Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (882 page)

‡ Wegscheider, § 199.

§ Compare with what follows especially the Briefe tüber den Rationalismus, s. 372 ff. Wegscheider, §§ 128, 133, 140.Christ is not essentially below the orthodox one, as regards his natural endowments and his external destiny, for in their view also he is the greatest man that ever trod the earth — a hero, in whose fate Providence is in the highest degree glorified: while, as regards the internal development and free agency of Jesus, they believe their doctrine essentially to surpass that of the Church. The Christ of the Church, they contend, is a mere automaton, whose manhood lies under the control of his Godhead like a lifeless instrument, which acts with moral perfection because it has no power to sin, and for this reason can neither have moral merit, nor be the object of affection and reverence according to the rationalistic view, on the contrary, Jesus had implanted in him by God the natural conditions only of that which he was ultimately to become, and his realization of this destiny was the result of his own spontaneity. His admirable wisdom he acquired by the judicious application of his intellectual powers, and the conscientious use of all the aids within his reach; his moral greatness, by the zealous culture of his moral dispositions, the restraint of his sensual inclinations and passions, and a scrupulous obedience to the voice of his conscience: and on these alone rested all that was exalted in his personality, all that was encouraging in his example.

As regards the work of Jesus, the rationalistic view is, that he has endeared himself to mankind by this above all else, that he has taught them a religion to which for its purity and excellence is justly ascribed a certain divine power and dignity; and that he has illustrated and enforced this religion by the brilliant example of his own life. This prophetic office of Christ is with Socinians and Rationalists the essence of his work, and to this they refer all the rest, especially what the doctrine of the Church comprehends under the office of high priest. With them the so-called active obedience has value solely as an example; and the death of Jesus conduces to the forgiveness of sins, solely by furthering the reformation of the sinner in one of these two ways: either, as a confirmation of his doctrine, and a type of the devoted fulfilment of duty, it serves to kindle a zeal for virtue; or, as a proof of the love of God to man, of his inclination to pardon the converted sinner, it invigorates moral courage.
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If Christ was no more, and did no more, than this rationalistic doctrine supposes, it is not easy to see how piety has come to make him her special object, or dogmatism to lay down special propositions concerning him. Consistent Rationalists have in fact admitted, that what the orthodox dogma calls Christology, forms no integral part of the rationalistic system, since this system consists indeed of a religion which Christ taught, but not of a religion of which he is the object; that, viewing Christology as the doctrine of the Messiah, it is merely an accommodation to the Jewish mind, — that even taken in a more noble sense, as the doctrine of the life, the actions,

* For the different views, see Bretschneider, Dogm. 2, s. 353, systematische Entwicklung, § 107.and the fate of Jesus as a divine messenger, it does not belong to a system of faith, for the universal truths of religion are as little connected with our ideas concerning the person of him who first enunciated them, as are the philosophical propositions in the systems of Leibnitz and Wolf, of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, with the opinions we may happen to form of the persons of their authors; that what relates to the person and work of Jesus belongs, not to religion itself, but to the history of religion, and must either be prefixed to a system of religious doctrine as an historical introduction, or appended to it as an elucidatory sequel.
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Accordingly Henke, in his
Lineaments,
has removed Christology from its wonted position as an integral part of systematic theology, and has placed it as a subdivision under the head of anthropology.

Thus, however, Rationalism enters into open war with the Christian faith, for it seeks to thrust into the background, nay, to banish from the province of theology, that which is its essential point, and cornerstone. But this very opposition is decisive of the insufficiency of the rationalistic system, proving that it does not perform what is demanded from every system of religious doctrine, namely, first, to give adequate expression to the faith which is the object of the doctrine; and secondly, to place this expression in a relation, whether positive or negative, to science. Now the Rationalists, in the effort to bring the faith into harmony with science, restrict its expression; for a Christ who is only a distinguished man, creates indeed no difficulty to the understanding, but is not the Christ in whom the Church believes.

§ 148. THE ECLECTIC CHRISTOLOGY OF SCHLEIERMACHFR.

It is the effort of this theologian to avoid both these ungrateful results, and without prejudice to the faith, to form such a conception of the doctrine of the Christ as may be proof against the attacks of science.
^†
On the one hand, he has adopted in its fullest extent the negative criticism directed by Rationalism against the doctrine of the Church, nay, he has rendered it even more searching; on the other hand, he has sought to retain what Rationalism had lost, the essential part of positive Christianity : and thus he has saved many in these days from the narrowness of Supranaturalism, and the emptiness of Rationalism. This simplification of the faith Schleiermacher effects in the following manner: he does not set out, with the Protestant, from the doctrine of Scripture, nor with the Catholic from the decision of the church, for in both these ways he would have to deal with a precise, developed system, which, having originated in remote centuries, must come into collision with the science of the present day; but he sets out from the consciousness of the Christian, from that internal experience resulting to the individual

* Röhr, Briefe, s. 36, 405 ff.

† Schleiermacher, on his Glaubenslehre, to Dr. Lücke, 2tes Sendschreiben, Studien, 2
, 3,
s. 481 ff.from his connexion with the Christian community, and he thus obtains a material which, as its basis is feeling, is more flexible, and to which it is easier to give dialectically a form that satisfies science.

As a member of the Christian church — this is the point of departure in the Christology of Schleiermacher
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I am conscious of the removal of my sinfulness, and the impartation of absolute perfection: in other words, in communion with the church, I feel operating upon me the influence of a sinless and perfect principle. This influence cannot proceed from the Christian community as an effect of the reciprocal action of its members on each other; for to every one of these sin and imperfection are inherent, and the cooperation of impure beings can never produce anything pure as its result. It must be the influence of one who possessed that sinlessness and perfection as personal qualities, and who moreover stands in such a relation to the Christian community, that he can impart these qualities to its members : that is, since the Christian church could not exist prior to this impartation, it must be the influence of its founder. As Christians, we find something operated within us; hence, as from every effect we argue to its cause, we infer the influence of Christ, and from this again, the nature of his person, which must have had the powers necessary to the exertion of this influence.

To speak more closely, that which we experience as members of the Christian church, is a strengthening of our consciousness of God, in its relation to our sensuous existence; that is, it is rendered easier to us to deprive the senses of their ascendancy within us, to make all our impressions the servants of the religious sentiment, and all our actions its offspring. According to what has been stated above, this is the effect wrought in us by Christ, who imparts to us the strength of his consciousness of God, frees us from the bondage of sensuality and sin, and is thus the Redeemer. In the feeling of the strengthened consciousness of God which the Christian possesses by his communion with the Redeemer, the obstructions of his natural and social life are not felt as obstructions to his consciousness of God; they do not interrupt the blessedness which he enjoys in his inmost religious life; what has been called evil, and divine chastisement, is not such for him: and as it is Christ who by receiving him into the communion of his blessedness, frees him therefrom, the office of expiation is united to that of redemption.

In this sense alone is the doctrine of the church concerning the threefold office of Christ to be interpreted. He is a prophet, in that by the word — by the setting forth of himself, and not otherwise, — he could draw mankind towards himself, and therefore the chief object of his doctrine was his own person; he is at once a high priest and a sacrifice, in that he, the sinless one, from whose existence, therefore, no evil could be evolved, entered into communion with the life of sinful humanity, and endured the evils which adhere to it, that he might take us into communion with his sinless and blessed life:

* Glaubenslehre, 2, §§ 92 — 505.in other words, deliver us from the power and consequences of sin and evil, and present us pure before God; lastly, he is a king, in that he brings these blessings to mankind in the form of an organized society, of which he is the head.

From this which Christ effects, we gather what he is. If we owe to him the continual strengthening of the consciousness of God within us, this consciousness must have existed in him in absolute strength, so that it, or God in the form of the consciousness, was the only operative force within him, and this is the sense of the expression of the church — God became man in Christ. If, further, Christ works in us a more and more complete conquest over sensuality, in himself there must have been an absolute conquest over it; in no moment of his life can the sensual consciousness have disputed the victory with his consciousness of God; never can a vacillation or struggle have had place within him: in other words, the human nature in him was sinless, and in the stricter sense, that, in virtue of the essential predominance within him of the higher powers over the lower, it was impossible for him to sin. By this peculiarity of his nature he is the Archetype, the actualization of the ideal of humanity, which his church can only approach, never surpass; yet must he, — for otherwise there could be no true fellowship between him and us, — have been developed under the ordinary conditions of human life: the ideal must in him have been perfectly historical, each phasis of his actual life must have borne the impress of the ideal; and this is the proper sense of the church formula, that the divine and human nature were in him united into one person.

Only thus far can the doctrine of the Christ be deduced from the experience of the Christian, and thus far, according to Schleiermacher, it is not opposed to science: whatever in the dogma of the church goes beyond this, — as, for example, the supernatural conception of Jesus, and his miracles, also the facts of the resurrection and ascension, and the prophecies of his second coming to judge the world, — ought not to be brought forward as integral parts of the doctrine of the Christ. For he from whose influence upon us comes all the strengthening of our consciousness of God, may have been the Christ, though he should not have risen bodily from the dead, and ascended into heaven, etc. : so that we believe these facts, not because they are involved in our internal experience, but only because they are stated in Scripture; not so much, therefore, in a religious and dogmatical, as in an historical manner.

This Christology is undeniably a beautiful effort of thought, and as we shall presently see, does the utmost towards rendering the union of the divine and the human in Christ conceivable; but if its author supposed that he kept the faith unmutilated and science unoffended, we are compelled to pronounce that he was in both points deceived.
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* This opinion has been already put forth in the most noted reviews of Schleiermacher’s. system; comp. Braniss, über Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslebre; H. Schmid, über Schl. Glaubensl. s. 263 ff. ; Baur, die christl. Gnosis, s. 626 ff., and the Review of Rosenkranz,. Jahrb. für wiss. Kritik, 1831.Science opens its attack on the proposition, that the ideal man was historically manifested in the person of Christ. It did not escape Schleiermacher himself that this was a dangerous point. No sooner has he put forth the above proposition, than he reflects on the difficulty of supposing that the ideal should be realized in one historical individual; since, in other cases, we never find the ideal realized in a single appearance, but only in an entire cycle of appearances, which reciprocally complete each other. It is true that this theologian does not hold the character of Christ, as the ideal man, to extend to the manifold relations of human life, so as to be the archetype for all the science, art, and policy, that are developed in human society; he confines it to the domain of the consciousness of God. But, as Schmid has justly observed, this does not alter the case, for the consciousness of God also, being, in its development and manifestation, subject to the conditions of finiteness and imperfection; the supposition that even in this department exclusively, the ideal was manifested in a single historical individual, involves a violation of the laws of nature by a miracle. This, however, is far from alarming Schleiermacher; on the contrary, he maintains that this is the place, and the only place, in which the Christian doctrine must necessarily admit a miracle, since the originating of the person of Christ can only be conceived as the result of a special divine act of creation. It is true, he limits the miraculous to the first introduction of Christ into the series of existences, and allows the whole of his further development to have been subject to all the conditions of finite existence: but this concession cannot repair the breach, which the supposition only of one miracle makes in the scientific theory of the world. Still less can any help be derived from vague analogies like the following: as it is still possible that matter should begin to agglomerate and thence to revolve in infinite space; so science must admit, that there may be in the domain of spiritual life an appearance, which in like manner we can only explain as the commencement, the first point, in a higher process of development.
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