149. Christology Interpreted Symbolically. De Wette. Kant.

The Attempt To retain in combination the ideal in Christ with the historical, having failed, these two elements separate themselves: the latter falls as a natural residuum to the ground, and the former rises as a pure sublimate into the ethereal world of ideas. Historically, Jesus can have been nothing more than a person, highly distinguished indeed, but subject to the limitations inevitable to all that is mortal: by means of his exalted character, however, he exerted so powerful an influence over the religious sentiment, that it constituted him the ideal of piety; in accordance with the general rule, that an historical fact or person cannot become the basis of a positive religion until it is elevated into the sphere of the ideal.

Spinoza made this distinction when maintaining, that to know the historical Christ is not necessary to felicity, but only to know the ideal Christ, namely, the eternal wisdom of God, which is manifested in all things, in the human mind particularly, and in a preeminent degree in Jesus Christ-that wisdom which alone teaches man what is true and false, good and bad. According to Kant, also, it ought not to be made a condition of salvation to believe, that there was once a man who by his holiness and merit gave satisfaction for himself and for all others; for of this the reason tells us nothing; but it is the duty of men universally to elevate themselves to the ideal of moral perfection deposited in the reason, and to obtain moral strength by the contemplation of this ^{P.888} ideal. Such moral faith alone man is bound to exercise, and not historical faith.

Taking his stand on this principle, Kant proceeds to interpret the doctrines of the Bible and the Church as symbols of the ideal. It is humanity, or the rational part of this system of things, in its entire moral perfection, that could alone make a world the object of divine Providence, and the end of creation. This idea of a humanity well-pleasing to God, has existed in God from all eternity; it proceeds from his essence, and is therefore no created thing, but his eternal Son, the Word, through whom, that is, for whose sake, all things were created, and in whom God loved the world. As this idea of moral perfection has not man for its author, as it has been introduced into him even without his beins; able to conceive how his O nature can have been susceptible of such an idea, it may be said to have come down to us from heaven, and to have assumed the human nature, and this union with us may be regarded as an abasement of the Son of God. The ideal of moral perfection, so far as it is compatible with the condition of being dependent on necessities and inclinations, can only be conceived by us under the form of a man. Now just as we can obtain no idea of the amount of a force, but by calculating the degree of resistance which it can overcome, so we can form no estimate of the strength of the moral disposition, but by imagining hard conflicts in which it can triumph: hence the man who embodies the perfect ideal must be one who would voluntarily undertake, not only to perform every duty of man on his own behalf, and by precept and example to disseminate the good and the true around him as extensively as possible; but also, though tempted by the strongest allurements, to submit to all sufferings, even to the most ignominious death, for the welfare of mankind.

In a practical relation this idea has its reality completely within itself, and it needed no exemplification in experience in order to become a model binding on us, since it is enshrined as such in our reason. Indeed, this ideal remains essentially confined to the reason, because it cannot be adequately represented by any example in outward experience, since such an example would not fully disclose the inward disposition, but would only admit of our forming dubious inferences thereon. Nevertheless, as all men ought to be conformed to this ideal, and consequently must be capable of such conformity, it is always possible in experience that a man may appear, who in his teaching, course of life, and sufferings, may present an example of a man well-pleasing to God: but even in this manifestation of the God-man, it would not properly be that which is obvious to the senses, or can be known by experience, which would be the object of saving faith; but the ideal lying in the reason, which we should attribute to this maniestation of the God-man, because he appeared to us to be conformed to it-that is, indeed, so far only as this can ^{P.889} be concluded from outward experience. Inasmuch as all of us, though naturally generated men, feel bound, and consequently able, ourselves to present such an example, we have no reason to regard that examplitication of the ideal man as supernaturally generated, nor does he need the attestation of miracles; for besides the moral faith in the idea, nothing further is requisite than the historical conviction that his life was conformed to that idea, in order to accredit him as its personification.

He who is conscious of such a moral disposition, as to have a well-founded confidence, that under temptations and sufferings similar to those which are attributed to the ideal man, as a touchstone of his moral disposition, he would adhere unalterably to this exemplar, and faithfully follow his steps, such a man alone is entitled to consider himself an object of the divine complacency. To elevate himself to such a state of mind, man must depart from evil, cast off the old man, crucify the flesh; a change which is essentially connected with a series of sorrows and sufferings. These the former man has deserved as a punishment, but they fall on the new: for the regenerated man, who takes them on himself, though physically and in his empirical character, as a being determined by the senses, he remains the former man; is morally, as an intellectual being, with his changed disposition, become a new man. Having by this change taken upon him the disposition of the Son of God, that which is strictly a substittion of the new man for the old, may be represented, by a personification of the idea, as a substitution of the Son of God, and it may be said, that the latter himself, as a substitute, bears for man, for all who practically believe in him, the guilt of sin; as a redeemer, satisfies supreme justice by suffering and death; and as an intercessor, imparts the hope of appearing justified before the judge: the suffering which the new man, in dying to the old, must perpetually incur through life, being conceived in the representative of mankind, as a death suffered once for all. Kant, like Schleiermacher, (whose Christology in many respects recalls that of Kant,) carries his appropriation of the Christology of the Church, no further than the death of Christ: of his resurrection and ascension, he says, that they cannot be available to religion within the limits of pure reason, because they would involve the materiality of all existences. Still, in another light, he employs these facts as symbols of the ideas of the reason; as images of the entrance into the abode of blessedness, that is, into communion with all the good: while another has yet more decidedly given it as his opinion, that without the resurrection, the story of Jesus would terminate in a revolting catastrophe; that the eye would turn away with melancholy and dissatisfaction from an event, in which the pattern of humanity fell a victim to impious rage, and in which the scene closed with a death as unmerited as sorrowful; that the story requires to be crowned with the fulfilment of the expectation towards which the moral contemplations of every one are irresistibly drawn-with the passage into a compensating immortality. ^{P.890} In the same manner, De Wette ascribed to the Gospel history, as to every history, and particularly to the history of religion, a symbolical, ideal character, in virtue of which it is the expression and image of the human mind and its various operations. The story of the miraculous conception of Jesus represents the divine origin of religion; the narratives of his miracles, the independent force of the human mind, and the sublime doctrine of spiritual self-reliance; his resurrection is the image of the victory of truth, a fore-shadowing of the future triumph of good over evil; his ascension, the symbol of the eternal mnj'esty of religion. The fundamental religious ideas which Jesus enunciated in his teaching, are expressed with equal clearness in his history. This history is an expression of devoted enthusiasm, in the courageous ministry of Jesus, and in the victorious power of his appearance; of resignation, in his contest with the wickedness of men, in the melancholy of his premonitory discourss, and above all in his death. Christ on the cross is the image of humanity purified by self-sacrifice; we ought all to crucify ourselves with him, that WE may rise with him to new life. Lastly, the idea of devotion was the key-note in the story of Jesus, every moment of his life being dedicated to the thought of his heavenly Father. At an earlier period, Horst presented this symbolical view of the story of Jesus with singular clearness. Whether, he says, all that is narrated of Christ happened precisely so, historically, is a question indifferent to us, nor can it now be settled. Indeed, if we would be candid with ourselves, that which was once sacred history for the Christian believer, is, for the enlightened portion of our contemporaries, only fable: the narratives of the supernatural birth of Christ, of his miracles, of his resurrection and ascension, must be rejected by us as at variance with the inductions of our intellect. Let them however only be no longer interpreted merely by the understanding as history, but by the feelings and imagination, as poetry; and it will be found that in these narratives nothing is invented arbitrarily, but all springs from the depths and divine impulses of the human mind. Considered from this point of view, we may annex to the story of Christ all that is important to religious trust, animating to the pure dispositions, attractive to the tender feelings. That history is a beautiful, sacred poem of the human race, a poem in which are embodied all the wants of our religious instinct; and this is the highest honour of Christianity, and the strongest proof of its universal applicability. The story of the gospel is in fact the story of human nature conceived ideally, and exhibits to us in the life of an individual, what man ought to be, and, united with him ^{P.891} by following his doctrine and example, can actually become. It is not denied that what to us can appear only sacred poetry, was to Paul, John, Matthew and Luke, fact and certain history. But it was the very same internal cause which made the narratives of the gospel sacred fact and history to them, which makes those narratives to us a sacred myth and poetry. The points of view only are different: human nature, and in it the religious impulse, remains ever the same. Those first Christians needed in their world, for the animating of the religious and moral dispositions in the men of their time, history and fact, of which, however, the inmost kernel consisted of ideas: i.e. the facts are become superannuated and doubtful, and only for the sake of the fundamental ideas, are the narratives of those facts an object of reverence.

This view was met immediately on the part of the Church by the reproach, that instead of the riches of divine reality which faith discovers in the story of Christ, is palmed upon us a collection of empty ideas and ideals; instead of a consolatory work effected, an overwhelming obligation. For the certainty, that God once actually united himself with human nature, the admonition that man ought to obtain divine dispositions, offers a poor compensation: for the peace which the redemption completed by Christ brings to the believer, it is no equivalent to put before him the duty of freeing himself from sin. By this system, man is thrust out of the reconciled world in which Christianity places him, into an unreconciled world, out of a world of happiness into a world of misery; for where reconciliation has yet to be effected, where happiness has yet to be attained, there is at present enmity and unhappiness. And, in truth, the hope of entire deliverance from these conditions, is, according to the principls of this system, which only admits an infinite approximation towards the idea, a deceptive one; for that which is only to be reached in an endless progression, is in fact unattainable. But not the faith alone, science also in its newest development, has found this system unsatisfactory. Science has perceived that to convert ideas simply into an obligatory possibility, to which no reality corresponds,.is in fact to annihilate them; just as it would be to render the infinite finite, to represent it as that which lies beyond the finite. Science has conceived that the infinite has its existence in the alternate production and extinction of the finite; that the idea is realized only in the entire series of its manifestations; that nothing can come into existence which does not already essentially exist; and, therefore, that it is not to be required of man, that he should reconcile himself with God, and assimilate his sentiments to the divine, unless tin's reconciliation and this assimilation are already irtually effected.