History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology Part 13

In them Paul exposes the fact that there were two parties in the early church, the Pauline and the Petrine. They struggled for supremacy, and the conflict was a long one. Peter was a thorough Jew,--and his side predominated even after the death of the princ.i.p.al combatants. Judaism was the cradle of Christianity; and the latter was only an earnest, restless, and reformatory branch of the former. But it was not an offshoot as yet, for Christianity was essentially Jewish all through its first historic period. The canonical writings of the New Testament, which const.i.tute the chief literature of the first two centuries, are the literary monument of Christianity while it was yet undeveloped, and undetached from Judaism. These writings are the _mediating theology_ of those distant days. The Petrine party was very strong, until the middle of the second century, when it was obliged to yield to, or rather harmonize with, the Pauline.

Many causes contributed to bring the two factions together. There was an absence of growth quite incompatible with their respective strength.

Alone, they were almost unable to brave the storm of persecution.

Finally, for the sake of security and propagation, they laid down their weapons, and united under one banner. From this union came the subsequent growth of Christianity. The canonical works so much revered by the church had been written in the interest of one or the other of the parties. Since the enmity has been destroyed, their literary productions must be considered in the light of history. The church is, therefore, much mistaken in attaching importance to the Scriptures, for they were written for a time-serving end, and are quite unworthy of the worth which we attach to them.

A numerous circle of disciples cl.u.s.tered around Baur, and they enjoyed his leadership until his recent death. But the writings of both the master and his school were answered by the best theologians of Germany.

Some of the greenest laurels worn by Thiersch, Dorner, Lechler, Lange, Schaff, Bleek, Hase, and Bunsen, were won in the contest with the Tubingen school; and their united labors const.i.tute a compendium of arguments which will not cease for centuries to be of inestimable value in the controversies of the church concerning Christ and the divine origin of Christianity.

The labors of the Tubingen school and of Strauss are two parts of the same effort to destroy the divine basis of Christian faith. We do not impugn the private opinions of the contestants, but we must judge them by their fruits. They wrote and taught against those departments of truth which it is necessary to preserve intact if we would have Christianity continue a vital power of the soul and an aggressive principle in the world. Objections will still be urged against the Gospel history, but it will still be blessed by the ceaseless oversight and unfailing ministrations of the Holy Spirit. Supposing the evangelical accounts to be purely human, we have even then the highest embodiment of truth in the history of man. Herder says, "Have the fishermen of Galilee founded such a history? Then blessed be their memory that they have founded it!" With the conviction that the writers of the Scriptures throughout were inspired men, and spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, we have a power demanded alike by the cravings of the soul and the aspirations of the intellect. Blessed with this sentiment, the individual and the church are thoroughly furnished unto every good work.

From Germany we turn to France. The latter country has been the traditional purveyor of revolutionary material for the rest of the Continent. No great popular movement west of the Rhine has been without its influence upon the eastern side. The July Revolution of 1830, which effected the overthrow of the Restoration represented by Charles X., set the German ma.s.ses in commotion. They were henceforth restless, and ready, whenever occasion offered, to overturn the government and establish a national const.i.tutional basis. The Rationalists were insurrectionary, and, the more rapid their decline in all religious sentiment the more decided was their opposition to const.i.tuted authorities. Strauss' _Life of Jesus_, great in its influence upon theology, was equally powerful over the political mind. Every new publication which befriended infidelity was not without its support of faction and discontent.

In connection with the revolutionary tendency, Rationalism a.s.sumed also a more pantheistic, and subsequently a more atheistic form. The second important work of Strauss, his _System of Doctrine_, was even more adapted than his first to sap the foundations of faith and social security. It was the embodiment of all the worst features of the Hegelian philosophy. It was frank and bold in all its statements. No man could mistake a single utterance. In it doctrines are traced to their genetic development, and held to be the luxuriant growth of the seeds of error. The truths of Christianity are surrounded by a halo to which it is no more ent.i.tled than the sagas of the Northmen. The old dogma was born of prejudice and error, hence the modern conception of it is sheer illusion. Faith and science are irreconcilable foes, for faith is the perversion, and science the development of human nature. Believing and knowing, religion and philosophy, are born antagonists, and man can make no rapid progress if he grovel in the errors of faith. The personality of G.o.d is not that of the individual but of the universal. The pantheism of Spinoza is the best solution of G.o.d's existence; "for," says Strauss, "G.o.d is not the personal, but the infinite personifying of himself."

The oracular responses of Feuerbach[67] were a step beyond even this skeptical usurpation. Religion is man's conduct to himself. Man, from time immemorial, has been buried in self-love, and become so far carried away by it that his religion is now one monstrous hallucination.

Religion springs not from his intellect but from his imagination. He wishes to get to heaven; he desires to be comfortable; therefore he believes. He will put himself to no little trouble to propitiate the favor of one whom he considers divine. Here is the mystery of all sacrifices. They are offered by all people from the mere inner force of abject egotism. G.o.d has no absolute existence whatever. Christianity needs to be attacked historically. Its chief elements are Judaism and paganism. That it is a collection of absurdities, corruptions, and prejudices, can be perceived on its very face. But still man needs religion, though he can only gain it either by rejecting Christianity altogether or purifying it from its thick envelope of dross.

The _Halle Year-Books_, published 1838-'42, were the princ.i.p.al organ of the new atheistic doctrines. They commenced with the laudation of Strauss, then pa.s.sed over into the service of Feuerbach, and finally served the cause of Bruno Baur and his fanatical adherents. They were under the chief editorship of Ruge; and, being popular and youthful in style, they wielded an unbounded influence on the dissatisfied and skeptical cla.s.ses. They broke through all the restraints of religion, and propagated the wildest perversions of Hegel's opinions. Though short-lived, they gained an authority not often enjoyed by a periodical.

They were factious in the extreme, and became one of the princ.i.p.al agents in effecting the Revolution of 1848. They breathed mildew on everything stable in government and sacred in religion. But, Samson-like, they fell amid the ruin which they inflicted upon others.

Quite a new form of Rationalism was then presented in the popular conventions of the Protestant Friends. These individuals held that by a return to the spirit of the Reformation, Germany would be endowed with a new and living energy. But it must not be the Reformation as the church would have us understand it. It must be an impulse and spirit, not an outward attachment to form and compulsory authority. They were popularly called Friends of Light, and embraced all the schools of Rationalists throughout the land. Their convocation was the parliament of German infidelity. Professing adherence to some of the doctrines of Christianity, they so glossed them that even the atheist could be a member without violating his principles.

Their founder was Pastor Uhlich, who, in company with sixteen friends, held the first meeting at Gnadau, in July, 1841. The second convention met at Halle, and was numerously attended by clergymen, professors, and laymen of every cla.s.s of society. The session at Kothen, in 1844, was a great popular a.s.sembly. It was addressed by Pastor Wislicenus, of Halle, whose lecture was subsequently issued as a reply to his antagonists, under the t.i.tle of _Whether Scriptures or Spirit?_ Not the letter, but the spirit, is the ground of true religion. The spirit permeates humanity, and hence there is no occasion for the observance of the law.

The spirit comes with its own law; it is a law in itself. The Evangelical church stands safe only when resting upon freedom. The glory of the church is the absolute freedom of its members. The Scriptures are very good in their way. They are a witness of the faith of the first times, but were never intended for these cultivated days.

The church is freed from the exterior law and elevated to the inner law of freedom.

Guericke, the church historian, called attention to Wislicenus in the _Evangelical Church Gazette_. Great surprise was manifested at once, and the sober mind of the nation became aroused to a sense of the danger now threatening the foundations of faith. In a short time the Saxon decree was issued against all a.s.semblies which called in question the Augsburg Confession. The following month, August, 1845, the Prussian cabinet-order appeared, prohibiting all convocations of the Friends of Light. Protests appeared against Wislicenus and his followers, which were followed by counter-protests signed indiscriminately by all cla.s.ses.

Another popular development of Rationalism occurred in Konigsberg, in 1845. Pastor Rupp attacked the Athanasian symbol in his own pulpit, whereupon he was ejected by the consistory. He collected an independent congregation; and thus arose those Free Congregations, which contributed equally to the Rationalistic and revolutionary movements. Appearing in other parts of Germany, they became a formidable opponent of the church.

While they held that the Scriptures were their rule of faith in the unity of G.o.d, they threw off their authority and that of all symbols.

They adopted baptism and the Lord's Supper, and professed allegiance to the civil power. But their influence was against the government, and their two sacraments were odious corruptions. Their form of baptism is enough to determine their religious sentiment: "I baptize thee after the manner of the old apostolic baptism, that Jesus is the Christ; I anoint thy head with water as a sign that thy soul remains pure, pure as the water that runs down the mountain side; and as the water rises to heaven and then returns to the earth, so may you be continually mindful of your heavenly home." Their convocations were finally restricted by the civil authority. The supreme church council issued an excommunicatory order against them; the police broke up their meetings; and forty of the Free Congregations were closed in Prussia alone.

The leaders of the Revolution of 1848 were the organizers of these popular independent movements. When the people had gained the upper hand of their rulers, their very first action was to select the destroyers of their faith as their political champions and representatives. It was, therefore, a great triumph for those fanatical humanists to find themselves seated in the national parliaments of Frankfort and Berlin, and, wherever the revolution extended, to be the leaders of the excited ma.s.ses.

What could be expected from a revolution conducted by such men as Wislicenus, Blum, Uhlich, Baltzer, Carl Schwartz and their adherents? It was a total failure. And when the restoration was completed in 1849, the reaction against Rationalism became so decided that the leaders had reason to tremble for their lives. The people were profoundly disgusted with a skepticism which could produce no better fruits than this one had matured. The indignation was even more intense than that toward French infidelity during the supremacy of Napoleon over the German States. In the latter case the people were disgusted with the efforts of foreign skepticism, but in the former, they saw and felt the sore evils of domestic Rationalism. Religious error had led them from peace and quiet into a dream-land. When the waking moment came, and the deception became apparent, the surprise at the delusion was overwhelming.

The doctrinal form of Rationalism had been arrested by Schleiermacher and his n.o.ble band of followers. Its exegetical prestige had been destroyed by the replies to the _Life of Jesus_. And, as if to make its defeat as humiliating as possible, the last blow was self-inflicted. It was the Revolution of 1848, and its consequent failure, which annihilated the political strength of German Rationalism. There is a G.o.d in history. And though one generation may fail to perceive the brightness of his presence, the following one may be favored with the vision. No skeptic should forget that the real philosophy of history is the march of Providence through the ages. But the infidel is the worst reader of history. The light shines, but he turns away from it. Or, as Coleridge expresses it:

"The owlet Atheism, Sailing on obscure wings across the noon, Drops his blue-fringed lids, and shuts them close; And, hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, 'Where is it?'"

There is a deep principle underlying not only the miscarriage of the Revolution of 1848, but of all the popular movements toward independence which occur at a time when the people are involved in religious doubt.

It is the spiritual status of a nation which commonly determines its love of law and order. A population adhering to an evangelical interpretation of the Scriptures can be forced to revolution only by evil and ambitious leaders, or by persistent oppression on the part of their rulers. The tardy movement of the American Colonies toward their revolt against the British Government betrayed a great unwillingness to inaugurate the struggle. At the beginning, the conflict was not designed to be a revolution but only a judicious expedient for the improvement of the colonial laws.[68] Wise rulers, governing for the best interests of their country, have generally found that the most discontented of their subjects are the most skeptical. Infidelity and error have systematically arrayed themselves against civil authority. This infidelity does not always a.s.sume the same type; for, while in Germany it was a general disbelief in the authenticity of the Scriptures, in France it was the rejection of the existence of G.o.d and of the immortality of the soul. Even Robespierre testified before the French National Convention of 1794, that "the idea of a supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul, was a continual call to justice, and that no nation could succeed without the recognition of these truths." A revolution in Christendom, which has its basis in the skeptical nature of man, or in an anti-scriptural idea, may succeed for a while, but it must eventually fail; because, like a vessel without compa.s.s, chart, or star, it lacks the cardinal elements and safeguards of progress and security.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] Appleton's _New Am. Cyclopaedia; Art. Hegel_.

[63] _Life of Jesus._ Ch. I. American Edition.

[64] Cf. _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Vol. 16.

[65] _Life of Jesus_, 852-3.

[66] _New York Independent_ and _New York Christian Advocate and Journal_--1864.

[67] In _Wesen des Christenthums_, Leipsic, 1841.

[68] The hesitation to become independent was very decided, even as late as July, 1775.--Bancroft, _History of the United States_. Vol. 8: pp.

55-6.

CHAPTER XII.

THE EVANGELICAL SCHOOL. ITS OPINIONS AND PRESENT PROSPECTS.

There is a group of theologians who deserve to stand side by side with the immediate opponents of Strauss and his disciples. We mean the Mediation or Evangelical School. They represent the advance of German theology from Rationalism to positive orthodoxy. Beginning with able and irrefutable arguments for the Evangelists, they have extended their discussions to other important branches of Scriptural defence. As a consequence, they have built up a valuable apologetic literature which will occupy a prominent place in the theology of the church.

But, in order to portray the character of the Evangelical School, we shall need to dwell upon certain members in particular.[69]

Not least in honor and achievement is the late Karl Ullmann. He contributed to the _Studien und Kritiken_, a quarterly established by himself and Umbreit, an article on the sinlessness of Christ, which he subsequently elaborated into a volume. One of the most original of his productions is his _Essence of Christianity_, which placed "him in the centre of the Mediation theology." He holds with Schleiermacher, that Christianity is not as much doctrine as vitality, and that it possesses the creative and organizing power of religion. Christianity is both divine and human; divine in its origin and essence, but human in its development and fulfillment. Without the person of Christ to stand in the very focus of Christianity, the latter becomes void and no more than any moral religion. We can have no proper conception of Christianity apart from its founder, for its whole essence exists in him.

Christianity is Christ developing himself in humanity. Christ is G.o.d-man in so far as he represents in his own person the perfect unity and interpenetration of the human and divine. Christianity is that religion which neither deifies nor destroys nature. Without considering it essential to prove the facts of Christ's life, Ullmann showed that Christ, in the divine character which we attach to him, was necessary to Christianity just as the pillars are to the superinc.u.mbent edifice. The effect of this argument was most salutary, for it was so well timed that it could not be otherwise. There were two things to be established concerning Christ. One was the verity of the Gospel accounts of him; the other was Christ as a necessity for man's faith, the world's progress, and human salvation. The former having been treated by other hands, Ullmann undertook the latter and triumphed. He is one of the most pleasing of the German theologians. Partaking of the warm southern temperament--for he was a Bavarian by birth--he wrote in that easy, natural, and earnest style which renders him a popular writer not only in his own language but when translated into foreign tongues.

We find in Dorner one of the most acute speculative theologians produced by the later Protestant church. His style is as complex as Ullmann's is simple. It is amusing that, in one place, he even enters into a justification of his technical and abstruse writing. Applying himself to dogmatic investigations, the fruit of his labor is his _Doctrine of the Person of Christ_. Christianity was the world's great want, and all the religions of the natural man could not supply its place. But Christianity is vague unless the question be settled concerning the person of Christ. Here is the battle-ground where Christianity and reason must meet and decide the great issue. Hence Dorner pa.s.ses by the personal ministry and history of Christ on earth and attempts the proper mode of construing his person. The Person of Christ is, in the trials and triumphs of individuals and the church, the central point of the Christian religion. He is the perfect Lawgiver, and also the Judge of the world. He controls the universe. Here he communicates the forgiveness of sins and the Holy Ghost, and in heaven, eternal felicity.

The happiness of heaven is formed by perfect fellowship with his person.

He has left his followers only in appearance, for, wherever two or three are a.s.sembled in his name, there he is in the midst of them. He is with his own always, even to the end of the world. To know Christ in his nearness belongs to the Christian worship; and this inst.i.tution is appointed for the church as the highest means for the enjoyment of his nearness.[70]

According to Dorner, heathendom longed for the apotheosis of human nature. Judaism sought the fulfillment of the revelation not completed by the law, and strained after the love of G.o.d as the consummation of the holy law. All these wants are met in Christ. He is the innermost revelation of the mystery, and the fullest condescension of G.o.d. For G.o.d has in Christ become man. Here is the point of unity between G.o.d and the world. But Christ did not appear in order to be the Son of G.o.d, as if this were the ultimate end; but the ultimate end was the glorifying of man, and therewith of G.o.d, in and through him. He is officially G.o.d's son.[71]

Was Christ possessed of sinless perfection? In both a physical and ethical point of view he was not absolutely complete from the first. He learned obedience. He _grew_ in favor, not only with men but with G.o.d.

Growth points backward to previous deficiency, or, what is the same thing, forward to the absolute goal which the reality approaches only by degrees. But deficiency in entire perfection is not sinfulness, for then all real humanity and sinfulness would be identical. Christ's temptations are explainable on this wise: he had a real moral task, not only external to himself, but in himself, which could not be solved at the beginning if he was to be like us. There was no disorder in him, but there were disorder and sin without him, which occasioned him the contests, temptations, and sufferings that filled his official life.

These later conflicts were only a.s.signed him because he remained the pure One, and had become morally harmonious in the midst of moral anarchy. But they were still inward and personal struggles; for he was to introduce the power of his harmony and of his sufferings, in order to overcome the disharmony in the world. He, the righteous one, must, by suffering, take upon himself disorder and disharmony, must live through it and taste it, in order to establish a power which is not only harmonious in itself, but so potent in harmony as to take the disharmony into itself, master it, and transform it into harmony. Christ was perfect man in growth and progress, in his temptations and conflicts, but without any historical trace of a flaw or blemish in his life. He was in all points made like us, without being necessitated to become like us as sinners. For, sin is the negation of the truly human. He laid claim to no exceptional law for himself as a privileged individual, but subjected himself to the universal human moral law. With this he was satisfied, and he fulfilled it in its purity, depth, and completeness.

He knew nothing of a super-moral religious genius, and would have nothing to do with it. His religion is moral; his morality, religion.[72]

The name with which we are most familiar is the devout and laborious Tholuck. He generally takes higher ground than many of the Mediation-theologians. But he is sometimes at variance with evangelical sentiment. Inspiration, according to him, is not real and total, but only partial, and is to be determined in reference to the truths necessary to salvation. While there are many mistakes of memory, false citations, errors in historical, chronological, geographical, and astronomical detail, these need not depreciate our general estimate of inspiration. The Scriptures have a kernel and a sh.e.l.l. Upon the former there is the positive and direct impress of the Holy Spirit; but upon the latter it is indirect and relative.

In merely stating Tholuck's definitions, however, we do not measure out justice to him. He must not be tested by any special department of labor, but by the spirit and totality of his service. In this light he is a remarkable personage, and his work is ent.i.tled to our highest eulogium. With him, Christ is not merely a person to be apprehended by the mind, but a Saviour to be received into the heart and henceforth to be a living power of the soul. He must be accepted by Christian faith, and the heart must undergo the transforming power of his Spirit. Without this preparation, all progress in science is but the worship of nature, and man, at the close of life, looks back upon a path of error and forth into a world of darkness.

"Tholuck has this characteristic," says one of his countrymen, "he cannot be cla.s.sified; he belongs to no particular theological direction, because he belongs to all." This estimate is strictly true. He has gained his greenest laurels in exegesis; and his commentaries on Psalms, the Sermon on the Mount, Gospel of John, and Epistles to the Romans and Hebrews, have already taken their places in the theological libraries of English and American divines. But he has asked himself the question, "What can I do to lessen the hold which Rationalism has upon my country?" And he has given the answer by his life-career. All his productions centre in that thought, and it is not the least of his service that he has written sketches of the old Reformation theologians, as an incentive to the restoration of their spirit. It is not easy to estimate the benefit which his _Sin and Redemption_ has conferred upon the young men of Germany. The Baron von Kottwitz is the real personage represented by the patriarch. Let us hear this venerable saint as he stands upon the border of the grave and antic.i.p.ates a bright future for his loved church and country. His words are the key to Tholuck's life, and reveal the bright hope which burned within him ever since the day when he was welcomed to Halle by the hisses and threats of the Rationalists.

The aged man says: "The greater the crisis the more needful is it to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the simplicity of the dove. I therefore address you as such an one who, perhaps, will soon be engaged at the university as one of the instruments employed by G.o.d in that important period. The work of G.o.d's spirit is greater than either you or the majority can estimate. A great resurrection morning has dawned.

Hundreds of youths on all sides have been awakened by the Spirit of G.o.d.

Everywhere true believers are coming into closer union. Science herself is becoming again the handmaid and friend of the Crucified. Civil governments, also, though in part still hostile to this great moral revolution from a dread of its producing political commotions, are many of them favorable; and where they are not, the conflicting energy of the light is so much the stronger. Many enlightened preachers already proclaim the gospel in its power; many who are still in obscurity will come forward. I see the dawn; the day itself I shall behold not here, but from a higher place. You will live to witness it below. Despise not the words of a gray-headed old man, who would give you, with true affection, a few hints relative to this great day.

"The more divine a power is, the more to be deprecated is its perversion. When those last times are spoken of in Scripture, in which the gospel shall be spread over the whole world, it is declared that the truth will not only have to contend with the proportionably more violent counterworking of the enemy, but also with a great measure of delusion and error within the kingdom of light. Such is the course of things that every truth has its shadow; and the greatest truth is attended by the greatest shadow. Above all things take care that the tempter do not introduce his craft into the congregation of the faithful. There will be those for whom the simple gospel will not suffice. When a man has experienced the forgiveness of his sins, and has for a little while enjoyed the happiness of that mercy, it not unfrequently appears to his evil and inconstant heart too humiliating a condition to be constantly receiving grace for grace. There is no other radical cure for a proud, self-willed heart than every day and every hour to repeat that act by which we first came to Christ. Pray that you may have more of that childlike spirit which regards the grace of your Lord as a perennial fountain of life. Especially avoid the error of those who seek life for the sake of light, who would make religion a mere stepping-stone to intellectual superiority. Such persons will never attain to a vital apprehension of divine things; for our G.o.d is a jealous G.o.d, and will be loved by us for his own sake. The intellectual power, the mental enlargement arising from converse with the great objects of faith is always to be regarded as a secondary and supplementary benefit to that which it is the immediate object of the gospel to bestow. Despise not human greatness or talent or ability of any kind, but beware lest you overvalue it. I see a time coming--indeed it is already at hand--in which gifted men will lift up their voices for the truth; but woe to the times in which admiration and applause of the speaker shall be subst.i.tuted for laying to heart the truth which he delivers! Perhaps in the next generation there will be no one in some parts of Germany who will not wish to be called a Christian. Learn to distinguish the spirits. The sum of my exhortations is humility and love!"