago which the Church
was henceforthtorecognize as the standard one, was—as
has —
alre
been
adyindicated in the text—Irena
the first
eus, great
genuine theologian, andpossibly the mostScriptural ofall the
“theologians ofthe early Church. We might almost call him the
‘Fundamentalist’ among the early Fathers. In spite of this,
however, even in his thinking the spirit of Greek rationalism
was at work, and precisely in his doctrine of the imago-similitudo,
which otherwise represents an important theological achieve-
ment (cf. on this point the careful study of the Catholic Klebba:
Die Anthropologie des heiligen Irenaeus in Kirchengeschichtliche
Studien, Miinster, 1894, which is a valuable work, in spite of
the fact that its point of view is entirely Catholic). His
anthropology is Gnosticism purified by Scripture, with a strong
element of general Greek philosophy. The first important point,
and indeed the decisive element in his doctrine, is the con-
ception of the Imago Dei as man’s natural endowment of reason.
For Irenaeus certainly God Himself is Reason proper, hence
the rational nature of man is a participatio Dei. But that view
does not go further than the Stoic idea of the human rational
nature: (Human) reason is conceived wholly in the sense of
Greek rationalism, as something which is intelligible in itself
—not as something which is actually related to God. The
starting-point is the Aristotelian distinction between man and
the creatures which are not endowed with reason. Man has
594
 APPENDIX I

been ‘created as gifted with reason and accordingly like God,

as free in his will, and his own master, the cause of himself’
(IV. 4, 3). But Irenaeus is too much of a Christian and a
Biblical theologian to be satisfied with this rationalistic idea
of the Jmago. Hence he combines it with a second idea, which,
in connexion with Gen. i. 26 (although in a complete dis-
tortion of the meaning of the passage), as Similitudo (duotwors)
he sets over against the Imago (exdév). The Imago means the
human nature which cannot be lost; the Similitudo means man’s
original relation to God which may be lost, and, since Adam,
has been lost. This is mediated through the Divine Spirit. As
it only emerges, rightly, in Christ, and not in Adam (‘it was
not yet shown, for the Logos was still invisible, after whose
image man came into being, and therefore he so easily lost
the likeness,’ V. 16, 2), it is related to soteriology rather than
to the doctrine of Creation, and in general is conceived rather
as the goal of development than as the Primitive State. Since
Irenaeus does not conceive the first man as an almost perfect
being (as was done later by Augustine and after him by the
Reformers (cf. for instance De civitate Dei, XII. 23; XIII. 19-21,
and Luther's Commentary’on Genesis, WA. 42, 46 ff.) but rather
as a big child, it is difficult to say in what the loss which was
caused by the Fall is supposed to have consisted. Man could
not lose the Jmago which was his nature, but the Similitudo was
only present in germ, and was rather a promise for the future
than a present reality. In any case, this distinction implies the
standard Catholic doctrine of nature and supernature, although
the word ‘supernature’ is not used until the rise of Scholasticism
(in Augustine primarily as gratia in contrast to Nature, here
already the concept of the adiutorium; it is only modern Catho-
licism which is able to speak explicitly and emphatically of
the ‘concrete supernatural gift of God,’ Bartmann: Dogmatik, I,
290). At the same time we ought to note that this distinction
between the Jmago and the Similitudo makes it possible for
Catholic theology to ascribe to unredeemed man complete
freedom of the will, since it belongs to the Imago whichcannot
be lost, as is also done by the Greek Fathers quite openly, and
by the later Latin Fathers and the Scholastics more or less
under cover of Augustinian formulas.
ries
 MAN IN REVOLT
\

(7) Augustine’s doctrine of the Jmago.is distinguished from

that of Irenaeus first of all by the conception of the Primitive
State as a state of complete Perfection—not only in regard to
the justitia originalis, but also in view of man’s physical, psychical
and spiritual endowments. Since, however, he took over the
distinction of Irenaeus between the Jmago and the Similitudo,
he was obliged to introduce the idea of vulneratio in naturalibus
which, although since then it has been incorporated into
Catholic doctrine, plays a very uncertain part. Secondly, in
Augustine we now see, under the influence of his new ideas
on Grace, a new conception of the Jmago being formed, as it
were beneath the covering of the old idea, which was bound
finally to explode the old traditional dual schema. The rational
structural idea of the Imago is replaced by the actual and
pneumatic idea. The human spirit is increasingly moulded
according to the image of God, the more it allows itself to
be determined by the divine Truth. (De Trinitate 12, 7.) It
is not the threefold character of the psychological functions
as such which is the image of the Trinity, but it is the fact
that the spirit, by means of this structure, is reminded of God,
understands Him and loves Him (ibid., 14, 2). It is rightful
oa

self-love if the spirit loves God, through whose working the

divine image not merely exists but is also renewed (ibid., 13).
Hence this divine image can be almost (even if never wholly)
extinguished (ibid., 4). Here certainly the Biblical truth is
coloured by Neo-Platonism, but Augustine has grasped the central
problem: that man’s being as a whole, both original and fallen,
should be understood from the point of view of being-in-the-
Word-of-God. The elements which De Trinitate provides for
the solution of the problem have never been adequately recog-
nized by theology, because the problem itself has never been seen
aright. Especially the conception of love as that which unites the
original picture and its reflection, and the relation of love to the
Divine Trinity on the one hand, to the human structure of the
mind on the other, is here developed in a way that has never been
done anywhere else in Christian theology, not even in Luther.

(8) In principle Scholasticism did not introduce anything

new, but through its Aristotelianism it developed the distinction
506
 APPENDIX I

between the Imago = anima rationalis and the similitudo == donum

superadditum supernaturale into a universal system of Nature and
Supernature. In so doing it intensified the dualism of Irenaeus,
by making a sharp distinction between the state of nature and
the state of supernature (in Irenaeus the idea was rather that
of elements in the same state which could be distinguished
conceptually from one another) and to this state of pura
naturalia—thus, of the Imago—a certain element of concupiscence
was also added, which emphasized the fact that by sin man
did not lose the Imago, but only the dona superaddita. Above all,
however, Scholasticism developed systematically the Aristotelian
rationalistic and individualistic conception of the Imago as
anima rationalis, and in so doing finally brought out the full
meaning of the ancient heritage. For Scholasticism it is
rationalism, not supra-rationalism, which is the decisive
element. Beholisite theology in part itself drew the following
conclusions from its Jmago doctrine, and in part prepared the
way for them:

(a) a rational natural theology is possible;

(6) a rational natural ethic is possible;
(c) free will has been left to man;
(d) good works are possible also apart from grace;
(e) thence there arose necessarily the condemnation of
Augustinian doctrine in the doctrine of Bajus, for instance,
of the statement (27) Liberum arbitrium sine gratiae adiutorio
non nisi ad peccatum valet.

(g) It_was_an_act offar-reaching significance (indeed a

history of tthought of‘the Reformation might be written from
_this_point_of view). when Luther broke through the tradition
“of thirteen hundred years and removed the divisionn_between
the Jmago aa
and the Similitudo by the ‘declaration: Similitudo et
imago Dei estveraet “perfecta Dei notitia, summa Dei dilectio, aeterna
vita, aeterna leticia, aeterna securitas (WA. 42, 46). With the one
sentence: ‘If the Jmago consists in that power of the soul (in
the anima rationalis) then it would follow that Satan too would
be formed according to the image of God, since in him these
natural qualities are far stronger’ (ibid.), he breaks with the
5°97
 MAN IN REVOLT

whole tradition and returns to the New Testament (in the same
context stands his distinction between the Jmago publica and
privata!). The Imago Dei is the same as thejustitia originalis.
The nature of man is againn|understood ‘theologically
the and_not
“philosophically, “man as man is once more a ‘theological’ being,
that is, as man he can only. be.understood_in the light of the
Word at God. ‘That iis Luther’’s achievement. That is his main
concern. For himself, it is ‘true, the negative and_ polemical
aspect is in the foreground; that is, the rejection of the. con-
clusions (liberum arbitrium) which Cathalie theology drew from
its Imago doctrine (which were on the lines of indeterminism)
(ibid., p. 45). It is easy to understand that this led Luther es
follow the Augustinian view of the wonderful, perfectendow
ments
nts of Adam (ibid.,“intellectus fut
f purissimus. Eagles’ eyes .
potursseuno verbo imperare Leoni etc. ). Now all the more cjAiculé
~ —as has already been shown in the text—was the question :
How is the humanitas of fallen man to beexplained? All that
‘could be said was: ‘Relics ‘ofthe
e Imago.” }Everywhere we see
how reluctantly Luther admits this—but what else can he do?
We see Joh. Gerhard wrestling with the same difficulty, only
in still greater measure. The definition of the Jmago as justitia
originalis and—following from that—the doctrine of the com-
‘plete loss of the Imago, is always followed again and again by
the painful addition: down to a ‘small relic? which remained.
But this little relic becomes the bearer of great things. Upon
this relic is based the whole humanitas, and with it that which
man still has of freedom, the justitia civilis, the naturalis cognitio
Dei, which already plays a considerable part in the thought
of Gerhard (quod libenter concedimus, est enim alique naturalis dei
notitia, sed languida et imperfecta, novit ratio aliquam particulam legis
diviade, potest ex Kowals évvotas et libro naturae discere, quod
sit coe quod justus sit quod sapiens. . . . V, 140), the dictamen
conscientiae (est particula quaedam imaginis divinae quam in nobis
ipsis verert debemus! IV, 292), and finally (at the end of the
whole chapter, op. cit.): This relic has been still preserved
to us by God, in order that these truths which have still been
left to us may be “‘rectrices externae disciplinae qua velut paedagogia
quadam utitur ad instaurationem imaginis suae partam nobis per
Christum’’—thus here even the doctrine of the point of contact
508
 APPENDIX I

is present, questionable as the argument for it may be. J.

Gerhard is then also aware that there are two possible con-
ceptions of the Imago, one of which (formal) he sees represented
by the Calvinists; but, although he does not absolutely reject
this, he describes it as non principalis pars imaginis (IV, 292).
In this he was right—but in saying this the problem was not
solved ; it had not even been seen.
(10) In essentials the same position is taken by Calvinistic
theology, at Jeast in so
far as it is determined byCalvin. But
now it is in accordance with the special historical mission of
Calvinistic theology that—within the common doctrine of the
Reformers of the justitia originalis and of the corruptio totalis—
the concern of the humanitas is perceived more clearly and
urgently than within Lutheran theology, without, on that
account, becoming Humanistic.
Calvin follows Luther, since in principle he ascribes the
humanitas—which characterizes even the empirically fallen
man—to the ‘relic’ of the Jmago. At the same time he ‘solves’ the
problem—like the Bible itself—simply by making use of a dual
conception of the Imago. Hence the fluctuations of his state-
ments about the Jmago and its significance. The fact that he
suggests that the anima immortalis—which also belongs to the
sinner—is derived from the Imago ought not to be regarded
as a peculiarly Calvinistic view, for the Lutherans also took
this for granted; and, even when Luther was in conflict with
Rome, he never forgot this (WA. 42, 63). It may be said,
however, that Calvin developed the idea of the formal Imago,
tmago = humanitas (that is, that which belongs to man as man,
whether man in his origin or man after the Fall), in a very
casual manner : ‘We have ideas of justice, integrity and honesty.
. . . The seat of these ideas must be a spirit . . . the image of
God reaches out to all in which the nature of man surpasses
that of every other species . . . the Jmago includes within itself
all that has any relation to the spiritual and eternal life’
(Institutio, I, 15, 1-6). In this connexion he mentions with
approval Plato’s idea that the soul is a picture of the divine
(ibid., 6). He also united the ideas of reason with that of the
spiritual Jmago: ‘The more that a man tries to come near to
God, the more he shows that he is endowed with reason’ (ibid.).
599
 MAN IN REVOLT

But he still maintains that the original Jmago was not ‘wholly
extinguished and destroyed, it is true, but yet that it is so
entirely defaced that all that is left is terribly deformed’
(ibid., 4). Even he does not extricate himself from this dilemma:
the reason belongs to the Jmago, which (in the main) is de-
stroyed, and yet we are still rational creatures. He ‘solves’ it
with the suggestion that we have a defaced reason (II, 2, 12 ff).
But since Calvin cannot help recognizing reason in its own
sphere, he asserts the principle: the higher the reason aspires,
the more it errs (at this point, again, he is in essential agreement
with Luther). Neither Luther nor Calvin has solved the prob-
lem: How is the central doctrine of the loss of the Jmago
= justitia originis) to be combined with the recognition of
the fact that the humanum which cannot be, and has not been
lost (freedom, reason, conscience, language, etc.), belongs to
the Imago Dei? In the attempt to answer this question Augustine
has gone further than the Reformers, although, on the other
hand, he had not such a profound understanding of the nature
of the justitia originalis, being in the Word of God.

(11) The theologian

ofthe
s post-Reformation
period did not
contribute anything essential towards. the solution.
RNS LOY igRR ERNE IEA SOS
of the prob- 7 .
lem; they depended wholly on Luther, Calvin and Augustine,
th - A ofold.scholastic.and. patristic
" Ost EO IEEE MEN SONNE EILEEN AS TELE ND stttaeseesmces
=F
“and soonbega tonrevert xe to
l '
Cae AOE aT
ee
conception; this process was facilitated bythe fact of the
re-acceptance of the concept Jmago = anima rationalis,
MRSoME aA

eon SuATnEgI the

rationalistic Aristotélian ide “of reason. is
NOURI RRA

“Later theolog
asians,
a rule, have not understood what this
question involves. Their whole attention has been absorbed
in the questions raised by modern science; on the one hand,
some of them try to save an impossible doctrine of the Primitive
State by means of apologetics, while others abandon the his-
torical form altogether as impossible, and in so doing they
lose the meaning of the doctrine of the Primitive State as well.
Vilmar (Dogmatik) develops a picture of the Primitive State
which is wholly free from the influence of historical and scien-
tific criticism; his view is in entire accordance with Lutheran
orthodoxy—from his own premisses he rightly defends the
Primitive State as genuine being against every attempt to
510
 APPENDIX I

reduce it to a mere ‘determination’ (‘a form of being complete

in every direction,’ I, p. 340); this, however, inevitably raises
the question: What then distinguishes an existence of this kind
from that of the redeemed? That is, in what did the posse
peccare consist?
Frank (System der christlichen Wahrheit) takes the opposite line;
he understands the Jmago in a purely formal way in the sense
of possessing selfhood, and the ‘filling of this form with moral
and religious content’—the justitza originalis—as something which
is added to the nature of man, and further is only recognized
as embryonic existence (p. 349 ff.), and thus goes back directly
to Irenaeus.
Von Oéettingen distinguishes the ‘so-called ‘“‘formal’’—that
is, that which belongs essentially to the form of man’s being,
and is on that account impossible to lose, and is actually not
lost—aspect of likeness to God because made in His image’
(II, Part I, 363), the ‘spiritually personal nature of man’ from
the ‘so-called ethico-material aspect of being made in the image
of God’ (p. 373)—which further he only regards as a tendency
(Anlage) of primitive man. To this extent he too accepts the
dual division of Irenaeus. Since, however, he relates both to
the self-imparting love of God, he comes very near to a solution
of the problem, though without actually doing so, and indeed
without being actually aware of the problem at all. Kahler
also begins with the personality of man as ‘being of the same
nature with God,’ and describes this as the form of ‘being made
in the image of God’ which cannot be lost. From this he dis-
tinguishes the ‘task’ of ‘filling it with the corresponding con-
tent? (Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, pp. 270 ff.); thus
he too simply seems to return to the twofold schema of Irenaeus.
But the further development of his thought shows that at least
dimly he has discerned the problem, and that he wishes to
regard the formal and the material as both derived from one
common principle, namely, from the divine will of Love, and
—this is the essential point—that he already regards the formal
element as an actual relation to the divine will of Jove, or at
least as a disposition thereto. In particular, his emphasis upon
the historical nature of human existence as such, works against
the traditional rationalism in the definition of personal being,
511
 MAN IN REVOLT

and places him among those thinkers who are on the path
towards the new understanding. Schlatter (Das christliche Dogma),
on the other hand, has no interest in the problem of the
Primitive State, nor in that of the Imago Dei; he dismisses
it with the remark that ‘no certain perception leads us back
to man’s origin.’ What he says further about the historical
conception of the Primitive State is absolutely correct (p. 278),
namely, that a long period of pre-history preceded the history
known to us, but that at one point in history the human ‘I’
was present as something new. But this does not exhaust the
meaning of the concern which lies in the idea of the Imago Dei;
it is strange that a man who has given more thought to the
fifth chapter of Romans than many others should overlook
this.
The attempts to deal with the problem’on the part of liberal
theology have already been treated in the text.
the new understanding of the problem of anthropology
begins with Ferdinand Ebner, Martin Bub and
er,Friedrich
Gogart en ; Heidegger has only made a very remote contribution
to this question—essentially as one mediating the thought of
Kierkegaard. Since, however, none of them have wrestled with
the problem of the Imago Dei in the narrower sense, I must
here content myself with expressing my very deep gratitude
to these pioneers (cf. my small contribution in the Ferdinand
Ebner Gedenkschrift, Verlag F. Pustet). A good critical survey
of these works which I re ard
as preparing the way for the
new solution which is attempted inthis book,isgiven by the
Swedish writer Cullberg, in his book: Das
RN a

Du und die Wirk-

lichkect (Uppsala, 1933).

(12) In conclusion, a word about the relation between the

view represented in this book and that in Natur und Gnade. I
assume that what I stand for both here and in that work is
exactly the same, but here I have tried to say the same truth
in different words, because it is evident that to a very large
extent this theological generation is deficient in that logical
training which is necessary for the understanding of such a
concept. Otherwise how could a theologian make the objection
that ‘after all, my conception of the formal Imago turns out
512
 APPENDIX I

to be something with a good deal of content!’ ‘Formal’ and

‘material’ are relative ideas. What the ancients, for instance,
called ‘formal freedom’ is certainly something which has a great
deal of content; but it is ‘formal’ in view of that with which
they were then concerned: the power to be righteous in the
sight of God. My concept of the formal Imago is formed on
the analogy of this concept of formal freedom; it describes
the human as human, the imperishable structure of man’s
being which cannot be affected by the conflict between the
Original Creation and Sin. But in opposition to Barth, and in
agreement with al] the previous theologians of the Church,
and also with the Reformers, I conceive this formal element,
man’s being, as something which is not only far from being
a commonplace, but, on the contrary, as very relevant for
theology; the Reformers expressed this truth in the rather
dubious notion of the ‘relic’ of the Imago; and I, on the other
hand, express this as a dialectical relation between the Jmago-
origin and the humanity-of-the-sinner. The content of my
concept ‘formal Imago’ is exactly the same as that of this ‘relic’
of the Jmago in the thought of the Reformers.
Although in using this terminology I am making no inno-
vation—in addition to those who have been named above I
could also name other precursors in this sphere—I have now
renounced the use of this expression ‘formal Imago.’ First of
all, in order to avoid giving further occasion for the misunder-
standing—into which Schlink and others have already fallen
—that I defend the Catholic doctrine of a double Imago (imago-
sumilitudo), whereas I regard this doctrine as the fatal, fun-
damental error of all the anthropology of the Church, and
thus reject it; and secondly, in order not to give further offence
to theologians who are unable to understand that something
‘formal’? may have a rich content, and even theological
relevance.
Over against the Catholic doctrine and that of Irenaeus
(which, as I have shown, many Lutherans have taken over
from orthodox Scholasticism) I maintain: there are not two
elements—an Jmago which can never be lost, and a Similitudo
which can be lost, of which the one is a natural quality, while
the other is an actual relation with God; but the nature of
513
 MAN IN REVOLT

man is to be understood as a unity, from the point of view of

man’s relation to God, without the distinction between nature
and super-nature; this unified ‘theological’ nature is perverted
by sin, but in this perversion it still always reveals the traces
of the image of God in the human structure, so that it is
actually the formal ‘human’ element which betrays man’s
lost origin.
Over against the doctrine of the Reformation I maintain:
my whole aim is to renew their fundamental conception—
~ which both the orthodox. Lutherans -cand Barth have lost,
‘although iin diffe
differentt ways—namely, that man as a whole must
be understoodfrom the standpoint of God, and therefore that
man’s being as sinner is man’s being in a corrupt form, but
that, for that very reason, even the humanitas which.still exists_
must be understood in “ne light. of the original i
image e of
0 f God,
OL “ofman’s relJation.“with.God.
us, like Luther, I teach that this present humanitas is a
mere ‘relic’ of the original humanitas, but that, for that very
reason, that element in it which is inalienable—that which
distinguishes man as man—is not a profanum, nor a trifle, but
that it should be understood only from the point of view of
)
i

the original Imago, and thus in a theological and Christological

manner.
The present humanitas is not, as Catholicism teaches, the truly
original human nature (since all that it lacks is the dona
superadditum), nor is it, as Barth teaches, a secular matter which
is of no interest for theology ;but, precisely in its merely formal
character, it is that which man has retained of his original
relation with God. But it is not sufficient to describe this
element that remains—as the Reformers do—merely quanti-
tatively as a ‘relic’; it ought to be understood dialectically:
namely, as the present structure of man’s being which is based
on law, dialectically related to the Gospel, which, firstly, has
some power of creating order in human life, and, secondly,
necessarily preserves man in his relation with God—although
it is perverted; which, thirdly, serves the Gospel as a point
of contact; which, however, at the same time, fourthly, is the
point of supreme contradiction and that which repels. I have
never taught that there was any other point of contact than
514
 APPENDIX I

this dialectical one; for the past twelve years (see my article
on the Law in Theologische Blatter, 1925!) the central point
of my theological thought—which has been unchanged—just
as it is that of the theology of the Reformers, has been, and
is, the dialectic of the Law and the Gospel.

515
 APPENDIX II

ON THE DIALECTIC OF THE LAW

‘Ir is the opinion of St, Paul that in Christendom both by

preachers and Christians. a _certain, difference. shou d be ta
taught ~
“aaertond between the Law and faith, _between cs
”
Command and the Gospel. . . For this is the highest art in
‘Christendom, which we anes to know, and where one does
not know this thou canst not be thoroughly sure of the dif-
ference between a Christian and a pagan or a Jew. For every-
thing hangs upon this difference.’ (Luther, WA. 36, 9.) At
the present day, too, “everything hangs upon’ this difference;
this present work should be a testimony to this. But this diss
tinction isstill, as it was inthe days when Luther had to wrestle —
with the ‘Antinomians, ‘the ‘highest art,” and the confusioni1s
great.
Brea erg Barth has ventured to reverse the traditional order and
to say: the Gospel and
_ the.Law. For in. theGospel “the Law
ishidden and1| enclosed as in the Ark.” “In— to know what —
|tha Caw is”we must “first ‘ofall know what OS)pe E
not the other way round”
d’ (Evangelium und Gesetz, p. 3).) Then
were the Reformers mistaken when they so obstinately and
plainly insisted on the reverse order? Or must we perhaps with
Otto Wolff (Gesetz und Evangelium, Evangelische Theologie, 1936,
pp. 136 ff.) play off Luther against Luther, ‘illuminated by
the most original intentions of Luther’ (p. 139) in order to get
rid of the traditional ‘dualism in which justitia and gratia are
either left side by side, or the one comes after the other,’ in
favour of a ‘creative, living and unified synthesis of justitia and
gratia (p. 143)?
The concern of Barth and Thurneysen (Die Bergpredigt) is
clear and fundamentally Scriptural. ‘How could the sovereignty
of Jes
esus Christbeproclaimed without the proclamationas such
being a summons to obedience?” (Barth, op. cit. » P- 10.) “The
very faith in the articulis stantis et cadentis eeelesine, in the word
of the justification of the sinner through the atonement made
by the Blood of Christ, means purification, sanctification,
516
 APPENDIX II

renewal, or it means nothing at all’ (Barth, p. 11). The one

concern is the Word of Jesus Christ, and nothing else at all,
and in that God’s summons to us is, in point of fact, ‘hidden
and enclosed.’ Would anyone have anything to say against
this argument, from the point of view of the Bible? The fact
\ that in the writings of Barth and Thurneysen we do not find
sufficient emphasis laid upon the renewing work of the Holy
Spirit, which creates real—though rudimentary and imperfect |
—obedience, is another question. Nothing can be taken away
from this their main Christocentric thesis. ‘This is the message
of the Bible: the message of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, —
which, as such, lays claim on our obedience.
Who would
~~question
the fact that theReformers knew this too, and that
they taughtit with such power and conviction that we can
“even learn it afresh from then! Why, then, did they still say:
“the Law and theGospel?
Why did Luther in his Disputations
against the Antinomians repeat this order of words hundreds
of times, and why did he defend this with all the force of his
theological power and authority? Is it possible that we can
really know better than he what he ‘originally’ intended? Or
perhaps, as so often happens in discussions: are we missing
the point entirely because we are using the same words with
a quite different meaning?
In reality, Luther means something fundamentally different.
from Karl Barth, when he speaks
of the ‘Law,’ and his whole
doctrine will only become intelligible to one who knows what
Luther
meant by ‘Law.’ Healone willunderstand why Luther
reckons the law among the ‘powers of wrath,” why
3 3 > A Ra
he so often,
i Malc) a al i ala la : ‘ataaiaaaadiaied SADA SEY TEETER LET HEN

Classes it_with.death
and the devil,
ee
He is, namely, always
speaking of the law of which Paul says explicitly, that ithas
been abolished by Jesus Christ—‘If ye are under the Spirit
rn bitin oc aac eR eats

“ye are no longer under the law’ ;“we are free from, the law
and have died to the law.’ Christ has come to ‘ransom us from
the curse of the law’—Christ is the ‘end of the law.’ Thus when
Luther speaks of the Law, he is speaking of something with
which the Christian, as a believer, has no further connexion,
of which, from the standpoint of the Gospel, one can only
speak in antithesis—without on that account becoming an
dvowos—just as St. Paul does.
517
 \

MAN IN REVOLT

Barth, too, knows of this law, ‘which Paul—not universally,

but as a rule—calls the Nomos, against whose “righteousness”
. HS TVR anes eet

and “bondage”
. . . of which
and “curse”
he warns his churchesmost urgently
ithas been said, and must be said: either wholly
the law and then death, or wholly the Gospel and then life. . . .
It is the law which has been dishonoured and rendered void
by sin, which with the power of the wrath of God still is and
_ remains His law’ (p. 25). But. while Barth passes on swiftly, as_
though there were very little to say about this law, Paul, on.
account
ofthis very law, wrotetheEpistl
to thees
Romans and_
to the Galatians; and the whole ofLuther’s theological thought
revolves round this ‘law’ in
his ‘la ?particular, and its dialectical
relationto our Gospel. Luther only begins to think deeply
: about the Law at the point where Barth stops.
7 ne Now this Nomos is not something which one can easily pass
it **\ over as a simple, even if unfortunate, misunderstanding; it
diy’ 38 not
somethingwhich merelyconcerned
the Jews of that day; __
yl
N
But-this law is.the fundamental. principle of thenatural self
understanding of man. It does not matter whether it is the
ewish Law, or the law written in man’s heart; it is all the
same (Rom. i and ii); in any case it_ is.Clearly opposed to
_.. the righteousness of faith (Rom, in), although ‘in some way
ri) ema TA REEMA or this veryreason, because
, it stands in this antithesis to the righteousness of God, and _
Yet at _the same time isGod’s Law, there exists between the |
Law and the Gosp _a remarkable
el dialectical relation.~
The Jewish Law as such has no longer much interest for
Luther. But he is intensely interested in that which Barth would
fain ignore, that is: the law which is written in the heart of
man, which he also describes by the phrase lex naturae, which .
; comes—through the patristic literature—from the Stoics. Weque
t<.@tamen Moses autor fuit decalogi. Sed a condito mundo decalogus fuit
ca inscriptus omnium hominum mentibus (Disputationen, Drews, 378).
Indeed, this law is the criterion of the law, valid for us also,
in the Old Testament. ‘Where now Moses’ law and the law
of nature are one thing, there remaineth the law and it is not
removed outwardly, save spiritually through faith’ (WA. 18, 81).
Thus the problem is posed of the Categorical Imperative
which indwells reason; for the ‘law of nature,’ for Luther, is
a ARTa AG ES NED

518
 APPENDIX II

always a law of obligation, even where it meets us as the Word

Sf God thanorder afcrextion. ‘In omni ture must the debet be’
(cf. E. Wolff: Natiirliches Gesetz und Gesetz Christi bei Luther,
Evangelische Theologie, 1935, p. 317). In the Disputations in
particular Luther_again and again sets up this equation (for
instance, pp. 378, 337 ff., 312, etc.). He is concerned to estab-
_ lish an
antithetical but immovable dialectical
relation between.
he immanental self-understanding and the Christian revelation
correspondingto the antithetical dialectical relation between
the natural (and legalistic), and the revealed knowledge of
God, or, to use the phrase of Kierkegaard, between the
immanental ‘religion A’ and the ‘paradoxical’ Christian faith.
d sin belong together. It is true of course that

ourselves from His law aurea of from the § renerous Will

God as Creator, is not due to thee Creation but. to sin.)Sin in
its centre 1s ‘precisely this legalistic self-understanding, with its
self-justification of man. Hence the effect of this law isbondage,
curse_and_death—again: not_of the lawas such, but of"the
self-understanding ywhichis
detderived from It.eTrerctore! the law
as the point of reference of this naturals
self-understanding of
man belongs to the ‘powers of wrath.’ It does not reveal the
grace but the wrath of God (revelatio trae, Disputationen 306;
336).
If, however, that were all there is to say about it, it would
be a simple matter—that is, just as simple as Barth would like
to make it out to be. But_it is not so simple as all that. For Aba iba sean Ot OSES

we have heard that this law ‘is not removed through faith.’
This law is not a plain and simple entity, but, in the most
rigid sense of the word, it is ambiguous. It has a dialectical_
relation to the revelation of grace. Of this law it is said, that
x
it is ostensio peccati seu
seu revelatio irae;
or correlates, as we would say (op. cit., 337): Hence this law
sunt termines convertibiles, \,
plays apart in the processof
0 salvation. “It is3 not to be value
simply negatively. Itisand re
remains ‘the divine factor in.the. é
iaiewawe =e, Alans

lost situation of the sinner.vt dis

accuses _and Aisquiets
REET
an, it. "
man,
‘accuses thee through thine own conscience’ (WA.30; 386).
Precisel that comes from God, although it
itcertain! ly is not ilar
ach
ended LETU SSAO RL EO EI at, er et Spedre4 A LO

519
 a <i patie aun

AKMN 7

MAN IN REVOLT

God’s opus proprium but His opus alienum, just.as the wrath of_
God shows
ws us not the tr
true face.“of.God but. the. face..of.God
altered{
by our sin.
“This
RTE
Iaw—which
TE I ETT
everyone knows to some extent, even if
encanta)
Seance eee
not very clearly—(for?instance, ”"sec “Disputationen, 337-9) —
has primarily a secular meaning, Its usus primus is coercere
delicta, atque haec coercitio est mundi seu carnis Justitia quae habet
suum praemium et gloriam. Sed coram Deo nihil est (Disputationen,
365). By means of the knowledge of this law even the heathen
“. have some knowledge of the divine ordinances, even if they
do not know the One who created them. So this law also
remains “outwardly’—that is, in secular matters—even where
it has been ‘spiritually abolished’ by faith. It is the—also
critical—principle of natural righteousness, for instance, politi-
cal righteousness (cf. E. Wolff, op. cit., p. 317). As a whole,
however, it_iswhat.we.may. describe as amoral norm. For
it is not in the content of the law that, ‘there gos
1 ‘the difference c
‘between the Bible and. heathenism or thenatural man; rather
what the law of nature teaches is‘precisely na also the
of the Old and the New Testament" teaches: the love of Cod
and of one’s “neighbour. ‘Nature teaches, as ERR
I ought to do what I would like to have done to me’ (WA. IT,
279). ‘But where thou dost shut thine eyes to love and nature,
thou wilt never be able to please God’ (ibid.). Although this
natural law written in the heart may be ‘dimmer’ than that
which is revealed in the Scriptures, yet here thére is no dif-
ference in principle. As we have heard, the natural law is even
the criterion for that which is valid in the Old Testament
doctrine of the law.
But this,important 2as itis, isnot the most im iportant. What
is most important is the facttthat this; ‘Taw-
Jaw—always this same
Nomos ‘separated from grace—is at“the si
2 pw nel aD mv PSN a
I iN Re BRN RAR Se Beoeaaserccatan—

same time a _Mecessary

Lf element in_the€ process of salvation. It is only here that the.
‘dialectic ofthe law begins. That is the second usus legis.
Secundus usus est, de quo dicit Paulus, quod lex sit paedogogus ad
Christum (Disputationen, 365). Man may look away from the law
and ignore it; and that is even the usual attitude. He evades
the law. Indeed, in his own strength he cannot help doing so.
At this point, however, God intervenes. Not first of all, through
520
 APPENDIX II

race, but by holding before man’s eyes the death-dealing,

merciless law. It maybe true that all men have the law in
Aeterna S sceeacskaae = eimai Teese ta peal yi a s LION! _

their hearts, but they do not all feel it. “Lex omnibus est communis,
sed non omnes sentiunt ejus vim et effectum.’ It is rather God who
does this, but per sensum legis (267). It is through the law that
one comes to the knowledge of sin and _of despair. For this very
reason this law—the nomos apart from grace—is necessary. Here ~
we are yet not thinking of repentance, but of the terror of
conscience. ‘Lex arguit sine spiritus sancti dono’ (269). Here, too,
the Spirit of God is at work, but it is God in His majesty,
adversarius noster. So the Lex is not ‘donum, sed Dei aeterni
omnipotentis verbum qui est ignis conscientiae’ (268).
In itself the despair which thus arisesis not that which does.
the soul good. Rather it is ambiguous. If it is to become healing
the grace which acquits must be added to the Jaw which
condemns This as Thave already said elsewhere (<wischen
den Keiten, 1932, pp. 505 ff.)—there is no continuity upwards
from man to God, but only downwards from God to man. He,
and He alone, makes the law a paedagogus (Disputationen, 286).
In itself the effect of the law is absolute annihilation, ‘lex redigit
ad nthilum’ (270). But without this redactio
ad nihil,
thus without
this merciless law and itscondemnation,
there is no conversion,_
no faith (268 ff.). This is the origin and the content of the
dialectic of the law. This is the extremely indirect but extremely
important connexion between man’s understanding
ofhimself
from
the immanental point
of view and from
the point of view
of faith,
Viewed from man’s standpoint all we can say is: Lost! No
immanental dialectic leads us beyond this terrible negative
conclusion. But in the Hands of God this same law, which in
itself only works death, becomes repentance. It is the divine
. mL
Buliearigmeniempeemancseaceay «uaa laste
work of grace that repentance arises out of this terror of the |
aw; but repentance must pass through
this terror infaceof
the merciless
law. That is the divine ‘pedagogy.’ Thus there
is a prous and a posterius; this order of the Law and the Gospel,
so far as Luther is concerned, is not a misunderstanding. ‘This
is the genuine teaching of Luther; this is his real position,
which he defends
with all his might; it is not an ‘element in
his early teaching which he afterwards reversed.’ All the _
521
 MAN IN REVOLT

Antinomian Disputations turn on this point. In ever new forms

—
SIS SLANT
ifs raat site

(in the work of Drews this occupies two hundred and fifty
| pages !) Luticr repeats theonestatement: itis not the Gospel
as such which creates this redactio adnihil,
butthe Law.
_» ~All that ‘kills’ in this way is law; for the Gospel alone ‘makes
alive.’ But God ‘kills’ through this law in order to lead to life.
i He uses the law as a paedagogus. Repentance begins with ‘the
Law, not with the Gospel (254) ; itis not grace which creates
contritzo,.. Mortificatio ante fidem est contritio. Sed haec fit per legem
Oo. quia lex occidit? (326). But through this law-repentance God
Cacho” leads when and whom He wills to faith, to Christ. This takes
~ place in the fact that He awakens the desire for mercy. ‘The
5 spe aR GEL OETA GTR EEOAIIE PR li i amici inn elias ; P
Ae yi is a sermon which sin makes, it is a thirsty areathing, it
“makes hungry souls, frightened, sorrowful, thirsty hearts and
_., souls which sigh after the grace of God’ (WA. 33, 443). ‘Lex
L~" docet quid habeas et quo careas, Christus dat quid facias et habeas’
(WA. 2,500). Why is this? ‘Quia Deus sic statuit convertere homines
ac praeparare ad suscipiendum Christum. Paedagogus in Christum,
verbum solatit, est proprissima et jucundissima legis definitio’ (Dis-
putationen, 364). Thus there is a twofold desperatio: the desperatio
of the man who remains under the Law, and therefore also
under wrath, the desperatio diabolica, and the desperatio evangelica,
ad quam lex adigere debet, through which God Himself praeparat
ad concifiendam fidem in Christum (351).
This is Luther’s concern in his defence of the law, and indeed
of the law which kills, of the law which in Paul emerges as
the Nomos, which leads to condemnation, which, however, at
the same time he acknowledges to be the zaSaywyds eis
xporov. There
is one more objectio
tonbe met: Is it then_
really the Jaw.whiccreates preaching
h repentance, and not the
_
of the Gospel?To that too Luther
a simple answer. Sive jam lege sive
gives a”cléar,
even ifnot _
evangelin rhetorica veneris ad
z
ws ~ poenitentiam, unum et idem eris (320). Jesus Christ and the
|e
“preach of the Cross also lead to repentance. Von omnes
se

eyes eR RRS
ing
eA aac RE COIDIR Sang iigeliieipld
i. “eodem modo vocamur ad Christum (346).ac Christ
clipe om ytabaamnnannneeneees :
too may exercise
ji" this office, although it is not ejus proprium (ibid.). Est
t. quidem ex cruce seu passione Christi homo ducendus ad poenitentiam,
. sed inde non sequitur quod lex ideo prorsus inutilis, inefficax et in totum
tollenda. The way of the Gospel is different from that of the_ TRS
FE HY NS
DENCE
DSN FS WLU O A d es

522
 APPENDIX II

Law; it depends upon the circumstances which of the twois

tin. ndividual case. (318). ‘It doth not matter
through ‘which it cometh’ (320). Itis the rhetoricae
evangeltt, not
the Gospel itself which creates contritio—which is necessary for
‘faith, and precedes: it. Here
Here” thé Gospel works not as the Gospel
but as the Law. For itthe is office of the law and not of the
Gospel to kill. Luther is not concerned about the means, but
about the truth itself. That which kills is according to its office,
law. And through this death one comes to Christ, even if it
is the message of Christ which leads along this way of the law.
To Christ Himself, however, one only comes through the
message of forgiving grace, through which the Holy Spirit
works and creates free obedience (270, 280, 284, 302).
This is the methodus of God, and haec methodus summa
diligentia conservanda est (259). Cum ergo prophetae Christus,
apostoli hac methodo usi sint, debemus eos sequi, praecipue insensatos
et impoenitentes, ut discant agnoscere magnitudinem peccati. Hoc ubi
per legem fecimus, habemus mandatum divinum, ut iterum erigamus
per evangelium pusillanimes. Sic verum et proprium officium legis est
accusare et occidere, evangelit vivificare (260). In the Third Dis-
putation, too, Luther openly admits that he had previously
taught otherwise; but then the times were different. He had
terror-stricken people before him, to-day through the preaching
of the Gospel they have become presumptuous (478; and also
306). But he>also
also gives another
anc reason why the law is necessary:
the_la'
law,“from_its ownn_standpoint, _must, affirm. the. reason
(WA. 36,, 308). ‘Otherwise, where it is noteae “written
in the heart, we would need to ‘preach and teach_ ong
“time before the conscience would take it home, to“sell Thus
must
it find it and feel it by itself (WA. 18, 80). The self-
understanding of the natural man from the standpoint of the
law must come to its own end; and with it the independent
human being. Hence. the. ork. of the law is the opusalienum
of God; God as it were goes after man along. ‘his path, and
leads him to
to the end of it, before He can show. him the other _
right we
Ww.Met
y, the€ way of“grace, which leads man ‘back to his
39nal eing,to his being in the gracious Word of God. That. ws
_iswhy there is this order: the Law, and then the Gospel. Hence
“the knowledge of the law, when God gives it in this way, is
| 523
 MAN IN REVOLT

the praeparatio (316); it is not that man can thus prepare

himself, but he is thus prepared by God.
_There is one further point to be noted. Through faith ‘we
are no longer under the law.” Ubi_ cessati peccatum; cessat lex, —
“Satie, rodentlly, 1for.‘thetheology of tthe tw
twen-_
tieth century : et in quantum cessavit peccatum tantum cessavit
ssavit lex,
ESTAR OR.

ut in futura vita “simpliciter 4

debet cessare lex (354). ‘But if ye are
ruled by the Spirit.ye. are‘no Tonge indeer_the law.’ sem
like the New Testament writers, believes that Christ really rules
men by His Spirit, that He Pally creates in them a new will
and obedience, the willingness of obedience and of love, even
if at first these may be very imperfect, so long as we live in
the flesh. Et ita Christus expellit Adam de die in diem magis et
magis secundum quod crescit illa fides et cognitio Christi, non enim tota
_infunditur, sed incipit, proficit et perficitur tandem in fine per mortem
(WA. 2, 146). Life in the righteousness of faith creates a
new man—‘a different’ feeling,“a”d “way =
vat things,. a different way of hearing, “working: “and speak-
“ing? (EA. XI, 200). A great deal is said in the Disputations
about the fet that although the Christian is exposed to
temptations he triumphs over them in faith per spiritum sanctum,
qui novos motus parit et voluntatem imbuit, ut vere incipiat Deum amare
et peccatum detestari in carne reliquum (302 ff.). Much might be
said about this in discussion with the Ultra-Kohlbriiggians of
our own day. Yet this is not the place for this (cf. my pamphlet:
Vom Werk des Fleiligen Geistes).
But true.as itis that as a believer the Christian is no longer
under the
the> Law, as a sinner he co tinually
y comes under it. This
“is
ESSthe> fin
final|dialectic. ‘of the LLaw and the
the Gospel. Even ‘faith
“Itself is never without that «element, which was mentioned at
the beginning, of being claimed by God; but in faith this
divine claim is revealed as His generous grace, and therefore
it is not law; and yet in it in particular the Nomos fulfils its
meaning; rather, in it alone could the true will of God be
discerned, which under the Nomos was only perceived in a
hidden and indirect manner and as broken by sin. In this dual
sense Christ is the ‘end of the law.’ He has made us free from
the law by leading us back to the gracious primal claim of
God. Hence Paul can call himself an ewoyos ypwrod, one
524
 APPENDIX II

who is obedient to Christ, particularly where he says that he

is no longer under the law (1 Cor. ix. 21).
in
the Christian—is
In so far, however,as sin— concerned,
the law remains operative ; for sin must die, it must be judged
.and_condemned, even and particularly, where one stands in_
faith, in the new life, For that very reason Luther insists,..1n...
hi SMe CE ainst the Antinomians
SG A aL
,VPLSthat
AI
ATG
the
RE
Law must
gene THRO

remain, not merely for “blockheads but also for believers, in

e we HOSTS 4 pp RE

security. It is not
FAR TA

fal intobya false

RA

rder_that they should not

eA Fy DR INS URNA ELSTON ORR
prs, PT

the fact that man is apprehended God, which belongs to

faith as such which is meant, but the death-dealing Law, which
is different from the Gospel, which indeed in its office and
work is opposed to it—in order, that man may learn more and,
more to live through faith alone, on. the generous, grace,.of
God alone...
_summed_up in the Cross. The Cross_is_both. the
‘strangest of God.towardsthe
work’ of God, the condescension
world of sin and hostility to the law and the fulfilment of
the. demands of theJaw’ (Rom, viii. 4), and in this very fact
ics GOREN al 5: ess sro S25 PONE
5 RS RE Ba eS TREE a

it is ‘the most proper work’ of God, the overcoming of the

law, and redemption from its curse. In the Cross God follows
n of law which leads to death, to the
his way
man upo bitter
put,him on the other way, when
foder
a
EL

. 8), inor
ES NERC I

ii,
NE ALN Lf ALERTS IIE

‘end (Phil
eee . si NR BGA
——oe

he has reached the end of his own way, the original way of
life which, through the conquest of the contradiction, has now
become a new way from and in the generous Word. That is
the dialectical doctrine of the Law of the Bible and of the
Reformers and the legalistic self-understanding of the natural peritaesine

man,It is in exact agreement with the doctrine of the Imago

wre ie lbs ti holik
ueig ase! eRe ume ute
mera Ss

e to
eae

Dei and-of sin. Man, évén as sinner, is always responsibl

idea of his
“God;_but as ‘sinner he necessarily .has..awrong
that,is,alegalistic
responsibility one.He understands it wrongly
“because he understands the Word of God which gives him life,
since it lays its claim on him, as law, which in his own strength
he should and can fulfil. Thus precisely in his legalism he is
one who lives in conflict with God and with himseBut lf.in
this very conflict he.is to..be...1understood..only...in..the light of
and his original. nature, that is, of the Jmago Dei.
ener? °

his origin
to his origin; that he must be
That he can be a sinner is due
Fis. 525
 MAN IN REVOLT

a sinner is due to his falling away from his origin. The fact
that.
he knows the lawofGodsprings from his origin, ‘thefact that
th ~
he has a wron 1gunderstandin
dingof it isdue.to.sin. Hence eman-
cipation from the curse of the law isthe same as the restoration
of the image of God; hence both the ‘relic’ of the Jmago and
the Nomos, precisely in their dialectical ambiguity, are the
critical points in the Christian doctrine of man, by which it
is proved whether a theology is dialectical, that is, whether
it is in harmony with the Christian message.

526
 APPENDIX III

THE PROBLEM OF ‘NATURAL THEOLOGY’ AND THE

‘POINT OF CONTACT? (ANEN UPFUNG)

Owinc to a somewhat unfortunate use of terms in my pamphlet

RN RE tinct

fact that to-day many “people regard me as the champion of.

‘natural theology’ in the usual sense of the word, |‘although
actually T“holdthe diametrically opposite view. In” spite of -
Barth’s remarks about my ‘retrograde development’ (Brunner
einst und jetzt, in his Antwort, p. 46) I have always been opposed
to a ‘natural theology’ of this kind, and I still am. The unfor-.
tunate_phrase_is_the. following :_¢hrastliche theologia naturalis.
“Apparently the phrase_ ‘natural theology’ was so ‘impressive
‘that the addition of the significant.word..‘Christian’.was.over-
Tooked, and, in the heat_of the controversy,. the distinction I
‘make between a theologia_naturalis in the subjective and in the
“objective sense (of which more anon) was “completely _over-
looked, although everything hinges upon1it. Further, some
“twenty times or so Karl Barth quotes from my pamphlet the
words {0 fenbarungsmichtigheit des Menschen!) which I not only
have never employed at all, but which I, as much as he, detest
as heretical. The phrase I did use was that of the Wortméchtigheit
(capacity for speech) of man, that is, I took the usual phrase
which describes the fact that man is endowed with the gift.
of speech and understanding, and turned it into a noun with
the same meaning.
‘The difference, of view between myself and Barth comes out,
in the main, at two particular points : (i) that I, in opposition
‘to Barth, ‘but in agreement |with the Scriptures and the Refor-
“mers, ‘maintain that"God i is still revealing Himself inHis work
fof Creation ‘at ‘the"present time,gand (i) that I do not regard
‘the distinctively hihuman ‘element, in man as a trifle, “but that”
I regard iit as a“theological ly ‘relevant ‘fact, ‘Which can only
be | understood _ from the point ‘of
« V
view “ofthe” truth that man
1 Lit. ‘man’s capacity for revelation,’ i.e. that man can pepvide his
own revelation.— Translator.
527
 MAN IN REVOLT

|has been created in the image of Gody In the following remarks

‘T hope that I shall be able to make my thought so clear that
such misunderstandings as those which have occurred with
Karl Barth may no longer be possible.

I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROBLEM: NATURAL THEOLOGY

The events in the German Church Struggle in particular
have shown how fundamental for the existence
ofthe Church
is
the right kind of theologia naturalis (Natur und Gnade, p. 44),
that is, thedoctrine of general revelation or revelation through ©
Creation which is based upon the Bible, and ofthe being of
the natural man as being in the denial of this original revelation
(Natur und Gnade, p. 12). The position of the ‘natural man’s’
knowledge of God and_of himself from the point ofview of
Jesus Christ_is a theme which
must necessarily stand at the
centre of theological discussion at the present time, not because
in itself it is the centre, but because it is the point at which _
the contrast between ‘modern’ thought and that of the Bible
‘comes out most clearly. We have also seen how this problem,
quite apart from all external controversy, penetrates into the
ultimate propositions of exegetical, dogmatic and practical
theology. How can man understand the Word of God?—a
problem of exegesis; how can man with his concepts sum u
the Wordof God in doctrine?—a problem of dogmatics; how
‘can manproclaim the Word of God to man?—a problem of the
practical work of the Church.

2. RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
The doctrine of sin must not be conceived in such a way _
_that it excludes the possibi
oflity
“natural” knowle ge, that is,
thecompetence of our reason for knowledge in general. Certain
“stateme
of the period
nts of the Reformation cannot be absolved
from the reproach of suggesting this view. A depreciation of
the power of the human mind to know is not Biblical; it is
not true. The recognition of rational knowledge within its own
sphere is paré
notonly of the doctrine of the Bible, but also
ofthe Reformers. "Without thisrecognitionofacertain com-
pete of the
nce reason even the value of theological
be wholly illusory. For that which
work will
distinguishes the theologian
528
 i APPENDIX III
from the simple old Christian woman is not his greater faith,
but his greater power of thought in the service of the faith.
This competence of the reason, which ought to be recognized,
is a graduated one: the reason is more competent to know the
world than to know man; it is better able to discern the bodily
(Nea
igs

Ptthan the spiritual

ani tented incitequality
bet e? Aeof man;
oan apart
cit from lethe Word of _ AGAIN, A
God it is not able toperceive the true being of man because
ce

this is not possible without the knowledge

ie : Ee
See Ni rE AN RIS SAG NETO
of the true Rte being
en MSNA
of God. According to Luther, the reason is not wholly unfit
Np ag 44

for the knowledge of God—namely, in the negative sense

(cf. Kostlin, Luthers Theologie, I, 328), but the more we are
concerned with theknowle of the
dg Divin
e e Bein
rr andgthe -
Tae ts ae
Divine Will, the less competent is reason. It may know some-
thing of the Divine Law (see below), but it knows nothing
of God’s forgiving grace (cf. Schlink: Der Mensch in der Ver-
=
=
kiindigung der Kirche, p. 249). So far as the natural knowledge
Wsiia) 4
of God is concerned, this is the position: ‘Sin dims man’s
vision to such an extent that in place of God
he sets up and
“‘knows’’ or imagines gods; that is, he turns God’s revelation
in Creation into “images” of false gods, or idols’ (Natur und
Gnade, p. 14).

3. THE REVELATION IN THE CREATION

The question of general revelation or of revelation through_
the Creation (in Natur und Gnadedescribedas the ‘objektive
theologia naturalis’) must be distinguished from the natural
or rational knowl
of God
edge(described in Natur tindGnade
as ‘subjektive theologia naturalis’). Save
for Karl Barth there.
was a consensus of opinion inthe Church—Béhl, the follower —
of Kohlbriigge,
A
is no 2 exception—that
Ns
there is such
pearance 1
a general
CLO yaaa
revelation, or revelation through the Creation, Just as it is not
contested that it is taught in the Scriptures
of the Old and of
the New Testament (for instance, Romans i; cf. too the excel-
lent observations of Bornkamm in the paper: Weutestamentliche
Wissenschaft, 1935, pp. 239 ff.; and of Schlier, Evangelische
Theologie, 1935, pp. 9 ff.).It_isequally clear that the Bible
expects us to consider this revelation through
the Creation,
and that to ignore it iscond
_asemne
the great sin’d
of the
heathen; Jikewise, it is evide
that the
nt Bible>
bases the respon- —
529
 MAN IN REVOLT

‘sibility 0of allmen, and _thus the sin of idolatry, upon _this
possibilit “of
of knowing Him, given by. God Himself. The denial—
of this revelation through the Creation in the latest theology
empties the Biblical idea of Creation of meaning—the Creation
is a manifestation of the wisdom and the Godhead of God,
the ‘natural revelation is not over with the Fall of man’
(Bornkamm, p. 249)—and also, wrongly, denies man’s relation
to God, and with that the responsibility of the godless eae
( It is equally clear that sin prevents man from seeingt
rev€ serailmane h the rea aright. {(‘the Christian are :
has tthe right 4naturalI Knowledge “of. God’—Natur und Gnade,~
p- 15), that v
we need the ‘Scripture ;as
s guide, (Calvin) if we are
really to recognize God and not idols in the works of the
Divine Creation (see above the quotation from Natur und
_ Gnade, p. 14). Thus"according to the Scriptures we must
distinguish between the revelation in Creation, or in Nature,
which has not in any way been destroyed by sin, and the
actual knowledge of God which is required by Him, but
actually frustrated by sin; that is, between the general (nature) |
and the special (historical) revelation, and finally between that
which the believer and that which the unbeliever knows of the
revelation in Nature.] ©
4. THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAW AND THE ORDERS OF CREATION
The fact that there is also a certain knowledge of the Divine
Law outside the Bible is the teaching of Scripture; this is
expressed by the Reformers in the traditional phrase: the /ex_
naturae. It isupon it,above all, that the doctrine
of the respon-_
sibility
yo}
of‘the ‘natural’_man is based, and also of the Justitia
civilis, and_of
of the competence of the reason in such matters
as the legal system, the State, and ‘ordinary. morality. Butthis
knowledge of the will of God through the reason is“subj_ ect
to the same.Festrictions as the knowled, re‘of God from the —
works of Creation. The bond between both is the divine orders —
of
Creation. Also from them the natural man has a certain
knowledge, but ‘they can only be understood in theirrreal
ree from the standpoint «a faith’ ((Natur wu?
Witenes: psc eeNe A
und Gnade,}
pr E75
Schlink, pp. 153 and 195 ff.). “The Reformerss express this, for
instance, by making a distinction between the commandments
53°
 APPENDIX III

of the Second Table, which, as such, can be known by

the reason, and those of the First Table, which can be
understood only through faith in Christ. Their view is
that the reason here
recognizes.the
fact, but does not
“not ablé“to~ know the Lawgiver Himself. Further, the
‘legalistic
rational understanding of God is also the exact
opposite of the evangelical truths of faith (cf. Appendix III,
pp. 520 ff.). But in. so.far. as.the external keeping, of the
Commandments
isa,fulfilment ofthe Divine Law—within the
limits of the idea of thejustitia civilis, of bein morally good—
it is possible for the natural man tofulfil the will of God—
“in such a way, however, that this takes place within the realm
of sin,and thus in spite of all stands under the wrathofGod,
and does not justify
man in the sightofGod. For the rest, the”
“more exact understanding
of the relation between the natural
law and the law revealed in the Bible is, even among the
Reformers, one of the most obscure and difficult problems and
has not yet been solved (cf. Bohatec: Das Recht bei Calvin).
It is Scriptural doctrine that through faith the good Creation
of God, in..contrast.to.sinful corruption, and thus also the
divine orders of Creation in contrast to their corruption—at
Jeast toaiden
acertain degree—may be prknown, and that not to know
engsy nnn encarta .
or recognize the
ds sin. Just as
manifested will
it iscontrary
of theCreator in the Creation
to Scripture to conceive the idea
‘of
sin in such a way that it excludes the competence of reason
altogether, so too, is it against Scripture to conceive it in such
a way that it excludes the possibility of knowing the Creation
and the orders of Creation. This supposedly Biblical agnos-
ticism is a doctrine which has never before been heard in the
Church (I cannot think of any theologian, ancient or modern,
within the Church who could be held to represent this view),
and it is an innovation which would make all concrete know-
ledge of sin impossible. For it is precisely the distinction between
the divine ordersof Creation and their sinful corruption which.
ves the idea of sin its concrete content. Thus, for instance,
the content of the Seventh Commandment is this: to protect
the order of creation of marriage from all disorderly sex
relations. The Bible itself indicates that (Matt. xix. 4 ff.) the
531
 MAN IN REVOLT

order of Creation is the ground of the Commandment. Thus

the Scripture itself requires that we should not stand still at
the ‘it is written,’ but that we should allow ourselves to be
guided back by the Scriptures to the order of Creation as the
basis of the concrete content of the commandment. There is
' no Scriptural basis for this new doctrine that the divine Creation —
_ and the orders of Creation cannot be perceived even from the
_ standpoint of faith ; this view is rather an offshoot from Kantian,
|

_ Ritschlian and neo-Kantian ideas. With the rejection of this

new theory we are upon the firm ground of the Reformation,
and there is no reason—and above all no Scriptural reason—
to allow ourselves to be led away from this Reformation
position by the statement that in this matter we ought to go
further than the Reformers. There is no need to be disturbed
by the further charge, that if we hold fast to this doctrine—
which is taught both by the Bible and by the Reformers—we
are “Thomist’ reactionaries; for it is quite easy to prove, from
the history of dogma itself, that this is not the case.

5. HUMANITY AND THE IMAGO

Tacolonea) ly all_the
he negative ;and post
ositive statements about _
the possibilities of reason must be taken into
9<account. From
“time immemorial ecclesiastical theology “done this in con-
nexion with the doctrine of the Jmago. In this respect the
doctrine of the Reformers is no exception. The undeniable fact
of the Aumanitas, which. also. belongs to, sinful’ man, “is ascribed |
PN aa
by all the Reformers to a ‘relic’ of the Imago Dei. This view,
psa nS vee
even if somewhat awkwardly expressed, brings out the idea
that the humanitas has some connexion with the original relation
of man with God, and thus thatthe formal structure of human _
existence ‘as such, whichcannot belost, contains a relation
spracas sextet re
[AEA Hl

to God. __The fact ‘thatboth ‘Luther and Calvin . held this idea
firmly, although it did not fit in with their main doctrine of
the complete loss of the Jmago, shows thatt the_perception of _
the connexion between the humanitas “and man’s. Xelation with
God wasvery deeply rooted. —
Objectively the Reformers are absolutely right Rite
At umanitas _
is only aa relic of the original being of man inn accordance with —
the
= Creation \sthat iis, 1t is that which -points back to the Origin,
532
 APPENDIX III

even in the sinful being of man. But this must not be under- ms ° mig a te aN aoe ES

as
ialecticalnasense,tS
. .

but in a
.

stood in a quantitative sense, ESN? rma

i ; uiSL NNER YAIR ERIag AC
gatiponai
waa aa
ndeed_has_teat been done.inth ; book. The expression; “formal
een

mago sh
original
o the cs D NRA OT HY
iser
Aiea ere TIC

formal, personal structure, of hu

pepeepey

6. THE ‘POINT OE.CONTACT. IN THE. ACTION, Of dlieCHURCH

ung der
Here Schlink’s book (Der Mensch in der Verkiindig
Kirche), although it has not provided a solution, has made one
possible. All that Schlink writes about ‘de Bemiihung um den
Menschen’ (‘effort to get into touch with man’) I can only
affirm, and recommend most cordially to my readers. This
tofor
‘ef touch with man’ is God’s command.to the
get into t
Bible, thereligious
‘ranslatorofAstheSchlink teacher, thepreacher , and
the pastor. rightly says, it isnot a matter of course
‘but a divine command (p. 243). But there are two points raised
by Schlink, one big and the other small, which are curious
and dangerous.
First of all, Schlink claims that this effort for the sake of
man, this wrestling for the understanding of a foreign language,
in order that the Bible may be rightly translated, this wrestling
to understand the other in the distinctiveness of his being and
of his situation, in order to discover the point ‘at which he
must be touched if he is to understand that it is he who is
meant’ (249)—all this, because it has been commanded by
God (243) must not be called a ‘point of contact’! As if God
could not command that we should make use of the ‘point
of contact’ to get into touch with man! But let us leave this
word Ankniipfung alone—for it is certainly not a classical
expression, nor is it a particularly good one—(although I have
found it used in theological language of at least a hundred |
years ago, in J. Miiller: Lehre von der Siinde, 11, p. 320). By
Ankniipfung 1 mean_nothing other than that which Schlink
describes in pages as the effort to get intotouch...
those pregnant God, and thus the ‘divine
with man which is comman by ded
claim to lay hold of an anthropo logy outside theology in the
interest of theology itself’ (p. 243).
Secondly, however, and this is the most amazing thing of
533
 MAN IN REVOLT

all—this effort which God commands, is said to be ‘fruitless?

(p. 244 ff. especially pp. 251, 253). It is true of course that
this effort in itself, without the special co-operation of the Holy
Spirit, cannot attain its end, that is, place man under the Word
of God. It is quite correct to say that this effort is. ‘limited in
three directions’: by the Scriptures, by the Creed, and by the
problems connected with the knowledge of human beings. But _
the conclusion which he draws from all this iswholly unscrip-_
tural and false, namely,
Aranda Ae a

that because it is man who speaks,

and beca this man
usé is sinful, even ifhe speaks as an evangelist__
‘or pastor, he speaks invain. “The command to make disciples
cannot be carried out?”
Here then the ultra-Reformation idea of sin of a certain
theological group has reached such a pitch of intensity that
it becomes sheer nonsense. For this ‘fruitlessness’ no longer
refers, as at first, to efforts made for man as such, but to the
accomplishment of the divine missionary command as a whole.
If the idea of sin is to be understood to imply that no command
of God can be carried out because we—even those who believe
and have received the grace of God—are all sinners, then the
effort to translate and interpret the Scriptures falls under the
same condemnation, then it too, and also the preaching of
the Word which is achieved through the preaching of sinful
human beings, is ‘fruitless.’
If we are prepared, in principle, to draw this conclusion in —
every direction, in that of theology as well as in that of
anthropology, in the same way, then I could accept it as a
somewhat exaggerated expression of a central truth: namely, —
that apart from Goo'we'eann doa nothing,that
tha without
withoutthe
theSpirit
Spirit_
ofGod all human activity for the Kingdom of God is‘fruitless’
;
for the Spiri
of t
God alone can build the ‘Kingdom of God.
He alone can speak God’s own Word.
But once the idea has been developed so far, immediately
the exaggeration becomes clear, For the Kingdom_of God, in
spite of the fact that it isbuilt by human action, and in spite
ofthe fact that all “human. action is sinful, isactually never
builtotherwise than with the help of human action in teaching,
preaching, pastoral work, and the administration of the Sacra-
ments... The dualistic severance of the instrumental human _
534
 APPENDIX III

action and the divine self-action is opposed to the experience

and the teaching of the Church, as well as to the Biblical
doctrine that God builds His Church through the instrumen-
talityof human activity and human speech. Without the Spirit.
of God we cannot fulfil His’s Commands—neith er the command
‘to ‘make disciples «ofall nations’ nor any other. But this -which,
in itself is impossible becomes possible through the Spirit of
savannas

"God;=
andthat itt actually ‘takes place through us, and actually
pre
can a experienced through us, is the teaching which meets
us, so to speak, on every page of the New Testament (I would
only remind the reader of Paul’s expression: ‘workers together
with God.’ 1 Cor. iii. 9)..
God builds His Church, He makes disciples, through human —
action alone, which He uses as His instrument, Thus in principle
‘effort for the sake of man’ and ‘effort for the» Word «of God?
‘are on exactly the same plane. ‘In themselves, “without. the
blessing of the Spirit, neither can “succeed, both are ‘fruitless’
—the theological effort as well as that of the missionary and
pastor; through the blessing of the Holy Spirit not only can
both succeed, but this success is explicitly promised, even as
the Apostles give explicit testimony to actual achievements of
this kind in particular instances (cf. 1 Thess. 1. 1, ‘hath not
been in vain’). The Bible, however, in contrast to this theo-
logical school, does not lead us to reflect on the lack of success
of our activity which takes place under the command of God,
but, on the contrary, the Bible leads us to the confidence that
an_action which takes place_in faith, even
Ae
if this faith
eg BEA RATS FHS,
is
imperfect,~
and
a a thou ch the men
1 “who_peerform. it it|, Are
a e sinful,
s accompanied with God’s blessing; :and will never be fruitless
PereiaiasaraGrened positive success, tothe actual making
of disciples ; fc
for He who has commanded us to ‘make disciples
of all nations’ (Matt. xxviii. 19) has also given us the promise:
‘I am with you all the days’ (Matt. xxviii. 20).
If we take the opposite attitude, and exaggerate the con-
clusions to be drawn from the Pidlical doctrine of sin, we do
not remain within the sphere of Biblical truth, and we merely give
the opponents.of the Christian message <a certain right to call the _
Christian idea of sin morbid and destructive. In actual fact such
aa doctrine of th 0 human action ;1s.‘destructive.
the“fruitlessness’ ‘of.
535
 MAN IN REVOLT

Schlink’s book goes further than the previous discussion in

the intensity and thoroughness with which that exaggerated
unscriptural idea of sin is pressed to its utmost conclusion; it
attacks. the very starting-point itself. This doctrinaire kind of
theology makes theology, as well as all other forms of human
activity, useless. If all human action be fruitless, then theology
also is useless; if all the effort of sinful men for the Kingdom
of God is futile, then the effort to proclaim the Word of God,
whether in teaching or in preaching, as well as everything
else that we do, is also useless, because it.is the work of
sinful human beings. At this point we see clearly how untrue
it is to make this division between divine and human action
as the logical conclusion drawn from a false idea of sin. It is _
themystery of that faith which worketh through love that
rat both —
‘thedivine and the human wor
word are united (Gal. v. 6). Human
reason and divine ‘Tevelation are OCEANA
iO SETS
not merely related to one
ee enre STS eather eee
another | ima ‘negative ‘manner; they <are also in a positive
telation 1 to one another, ‘The positive relation may be described_
by dithe word ‘instrumental.’ Every good theological book, as
forinstance KarlBarth's Dogmatics, is a proof of this positive
relation, since it is a document of human rational effort and
of capacity for thought in the service of the Gospel. The
question is not whether _there besuchh_a_positive relation
between human réason and divine
< ‘revelation,
_ , but in what it
consists. To recognize this point in our own day is a great
gain, and to express it in the theological world is a proceeding
which is fraught with a certain amount of danger. This brings |
us to the question | of the ‘point
° of contact.’

7- THE POINT OF CONTACT

(By this we mean all that the God who deals with us in His
ord and by His Spirit apprehends iin_man, in order togive_
fhim the gift offai
faith.
h.
And again all that He thus; apprehends
ends __
fis creat
wert Me
byed Him,by” His Word and His Spirit. He only
apprehends ineHe has already created. When the word of —
the Gospel, through its proclamation, approaches the sinner,
his life is apprehended by God in the following order:first
of all, his outward presence and the external act ‘of,hearing,
‘the act of understanding, in the logical and grammatical sense,
AULA TICE

se
536
 APPENDIX II!

then his rationaland personal being, above all its centre, the
now ledge ofresponsibility. Here I cannot refrain from quoting
once again a decisive passage from Luther which I have quoted
elsewhere: ‘But if the natural law were not written and given
by_God_in thee heart, _we would. have to ‘preach a very. long
time ‘before the “conscience. vould fe reached ; we would have
to pr each to an ox or a horse or cattle for a ‘rundred thousand
years before they would accept the law, although they have
ears, eyes, and a heart just like a man, fe can also hear, but
it does not enter into their heart. Why? What is lacking? Their
soul is not formed and created for this so that they can accept
it. But if a man in confronted with the law, he soon saith:
“Yes, it is so; I cannot deny it.” We could not _persuade. him.
sO quickly vwere it not that the law iswritten in his heart.
Because it is already in his heart, although in a dim _and7
ane eae

EEN hen et

‘obscure manner, it is awakened again by the Word? (WA. 16,

447). Further, to this we may add the passage quoted oben
(Appendix III, p. 523) ‘otherwise were it (the law) not naturally
written in the heart, we would have to preach and teach for
a long time before the conscience would apply it to itself’ ‘This
istheBiblical view of the point:of contact’; the Bible contains ~
Tho actual doctrine of the ‘point “of pantaed but this applies
to many other questions as well. This ‘point of contact’ is the
presupposition of the Pauline message; hence Paul places it
at the beginning of his Letter to the Romans which deals with
the question: with whom does the man who preaches the
Gospel have to do? The Bible teaches us that the Word of
God is set in our hearts in order that it might be received by
the reason, by the_responsible human being who could know
something of God JThe Word of God does not presuppose man
as a tabula rasa, nor does it make him into a tabula rasa!
Itis entirely contrary to the Biblical doctrine that in faith
as_the F ormula of Concord _says—man should ‘be ‘wholly
as
Dassive,” Or, as Amsdorf puts it, should be like a clod of earth
_orwe ‘stone. Definitions of this and are not Biblical theology,
“but bad philosophy. The Biblical sstatement is that man receives
grace, and also faith, purely as a gilt. But it does not saythat
in_f“faith._man., ds.to.be wholly _passive, but something very
“different. The Bible never regards man, and least of all in the
“537
 Hf ey al Ny)

r i Sy en |
FaiaMaa ja
“aa Oh

a e. MAN IN REVOLT
process of faith as truncus et lapis, as an object which is treated
as a piece of wood which is planed by the carpenter, but it
always re
regards him: as aa responsible subject. This responsible
subject i
is not first of all created iin the preaching of the Word,
‘butis “presupposed before the \preaching takes place. It is not
the subject Paul who is created anew by the Word of God—
it is rather presupposed by the Word of God—but the new
person is created by the historical Word of God; a believer
is madeout of. an unbeliever, the self righteous 1s Tene into
the Paul whod depends wholly on the grace of God; that which
oeae

pi “understan ling, thus with the.use of the:reason. ‘Thenew creation

consists in the fact that out of the cor incurvatum in se ipsum there
, arises the heart which is opened to God, so that not merely
' is there a new content of the spirit, the reason, the heart, but
a new way of being, a new ‘person’ has come into existence.
Now a false anthro ology has defined this relation between
God and -man, which ispresupposed by the preaching of the
Word on the one hand (formaliter), and at the same time
(materialiter) is created anew, in such a manner that it inevit-
ably leads to insoluble dilemmas, and, what is worse, to a false
conception of faith itself. The relation between God and man
was, namely, conceived causally. This meant that” there was
nothing for itbut either to seek causality purely upon the. side
of God |and to make man into a ¢runcus seu Lapis ;or to di tribute
causality. between both, although iin unequal proportions, which
ve endangered _ the truth of the sole power of the
1¢_grace of God.
The views ofFlacius led to the first conclusion and § nergism
led to the second. All this is not in the Bible at all.[The Bible
always places man over against -the Word ofGodas a respon-
sible subject and understands the operation of the Word always
as a process suz generts which is achieved as speaking and heaging,
being apprehended and being obedient. Hence it it places the
'| two statements alongside of one, another: that God alone does
WOR

everything, ;and that man must believe, that.he

he. must receive
the message, |that,hemust. ‘come’. to the.feast.“which God has
‘prepared, that he must ‘put on? the Wedding Garment, that
he must ‘sell all’? and ‘buy’ the Pearl of Great Price. Thusiin
538
 / APPENDIX III

spite ofthe fact thatGod gives us His grace purely out of

EPPA TMG I AD He RTE EINE

of groundlesscaicateeceiets
love, in i this “whole
whole process man is not _presupposed
ony anemneninaniageatens
as passive, but, on thecontrary , asextremely active. The acti action _
f God is ‘achieved by apprehending the. highest. activity,of
h an, which, however, in its meaning (but not in its psycho-_
ogical form) is passio: tO Surrender oneself, to surrender all,
to give oneself ses death, to look Sa olly from oneself
to the Word of God alone, and so on. The action of God takes
place by claiming human personal acts, and indeed, the solé
possible total act of the person, to which there corresponds
in concentrated activity nothing save the total act of sin—and
this only within certain limits—faith.
Thus the structure of the being of man is always pre-supposed,
which indeed, as we now know, is an actual, nota.a substantial AD ee nortetredsabob

{{responsible |being, being in decision. n the Bible this structure is

never
er regarded a:as lost—indeed how could this be so, since even
the sinner is still a human being?—rather even in the act of
faith itis presupposed as operative, and as such it is shown para-
bolically (‘coming,’ ‘selling,’ ‘drawing’), as well as in purely
logical conceptions.''This personal structure as actual being is
eae

that which is always proper to man, and this, inthe general sense,
ag

is the ‘point ofcontact.

c *To putit more exactly, tthat which makes
this personal structure personal is -responsibility+that which
CCAR NPROEE
R SET

in the passage above quoted from Luther is called ‘conscience’—

the pointof contact in the narrower sense of the word, and there-
fore the act of‘making
ae tence le
“
ee nel
contact’ of the preacher or pastor consists
in seeking for
OPH RETLT
the point atwhich the
tzengen naraeYibility, partipaee etd peat
hearer
ey
is to ‘be.‘met’ In the
ytcongreseamts

of respon
Sense Ol. re Sponsl 1 ity, or iin accordance with his conscience.
“But this situation
suai aerial corte a
is‘now comp icated
benepeuraliong: acai
by the fact thatl
the
same reasonwhich on its formal side is always a presupposition,
in its‘material aspect as material personality, is always defined
as sin, and thus inOpposition. to he Word ofGod. Hence
the very same ‘point 1whichisthe real ‘point of. contact” is also
the
the pointof2 26.8reatest ‘contradiction : namely, -“responsibility.
as the sin pees bein Ing understands.
U it, tthe legalistic under-
standing a God and oneself, Legalism, too, is a kind of
vresponsible ‘being, that is, the function of responsibility is
reversed, and becomes responsibility in the ‘un--real’ sense,
being which is in opposition to the Word of God, as, con-
539
 MAN IN REVOLT

versely, faith is the right kind of responsibility, that which

corresponds to the Word of God which calls man, is real being
in the Word of God. Thusfwhile the structure
of responsible_
‘men, in any. case,.only
being as such is presupposed—only
\beings endowed with reason, can hear the WordofGod—the _
material aspect of this beingof
man, that is, man_as_godless,
or_si
or nner,
‘under the Jaw’ is that which cannot serve as_
a ‘point of contact,’ but is denied.)The soul that passes through
his process of allowing the self-centred, autonomous reason
* to be broken up, comes out into the light of faith. The Passive
- endurance of this painful process is what the Bible describes
as ‘repentaIn it man is extremely active, but his activity
nce.’
consists in fassz0, in self-denial,intheabdication ofthe sovereign
AT,’ of that “confident despair’ which clings to the divine promise
5a O

, ofgrace. The defiant ‘I’isovercome by the loveofGod,

_ . surrenders itself as a defeated captive, and at the same time
--exults in the fact that it has been taken captive. For now it
knows that it has once more become what it was originally,
and to which it was in opposition. But how this activity of
the human heart isawakened and arousedto such
rs

a pitch —
of intensity, in the divine actio, which the actio of man appre-
es

hends aspassto, is possible, and how it takes place, is, and _

atascy BR pre = 7 Seay x PALIT OT LANG LO PR PERNT A FLEAS A ioainy

~ remain a mystery.
s, What matters to us is the preservation
of the character of this happening: that from the point ofview
ea,
of the content it is God’s sole act and gift, that from the side
USHA ica Sad panini— Si RAST

* MAYA i rigidpagan 4a sk dni &WiAids le laa ga Aid ae eae

of
RPDS SAP

man it RATAN
Ne lize ated raniesterica

isAMEthe
t ntemAln eR

supreme,
RA OOS

aii ritcintaelio ORDi Yt

andmunighinsndy
a Nr Ne PRUE
indeed at
the only total act, and
rca
: oth th
these
CRT, (TSSoe
truths are united from the very outset, and a

in accordance with the Creation, because this active quality

of the being of man is already grounded inthe divine action.
Because man’s being as a whole, as responsible being, whethe r
that of the sinner or of the believer, is being derived from the
Word of God and destined for the Word of God, and this
remains irrevocably, for curse or blessing, in the love or in
the wrath of God—therefore the turning from sin to faith, from
falling away from God to return unto God, is!God’s new
|creation of man’s original state,} and is at the same time the
apprehension of that way of being which, even when turned
in the wrong direction, is still the being, or the nature of man,
and here this means: responsive actuality.
549
 APPENDIX III

The old dogmatic theologians of the Reformation, once more

following Augustine, expressed this in their teaching that sin
is not the ‘substance’ but the ‘accident’ of sinful human exis-
tence. But the Aristotelian distinction between substance and
accident is not adequate. It is just as dangerous to affirm the
substantial nature of sin like Flacius, as it is to deny it, like
the protagonists of the Formula of Concord. Personal being
cannot be compressed within this schema of ideas ;God’s action
in man is not causal, and the being of man is not substantial.
If, however, that is understood we shall then again return to
the personal type of doctrine of the Bible—which seems so
paradoxical to abstract thought—which simply places these
two thoughts side by side: God alone must.do it, but man must
‘work out_his own salvation ‘with fear and trembling.’ (Fzaith|
omes from God alone>,but
iffaith does not come into being | A)
man alone isto lame.Shela faithfreely, from pure mercy, |
yet faith doesnot come into being save through the obedience
of man.|Every attempt to go beyond this dualism, which yet
plainly expressesthe priority of God, and to reach a unified
formula, destroys 1thepersonal |understanding of the relation
between God and man and changes it into something material.
The relation between God and man cannot be described by
the formula of the sole causality of God, or of the sole operation
of God, because!God’s creation of man has from the outset
created a relation of ‘ er-againstness’|which—this is God’s
will—has the result thatleven the divine action in man always
respects the fact that/man is “subject. Eventhe |divine ‘action
of grace is not an.arbitrary action, butit is“Intercourse orf
personal ‘communion,n, Jj rand indeed the only real intercourse’ ~
which is the only pure contrast to any arbitrary treatment,
because it consists in the factthat God’s word oflove changes
\reme ne

any < coercion that it is the self-surrender ‘ofGod for us. God
is greatly concerned that man, even as sinner, shall not be
overwhelmed, but addressed as one whom God confronts. The
most decisive. thing which can be said about the ‘pointt of
contact” is thefact that the «
divineoperation in man takesplace

"541
 APPENDIX IV

PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL

ANTHROPOLOGY

Tue discussion of this theme has entered upon a new phrase

with the rise of the ‘Existenzphilosophie,” thatis;"
With” the™
entrance
of Kierkegaard into the sphere
ofphilosophy.
The -
sie Gatssantor i pete

i
‘ontology of Heidegger is the point at which it hascrystallized.
If at the moment we are hearing less about it, this does not
mean that it has been completed, nor does it mean that it
has proved unproductive. The reason why this discussion has
been arrested is purely a practical one. Like so many
important theological problems, it has had to stand aside for
the moment in order that all the effort may be concentrated
on the defence of the existence of the Church itself, and the
preservation of a position in which the Bible is central. But
the urgency and the importance of this theme is as great as ever.
The question, which, on the side of the philosophers, has
been discussed by Léwith and Kuhlmann (in spite of the
‘Theological Anthropology’ written by the latter, he must be
reckoned among the philosophers and not among’ the theolo-
gians), and, on the side of the theologians, has been discussed
by Bultmann, Heim, Schumann and myself, primarily concerns
the relation between
philosophical ontology and_ theology
(cf. chiefly No. 5 in the Zectschrift
fur Theologie und Kirche
1930
and No.2 1931; also Bultmann: Glaube und Verstehen; Schumann,
Um Kirche und Lehre). Here it is impossible to discuss the views
of the various authors in detail, butI must confine myself to
the effort to make my own position quite clear; this is all the
more necessary since in many respects I have advanced beyond
what I have said in earlier books.

1..Whatever
the claims
of philosophy may be, Imaintain
that faith must never renounce its own ontology. Being—not
a ee Tr a elenter analameriainieldind mali ad a Chee IT " ene 2

merely the existent—as being created, and indeed as being

created by and in the Word of God, is equally a being of its
own kind as the Being of God is the ground of all that exists,
542
 APPENDIX IV

no, definition,
and of His manner of being. There isabsolutely_no
which is more ‘original’ than this: Creator and creature. God _
llthe
is the Creator not only of all that exists,“but also ofall
“forms of existence,€,just asthere is no reason which is higher
than God in;which the Divine Being might have a share—God
is the Creator also of the reason. If I had space to develop
it, this could be illustrated most plainly by means of the idea
of contingency which seems to be a purely philosophical idea.
In reality, this idea is an offshoot from the Idea of Creation;
at least the pre-Christian idea of contingency (Aristotle), like
all Greek thought, betrays the pantheistic idea of continuity
as its background ; thus it is not radical like the Christian idea.
The same is true of the idea of Being in general. The thought.
of the being of the existent is fundamentally ddifferent according.
posers serene

as the idea of the Creator lies behind it or ‘not. “There iig NO

neutral being. already .betrays | its “back-
Every idea of being alr
ground, W. ether it be that o metaphysics 0or offaith.
A se eal EEN a

SAS SANGIN LAELIA LRA I

MEE

2. This becomes particularly clear in the Sein des Daseins.*

The_ definition ‘creaturely|being”, applies.absolutely to. the
character ofofbeing as such, ‘and iis thus an ontological;and_not
‘an ontal category ; ‘all the more is the historical, or ‘being-in-
‘decision,’ the contrast between Evgentlichkeit and Uneigentlichkett,?
etc., not only accidentally—through the never complete
objectivity of the thinker, as I used to believe—but necessarily,
an_ontological category, the content of which iscompletely
different, according: as one thinks from the Christian point of,
_view ¢ornot. Itis a leading idea ofmy “book that the structure.
of thebeing «ofman, as such, is to be understood. theologically,
and not (or not merely) hiloso} hically.‘Being-in-responsibility,
andnh (orpotms rey) Pivosontica and all the further defini-
tions which depend upon this fundamental one, of guilt, etc.,
are such that, formal though they may be, they are conceived
quite differently according as. they start from the Christian
ideaofCreation not.
or Die
nany case I would feel obliged to reverse Heim’s statement
1 See Contemporary German Philosophy by Werner Brock, pp. 109 ff., for
Heidegger. cf. God Transcendent: Karl Heim, pp. 140 and 149. “ssTrahtslators
2 See Translator’s Note, Chap. I, p. 19.
543
 MAN IN REVOLT <

that ‘every theology which believes in a personal God applies

ontological presuppositions about the structure of then ‘I-Thou”
relation to the relation between God and man,’ and to say:
every philosophy of the present day which deals with the
“T-Thovw’ relation uses, perhaps without being aware oftheeact;
Christian
an categories,
| while thinking that they are using
g purely eS
rational p hilosophical ‘ideas.
i Tt is no accident that the Exis-
tential -pemosoptica was created by the Christian theologian
Kierkegaard ;1 further, it.is no accident that Heidegger, in
his attempt to set himself free from the Christian presuppositions
of this philosophy, has already given a different meaning to
the fundamental ontological concepts of Kierkegaard (for
instance, to the idea of the ‘existential’). I hope that in my
book I ee proved that it is precisely the understanding of
the structure of existence as such from the standpoint of the
Christian idea of God and Man which alone makes it possible
to perceive the true connexion between Humanity and Faith,
and solves a mass of theological problems which are only
‘problems’ when viewed superficially, or apart from the real clue.

3. I believe that Iam aware of the danger of thisS_point :

of view. It lies in‘the “fact ‘that theology. threatens” to become
‘a universalsc
science._
And indeed what is there |leftfor.unfortunate
‘philosophy 1if even theformal is no longer left to ‘it?“Andd what
will happen to theology ‘if
if iteven presumes to produce its own
“Togic?” T believe, however, that it will not be too difficult, at
least in principle, to ameid this danger. Of course there is no
special science of Christian logic or. mathematics 2 as_such,
although—following some hints thrown out by Leibniz—I
am not so sure that the Christian faith could not throw light
upon certain problems of mathematics. The Jess a truth has
to do with the centre of personality, th the more autonomous _
“Is reason within it
it; that is, the difference, or the contrast
_between “the pointTor view“SPthe believer or Ofthe unbeliever,
“comes out in it less’ and less. Butiin theproblem o ofthe being_
of xman as responsible ‘being, ‘the formal and_the material sare
SURO

originally, 1in harmony with the purpose of

RENCE
EETHY IS

« tthe Creation, one.

PY STEFFEN Sere Rc ecrirohenen
1 See Contemporary German Philosophy, by Weoner Brock, on Kierkegaard:
pp. 82 ff.— Translator.
544
 APPENDIX IV

This, indeed, is the really revolutionary meaning of Luther’s

doctrine of the Imago. There is no neutral idea ofresponsibility.
into which the Christian content could th
thenbe _ incorporated ;;
but the idea of responsibility itself iseither a Christianor
a
non-Christian idea; it is either “Tegalisticsith autonomous, or
eu tngearneeet faith. In the thought of Heidegger it
is secretly derived from the philosophy of Fichte; in «that
of Kierkegaard it is explicitly Christian. Through the Fall
alone does the separation between formal responsibility (and
accordingly :Humanity) and its closer determination as content
arise. Formal fumanitas is not the presupposition of being-in-
the-Word-of-God, but the opposite: it is that which is left of
being-in-the-Word, even after the Fall.
The statement of Bultmann: ‘since there is no other existence
(Dasein) than this which constitutes itself in its freedom, the
formal structures of existence which are shown in the onto-
logical analysis are neutral, that is, they are valid for all
existence (Dasein)’ (Glaube und Verstehen, p. 312), is therefore the
mp&tov weddos. The understanding of freedom is quite
different when it leads to the concept of a freedom in itself
(as in the thought of Heidegger), or as in the thought of
Christianity, to that of freedom in God, which as such is never
neutral, but is always defined as either negative or positive,
as sin or as faith, as either a lost freedom or a real freedom.
If, however, as Bultmann says, faith ‘leads back to the original
Creation’—how can a non-believing philosophy know of this
possibility?—even, as Bultmann says, as meaningless?

4. But the problem has been rendered still more complicated

by the fact that man is never without somee knowledge cof God ;
whetherrightlyornot, to ‘some _extent_hhe is always aware “of
Him. Rational ideas about t the being of man are always,
eae theological ideas, however formal they may seem to
be, namely, ideas of a reason which is set free from God, and
therefore one which regards man from a legalistic point of view,
that is, from the point of view of reason which misunderstands.
This is particularly true of the idea of freedom. This idea
certainly is that with which we think first of all; it is the
‘pre-understanding of the right understanding ay is in
545
 MAN IN REVOLT

harmony with faith, to which therefore preaching, but always

polemically, appeals. Even the formal concepts of every philo-
sophical ontology are positions of sinful reason, from which,
it is true, not reason but sin must be eliminated. From the
standpoint of methodology this means: we always have already
a philosophical ontology of some kind before we have faith;
but it would be a hopeless underto
takin
try to creategthe
right philosophical ontology without faith. Rather, the right eH
m

‘ont ofthe
olog being”ofymai arises—approximately—thrstandpoint
the criticalsifting of rational concepts fromthe
oughof
faith; that means, through a fundamentall
Christian philo-
y
sophy.. It was as a Christian philosopher that Kierkegaard
created the ‘Existential’, philosophy, (it was as a Christian
|thinker that Ebner discovered the theme of *I-Thou’j-no
Greek, however great a genius, would have ever understood
such a theme—it was as a Biblical thinker that Martin Buber
recognized the significance of the contrasts between ‘I’ and
‘It,’ ‘I’ and ‘Thou.’ It is as a Christian thinker that Karl Heim
has established his theory of dimensions which in essentials is
simply the attempt to create a Christian ontology. —
The fact, that there are subjects about which in pointof
fact—at least approximately—there is neutral philosophical
thought, ought not to lead us astray to the point of believing
Mans ERIN TREY is LIT ILI REED LST PES LENORE
LTLt IT LLNS LEN AS ANT EATEN ANA OSAP AIOE i A UH RAN agIO (ss eal ceil

bre ear ae z -
that there is also a neutral ontology of being or of existence.
: RESET NEUES Oo NEON reece
cw ae mity gaitsyp GRAIN TRIORGNINRLEISR
ADRES IIE
eer cAI tH EA UPTO ROC clemerase

Where we are dealing with ultimates—and

Uae ROH M0 5 SRP SE

the concept of
ban.

Being is “truly an“ultimaté—there”

can be no philosophical
sen Pre ASANTE RTE ITER NY TOES IY P|

acaeea Belief in the division of labour between philosophy

and theology, which also colours much of the theologyofthe
‘Reformation, must give place to the view that between theology
and philosophyor,
, to putitmore correctly, between rational
{thought and thought governed by faith, ther isa dialectic
e eth 2
elation, which simply reflects the” dialectic"ofthe Law and
theCoapeh [that 3, 2 view of man whichis either legalistic or _
believing. So long as this is not perceived, we shall continue
to miss the point, while we argue as ‘Humanists’ or as ‘Refor-
mation Christians,’ and each will see his advantage in the—
rightly perceived—weakness of the other. How much my book
contributes to the solution of this problem, I do not know.
But of this I am sure: the problem lies where I have seen it.
546
 APPENDIX V

THE UNDERSTANDING OF MAN IN ANCIENT |

‘PHILOSOPHY AND IN CHRISTIANITY

THE conception of man in antiquity is a problem which I

am not competent to treat adequately, as a whole. Here all
I can do will.be to discuss what everyone knows from some
points of view which are suggested by comparison with the
Christian understanding of man. In addition to the original
sources themselves—so far as I am acquainted with them—I
have made use of the following books: Jager: Paideia; Groete-
huysen: Philosophische Anthropologie, Part I, The Ancient World,
op. cit.; Schneidewin: Antike Humanitdt; Miihl: Die antzke
Menschheitsidee; Reitzenstein: Werden und Wesen der Humanitat
im Altertum; Bonhoffer: Die Ethik des Stoikers Epiktet ;Bonhoffer:
Epiktet und das Neue Testament; Deissner: Paulus und Seneca;
Nygren: Eros und Agape; Reinhardt: Kosmos und Sympathe;
Rohde: Psyche; Bultmann: Das christliche Gebot der Nachstenliebe;
as well as the works on the History of Ancient Philosophy by
Zeller and Uberweg-Praechter which have already been men-
tioned. The aim of this comparative presentation of this subject
is not in any sense historical, it is exclusively theological and
practical; what I want to do is to show as clearly as possible
the contrast _between “the vviewy of man in ancient philosophy
and that of the Bible and the. Christian faith. At the same time
“as has already:been said inChapter VII—the >
presupposition
of all thisis the fact that Ancient, Humanism, in spite of, and
precisel}
sely in_this contrast. to~the “Christian “understanding or
jan, dsone ‘of the clearest ‘‘traces ‘of the.Imago De’ which can
‘Be:seenin fallenman from the point ofview of faith. |
1. In spite of the various modifications which the ancient»
idea of man underwent in the course of the six or eight hundred
years of Greek and Roman thought, it does possess a certain
common element, which,especially when compared with the
Christian conception of man, strikes one immediately, and
makes the differences appear less important. Formally, this _
547
 MAN IN REVOLT

distinctively common element is ratio alism—that is, the

rational understanding of ‘™man—maiterially, it is Pantheism,
‘understood iin a very ‘bre
road sense. —

_2.. Ancient
Ancient Humanism, like all other forms of humanism,
earcha religious
OED background; to the extent in which the religious~
background disappears, the distinctive character of man, as
distinguished from the rest of the natural order, also disappears,
becoming at first unimportant and insignificant, till at last it
fades away altogether. The distinctive elementiin man, upon PWIA
the
the perception of which theoretical Humanism, a and upon the
“assertion
of which practicalHumanism
H iisisbased, i:
1Ss the humanum,
which|for,Greek.
Gre thought isalso a.divinun..NTR
humanum based
is
upon_a divinum, ‘This is the common element in the
e idea of
man both in ancientt philosophy and_itinn_Christianity. The "_
~ contrast lies in “the sphere of the. tent, ‘and the manner in
which this divinum is based on this humanum, and how the
relation is determined between these two entities.

3. The divinum, on which ancient humanity knows itselfto

be based, is an ae of of. God. which. is_ either. “pluralistically-
personal or
or“monisticall -im ersonal._ In Homeric pol ytheism__
the relation ‘between -
‘theTumanum and the “‘divinum ds
i “extremely _
uncertain (cf. the work, still very instructive, of Nagelsbach:
Homerische Theologie) ;in some way or aines men come from
the gods; but the relation between both is not really essential,
or such that it constitutes man’s nature. Accordingly, the
distinctive element in man, as against nature, does not stand
out very clearly. Man is still to a very great extent conceived
as a natural being. Similarly, the unity of mankind is either
questionable, or it has not yet become a problem.
itis only in the sphere of philosophical reflection. thatthe
Peer

relation between both “conceptions comes clearly into the field

of.vision. The divinum, however, which emerges in ‘this‘philo-
‘sophical reflection—which is certainly mostly still connected
with religious and irrational elements—is on the one hand a
more or less rational, on the other hand a more or less pan-
theistic conception of God. All Greek thinkers, from Plato to
Plotinus, speak about the divinity in a manner which, as
548
 APPENDIX V

Bonh6ffer says of Epictetus, “represents a mixture of Theism,

Pantheism and Polytheism, which is scarcely intelligible to
our modern ideas’ (Die Ethik Eptktets, p. 82). This, however,
is no accident, but it is in the nature of the case—namely,
in the rational idea of God. What is disclosed to thought cannot
be the living personal God of faith and of revelation. The reason,
by its very nature, cannot get beyond the idea of spiritual
laws, of the Logos of reason which pervades the All. Reason
can only posit that which is in accordance with the law which
is the presupposition of rational thought; to it everything else
is ‘exaggerated.’ On the other hand, the idea of reason as the
essential sign of divine Being leads to a kind of personalism;
the divinity is represented as thinking and willing. Here is the
same oscillation which we have seen in the thought of Kant
(see above, p. 113). In so far, however, as these thinkers still
—or like Posidonius and Plotinus, once more—stand within
a religious tradition, their rational philosophical ideas are also
always interwoven with religious and personalistic motifs, which,
on their side, are mingled with polytheism. Even Epictetus,
who ‘perhaps comes closest to the Theistic idea of God, of
all philosophers before and after Christ’ (Bonhéffer, loc. cit.,
p. 81) and the Roman Stoics, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius,
are no exception to this rule, although in them all the purely
practical purpose of their thought makes room for the emer-
gence of the personalistic element. ‘Seneca also teaches that
every name can be applied to the divinity—this reminds us
of Goethe’s words in Faust, Name ist Schall und Rauch—for him
God, Fate, Providence, Nature and World are identical con-
ceptions.’ To the question: What is the divinity? he answers,
in a wholly Pantheistic manner: ‘the soul of the All... all
that thou seest and all that thou dost not see. Then alone will
its peculiar greatness be perceived beyond which nothing
greater can be conceived, if it alone is all, it dominates its
work from without and from within’ (Natur. quaest. lib. I.
Praef. 13 in Deissner, op. cit., p. 19). The same is true of
Marcus Aurelius. “Usually by God he understands the Hege-
monikon (ruling part) of the All, the World Reason,’ or, more
naturalistically expressed, ‘All-Nature’ (Bonhdffer, op. cit.,
pp. 246 ff.). The great classical philosophers, like Plato, have
We 30)
 MAN IN REVOLT

a still more impersonal idea of God than these later, popular

philosophers. In Plato, for instance, we find the same confusing
blend of polytheistic myth, used half playfully and half seriously,
of the rational World Reason which pervades the All, and
monotheistic elements of the Idea of God. Plato speaks of the
world Creator (Timaeus, 30 B) only in connexion with obviously
mythical ideas; in the same Dialogue he also says that the
world has become God, and that the constellations have become
gods (Tim. 40 D). In Heraclitus, as in other older Stoics, the
pantheistic and impersonal element far outweighs the theistic
personal element, although the idea of the Logos, as the World
Reason, understood as an active idea of the world, is continually —
pressing towards the idea of a Divine Self.

4. In exact accordance with this is the way in which the

humanum is understood as grounded in the divinum. Here too
there is the same oscillation between the ideas of creation,
emanation and immanence, in the sense of ‘being part of.’
So far as the human reason is concerned—and that is the real
humanum, that distinguishes man from all other beings—the
idea predominates that it is itself of a divine nature, and indeed
that it is identical with the Divine Reason, It is the idea of
affinity with God which, in various forms, constitutess the 2
NebQermegeaie

fundaméntal 1 3 idea of ancient, Humanism,

f Fir.
Irst, it Issolely ‘this
th -
‘affinity. with, the. ‘divinity..which_ makes mann_capable_ of the
| enowledae. of the divine, as only the £ye. which is accustomed
to thelicht‘can kbear. ‘thee rays
ra ¢ofthe sun’ (Posidonius, according
eae op. cit., p. 67). Lhe theoretical possibility of the
rational ieicige of God is based upon this presupposition
of the identity of the human and the Divine Reason; at the
same time, however, the limitations of human knowledge”aare
“recognized. “Thus ‘the human reason is a fragment, a Spark, iS Ti

a
splinter, of the Divine "Reason ; nevertheless, here ‘there is _
_similarity aareenntres
(0 “The same thought is also ‘expressed “as
the indwelling of the divine in the human reason; in the spirit
of man as such—in the reason as such, in rationality—the
Divine Spirit is immanent. The concrete idea of spirit of the
Stoics in particular allows such an identification of the divine
and human reason, even if only in a partial way; the human
559
 APPENDIX V

spirit is particula Dei. This means that the humanum_does_not,

consist so much in a personal r
Telaation. to. the» divinity. as.in.a,
nature, that is, in the rational —nature, ‘The Reason is the
divinity which lodges within man, in “the slave as well as in
the nobleman (Seneca, Epist. xxxi. 11). (That in Plato the
actual relation is at least foreshadowed, see above, p. 99.)
_Here is the root of the idea which has had such a disastrous
PbO RA i ing eS Poe AeES wert AEE PoE NY As att embaL cs e SA TN NS

influence 1 upon the anthropology of ‘the “Church::.man., Sore

rational substance. Think, for example, ofthe idea offpersonality
of Boethius: persona est naturae rationalis individua substantia (De
duobus naturis et una persona Christi, c. 3). Being divine is ascribed
to man as a natural quality, in virtue of his rational nature. aitSS hake MANS coleSonic a aay Ee SAIatpl ease IS ATAU a?

This nature cannot be “perverted like an act; it is what it is

aan —— Tee ‘ee lela a

in virtue of its present being. There isno decisive importance Title aoc A laa Ys Pierce le baa

in the content or direction. of ‘this,‘spiritual aact. ascompared _

“with this
is formal structure. Here the idea of sin1 cannot SEYESP.
a REE STIS AIO ODD ROGERS HNL SOR A A RS SEN HE
pve aE

5. Hence it follows that the Divine1

is“ae the potent
present in iman; all t at is Aa
pisnccnisansan eesima “Foie
needed
A
is to
dans 82a TN
maa eet
RESI e aRan ah.
nowledge i
t to_God.
Jnust... become aware of his relation “to._(
Sees Fine HRC
dnamnesis, or introspection, or reflection. upon | oneself are
are vail.
all
thatisors to make the divine-human possibility | into a
SA ST

Teality. Here there can never be any idea ofa. real contrast
between God_ and man,1,between
the will of God and human
self-existence ;“evil can never consist in anything other than
either in not knowing—that is, the latent possibility is not
actualized—or in the fact that the physical nature or the
domination of the senses either does not perrnit or actually
hinders the spirit from expressing itself. For ignorance is due
to mental inertia, which, again, is due to the fact that the
sense-life is a drag upon the higher part of man. Thus evil
never springs from thehigher part of man—from the “mind —
is notwide_
or Sp is simply‘due to thefact ‘that the spirit
or
awake, which again is the f ult to} the sense-nature. |‘Evil,
_therefore, is not a ‘personal but a ‘metaphysical principle ; it
_is not ;act, but nature, If the positive relation with God is not
conceived in a personal way, but as part of nature, then the
negative relation also must be understood in the same way;
here, indeed, we can scarcely speak of a negative relation with
oon
 MAN IN REVOLT

God at all. Evil is not enmity against God, but it is imperfection, -

weakness, indolence ; in short, a defect, not an act of the spirit.

6. The positive relation with God, however, the right under-

standing of oneself in the divinity, is realized as knowledge
of man’s participation in Divine. Being, and therefore leads
quite logically to the characteristic idea of middle and later
Stoicism, of a republic ‘common to man and gods, of a great
commonwealth guided and directed by the recta ratio as by
a Divine Law” (Panaetius in Muhl, op. cit., p. 77), a thought
which characteristically returns once more in Kant (cf. the
Grundlegung zu einer Metaphysik der Sitten, Kehrbach, pp. 75, 95;
104, ff.).

7. If then the humanum as formal-rational being, or spiritual

being, is by nature substantially based upon the Divine Reason,
then in relation to man it must work out as the recognition
of that element which is common to all, of that which is alike
in all, and thus in an egalitarian manner. To do this it is not
necessary to deny differences of individuality; their value will
differ in accordance with the view one holds of the physical
part of man. But so much at least is clear: the individual |

elementis the non-essential, it is that which is based on physical —

being, not onspiritual. being...All thatisessential issolely that
which belongs to the species, ‘that which is:typical, the same,
the universal, that which is rational and in accordance |with
‘laws. The relation. to man which, as the ‘Humane,’ results from
‘this, is that of respect, which, Wowenes can well be combined
with a certain enthusiasm, ahd: iene the pantheistic idea is
coloured with mysticism, may become a ‘cosmic sympathy,’
or an emotional awareness of a universal affinity. All human
beings are related to one another, and should, as such, love
each other. ‘Humanity’ arises on the one hand as philanthropy
and on the other as a sense of world citizenship.
But just as the personal character of the Idea of God is
peer CRITI OTST POETS
uncertain and fluctuating, so is it too with the idea of love.
The legalism, of the reason does not really ‘admit anything moreOre |
_than recognition in the sense of respect on the basis off equality.
ann yarn eee poreememeernn—

ee rane Lanne
“Tt
It_would_ then_ be. more. correct alg speak of
of _enthusiasm “for
fo
552
 APPENDIX V

Heaharaey than of
of the love of one’s neighbour. Homo sacrares
homini ;this saying of Seneca describes most beautifully of what
ancient Humanism is capable (Epist. xcv. 33): ‘Each. enjoys,
my: favour because he bears the name of man’ (De Clem. I. 1 st)
‘Both sayings describe the’ recognition of the divine origin of
every other human being, and in that his inviolability; but
there is here no irace of the ideas of love as self-sacrifice, or
living for others. Philanthropy should be accorded to man in
so far as he is worthy of it, not according to his need. The
idea of universal cosmic sympathy may indeed produce some-
thing which resembles what Paul expresses in his parable of
the ‘Body of Christ’; but this ‘cosmic sympathy’ has no sense
of a sacred obligation. Just as the idea of God oscillates between
the pantheistic idea of the All-One and the rational world
law, so also our relation to our fellow-man oscillates between
mere respect, in rigid accordance with law,- "and love in a
_rather ae
aesthetic. sense, L105.The Stoic
S iccannot rreally be united :
_with the other man because he i1s s sufficient unto himself, he.
iss independent.” He recognizes, it is true, that the other ‘also
‘possesses reason; but he hasnoneed Of the other, since
in his
“own reason he has access to the highest goods, and because _
to him the supreme : good 1is the _Preservation of his ‘indepen-
SATAN BY a IRR N

dence 2an his freedom. As Humanism is rationalistic,it is also

Tiberalistic, and therefore also individualistic.
Even inin Plato the relation of the Spiritual man to the com-
munity is 1ss something .secondary ;1it is a concession. _Actually,
he “ought to sever himself completely from “society, in order
gen SESEP ALE BSA A orm

“to givehimself up “wholly and without interruption to the

“contemplation of the Ideas, to the way of redemption through
thought. The connexion erie ‘the Polis, with the State, is only
recognized because he who knows guides the State. In the philo-
sophy of the Cynics and of the Stoics the connexion with society
was still looser. Here we have the world citizen ; the cosmopolitan
ideal is the consequence of the rational idea of humanity which
has been thought out logically. For the real philosopher—in
contrast to the statesman who is a dilettante philosopher—
- however, this world-citizenship is not real citizenship, it does
not entail concrete political responsibility. The Roman Stoic,
however, is too much of a Roman, that is, a political person,
553
 MAN IN REVOLT

to become logically a Stoic sage; he tries to find a compromise

between political and social obligations to the community and
philosophical isolation and self-sufficiency.
In the Stoic idea of the sage, however, as understood and
expressed by the later Greeks, the self-sufficiency of the
individual as the bearer of the Divine Reason is based.
Certainly—so ffar as he has to do pee the other man he must
meet himhim in a way
wa proper ‘to
to | the dignity of man, as one who
is“spiritually related, as a bearer Le
of t which
dwells in himself, and he must even do ‘him “good. “But this —
‘social task is a parergon; the Stoic sage is an occasional
philanthropist, he practises love of his neighbour by the way.
His main. calling is the cultivation of his own virtue and its _
"preservation under difficult circumstances. “But these difficult
‘circumstances allissue from the physis and from external Fate;
his task is ataraxia, the power to remain undisturbed, and |
thus ultimately to be self-contained.

8. One final consequence we have not yet noted: the self-

PORE ERIE
_sufficiency ofman over “against God. The: relationto the deity,
_as we haveve§seen, is not conceived as an actual relation, but 35~
“as a ‘substantial ‘one,a ‘similarity, affinity-in-being. Heres
era: |=
“however, there is an oscillation between the’ ‘mystical and
pantheistic and the rational and legalistic pole. The rational~
ine
-line. of development ‘Teads to the idea of self--redemption through -
anamnesis, through philosophical reflection, through soaring*to™~
‘the heights ‘of the Divine.
The Platonic philosophy knows a
“way of salvation’ (Nygren) which corresponds to the myth
of the soul. The soul which has fallen out of its heavenly
existence into the earthly existence, once more aspires to rise
upwards, and finds the way back through the contemplation
of the Ideas. The soul redeems itself by means of right thought.
Thanks to its rational nature it has the power and the possi-
bility of cleansing itself, and of once more uniting itself with
the Divine Being. This religious gnosis is simply self-“redemption.
In speculative mysticism man’s relation to the deity is rather
different. Here the emphasis is rather on the rational being
which belongs to the soul, its own rational nature, than upon
a continual participation in the divine life of the spirit. Even
554
 APPENDIX V

in Ancient Greece mysticism—to speak of a ‘Roman mysticism’

would be a sort of contradictio in adjecto—has something which
at least resembles the New Testament doctrine of Grace. In
reality, here too there is a contrast which is no less sharp,
but it is hidden, All mysticism, even the Hellenistic mysticism_
and that of Plotinus~6f Tate
of Posidonius, antiquity, secks
ecstasy, or in the
the experience of
“union with the deity in

‘the ancient world—the initiative in this divine experience is _

always taken by man. The movement goes forth from him,
his search for God, and his absorption in God is the movens.
‘A God does not hold intercourse with a man’ (Symposium,
203 A). Even as mystic the Greek never abandons the funda-
mental idea of adrefovola. Greek mysticism, and mysticism
of God. Hence_
in general, knows nothing of the forgiving love
“here, too, the mystical relation with God islittle affected by
the guilt of _
the contrast between the Diviné command and by ee oes ei
y
breaking
NE
eal REAcre rene naraMa g
sin. The rigidity of the rational is not overcome
reece ° °

eA

the autonomy of the Self, but by an aesthetic softening. Here,

too, we see that between God and man there is no real relation
of ‘over-againstness’ but only that of immanence, thus not real
dependence but affinity of nature, not a personal and actual
relation, but one, which is natural and substantial.

g. The characteristic element of ancient Humanism, how-

ever, isnot mysticism but. the idea of the world Jaw, and of
the lex naturae which naturally belongs toae human nature. The -a /
Greek spirit can only bear a certain amount of the influence.
SY re eee ‘ pean vena
Sg PARNER AETHER

of Oriental mysticism ; ifit goes beyond this it becomes estranged

“from itself and the Humanism peculiar to it. ‘Then, too, it is
has had the greatest practical influence ~
which e
_the lex natura
and also, through the F athers and the
iés, upon the Middle Ages, and on later times, The
‘both on antiquity,
‘Scholast
doctrine of the lex naturae not only formed an important element
in public opinion which, through the educated classes, pene-
trated into the life of the people at large—exercising a liberating,
civilizing, uniting influence, softening the harshness of human
destiny, and affecting the social life of antiquity as a whole;
but, above all, through the Roman Law it has influenced
5595
 MAN IN REVOLT

men’s views of law as awhole—the legislation, the legal practice,

and the political life of Europe—as one of the main factors in
the history of Europe. It is that idea which sums up most fully
and comprehensi
Humanism,
vely all that has to be saidabout ancient
and shows most simply what it was.
The three elements which we have recognized as essential
are contained
in it: the rationalism of the /ex, the pantheism
of the natura,
and the natural immanence of the divine in man.
The lex,the Divine Law which prevails inthecosmos is the
_main concern..The question whether this is a law related to
acts, orto the moral order, cannot be answered. It is both,
and it is neither. It is related to facts, in so far as the Divine
Law effectively determines and orders the world, quite apart
from the will of man; it is related to the moral order in so
far as man ought to live duodoyounévws rH dvoe, as that,
in particular, is the sum-total of all attitude to law, and thus
the ‘law of nature’ is the supreme norm of all ethics and all
law. But it is not a law related to facts in the sense in which
we use the phrase ‘law of nature’; it is not a law related to
the moral order in the sense in which we, within the Christian
tradition, are aware of ‘obligation.’ This oscillation between
what is and what ought to be in the idea of law is a characteristic
expression of the ancient idea of the cosmos, in which God
and the world, what ought to be and what is, are one—a
unity which has been destroyed by Christianity. The fact that
for us the law of nature and the law of the moral order have
been separated so widely from one another, that we can no
longer reduce them to a common denominator, is the effect
of Christianity, or to put it more exactly, of the Christian Idea
of God and of Creation.
The rationalism of the idea of God is, firstly, based upon
the fact that this lex includes the possibility of the knowledge
of God immanent within itself; the rationalism of the order
of internal human relations is gro inundthe fact that
ed this
lexisthe practical fundamental law. The rational, legal know-
ledge of God can never be truly personal;
Na esi ncaaTNH D RCA al ln Se pay REN
iy mei eS Se
the legalistic relation
ofr netre rors

to one’s fellow-man can never be truly personal. The barrier

ieeadibdedubsaibiias siscacaieiak" mosis <¢paaumee tateea ackcae

ofthe oneis the barrier of the other. To the impersonality

of God there corresponds, on the one hand, abstractness in
556
 APPENDIX V

our relation to the other man—the abstract ethos of humanity

(respect), the abstract unity of humanity (cosmopolitanism),
and the abstract idea of equality—on the other hand, the
barrier between man and man in general, the principle of
autarchy. If Ipossess the essential in myself, I have_no need
_of the other. If I have the essential in
i myself, the main task

“my_inward freedom and my inward balance Ppainst all dis-

turbance from without.
Secondly, there is the Law of N ature. God _.and Nature are
cae Alacer ts to assert the‘sovereignty of “God over the —
“world are
areETE
al swallowed up ;in the thought of this identity.
Hence God cannot be really ‘known as the Creator of the world,
and therefore not as really personal; accordingly there is no
real personal 1 relation with Him. Man’s relation with God is
exhausted in a kind of being, namely, iin an affinity with Him _
‘and an awareness of this relation. The necessity to perceive
‘these relations brings a certain actuality into man’s relation
with God; here decisions can be made; here there is an Either-
Or. One may see it or not see it, one may obey or disobey
that which one has seen. But once more: all attempts to assert
this actuality ultimately crumble into nothingness owing to
the, idea that man is already _ divine, that. his. divine nature

: the decision cannot be a ‘matter of life or death.

“This brin; gs us to the third element: immanence. The divine
being of nature is,
in anatural way, that is, as anatural being,
peculiar to man. Reason as such, as a possibility, as a formal
element is already the divine. 1The divine therefore cannot be
“Iost—thus the decision is not really Serious. We can no ‘more
Tose this reason than we can lose the divine patent of nobility;
all we need to do is to remind ourselves of it continually. But
B
the divine which is in man is also from the point of view of
“content ‘essentially; |the same as the divine of the deityitself.”
“Est deus in nobis, not through grace—grace which includes
within itself the human decision of faith—not through historical
events in the world, and not through Nature. Man has God
in himself in virtue of his being as man, in virtue of his birth
as_man.1. This idea is, so to speak, the very opposite of the
557
 MAN IN REVOLT

—equally non-Biblical—idea_ of the ecclesiastical, -doctrine..of-

sarasonmayr
seCo

Original Sin, namely, | that man, in virtue_of his birth, in .

GV Sra THAR a RRIF aR

virtue of his nature, is a sinner. The negative idea of nature

of Christian theology is the assertion of the truth as against
the penetration of the positive idea of nature into the eccle-
siastical doctrine, from the Stoics, from the Jlex naturae
(Pelagius). ‘The Augustinian idea of the natural inherited curse
corresponds
corres 1
to the.Stoic i
ideaa OF tthe natural inheritance ofTea ik
divine nobility defe ded by |Pelagianisr 1, an ‘idea which |holds
‘that the divine inheritance cannot be lost, an does notIeave
any room for a serious idea.of sin.

10. From what has been said both the relation to, and the
contrast to, theChristian idea of man’s being will have become.
_clear. The. ci on element. is.this: man can never.r bbe under-._.
Lei alidiasenL aicaleed ey hie NAAT aati eek ery ars Wo SS
eave

"stood apart from m.his relation t

toGod, Manis a ways, ‘irrevocably ~
related to God. But in Christianity this relatio
on to Godisan _
actual relation, responsibili as_the answer in faith and
ob ed¢lence tto.the word of the€ generous Creator. Hen
nce, although
it is true that man’s relation to God assuchcan never be lost,
the right relation may be, and indeed is, lost by sin. _The_
_xelation toGod therefore always :stands in decision it isnever
age
areDNe
nature, | because
tesR
God
G
EONIY
Is person and creates TORE
man as
ATRYN
erson.
ah rough ‘the primal decision, the personal|act of th,
the peccatum
‘the free
originis, the right relation has been lost; throuugh the
_decision, free choice, the generous grace of God
G 3 esus
in us Christ, EOE ENTER
this relation i
ee tele Ri a EMP RL
is once more restored, but 1inv SCOTS
sucha wayytl
ANE ET
that ii
‘(Appts
PARR NTs

must be once. more _appropriated by”man in an act ‘of

of decision,
in faith. “Hence, “because here, everything. depends u
upon “the
_personal ‘and the actual, thePete
relation to man also becomes
personal and actual love which cannot be summed up in
n any”
“Taw. Greek Humanism, from this point ofview, is thé“gre
great
misunderstanding of true humanity, great too in its misunder-
standing. At the present day we are striving to remove this
misunderstanding; that is why it is so important to perceive
the contrast aright. It is falsely conceived SI rg a iy
when the relation
ean tran meena
of sinful man to God is denied; when the humanum is
is made aa
profanum, The error of ancient ‘Humanism did not consist in
the fact that it regarded the humanum as divine, but that it
558
 APPENDIX V

defined the humanum as divine by nature. Hence a truly Biblical,

theology will be opposed both to the dehuman izing”of ma
cEiN
SAE OEY

sang

in virtue of his nature;

‘and fo his divinization. Man isnot divine
ut God has given him from the beginning the divine destiny
which, if he acts against it, becomes his curse, but which is
given to him once more now in faith and later in sight, now
as something imperfect and later as a perfect ‘being like unto
Him’ through Him who is equal with God from all eternity,
through the eternal Son who restores to us our lost sonship
and perfects it.

559
 INDEX

Adickes, 242 (n. 1) Bergson, 115 (n. 1), 182 (n. 1),
Adler, 37
Alexander the Great, 177
319 (n. 3), 371 (n. 1), 391
Allwohn, 37 (n. 1)
(n. 1), 396 (n. 1)
Biedermann, 124
Althaus, 292 (n. 6), 438 (n. 2), Blanke, 164 (n. 1 on 163)
467 (n. 1, n. 2), 469 (n. 1) Blumhardt, 385 (n. 2)
Anselm, 121 (n. 1) Boethius, 551
Apostolic Fathers, 84 (n. 1) Bohatec, 157 (n. 2), 531
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 57, 414 Bohl, 529 _
Archimedes, 227 Béhme, Jacoh, 237 (n. 2)
Aristotle, 23, 26, 43, 57, 60, 99, Bonhdéffer, 385 (n. 3), 547 ff.
170 (n. 3), 215, 319 (n. 1), 390 Bornkamm, 529
(n. 1), 414 (n. 1) Brock, Werner, 20 (n. 1), 239
_ Astholz, H., 454 (n. 3) (n. 2), 543 (n. 1), 544 (n. 1)
Athanasius, 84 (n. 1), 261 Bruno, Giordano, 421
Auberlen, 46 (n. 1), 366 (n. 2) Buber, Martin, 23, 245 (n. 2),
Augustine, 84, 119 (n. 1), 121,
285 (n. 3), 292 (n. 5), 368
rae" (nAsr) rer: (en)
(n. 1), 139, 146, 174 (n. 1),
(n. 1), 448 (n. 2), 512, 546
Buckhardt, Jakob, 33 (n. 1), 57
197, 219 (n. 1), 241 (n. 2), 256, Bultmann, 471 (n. 1), 474 (n. 5,
261, 264, 267, 409 (n. 1), 435 n. 6), 542, 545, 547
(n. 1), 450 (n. 2, n. 5), 451 Busse, 377 (n. 2)
(n. 1), 504, 506
Calvin, 72, 76 (n. 1), 78 (n. 1),
Baader, F. V., 156 (n. 1) 95 (n. 1), 154, 178 (n. 2), 227,
Bachofen, 45 (n. 2), 349 (n. 1), 245 (n. 1), 261, 372, 380 (n. 1),
352 (n. 2) 387 (n. 1), 453 (n. 2), 483
Baeumler, 45 (n. 2), 113 (n. 1)
Bajus, 507
(n. 3), 509
Carlyle, 342
Barth, Heinrich, 146 (n. 2), 170 Carus, 45, 366 (n. 1)
(n. 2), 239 (n. 2), 268 (n. 1) Cathrein, 115 (n. 3), 178 (n. 1)
Barth, Karl, 88 (n. 1), gt (n. x) Cicero, 46, 48, 273 (n. 1)
95, 171 (n. 1), 180 (n. 1), 181 Classen, W., 331 (n. 1)
(n. 1), 409 (n. 1), 513, 514, Clement of Alexandria, 84 (n. 1)
516 ff., 527 f., 536 Comte, 185 (n. 1)
Bartmann, 393 (n. 1), 505 Copernicus, 421
Bavink, 332 (n. 1), 379 (n. 1); Cremer, 501, 503
383 (n. 2), 394 (n. 1) Cullberg, 23 (n. 1), 292 (n. 5)
Beck, 64 (n. 3)
Bellarmine, 130 (n. 1) Dacqué, 381 (n. 2), 394
Berdyaev, 183 (n. 1), 217 (n. 2),
Dante, 345 (n. 1)
238, 287 (n. 2), 294 (n. 1), Darwin, Charles, 23, 27, 34, 35>
348 (n. 2), 368 (n. 1) 396, 446
560
 INDEX

Daumier, 337 Freud, Sigmund, 33, 37, 185

Deissner, 547 (n. 1)
Delitzsch, 64 (n. 3), 166 (n. 1), Frick, 448 (n. 1)
224
(n.2
(n. 1), 370 (0. 1), 373 Galen, 336
Democritus, 40, 280, 379 Galileo, 59
Descartes, 418 Geiger, A., 32 (n. 2)
Dessoir, 215 (n. 2) Geismar, 356 (n. 1)
Deussen, 44 (n. 1) Gethard, J., 117 -(n. 1); 130
Diels, 306 (n. 1) (n. 1), 268 (n. 4), 411 (n. 1),
Diem, H., 146 (n. 2) 415, 508
Dillmann, 367, 500 Gide, André, 129, 480 (n. 1)
Dilthey, 32 (n. 1), 57 (m. 1), 59; Gieseler, 273 (n. 2)
64, 259 (n. 1), 318 (n. I Gilson, 174 (n. 1), 242 (n. I on
Dionysius, the ‘Areopagite, 69 241)
(n. 1 on 68) Goethe, 24, 182 (n. 2), 185
Dostoevsky, 47 (n. 2), 291, 345 (nm. 1), 464,
Drews, 61 (n. 1), 208 (n. 1), 522 483 (n. 1)
Driesch, 379 (n. 1) Gogarten, 127, 292 (n. 5), 458
Du Bois-Reymond, 378 (n. 1) (n. 1), 512
Gotthelf, 47
Grisebach, 127-8, I91 (n. 2),
Ebner, 23 (n. 1), 127 (n. 2), 176 245 (n. 2)
(n. 1), 183, 292 (n. 5), 512, Groethuysen, 59, 296 (n. 1), 547
546 Gunkel, 373 (n. 1)
Ginther, 35 (n. 1), 331 (n. 2)
Eddington, 376 (n. 1), 450 (n. 3)
Eichrodt, 93 (n. 1), 108 (n. 1), Gutbrod, 73 (n. 1), 149 (n. 1),
367, 449 (n. 1), 500 254 (n. 1), 363 (n. 1 on 362)
Ellwein, 385 (n. 2)
Empedocles, 192 (n. 2), 390 (n. 1) Haas, 159 (n. 2)
Engelhardt, 286 (n. 2) Haeckel, 392
Epictetus, 385 (n. 3), 549 Haecker, 68, 183, 340 (n. 2),
Epicurus, 171 (n. 1), 174 (n. 1) 420 (n. 1), 451 (n. 1), 453
Erasmus, 344 (n. 3)
Eteocles, 193 Hamann, I01, 129
Eucken, 189 (n. 1) Harnack, Adolf, 84 (n. 1), 122
(ns), 198.1) 51272" (nea)
283 (n. 5) ;
Feuerbach, 23 (n. 1), 171 (n. 1), Harnack, Theodosius, 103 (n. 1),
185 (n. 1) 134 (n. 3), 156 (n. 2), 163
Fichte, 30, 43, 49, 101 (n. 1), (n. 1)
189 (n. 2), 250 (n. 1), 263 Hartmann, N., 129, 239 (n. 1),
(n. 1), 297 (n. 2), 304, 364 273 (n. 2) |
(n. 1), 458 (a. 1)
Flacius, 137 (n. 2), 538
Hase, 87 (n. 1)
Hauptmann, Gerhard, 38 (n. 1)
Francis, St. (of Assisi), 21 Hegel, 23, 43, 49, 190 191 (n. 2),
Frank, 511 283 (n. 1), 298 f ., 396
561
 MAN IN REVOLT

ce 19. cmt) A 7otlS Kepler, 247

(OlT), 164, (i.-r),. 489 1m), Kierkegaard, 23 (n. 1), 47, 63,
195 (n. 3, n. 4), 217 (n. 2),
234, 288 (n. 2, n. 3), 313 (n. 1),
118, 131 (n. I), 140, 143, 188
(n. 1), 191 (n. 2), 195 (n. 3),
462 (n. 2), 512, 542, 543, 544 201, 220, 221 (n. 1), 229, 252
Heim, Karl, 174 (n. 1), 403 (n. 2)5-267, 207 (ms; 1) 55285
(n. 1), 422, 424 (n. 2), 426 (n. 3), 309 (n. 4), 315, 316,
(n. 2), 542, 546 340, 356 (n. 1), 400-ff., 438
Heppe, 128 (n. 1), 265 (n. 1) 1), 443 (n. 2), 456 (n. 2),
Heraclitus, 306 (n. 1), 388 (n. 1), 486, 489 (n. 1), 512, 519,
390 (n, 1) 542, 544, 546
Herder, 473 Kittel, 160 (nm. 1), 193 (n.\1);
Hertwig, 35 (n. 1) 465 (n. 2), 469 (n. 1), 499
Hippocrates, 336 Klages, Ludwig, 30 (is Disa ASS
Hirsch, 438 (n. 2) 115 (n. 1), 349 (n. 1), 365
Hirzel, 222 (n. 1) (n. 1)
Hodlderlin, 249 (n. 1) Klebba, 504
Homer, 29 Koberle, 366' (n. 2)
Humboldt, W. von, 42, 345 Koffka, 216 (n. 1)
(n. 1), 349 (n. I), 353 (n. 1), KGhler, L., 367, 449 (n. 1), 500
473 (n. 1 Konig, 500
Hume, 185 (n. 1) KOstlin, 416 (n. 2), 529
Hutter, 121 (n. 1) Kretschmer, 257 (n. 2), _ 303
Huxley, Aldous, 321 (n. 1) (n. 1), 320
Kroner, 101 (n.1)
Inge, 189 (n. 1) Kuhlmann, 73 (n. 1), 542
Irenaeus, 84 (n. 1), 93, 265 (n. 1), Kilpe, 216 (n. 1)
450 (n. 2), 503, 504 ff, 511 Kutter, H., 45 a I), 145 (n. 1),
182 (n. 1), 184
Jacob, G., 165 (n. 3), 203 (n. 1)
Jacobs, P., 78 (n. 1) ; Lange, F. A., 260 (n. 1), 378
Jager, W., 29 (n. 1), 547 (n. 1)
Jaspers, 239 (n. 2) Lau, 61 (n. 1)
Jung, 37, 45, 179 (n. 2), 185 Lawrence, D. H., 38 (n. 1)
(n. 1), 195 (n. 1), 310 (n. 1), Leibniz, 43, 280 (n. 1), 283
336, 366 (n. 1) (n. 1), 375, 376
Justin Martyr, 84 (n. 1) Lenin, 451
Lessing, 438, 439
Kahler, 141 (n. 1), 178 (n. 1), Lévy-Bruhl, 44 (n. 3), 367 (n. 1)
203 (n. I), 511 Lieb, 37 (n. 1)
Kant, 43, 100 ff., 113, 126 ff, Lilje, Hans, 438 (n. 2)
152 ff., 158, 189 (n. 2), 222 ff, Loewenich, 206 (n. 2)
270 (n. 1), 272 (n. 1), 297 Lommel, 192
(n. 2), 300 (n. 1), 303 (n. 1, Lotze, 289
n.= 336 (n. 1), 422, 470, 473 Lowith, 542
Lowrie, 315 (n. 2)
Keanbath, 222 (ni 2), 303. (ma1) Lucka, 340 (n. 1)
562
 INDEX

Luther, 25 (n. 2), 61, 67, 72, Oettingen, von, 393 (n. 1), 502,
85 (n. 1), gt (n. 1), 93 ff, 511
Oy (aeyt); er7r i, gt. (a 2); Oldham, J. H., 334 (n. 1)
136 (n. 1), 137 (n. 1, n. 2), 138 Origen, 84 (n. 1), 142-43 (n. 3),
(n. 1), 142 (n. 2), 150, 154,
157, 165 (mn. I, .n.-3),. 169,
404.
Otto, 44 (n. 1)
173 (n. 2), 174 (n. 1), 199
(n. 1), 201 (n. 2), 203, 206 Panaetius, 552
(n. 2), 207 (n. 1), 208 (n. 1), Pascal, 47, 173 (n. 1), 181 (n. 1),
Bat. (i. 2) 296 -(nse 2), 44 188 (n. 1), 196, 204, 422
245 (n. 1), 246 (n. 2), 257, Pelagius, 84 (n. 1), 121, 149,
261, 297. (nT), 7292; “363 272 (n. 1), 273 (n. 3), 558
(n. 2), 367 (n. 1), 380 (n."1), Pericles, 21, 66
387 (n. 1), 412 (n. 2), 415 Pestalozzi, 290
(n. 6), 416 (nn. ¥, ont 2)} i417 Pfister, 257 (n. 1)
(n. 2), 468 ff., 476, 487, 492, Pfleiderer, 87
502, 507, 516 ff, 522 ff, 529, Philo, 108 (n. 2)
537 Picard, Max, 196
Piper, Otto, 346 (n. 1)
Maeder, 195 Plato, 26, 43, 60, 99, 170 (n. 2),
Manu, Code of, 32 197; 217 (n. 1); 220 8h e4t
Marcus Aurelius, 549 (n. 2), 261 (n. 1), 283 (n. 1),
Marx, Karl, 31, 33, 36 ff, 171
284 (n. 3), 296, 297 (n. 1), 298,
(n. 1), 458
Melanchthon, 95 (n. 1) 325 (n. 2), 345 (n. 1), 349
Melito, 503 (n. 1), 382, 404, 426, 443, 465,
Messer, 216 (n. 1) 548, 559, 553
Plotinus, 242, 548, 555
Michelangelo, 92, 395 ff. Posidonius, 325 (n. 1), 555
Monakow, V., 304 (n. 1) Prachter (Uberweg), 547
Montaigne, 181 (n. 1), 419 (n. 2) Praxiteles, 388
Miuzhl, 547
Miller, J., 116 (n. 1), 127 (n. 1), Rad, von, 499
132 (n. 1), 142 (n. 3) Reinhardt, 345 (n. 1), 547
Nagelsbach, 29 (n. 1), 548 Reisner, 186 (n. 1)
Napoleon, 310, 451 Reitzenstein, 547
Natorp, 279 (n. 1) Rheinfelder, 222
Nietzsche, F., 31, 33, 34; 35. 39; Ribot, 234 (n. 2)
182 (n. 1), 186, 233, 287, 352 Richard III, 305 ff.
(n. 2), 356 (n. 1), 374, 428, Rickert, 239 (n. 1), 454 (n. 3)
Ritschl, 124
485, 489 Rocholl, 436
Nygren, 219 (n. 2), 221 (n. 2),
Rohde, 29 (n. 1), 192 (n. 2), 193
283 (n. 5), 547, 554
Nyssa, Gregory of, 84 (n. 1),412 (n. 1), 463 (n. 2), 464 (n. 2),
547
Oehler, 500 Rothe, 87, 459 (n. 1)
Oetinger, 46, 237 (n. 2), 366 Rougemont, de, 436
(n. 2) Rousseau, 371 (n. 1)
563
 MAN IN REVOLT

Rubens, 281 Stomps, 164 (n. 1), 460 (n. 4)

Rifner, 381 (n. 2) Stratton, 48 (n. 1)
Strauss, D. F.,171 (n. 1), 432(n. 1)
Sannwald, ror (n. 1), 125, 127, Strindberg, 356 (n. 1)
220 (n, 2) Struker, 503, 504
Scheffler, J., 410 (n. 1)
Scheler, Max, 48 (n. 1), 49, 92, Temple, William, 101 (n. 1),
182 (n. 1), 239 (n. 1), 290 (n. 1) 377 (n. 1)
Schelling, 127, 186 (n. 1), 238, Tertullian, 92, 215 (n. 2)
259 (n. 2), 345 (n. 1). Thales, 422
Schiller, 223 (n. 2), 343 Thielicke, 438 (n. 2)
Schlatter, 119 (n. 1), 224 (n. 1), Thorndike, 215 (n. 1)
393 (n. 1), 412 (n. 1), 414 Thurneysen, 162 (n. 1), 387
(n. 2), 476 (n. 1), 512 (n. 3), 516
Schleiermacher, 87, 123, 259 Tillich, 313
(n. 2), 400 Titius, 332 (n. 1), 378, 379 (n. 1),
Schlier, 73 (n. 1), 529 383 (n. 1), 396 (n. 1), 419 (n. 1)
_Schlink, 64 (n. 2), 513, 529, 530, Troeltsch, Ernst, 32 (n. 1), 59
533, ff. (n. 1), 87, 435 (n. 1), 436
Schmidt, H. W., 426 (n. 2) (n. 1), 447 (n. 1), 451 (n. 1)
Schmidt, P. W., 179 (n. 1) Tschulok, 395
Schneckenburger, 76 (n. 1)
Schneidewin, 547 Vaihinger, 260 (n. 1)
Scholz, 438 (n. 2), 450 (n. 5) Van der Leeuw, 48 (n. 1)
Schopenhauer, 152 (n. 1), 301, Vilmar, 510
356 (n. 1) Vischer, 419 (n. 2)
Schott, 150 (n. 1), 170 (n. 1), Vossberg, 169 (n. 1)
254 (n. 1), 487 (n. 3)
Schrenk, 435 (n. 1), 438 (n. 2) Warneck, 334 (n. 1)
Schubert, 366 (n. 1) Watson, 215 (n. 1)
Schumann, K. F., 114 (n. 1), 542 Weber, Max, 32 (n. 2)
Schwarz, 101 (n. 2) Weiniger, 356 (n. 1)
Schweizer, Alex., 76 (n. 1) Wertheimer, 216 (n. 1)
Seeberg, 169 (n. 1) Williams, N. P., 119 (n. 1)
Seifert, 315 Windelband, 418 (n. 1), 446
Semon, 366 (n. 1) (ie. I ts
Seneca, 549, 551 Witte, J., 180 (n. 1)
Shakespeare, 306, 464 Wolff, E., 519, 520
Siebeck, 215 (n. 2) Wolff, Otto, 516
Silesius, Angelus. See Scheffler,J.
Socrates, 184, 356 (n. 1) Zarathustra, 443
Spencer, 185 (n. 1) Zeller, 170 (n. 2, and on 171),
Spengler, 33, 34
Spitteler, 258
319 (n.1), 443 (n.1), 465 (n. 1)
Zickendraht, 257 (n. 1)
Spoerri, Th., 25 (n. 1) Zockler, 393 (n. 1)
Stange, 156 (n. 1), 467 (n. 1), Zwingli, 171 (n. 1), 245 (n. 1),
469 (n. 1) 384, 404 (n. 3)
564

THEOLOGY LIBRARY
CLAREMONT, CALIF.
AGN,
 2093

Brunner, Heinrich Emil, 1889- |

gee:in revolt, a Christian anthropology iby, Emil Brun-
tr anslated by Olive Wyon. Philadelphia, The West-
1947 a eee press [c1947]
2 p.1., 564 p. 234 cm.
“An unabridged translation of the book... first published in Ger- |
man in 1987 ... under the title: Der mensch im widerspruch.”—
Translator’s note.
Includes bibliographic footnotes.

1. Man (Theology) 2. Dialectical th@elogy. I, Wyon, Olive,

1890- te Title. zits Brunner, Heinrich Emil, 1889~1966.
Der Mensch im Wider- \ spruch. English. IV. Der Mensch
im Widerspruch. Eng — lish.
2073 — Library of Congress 56q3,
po oyteng go>
Sa