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CLARK'S

FOEEIGN

THEOLOGICAL LIBEARY.

NEW SEEIES.
VOL. XXVIII.

iFranft'0 Cfirtsttan CEttatntg.

EDINBUEGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
1886.

PRINTED ET MOKRISON AND GIBB,
FOR
T. & T. CLAKK, EDINBUEGH.
LONDON,, . . . HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
DUBLIN, . . . GEO. HERBERT.
NEW YORK, . . . SORIBNEE AND WELEORD.

C/

SYSTEM

CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.

De. ee. h. e. FEANK,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ERLANCEN.

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND IMPROVED THROUGHOUT.

STransIateti from tfje ffierman
BY
Rev. MAURICE J. EVANS, B.A.

EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
1886.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

FitOM the existing position of the Church of Jesus Christ,
in itself and in its relation to the world. Christian theology
receives its essential tasks. Not as though by working to
order it had to furnish well prepared, to the rising or actual
ministry of the Church, the requisite theological supply, — it is
a free science, as free as any other whatever, bound solely by
that which constitutes at the same time its freedom, by the
peculiar experience from which its knowledge arises, by the
particular objects on the understanding of which it labours, by
the means appropriate hereto with which it solves its problems.
But this very thing, in which at once its freedom and its
restriction consists, grows up for theology out of its close con
nectedness with the Church : without such connectedness its
theologizing were a groundless and baseless one, a Will o' the
Wisp movement about the object, the possession of which con
ditions the right and the necessity as likewise also the form of
Christian theology.
I have remained conscious of this in the working out of
the System of the Christian Certainty. Nothing was further
from my intention than to discover and bring out that which
is new, in the sense in which, for instance, the individual,
taken alone and severed from the community, may form his
private thoughts on this or the other particular. On the con
trary, I did not and do not entertain a doubt but what, in

Vi PEEFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION.
accordance with the stage of development which the Christian
Church has attained at a particular time, the task is imposed
upon theology of exhibiting the sources and coherences of the
Christian certainty in their organic unity, not as these dwell
in the individual apart, but in him as a member of the
Church, thus in fact dwell in the consciousness of this Church
itself. And nothing would be more agreeable to me, than
that the scientific discussion on the Christian certainty should
afford only that which already lives in the heart of the
Church, even though more or less unconsciously, — the scientific
declaration of its possession, the declaring of this just now
and just as it is, as the satisfaction of the need born out of
the Church's present position.
I do not, however, disguise from myself the fact, that with
this conception of the matter the difficulty of the task is
augmented rather than diminished. The experience of the
individual as member of the Church is always only a partial
one, and the general consciousness, participating in which he
supplements his own defect, is in the present day less than
ever something definite, in its manifestation uniform and
tangible. Moreover, processes of life and of spirit like these,
the more immediately — one might say, the more instinctively
— they are accomplished, the more dif&cult are they for the
thought to apprehend and systematically to unfold. Finally,
I was compelled in the drawing up of the system, to follow
the guidance simply of the inner dialectics of the matter,
without enjoying the security which is afforded by having
predecessors on the path.
On this account it will be believed that I published this
work not without trembling. The practical importance of the
object enhances the responsibility, as regards the friends and
as regards the foes ; nor, apart from the defects which attach

PREFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION. vii
to the treatment, will there be wanting, either, involuntary
occasion for misapprehensions.
What has nevertheless encouraged me to put forth the
book as it is, is the conviction that the work must at any rate
be done ; that the present position of the Church doubly calls
for it ; that I have been led by the course of my theological
studies to take up this question ; that even a defective attempt
to do this work is yet a beginning of the work, and as such
may be a contribution to the required performance.
Erlangen, 29th March 1870.

I do not know that I have anything to add to the Preface
to the first edition, — the point of view of which I now, as
then, deem to be regulative for the right apprehension of the
problem laid down and the attempt at its solution, — beyond
the assurance that I have earnestly endeavoured to testify my
gratitude for the friendly reception of the work by a diligent
revision, by a consideration of objections raised, as also of
opposing tendencies, finally, by the effort after the utmost
feasible perspicuity of the contents and the simplifying of the
form.
Dr. frank.
elangfn, 8th August 1884.

CONTENTS.

THE TASK IMPOSED,
PAGE
§ 1. The scientific cognition and exposition of the Christian Certainty
is a task of theology, .... 1
§ 2. Of the evangelical theology in particular, . 5
§ 3. Of the Christian theology of the present day, . . 12
§ 4. As distinguished from apologetics, ... 18
§ 5. As distinguished from the philosophy of religion, . . 25
§ 6. The System of the Christian Certainty forms the first part of
systematic theology, ...... 31
§ 7. Arrangement of the System of the Christian Certainty, . . 42

PART I.
THE CHRISTIAN CBETAINTY IN ITS CENTRAL CHARACTER.
SECTION L
THE CHARACTER OF CERTAINTY IN GENERAL.
§ 8. Certainty as a condition of subjective assuredness common to the
natural consciousness with the Christian, ... 53
§ 9. The necessary and constant supposing of an object in Certainty, . 57
§ 10. The relation of the subject to the object : experience and
cognition, . . . . . . .63
§11. Notion of the Certainty, degree and norm thereof, . . 74
§ 12. The Certainty in the enlargement of the individual subject into
the general, . ...... 83
SECTION n.
THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
§ 13. Formal accordance of the Christian Certainty with the natural, . 89
§ 14. Material diversity of the Christian Certainty from the natural,
on the ground of an experience of a peculiar moral kind, . 98
§ 15. The peculiar moral experience which underlies the Christian Cer
tainty is regeneration and conversion, . . . • 109

122

CONTENTS.

§16. The moral transformation accomplished in regeneration and con
version approves itself to the Christian as legitimate and
necessary, ....-••
§ 17. The relation of the Christian Certainty which has reference to
the state of life in regeneration, to the Certainty which grows up
out of this state of life, ..'..•• ^^^
SECTION III.
THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE.
§ 18. To the positive exposition of the Christian Certainty in principle
there attaches that of its congruent, likewise principial, opposi
tion, which the Christian recognises as relatively necessary and
absolutely null and void, . . . • .147
§ 19. The opposition is based in the first place upon the incongruence
between the natural experience and cognition of the subject and
the spiritual realities, the assuring with regard to which is in
question, ....-.• 152
§ 20. The opposition is enhanced in proportion as influences proceed
from the Christian trath to the natural subject, adapted to
transform the moral antagonism, already dwelling in him, into
a decisive conflict between the rising new / and tlie old / itself, 158
§ 21. As regards the object the opposition is conditioned by misconcep
tion of the treasure of the Christian truth, . ¦. . 163
§ 22. The uncertainty for the time being, even on the part of the Chris
tian, is in its ultimate- ground conditioned by the interruption
and arresting of that moral process of life, by which the im
planting of the new / constantly accomplishes itself, . . 172
PART II.
THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY IN ITS RELATION TO THE OBJECTS OF
FAITH.
§ 23. The Central Christian Certainty stands in indissoluble relation to
the complex whole of the objects of faith. This relation, how
ever, is different according as it is a question with us of
immanent, of transcendent, or of transeunt objects of the
Christian trutli, . . .... 183
SECTION I.
THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY IN ITS RELATION TO THE IMMANENT OBJECTS OF
FAITH.
CHAPTER I.
THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY.
§ 24. The relation which exists between the I of regeneration and the
natural /, assures the Christian first of the habitual and actual
sin, then and at the same time of the naturally uufree will, . 189

CONTENTS. xi

§ 25. The process, in which the 1 of regeneration is produced and exists,
assures the Christian of the habitual and actual righteousness,
as also of the spiritual freedom of the will, . . . 202
§ 26. In the installing of the new / in the centre of the human person
ality and in the present continuance of the same, the Christian
has the pledge for the future sole determination of his whole
nature from that centre, the certain hope of the consummation, 219
CHAPTER II.
THE OPPOSITION" OF RATIONALISM.
§ 27. Derivation of the contradictions which here meet us from the
opposition in principle as their source, parallel to the derivation
of the practical certainty, and comprehension of the oppositions
directed to the immanent objects of the faith under the name of
Rationalism, ....... 231
§ 28. Explanation and rejection of the contradiction made to the Chris
tian Certainty of sin, ...... 242
§ 29. Explanation and rejection of the contradiction made to the Chris
tian Certainty of righteousness, . . . . .259
§ 30. Explanation and rejection of the contradiction made to the Chris
tian Certainty of the consummation, .... 276
SECTION II.
THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY IN ITS RELATION TO THE TRANSCENDENT OBJECTS
OF FAITH.

CHAPTER I.
THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY.
§ 31. The self-assuring with regard to the transcendent objects of faith
is accomplished on the ground of the state of fact heretofore
vouched for, in which the realities of the other world reflect
themselves as operating factors, and in virtue of the principle
of cognition which is implanted with this operating, . . 295
§ 32. With the fact of his inner transformation the Christian has become
conscious of a power, which has guaranteed itself to him by its
operation as transcendent, absolute, personal, consequently of
the reality and personality of God, . . . .303
§ 33. The diremption of that one fact into its different elements without
affecting the abiding unity is a pledge for the corresponding
diremption of the one absolute, personal factor without preju
dice to the abiding unity of the same, consequently for the one
personal God as the triune God, .... 324
§ 34. The necessity and the reality of the expiation conditioning the
freedom from guilt has left its impress upon the experience of
the Christian as of one rendered by God to Himself, at the hand
of man, and in this respect vouches for the fact of the God-man,
the sinless, substitutionary One, triumphing over death, . 349

XU CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
THE OPPOSITION OP PANTHEISM.
§ 35. The sense in which the oppositions to the transcendent objects of
faith are comprehended under Pantheism. Explanation and
rejection of the contradiction made to the Christian Certainty
concerning the personal God, ....
§ 36. Explanation and rejection of the contradiction made to the ChriS'
tian Certainty concerning the triune God,
§ 37. Explanation and rejection of the contradiction made to the Chris
tjan Certainty concerning the divine-human Expiator, .

371408
437

ERRATUM.
P. 115, line 19 from foot, for 'producing itself,' read 'producing of itself.'

SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAmTY.

THE TASK IMPOSED.
§ 1. Christian Certainty, here understood as a correlative of
Christian truth, and thus not as identical with the assur
ance of salvation (certitudo saluiis), is for the Christian as
such an inalienable reality, implanted in and with faith,
yet by no means covering exactly the same ground with
the latter. To recognise and explain this certainty, in its
Origin, its Nature, its Warranty, is the task of Theology.
1. We take our start from the fact of the Christian cer
tainty, as that on which the right and the necessity for making
it an object of Christian science is founded. Without fore
stalling subsequent investigations as to the nature of such
certainty, let it, for the avoidance of misunderstanding, be at
once premised that we employ the expression in a much more
comprehensive sense than that of the personal assurance of
salvation, the certitudo saluiis. We have to do with the fact
that for the Christian Church, and with it the individual
Christian who is what his name implies, the Christian truth
as such is counted and firmly regarded as a reality. It is
evident that this is something quite different, of a more general
nature, than that assurance of salvation, in connection with
which, particularly in the conflicts between the Evangelicals
and the Catholics, it was a question whether, and to what
extent, the Christian could be assured of his state of grace
before God. If in such assurance of salvation there is con
tained a part of Christian truth, our theological discipline will,
to be sure, have reference to this also in its proper place.
A

2 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
But for the present we are not speaking of this, but of that
certainty which is correlative with Christian truth in general.
We do not propose to call it forth where it is wanting, nor to
renew it where it has been lost; but where it exists we accept
it, and seek to understand what it is and how it has arisen.
2. With equal decision must we reject the opinion which
would identify Christian certainty with Christian faith. We
can do this so much the more positively, if we start from the
Evangelical idea of faith. For according to this, faith is not
a mere regarding as true, but an act of the will, an act of the
DO '
renewed personality, by virtue of which the person surrenders
himself to the Redeemer, and appropriates the salvation
obtained by Him. To come to Christ, to apprehend Christ,
that is in the evangelical sense to believe on Him. Yet, how
ever much it were out of place to identify Christian certainty
with such believing, it is on the other hand clear that with
the latter the former is at the same time granted, and that the
Christian state, into which faith brings us, includes within
itself Christian certainty. To faith also the certainty attaches,
not merely inasmuch as with the act of faith there is always
associated the consciousness of the legitimacy and moral neces
sity of this act, but also inasmuch as the state of life, and
the world into which the Christian enters by means of faith,
therewith attest themselves to him as real. It may remain
for the present undecided whether faith conditions certainty,
or certainty faith ; it suffices us to establish the proposition
of experience, that there is no Christian faith or Christian
state without Christian certainty. Not as though this cer
tainty were at all times and on all points equally strong, it
may be that it is moved and shaken by doubts, and that for
the consciousness of the Christian at any particular time it
appears as though everything had become uncertain, or even
altogether lost for him, of that which made up the real con
tents or foundation of his faith. In this case, however, only
one of two things is possible, and the one as the other serves
for the confirmation of our general statement; either there
continue to exist — while the tempest of doubt bows down or
breaks off the certainty of the Christian consciousness— the
inner living relations of faith towards those realities heretofore
regarded as certain, the having apprehended and constant

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 1. 3
apprehending of Christ, and then the believing subject, upon
bethinking himself again as to the roots of his Christian state
of life, cannot help recognising as mere appearance or delusion
that temporarily prevailing uncertainty, and as such casting
it from him ; or else there combines with the doubt, at the
same time, a preponderance of the natural principle of life
over the spiritual, of which the cause or consequence is an
actual breaking away from Christ, a cessation of faith, and
then doubtless the former certainty is not only apparently but
really lost, yet only at the same time with faith and the
Christian state of life. Otherwise does the matter stand
where the doubt is directed not to the centre of faith itself,
but to some point or other of the circle of life comprehended
by it, in such wise that this point for the consciousness of the
believer comes into contradiction with the other, more or less
central realities, of which the believer is assured; here too it
is no doubt possible that the uncertainty, combining with
some morbid condition of the spiritual life, should gradually
extend, should gradually lay hold on other and more important
parts, and finally should destroy the central certainty itself,
along loith the Christian state of life. It is not, however, in this
case, as in the former, necessary that the uncertainty, during the
continuance of the state of life, should at once be recognised
as illusion, or should be able to remain only in an enfeebled
state of life ; but it can continue to exist unsurmounted side
by side with faith, and is experiemeed by the consciousness as
a temporary defect and a limit to be set aside, just as, in the
purely moral domain, the sin which still cleaves to us. This
last case seems certainly not perfectly to conform to the
general rule, according to which with the Christian faith and
state of life there is also given the corresponding certainty,
inasmuch as here the Christian state, still continuing, is seen
to be combined with enduring uncertainty. Notwithstanding
this, on more careful reflection, the exception proves not to be
real, inasmuch as we speak of Christian certainty not other
wise than of the Christian state of life, namely, as not yet
perfected, as existing and at the same time arising ; so that
therein the fundamental certainty, having respect as such to
the Christian state, none the less remains, and appears
hindered only in its fuU operation and complete result.

4 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
Besides which there is the additional consideration that the
believer overcomes — at least as regards the thesis — even that
uncertainty yet remaining; that is to say, assumes the contra
diction which gives rise to the doubt, not to have an actual
existence, consequently has overcome it in hope, if not yet in
cognition. So that thus the fact is confirmed on this side
also, that Christian certainty is granted to the Christian along
with his faith, and alienable only with his Christian state.
3. The more consequently Christian certainty manifests
itself as really present, apart as yet from its being lifted into
the theological consciousness, so much the more is it adapted
for becoming an object of scientific theological cognition. It
would be so even though there were not — what is yet evidently
the case — implanted within it a tendency to the clear per
ception of that which one possesses and retains in faith. For
as beyond doubt present, conferred along with faith, having
respect to a whole array of objects of faith, it must surely
have a foundation which discloses itself to the intellect
directed thereto; must, in its rise, in its connectedness, in its
extension — not everywhere homogeneous — to the different
sides of Christian truth, and in its relation to natural truth,
admit of apprehension and presentation — all this in a very
proper sense a task of scientific labour. And to what extent
this process of observing and reflecting research may be con
tinued cannot be determined beforehand, but is itself dis
covered only as a result of the process of cognizance. But
there is now also the further consideration, that even in the
certainty of faith itself there is implanted a tendency to full
knowledge, which facilitates the transition to a scientific
understanding with regard to the matter. For of a truth the
elevation of the certainty into the consciousness, the detaching
of the same from the subject on behalf of an objective know
ledge, admits of very different degrees, and the certainty in
this domain may at first appear just as instinctive, and to this
extent beyond our consciousness, as in another province the
natural certainty. But inasmuch as we have admittedly
before our eyes not the Christian's state of life in its first
stage, but the developed and matured state of life, we may
take it as a fact that with this life there has also been
regularly developed, in a greater or lesser measure, the con-

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 2. 5
sciousness of the wherefore of faith, the rudimentarv beginning
for that intellectual process which theology on its part has to
take up, to explore, and scientifically to carry out. Or is it
to be sought in this, that to ask why I am certain of the
relation between God and man which has attained to realiza
tion in me„ " is an event that could just as little happen to
me as to ask why I am certain of the fact that I exist " ? (von
Hofmann, Ethik, p. 15). Well, the last-named event has
very often happened on the side of the philosophers, and the
first-named event lies so much closer at hand, inasmuch as
the state of fact in question, and the certainty thereof, is in
me something not naturally existing, but something which has
arisen in the midst of the natural world, with regard to which
therefore, much more than in the other ease, it may be asked
how and with what right it has arisen. Or let, if you will,
Christian belief be a belief on thei ground of authority, —
although no evangelical Christian will admit this in the sense
in which the opponents use the expression,^ — yet the Christian
is able to say, or ought at least so to be able, why he feels
inwardly impelled to submit to the authority which comes to
him with this claim ; he is able and ought to be so, not in
the first place for the sake of others who require an account
of the living hope that is in him (1 Pet. iii. 15), but in the
first place for his own sake. The question is thus not merely
as to the nature of that certainty, that one may recognise it
as it actually exists, — for this existence, however real it may
be, might still be an unwarranted existence — but at the
same time as to its right to existence; for without the con
sciousness of this right, of this inner necessity, all would be
over with the joyfulness of faith, as with its veracity : to
investigate and give scientific expression to all this, which
is implicitly or explicitly deposed in the consciousness of the
Christian, is necessarily the business of theology.
§ 2. The restoration of Christian certainty, in itself everywhere
the same, became in consequence of the Eeformation of the
Church to this extent modified, viz. that the factors thereof
began more than before to enter into the consciousness
For in order to renounce the Eomish Church, now become

6 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
in essential particulars antichristian, there was need of a
personal decision between pretended and veritable authori
ties for faith ; and this personal decision could not fail of
reacting also upon the advocates of the ancient Church.
On this account the clearing up of uncertainties as to the
basis and nature of Christian certainty is a task in particular
of evangelical theology.
1. Everywhere where certainty exists, be it in what domain
it may, it cannot have been otherwise brought about than by
subjective means. The necessity for recognising a reality as
such, for determining how much or how little attaches to it,
and how much or how little it itself contributes to its credence
by its influence upon the subject, demands a judgment on the
part of the subject, and is — specially where the compulsion
of physical experience is excluded — in the last resort con
ditioned by the personal decision of the subject. The religious,
the Christian certainty, forms no exception to this rule. The
opinion therefore cannot be entertained, that the inner and
fundamental relation between the genesis of personal certainty
and the realities to which it has reference, may be changed as
to its essence by any outward occurrences, by facts of history ;
and what is true of Christian certainty in itself, must there
fore be true also of the certainty of the evangelical conscious
ness conditioned by the fact of the Eeformation. Nevertheless
there is a difi'erence between the proposition that the Christian
certainty is at all times as to its essence accomplished in an
identical manner in the subject, and the assertion that in
consequence of an important ecclesiastical event, thus here of
the Eeformation, the question as to the basis and mode of
producing this certainty presents itself to the consciousness of
the Christian in a particular way. In the latter case it is
the consideration of a reflection on the part of the Christian,
on an act of his inner personal, ethical, and intellectual life,
which he has perhaps hitherto performed unconsciously, and
without accounting to himself for it ; but of which he now
asks, in consequence of external solicitation and compulsion,
with what right, by virtue of what motives, he has done so
and is further resolved to do so.
2. The act of such personal reflection [or deliberation], and

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 2. '
that in the first place not of the individual but of the Church
within certain districts and territories, upon the object and
basis of its faith, was the means of effecting the Eeformation.
In presence of the medley, into which in the course of the
ages the Christian realities — in which the religious need finds
its satisfaction — had entered with the additions of human
opinion, the consciousness of the difference between the
religious-moral want and the means hitherto at hand for its
satisfaction must assert itself the more powerfully, just where
this want (notwithstanding all) attained to its contentment,
and in the measure in which it did so ; and the experience,
now advanced to a conscious, knowledge as to which elements
of Christian truth, presented to it on the part of the Church,
had promoted that satisfaction, and which had stood in the
way of it, must lead to a rejection of the latter in accordance
with this experience. The process of self-contentment was
in this case a detail of self-assuring as to the realities of the
faith, wherein was involved, along with the certainty regarding
the value and reality of these realities, that also as to the
unreality of other things presented with equal claim; and,
indeed, in such wise that the eye continued everywhere turned
towards the objective realities, actual or only apparent. To
the self-decision of the subject there thus certainly attached
a twofold importance ; yet not in such wise that one was
conscious of the severance from the authorities in the act of
the decision, but only inasmuch as, on the ground of the self-
satisfaction attained, other authorities were substituted in
place of those hitherto retained. The grace of God instead
of human merit, the sole supremacy of Christ instead of that
of His pretended vicar. Scripture instead of the tradition that
had overgrown it, and the like — these it was on which the
certainty of faith was made to rest, objective realities and
authorities, in connection with which the question now of
necessity arose, why then the confidence turned towards these,
why upon these was founded the certainty of faith which was
withdrawn from those others 1 To this question the answer
was given in the first place not by a going back to the
ultimate grounds, furnished in the relation of the subject to
those objective realities, but men took their stand on these
realities as in themselves certain ; and so much the more

8 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
readily, inasmuch as they had not been put away, rather only
clouded and placed in the background, by the hitherto pre
vailing ecclesiastical consciousness of the community.
3. Despite this pushing forward of the objective factors
into the foreground of the consciousness in the self-assuring
of faith, the subjective was still in point of fact the decisive
one ; and it is to this extent a well-founded judgment, when
men see a period of subjectivism begin with the fact of the
Eeformation. The reproaches of the Eomish opponents were
adapted to bring this honae to the consciousness of the
Evangelicals, however little the latter might be inclined to
acknowledge it, or indeed capable of doing so ; and the actual
course which the Eeformation took within the divers provinces
which were affected by it, the divisions, sects,, and heresies
which cropped up in its train, must contribute to destroy the
illusion that the certitude of faith rests in the last instance
on the appeal to any objective authority whatever. There in
the Eomish camp they asked such questions as this : How
the Evangelicals came to look upon a certain sum-total of
sacred books as the highest authority for faith, books whose
canonicity after all must be traced back in some way or other
to the verdict of the Church ; or they asked in view of the
differences which had manifested themselves among the
Protestants, whether in reality the objective norm of Holy
Scripture maintained by the latter was in a position to afford
to individuals and the Church the necessary certainty, since
this norm, to be sure, is submitted to the subjectivism of the
expositor. Here on the other hand, in the circle of the
Protestants, the diversity of the authorities on which men
relied, and even the varied apprehension and employment of
the same authorities, pointed to the existence of a subjective
factor as operating in the background, M'hich alone made this
difference explicable ; nay, there were not wanting those who
would have the subject regarded as alone the normative factor.
It was of course a folly on the part of the Eomish polemics,
that they reproached the Eeformation with that subjectivity
of the deciding factor as a defect, and supposed that all kind
of authority on the part of the objectively operating forces
was thus broken for the faith; and this folly has had its
representatives even to the present day as though the accom-

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 2. 9
plishment of any Eeformation whatever were possible without
such a breaking through of the subjectivity, and as though
the maintenance of any authority, be its name what it may,
were not conditioned in some way by the self-decision of the
subject. But just as little as the attack was the defence to
the point, when, covering from sight or denying the subjective
factor, it perhaps based the supreme authority oi Holy Scrip
ture simply upon the fact that it is God's word, or that it is
inspired — a manifest deflecting from the question at issue,
which is, how this so-constituted writing becomes an authority
for me, the believer; or even (though this approached nearer
the truth), when it fell back upon the testimony of the Holy
Ghost, with regard to which the question nevertheless again
arises, how I, the believer, come to regard it as such, and to
make it an authority for me ; not to say that those grounds
of assurance, whose operation is comprehended under the
expression fides hiimana, might contribute something towards
the solution of the problem. Yet quite recently one of the
ifiost earnest and faithful adherents of the Eeformation,
Philippi, went so far as — in opposition to the attempt to
trace out and indicate the subjective conditions under which
faith arises, conditions which take place under all circum
stances, consciously or unconsciously — to formulate the anti
thesis : " It will always come to this, that not the subjective
regeneration, but the objective atonement wrought out by
Christ, attested and offered by the word of God, is alike the
starting-point and the only rock on which the evangelical
Christian bases his assurance of salvation, and by which he
ever raises himself again " (V. 2 ; 2nd ed. p. 5 8). But then
the question is just this, how an evangelical Christian comes
to make those graciously given realities the only rock of his
confidence. Moreover, one easily recognises that the difficulty
which, historically viewed, becomes manifest between the two
confessions on single points of attack and defence, is of a
more general nature, and rightly regarded extends to the
whole domain of Christian faith and the self-assurance con
nected therewith.
4. Thus then it is comprehensible that even the Eoman
Catholic theology should take into consideration those
questions raised by the Eeformation in particular, and,

10 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
availing itself of analogous endeavours on the part of
the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, should seek to
define the ultimate grounds of the specifically Catholic
assurance of faith. For not everywhere in this theology
do we meet with the same folly as according to the general
verdict characterizes the ordinary polemics of scholasticism,
and as it has recently been comprehended in the most
instructive manner in Hettinger's Krisis des Christenthums
(1881), according to which there is opposed to the Protestant
subjectivism " the authority of the Church," which " proves
itself by itself." " Its great and admirable unity, the blossoms
of its saints, its catholicity, which embraces the earth, its
apostolicity, which extends upward, in unbroken succession
of Eomish bishops as far as Peter, in whom it received its
mission from the Lord, its marvellous extension, its invincible
continuance, its inexhaustible prolificness in all good things,
is a magnificent and enduring argument for its credibility
and an irrefutable testimony for its divine mission, the visible
manifestation ^ of the spirit invisibly operating within it"'
(p. 124). It has of course always been the endeavour of
the Eomish theologians to establish the authority of the
Church; but the more far-seeing and profound among them
did not conceal from themselves the fact that one cannot
possibly take one's stand at this as the final authority, that
on the contrary there is need of a confirming of the same,
which, however objectively conditioned, nevertheless takes
place within the human subject. Suarez, e.g., traces back the
self-assurance to the judgment : " God is omniscient and true,
infallible in knowledge and speech, and has revealed Him
self ; " " from this is then obtained the ground of assurance
for the accepting of the material objects of revelation " (comp.
Aloys Schmid, Untersuchungen iiber den htzten Gewissheitsgrund
f%T die Annahme der materiellen Ohjecte der Offenbarung,
Mlinchen 1879, p. 165). But then it was just as com
prehensible that they should not be able to take their stand
at this pushing forward of another objective authority, albeit
subjectively acquired, before that of the Church ; on the con
trary, that perceiving a reasoning in a circle in the demand
that one should admit " the infallible knowledge and veracity
of __God, on whose testimony it must be accepted, and the

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 2. 11
latter again on the ground of the former," they should go
farther back, and make the infallible knowledge and veracity,
or authority, of God guarantee itself to man, " only by virtue
of a supernatural act (assensus supernaturalis), which in a
wider sense may be called faith, inasmuch as it, serves as a
root to the faith in the contents of the divine testimony "
{ibid. p. 168). It is not necessary at this place to enter
further into these attempts at furnishing the ultimate grounds
of validity for the accepted ecclesiastical authorities : we see
how the logic of facts constrained to such attempts, and how
for the future it will only be a question by what means and
in what way this subjective assurance is brought about.
5. The less will a further justification now be necessary,
when we designate it a task precisely of evangelical
theology scientifically to define the ground and mode of
producing the Christian certainty, and more particularly the
evangelical. The evangelical theology has on the one hand
been led and impelled to this task by its origin and history,
and on the other hand has received it, one may venture to
say, unsolved at the hand of the Eeformation. However
comprehensible and natural it was that the vital act of the
Eeformation, as every other act of sound life, should be
accomplished at first instinctively and without reflecting
thereon, so that the Christian certainty in the evangelical
form was already constituted before it accounted to itself
regarding the ultimate principles of its work, the right of its
existence, the extent and limits of its domain, yet equally
unnatural and culpable would it be were not this act of
life made an object of cognition and as to its inner laws
brought to the consciousness. For although the certainty
itself can never be produced by this process of cognition, on
the contrary this presupposes the existence of the same in
order to its performance ; yet the fact admits of no doubt,
that the clearness of the knowledge about the Wherefore and
the How of the certainty confirms and enhances it, and thus
corresponds to the normal development of the human being,
that his action become more and more one consciously under
stood and willed. The evangelical theology, which already in
its earlier controversial history, in its conflict with Eoman
Catholicism and in other confessional controversies, had

12 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
neglected to enter energetically and with full freedom of
spirit upon that question of principles, experienced the
after - effects of this fault in the almost always unsolved
pietistic controversies, where questions like that as to the
theologia irregenitorum and the like come into the most
intimate contact with those principles of Christian certainty ;
and with the further neglect of this task, specially in the
present day, when the oppositions of life and of knowledge
affect the lowermost foundation of the Christian truth, would
to its loss forego the scientific support which is its due.
§ 3. The opposition of Christian and extra-Christian views of
life has in the present day more than ever taken the form
of one of principle, so that the conflict quite naturally
retires from the contested objects of the Christian faith to
the ultimate grounds of Christian and natural certainty.
The processes of life and cognition, as they take place in
the profoundest depths of the human personality in the
calling forth of Christian certainty or its opposite, con
dition on their part the decision of that conflict which
concerns the single objects of the faith. The investigating
and representation of that process of self-assurance accord
ingly manifests itself to be an essential task of the Christian
theology of to-day.
1. That which is apparent to every one, and in particular
forces itself upon the Christian of the present day, calls as
such for no detailed proof, only for indication. It is a fact
that the oppositions in the mode of viewing life, so far ¦ as
they affect the religious moral domain, have advanced far
beyond the differences which formerly may have rent asunder
the Church and the social circles influenced by it. Christian
truth, which in its permeation of the human being and of the
popular mind had formerly to a certain extent, so to speak,
naturalized itself,— so that even where the obedience of faith
was more or less refused, essential portions of that truth were
established in the consciousness of the community,— mws^
in accordance with its ethical character, so much the more
quicldy separate itself from the consciousness of the community

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 3. 13
now reacting against it, in proportion as the life of society
ceases to be a compact, naturally united one, and the power
of individuality penetrates it. From this it does not at once
follow that the number of truly believing and converted
persons in the present day is smaller than at the time when
the social consciousness was naturally dominated by Christian
elements or permeated therewith ; but certainly there results
from it the essential change, the greater intensity and severity
of the conflict in which Christian truth is involved with the
antichristian forces, and the narrowing and contracting of the
ground which, as one common to the two opponents, affords
the possibility of a natural understanding. True, the opposi
tion to the view of life (and the cognition based thereon) on
the part of the natural man has been peculiar to Christianity
from the beginning and inalienably, — the wisdom of this
world is foolishness with God, and again the word of the cross
is foolishness to the lost (1 Cor. ii., iii.), — but one must say
that this tension of the opposites has in the present day
assumed greater acuteness, inasmuch as the naturally moral
presuppositions of Christianity in the unconverted man are
likewise affected by these oppositions. It is another question
whether the religious trait, which historically regarded may
be looked upon as the universal characteristic of the natural
man, and which despite all distortions nevertheless possesses
a certain homogeneity with Christianity, may still be pre
supposed to exist as a consciously and willingly produced fact
of the moral intellectual life ; or whether, as is actually the
case in many higher and lower spheres, this fact, however
certainly it may continue objectively to exist, is subjectively
ignored, combated, and so far as possible destroyed. Nor is
it open to any doubt that in the same proportion in wliich
the latter takes place and consolidates itself as the prevailing
sentiment, the strength and clearness of the natural moral
consciousness — which in certain measure is likewise homo
geneous with the Christian — diminishes, and therewith the
compass of the naturally firm and fixed moral truth is
narrowed down. Each of these is the mark of the present
day ; and we must reflect, first, that the dispossession of the
naturally religious and moral truth is accomplished much
more swiftly where the breach has preceded with that

14 SYSTEM OF TEIE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
Christian truth which embraces it, and then, that the
modern liberation of individuality accelerates the loosening
from the still unavoidably operating traditions of an other-
minded past, and therewith accelerates the process of
degeneration itself.
2. While the Church naturally is not in a position to place
in the background or surrender the store of Christian truth
which it has heretofore acquired, by exploring the substance
of the revelation which lies objectively before it, and the
possession of faith subjectively dwelling in it, — because the
attack upon this truth much less in the present day concerns
the single parts thereof than its ultimate principles, which
men were formerly wont to look upon as solidly established,-^ —
yet . not less certainly is it its task to take up the conflict
with the antichristian powers, above all just where the attack
is strongest, and thus the peril greatest, at the point of the
principles of the Christian faith and life. And while other
wise the path which the Church has to strike out in the
reproduction and appropriation, by way of experience and
cognition, of its possession in the faith, as a rule advances
from the centre of the same to its periphery; it is now com
pelled by the state of the case, without prejudice to the
continuation of this labour, to return to the fountain-region of
that which constitutes its life, and there to become conscious
of the ultimate grounds in virtue of which it is what it has
become and retains what it possesses. It is then in particular
the questions as to the nature, authority, genuineness, inspira
tion of Scripture, and what is akin thereto ; further, as to
the existence, the personality, the operations of God, and in
close connection with this as to the person of Christ, to which
the Church is directed by the nature of the opposition with
which in the present day it has to deal, — questions which
at once strike us as questions of principle, as on the other
hand we are struck by the novelty of the form in which
now, otherwise than in former ages of the Church, they press
importunately for an answer. So far as these questions are
of an historic nature, the Church has now not merely to do
with a purely historic investigation and criticism, such as in
reality has never before been brought to bear with equal
energy and in like extent upon the documents of its faith ;

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 3. 15
but it also becomes conscious in doing so that the solution of
these questions is not to be effected by a purely historic
method, inasmuch as this method, in order to its application,
presupposes the establishing in principle of the factors of all
beginning, as these are proper to sacred history in contra
distinction from profane, and of the relation in which the
inquiring subject accordingly stands to the facts of such
history. And so far as these questions are of a purely dog
matic nature, the previous labour of the Church, of what
ever enduring profit it may be in other respects, does not at
all suffice for the present day ; because the oppositions — and
consequently the presuppositions — of the conflict, whether as
regards the nature and personality of God in the midst of
His operations in and on the world, or as regards the life and
divine-human person of Christ, are now essentially other than
in any period whatever of the ecclesiastical past, and the
certainty of the Church, as that of which she is conscious,
calls for a distinct and firm position towards these contra
dictions. 3. It would be an error to suppose that this change in the
position of the conflict, in which the Church is now placed,
should influence only its dogmatic, and not at the same time
its practical labour. Out of the necessities of life grow up
for the Church the tasks of its dogmatic activity, provided
this last is a normal and sound one, and nothing can be, and
indeed has been, more fatal to the continuance and prosperity
of the ecclesiastical commonwealth than the dissevering of
the dogmatic scientific activity from the practical require
ments, conflicts, and endeavours of the common faith.
Besides, it needs now no proof, only an open eye for the state
of things at the present time, in order to recognise the con
sonance of the one with the other, as accordingly the direc
tion of the dogmatic activity to the centre of the faith is
entirely in accord with the fact that the practical Christian
conviction is threatened at its very roots by the antichristian
powers, and the planting thereof within the nominally Christian
world must often take place upon utterly unchristianized soil,
and consequently de novo. We have now, it is true, at the
very threshold to guard against the mistake of supposing
that the spiritual moral process, by means of which the saving

16 SYSTEM OF THE CHKISTIAN CERTAINTY.
Christian faith is communicated, acquired, maintained,
defended, is as to its essence at any time and in any condi
tion other than it has always been ; it is a question every
where of conversion to God in the experience of man's
personal guilt on account of sin, and of the liiVgiving
righteousness of Christ, and everywhere it is the drawing of
the Holy Ghost, in connection with the use of the means
appointed to this end, whereby this conversion is made
possible and effected. But, all this notwithstanding, the
conversion of a heathen who has liAcd in the actual faith
of the reality of his gods, or the conversion of a rationalist
who has been seeking in the fulfilment of the law righteous
ness in the sight of the personal and living God, is, even on
the most superficial view, other than the conversion, say of a
modern materialist or atheist, for whom the existence and
value of the human soul, the absolute validity of the moral
law, the freedom and responsibility of human action, is
equally lost from sight as the existence and personality of
God. If one looks, however, to the bottom of the matter,
one perceives the difference in the first place in this, — that
in the latter case the entrance into the normal Christian
position is at the same time a recovery of that true natural
relation which was here lost, there on the other hand in a
higher or lower degree still present. And further, since there
is no conversion without a simultaneous act and process of
cognition, by virtue of which the truth of the Christian
standing of life, and therewith the authorization of the same,
discloses itself to the man under conversion ; the intellectual
action, which accompanies the conversion, and on its part
renders it possible, must be different, in the measure in which
the opposition of the previous aberration was dilTerent. For
we must not deceive ourselves on this point: however the
relation between awakening of life and enlightenment may
be thought of in the worlv of conversion, even though the
latter follows the former and is conditioned by it, in no
case is conversion effected without a self - assuring in an
intellectual sense also, which assurance in some way
vanquishes, within the immediate intellectual circuit of
vision, the till then existing intellectual opposition to the
Christian truth. Now we see then how the practical

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 3. 17
activity of the Church, despite the otherwise essential
identity of its functions in the winning and preserving of
souls, modifies itself in the present day in accordance with
this condition of things, and how this modification is in due
coherence with the Church's dogmatic task. Not that the
teaching in the Church, as unhappily often happens, has to
mix up in the strife of opinions, where human - scientific
grounds are ranged against each other with relative claims,
. and brought into conflict ; but the one and abiding, saving
and world-overcoming truth, whose relations by virtue of its
universality extend in every direction, this it has to oppose to
the so-constituted oppositions, and by means of the same to
overcome them ; in such wise it is true that the combining
of this truth with the natural knowledge of truth in this
field is, and must be, accomplished in the same manner as is
the case elsewhere in the relation between Christian and natural
truth. 4. We may sum up the nett result of our discussions
hitherto. If Christian theology is directed by the state of
affairs to the fixing of the actual ground and the describmg
of the normal genesis of the Christian certainty, on account
of its connection, in itself indissoluble, with the living
Christian faith ; if it is, in the second place, indirectly led to
this course of action by the nature of the controversial
questions and confiicts arising out of the Eeformation, inas
much as these can find their solution in principle only by the
scientific proceeding indicated ; so is it, finally, impelled in
the most direct manner to this task by the present order of
conflict for the Church, where, in addition to the number of
inherited and ever-augmenting conflicts within the Church —
Church here taken in the widest sense of the term — it is a ques
tion of the maintenance and fortifying of the fundamental
Christian sentiment and view of life : herewith closes the
circle of the inner and outward necessities, which demand the
science of Christian certainty. The experience made of the
enhanced disagreement between that which Christian truth
supposes and claims with regard to the normal conformation
of the human being, and that which the natural conscious
ness of the time recognises as truth in this particular respect ;
and at the same time the fact that harmony of knowledge
B

18 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
as of conduct is for the constitution of the Christian's life
equally a necessity as for the nature of man in general : both
taken in combination constrain us to concentrate the view
upon that point at which for the first time this divided
consciousness comes together into unity, upon the manner
and norm of this combination, and then further to take into
contemplation from this point the compass of the Christian-
natural truth as one organic whole. It is the same question.
Why believest thou 1 which we recognised above as put with
the faith itself, the question as to the certainty of faith on
its objective as on its subjective side ; but this question now
brought back to a starting-point, which has thus first been
advanced before the eye by the extreme separation, in prin
ciple, of the Christian and the natural view of life; the
Christian certainty, existing in point of fact, reflects itself in
its basis, inasmuch as it recognises in its actual rise the
justification of its rise ; it forms to itself upon this founda
tion a system of Christian certainty, which as intellectual
and scientific claims to be, and must be, nothing else than the
setting forth of the actual system of the utterances of life
and coherences of life, as consciously or unconsciously they
answer to the rising, existing, and growing faith of the Chris
tian. And, if now the question as to the certainty has been
forced into a one-sided shape by the opposition of evangelical
and catholic faith, — in that this opposition is really no
absolute one, embracing the totality of the Christian faith
in all its relations, — and consequently also the Christian cer
tainty within the compass of this opposition is not universal
and complete ; this • one - sidedness disappears again at tlie
third standpoint, whence we contemplated the necessity and
character of a system of Christian certainty, without the
evangelical faith therewith ceasing to be determined by the
Catholic opposition, and to bear in itself the fulness of those
motive forces which have accrued to it out of this opposition.
For this very reason we have preferred on the present occasion
to 9,ssign to Christian theology in general that task, of which
we have before spoken as incumbent on evangelical theology.
§ 4. The task which is herewith set for Christian theology
has points of contact with the apologetic endeavours of the

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 4. 19
present day ; but is essentially , distinguished from them
by the fact, that in place of wishing to produce or main
tain Christian certainty, or to restore it where it has been
shaken, it presupposes the same as existing, consequently,
merely calls for its scientific testimony about itself in the
sense of Christian gnosis, to the end of its rendering an
account of itself, and furnishing the proof for its right of
existence. 1. The apologetic character which attaches to the task of
theology, as unfolded by us in that which precedes, inasmuch
as the conformation of the same has resulted essentially from
the oppositions to the evangelical faith, and to Christian faith
in general, is at once apparent ; but it is the more necessary
just here sharply to distinguish it from the kindred tasks
which the apologetics and apologies of Christianity, recently
appearing in considerable numbers, are wont to propose to
themselves. In like manner, as an apologetic activity and
literature was called into life in the ancient Church by the
struggle of Christianity for its entrance into the world, and
for its claim to dominion in the world ; so in the present day
has the impetus of the antichristian powers and ideas, in its
collision with the ofttimes newly-awakened faith, called forth
an apologetic activity and literature, which is partly of a
more practical, partly of a more theoretical character, which,
however, in every case aims not merely at repelling the
assaults of the opponents upon the truth of Christianity, but
also in some waj' at exhibiting this truth itself, and com
manding recognition for it. We have no thought of contest
ing the right and the necessity of these endeavours, — in
presence of misapprehensions which have arisen this must
again be emphasized, — but undoubtedly we are concerned to
remove an indistinctness of conception, which has not seldom
accompanied these endeavours, and clearly to distinguish our
task as of a different nature from that of those apologetic
endeavours. We may express it as an established axiom of
Christian knowledge that the living Christian conviction, of
the awakening, strengthening, maintenance of which it is a
question in those apologetic labours, has as its factors in the

20 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
first line not the means of human agreement upon a thing,
the proof of the historic character, the conceivableness, the
freedom from contradictions, the logical consistency of Chris
tianity, and many other such matters; but those spiritual
moral forces which, innate in Christianity from the time of
its divine founding, are alone, but also perfectly in a position
to awaken, to nourish, and to sustain that faith which is the
channel of salvation. If it were possible by that method of
agreement and of human evidence to introduce into the circle
of Christian ideas, and to convince of the truth of the same,
the result would be precisely that which the apologetics did
not aim at : this conviction so produced would be something
quite other than the faith which it sought to call forth, and
which alone, according to a Christian estimate, has any value.
Nay, apologetics, if it rightly understands its object, could
not even wish that the result should correspond to the design ;
for if this were to take place, therewith would be afforded in
point of fact an evidence against the truth of Christianity ;
because one could then be rendered certain . of it by other
factors than those divinely appointed to that end. A further
consideration likewise weighs with us. If apologetics, as
ofttimes happens, addresses its establishment of the Christian
truth to the opponents of the same, and in general to those
standing outside thereof, in order to overthrow their objec
tions and teach them something better, it forgets that it runs
the risk at the same time of surrendering an important article
of this truth, namely, that it is, at least in its centre, to the
" natural man " foolishness, and cannot cease to be foolishness
to him so long as it continues what it is. The same case
here arises, only in another direction, as there, where we had
under review the result of Christian conviction. In the
measure in which one succeeded in removing the stumblino--
blocks which Christianity presents for the natural man,
would Christianity itself be divested of its essential power
and truth ; and the more perfect and effective the reasoning,
the more destructive would it be for the foundation of the
truth itself— a ruin of Christianity at the very point where
it was supposed the fundamental proof was being delivered.
When, however, a clear view has once been gained regarding
this position of the apologetic endeavours, one will not indeed

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 4. 21
have to renounce them as useless and dangerous, but yet we
are required so to order them as to determine that, and how,
their activity can be a fruitful one. In the first place, the
practical tendency of the defence and evidencing of Christi
anity will exclude the claim to present a system of apolo
getics in which Christianity shall be proved for the natural
man also, though but as regards its bases, to be the only true
and necessar}' religion. For every such attempt is not only
founded on a surreptitious proceeding, in virtue of which the
idea of the true religion — which as such has yet been demon
strably first abstracted from Christianity — is placed first in
order, and the same afterwards pointed out as realized in the
Christian religion ; but it also labours under the difficulty
that the material of apologetics, because conditioned by the
state of the Church in the world at any particular time, and
specially by the attacks upon Christianity, and thus varying
in manifold ways, resists the endeavours to systematize it.
Thence, then, apologetics will easily cease to effect that
which its name indicates, in proportion as it lends itself to
systematic treatment; and, conversely, the more renounces
the claim to be a system, as it surrenders itself in
details to the scientific activity. In the second place, this
activity must not primarily set itself to draw over to the
Christian truth the man standing outside of the same, but
rather to retain in that truth those who are in some way
connected with it, but are wavering, backward in Christian
knowledge, and tempted on the intellectual side to apostasy,
to lead them farther, on the ground of that which they still,
in fact, possess of it, and to confirm them therein by every
practicable solution of the intellectual difficulties. For though
faith is not established by intellectual means, and there
fore also cannot be preserved in this way, yet it is not able
to exist without unity and harmony of life and knowledge at
least in the central matters of the conception of life, and the
disparity of a preponderantly intellectual development and
culture in relation to the ethico-Christian brings with it
temptations which, it may be only with the accession of
ethical forces, imperil the still existing possession of the
Christian truth. We shall not err if we find here the true
motive, and consequently also the essential object of the

22 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
apologetic labour of our days, of which as such one would
have to remain conscious : the refutation of the pronounced
enemies of Christianity does not aim primarily at the
vanquishing and winning over of these latter, but at the
confirming and strengthening of those who belong not to
them, but feel themselves disquieted by their objections. In
the third place, looking at those who have made a complete
rupture with the Christian truth, and taken up a position
of hostility towards it, the task of apologetics will certainly,
as was already implied in that which has been said, be that
of repelling the attacks of the same, and solving as far as
possible the seeming contradictions in which the Christian
knowledge has become involved in its relation to the natural.
But in connection with this it must not be forgotten that
there are here contradictions which remain, and will remain,
so long as the spiritual understanding given with faith itself
is lacking; and that therefore the fruit of the apologetic
labour in this province can only be a propfledeutic one, in
that it clears out of the way, so far as practicable, the
hindranc&s, behind which the natural man conceals the con
tradiction against the gospel having its ground in other
motives. For the same end apologetics will this time have
to bear not only a defensive, but likewise an aggressive
character, in such wise, namely, that it brings home to the
consciousness of the unbelievers the untenableness of the
opponent's position, which of a truth can be demonstrated by
the means at the disposal of natural knowledge, and on its
part thereby renders possible and facilitates for them the
entrance into the Christian standing of life and conception of
the worid. In the fourth place, for the sake of the practical
aim which apologetics has to pursue, even where it is occu
pied with scientific objects in a scientific manner, the spirit of
testimony, upon which the world- vanquishing power of Chris
tianity depends, will have to sustain and permeate its whole
activity. For it is false to say that this spirit can combine
only with the popular devotional form of discourse, or with
the form of the parsenesis ; it is given to Christianity to
speak in all languages, in the scientific among the others, and
to charge all forms of presentation with the element of life,
which on its side calls forth life.

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 4. 23
2. If we have heretofore recalled to mind the tasks of the
apologetic activity, as it seems to us they must be appre
hended from the nature of the case, we shall now be able,
with little difficulty, to develop and set forth the relation
between these and our own task. While it is there a
question of producing and establishing the Christian certainty
in those for whom this certainty is as yet more or less
wanting, it is, in our case, on the other hand, one of an
actual testimony of the same concerning itself, where it is
already present. There consequently falls away for us, before
everything else, that immediate practical aim in which
apologetics has its organic existence, and the task assumes
the form of a purely scientific one, which as such bears its
aim and object in itself. The system of Christian certainty
has this in common with apologetics, that it claims to return
an answer to the Wherefore of the Christian fiith ; yet to a
Wherefore which is not put to the Christian from without,
but which he puts to himself, not in order to buttress his
assurance of faith, much less to ground it, but in the interest
of the Christian gnosis. And whereas there one could speak,
only in a very limited sense, of a "proof of the faith,"
namely, of a scientific proof, specially where the apologete
sees himself confronted by the " natural man ; " here, on the
other hand, the demand for a proof of the truth can and
must be raised, inasmuch as it is for the Christian faith an
inalienable right to know why one believes. If, therefore, it
has been not infrequently objected to the attempt here made
at laying down a system of Christian certainty, that the
subjective foundation of the same is too weak for us thereon
to establish or maintain the Christian certainty, there lies in
this objection an imputation of tendencies which have not
been pursued by me. In some way surely the Christian
certainty, where it exists, will have been brought about ; and
those who think it has been brought about in another way
than that here indicated would do well to point out this way,
in place of spiriting the question away into another domain.
For the rest, the emphasizing of the gnosis, in the interest of
which primarily the solution of our problem is attempted, is
not to be understood as though this labour and the result, of
this or that nature as the case may be, were practically and

'24 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
for the Christian faith itself without significance. To know
why one believes is not merely a scientific demand, of which
the Christian as such can rid himself, but in the first place
an ethical and therefore practical one, which follows from the
indissoluble connection of pistis and gnosis, from the naturally
and morally necessary progress of faith to knowledge. The
system of Christian certainty, as a purely scientific system,
shares in this natural and ethical necessity, and is character
ized as the close of that, in the first place practical, intellectual
process, as the elevating of that knowledge, which belongs
universally to the advanced and conscious Christian, to the
higher stage of theological gnosis. As, however, in this
particular the solution of our problem is in intimate connection
with a specifically Christian want, demanding its satisfaction
in the enhanced form of scientific knowledge and presentation ;
so, on the other hand, it ranks among the tasks of scientific
and systematic activity in general, inasmuch as it has, in
common with all these, the tendency and aim to make a state
of fact, wherever it may be, in its whole organic connection
transparent for knowledge, and in conformity with its reality
to bring it to an adequate presentation. Finally, however,
as every scientific system, — though it may find its immediate
object in itself, — the nearer it approaches its contemplated
end, the more will it be qualified for the teaching and
instruction of those, namely, who have made or can make
the experience of the condition of life in question ; so not
only will this general didactic character here combine with
the scientific presentation, but the self- disclosing of the
Christian certainty in its rise, and in the combination of its
elements into organic unity, will on its part quite naturally
contribute to the due exercise of the practico-apologetic
activity. The more one has himself passed through the
psychological process of assurance, and has closely examined
that which he has passed through, the more one has perceived
the inner necessity and legitimacy of that process, the better
will one be qualified for recognising the difficulties for others
in the way of such self-assurance, and for pointing out to
them, so far as this is at all dependent upon human
instruction, the right path. All these possibilities, however,
of practical application have for us only a secondary signi-

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 5. 25
ficance ; the system of the Christian certainty has in the
first line to do with this itself as given, as the scientific result
of the certainty reflecting on itself, recognising itself, and
thereby legitimating itself.
§ 5. Not less is the labour, to which the system of Christian
certainty is called to apply itself, distinguished from the
attempts of the philosophy of religion to comprehend the
truth and necessity of Christianity, in building upon the
foundation of the truth universally recognised by mankind,
with the presupposition of the natural religious capacity.
The said problem is here to be worked out only in the
specifically theological sense ; thus by no means by the
way of speculation.
1. If' one apprehends the task of apologetics in Schleier-
macher's sense, and subordinates this discipline to the
philosophical theology, then the distinction which we have
here to make lies already included in the former one. Never
theless, we did not there take our start from that Schleier-
macherian acceptation, but treated of apologetics as pre
eminently a practical discipline, which, as we saw, by no
means excludes the scientific form of the same. Moreover,
we have here not to do with that which is termed philosophic
theology, as a constituent part of theology in general; but
rather with the philosophy of religion, as a constituent part
of the philosophical science. We must, however, even in the
interest of Christian theology itself, declare against the mixing
up of its problems with those of philosophy in general, or of
the philosophy of religion in particular, in order to safeguard
the theologic science against the invasion, now afresh threaten
ing, on the part of metaphysical, religious-philosophical, and
ethical dogmas belonging to an extra-Christian view of life.
2. As a theological discipline, we can recognise only that
which is occupied with the whole or with some segment of
the circle of life, which the Christian life-experience describes,
and within which the theologian as such has to take up his
standing-place. Without doubt Christianity, as a reality
present in the world, is likewise, with all that attaches to
it, an object of the natural cognition, which falls in with it

26 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
as a reality of the earthly existence along with others ; and
a constituent part of the world-consciousness, for which, like
other phenomena, it has become objective. In this sense,
however, Christianity is not an object of theology, although
it is of philosophy. The philosophy which, taking its start
from the world-consciousness, as the consciousness of the
whole which comprises the world, seeks to recognise and
represent the totality of existence, whose scattered provinces
are the object of the single sciences, in its unity of principle
as the universal science, or science absolutely speaking — this
philosophy, I say, cannot free itself from the task of pro
secuting and comprehending, as becomes the philosophy of
religion^ the religious movement of the spirit in its ultimate
grounds and in its diverse phases, the Christian religion thus
included. In connection with this endeavour it will trace
its way back to the religious disposition of man as being
founded in his nature and to be explained from this nature
itself, and will assign the concrete conformations of the
religious spirit to the genus of the religion. The Christian
religion will consequently appear to it as an individual evolu
tion, however much it may be the highest, of the religious
spirit It will perhaps, if it is of a theistic kind, pledge
itself to exhibit the Christian religion as the necessary result
of the religious movement, and so to prove the — absolute or
relative — truth of Christianity in some or other mode of
apprehension. That philosophy should proceed in this or a
similar way arises from its nature, and cannot be forbidden to
it. And just in this particular is displayed a certain resem
blance between this philosophic basing of Christianity and
the kindred theologico- apologetic endeavours, to which we
have above assigned their position and their limits. Theology
enters upon the wrong path when, however it may begin, it
seeks, from the natural standpoint of the religious conscious
ness, to bring home the specific nature of the Christian
religion to the cognition, and to justify the same ; and there
fore this path must certainly be denied it. It is to be mind
ful of the fact that it thus surrenders that which is essential
in the Christianity which it will prove and establish, and
that, while it transposes its position within the Christian
life-experience to the domain of the natural consciousness, it

THE TASK IMPOSED, § .5. 27
renounces the peculiar advantage which it has over philo
sophy. To ^philosophy, as we have said, that path of the
development of the natural consciousness, in order thence to
attain to the Christian consciousness, is prescribed by its
nature — it is another question whether it is able in this way
to reach the goal. For since, according to the verdict of the
Christian knowledge, there does not exist such a thing as the
elevation of the natural consciousness to the stage of the
Christian consciousness by the purely intellectual means of
philosophy, — :Seeing that the understanding of the spiritual
objects of the Christian faith is conditional on a preceding
contact with these objects in the way of ethico - Christian
experience, — Christian theology cannot take up any other than
a sceptical bearing towards such attempts of philosophy, how
ever little it may gainsay the right thereto ; and the results
of these attempts, so far as they actually lie before us, serve
only to confirm this verdict. For not merely the difference
of the results in themselves, which have in the most varied
ways damaged and, as far as they were concerned, annulled
Christianity in the endeavour to explain and establish it, must
give occasion for such scepticism ; but before everything this
must be occasioned by the insight into the main ground of
all for this difference — namely, that the divergency itself
is derived from the difference in principle of the attitude
assumed by philosophy towards the Christian truth, from the
disparity of the personal contact with the spiritual objects.
According to the spiritual view there exists here an antinomy,
which as it stands does not admit of solution : philosophy, if
it remains that as which we have above recognised it, is not
able to do justice to Christianity, and in proportion as it
succeeds in being just to the latter it ceases to be philosophy
and comes over to the domain of theology. Of course we do
not mean by this that it is the prerogative of the members
of the theological profession to understand the spiritual
nature of Christianity in a spiritual manner, and that philo
sophers are not equally in a position to come into inner
contact with the facts of the faith. It has been urged in
objection,' that I should be right in thus speaking, if only
" logic and speculation " were at the command of philosophy
^ Carlblom, Zur Lehre von der christlichen Geivissheit, p. 17.

28 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
as means of apprehending the truth. If, on the contrary,
philosophy, as a science of reality, reposes on a speculative
contemplation of the actual, we may not seek to forbid it to
bring the divine solution of all contradictions of the natural
religious consciousness — the solution by means of the redeem
ing facts of the divine revelation — within the sphere of its
thinking. Now certainly the speculation which we appro
priate to philosophy has to do, not merely with airy thoughts,
but before everything with the "contemplation of the
actual;" but just in the contemplation of the actual we find
the distinction which separates the philosophic observation
of Christianity from the theologic. If the philosopher takes
up the fact of Christianity as this presents itself to the
general experience of mankind, and with this to the con
sciousness of the world, his speculation will no doubt repose
upon a contemplation of the actual, but without his approach
ing any nearer by this means to the theological observation
of the same. He would approach nearer to this only in the
case that, having now entered into the specifically Christian
circle of experience, he no longer sought to make himself
master of the facts of Christianity from the standpoint of the
universal-human experience, but, conversely, the facts of the
natural consciousness from the standpoint of the specifically
Christian. Perhaps one or another' is shocked at this
dualism, this rude opposition. It were certainly better if the
same did not exist, better not less for the life than for the
thinking. But unhappily this opposition itself belongs to the
number of the facts, the contemplation and understanding of
which first arises out of the specifically Christian experience.
To seek to remove this, i.e. to prove it non-existent, signifies
nothing else than the demand that Christian experience
should renounce its own existence. If, now, a philosopher
endowed with such experience seeks to comprehend the
Christian truth, and to assign to it a place in the totality of
the universal human truth, he will either give satisfaction to
the theologians, inasmuch as from the beginning he contem
plates the natural truth in a light which is afforded him by
Christian knowledge; then, however, to be sure, the philo
sophers will deny his claim to be an " unbefangener "
1 Cf. 0. Marpurg in Bergmann's Philosophische MonatsUfte., vii. 393 sqq.

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 5. 29
(unprejudiced) explorer, since he has notably mingled up with
his investigations unproven, and for them unprovable theses ;
or else he will travel in the ways of the natural, universally
human knowledge, and therein have the approval of the
philosophers, but then, in the grasping and fitting in of the
Christian truth, will come to a point at which the method
heretofore followed in the cognition of truth refuses its
service. This last, despite the fact that the laws of cognition,
formally regarded, are the same on this side as on that — the
facts, however, to which these laws are applied are different.
It is true likewise that a series of thoughts, born of Chris
tianity, as also a multitude of facts owing their origin to
Christianity, have, by virtue of the historic process into which
they entered, become naturalized, and thereby accessible to
the natural consciousness ; to this extent also philosophy will
be in a position to dominate them and to take them up into
its system. But this amalgamating of the spiritual and the
natural shows itself just in the effects, not in the supreme
factors and principles ; and the experience of the present day
proves how this process of naturalization, too, may become re
trograde, and full much which the natural judgment, formerly,
on the ground of the unconsciously experienced influence of
Christianity, assumed to be certain, is now rejected by it as
erroneous, on the ground of the difference of principles.
3. The path, consequently, which Christian theology has to
take, in that it has ascertained for itself the truth of Chris
tianity, is the reverse of that of philosophy. Standing and
taking up its position not without, but within the Christian
consciousness, it has certainly the task of recognising and
pointing out the development of the general religious spirit
in its connection with the Christian truth as personally appro
priated ; but the chasm which there arrests the progress of
philosophy at the transition to the highest stage of the
religious consciousness, is here already filled up, and from
the lofty height of the Christian consciousness, in experi
mental possession of all the factors of this consciousness,
theology looks backwards and downwards, in order intel
lectually to assure itself of the truth of its possession. The
demand for the proof of the truth does not here recede into
the background, but is brought precisely into the very fore-

30 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
ground; and the question as to the relation between the
Christian and the extra-Christian possession of truth is not
thrust aside, but now first approached with adequate means,
and its solution attempted with success. Since, namely, the
Christian subject has himself made the journey, from the position
of the natural man and the certainty proper to him, to the
position of the certainty innate in Christian faith ; and at
every point of this way, as well as at the goal thereof itself,
must have, and actually possesses, the warrant that it is not
mere semblance and delusion, but truth, to which he sur
renders himself, — so must this truth manifest itself intel
lectually, too, and the ground of this certainty, perfectly
adequate objectively as well as subjectively, must admit of
demonstration. Such assuring can from its own nature, and
according to the testimony of experience, be brought about
in no other wise than by virtue of a relation into which the
existing natural assurance and the rising Christian assurance
— consequently, also the existing extra-Christian truth and
the appropriated Christian truth — enter with each other ;
so that thus that question which we met with as a question
of philosophy, namely, how the universal religious spirit
adapts itself to the Christian spirit, must necessarily be
answered here. It can now, however, so much the more
easily be answered, not merely because the fact lies before us
as an accomplished one, and it is therefore in this respect
only a question of the due perception and defining of a state
of fact; but also because, from the standpoint of the accom
plished fact, the insight into the religious condition of the
natural man in itself is first really opened up to us, and in
the light of this fact the enigmas and contradictions of the
natural state are solved. Only a purely theological discipline
is, as one sees, in a position to achieve all this, a theological
discipline which, as such, stands entirely within the domain
of that experience which is the object of theology as the
science of Christianity ; and if philosophy, in particular the
philosophy of rehgion, assigns to itself a kindred task, yet
this latter, if we except some possible medley-forms, is
different as well in its mode of apprehension as with regard
to the means of its solution, and finally as respects the end
to be attained, from our purely theological task.

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 6. 31
§ 6. If it is thus a purely theological performance which
is here aimed at, the discipline upon which this is
incumbent falls of necessity within the province of
systematic theology, and here takes precedence of dog
matics, as the system of Christian truth, with at least
equal justice as the latter is followed by ethics, as the
system of Christian morality.
1. In virtue of the distinctions which we have drawn in
that which precedes, we are placed in the position for more
nearly determining the place which belongs to the system of
the Christian certainty within the province of theology in
general. It is well known what uncertainty prevails, even
to the present day, upon the question. What place is to be
assigned to apologetics in the complex of the theological dis
ciplines ? This uncertainty is closely connected with the
varying sense in which the term is understood, with those
obscurities to which we have before alluded, and specially
with the fact that justice has not everywhere been done to
the necessarily practical aim of the apologetic activity. If,
now, we reckon the latter, and consequently also apologetics,
to belong to the practical theology, and surrender on the
other hand to philosophy the doubtful attempt at deriving and
proving the necessity and truth of Christianity from the
general religious idea; then, in contradistinction, the science
in which the Christian as a theologian gives an account to
himself of the Christian certainty dwelling in him, falls
within the province of systematic theology. We proceed
thus from the threefold division of the whole of theology, as
historical, systematic, and practical, and this in such wise that
the exegetical takes its place at the head of the historico-
theologic disciplines. For — since exegesis has to do with the
understanding of the documents of the Christian faith, and is
designed for the comprehending of Christianity in its historic
preparation and in its historic appearing, in accordance with
those documents — we cannot possibly draw between it and
Church history a like line of separation as between the latter
and systematic or practical theology. For just as the
ecclesiastical consciousness of the historic rise of Christianity
and the Church, neither of which latter can in this conscious-

32 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
ness be absolutely separated, finds there its theologico-scientific
expression ; so, on the other hand, the ecclesiastical conscious
ness of the nature of Christianity, as this now presents itself
to the consciousness in positive organic connection on the
ground of that rise, finds its theologico-scientific expression
in systematic theology; while the ecclesiastical conscious
ness of the progressive self-edifying of the Church, whether
intensive or extensive, in the application of all those means
which, in accordance with that twofold intelligence of the
Church — with regard to itself and with regard to its faith —
serve to advance this work of self-edification, in turn finds
its theologico-scientific expression in practical theology. If
we are right in this classification, and we must here presup
pose the warrant thereto, it is self-evident that the theological
discipline which is scientifically to deduce and develop the
certainty of the Christian in its present form — as condi
tioned partly by the development of the Church itself until
this day, partly by the existing oppositions of the world to
Christianity — can find its place only within the province of
systematic theology. For it is the peculiarity of systematic
theology that, without either relating that which has hap
pened or furnishing the norm for that which is still in the
act of formation, it presents to the contemplation the actual
substance of Christianity, in its causal and organic connected
ness, in accordance with the reflex of this [Christianity] in
the consciousness of the Christian Church of to-day; and
in all these respects the system of the Christian certainty
intended by us is in harmony with the requirements of
systematic theology.
2. Greater difficulty than is presented by the ranging just
made, under the head of systematic theology, would seem to
be offered by the question as to the relation in which our
discipline stands to those other ones which are usually, and
with justice, comprehended under the same category — namely,
dogmatics and ethics. It is true, the distinction from this
last — which, moreover, as a systematic discipline, likewise
cannot pursue, as its supreme end, the object of practically
regulating the Christian life, but must rather aim at giving
expression to the idea of the Christian moral life in its
foundation, in its progress, in its manifold relations, and in

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 6. 33
its earthly consummation, in accordance with the present
ecclesiastico-theological comprehension — is at once apparent,
not less than the other fact, that the Christian certainty,
the correlative of the Christian faith, must precede the
Christian life ; as, consequently, also the system of the cer
tainty must precede that of the life. The mistake of
supposing that the Christian certainty can first attain to
scientific expression only in the systematic working out
of the " whole Christian life of grace," thus notably in
ethics, — inasmuch as regeneration and conversion form
the basis of such certainty (von Oettingen), — hardly, to be
sure, calls for particular correction. Must it then be so
very difficult to come to the understanding, that the very
presentation of the Christian life of grace, which presenta
tion as such unquestionably has to take into account regenera
tion and conversion, and therewith the rise of the Christian
certainty, nevertheless takes for granted the latter as present ?
And that the one does not exclude the other ? Somewhat
more minutely shall we have to enter upon the question,
How the system of the Christian certainty stands related to
dogmatics, specially in the form in which the latter is com
monly understood and treated. That in doing so we make no
distinction between doctrine of the faith and dogmatics we
need here only indicate, in opposition to the modern attempts
to keep them apart, or rather to tear them apart. If, how
ever, we do not so distinguish, but in the consciousness of
the indissoluble connectedness of the ecclesiastical-believing
consciousness of the present day with that of the past look
upon the two as only different names for the same thing,
the question becomes the more natural, how it is possible to
preserve a distinct separation between the doctrine of the
Christian certainty and dogmatics as the doctrine of the
Christian truth. For, in the first place, dogmatics, as a
constituent part of systematic theology, develops the com
plex whole of that Christian truth which is at all times
believed, which has entered into the believing consciousness,
thus strictly only as a truth of which the consciousness has
become assured, the truth in the form of certainty ; and,
secondly, dogmatics surely claims not only in its own manner
to set forth the Christian truth in its organic connectedness,
c

34 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
but also to prove it — whether now these means of proof are the
Scripture, or history, or the dialectic unfolding of the coher
ence of part with part ; consequently by all these means to
convince of the truth. Nevertheless the existence of the
so-called prolegomena to dogmatics, with which theologians
have not yet been able altogether to dispense, notwithstanding
the fact that they are scientifically indefensible, still shows
that the doctrine of the faith makes presuppositions on the
side of the assuring of its contents, such as it is not able of
itself to show warrant for. The essential presupposition,
namely, which includes all others in itself, and without which
one cannot enter upon the doctrine of the faith — because
there would neither be an interest felt for it nor a possi
bility of its scientific presentation — is this, that one possess
the faith which one will exhibit ; and for this very reason
there arose for the dogmatists the question whether, and if so
how, one must in the first place prove the justice of this
standpoint of faith, before one developed therefrom the
Christian truth in its scientific coherence. Here, then, that
sort of apologetics ensconced itself, which, regarded only in a
scientific light, performed at once too much and too little ;
inasmuch as with all the piling up of the material, whereby
not rarely the province of the doctrine of the faith itself was
encroached on, it nevertheless failed to attain the end of
justifying the believing standpoint of dogmatics. If we have
at an earlier stage adjudged to the apologetics of a practical
bent, alike defensive, aggressive, and witnessing, its right and
its place within the province of theology, we must now, on
the other hand, pronounce an unconditional sentence of rejec
tion upon these prolegomena to dogmatics, which are for the
believing theologian unnecessary, for the unbelieving judgment
useless, and measured by the standard of scientific systematics
are devoid of principle as of coherence. In reality a singular
mode of procedure for an evangelical dogmatist, who designs
within his doctrine of the faith to prove the incapacity of
the natural man for understanding spiritual things, when he
endeavours in the prolegomenon to maintain before the bar
of the universal reason of mankind the necessity and the
truth of the Christian revelation, the divine authority of
Holy Scriptures, etc. Yet we may at once presuppose an

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 6. 35
agreement as to the impracticable nature of these prolegomena
to dogmatics, on whatever different grounds. But whence the
need which manifested itself in this mistaken method of
teaching ? And does not that need still exist after the latter
is discarded ? Even Schleiermacher, who gave up the ordinary
form of prolegomena, felt himself constrained, in order to
attain to that stage of the development of the consciousness
whence the doctrine of the faith has to take its departure,
to preface his treatment with subsidiary propositions drawn
from other disciplines, which were intended in a better way to
meet that want. We have, however, already explained why
we are unable to adopt those Schleiermacherian presupposi
tions. We altogether disregard the supposed problem, in this
place insoluble, of raising the natural human intellect to the
height of that Christian consciousness which the dogmatist
has to develop on the side of its faith ; on the contrary,
we detach from the affirmation of the Christian theologian as
to the contents of his faith — which contents as guaranteed
to him he unfolds in the dogmatics — the preceding affirmation
of the theologian with regard to the certainty of his faith,
the question how far he possesses it, how he came by it, and
in what manner it extends to the different sides of the truth
of the faith which he aims at presenting in the dogmatics.
This problem is accordingly solved as an independent one, as
such, indeed, distinguishable from the task of the dogmatist ;
the system of the Christian certainty, as existing for its own
sake, takes precedence within the province of systematic
theology over the doctrine of the faith.
3. In virtue of the foundations thus laid, we may now
indicate the distinctions more definitely and in detail ; and
equallj' so will it be possible to remove the misunderstand
ings which have attached to this work of discriminating. It
is true the system of the Christian certainty, just because it
is the Christian truth whose certifying is in question, has
likewise to do with the dogmas of the Christian faith, the
contents and coherence of which are developed by dogmatics.
For if it has been recently said that what the Christian
believes is not a sum-total of dogmas with regard to which
he is certain that they are true, " but what he believes is the
actual subsistence of a peculiar relation between God and

36 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
man, of which he is certain that it is a reality," ' I under
stand well the justice of this opposition, whereby one is to
guard against the erroneous supposition that Christian faith
is the a°cceptance of a number of abstract dogmas as truth.
But this very opposition, to such extent warranted, is wrongly
pushed to an extreme ; since by the dogmas of the Christian
faith we understand nothing else than the motive forces of
that "peculiar relation between God and man," as appre
hended in the thought and intellectually fixed. Whereas,
then, dogmatics objectively apprehends the so - understood
dogmas of the Christian faith, i.e. as it (dogmatics) presents
itself to the ecclesiastical consciousness of the present day, in
which and abreast of which the dogmatist is to stand, as in
itself a compact organic complex of truths of the faith, thus,
despite this subjective reception, unfolds the whole of that
truth out of the objective principles ; here, on the other hand,
that point is first of all to be found in which the Christian
certainty, the subjective guaranteeing of the Christian truth
as real, is fundamentally grounded, in order from this point to
embrace the whole of the Christian truth, although without
pursuing it into details. Thus, not only will the starting-
point in the one case and the other be entirely different,
inasmuch as the doctrine of the Christian certainty must of
necessity regulate where, by the influence of Christian truth
upon the human subject, certainty on this point is formed ;
but also, wherever a portion of the Christian reality, whose
place in the connected whole of this reality is disclosed by
dogmatics, is brought under contemplation, there the question
for the cognition is in the first place only as to its connected
ness with the fundamental Christian certainty, as to its actual
comprehension under that same guaranteeing of the truth
from which the system in principle takes its start. It has
been objected that this distinction cannot be carried out,
inasmuch as it is impossible to explain from its causes a
magnitude which, like the genesis of a humanity of God, is
real only for the eye of faith, in the same way as one would
an event of our experience (Hermann, Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1881,
p. 526). The reality of the objects of faith per se cannot, we
are told, be distinguished from their effects, in which they
' Von Hofmann, Ethik, p. 14.

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 6. 37
are apprehended as constituent elements of the Christian
consciousness, thus as objects of faith (p. 525). It will be
well to allow this difference of principle, to which we shall
have occasion to return in the sections devoted to the found
ing of the Christian certainty, already to express itself here.
It rests in the last instance upon the thought, " That we are
just as little able to explain the new birth from God, in
which we believe, as we are able to treat as an objective fact,
and render comprehensible, any other material of the concep
tion, the reality of which is constituted only with our own
most subjective life " (p. 536). A strange objection, which
makes a presupposition of that which must first be an object
of proof. The reality of the new birth, we are told, is
constituted " only " with our own subjective life. This proposi
tion is just as much unproven as it is false. Not by a hair's
breadth is the possibility of " explaining an event of our own
experience" (einen empirischen Vorgang, ibid^ distinguished
from the explaining from causes the new birth or the genesis
of a humanity of God. The one is not less known from
experience (empirisch) than the other ; and if the one can be
explained from causes, so certainly also the other. Nay, we
must go fuilher : it pertains to the nature of regeneration, or,
. more exactly, of the consciousness of regeneration as a fact
of the experience, to know the same to be conditioned by
objective causes, which are for the recognising subject just as
much within reach as this subject has been within reach for
them. And so little does it follow from the fact that we
proceed from that which has been subjectively experienced to
the objective causalities, and then seek to exhibit them in
their bearing upon the subject, — so little, I say, does it follow
therefrom, that the realities as such firmly established for the
Christian do not in themselves (noch nicht) satisfy him
(p. 525); that precisely because we live by these realities,
and have full satisfaction in them, we attempt to trace the
causalities by which they are conditioned and constituted.
Just as the physical process of nourishment, which is expe
rienced by the subject as real and satisfying, does not on that
account exclude the possibility of the cognition turning from
this experience to the objective causalities which condition
this process of nourishment. And thus much is surely com-

38 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
prehended by every one, that it is one thing to retrace one's
steps from the effect experienced to the causalities which
have produced this effect, and another thing to exhibit in
their bearing upon the subject the causalities in this way
proved. That analytical proceeding we attempt in the system
of the certainty; this synthetical one we pursue in the
system of the truth. That which is in itself existent is
[known to be] such indeed only on the ground of the expe
rience of the subject ; but for this cause it does not cease to
be in itself existent, namely, for the subject.
4. With this distinction then undoubtedly, and we believe
to the gain of dogmatics, much will have to be banished from
this last-named science which has already found its place in
the theologico-systematic discipline which precedes the same ;
and we can appeal to facts in favour of such banishment. It
has not been customary within recent times, to the same
extent as formerly, in the dogmatic doctrine concerning God,
to adduce the proofs which are supposed to establish the
existence of the One personal God ; it has been rightly felt
and recognised that the doctrine of the faith is only for those
for whom it is no longer necessary to institute a proof of this
kind, who are already settled in that faith. But now it is a
fact open to no doubt that a Christian, who believes in the
personal living God, must know, and ought to be in a
position to say, why the existence of this God is for him
incontestably certain : his belief would be an arbitrary one
if he were not able to do so. Of a truth, however, we do
not thereby mean that the affirmation of the Christian on
this point should consist in the repetition of the usual proofs
for the existence of God, and that the difference be only that
those proofs, in place of being adduced in the dogmatics, are
rather adduced in the system of the Christian certainty.
We do not at all aim at constraining any one whatever,
who does not believe in the personal God, by means of
evidences to accept such faith. But the affirmation can
only be directed to that in which the Christian, as such,
possesses the ground of his certainty of the existence of
the living personal God. If in connection therewith the
specifically Christian certainty should run in the same line
with the natural certainty, such can be the case in no

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 6. 39
other way than as the former in general coheres with this
latter, presupposes it, supplements, or corrects it — a question
the answering of which belongs to the system itself. Accord
ingly it is thus quite in order, that dogmatics in the locus de
Deo does not concern itself any longer with the establishing
of the certainty as to the existence of God, and leaves to
apologetics, in the above indicated practical sense, whatever
may be of use in the ordinary proofs for the existence of
God ; on the other hand presupposes, on its part, that the
Christian, whose faith in God it will expound, has before
this as a Christian become certain of the reality of God,
and as a theologically educated Christian is in a position
to give an account of this specifically Christian certainty.
What, however, is true of this single portion of the dogmatic
truth, — and is also to a great extent known and recognised,
although not yet with the required clearness, — that we have,
in like manner and with the same justice, to enforce as
regards the remaining portions. There is need, indeed, only of
reflection upon the fact that the matter is situated in the
one case exactly as in the other, and the ground for such
presupposition there is no other than it is here. If, then, the
doctrine of the faith too may, no doubt, in its province and
with the means at its disposal, evidence the Christian truth
as such, whether by an appeal to Holy Scripture, or by a
reference to the development of the Christian consciousness
in the Church, or by a dialectic opening out of the contents
which are locked up in a Christian reality, or with necessity
result therefrom, yet this dogmatic action is something alto
gether different from that which we have apprehended as
the task of our discipline. For in order to our developing
the contents of a reality of the faith, this reality must first be
firmly established for the dogmatizing subject ; and in order
to argue from the normal progress of the Christian conscious
ness of the Church, the certainty as to the truth of this con
sciousness must exist beforehand ; and in order to appeal to
Holy Scripture as a fountain of knowledge for the Christian
truth, the dogmatist must first be assured that this character
pertains to Scripture. Besides it seems to us that at least
the two last named forms of dogmatic proof, that, namely, of
the history of doctrines and that of exegesis, do not, strictly

40 SYSTEM. OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
speaking, belong to the proper task of the dogmatic discipline
as a part of systematic theology, inasmuch as they present
only the necessary coherence, in which the consciousness of
the Christian truth recognised in the present day stands with
the consciousness of the historic rise of the same according
to the documents of the Christian faith, and with the like
wise historic process of cognition which the Church has
passed through in relation to this truth bestowed upon her.
5. We do not in thus reasoning conceal from ourselves the
points of contact which nevertheless exist between the dog
matic discipline and our own, and which there as here render
difficult the sharp separation of the respective domains. Yet,
this notwithstanding, while (generally regarded) in the part
ing of the one and indivisible truth among the different
sciences, it must always be the case that this parting is never
an absolute one, this must manifestly be so in a higher degree,
in proportion as the circle is narrower, whose exploration on
different sides is made the task of the one and the otlier dis
cipline ; and systematic theology has certainly in all its parts
to do with the expounding of the consciousness of the Church
in the present day as to the essence of Christianity. In
general, however, we may assert that of the three disciplines
which, according to our view, give an account of systematic
theology, the first is bounded off from the second at least
quite as definitely, nay rather, even more definitely, than the
third from the second. For while the starting-point for all
three is to this extent the same, that they take their standing-
ground in the existing faith of the theological subject, as this
faith in the form of cognition becomes consciousness ; yet ethics
has in common with dogmatics the whole domain of the
Christian life as this is fashioned on the ground of regenera
tion and of conversion, and is hereby characterized as the
detailed amplification of that which, as to its foundations, had
to be treated of by dogmatics as a portion of the Christian
truth appropriated by the subject. On the other hand, such
a coinciding between the doctrine of the faith and the doctrine
of the certainty cannot take place, because in the latter the
Christian truth in its existence and connectedness never comes
under review, as in dogmatics and ethics, but only on the
side of its, certification for the believing subject; and the

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 6. 41
contact is accordingly, in the first place, this, that undoubtedly
we shall have to make mention, in the system of certainty
too, of dogmas, of the guaranteeing of which we cannot speak
without in some way stating and explaining their contents ;
and, in the second place, this, that where the certifying is not
immediate, but a mediate one, e.g. the certifying by an appeal
to Holy Scripture, the truth of which must before have become
certain for the Christian, — the proof of such certainty cannot
be distinguished from the corresponding undertaking on the
part of dogmatics, in this case from the dogmatic proof from
Scripture. Nevertheless, even though the task on both sides
here really coincided, yet no other thing would happen than
that which IDiewise occurs in the relation between dogmatics
and ethics, without these having ceased on that account to be
separately treated. As, namely, the ethical renewal of the
believing subject must be counted among the objects of the
doctrine of the faith, — in such wise, it is true, that the scien
tific development of its carrying into effect, in the various
provinces of life, is still left to ethics, — so also Scripture, to
confine ourselves here to this one point, belongs, as a means
of Christian knowledge and certification, alike to both sciences,
the doctrine of the faith and the doctrine of the certainty ;
yet, in such wise, that the latter is contented with telling how
the Christian comes to accept as real and pure this fountain
of the Christian certainty and knowledge. Dogmatics, on the
other hand, looking upon Scripture as assured for this science,
is intent upon drawing upon this fountain for the single
articles of Christian truth. Everywhere, however, will the
portions employed in common, whether they are really common
to the two or only seem so, arise there in quite other
systematic coherence than here; and wherever we have
assured ourselves of a portion of the Christian truth, we have
yet here nowhere the dogmatic interest for explaining it in
accordance with the various elements (Momente) therein con
tained and its objective relations. It still holds good, not
withstanding all points of contact, that in this sense the
system of the Christian certainty forms the presupposition
for the beginning of the dogmatic, just as ethics, as the
system of the Christian morality, everywhere rests upon
dogmatics as the system of the Christian truth.

42 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
§ 7. The system of the Christian certainty is unfolded in
three concentric circles, of which the first and innermost
comprehends the Christian certainty as existing in itself
and in its central essence ; the second, this same certainty
in its extension to the complex whole of the objects of
faith ; the third, the certainty thus filled up, in its relations
to the objects of the natural life. In such wise, indeed,
that in this unfolding the constant element is everywhere
the answer — for the Christian's state of conscious faith in
dispensable, and one continuing essentially the same — to
the Why of his faith; the fluctuating element, which is to
be reduced into the former, is the contradiction at a par
ticular time, which, as a thing to be overcome, stands
opposed to the certainty in all its phases of development.
1. It is the last one of those introductory propositions
which have regard to the claim and character of our problem
with which we have here to do. If we have hitherto been
obliged to indicate this problem more from the negative side,
in order, with a view to contradistinction from other domains of
theology, to draw the limits within which it moves, we are now
finally called to give a provisional description, a preliminary
sketch of the system, by means of which the solution of this pro
blem is to be attempted, and just thereby will this limitation
become fully recognisable in its truth and necessity. For,
inasmuch as the character and the contents of the disciplines
with which ours touches lie actually before us, the comparison
of the positively defined problem and task of our system with
those there laid down, and already in this or the other way
solved, now enables us to test the correctness of the distinc
tions made, and yet further to obtain at least a provisional
judgment, whether in general we may speak in the same sense
and with like justice of a system of the Christian certainty,
as we do of a system of dogmatics and of ethics.
2. The system in • which the actual consistence of the
Christian certainty is disclosed ought of necessity to be a
scientific system. There is a system of life, as there is a
system of thought ; and the latter, if it is of the right kind,
can be nothing else than the comprehension, in the thoughts.

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 7. 43
of the existing elements (Momente) of life, — in their combina
tion with each other, in their coming forth from each other,
and in their self-fashioning — corresponding to the system of the
life. The system of the life, of the physical as of the mental,
is the organism, the unfolding of a totality of life from a single
vital principle, which puts forth the parts and forms of which
the whole consists, constantly pervades them, moulds them,
and thereby locks them together in organic unity. He verily,
who, perhaps biassed by a mistaken opposition to Monism,
denies the right and the necessity of transferring the con
ception of organism from the physical to the intellectual
and moral domain, will be from the outset incapable of
doing justice to the systematic task as here understood.
That principle of unity is alike material and formal, con
ditioning at the same time the nature of the shapes
assumed and their appearing ; but not at all in such wise
that it had need only of itself for setting it in operation, and
were able, in the way of the simple evolution of that enclosed
in it, to bring forth out of itself the structures of the organism.
It has need, in order to express itself and to carry out [the
idea impressed upon it], of the reciprocal action with the
things and forces existing outside of it, without ceasing on
this account to be itself, and itself positively to operate.
Eather, it first comes to that which it is in itself, precisely
through the influence of that which it undergoes, through that
which is of other nature with which it combines ; only that
this latter, if the process is to be a normal one, must be
actually assimilated and made its own, as the method by which
the identity of the organic principle and the homogeneity of
the structure thence arising is preserved. By this standard
we may measure the various demands which are to be made
on the system of the Christianity certainty. This certainty
is a reality of the personal Christian life and consciousness,
which, at first implanted germinally and in principle, from this
beginning of life assumes form and shape under constant
influence from without, yet in such wise that it ever remains
the very own structure of the subject, and to this extent
remains identical with itself; and the scientific system which
will be the corresponding expression of this reality, the pro
jecting of it in the thoughts, has in this its norm. Only in

44 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
connection with this we have certainly to mention that the
structure of the Christian certainty, as a reality of the Christian
life, has all those elements (Momente) as co-existing and
interwoven, which the scientific system is, from its nature,
able to develop only in the successivity of the presentation in
M'ords, as though these things were thus also in reality lying
apart. This imperfection, which attaches to the discursive
thinking, and with it to the scientific presentation, cannot be
set aside ; yet it may be immediately diminished, if at all
points of the system we remain conscious of the mutual
unfolding of the elements (Momente) to be recognised and
presented, and allow ourselves to be constantly guided by this
consciousness. Moreover, it is by no means the case that an
absolute incongruence must perforce arise between the system
of the life and the system of the knowledge, because surely
in the former, so far as development and progressive shaping
out of the organic structure there takes place, this at the same
time falls under the law of successivity, and because there
also a distinction can actually be made between the primary
factors (Momente) of the certainty, and those derived there
from, though no doubt equally included therein from the
beginning. There is, in point of fact, a central place of the
Christian certainty, the innermost citadel of the Christian
conviction, into which the Christian withdraws when this
certainty is assailed and shaken in any one of its outworks,
and from which he comes forth again, thence to incorporate
the whole fulness of the Christian truth into his certainty, as
also to bring into connection and reconcile therewith the
contents, accessible to him, of the natural truth. This dis
tinction must necessarily appear in the scientific system also,
and the clear perception as regards the character and measure
of the Christian certainty, the co-existence of the fundamental
certainty, which is the inalienable possession of faith, with the
consciousness of being liable to err, notwithstanding this
certainty, with regard to this or that portion of truth, is essen
tially conditioned by it. Just as, finally, the system of the
Christian certainty, as of a fact of the life, can from its nature
never be regarded as closed and finished, — inasmuch as neither
the kingdom of truth, of which the Christian assures himself,
nor his capacity for appropriating, can be definitely limited, —

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 7. 45
neither may the system of the same as a science lay claim to
present the structure of the Christian certainty otherwise than
in its continuous development, or aim at furnishing anything
that is finished, save in the sense that therein is apparent in
what stadium of its development the same actually is. How,
after this explanation, exception can be taken (von Oettingen,
ii. 365) to the expression, "System of the Certainty," I cannot
properly make out. It has been said that certainty is an
inward condition, which to be sure as such admits of a
psychologico-ethical analysis, but has no contents which may
be reduced to a system. If, however, we are told one is
pleased in the total-notion " System of the Certainty," so to
take the genitive that it becomes a question of the systematic
expounding of that which has become certain for the Christian
in believing, there is then no difference between such expound
ing and that of dogmatics and ethics. Now, it has doubtless
been perceived by every one who has perused the foregoing
explanation with any degree of attention, that the expression
is used by us neither in the first nor in the second of the
senses here assumed; not in the former, for it were surely
absurd to aim at describing the certainty apart from its con
tents ; not in the second, for the systematic presentation of
that which has become certain for the Christian in believing
assuredly appertains to dogmatics along with ethics. After
that which has been said above, I hardly need to repeat that
the system of the Christian certainty has this certainty as the
object of its scientific presentation, inasmuch as, with its
unique central genesis, likewise its extension to the mass of
truth which is guaranteed for it, it is presupposed and is to be
proved — a task which thus devolves not upon dogmatics, nor
even upon ethics.
3. From that which has just been said, that division of
the system will be provisionally explained and justified —
even without our encroaching upon the system itself — accord
ing to which, proceeding from the innermost fountain of the
Christian certainty, we have first of all to develop and repre
sent its nature in and by itself, then the extension and
reaching of this certainty to the different objects of the
Christian truth, and finally the relation occupied by the
Christian certainty, as thus determined and filled up, towards

46 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the realities of the natural life. As regards the beginning,
then, this must be of such nature that a need does not exist
for going back beyond this ; i.e. the certainty must be con
scious of resting complete in itself, of not calling for a basis
lying behind itself, of being simple, even though the psycho
logical process, by which it is called forth and exists, may be
a complex one. We have here to do with the central and
specific essence of the Christian certainty, where no authority
whatever coming from without decides instead of itself, but
the Christian subject himself, and personally, decides as to
the ground and justice of his certainty — for nowhere else than
in the subject and by the subject can the certifying be accom
plished. This, however, does not at all exclude the fact that
such act of self-assuring is brought about under influences
which have been exerted, and are exerted, upon him from
without, and with a constant reference of the rising or
existing Christian certainty to the present or past natural
certainty. On the contrary, just this will prove itself the
essence of the certainty, that it is conditioned in its exist
ence by such influences as have approached the subject from
without, and by a constant relation — by an attractive and a
repulsive relation — to certainties which are inherent in the
subject as a natural man. But, for all this, the Christian
certainty must be apprehended in the first place as simple
and bounded within itself, ere we proceed, to explain to what
extent that which as Christian truth is objective to it is con
tained in it and guaranteed by it. From this at once results
a twofold circle with a common centre, of which the smaller
contains the affirmations as to the specific essence of the
certainty, the other and larger [contains] the affirmations as
to the measure of the Christian truth therein enclosed. Not
as though it were in the former case only a question as to
the form of the Christian certainty as compared with the
natural, apart from the substance of that which is certified ;
but the relation is that of the immediate to the mediate, and
in accord with this relation will the progress of the system
ensue. The complex of the Christian truth, as it is objectively
given, does not, by any means, all occupy the same relation
to the fundamental certainty of the subject, but some of the
realities of the same lie nearer, the others farther removed

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 7. 47
from the centre and from the innermost circle of the con
sciousness, and the certainty of the one first, on its part,
brings about the certainty of the others. That we clearly
recognise this fact, — that we do not suppose the objects of
the Christian truth to be taken up without discrimination by
the certainity, — that thus the innermost tissue and frame
work of this intellectual-organic structure be brought to light,
this above all is to be looked to in pursuing the systematic
progress. Somewhat different is the state of matters in
regard to the third circle, with which the system is brought
to completion. Not, it is true, inasmuch as the complex of
the natural truth forms for the standpoint of the specifically
Christian certainty in reality a wider circle, which as more
external stands opposed to the before-described (umschrieben)
inner circle. For, though it may be the case that the
Christian certainty cannot be produced without having con
stant respect to the things of the natural life, yet it is none
the less a world in itself in which this certainty first of all
becomes at home and establishes itself, and whence it then
looks forth abroad, in order to find the relation to the other
realities. Nor to this extent, that the centre of this outer
most circle were other than the centre of the second, and it
were a question of a relation between things lying absolutely
apart and disconnected. For the [true] relation to the
objects of the natural life, the harmonious relevancy of
these latter to the spiritual realities, is what can be
reached from no other standpoint than that of the Christian
certainty ; even as, according to the conviction of the Chris
tian, the natural world exists for the spiritual, must in
virtue of divine appointment subserve the spiritual world,
that consequently the complex of the natural truth does not
exist in absolute severance from the Christian or in anta
gonism with it. But, all this notwithstanding, — and herein
lies the distinction, not to be overlooked, in the relation of
the third circle to the first two, as compared with the relation
of these to each other, — the certainty regarding the things
here in question is not, in like manner as there, enclosed in
the central Christian certainty on the ground of their influence.
Only in general is it established for the Christian, by virtue
of the certainty peculiar to him as such, that this harmony

48 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
exists ; while, on the other hand, the knowledge of the same
in the concrete case is afforded him by a combination of the
facts of the natural life with the facts of belief Here then
we shall be much less concerned to prove on single points
the accord of the Christian truth and the natural truth, as
though the certainty of the Christian himself depended on
such proof, — often problematical and for the time being
not even feasible, — than rather to bring the position of the
Christian, in and of itself certain, in relation to the great
domains on the one hand of the ethico-intellectual life of
mankind, and on the other of the physical life of the creature,
and to set forth the harmony with the Christian truth exist
ing in these domains.
4. What among other things makes it impossible to apolo
getics, if it is what its name indicates, to be a system, is the
fact that its contents are conditioned by the attacks which
are from time to time made upon Christianity. It follows
from the nature of the case that a system of the Christian
certainty cannot avoid likewise occupying itself with these
attacks. Inasmuch as they assail the Christian truth, they
threaten at the same time the certainty with respect thereto,
and this certainty is not brought about at the beginning, and
is not consummated in its self-unfolding, without constant
conflict with these oppositions. But, nevertheless, the possi
bility of a systematic order and succession is not thereby cut
off or diminished ; but there results to us therefrom only the
distinction between a constant and a variable element of our
discipline, of which the latter obtains from the former its
firm support and its due place in the'^ system. The question,
why I believe, is one equally constant as the Christian belief
itself ; and the answer given to it, this necessary self-affirma
tion of the Christian certainty, in its essence depends not in
the least upon the accidental contradictions which, at this or
that time, in this or the other place, are made against Chris
tianity. Apart from all account which the Christian has
occasion to give to others of his faith, he always experiences,
in proportion to the measure of intellectual gift and leaning,
an inner necessity for a distinct understanding why it is
truth and nothing but truth to which he holds fast in
believing ; and his faith were no well-grounded and sincere

THE TASK IMPOSED, § 7. 49
one, if he hesitated to put this question to himself in all
seriousness, and to return answer to it. But then, just as
his faith can never be developed and maintained without
conflict, and of a truth in the first place ethical and practical
conflict, neither can the certainty, which is inherent in faith,
be grounded and shaped without continual conflict with the
doubt which attaches to the truth believed and recognised,
whether in the spiritual or in the natural domain. These
contradictions arise for him in foremost order from the dis
cord of the inner man itself, from the reciprocal relation of
the natural and the regenerate ego, whence indeed the im
mediately practical conflicts arise ; and, inasmuch as neither
this [ego] nor that exists in perfect isolation from the outer
world, but each forms an organic member in the body of the
natural or the regenerate mankind, the intellectual as well as
the ethical movements, which penetrate this total-organiza
tion, must of necessity communicate themselves to these
members, and the Christian certainty of the individual cannot
form and develop itself without reference to the oppositions
forcing themselves upon it from without. These last, how
ever, are at different periods different, and have their history :
so consequently the system of the Christian certainty, as
growing out of the present scientific consciousness of the
Church, must principally concern itself with the oppositions
which stir the Church even to the present day. Whereas
now these oppositions meet us sometimes in the one, some
times in the other domain of faith, and looked at merely on
this side necessarily resist all attempt at systematic order, —
apart from the consideration that the negative element, from
its very nature, does not well lend itself to a systematizing, —
every difficulty of this kind is for us, in accordance with our
positive apprehension of the problem before us, removed
beforehand; in so far as everywhere the positive develop
ment of the Christian certainty, in the manner above
indicated, conditions the progress of the system, and in
this way the oppositions naturally find the place for their
treatment and refutation. While we are hereby secured
against the splitting up of the material, against the unskilful
dragging in of details, etc., it is on the other hand not to be
feared that any essential point of this negative material
D

50 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
should be omitted or overlooked ; for the more completely
the domain of the Christian certainty is described in its
circumference, so much the more surely shall we in this work
come upon the contradictions which oppose this certainty.
Considering the constant relation of the positive and the
negative element in the bringing about of the certainty, the
completeness in the unfolding of the first-named is the pledge
for the completeness in the adducing of the oth'er.

PART I.

THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY IN ITS CENTEAL
CHAEACTEE.

SECTION I.
THE CHAEACTEE OF CEETAINTY IN GENEEAL.
§ 8. Certainty, as a condition of subjective assuredness
regarding any truth, is common to the natural conscious
ness with the Christian — a community, the knowledge of
which is necessary for the understanding of the specifically
Christian certainty; although it does not destroy the dis
tinction between the Christian certainty and the natural,
or the essential independence of the former in relation to
the latter.
1. The fact that the object of our science, that peculiar con
dition of the Christian consciousness which it has to develop,
bears a name which is likewise employed of corresponding
conditions of the natural consciousness, is in itself a finger
post, pointing out that some kind of agreement, though it were
only a formal one, must obtain between the natural and the
Christian certainty, and suggesting as a task the elucidating
of the relation of the one to the other. Certainly only a
finger-post — for to attempt to derive from it a proof for the
equality of the notion, or for an affinity of such or such
nature between the one and the other, were folly. It would
be just as absurd as if, e.g., from the parallel application of the
word "belief" in the natural as in the spiritual domain, one
would venture upon a deduction as to the nature of Christian
belief in relation to that which, besides this, bears the name
of belief. The entry of the Christian consciousness into the
natural consciousness, — already filled as this last is with a
world of experiences and notions, — conformably to the entry
of Christianity into the existing Kosmos, conditions the
designation of the newly-entering objects of the Christian
world after the analogy, and with the given notions, of the

54 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY,
natural, yet in such wise that these notions are thereby
essentially modified and transformed — a change which may
be compared with the transference of sensuous [pertaining to
the senses] notions to intellectual objects, although the leap
would be less great in the latter case than in the former.
Only the clear cognition of the objects to which the certainty
applies in the one case and in the other, as of the psychical
procedure by which, in this instance and in that, one reaches
that which we designate by the common name of certainty, is
able to afford us more definite information as to the reciprocal
relation of agreement and difference. Yet none the less is a
like designation of things, however they may differ in them
selves, a provisional indication of the existence of common
elements (Momente), a consequence of the actual consubstan-
tiality of the Christian consciousness in its blending with the
natural [consciousness] ; even as this consubstantiality itself
again points to the fact that the spiritual and natural world,
apprehended by it, cannot stand towards each other in the
relation of absolute difference.
2. There is a natural certainty, i.e., as we will call it for the
time being, a state of subjective assuredness with regard to
any truth, inasmuch and in so far as this truth falls within
the domain of the natural cognition. We express this pro
position as one of universal validity, without as yet distinguish
ing between conscious and unconscious certainty, weaker or
stronger, false or true — a certainty scientifically called forth,
or a universally human, immediate certainty. Every kind of
spontaneous activity on the part of man has such certainty as
its necessary background, even where he is only seeking after
truth ; for he is not able to do this without at least in some
way being assured of its existence, and without proceeding
from one certainty which is to lead him to another ; of this
general certainty, the moral certainty, which has reference to
truth in the ethical sense, to the truth of that which ought to
be done (was geschehen soil), is only a single part. We here
leave as yet entirely out of consideration the question, by
means of what inner process one arrives at this certainty, and
merely lay stress upon the single particular that each fresh
act of self-assuring, which is accomplished in the man, can be
brought about only by the adjustment with the certainty

THE CHARACTER OF CERTAINTY IN GENERAL, § 8. 55
already existing, as the standard for the new which enters, in
so far indeed as the contents of the former stand in actual
connection with the latter. If, therefore, matters stand so
with the Christian certainty, that it is the later comer, in
comparison with natural certainty, one thing will at once be
inevitable, namely, that the later in some wise attach itself to
the earlier ; nay more, it seems as though the Christian
certainty could not otherwise be established in the subject,
than by the means, and on the ground, of the natural certainty.
It is true, it is also often enough the case, in the purely natural
domain, that an existing certainty is overpowered and con
victed of error by another certainty in the process of formation ;
and, in this respect, there is nothing surprising if the same
thing is repeated in relation to the natural certainty on the
entering of the Christian certainty. But wherever this takes
place within the realm of the natural life, there after all it is
the same principles and norms, in accordance with which the
earlier and erroneous certainty, as well as the later and more
correct one, is formed ; by means of the same intellectual
process one becomes certain of the fact that one has to
exchange the former certainty for another and better-grounded
one. The way in which one becomes conscious of the mistake
made in connection with the previous assurance must of
necessity be analogous to that in which one at that time
expected to become conscious of the truth. Accordingly, it must
be evident that, however the Christian certainty may stand
related to the natural, we cannot but preface the development
of the essence of the former with that of the latter, at least
in its main traits ; inasmuch as the essence of the Christian
certainty exists in really inseparable connection with that of
the natural certainty, and cannot be rendered intelligible in
its distinction therefrom without an insight into the essence
of the natural certainty.
3. But this now also forms the utmost limit to which we
have here to proceed. For it is, on the other hand, a deposi
tion of the Christian certainty itself, that it does not derive
the guaranteeing of the truth from principles of any natural
truth whatever ; and we should return to the erroneous paths
of apologetics if we fail of rendering justice to this declara
tion. The Christian certainty would cease to be what it is

56 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
if it were conditioned by the factors of the natural certainty ;
and no one comes to such certainty who measures the Christian
certainty which presents itself to him merely by the standard
of the natural certainty. The consciousness of the Christian
tells us that his natural certainty is borne up and supported
in its truth by the Christian certainty — scepticism, if it arose
for him in the natural domain, would be vanquished by the
Christian certainty, not the converse ; the ego of the Christian
forms the centre not only of his Christian, but also of his
human existence, and he remains certain concerning himself
as a man, because he is so as a Christian. Herein, in com
parison with the above propositions, lies the peculiar antinomy
which we encounter at the very threshold of our discipline ;
an antinomy of which the Christian consciousness in its
immediate action is not at all sensible, because it has actually
solved the same, but one of which the solution presents no
small difficulties to the intellect. Without its solution there
were no system of the Christian certainty, and we have before
all things to accomplish the solution where we are treating of
this certainty in its central existence, its existence in itself
Without here in any way anticipating this solution, this one
observation may yet at once be made for the obviating of
misunderstanding, viz. that by such antinomy is meant a
dualism lasting indeed for the time being, but yet capable of
being overcome ; a dualism of natural and spiritual certainty,
not one of twofold truth apart from the manner of its certifi
cation. Nothing can be more inept, more in contradiction
with the Christian consciousness itself, rightly understood, than
the assertion met with now and then, that the spiritual and
the natural truth stand opposed to each other. And the same
tiling may be said with regard to the laws of thought, which are
necessary for the assuring of the spiritual and of the natural
truth. But with the recognition of this fact we have by no means
determined how the new spiritual certainty accommodates itself
to the existing natural certainty ; without questioning this homo
geneous character we deny once more the conception that,e.5'.,the
former is built up upon the latter, or, more exactly put, that the
elements which exist in the natural, moral or religious, conscious
ness are haply the standard by which, on the rise of the Christian
certainty, the Christian truth, as assured to us, is measured.

THE CHAEACTEE OF CEUTAIKTY IN GENEEAL, § 9. 57
§ 9. Certainty as a condition of the subject does not arise
without the presupposition (Setzung) of an object of which
it assures itself This presupposition consequently exists
so long as there is certainty at all ; and, inasmuch as the
latter, however constituted, is inseparable from the nature
of man, thus always exists.
1. We cannot enter upon the investigation as to the
nature and rise of the natural certainty, without realizing
the great difficulty which is for us connected with this
investigation. If we view the question in itself, there already
lie in this domain the differences, by no means harmonized,
of the philosophic conception of the world, according to one's
apprehension of the reality, presenting itself to the subject
in relation to the objects, as actual or apparent ; and by the
natural science of the present day these differences have
been so little overcome, that, on the contrary, on the ground
of the most exact research the Kantian Criticism and the
Fichtean Idealism have been renewed in their genus. More
over, even though we could disregard this research and its
results, yet, for every one who has closely followed the course
of the philosophic development since the time of Kant, it is
absolutely impossible to return to the noAf standpoint of the
relation of subject and object which characterizes the ordinary
empiricism and sensualism. In this way it is indeed to a
certain extent explicable, that as well Catholic as Protestant
critics should have ascribed to me a sort of Kantian position
towards the realities of experience, and have given utterance
to the doubt whether these things had for me more than
subjective reality.^ Or that, on the other hand, it has been
pointed out that the argumentation does not suffice to over
come the objections of idealism.^ I cannot hope, in the
renewed working out of this section on certainty in general,
to escape these and similar objections. And how should it
be possible, seeing the uncertainties and differences which
are still to be found in this domain among philosophers and
natural scientists, to solve within the limits of a few pages
> Knittel, Theol. Literaturbl. von Reusch, 1871, p. 402 ; Leonh. Stahlin,
Zeitschr.f. Luth. Theol. u. Kirche, 1873, p. 201.
^ Herrlinger, Jahrbiicherf. Deutsche Theol. 1872, p. 172.

58 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
those fundamental problems of human thought ? And should
I make greater progress and overcome all objections, if I
were to expand this part, which deals with the theory of know
ledge, to a twofold or threefold bulk ? So far as I take in
the whole state of the question — and I believe I do to some
extent take it in — I could not hope so to do. But of one
thing I may well remind at the outset. It is not my
intention to ground the Christian certainty upon the natural
certainty, and my object is merely, from the standpoint of
that Christian certainty which I presuppose, to direct a
glance to the essence of the natural certainty, in the interest
of the proof for its formal congruence with the Christian.
For the Christian — by virtue of his faith, by virtue of all
that which makes him a Christian — the objective reality in
the first place of the spiritual world in which he lives, and
with this at the same time also of the physical world, is
decided ; and the Christian consciousness will therein always
remain in harmony with the ordinary natural consciousness.
In connection with which then, to be sure, the nearer defining
of the manner of this objectivity remains reserved. And
in addition to this the other consideration has to be taken
into account, that the explanation of the experience and of
the certainty, even when it is attempted from the idealistic
standpoint, must yet always so take place, "as though the
world of material things, assumed by the realistic hypothesis,
really existed." ^ For us Christians the realistic hypothesis
— even though, if you will, one is not permitted in con
nection therewith to get beyond this " as though " — is
decided ; I believe also it will always approve itself, of
course not in the merely sensualistic application, even to
the natural consciousness as the preferable one. Let us
thus attempt so to enter upon the question of the natural
certainty " as though " that world of objects existed outside
of us ; and let us consider in connection with this task that
the explanation of the assumed reciprocal relation always
remains the same, whether one ascribes to the objects con
ceived reality in themselves (an-sich-seiende) or not. For
even though they had not such reality, they must be conceived
of as operating in such or such wise, as operating upon us.
1 Helmholz, Die Thatsachen in der Wahrnehmung, p. 35.

THE CHAEACTEE OF CERTAINTY IN GENERAL, § 9. 59
2. By the very fact that we designate the certainty as a
condition of the subject — and against this there will assuredly
be no objection raised on any side — ^the object is already
therewith presupposed, apart as yet from that which results
from the notion, which is more nearly to be defined, of the
certainty itself For the subject, at least the finite subject,
knows itself as such only in and with the distinction from
the object : its rise and its knowing itself as subject is not
merely presupposition (Setzung) of the object at the same
time, — so that the latter should take place necessarily indeed,
but always by the way of deduction, — but is, and is con
sciously, conditioned by the actual existence (Gesetztheit) of
the object, as something preceding and independent of this
subject. It is not true which has been said (Herrlinger, I.e.),
that that which exists immediately for the subject (das . . .
unmittelbar Gegebene) is only the certainty of itself (Selbst-
gewissheit) — without presupposing an object (Objectsetzung)
this very certainty of self is never brought about. The act
of supposing the object, namely, will be apprehended as one,
the accomplishment or non-accomplishment of which is by no
means left to the caprice of the subject, any more than it is
left open to him to think of himself (sich setzen) as subject
or not; and this fact does not exclude the other, that the
object does not exist for the subject without one's own act
of supposing (Setzung). For though the object in itself may
yet exist, apart from the relation to the subject, nevertheless
as object, that is for the subject, it does not exist without
this last, or without the presupposing by the subject — this is
the abiding truth of Fichte's Idealism. Nor can one say
that any knowledge or system of knowledge has to do with
the object as existing per se, which indeed would involve a
contradiction in itself, because knowledge always begins only
after supposition made of that which is to be known : to this
extent the question is in truth an idle one, as to what the
thing-in-itself (Ding-an-sich) is — for it is an object of cog
nition only as the thing-for-us (Ding-fiir-uns) for the subject.
The interest of the opposite side, the inner necessity accom
panying that supposition, for ascribing to the object an
existence in itself, arises from the consciousness of the un-
freedom of that supposition, which latter, however, does not

60 SYSTEM OF THE CHKISTIAN CERTAINTY.
on that account cease to be itself ; and the true description
of that inner process in connection with the relation between
object and subject will therefore be only this, which renders
justice equally to both sides of the consciousness. The un-
freedom is by no means merely this, that the subject becomes
aware of the impossibility of constituting itself (sich selbst zu
setzen), and to this extent is conditioned by the limit of the
non-ego ; but at the same time this, that he is conscious of
being compelled to suppose the object in such wise and not
differently, that the nature, multiplicity, etc., of the object
forces itself upon him as something fixed (als gegebene).
That it is so is certain for him, without affecting the pos
sibility, still present in connection herewith, of explaining
this fact either from the nature of the object in itself, or
from the necessary form of the supposition, or from both
together. But likewise the purely idealistic solution of the
problem — inasmuch as it represents the object as it appears
to the subject, as positively conditioned by the organization
of the subject — presents this organization as object, from
which the ego is distinguished as that by which the cog
nition is made : objective cognition it is here also whicfi
the subject will have, without which it is not conscious of
itseK as subject, and the difference from the empirical con
ception has reference not to the supposition or non- supposition
of an object, but only to the manner of supposing it.
3. It is only the inner consequence of the relation,
discussed by us, between subject and object, that we cannot
speak of a certainty of the subject, without saying that this is
certainty respecting an object. We cannot here as yet take
as our foundation the full notion (Begriff) of certainty, since
on the contrary we purpose hereafter to discover, and derive
from the consciousness, what it is that constitutes it. But
certainty, howsoever brought about, has of necessity the
tendency to an object of which it has assured itself, and
without this [object] there would be no certainty. We here
comprehend object and truth in one, for the being (Sein) is
the truth, in contradistinction from the semblance (Schein),
the vain, the nothing, which pretends to be what it is not.
It is true, even this semblance cannot exist without being
something, and to this extent some truth underlies every

61
semblance. But it is untruth, because and inasmuch as it is
not that which it seems to be. The myth presents itself in
the form of historic occurrence and is to this extent untrue,
because this occurrence is only semblance ; but it is not on
this account in every sense untrue, it is not simply nothing,
but only something else than what it seems ; and to this
extent it is truth. And that it so seems is also not sem
blance, but likewise truth, which as such claims recognition.
Certainty then as a particular condition of the discerning
and knowing subject is just this, the perception of the object
as the truth. Only in so far as the subject is convinced that
he apprehends the object, which presents itself to him, as
that which it is, detached from the semblance which it is not,
does he believe himself to be in possession of certainty. For
this reason there is also only objective certainty, i.e. a certainty
which is sure of its object, equally whether this objective
certainty itself, on its part, rest on semblance or be truth.
There is no certainty absolutely relating to itself, to this
extent purely subjective. For even though the subject will
assure himself of his own certainty, whether it is truth or
rests upon delusion, he must beforehand detach the same
from himself as subject, objectivize it, and the new process
of the emerging certainty is that of an objective certainty.
And this is not merely semblance or caprice, but that fore
going certainty is really an object, a reality of intellectual
order, of which it is just the question whether it is that
which it claimed to be : there is here simply a repetition
of the process which we everywhere meet with, where the
subject assures itself of an object, of the truth of an object.
4. But we advance at once a step farther, and pass over
therewith to the domain of the logical relation of reciprocity
to that of the reality, — the reality as alone we possess it at
all, — in saying, finally, that that certainty, which as supposed
necessarily supposes the object with it, is one inalienable for
man, is inseparable from his being. It is, however, here a
matter of indifference for the thing itself what may be the
contents and what the extent of this certainty ; since, even
with the greatest limitation of the one and of the other, the
result is the same for us, if only it can always be proved that
it belongs to the being of man not merely to strive after, but

62 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
also to possess, certainty of some kind. Scepticism opposes
this our assertion not precisely in such a way that it would
call in question the existence of such certainty in general ; it
denies, in the first place, only that one can depend upon this
certainty, it characterizes it as a merely apparent one, as in
reality unsupported. But it [scepticism] directly assails it,
when it asserts of the consciousness of the sceptic, — as of one
who has raised himself above that self-delusion of the general
consciousness, — that for him certainty does not exist anywhere ;
and this standpoint of knowledge appears to him the true one,
as opposed to the error of an imagined certainty. Yet, in
doing so, scepticism as absolute, and one of principle, puts an
end to itself, and merely confirms our affirmation in seeking
to deny it. For in connection also with this most consistent
enforcement of the skepsis, in the denial of every kind of
certainty, even that of the sceptic, scepticism cannot avoid
affirming, because it were otherwise impossible for it to deny.
The lever, by means of which all certainty grounded in the
common consciousness is to be lifted off its foundations and
overturned, is not able to operate, when there is wanting to it
a fulcrum on which to support itself ; and in connection here
with it is quite a matter of indifference to what point the
doubt is pushed, since on each occasion there must exist
behind this point a position from which the doubt appears to
the sceptic as something warranted. It is this position,
however, which we designate as that of certainty, certainty
inalienable even for the sceptic, to which he holds fast not in
spite of his skepsis, but because of it, for its very effectuating.
For the rest, the reality and inalienableness of the certainty,
however it may be constituted, follows from the consideration
of the fact that the whole movement and conduct of human
life, in all the domains of man's voluntary activity, and
specially where it is a question of aims, has some kind of
certainty as its presupposition. For here the same thing is
repeated in the sphere of will and of action, which we have
already observed, with regard to scepticism, in the intellectual
domain. We cannot raise a foot to attain to the proposed
end without the consciousness of being sure of this end  the
cessation of certainty would be the stand-still of life, and the
abiding fact of life, with its labour for ends and aims, is the

THE CHAEACTEE OF CEETAINTY IN GENERAL, § 10. 63
actual proof for the fact of man's certainty, as pertaining to
his essential character. So that now, combining the logical
compulsion of the assumed certainty to the supposing (Setzung)
of the object, with the constant actual presence of the same
[i.e. the certainty], we are warranted in saying that the
supposing of the object as real is necessary to the natural
consciousness, and is as little separable from it as is the cer
tainty inherent in it.
§ 10. The relation of the subject to the object, which the
certainty as a real one presupposes, is that of reciprocal
operation, in virtue of existing homogeneousness ; from
this experience of the subject arises cognition.
1. If the certainty is both an objective and a real one, i.e.
one which is necessarily assured with regard to an objective
being, and one which is characterized as actually existing,
we enter therewith upon the question how the necessarily
supposed object communicates itself (sich vermittele) to the
subject, that this may become certain of it. We do not ask,
here either, what the things of the objective being are in them
selves, apart from their relation to the subject, and from the
knowledge of the subject — a vain question, as we have seen ;
since we are never able to know the things otherwise than
they are for us. But just as little will we allow a doubt to
rest upon the point whether we suppose (setzen) that same
for-us-existence as a real one, in the same measure, as the
certainty of which we are conscious to ourselves as real. And
thereby we are so far from affording support to scepticism
that, on the contrary, upon that existing-for-us of the objects
we ground our certainty of them. So seriously do we believe
in the reality of these objects existing for us, that we imply their
existence in themselves in the very determination of them as
being for us, and that the thought of their being possibly figments
of our subjective imagination is absolutely excluded. If we
would look upon them as such, this would not accord with the
very experience which we make of these things. Moreover,
we apprehend the objects with which we have to do in the
widest extent, and do not yet distinguish whether they are
objects of external or inner perception, save that here, too, we

64 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
limit ourselves to the natural consciousness, in the theological
sense of the term, and so far exclude the objects of the
spiritual, specifically Christian knowledge.
2. That of which the subject becomes first conscious, in its
relation to the object, is not its activity thereto directed, not to
speak of its knowledge concerning it, but a being touched, or
affected, or determined by the object, just that impression of
unfreedom in the act of supposing (Setzung) of which we
have spoken above. The things are apprehended as existing
independently of us, definite (gegebene) in their being and in
their quality, which, however, present themselves to us in
virtue of a relation (rapport) into which they enter with us.
Our bearing towards the things is in this respect a passive one,
inasmuch as we are conscious of the " impressions " which they
produce upon us, whether indeed the object from which these
impressions proceed is an external or an inner one. The
object counts with us for exactly as much as the impression
contains which we have received from it. The impression is
for us the measure of its essence and its quality, and we are
at first not at all conscious of having contributed anything on
our part to this apprehension and valuation. But the more
closelj^ we pay heed to the manner in which the impressions
are effected, the less are we able to stop at the point of sup
posing our participation therein to be a merely passive one.
For there is not alone the consideration that very soon the
observation is forced upon us, how one and the same impres
sion affects one subject in a different way than it does another,
we also become conscious that the impression varies according
to the disposition of the self-same receptive subject. There
are, e.g., objects lying within the field of our vision, which we
nevertheless do not see, while others near to them draw our
attention ; or sounds smite our ear which we nevertheless do
not hear, while we catch other sounds which are present simul-'
taneously, and in like intensity with them. Nay, still more ;
we are taught by natural science that the images of objects,
which our eye perceives as objective, are so only in virtue of
an altogether definite optical process, which, in its turn again,
is dependent on an altogether definite organization of the
eye ; and that the concussions of the air, of which our ear is
sensible as notes, are so for us only in virtue of a construction

THE CHAEACTEE OF CERTAINTY IN GENERAL, § 10. 65
of the ear, by means of which certain organizations of the same
are set in a vibration corresponding to those concussions. We
come, in this way, to the insight that thatwhich objectively exists
(das objectiv Gegebene) always appears to us only in accord
ance with the organ which transmits to us the impression,
thus not in an objectivity independent thereof " All that the
optic nerve reports to us, it reports under the form of a
sensation of light, whether this then be the beaming of the
sun, or a blow on the eye, or an electric current in the
eye. The acoustic nerve, again, transforms everything into
phenomena of sound ; the nerve of the skin, all things into
sensations of temperature or touch. The same electric current,
whose existence the optic nerve reports as a flash of light,
which the nerve of taste reports as an acid, awakens in the
nerve of the skin the feeling of burning. The same sunbeam,
which we call light when it falls upon the eye, we call heat
when it strikes the skin." ^ Thus then, indeed, that first con
ception becomes rectified, by which we were led to imagine
that the impressions were made on the part of the object in
a way that did not call for, or even excluded, any action on
our side ; and the relation of the object to the subject is
characterized, upon closer examination, as that of action and
reaction. Only that with this the consciousness of the passivity
of the subject by no means disappears, but rather, in the first
place, is so determined that the spontaneous activity is neces
sarily called forth in the reception of the impressions, and is
withdrawn, to a certain extent, from the will and pleasure of
the subject. It is a false conclusion, too, if one turns to
account the fact, that the impressions are conditioned by the
organ of' reception, for the purpose of deducing therefrom the
non-reality of the objects placed in communication with us
by those organs ; only thus much, on the other hand, follows
therefrom, that there exists a homogeneousness — however to
be explained — between object and subject, which renders
possible the entrance of the objective impressions through the
medium of the receptive organs, and according to the measure
of them. 3. Here then begin the true difficulties of philosophic
knowledge, which can be overcome just as little by supposition
1 Helmholtz. E

66 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
(Setzung) of an empiricism and dualism, as by the hasty
assumption of an absolute monism. The former of these has
its abiding authorization in the fact that every identification
of the object with the subject, not to speak of the actual
production of the former by the latter as finite, or by the
sum-total of these [subjects] as finite, is continually in contra
diction with the character of the impressions received ; the
latter has its truth in this respect, that the assumption of a
complete disparity between object and subject is not compat
ible with the actual coalescence of the two in the perception
and in the knowledge, which calls rather for a higher oneness
of the same, having an existence in itself It lies not within
the claims which are made upon us by the solution of our
problem, to answer this fundamental question of philosophy
with the means at the disposal of philosophy. Only thus
much will we observe here, anticipating the results of later
investigation, that the Christian certainty, however little it
immediately relates to the solution of such metaphysical
problems, yet to a certain extent actually decides them. For
if, e.g., we shall Iiereafter show the presupposition (Setzung)
of the absolute and personal God to be comprehended under
that certainty, this is in reality for the Christian subject at
the same time the negation of that strict monism, which
presupposes the unity of the substance or the essential
identity of subject and object — the distinction of the creative
and the created being, the assumption of a specific and
permanent diversity of divine and human essence is therewith
at once entailed (gegeben). And if, on the other hand, the
Christian consciousness knows all that is of created nature
as existing in God, from Him proceeding, by Him consisting,
and to Him tending, there is thereby not less decidedly
rejected that dualism, for which the bond between nature
and spirit, the homogeneousness and inner unity of subject
and object, has been lost — there lies therein immediately the
comprehension not only of all diversity and contrariety of the
creature, but also of the essential being of the creature and
the Creator, in unity, though not indeed in uniformity. But
then the question how that negation stands related to this,
the first supposition to the second, that, it will be understood^
is not at all herewith decided, and it would be a

THE CHARACTER OF CERTAINTY IN GENERAL, § 10. 67
apprehension of the state of the case, an unseemly vaunting
on the part of Christian knowledge, if it should suppose that
for it those philosophic problems had ceased at all to exist, or
should contest to philosophy the right to attempt the solution
of the same with the means at its disposal. For we see
even in the Christian domain a like wavering between
dualism and monism arise and assert itself, inasmuch as the
measure of distinctness between divine and human unity has
been by no means fixed by common accord, but runs through
a very extended scale, from the assumption of complete
disparity to the assumption of a certain identity — the latter
more especially in mysticism.
4. That to which we have here accordingly to limit our
selves is the more exact defining of the homogeneousness
which must obtain between object and subject, in order that
those impressions may be produced of which the reality is
for the natural consciousness fully established. For the
necessity of its existence is not less imperative for the calling
forth of the specifically Christian experience than for the
effecting of the natural ; and we shall hereafter, in the defin
ing of the Christian certainty, have to avail ourselves thereof.
It is only the most external form of this homogeneity when
we say, in accordance with that which precedes, that the
object on each occasion enters' within the perception of the
subject, under the condition, and consequently under the
limitation, which the receptive organ imposes upon it. The
organ, e.g., of hearing, is so constituted that it corresponds to
a definite side of the object, that it is able to prolong within
the ear certain concussions of the air which have arisen out
side of the same, by means of corresponding vibrations of
certain definite parts of this organ, according to which then
the object, in so far as it produces these concussions, as some
thing sounding, finds entrance to the subject. And what is
true of one organ will necessarily be found true of the others :
by means of this conformity the general rule is indicated,
which exists for the impressions universally. That the sun
beam produces upon us at one time the sensation of a ray of
light, at another time of a ray of warmth, depends certainly
upon the fact that there it is the optic nerves, here the nerves
of the skin, upon which the impression is made ; it does not

68 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
at all follow, however, therefrom, that this which is perceived
by the senses is something purely subjective, and not corre
sponding to the object ; but what follows is only this, that
there are present in the subject organs conformed to the
different sides of the object, by which these communicate
theiliselves to the subject in a manner corresponding to their
reality. For if it must be conceded that just according to
our experience it depends not merely upon the state of our
nerve-apparatus, but in the first instance upon the nature of
the rays, whether they appear to us as a red or blue, as a
strong or weak light, — if thus here the conditioning of such
or such kind of sensuous perception, by the nature of the
object, is admitted ; why not the like conditionedness
(Bedingtheit) and conformity where it is a question of other
and different perceptions by the senses ? But we have not
at all in our case to do merely with this outermost side of the
perception, not merely ¦with the manner in which the senses
stand related to the outward objects, for the reception of
which into the subject they are qualified. For there accedes,
even in the case of the simplest, as it would seem purely
outward, perception by the senses, an inner activity of the
subject ; inasmuch as, e.g., in the beholding of a body only
two dimensions, the vertical and the horizontal, immediately
strike the eye, while on the other hand the third, that of
depth, is only gradually deduced by the subject, though on
the ground of an optical process which renders this deduction
possible. It is a mystery which corresponds to the relation
of the soul to the body, how the whole sensuously perceptible
world which surrounds us is, by the instrumentality of the
senses, reflected within us ; when, however, we have once been
compelled not at all to trace, in an idealistic way, the differ
ence and multifariousness of the phenomena, the being and
the thus-being of the objects, to our own activity in the
perception — however much this activity may be jointly
necessary thereto — we shall then be obliged to maintain the
same thing with regard to the psychical operations, under
whose co-operation we attain to real perception, as of the
quality of the receptive sensuous organs, viz. that there exists
between these and the objects present a homogeneity, which
renders possible the perception. This homogeneity will admit

THE CHARACTEE OF CEETAINTY IN GENEEAL, § 10. 69
of being more nearly defined in the direction that the
conditions of existence [on which existence is possible
(Bedingungen)] within the objective world are identical with
the conditions of existence within the subjective world ; or,
in other words, that there the being and genesis is supported
and penetrated by ideas which are conformed to the ideas of
the subject. We make use here, for brevity's sake, of the
term " ideas " for the comprehension of all the " aprioristic "
element, which, according to Kant, is contributed by the
perceiving and cognizant subject to the material of experience
received a posteriori. One has no right to think of these
ideas, as for instance that of causality, as carried into the
objective world by the subject, for the reason that the subject
cannot otherwise think of the phenomena of the objective
world than in accordance with this idea ; any more than one
has a right to conceive of the idea itself merely as first drawn
by way of abstraction from the phenomena, and as thence
having entered into the subject. Against the latter empirical
conception, which in the present day has been revived afresh
by positivism in particular, all still holds good which was
urged by Kant in his day against sensualism ; we remind
only of the impossibility of thinking of the magnitudes and
figures with which geometry makes its calculations — and
which are nowhere so found in actual existence, however
much they may constitute the ideal fundamental forms of
quantitative being — as simply carried over into the subject
from actual existence. To the idealistic view of Kant, how
ever, there is opposed not only the fact that at the beginning
of his system he represents the same causality, which he
afterwards apprehends as a category of the understanding, as
operating objectively upon the subject from the thing-in-itself ;
and thereby, by this " stirring of our senses " represents the
" rude material of the sensuous impressions " as being pro
duced, which [material] is then elaborated into a knowledge
of the objects ; but above all [there is opposed to it the fact]
that the necessity, whether of intuitively contemplating, or of
thinking out, all that is perceived by the senses under definite
categories, does not by any means exclude the assumption
that these norms equally determine the objective being as
they do the intellectual contemplation and the thinking of

70 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the subject. If, as we have seen, the presupposition of the
object (Object-setzung) in general is for the subject just as
necessary and inalienable as the presupposition of the truth ;
if, further, the presupposition of the quality of the object is
likewise an involuntary one, in connection with which the
subject, at the same time with his personal activity, becomes
sensible of the dependence of the impression received upon
the object ; it is only a natural consequence that, advancing
farther upon this path, we ascribe the rationality, so to say,
of the objects in the laws determining them and their relation
to each other, not in a one-sided way to the conception of the
subject, but to the object itself ; and think of the relation of
the subject to the object again in the form of a homogeneity,
by virtue of which the laws, forms, ideas, prevailing in the
objective world, are the subject's own ideas and laws. This
homogeneity, as existing in itself, renders possible that reci
procal operation between object and subject, by which the
former communicates itself to the latter, and the latter exerts
an influence upon the former ; this homogeneity it is, on
account of which the subject feels itself at home in the
objective world and familiarized with it.
5. The immediate precipitate from the reciprocal operation
depending on this homogeneity, the sum-total of the impres
sions which are thereby deposited in the subject, however
this process may be accomplished in its details, we call
experience. Its essence is the immediateness of the rela
tion in which, in connection therewith, the subject finds
himself still placed to the things, in distinction from the
knowledge mediately derived. It is a contact of the objec
tive and the subjective life, from which experience springs ;
and for this very reason the experience may also be an un
conscious one, however little it must always be so. This in
the truest sense of the word Innewerden (becoming sensible)
of the objects, their taking into oneself on the part of the
subject, is accomplished equally in the unconscious child as at
each later stage of the human development. There is col
lected in the child, from the first moment when it opens its
eyes, a material of impressions of objects, which it by no
means receives only passively, but takes up into itself with
unconscious self- activity and just as unconsciously already

THE CHAEACTEE OP CEETAINTY IN GENEEAL, § 10. 7l
arranges, simply in virtue of the homogeneity which exists
between the life of the child and the life by which it is
surrounded. The formation of the single impressions into
general ones begins at a time when the capacity for reflection
and abstraction, as something existing apart, as yet entirely
recedes into the background; on which account we may
doubtless assume that the genus is not at all an abstraction
made, by way of supplement, by the subject from the single
things, but an objectively existing reality, comprehending the
single things, in the form of a creative idea putting them
forth from itself For it is a very shallow piece of trifling,
just for that reason manifest for the common sense of man
kind, that witticism of late often heard again, of the fruitage
(Obst) as a fictitious existence side by side with the single
fruits, the apples, pears, etc., which are comprehended under it.
He who knows the creative idea only as an aistractum, as
" memory's image of many things in the majority similar,
thus homogeneous," he who in a nominalistic way seeks the
reality and truth only in these single things, into his soul has
never fallen the veritable image of an artistic idea. On the
other hand, it is seen that where the personal activity does
not come forth to meet the influence of the objects, the experi
ence also further ceases ; as, e.g., in the case of the child, so
far as one can see, the world of sounds as yet passes over
without a trace, while the eye has already long taken in the
impression of the objects of its environment. Nor can one
say that merely the world surrounding the child is for him an
object of experience, and that the man becomes so to himself
only in riper age ; but it apprehends itself also as object,
and therefore speaks of itself at first always in the third
person. From this unconscious and involuntary experience,
therefore, the experience, where it is made with consciousness
and designedly sought, is not essentially different. For one
may, it is true, set oneself to obtain experience, in that one
subjects oneself to the influence of definite objects, selected
for this purpose ; but, apart from the fact that in such case
the consciously discerning activity immediately accompanies
the experience, the latter is, here too, nothing else than the
direct (unvermittelte) taking-into-oneself of the objects, the
depositing of their impressions ; and it may be long before

72 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the thinking of the experimenter, although from the beginning
directed to the experiment, is in a position to render com
prehensible the impression received.
6. The collective material of the experience forms the
basis of knowledge. This is the comprehending of the
existence experienced under the form of the notion (Begriff).
For all thinking is, in the first place at least, after-thinking,
reflection (iVacAdenken, as we say, thinking it over). The
worid of thought reproduces in itself the world of existence,
of which the subject is in immediate possession by experi
ence, that it may now mediately possess it by the conception.
The notion is the copy of the object formed in thinking. And
all real acquiring of knowledge is a working upon concep
tions, with conceptions, a combining of the same with each
other. With this action the subject certainly detaches itself
from the object of experience, but only in order to make the
same completely its intellectual property, to grasp in thought
the conditions of its being, its quality, its effect. For this
is the peculiarity of knowledge, that it does not stop at the
single phenomenon, but apprehends it within a close connec
tion of conditions, which raises it above the character of
accident and thereby renders it comprehensible. The pheno
mena remain strange to us so long as we have not possessed
ourselves of their connection and do not understand their
conditions. There manifestly underlies this fact again that
above indicated homogeneity however to be explained, between
object and subject, a rationality of being corresponding to
the thinking. And there takes place no leap in connection
therewith from experience to knowledge, but in the former
the other is already present in a rudimentary form (mitan-
gelegt). " Our material nature, in fivefold wise adapted to the
qualities of things, is combined with our rational (intelli-
genten) soul in such essential unity and such oneness of
essence, that the material operations proceeding from things,
which as material incitements affect our material organs,
forthwith in an inexplicable manner call forth emotions in the
rational soul."^ With the phenomenon there is for us at
once conveyed (gegeben) the impression of that in the pheno
menon which is conformable to law, and this "conformity
^ Heman, Die Erscheinung der Dinge in der Wahrmhmung, p. 148.

THE CHARACTER OF CEETAINTY IN GENEEAL, § 10. 73
to law is the condition of comprehensibility." ^ On the other
hand, every act of knowledge, the taking over of the being
into the notion, is accompanied by the mental representation
(Vorstellung, conception), unconscious if you will, but neces
sary representation, that what thus appears and is known is
in some way a reality in itself; in the opposite case the
energy for knowing would at once be paralysed, and the
interest in that which is known would vanish. From this,
however, we learn as a further result, that the thinking, and
why the thinking, by which we arrive at knowledge is not
merely a reflection (Nachdenken). In accordance with that
presupposition of the homogeneity everywhere present, though
perhaps latent, the subject may venture, from the starting-
point of definite notions which it has derived from experi
ence, now to proceed independently, to unfold the contents
of the same, to develop their relation to each other, and so
to construct a system of conceptions, to which it ascribes
reality, even without having tested this system in detail by
experience. Knowledge may thus precede experience, and
determine how the experience must be in a particular case :
one finds in that case, of course, that the experiment which
one undertook on the ground of the forethinking combination,
corresponds to the structure (Gebilde) of the thinking. Here,
consequently, it is evident that, while the thinking cognition
always proceeds from experience, — whether this be an inner
or an outward experience, — it by no means always runs
parallel to experience, but is able equally to outstrip it, as it
is to come in after it. On the one hand, there lie within us
whole successions of experiences, the material of which has
still remained unknown to us, and perhaps ever will remain
so, because we find no occasion for directing the thinking
cognition towards them ; on the other hand, we go in pursuit
of knowledge, inasmuch as we make certain experiences serve
as our basis, but forthwith leave these behind us, and, in virtue
of the assumed harmony of thinking and being, form notions
from notions, in this way to attain to full knowledge. It is
true there generally remains, even as regards the particular
object of which one has become sensible by experience, a
residuum, which does not pass over with perfect congruence
1 Helmholtz, Die Thatsachen in der Wahrnehmung, p. 41.

74 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
into the experience ; partly, the experience of the impression
is an insufficient, defective one, taking in only certain sides
of the object, for which the subject is specially organized ;
partly, the single object as member of the whole is so closely
connected with others that the experience of the single one.
as such, is in itself a one-sided one ; partly, every reality in
general conceals within itself a mystery, which it either does
not at all disclose to the experience, or else at least only after
long exercise of the receptive organs. Thus even here, where
knowledge is apparently altogether based upon experience,
this knowledge passes, in the impulse for comprehending the
object under all its conditions and on all its sides, beyond the
measure of the impression received, in that it seeks of itself
to fill up that which is wanting to it after the analogy of
the same ; consequently, often without becoming conscious of
doing so, frames hypotheses, and interprets and models the
experience in harmony with these hypotheses. The more,
however, the knowledge passes beyond the single object, — as
to be sure there is in reality no actual knowledge of the
particular object as such, but only of the particular object
in the complex of the whole — the more, I say, whole series
of individuals, whole domains of life, become the object of
knowledge, the more frequently will it happen, that either
experiences are lying in the subject, which have not yet, or
not perfectly, passed over into knowledge, or judgments are
formed, which serve only to bridge over a place left void
by experience, but which are not themselves immediately sup
ported by experience. All this is to be kept before the mind
when we now further proceed to deal with the nature and
degree of certainty.
§ 11. Certainty is the becoming sensible of the harmony of
the being with the notion, or of experience with know
ledge; from this its essential character is comprehended
the varying degree of certainty, the manifold possibility of
error, as well as the norm for the correction of the one
and the perfecting of the other.
1. We have now reached the point at which it will be
possible, upon the foundation of that which has heretofore

THE CHABACTER 0¥ CERTArSlT IN GESEEAL, | U. 75
been discussed, more definitely to fix the essential nature of
certainty, and alike to separate as to combine the inner pro
cesses &oni which it springs. For certainty is something
that is coniponnd, howerer little this fact may be at once
biongbt to the conseionsness of the subject, of whom the
certainty is, or is becoming, the po^ession. Forthwith upon
the reception of an experience, which to be sure is at once
taken up by the cognitive activity, it is present, perhaps, in
the form of a feeling accompanying this cognition, or of im
mediate consciousn^s, which has not yet become objective
for the subject; for the purely intellectual acts likewise,
wliich are requisite for the constituting of certainty, are in
the fiist instance accomplished involuntarily and unconsciously,
and the certainty is not then for the first time present when,
for instance, the subject becomes conscious to itself of the
proce^ of experience and cognition which takes place in con
nection therewith. Just for this reason I have preferred on
the present occasion designating the certainty as a iecomiiig
seasibk (Tnnewerden), not as before, as a conseumsne^ of the
harmony of the being with the notion (B^riff), 1^; a mis
understanding should attach to the espiession coi^eiousness,
as though there were need in order to certainty of a conscious
reflection. And certainty is a hemming sensible, inasmuch as
the same constantly accompanira that experience and cog-
nitioiL Not l^s does it accompany the bare cognition, when
this undertakes to make its deductions from single bases
furnished by experience, on the ground of the law of causality
and in accordance with mathematical or logical norms, after
an analogy corresponding to experience, eta, and in this way
to pass beyond the domain of experience. Beyond doubt
diSculti^ and differences arise here, when we ask as to the
proportion, in which either the activity of the impression, or
the taking of it up and combining of it in the conception, or
botii t(^ther, constitute the certainty. It is said indeed,
that human knowledge consists in the last instance of a
series of thoughts which, growing out of the most diverse
points of germination, mutoaHy stay and support each other
by their power of producing conviction ; and that the ulri-
mate certainty for each individual consists only in the
agreement, free from all contradictions, with whidi it fits into

76 SY"STEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the connection of the whole.^ And even where the facts of
experience are brought more into the foreground, and the
certainty is made to extend to all facts " which are immedi
ately conveyed (gegeben) in the perception (Wahrnehmung),
or are necessarily inferred from facts of the perception ; " ^
"the ultimate criterion of certainty" is declared to be "a
logical one." That is to say, those facts are objectively
certain, which cannot be set aside in the way of progressive
correction of the observation (Wahrnehmung) ; and whether
certain observed facts will still continue to hold out against
such correction, " can only be discovered as a result of con
clusions which, on their part indeed, must rest upon percep
tions." ^ But if, after all, those conclusions must rest again
upon perceptions, it cannot be said without more ado that
logic has to speak the last word. There must first be
observed facts, before logic can begin its work on them ; and
therefore it seems surely as though objective certainty depends
in the first place upon the proving of the facts. But before
everything there is need of an agreement as to what we are
to understand under the term facts in this case. We regard
as facts of this kind first of all the phenomena, which just
because they are such are objects of our observation. That
the sun daily rises for us, is such a fact ; namely, a pheno
menon which is by no means set aside or corrected by our
being constrained to assume that the sun does not turn round
the earth, but the earth round the sun. That phenomenon
observed by us ever afresh, all logic notwithstanding, which
is for us an established fact whether the explanation of it
may turn out in the one way or the other, is explained in
union with other facts by the assumption that the earth
moves round the sun. So the colours which we see, the
notes which we hear, are such observed phenomena, conse
quently facts which are in every way certain for us, however
they may be explained. If we trace them back to the
vibrations of the ether and air, we do not correct those facts,
but become acquainted with the process by which such phe
nomena are called forth. The fact itself would be corrected
only if I could convince myself that I had wrongly observed ;
1 Windelband, Prdludien, 1884, p. 180.
' Wundt, Erkenntnisslehre, p. 401. ' Ihid. p. 385.

THE CHARACTER OF CERTAINTY IN GENERAL, § 11. 77
that, e.g., I had looked upon that as blue which is yellow, or
as green which is red.
2. In this sense, thus, we place in the forefront the facts
which meet us in the phenomena, without thereby intending
to deny that the harmonizing of the facts with each other, in
which now logic is more interested, forms a further element
(Moment) of the certainty. We presuppose without further
examining, on the ground of our observation, that the observed
facts do not stand opposed to each other, that in place of
denying and nullifying each other they mutually explain and
support one another. It is impossible for us to regard facts
as true, of which the one annuls the other; we cannot at
once maintain yea and nay ; the logical impossibility which
lies therein, we transfer by virtue of the assumed homo
geneity of subject and object to the thing itself But here,
too, the preponderance of the facts is manifested. Very
frequently we discover (gewahren) that what we had looked
upon as a contradiction in the facts, was rather a contradic
tion in the explanation of these facts. The fact of sunrise
we thought could be explained only in such a way that we
should suppose the sun turns round the earth, whereas the
opposite supposition (Annahme) also explains, and better ex
plains, that fact. The notional image which we project, in
accordance with the impressions of the phenomena and the
facts therein announcing themselves, always apprehends the
phenomenon already in the assumed continuity of condition
ing and conditionedness ; and only when we succeed in so
fitting in (ein-zuordnen) an experience, an event, with such
continuous whole as explains it as an individual experience or
event, does our certainty become complete, satisfied in itself
From this, however, it does not follow that there is no
certainty at all present, until that continuity has been estab
lished on every side : for this establishing indeed is after all
only a relative one, never perfected, at best a gradually pro
gressive one. Here thus, that which ever afresh decides in
the first line is the facts, which as such urge themselves upon
us with irresistible force, and we feel it only as a defect, not
as an annulling of certainty, when, and so far as, we are not
in a position to recognise the consonance of facts with each
other, and to know their conditionings. It is needful then to

78 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
be so much the more strictly on our guard, to see whether
and how far we have on our own part undesignedly added
and substituted presumptions, to which we wrongly ascribed
the character of facts, and to which the continuing dissonance
is to be traced.
3. At any rate it follows from that which has been hereto
fore developed, that the certainty, wherever it exists, is not
merely the result of the impression received and taken over
into the notion; but that to these two yet a third must
always be added, namely, the becoming sensible (perception)
of the harmony between the fact observed and the notional
image which we form of it. Only in this perception, whether
it be an unconscious or a conscious one, does the observing
subject, going out so to speak in quest of assurance, then
rest: the certainty is the permanent condition (Zustandlich-
keit) of such a perception, the sense of its normal course,
brought about by the accomplished process of the observing
and cognition, and ever renewing itself. Now it is true the
comparison of the fact observed with the notions thereby
obtained would have no meaning, and be altogether idle,
if the notions were nothing more than the simple im
prints in the cognition of the impressions left by experience,
where it would then be self-evident that the former must
agree with the latter ; it has a meaning, only if the case is so
with the reception, of that which is experienced into the
cognition, as we have above developed it, viz. that the subject
is at the same time productive inasmuch as it is receptive, that
the cognition partly anticipates the experience, partly succeeds
it, and that even in connection with the experience in itself
the participation of the subject is by no means a merely
passive one. From this very fact it is likewise explained that
the certainty is strongest where, starting from the presupposi
tion of the primary forms of all sensuous experiences, e.g. of
space, of quantity, of number, the knowledge advances in
accordance with the laws immanent in it, so that there is here
no longer need of the further comparison of being with notion,
but the cognitive activity remains occupied purely with itself,
as in mathematics. Moreover, it must not be overlooked here
either, that the subject does not at all possess this certainty
as a certainty complete in itself, shut up within the circle of

THE CHARACTER OF CERTAINTY IN GENERAL, § 11. 79
the subject, but that, in virtue of the homogeneity of the
objective and the subjective being, the validity of the mathe
matical propositions holds good with reference to the whole
objective world as one filling space, as existing in quantity and
multiplicity. 4. If, now, we leave that kind of certainty here out of con
sideration — which, although it is true likewise starting in some
way from experience, yet has no need of the same for its
further prosecution, but rests solely upon subjective postulates
of knowledge and their carrying out — and fix our attention
upon that domain of truth, of which the certainty assures
itself as one lying external to us, intellectually or sensuously
real, we shall be in a position, on the ground of that which
has been discussed, to determine in general, first, the degree
of the certainty, then the varied possibility of its erring, and,
lastly, the norm for its correction. The complete certainty
will set it where the impression received has passed over into
the knowledge as a certainty defined on all sides, distinguished
in its peculiar character from others, and therefore constantly
remaining the same; where, further, the notion which the
knowledge has gained therefrom enters as a perfectly lucid
one, i.e. one corresponding to the conditions of the subjective
cognition, into a continuous whole (Zusammenhang), free from
contradictions ; and where, finally, the observing and cognizant
subject in connection with the perceiving of this course never
comes upon a discord, but enjoys rest in the perception,, the
sense, and consciousness of its, in itself, congruous character.
Thus, e.g., one has the certainty of a fact, of which one was a
witness, when one has become sensible of it, in the first place,
purely as such [fact] by means of the corresponding organs of
observation, in such wise that the diverse phenomena of the
same have distinctly stamped themselves upon the experience, —
yet not with this alone, but perfectly only when this fact has
taken the form of an intellectual image in us, which we com
prehend; so that the occurrence in its succession and in its
connection is seen to be conformable to the conditions of our
thinking, admits of being perfectly comprehended under them,
and now^ the congruence of this image, formed by the cogni
tion, with the after -enduring impression of the experience is
brought home to our feeling or our consciousness. Then the

80 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
case may indeed occur, that in the course of time the
impression in its distinctness is effaced, that single sides
thereof vanish from the memory, and that, in consequence, we
are no longer quite certain whether the image formed by the
cognition actually accords with the reality. Or, it may well
happen that, while the fact in the main is certain for us, in
virtue of the agreement of the being with the notion, yet single
phenomena accompanying the fact — phenomena of which the
impression may chance to be a distinct one — will not fit in
with the notion which we form of it in virtue of the funda
mental conditions of our knowledge. On this point, accord
ingly, as compared with other ones, our certainty relaxes ;
notwithstanding the distinctness of the impression, we can ask
ourselves whether we have not, after all, been mistaken therein.
Enough, it is evident that those two things, the impression left
by the experience and the image formed by the cognition,
must always coincide in order to produce certainty ; and that
the degree of certainty is dependent, for the consciousness of
the subject, upon the degree in which they coincide.
5. By this, then, we are to judge further of the possibility
and diverse occasioning of the erroneous certainty, and may
define in advance the ground of the erring, and therewith, at
the same time, the necessary mode of correction. The ground
of the erring may lie either in the defect of experience, or in
the incongruity of the knowledge, or in both together. Since,
namely, in the case of experience, the correctness and distinct
ness of the impression does not at all depend merely upon the
reality of the object and the effect proceeding from it, but, at
the same time, upon the quality of the receptive organs,
upon the degree of practice on the part of the sensuous or
intellectual faculty of perception — this being so, an object
may, of course, come under the experience, and by means of
the cognition congruent with the object, which sets in between
the two, call forth a certainty in the subject, as to the correct
ness of which he [the subject] the less doubts, inasmuch as he
is conscious of the reality of the impression which has been
made, and which is still present to his mind ; and yet, spite
of the reality of the impression, the certainty rests upon an
error, because, and in so far as, the experience only in part, in
an imperfect and defective way, and therefore in a misleading

THE CHARACTER OF CERTAINTY IN GENERAL, § 11. 81
way, corresponded to the effect and utterance of the object, in
such wise that the subject, upon repetition of the experiment,
upon acquiring a more practised discernment, observes more
and more accurately than before, and in accordance with what
he has now observed modifies his previous certainty. But
even, upon the presupposition of a congruent state of the
faculty of experience, it may be that, in consequence of the
spontaneity of the subject in the reception of the impression,
the attention of the same [the subject] turns, exclusively or
mainly, towards a particular side of the object, and towards a
particular mode of its operation, so that the operation pro
ceeding from the other side enters only defectively into the
experience, or else not at all ; as accordingly it always happens
that a series of phenomena pass over us without leaving a
trace, for the very reason that our apperception is taken up
with other things. Just as, then, the erring of the certainty
is here occasioned by the fact that the objects do not enter
congruously into the experience, so may it further arise from
the fact that the congruence is wanting, or is incomplete, in
the taking over of that which has been experienced into the
cognition. For there is lying in us, as we have before seen,
a multitude of experiences which have not, or at least have
not clearly, formed themselves into images of the cognition ;
while, on the other hand, the process of the cognition does
not stand still, but seeks to supply from itself the actual
or apparent defect of the experience-material. The cogni
tive subject, then, ranges the particular [fact], which he has
actually experienced, and which as such has entered into his
consciousness, in a connected whole (Zusammenhang) of notions,
which he has obtained from himself, without this connected
whole of notions corresponding with the connected whole of
the things, and thereby perverts even the correctness of the
particular, in assigning to it a false position within the whole.
For the particular is comprehended only from the whole, and
in accordance with the position which it occupies in the whole ;
and as the subject is certain that there is such a close coherence
(Zusammenhang) of the whole present in the objective world,
so is he, the subject, adapted to the same, and cannot dispense
with the endeavour to establish such close coherence of his
notions. One sees now, how possibly, nay, how as a rule, in
F

82 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the bringing about of an erroneous certainty two things will
concur, the defect of experience and the defect of working out
in harmony with the cognition — a twofold incongruity, of
which the one element reacts upon the other, and, at the
same time, an incongruity of which the subject becomes con
scious, perhaps, only at quite a remote point, where some further
experience or other cuts athwart tlie calculation of the notions.
In such case the harmony hitherto assumed between the
notion and the being at once ceases, uncertainty sets in, and a
renewed checking (Controle) is called for, in order to discover
the seat of the error. The latter, it is true, will not be every
where possible, since, and in so far as, the world of experience
is not on all points equally accessible ; and conformably to the
individual limitation of the circle of experience and knowledge
one will have to rest content with holding fast the certainty
within the periphery in which, by virtue of the given reality
and completeness of the experience, the agreement of the same
[the experience] with the notion can be verified. One is com
pelled to put up with contradictions, which cannot be brought
into keeping with the assurance produced; and one can put
up with them, if only the certainty is well-grounded on definite
facts of experience and knowledge within the circle accessible
to the subject. At the same time it is manifest that that
preponderance of the actual, and of the experience grounded
thereon, of which we have spoken above, asserts itself in this
place, too, and cannot be overlooked. Not, in like measure,
is the remaining or newly-appearing uncertainty conditioned
by defective experience and insufficient knowledge. And not,
in like measure, is the error fatal on this side as on that. For
conformably to the experience that our whole existence and
life, the inner as well as the outer, is borne and upheld
by facts and realities, we always inquire also, in the first
instance, about that which presents itself to our perception as
fact and reality ; and our certainty depends much less upon
the question whether these realities will range themselves in
harmony with our cognition into a continuous (einheitliches)
whole, into a system of conditioning and conditioned, than
upon the question whether the realities are ever afresh experi
enced by us in their actuality and potency. Therewith, never
theless, it is not to be ignored that the impossibility, for the

THE CHAEACTEE OF CERTAINTY IN GENERAL, § 12. 83
time being, of such ranging in a continuous whole, presses
upon us as a burden, and that a certainty satisfied within itself
arises only when that pressure has been removed. With this
designation of the defect of certainty we have, however, at the
same time expressed the idea of its consummation ; or rather,
it was the idea of its consummation from which we attained
to the knowledge of the defect. The subject cannot avoid
supposing (zu setzen) the truth, the reality of all being, as one
and in itself free from contradiction ; and is constrained to
suppose this world of being, in itself manifold, and yet one in
nature, as for himself, the subject ; however much his certainty
may be limited to single points -and circles of this whole, yet
he comprehends a priori those single parts in one with the
postulate of the whole to which they belong, and is everywhere
guided by this previously-acquired conception.
§ 12. The enlargement of the single object of certainty to
the comprehension of a whole of truth corresponds to the
enlargement of the individual subject to the general, of
which he feels himself an organic member, and whose
mass (Gehalt) of life and knowledge he receives into
himself, according to his individual measure, as his own.
1. We have hitherto, in connection with the question as
to the constituting of the certainty, always kept only before
our mind the subject simply in its relation to the object,
without, in so doing, taking into consideration the relation
of the single subject to the general. And yet, if we had
stopped at this, we should have indicated the nature of
certainty only incompletely, because in an abstract way;
since the process of self-assuring everywhere, it is true,
proceeds between subject and object, but not at all merely
between this last and the individual subject. Yet the circle
of the experience and the domain of the knowing, within
which the individual subject immediately assures itself of
objective truth, is comparatively speaking very limited, and
at any rate certainty, wherever we find it, reaches out beyond
this limited circle of the direct individual appropriating of
the objects. Nay more : we should, with all sureness and
correctness of the personal experience and knowledge, still be

84 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
involuntarily seized with doubt as to the truth of the same,
if we could only look upon it as an individual experience and
knowledge ; if we could not regard the heritage of truth,
acquired by us, as a widely recognised possession, valid for
the general consciousness equally much as for the individual.
And on a close examination of those elements and articles
which the certainty of the individual embraces — whether it
be in the things of daily life, or in one or other of the
sciences — it is seen at the first glance how much appears
certain for us, without our having personally and immediately
gone through the process of ascertainment. One may say,
that as the purely individual life would be no life, inasmuch
as in its character of individual it has need of the general,
and without the latter would perish or would not come into
existence at all ; so also there is no purely individual
certainty, but certainty as individual always presupposes the
general, is embraced by it, embraces it in turn, and depends
for its existence upon this reciprocal relation.
2. To the individual subject the other subjects, which
stand opposite to him, and whose influence upon himself he
experiences, appear at first as objects like the rest. This
equalization likewise again displays itself, only in the reverse
way, after the subjecthood of the others has entered into the
consciousness ; in the personification, on the part of the child,
of the inanimate objects surrounding him. But the hetero-
geneousness of the influence which proceeds from the surround
ings, according as they are only objects or likewise at the
same time subjects, the enhanced consciousness of the homo
geneity in the latter case — both together have only the
necessary consequence that the subject distinguishes more
and more between the pure objects and the subjects, and
involuntarily takes over the latter to himself, places them in
one line with himself, and at the same time opposes them
with himself to the things. It is the same inner impulse
to the comprehending of the individual under a higher
general unity, which we have already met with in the
domain of the objective existence, only here recurring in
the subjective domain; a fresh proof for the truth of the
proposition before stated, that in the apperception of the
universal there is by no means the making of an abstraction,

THE CHARACTER OF CEETAINTY IN GENERAL, § 12. 85
which as such detaches itself from the concrete reality, but
that that universal as a prolific (lebensvoUe) idea underlies
the individual formations, and that the subject is constituted
for reproducing in itself this true (reale) and creative idea.
On this account we say now also, and can assert it with
reason, that to the enlargement of the single object of the
certainty, unto the embracing of a whole of truth, corresponds
the enlargement of the single subject to the universal, in
that this single subject conceives of himself (sich setzt) as
one with the other subjects which he takes over to himself.
And this process of the embracing in one (Einssetzung) is in
this case equally a gradual one as in the other, ever striving
forwards to the whole, without at once taking up the whole
into itself The subject feels himself more and more, and
experiences more and more that he is, an integral member in
an organism of subjects, an organism consisting of mankind,
whose life he recognises as his own, and by whose life, ex
perience, knowledge, is conditioned that which he bears in
himself of life, experience, and knowledge. In the conscious
ness of the essential equality in the relation of himself and
the other subjects to the objects, he believes the experience
and knowledge of those subjects — -the more so in proportion
as he has been in a position to test in bis own case the truth
thereof This belief itself, accordingly, is based again upon
experience and knowledge, is the expression of a certainty
attained respecting the others, in accordance with which the
subject is entitled to make their certainty his own. It is
thus no arbitrary, no unfounded belief, no mere traditional
acceptance ; but yet the certainty of this belief is, as regards
the single portions which it takes over out of the certainty
of others, only a mediate one, effected and produced by that
certainty which immediately respects the relation of the
subjects to each other. These portions of the mediate
certainty now again combine with those of the immediate
certainty, founded upon the very own experience of the sub
ject ; the one locks into the other, and there is formed a
total-consciousness of the truth, a consciousness of definite
circles of like-constituted (zusammengehorige) men, who are
united together by like' experiences and judgments. Thus
there arises a common fund of certainty, which needs not

86 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
first of all to be always created afresh, into which the
individual enters, and which he administers as his own,
participates therein — in greater or lesser measure through
immediate experience and knowledge, though never through
these alone.
3. But this certainty of the enlarged subject is, as one
mediately produced, likewise a conditioned one, and the con
ditions thereof have already been indirectly fixed in that
which precedes. If it is the consciousness of homogeneity
which leads the individual subject to form a compact union
with others, and thus to enlarge into the general subject ; so
will the taking over of the certainty not immediately acquired
find, just in the first place in this consciousness, its condition
and its limit. It is always only certain circles mutually
pertaining to each other, connected with one another by
likeness of organization, of life's guidance, of experience, in
which the individual unhesitatingly enters upon the intel
lectual acquisition of others as one guaranteed by their
experience and knowledge. If we suppose, for example, a
society of investigators in any scientific domain, who
recognise each other as equals in respect of the ability
requisite for this task, as alike educated, as having the
same end in view, the individual will have no scruple
about appropriating the certainty of the others, even when
in the given case he is not in a position personally to repro
duce this certainty by the like act of experience and cog
nition [verification]. On the other hand, hesitation and doubt
will make their appearance in the same measure in which
those preliminary conditions are wanting, and in default of
them the individual subject is unable to identify itself with
the other subjects. But even apart from this, if we assume
the greatest possible homogeneity, the perils of falling into
error, which — whether on thfe side of experience or on the
side of cognition — threaten the certainty, will not be forgotten
for the consciousness; and that therefore of course repeats
itself in connection with this more extended certainty, which
has been said of erroneous certainty in general. Above all,
however, one thing here comes under consideration, which
we have purposely reserved to ourselves for the last, seeing
it has a special importance for our task — the moral trust-

THE CHARACTER OF CEETAINTY IN GENEEAL, § 12. 87
worthiness of those other subjects, whose certainty we share.
This side of the homogeneity is of moment for that com
municative certainty, not merely within the narrower moral
domain, where it is a question of assuring oneself with regard
to the moral facts of the individual and social life, but every
where, where at all experience is to be made and knowledge
to be won, in so far as the moral bearing and activity
of the subject necessarily participates therein. We have
already seen above to what an extent the freedom of the
subject exerts an influence upon the measure and kind of
the experience, and this freedom is in its very nature every
where morally conditioned. We demand of the man whose
experiences we are to trust conscientiousness in the observa
tion and reception (Aufnahme) of the facts, and speak in this
sense, for instance, of a scientific conscience, which the ex
plorer must possess in order that we may be able to rely
upon his testimony. But this scientific conscience is itself
only an outcome of the general conscience, the extension, to
the special domain of scientific investigation, of that demand
for accessibility to the truth and accordingly for veracity,
which applies to man on all sides and in all relations. It
is a question in connection therewith not merely of formal
dishonesty, in the sense that the subject wilfully and
wittingly closes his mind to the impression of the truth, in
order to retain a prejudice which has become endeared to
him ; thus a question of the intentional denial of the truth ;
but for the most part it is a question of an unconscious,
though not on that account unculpable, perversion of the
moral freedom in its relation to the objects, which goes hand
in hand with apparent, but actually erroneous, certainty.
Surrendered with exclusive interest to a single side of the
truth, elevating this out of its relative proportion and worth
to the rank of an absolute position and significance, the
subject perceives in reality those manifestations of the objects
which are remote from this either not at all or only insuffici
ently, and the activity of cognition at once striking in, com
bining, acting with [these manifestations], produces therefrom
a seemingly objective image of the truth, of which one believes
one has assured oneself in a normal manner, and to which one
holds fast with conscientiousness. Thus one may, e.g., observe

88 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
the regularity in the recurrence of definite morally depraved
actions within single circles of human society and with the
utmost conscientiousness make a collection of the facts relat
ing to this matter ; one may, from the perception that this
recurrence is conditioned by definite physical causes, advance
— under co-operation of the combining and deducing cog
nition — to the supposition of a determinism, according to
which the physical causes are regarded as equally efficient
and decisive in the moral domain as in the natural ; and one
fails to hear and overlooks in so doing a whole series of moral
facts which tell against that determinism, one screws up
the relatively co-operating physical causes, which on their
part exert an influence only on the presupposition of the
moral factors, to the level of absolutely efficient determining
[fiir sich stehende] causes, and one obtains in this way
a false image of the objective truth, though one brought
about with apparent, nay in part actual, conscientiousness.
In the case here given, the overlooking of the moral facts
will be intimately connected with a lack of the practised
eye for the observance of the phenomena in this domain,
a lack of the requisite harmony of tone between the sub
jective organs of the moral experience and the objective
life-utterances of the moral world. It is not, however, to be
thought that the importance of the moral bearing of the
subject enters into the consideration just as regards the moral
world alone, although this importance is there most obvious :
it asserts itself everywhere, where the subject with personal
freedom confronts the objects ; and the more clearly the
individual subject perceives the influence of this moral factor
on himself, his experience, knowledge, and certainty, the more
will he continue to be conscious, in connection with the
enlargement of his individual consciousness to the general
consciousness, in connection with his participation in the
general certainty, of the condition and limit herewith im
posed. The homogeneity of the subjects is therewith called
for in yet another sense than before ; and here is the point at
which we pass over from the essential character of certainty
in general, to that of the specifically Christian certainty.

SECTION II.
THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
§ 13. Formally regarded, all the elements which go to con
stitute the essential character of certainty in general, the
relation of the object to the subject, the reciprocal influence
of both on each other in virtue of an actually existing
homogeneity, the experience and knowledge, as also the
correlation of the two, are contained exactly the same in
the Christian certainty.
1. We return herewith to the starting-point, after having
followed up the process of the natural certification in its prin
cipal elements, and are now in a position to characterize more
definitely than there the relation of the specifically Christian
certainty to the natural certainty. In doing so we fix our
attention in the first place upon the formal side of the rela
tion, wherein the consentaneousness in the effecting of that
twofold certainty can be proved without difficulty ; and
recognise therefrom, more perfectly than we could do above,
the inner possibility of the experimental fact that, as also the
manner how, the Christian certainty, despite their manifold
material differences, meets and co-exists with the natural cer
tainty in the unity of the subject. This knowledge is of
importance, for the reason that even in itself it preserves us
from the mistake into which the Christian consciousness, in
proportion as it is sensible of the peculiarity of its possession
of truth, is the more easily led, of imagining that an absolute
variance exists between this and the natural possession of
truth, that it is in every respect the manner of the Christian
experience and the Christian knowledge to contradict the
natural experience and knowledge. Eevealed truth also,
although incongruous [inadaquat] with the natural, can yet

90 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
become the property of man in no other way than in sub
mitting itself to the conditions under which man is able to
appropriate objects of truth in general, the conditions of
human experience and human knowledge ; and this in accord- •
ance with the faith of the Christian, that God, however
much higher His thoughts may be than the thoughts of men,
has nevertheless clothed them in the garb of human language,
and that the personal Word of God, in order to reveal and to
accomplish the eternal decree of salvation, entered into the
limits of human existence. This position of the Christian
certainty in relation to the natural is only a consequence of
the exclusion, which we have before seen to be necessary, of
that dualism which men would again introduce in the present
day into human knowledge. All acts of experience and of "cogni
tion on the part of man are of one nature, notwithstanding
the diversity that may arise in connection therewith out of the
objects of experience and cognition. Whatever is object of
experience, that is also object of cognition, and we have not here
to make the distinction of sensuous and intellectual, physical and
moral or religious, " theoretical judgments " and "judgments of
value." For we measure the value of a thing by that which is
" behind " it, which makes up its reality, and our knowledge of
the reality of things always takes the direction of the value
which they have for us (comp. ii. § 50. 3, 4). If, however, it
thus assumes the appearance, as though the object of the Chris
tian truth is in this way brought into dependence on the natural
consistence of the universally human truth, as though now the
natural certainty would be called to sit in judgment upon the
contents of the divine realities, — which nevertheless come to
men with the claim to superhuman, absolute authority, and on
the ground of this claim demand acceptance, — we must for the
time being bear with this appearance, in the hope that after
wards, in connection with the material development of the
Christian certainty, it will vanish.
2. The Christian certainty corresponds to the natural and
universally human certainty, in the first place, inasmuch as it
proceeds from a relation between object and subject, the
presence of which as a real one is the condition of the
existence of certainty. It is true we cannot here assert that
this certainty is inseparable from the nature and conscious-

THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 13. 91
ness of man, and thus neither can we, in the same way as
above, infer the necessary supposition (Setzung) of the object
as real ; but neither do we speak here of the value and the
sufficient ground of the Christian certainty, but only of its
existence, which cannot be doubted as real, and of the
necessary supposition which precedes and accompanies this
certainty. And there one must say that the Christian
subject, whether rightly or wrongly, effects the supposition of
the object with yet greater energy than does the natural sub
ject; for if it occurs historically with regard to the latter
that he locates that object merely in himself, denies in an
idealistic or sceptical way the existence of the objects in
themselves, without at all depriving himself of certainty, this
possibility on the other hand is for the Christian subject
absolutely excluded. One may, indeed, cease to possess
Christian certainty, and with this of course falls away the
supposition of the spiritual realities which it included in
itself ; but one cannot possess Christian certainty of any kind,
¦and while doing so apprehend the objects of the same as
merely subjective phenomena, products of the subjective
activity. If, e.g., it has been asserted from the standpoint of
the critical philosophy, that the idea of God suffices, even
without one's being convinced of its objective reality, for the
producing of a religious-moral course of conduct, it may be
here left undecided how much of this assertion is haply true ;
at any rate this statement is incompatible with the specifi
cally Christian certainty, which has as such the choice either
to presuppose God as objective reality or to die. Or if, for
instance, from the point of view of the natural consciousness
one will recognise the value of prayer, as that which, it is
true, can exert no objective influence upon God's government
of the world, but which yet, by the religious elevation of the
subject, exerts a morally favourable influence upon the latter ;
the Christian consciousness, on the other hand, and the cer
tainty proper to the same, is not able to tolerate this subjec-
tivizing of that supposed (gesetzt) as objective : so long as it
exists it apprehends this effect as objective, and would cease
if it could not do so.
3. Not less certain is it, that that taking possession of the
Christian truth, of the spiritual objects, by which one finally

92 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
attains to the Christian certainty, appears to the conscious
ness of the Christian as a consequence of a reciprocal action
of object and subject, which on its part presupposes an actual
homogeneity of the two with each other. Be it so, that this
reciprocal action in our case is of other character than in the
natural domain, and that the homogeneity too cannot be
straightway taken as identical with that; yet both are
present, and only because they are present can the subject
assure himself of the Christian truth. The separation
between God and the man fallen into sin, however deep and
great it may be, does not annul for the Christian conscious
ness the fact, indissolubly bound up with the Christian's own
existence, that even this fallen man is still the offspring of
God and created for God, that even in the condition of his
separation from God he still bears in himself the capacity for
undergoing an influencing on the part of God, by which
God can become for him, even as he was before, and taken
in himself, for God. The fact, without which a Christian
consciousness does not exist, that God's eternal thoughts of-
redemption can nevertheless be apprehended and appropriated
by the human I, alienated by sin ; nay more, that God's own
life lives and operates in him, not as in a pure object and
instrument, but as in a subject which is conscious of this life
and confesses to it — this fact is in itself the perfectly valid
proof for the actual homogeneity of object and subject in
the present case also ; and however great the change may be
which takes place in the natural I by the Christianizing of
the same, to whatever extent this effect is produced by the
objective factors of the spiritual world, it is still human life
into which the divine life enters, human thinking into which
the divine thought enters, which without a really existing
homogeneity would not be possible. It is likewise surely a
fact, that the Christian, who has become so, is not sensible
of thereby having been estranged from the human nature of
which he was before conscious as something belonging to
him; on the other hand, just the reverse of this is what
takes place, he becomes conscious of having thereby passed
through out of the evil actuality of his human nature to its
truth, and so of having become in fact that which he was in
himself [according to the creative idea] and which he ought

THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY, § 13. 93
to be. And not less than of this actual reality is he con
scious of the fact that only by the reciprocal operation
between object and subject has arisen that possession and
state of things in which as a Christian he rejoices. It
is nothing singular and in contradiction with the natural
relation between object and subject, that according to the
consciousness of the Christian the initiative in that
reciprocal action falls absolutely on the side of the spiritual
object, and only on the ground of this influencing a
retroactive energy is called forth on the part of the subject.
For even in the natural domain the subject becomes con
scious of himself as such (findet sich) only in the midst
of, and in consequence of, the objects surrounding him and
exerting an influence upon him, recognises his activity as
awakened and conditioned by the impression he receives
therefrom. And even though it should be the case — which
cannot at this stage be an object of investigation — that the
organs of spiritual perception and feeling are in a certain measure
first created by the objective impressions, yet the fact is for the
Christian mind open to np doubt, that there is attached to this
pure passivity of reception, at once and without distinction of
time, an energy and retroaction of the created organs, by which
the reciprocity in this spiritual domain is brought into formal
equality with the reciprocal action in the natural domain.
4. Accordingly we may, without hesitation, extend the
parallel between the natural and the Christian certainty even
to the motive-forces (Momente) of experience and cognition.
The more the Christian, as we have seen, is convinced of the
reality of the spiritual objects, and the less the Christian con
sciousness comes into the position of apprehending the complex
of the truth which has become certain for him as a product of
his subjective activity, so much the more decidedly will expe
rience just here be called for, as the immediate (nachste) form
of the perception of the spiritual realities ; as accordingly
also this emphasizing of the Christian experience has on
that account become a sort of locus communis of the
Christian understanding and judgment. Precisely here it
is the wont to distinguish experience very definitely, not
indeed from cognition, but certainly from the mere knowledge
(Wissen) and acquaintance, and we shall hereafter have to

94 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
investigate what is involved in this distinction. In no case,
then, do we understand by this experience only a passive
being touched, or having been touched, by the objects of the
Christian world, but we find it where the subject has entered
into these impressions, by means of a spiritual sense has made
them its own, so that we can designate it, conformably to our
former definition (§ 10. 5), as the precipitate of the reciprocal
action between the Christian object and subject, as such pre
ceding the cognitive and comprehending activity. The truth
of the proposition fides prcecedit intellectum rests essentially
upon this necessity for first becoming sensible by experience of
the efficacy of the spiritual objects, ere we are able by thinking
to comprehend them, and one sees how we therewith by no
means have given utterance to a demand which could assert
its validity in reference to the Christian domain alone. Just
as experience is rendered possible only by the fact, that an
actual homogeneity of the human subject with the Christian
realities precedes it, so in the measure in which the experience
grows, deepens, and extends, is this homogeneity enhanced —
an assimilating of the material which the subject appropriates,
and a transforming of the latter into the nature of the objects,
a blending in the life of this with that and conversely, aboli
tion of the dualism without false identification. The essence
of this experience remains always the same, whether it be made
consciously or unconsciously, inasmuch as it is in any case the
immediate depositing of a relation of life (Lebensrapport) in
the subject, and here too the peculiarity recurs, that a series
of phenomena enter into the possession of the subject, without
at once being taken up into the region of the consciousness.
This raising into the consciousness, however, takes place with
the same inner necessity as it does in connection with the
natural experience, and in a manner congruent with the
development of the natural cognition. However much we
may emphasize the difference between the spiritual experience
and the natural, the surpassing height of the divine thoughts
in comparison with the human, yet it can in no case be denied
that the intellectual process, by means of which the material
of the experience is comprehended, transposed into the struc
ture of the thinking, subjected to the conditions of thought, is
here the same as there. Human wisdom may be folly with

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 13. 95
God, and the foolish preaching of the gospel come into conflict
with that which for the general consciousness of men appears
wisdom ; the matter cannot rest at this point, but it is, never
theless, wisdom in the estimation of those that are perfect,
which is recognised by them in this divine folly, and even the
credo quia absurdum est cannot be expressed without this
absurdum in some way conforming to the conditions of human
knowledge. There must be logic in the folly and absurdity,
not merely logic in itself, — for with this we should get no
further, — but a logic attainable for the human thinking, in
some way congruent with it ; the facts, however little they
may be explicable from the natural continuity of things, must
be in some way amenable to the law of causation, the law of
adequate cause ; since they would otherwise appear to the
human cognition as merely accidental, arbitrary, thus as
incomprehensible. Likewise, with regard to miracle, the
notion we form of which is, in the first place, that it cannot be
comprehended from the natural causality of the finite factors,
we are not able to stop short at this antithesis to our ordinary
form of comprehending, but still seek in some way to compre
hend it, that is, to render it conformable to the conditions of
our thinking ; whether it be that we represent the event in a
manner analogous to the forms of natural occurrence, or
whether it be that, while we fully admit the existence of that
antithesis, we are nevertheless intent on finding, in a higher
order of facts, the idea, the ground, the necessity of miracle.
In this higher order the antithesis is then put an end to, and
we recognise continuity, rule, and design, where all this seemed
at first sight to be wanting. Nay, we must say that the
congruence with the corresponding procedure in the natural
province is here yet greater, and more striking, than is the
case with regard to experience. For there it is indeed also
experience which proceeds from the reciprocal action of object
and subject, but an experience of another kind, with other
organs, in another way than elsewhere, as we shall have more
exactly to define this difference immediately below ; but where
once this peculiar experience has been made, there it is, never
theless, not in the same measure a peculiar thinking, by which
that which has been experienced is taken over and transformed
into the notion, but it is essentially the same labour of thought

96 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
by means of which it is brought to cognition ; and the unity
of the thinking ego is not in so doing to the same extent dis
traught, as the experiencing ego is rent by the spiritual and the
natural experience into " the old and the new man."
5. The reference to each other on the part of the being
which is experienced, and of the notio7h which is derived there
from, and the perception of their harmony, thus forms not less
the essence of the certainty proper to the Christian as such,
than that of the natural and universally human certainty ; and
if it might, perhaps, seem as though there were here still much
less need of the notion than of the experience for the produce
ing of the certainty, in that the latter alone, and not the more
or less advanced knowledge, affords to the Christian the full
assurance of conviction, yet this seeming rests only to a certain
extent upon truth. For even the simplest Christian, who,
occupied with the life, is wanting in theological knowledge,
will be able in answer to the question, what then assures him
of this or that reality of the spiritual world, only in such wise
to point to the spiritual experience immanent in him, that at
the same time he has regard to the image of the external thing,
which has become objective for his thinking, — thus has been
taken up into the apprehension (Begriff), — to see whether, and
to what extent, it corresponds to the impress of the experience.
And upon the fact that this does take place at all, not upon
the degree or extent to which it takes place, the question here
turns in the first instance. If, now, it must, nevertheless, be
admitted that, according to the consciousness of the Christian,
in connection with Christian certainty the accent falls more
upon Christian experience than upon anything else, this fact
is explained from the consideration, and finds therein its
warrant, that the Christian, as we saw above, is yet more
intensely conscious of his incapacity for producing out of him
self the truth peculiar to him, than is the natural man in
presence of the natural truth accessible to him. The fact of
the homogeneity between natural object and subject forces
itself upon the natural consciousness in a higher degree, it
becomes easier for him, therefore, to' suppose (setzen) the
reality of the thought-images when he recognises them as
corresponding to the laws of the mind ; specially, also, since
some single sciences, as the mathematicai sciences, althouo-h

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 13. 97
they, too, start from empirical perceptions and experiences,
do not for their certainty demand further comparison with
experience. On the other hand, there stands for the Christian
consciousness beside the fact of the homogeneity that of the
disparity, nay, of the opposition, between object and subject ;
beside the fact of the entry of these Christian ideas (Begriffe)
under the conditions of human knowledge, that of the utter
undiscoverableness of these thoughts on the part of the subject
who is devoid of Christian experience. Thus it becomes clear
why the Christian consciousness, in connection with the cer
tainty immanent in it, lays the stress, above all, upon the
experience, as that by which the whole possession of truth is
conveyed to it ; but it is equally certain that the intellectual
percept (Begriff) of the certainty is not thereby changed as to
its essence, but that here, too, it springs from the comparing
reference to each other on the part of experience and cognition.
For we find not less here — what is possible only upon that
supposition — that the activity of cognition by no means stops
short at the percepts obtained directly from the spiritual experi
ence; but on the ground of the same often passes beyond them,
combines the isolated experiences, makes further deductions
after the analogy of the same, bridges over void places of the ex
perience by hypotheses, anticipates it [the experience] in general
— in short, does just the same in this province as we have
observed to be done in that of the universally human certainty.
It is the idea of the oneness, and necessary connectedness of
the true, which presents itself in isolated manifestation, it is the
d priori negation of accident and caprice in the objective facts,
it is the confidence that the thinking process in the subject is
conformable to the originating-process (Werdeprocess) in the
objects, which renders possible, and gives rise to this advance
of the activity of cognition beyond the experience, without, in
so acting, the consciousness of certainty necessarily disappearing
for the subject which thus takes cognizance. But undoubtedly
we must here, too, recall to mind the observation above empha
sized, that the production of the oneness of a continuous whole,
free from all contradictions, is always only a relative, never a
complete one ; and therefore the main stress always falls upon
the facts of experience, pressing upon us with immediate force
and evidence. We hold fast to those facts in the hope and
G

98 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
assurance that they will certainly yet range themselves in the
organic whole (Zusammenhang) of harmonious knowledge,
however defective this knowledge may yet be for the moment.
Accordingly, it is quite comprehensible that the peril of erro
neous certainty increases in proportion as experience recedes
into the background. Yet such peril exists by no means only
in this case, but a delusion may not less creep in as a con
sequence of one-sided, defective experience, or incongruent
framing (of that which has been rightly experienced) into the
intellectual notion, that working-out [digesting] in thought of
the material of the experience, which unconsciously, and apart
from our volition, precedes the conscious process of cognition.
That, however, which is here decisive in the first line is the ,
moral bearing of the subject, which we had already to charac
terize as of great importance in the universally human domain ;
the difference between the natural and the Christian certainty,
which we have hitherto seen running side by side, is with this
at the same time indicated. '
§ 14. Materially regarded, the Christian certainty is dis
tinguished from the natural by the peculiar moral experience
which underlies it. The nature of moral experience in general
conditions on the one hand the firmness, on the other hand
the non-universal diffusion, and the non-uniformly arising
necessity, of the certainty corresponding to it. The existence
of moral experience in the natural domain also explains, not
withstanding the abiding difference, the similarity and affinity
which here too continues to exist on either side.
1. Christian certainty is distinguished from natural certainty,
not by the fact that Christian certainty in general is of a
moral nature, based on moral experience, but that it is of a
peculiar moral nature, proceeding from a moral experience of
a kind which the natural man as such does not make and
cannot make. We stand thus here upon the bridge which
leads us over from the formal homogeneity, hitherto observed,
to the material heterogeneousness in the effecting and result
of that twofold act of assurance, and have first of all to
become fully acquainted with the ground and soil out of
which the moral experience and cognition grows. If in doing

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 14. 99
so we have to deal with propositions which are afterwards
more fully proved out in the "System of the Christian
Morality," we need hardly remind that the object with which
this is here done, therefore also the manner and measure of
the treatment, is essentially other than there, where the
ethical is in question on its own account. Here our glance
is directed only to the end and aim of recognising the
peculiarity of the Christian assuring, however closely the
extended notion of the moral is associated with this hetero
geneous task. For we here take the Moral in the general
sense, according to which it is still connected in the first
place with the Eeligious, as the complex of those manifesta
tions of the life of man in actions, which have reference to
the shaping of his personality for the highest aim immanent
in that personality. Nothing is moral which does not
determine and express the position and comportment of the
human I, whether as individual or as general, in relation to
the supreme aim of his existence ; and everything is moral
which does so. We purposely abstain in connection with
this definition of the Moral from touching as yet upon the
contents of the same ; since only under this formal designation
all that may be combined which, whether from the Christian
or the natural standpoint, must be acknowledged as moral ;
whereas, on the other hand, in connection with a material
designation of the notion, there come in the differences in
men's apprehension of that which is moral. For though the
matter actually so stands, in accordance with the Christian
verdict, that the Moral has its existence only on the ground
of man's destination for God, to a free personal communion
with the personal God ; yet things are not so constituted that
only where this supreme foundation for the moral idea is
recognised, there alone also moral activity is in reality put
forth, but the moral norm may, for the consciousness and for
the intellect of men, detach itself from God, of whose will it
is the expression, — perhaps as a categorical imperative, or
moral order of the universe, — and nevertheless the hereby
normated human action claims the title of moral action.
Further, it is possible that in consequence of such detaching
the contents also of that norm given by God are made obscure,
that something appears to the subject as a moral demand

100 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
v,?hich is [really] in contradiction with the normative will of
God — even in this case the activity corresponding to the
demand does not yet cease to be a moral one ; inasmuch as
also the erroneous and immoral is demanded in the name of
a moral idea. We come then to this, if we will denote in a
comprehensive way the nature of the moral as it presents
itself in real life, that we postulate a supreme aim, immanent
in man, inseparable from his person, in the free realization of
which moral activity in general has its being. For the moral
idea or norm and this immanent aim are correlative notions :
tlie former it is which, however understood, holds forth the
latter to the subject. It must be an aim immanent in the
person as such, actually or according to the subjective accep
tation, not one accidentally presented to the person, not
standing before the person as an isolated individual ; therefore
a supreme aim, comprehending in itself, and regulating the
totality of the single aims, so that consequently the measure
of its realization is the measure for the appreciation of the
subject, of the person as such. One may have a false
standard, one may, e.g., characterize the participation in the
producing and maintenance of a well-ordered civil community
as the highest moral norm, as the life's aim of each individual,
in such wise that the civic virtue determines the worth of the
individual ; or one may, yet more generally, represent pro
motion of the earthly prosperity of human society, to the
highest possible extent and degree, as the moral idea to be
realized, and estimate the worth of the individual by the
measure in which he contributes to the realization of this
idea : at any rate one must have some standard by which the
judgment regarding the person is determined, a supreme aim
which furnishes the norm for the conduct of each individual,
if we are to speak at all of a moral action and a moral
estimate. And that in reality men in general possess such a
standard, that the idea of moral actions is not lost, however
confused it may have become in a material respect, is shown,
even in the case of those who in their personal conduct are
not determined by it, but seem to be utteriy consumed in the
prosecution of the accidental and only selfish aims of life, —
by the verdict which they pronounce upon the conduct of
others.

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 14. 101
2. That fact of the moral action and of the moral judgment,
which we have purposely only indicated hitherto in its
most general outlines and on its formal side, is as universal
only the expression of the universal moral experience, whicli
the natural subject is compelled to make to a certain degree,
and which in so far corresponds to the physical experience.
There are moral realities, objective moral powers, which exert
an influence upon the subject, in such wise, indeed, that the
latter, in virtue of his moral homogeneity, in virtue of organs
congruent with those impressions, is capable of entering into
reciprocal action with these influences, and of receiving into
himself the precipitate thereof as moral experience. For it
would be a mistake to suppose that in this case the subject
attains to experience in a way essentially other than in the
former, that here, for instance, the subject acquires the moral
idea merely a priori and from itself Just as the natural ear
is adapted for perceiving the sound waves as tones, in that
the vibration pressing on from without prolongs itself in the
organs existing to this end, so likewise the organ of the moral
perception of man is not productive of itself, but first becomes
possessed of the moral idea, in virtue of the relation (Eapport)
into which the moral powers enter with him, forms, as it were,
the resonance, by dint of which the moral vibrations from the
domain of the objective realities find an echo within the
subject. Only it stands to reason, from the nature of the
Moral, that there is here need of other means of accomplish
ment than in the former case, however surely the Moral has
likewise its place and its significance in the world of the
senses. By means of an organ which is homogeneous to the
nature of the moral realities, the subject perceives, in constant
bearing upon the actions proceeding from him, that norm
which shows him whether, and to what extent, his conduct
corresponds to the supreme end and aim of his personal life,
which [norm] consequently determines the absolute value of
his personality. We do not here institute any more precise
investigations as to the constitution of that moral organ, least
of all do we enter into a discussion as to the nature and
character of the human conscience, for which of a truth all
presuppositions would be wanting to us in this place. We
confine ourselves simply to the' fact that such an organ is

102 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
present in man, and determine merely the relation in which
the same stands to the organs of physical apperception, and
therefore the ethical experience stands to the physical. In
this last respect we may at once affirm that it is not placed
absolutely at the pleasure of the subject to become sensible
of that normative and judicative idea of his being, but he
becomes sensible of it either with or without the co-operation
of his will ; in other words, it is an objective moral power,
which here just as much thrusts itself upon the organ of its
apperception as the realities of the senses do force themselves
upon the organs of the physical apperception. The imma
nence of that moral norm, its inseparableness from the person
of man, is not to the prejudice of its independence and its
reality as standing above the subject, distinguishing itself
from him ; the matter stands with regard to it not otherwise
than with regard to the reality of the moral power which
penetrates and dominates the community of men as a personal
community. This power presents itself to the individual
subject as something objective, and forces itself upon him
even in opposition to his will ; but just as it, as borne and
represented by the totality of persons in the community,
traces itself back as regards its existence to that objective
moral idea immanent in the individual person, the person as
such, so also the individual would not be able to perceive, to
comprehend as such, the moral norm which penetrates the
totality, unless he at the same time perceived it in himself
by virtue of the organ bestowed upon him for this end. And
the same is true of the perceiving of that moral power which
permeates the community of men, in so far as it does not
appear as something borne by the total personality, but as
something realizing itself upon it, as accomplishing itself
judicially upon it ; while here the doubt must entirely dis
appear, as to whether that idea is only something subjectively
produced by the common will, so, on the other hand, is the
consciousness of the idea in this form likewise oonditioned
by the presence of the reality of the same given in the subject
himself, and of the perception here accomplished.
3. Thus, then, the conditions of experience in this ethical
domain are equally determinate (gegeben) as in the physical
domain ; the main difference, however, is based on the con-

THE SPECIFICALLY CHKISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 14. 103
sideration that the factor of freedom has here a much higher
significance than there. For if we have already been obliged
there to trace back the difference of the experiences in great
part to the fact, among others, that the subject has the organs
of perception to a certain extent in his own power, and can
proceed to make experiences on a definite side or not ; how
much more will this be the case here, where every physical
compulsion, which would impose limits to that freedom, dis
appears, and the reciprocity between object and subject moves
within the personality as such ! The dependence of the
perceptive organ upon the will is, here too, no absolute one,
so that it should be altogether open to the man to make a
moral experience or not ; but it is a far greater one, as is
sufficiently proved, alike from that reason founded in the
nature of the case, as from the actual difference of the moral
experiences. From the utmost delicacy of the moral organ
to the utmost insensibility, what a gradation ! While the
one in everything that occurs at all perceives the rule and
sway of a moral power, the other, on the contrary, perceives
only the expression and the continuity of physical causes.
And while the one has the centre of his personal life in the
inner reciprocal converse between his I and the moral powers
inwardly or outwardly exerting an influence upon it, for the
other these influences form but motive forces (Momente) only
occasionally and temporarily coming into play, of which he is
conscious as something alien and incongruous (disparat). This
arises from the fact that here the orgafi of perception,
unlike the physical organs, is conditioned and dependent, as
regards its temper, its efficacy, nay, its very existence, upon
the free use made of it by the subject. It is true, by reason
of the neglect or exercise of a physical organ the weakness
or intensity of the perception thereby obtained may vary in
manifold degree, but yet not nearly in the measure in which this
is the case with the moral organ. As regards a phenomenon
of nature we are convinced beforehand and presuppose it as
something universally understood, that all who are witnesses
thereof see and hear it in an essentially identical way ; its per
ception forces itself upon us. On the other hand, we have
not absolutely the same conviction respecting a phenomenon
of the moral world ; but before we can think of exchanging

104 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY'.
experiences with any one regarding it, we must know whether
he has a sensorium for things of this kind; otherwise he
speaks as a blind man concerning colour. Not as though we
thus assumed the matter to stand the same with the moral
organ as with a special inborn talent, without presupposition
of which it would be impossible to understand each other on
things for the perception and understanding of which such
talent is requisite ; but we regard this organ nevertheless as
a universally human one, and just according to the measure
of its presence we estimate the person to whom it belongs.
From this, then, it naturally follows that this moral organ
must be subject in much higher degree than any other to the
self-determining of the subject, that the more it adapts itself
to the person as such the more it is conditioned by the
activity of the self- constituting (sich selbst-setzen) which
forms the characteristic of the personality ; that thus also it
must be otherwise with the certainty derived from the
experience and cognition in question, than with the natural
certainty previously discussed.
4. The moral certainty is characterized in distinction
from certainty of other kind on the one hand by a firmness,
which in the latter case has its equal at most only as regards
mathematical and logical certainty. A man may doubt the
reality of objects which he sees with bodily eyes and hears
with physical ears, and he still does not on that account
doubt the reality of the moral world, of which he is con
scious. That is the abiding truth of the Kantian philosophy,
which in the moral domain sets limits to the skepsis regard
ing the objective realities ; the truth also of Fichte's doctrine
of the moral order of the world, the reality of which is not
affected by the idealism in other respects. But this stronger
certainty is not here the consequence of a pure d, priori
existence of the moral idea, as we have already above seen
the moral experience arising in the way of reciprocity between
object and subject. But it is the consequence, in the first
place, of the greater immediateness of the moral perception,
and then of the closer connection (Zusammenhang) of the
moral world with the person of the subject as such. It is of
slight importance for the person of the observer, whether this
physical object which I see before me is in truth so as I see

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 14. 105
it, or other than I see it. But the whole constancy and
strength and worth of the personality depends upon the ques
tion whether this moral good which I acknowledge as reality,
or this moral demand which I experience as real, has an
actual existence or not ; the personality cannot free itself
therefrom, without the innermost basis and the supreme aim
of its life being lost. And again, the subject knows itself, in
virtue of the immediateness of the perception, in this domain
independent of the influence of the intermediate members, by
which elsewhere the experience may be clouded. Whether
the sensuous objects, upon which the moral action shows
itself, or upon which the moral idea appears, are that which
they seem or something else, does not touch the truth of the
moral relation in which I stand to them and they to me, does
not prejudice the reality of the moral realities which by them
become manifest for me ; nay, it may happen in the reverse
way — and this, as we shall afterwards see, is the case in
connection with the Christian certainty- — that precisely the
abiding moral certainty forms the basis for the certainty as
to the reality of historic, thus external and in the first place
sensuously perceptible, facts. But this is yet only the one
side, which the moral certainty presents to the observation.
Along with it stands the other, that that certainty by no
means bears the character of universality and necessity in the
measure and in the manner which is proper, e.g. to the mathe
matical certainty. And this altogether without detriment to
its assurance, in other respects comparable to the mathe
matical. It is true things are not here so simple, that we
could straightway designate non-universality (Particularitat) as
an attribute of the moral experience and certainty. The
moral responsibility which we universally ascribe to man, the
culpability which belongs to moral transgression, proves the
opposite. Nevertheless, responsibility is surely not neces
sarily a testimony for the actual presence of equal moral
certainty, but merely for the universal possibility of attaining
to it, a possibility which — no doubt culpably, thus without
excluding responsibility — may have been realized only in
slight degree. And even where we in general assume the
responsibility, we suppose a different measure of the same in
proportion to the capability of the subject and the oppor-

106 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
tunity given him of making moral experience. Even in the
simplest moral questions, such as on Mine and Thine, there
may arise, and that entirely apart from the degree of culture
of the subject in other respects, indistinctness and confusion,
which is, in fact, the proof for the lack of moral certainty.
There are provinces of life and social spheres in which a
certain measure of lasciviousness or a particular kind of false
hood are not at all looked upon as sin. And where it is now
further a question of deeper-lying moral relations, as of sin
in its habituality, of the moral causal nexus in the life of the
individual or of society, of the character of the moral forces
which influence the ethical development of the subject, it
becomes evident how little we can speak of a universal and
absolutely necessary moral experience and certainty. We
may compare as regards this lack the fact that, elsewhere too,
a man without artistic gifts does not observe realities which
lie fully disclosed for the eye or ear of the artist ; but the
difference remains, that we make the moral judgment, the
judgment as to the personal worth, dependent here, other
wise than there, upon the existence or non-existence of that
ethical or spiritual organ and the experience corresponding to
it. Thus it is comprehensible that the particularism of the
moral experience and certainty is by no means to the detri
ment of the undoubting firmness of the same, inasmuch as he
who stands at the height of this certainty at the same time
understands and appreciates the lack of the same in others on
the ground of the co-operating factor of the ethical freedom.
5. Here now, in this domain of moral experience and
moral self- decision, it is that the Christian certainty has
its being; only in connection with this certainty it is a
question of a moral experience of peculiar kind, by which it,
still more than the moral certainty, is distinguished from
certainty of every other kind. If we could there assert that
moral experience in general is inseparable from the nature of
man, even though the measure and kind thereof may be
differently shaped by the factor of the moral freedom ; yet
here this remnant, too, of universality and necessity falls
away, and we have to do with a moral experience which the
natural man as such neither makes nor can make. Not. as
though, to be sure, the nature of the experience were a

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 14. 107
specifically different one, such as one without that reciprocity
of subject and object which in other cases underlies the
experience ; but so that for the coming in of this certainty
other factors are called for than those which everywhere else
condition the experience, and indeed also the moral experience,
of man. We call this specifically Christian experience a
spiritual experience; as such opposed to the natural, yet,
however, not absolutely, but lying within the circle of moral
experience in general, analogous also to it in this respect, that
the religious element is not separated from the ethical in the
narrower sense, however little man will of himself, and from
the complex of the natural, even the moral natural, objects and
realities, which surround him and exert an influence upon him,
come to make Christian experience and thereby to receive
Christian certainty ; yet just as closely, on the other hand,
does this special moral experience link itself to the general
moral and natural experience, can find scope only on the
presence of the same and in conjunction with the same, in
such wise that the newly arising certainty in its accomplish
ment constantly and necessarily comes to terms with the
other, and thus the unity of the human consciousness, of
which it becomes part, continues preserved. Nor does there
by any means attach to the peculiar nature and particularism
of the Christian experience the character of accident, in the
sense in which other particular experiences of a natural kind
are accidental, more or less irrelevant for the person of the
man ; but it displays its moral nature in the fact that it
determines the supreme aim and the absolute worth of the
personality, that it arises with the claim first to raise man to
that which he ought to be in himself and according to the
idea of man. In like manner also the responsibility in defect
of such experience does not come to a cessation merely because
the man is not in a position, in his natural state, experimentally
to perceive the spiritual realities ; for, apart from the considera
tion of the source of this natural incapacity, it were certainly
possible — what we cannot as yet here determine — that this
incapacity should by the influence of these realities be taken
away, and thereafter surely the will of the subject should
decide as to the experimental perception of the same. So in
like manner will the firmness of this specifically spiritual and

108 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
Christian certainty not suffer from the fact that this certainty
is not a universal and necessary one, and that in part it con
tradicts the natural, even the natural moral, certainty. Fo
this certainty rests precisely, here too, upon the twofok
ground of the immediateness with which the spiritual realitiei
press themselves upon the subject, and the importance whicl
they acquire, not for some side or other only of the subject
but for the personality itself. One may, as e.g. Pascal, be t(
a certain extent a sceptic as regards the things of the natura
life; and yet while so bear in oneself the full Christiai
certainty, in virtue of that immediateness of the Christiar
experience. And just because by the Christian experienc(
the centre of gravity of the personality — as this centre o
gravity has disposed itself in accordance with the natura
moral consciousness — is transposed, there arises therefron
the full Christian certainty, which now first is assured of thi
innermost stedfastness and supreme aim of the personality
The certainty is and remains thus a particular one, because i
rests on a peculiar moral experience ; but it is so much thi
more a solid one, inasmuch as, with the truth and actualit]
of the spiritual realities experienced, it comprehends at thi
same time in its deepest ground the erroneous certainty
hitherto existing, and upon a comparison with this las
receives not a weakening, but rather a strengthening of itseli

-^o

§ 15. The special moral experience which underlies thi
Christian certainty, is that of regeneration and conversior
a transformation of the man's moral state of life, accom
plished by ethical impulses not proceeding from the subjec
himself, but yet willingly received by him ; in virtue ^c
which a new I, as innermost determining ground of hi
personal moral life, is henceforth distinguished from tha
hitherto prevailing, and in conflict with the same assert
its central, dominant position.
1. We have now reached the point at which it i
incumbent upon us more precisely to define the special mors
experience whence the Christian certainty proceeds ; and w
designate this experience as that of regeneration and coi
version. It might seem as though in saying this we wei

THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY, § 16. 109
compelled to trench on the province of other disciplines of
systematic theology, among whose doctrinal articles the
testimonies concerning regeneration and conversion are
counted, and there must thus first of all be brought home
to the consciousness the peculiar way in which, in the system
of the Christian certainty, we have to treat of those articles.-'
Seeing that in the sequel the same semblance will often
' recur, it is therefore advisable at the outset to subject it to
as close an examination as possible, and therewith to destroy
it. If not only dogmatics in its own place has to speak of
regeneration and conversion, but not less also ethics, inasmuch
as the complex of the Christian life, which the latter presents
in accordance with the idea of that life, has its root in those
Christian moral realities ; he therefore who, although this is so,
recognises the relative independence of those two disciplines,
¦will not without further reason be able to discover a trenching
upon a foreign province in the fact that the like takes place
in the system of the Christian certainty. For while, alike in
dogmatics as in ethics, these realities are presupposed as
certain, and there the mention of them takes place in their
connectedness with the objective facts of salvation, within the
actually existing causal nexus of the ascertained Christian
truth ; .here, on the other hand, as the equally certain and
abiding basis of the whole Christian moral life, they come
under consideration for us as the basis of the whole Christian
certainty, and we ask in this place neither as to their con-
ditionality upon the facts of salvation, nor as to their con
ditioning effect upon the Christian activity of life. Some
thing is in question for us here, which there was on no side
in question, the rise and the essence of- the specifically
Christian certainty; and by this is measured the boundary
within which, as also the independence with which, we shall
here have to speak of regeneration and conversion. The moral
intellectual event, which is indicated by those names, must be
regarded with a view to discover to what extent in the first
place it brings home its own reality, truth, necessity to the
experience and the certainty of the subject in whom it is accom
plished, and then to what extent all other certainty of the
Christian as such lies enclosed therein and proceeds therefrom.
^ Comp. also System der christl. SitUichheit, i. § 16. 1.

110 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
2. It might indeed appear that the starting-point of the
Christian certainty, as we proceed hereby to fix it, is a much
too subjective and therefore vacillating one. Not only will
Philippi, in the passage already adduced (p. 9), have us
regard, in place of the subjective regeneration, the objective
atonement wrought by Christ, attested and proffered by the
word of God, as the starting-point and the only rock upon
which the evangelical Christian can base his hope of salvation;
but also Kahnis ^ expresses objection to such mode of founding
the certainty, inasmuch as regeneration, as an act of God in
us, is one thing, and the subjective certainty of the same,
which even in the case of a Paul was still struggling for
existence (Phil. iii. 10), is another thing. Moreover, the idea
(Begriff) of regeneration, he tells us, cannot very easily be
fixed, in its nature and confines, from experience. And
Dorner, who otherwise displays a better capacity for under
standing the matter, believes himself warranted in objecting
to. me that the state of faith and the certainty thereof are not
produced by the fact that we feel ourselves regenerate and the
children of God, " but first we experience the gracious look '
(Gnadenblick) of God, who shows Himself to us Father in
Christ, and now we cry, Abba, Father, and know — on the
ground of His having made known Himself to us in the Son
as Father — ourselves as His children."^ In reply to this it
certainly suffices to assure that I have never doubted but
what the gracious look of God in Christ precedes our state of
faith and our certainty, that, on the contrary, my whole
system rests upon this fact. Only my reasonings went, and
still go, a few steps farther upon this path. That it is a
"gracious look of God" which first falls upon us, must,
according to Dorner too, be "experienced," in order that
certainty may arise. If that gracious look falls upon those
who do not thereby attain to a state of faith and certainty,
the cause of this last is unquestionably that while it has
indeed fallen objectively upon them, it has not been sub
jectively "experienced" by them. Wherefore it seems to
me further, that he who will investigate the rise of this
Christian certahity must direct his attention to this " experi-
1 Kahnis, Dogm. 2nd Anil. i. 93.
' Dorner, Olaubenslehre, i. 41.

THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 15. 1 1 1
ence." With him who in any way does this I can enter into
a discussion on the Christian certainty and its rise. It is a
question by itself, on which one may argue, what name may
be given to that subjective experience. With him, however,
who opposes to me the " objective " act of redemption and
the word of God in place of my " subjective " starting-point,
I am not able to find terms of agreement, because he has not
understood the position of the question.
3. According to the Eoman Catholic apprehension,^ the
subjective judgment, in some way founded, must then in
truth likewise precede, in order that the authority for the
faith, however one may designate this, may be acknowledged
as such. But just here there is displayed a twofold
characteristic difference, which stands in the most intimate
connection with this mode of belief and its relation to the
evangelical. One point of difference we have already men
tioned above (p. 1 0 sq.), the endeavour to get that authority on
which theXatholic has further to rely, and which afterwards
prescribes to him that which is to be believed, as quickly as
possible under cover ; the second is this, that in opposition to
the " mystical founding " of the certainty, as this is ascribed
to the " orthodox Protestantism," and finally to me, recourse
is had to a basis in which natural and supernatural elements
lie in this way or the other side by side. It has produced
an exhilarating effect upon me to find that while, according
to the latest " discovery " of Eitschl, mysticism after the
Eeformation was smuggled over to us from the Catholic side,
here now precisely on the Catholic side protest is raised
against these Catholic contraband wares, and they are claimed
as the very own product of the evangelical theology. In the
former respect the Catholic is concerned before all things to
gain a position, whence results the obligation of belief and
the enjoining of belief — this alone already a wide gulf
which separates evangelical belief and cognition from Eoman
Catholic belief and^ cognition ; in the latter respect the retro
action of the semi-Pelagian and synergistic tendency of the
Eomish theology at once shows itself, according to which
" the recognition of credibility is, in the first place, a natural
' Comp. the Untersuchungen iiber den letzten Oewiasheitsgrund des Offen-
ba/rimgsglaubens of Aloys Sohmid, already cited aboye.

112 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
one," so that one reaches some such judgment as this
"There exists an omniscient and all-truthful God, who has
revealed Himself, whom we can believe, and as in duty bound
ought to believe!" (p. 307). And to this theoretical judg
ment there then accedes a practical one, which says : " On
the ground of inner perception, the above conviction or
affirmation of judgment presents itself to me as not mere
probability, but as certainty ; thus there arises for me further
the practical certainty that I am bound to follow that
theoretical conviction of certainty." Now both these judg
ments of credibility, however, the theoretical and the practical,
are of a natural kind, "and would be so in their essential
character, even in the case that they were produced under the
influence of an assisting, relatively supernatural gracious aid.
They could only serve to carry the lamp before a willingness
to believe, and a belief, of essentially natural constitution.
If in a manner transcending this a willingness to believe and
a belief of the higher salutary order is to be rendered possible,
then these must be preceded by a foundation-laying judgment
of credibility of like order, which absohdely requires for its
production the higher grace, thus is of essentially, supernatural
character" (p. 309). Of a truth there has been and is no
absolute agreement as to the relation of the supernatural
element to the natural in the producing of the certainty of
faith. Aloys Schmid belongs to the number of those Eomish
theologians who are intent upon preserving the supernatural
and divine character of the beginning of faith, as of faith
itself; nevertheless in such wise that he shall reject alike
"rationalism, irrationalism, and illuminism." The decision
to which he comes, in substantial adherence to Lugo's theory,
is, not only in its contents, but likewise in its form, too
characteristic for me to be able to deny myself the pleasure
of inserting it in its main outlines here. The process of
origination of the supernatural-practical judgment of credi-
biUty " is simply as follows : " " The reason recognises from
the things external to God {aussergottlichen Dingen) the omni
science, all-truthfulness, and supernatural revealing activity
of God, and then is able possibly to assent to them on their
own account, as they appear to us in their own manifestation,.
and in such wise to. pass the theoretical judgment : God has

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 15. 113
revealed Himself in a credible way, so that one rightly can
believe, yea in duty ought to believe. By reflection upon this
judgment the reason then attains to the further judgment :
such theoretical conviction one may not only allowably
follow, one has to follow it even as a matter of duty. Upon
which final ground of certainty, however, does the reason
pass this practical judgment of credibility ? Upon the testi
mony of its own conscience as that of a creature, or upon God's
testimony, as this makes itself audible and sounds forth in our
conscience? The reason may pass such judgment in accord
ance with the. feelings in an instinctive, spontaneous way ; or
in opposition to the will, constrained by the voice of the
conscience, which will not be reduced to silence; or in
willing submission to God, whose voice makes itself audible
through our conscience. Otherwise does the matter stand,
when it [the reason] is lifted up in the tendency to the higher
goal ! It not only can then express the obligation of belief
in willing submission to God, thus on account of God, it even
must do so : thus now the supernatural practical judgment
of credibility has arisen. It is in its final ground of certainty
not only supernatural, but also divine. The obligatory cha
racter of belief it affirms not with an appeal to our voice of
conscience, but to the voice of God in us. It affirms the
same, because Gpd speaks by our conscience, without deceiv
ing or being deceived. It affirms the same immediately on
account of God ; yet not with the leaving aside, but with the
pressing in of all the rational grounds which, in the given state
of the theoretical conviction, confirm such obligatoriness and
point it out to the will" (p. 312).
4. Perhaps it is rightly expressed, if I say, in presence of
this Catholic disquisition on the final ground of certainty:
the endeavour to obtain a thoroughly massive, firm authority,
where possible, incorporated in a single human person, in
order upon this authority to lay down all personal doubts and
scruples of conscience, has as its reverse side that exceedingly
insecure and tottering basing of the certainty, with which the
individual now submits himself to that authority. We would
commend this mode of establishing to the study of all those
who, amidst our Protestant disagreements, look with a certain
envy upon the firm authority which the Eomish Church
H

114 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
enjoys. But for essentially the same reasons, on account of
which I oppose this Catholic method of establishing the
certainty of faith upon a basis partly natural, partly spiritual,
I cannot attach myself either to an attempt, recently made
on a friendly side,' to go back behind the specifically Christian
experience, and to show, by means of a psychological analysis
of the ethical and religious fundamental elements, which form
the presuppositions for the rise of the Christian certainty.
For I am of opinion that no such judgment is at all to be
reached on these fundamental elements, which, at any rate,
in virtue of the continual ethical self-movement of the natural
marl do not remain absolutely the same — as should become
the common basis of Christian and natural cognition for the
Christian certainty to be raised thereupon. If, however, one
has no regard to that community, and will only set forth the
Christian judgment regarding those fundamental elements,
one is compelled, in the first place, to answer the question
what this specifically Christian cognition is, and one finds
oneself again in the track which one wished to leave. Now,
I am of opinion that he who takes his stand in the evan
gelical faith, must, under all circumstances, avoid making the
natural condition of man and the natural truth in any way
the basis for the Christian truth and its assuring. One can
dispute, it seems to me, at bottom only as to what measure of
Christian experience and Christian knowledge is to be taken
as a starting-point. And in this respect I will only briefly
repeat that the task set me is this, to declare how a Christian,
standing in the certainty of the faith, becomes conscious of
this state of fact in its rise, in its continuity, in its warranty.
On that account I take the subject, who addresses these
questions to himself, as regenerate and converted, not in any
sense of regeneration that may be chosen, but in that de
veloped immediately below; and I await the proof that
there is, or has been, at any time or in any place an actual
Christian state of the Church, namely, as a Church standing
in personal self-determination, save on the ground of such
spiritual experience. If, then, it is further objected — as was
done by an eminent theologian, now some years dead — that if
such is our meaning, the profit must be but small; for he
1 Henry Ussing, Den christelige vished, Copenhagen 1883.

THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY, § IS. 115
who has made such experience and stands assured needs not
that proof, and for him who has not made it and does not
stand in this assurance, it is of no help; I answer that I
should desire nothing more than to understand in some
measure that M'hich is really present, the certainty actually
existing : desidero aliguatenus intelligere veritatem tuam, quam
credit et amat cor meum. A small task, it may be, but yet
a task, namely, a scientific one : he who standing in the
certainty has no desire for this understanding, may leave it
alone ; and he who does not stand in the certainty may also
leave it alone !
5. The Christian is conscious of an inner moral actual
state of his human nature, which as it exists presupposes a
having arisen, or more definitely, that it may not seem as
though we had here to do with postulates in place of realities,
which in its existence itself involves the fact of the having
arisen. The actual state, namely, is that of a transformation
of his moral nature which has taken place, a transformation
which is indeed an accomplished one, and to that extent
constitutes an actually enduring condition of the same ; but,
at the same time, a transformation being accomplished, exist
ing by a constant producing itself anew, and not merely
continuing to exist by its effects, so that accordingly the
process of the having arisen is made manifest in its result,
the present existence and rise. We have to keep this before
our mind, because it might seem as though a good part of
this life-process withdrew itself from the conscious experience
of the subject; at least, in the present Christendom, wherein
the beginning of that moral transformation for the most part
falls in the age of childhood, in which there is not yet a
conscious experience. For if it is true that in baptism, even
as infant baptism, regeneration takes place, or at least the
seed of the new life is implanted in the child ; and since it is
possible that this new life, entering into the process of the
natural-human development, becomes, immediately upon the
entry of conscious decision of will on the part of the subject,
something consciously willed ; since further, even where this
last is not the case, yet the seed of regeneration does not on
that account at once become lost -and die, — one might conclude
therefrom that at least for the Christian born again in infant

116 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
baptism there is present no conscious experience of the ethical
transformation there already begun, of which in its beginnings
he is not able to remember anything. But this conclusion
proves erroneous, and that semblance vanishes in sight of the
fact, of which the Christian is conscious as a present one,
that the , formation of the moral state, in which he recog
nises his nature as a Christian, is a continuous one, and
that the same unceasingly becomes what it is by no other
means than those by which it before became so. The
moral transformation which he constantly undergoes, the
deposing anew of the moral state, which he ever afresh
accomplishes, is in its essence the same in its continuance as in
its first rise ; it maintains itself by this very means by which
at first, and subsequently, it arose ; the factors of the result,
so far as it is completed, are contained in the result as this
daily shapes itself anew, are in essence the same as those by
which this result is obtained.
6. The moral transformation which the Christian has
experienced and experiences, and which as a moral state
of fact makes up his nature, is characterized in its mani
festation in the first place by the peculiarity that there
is present in it a twofold bent of will; of which the one
belongs to the / of the same, as it was before the trans
formation of his moral nature, and apart from the same still
is, and the other to the / as it knows itself constituted by
this transformation. Side by side with the bent of will of
the old man stands that of the new ; in such wise, indeed,
that the latter occupies the centre of his being, and thence as
ruler determines the same, but for that very reason is engaged
in constant conflict with the formet bent of will, which is
from earlier times still present. In this manifestation and
operation is now immediately displayed the essence of the
moral transformation, as consisting in the fact that that new
point which is the source of the personal self-determining,
the new / has been planted in the subject, and that it has
been installed in the place where hitherto the old / had held
its post and had the throne of its dominion. With the rise
of the new /, from which proceeds a bent of will in accord
with it, there was conjoined an enthronization of the same
accomplished by moral deed, an act of moral revolution, by which

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 15, 117
the former ruler has been deposed from his position till
then held, and to this extent deprived of power. For that
the matter is so, that Christian also, who from the first
moment of his self-consciousness remembers the existing and
abiding dominion of the new /, or according to the ecclesi
astical dogmatic expression has never fallen from the baptismal
grace, perceives from the fact that -the conflict of the old /
against the new is no other than that of a ruler, dethroned
indeed, but still holding out within his territory, a conflict for
the recovery of a lost dominion. For every sin, even that
of which one is not conscious as such, is, according to the
experience of the Christian, a derogation from that supre
macy of the new /, whose power at some point or, other, in
some exercise or other of the will, is seen to be arrested and
rendered ineffectual ; and the sin v/hich includes in itself an
actual fall, is that by which, even though only for moments,
the dethroned I penetrates to the centre of the Christian
subject, to the seat of dominion of the new /, and temporarily
deprives- the same of its sway.
7. That state, of fact, in the presence of which the
Christian recognises his nature, is a moral one. A change
has come over him, and continues itself in him, which affects
not something about him and in him, but himself, his person,
his I, and has transformed and determined not some one of
the aims of life, but the life's aim itself. The Christian has
the consciousness of having gained himself in experiencing
this transformation ; and he holds fast to it, because he must
fear to lose himself, if he should suffer himself to forego
this state of life. The measure in which the same is
realized in him or in another, is the graduator (Gradmesser)
of the personal worth which he has to assign to himself or
others, and he judges everything which bears the name of
moral life ' and action, even beyond the Christian sphere, by
this standard. But just as certainly as this state of fact
is one willed and firmly held to by him, and as certainly as
the worth of man as such appears to him conditioned thereby,
so certainly with the fact does, he become at the same time
sensible ' that the transformation did not proceed from him
self, but was and is conditioned by ethical influences which
operate upon him from without. From without, i.e. in such

118 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
wise that they did not lie within his previously existing bent
of will, were not called forth by the / which fo'rmeriy held
dominion. For in the very experience that the natural T of
the Christian fights for a lost supremacy, for a supremacy
which it previously possessed and will now seek to recover, —
in such constant experience of the Christian life the fact lies
involved, that this formerly dominant T could not of itself
will otherwise than it actually willed, that it could not wage
war with itself, not cast itself out of possession and rule :
for this it had formerly as little as now the will or the power.
But, again, the Christian bears in himself the experience with
regard to the J which has arisen by the moral transformation,
that the continued existence of this /, although he himself
wishes this and confesses himself on this side, would not for
a single moment be assured, if the impulses of an ethical
power not belonging to himself, which operates upon him,
should be relaxed or cease. He has the clearest consciousness
— equally clear as that of his Christian state itself — that
only by the elements of life in which he breathes, which
constitute the spiritual nourishment of his inner man, is the
existence, the growth, in brief, the whole life of the same
conditioned. And this consciousness extends also so much the
more certainly to the origin of the new /, inasmuch as, as we
have seen, the moral state of fact, which has arisen in conse
quence of the transforming, maintains itself by constant renewal.
8. We denominate this transformation, in availing our"
selves of the ecclesiastically accepted expressions, by the two
fold name of regeneration and conversion ; and that in such
wise that by the former we designate the implanting of the
new life as conditioned by factors lying without, by the latter
expression, however, the same implanting in so far as it is an
act of the subject. For it must first of all be recognised
that it is only two different, but in point of fact supple
mentary, sides of one and the same inner event which we
apprehend in the separated notions of regeneration and con
version, and so taken the two expressions correspond exactly
to the contents of this event. For, in the first place, the
implanting of that actual state, as the implanting of a
beginning of life, by which the new / came into existence, is
aptly compared with the natural birth, by which likewise

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY, § 15. 119
a beginning of life takes place, without the same having been
effected by the subject thereof; and that it is designated as
regeneration finds its justification in the consideration of the
state of life, as this has been brought about by the physical
birth. But then also the expression conversion is appropriate
to the designation of the act by which the subject, in
virtue of the new life first implanted in regeneration, on its
part wills and implants that new life in the power of the
same ; inasmuch as the active, willing turning and tending
towards the factors whence the regeneration is derived is the
essence of this act. The gravitation willed by the subject
and constantly produced anew, namely [the gravitation] of the
life created in regeneration, and constantly nourished by the
factors of the regeneration, towards the source whence it
sprang, is conversion. If, however, it is just the same I
(Ichheit), which, according to the declaration of the Christian
consciousness, knows itself as having arisen by regeneration,
and in conversion directs itself thither whence it is derived ;
there results therefrom, that the second factor of that Chris
tian state of life designated in a twofold way, is by no means
simply co-ordinate to the first, existing and operating side by
side with the first, but is rather subordinate to it, by it
deposed and from it springing, a personal apprehension of the
same in the subject, a transforming shaping of itself, on the
part of the life at first objectively created, into the person
ality of the I, effected in harmony with the will. In this
respect there lies undoubtedly an essential difference in the
process of experience whereby this Christian state of life is
realized, as compared with the production of other experience,
of a natural or even of a moral natural order. But yet not
in such wise as though — from the first moment at which the
life-awakening impression is made upon the subject — that
reciprocity were not required, for the production of the moral
transformation, in which we have recognised the essence of
experience in general. Assuredly it may happen, and this is
according to the experience of the Christian by far the more
frequent occurrence, that the regenerating influences exert
themselves for a time upon the subject, without the corre
sponding personal apprehension and personal deposing of the
life thereby deposed, which [personal action] is reciprocal to

120 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
these impressions— that the seed of regeneration is present
without at once developing itself in conversion. In this case
we discover also an antagonism between the natural I, with
the bent of will proceeding from it, and the new / emerging
in the subject, together with the moral movements proper to
it, yet an antagonism which is the opposite of that which
constitutes the essence of the Christian state. For the
former maintained its supremacy despite the attempts with
which the new I sought to establish itself in the centre of
the subject; the conflict was now more intense, now less
intense, but without permanent result for the new man ; for
a time it might even appear as though the natural / would
be left in undisputed possession of its power, and yet the
seed of regeneration was not lost ; until at length, by favour
able concatenation of circumstances, in a position not brought
about by the subject, in consequence of a specially mighty,
•overpowering impression, the will implanted by regeneration
made a victorious onset, penetrated to the centre of the per
sonal ethical life, and so the new / of regeneration attained
to definitive supremacy. In this case the subject remembers
the moment of his conversion as the point of time at which
the transforming and transposing of his moral centre, the
shifting of the centre of gravity of his personal nature ensued ;
while the stirrings of the will on the part of the new /,
implanted in regeneration but hitherto not yet attaining to the
mastery, are known to him from former time. But from this
follows only with so much the greater certainty, the fact from
which we started above, that that moral transformation which
constitutes the essence of the Christian state, and in which
the Christian certainty is an immediately founded one, is
afforded only in the combination of regeneration and conver
sion, as two sides of one and the same moral condition of
life. For, however little we can take our departure from any
definite stage within the progressive Christian life, — as though
there were Christian certainty only after attaining the same,
for the Christians in such wise advanced or for the perfected
Christians, — we have just as indubitably to take as basis the
really present living state of the Christian, and the same is
present only upon the existing alike of regeneration and
conversion.

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 15, 121
9. That the Christian has experienced that moral trans
formation, that it is a present reality with him and in himself,
of this the Christian is immediately certain ; and we have
here still to distinguish this certainty of that in which the
point of attachment for the Christian certainty lies, from the
certainty therefrom further derived. We recall to mind to
this end our former declarations on the essential nature of
moral certainty in general, and add only the observation that
what had to be asserted of that as regards the firmness
pertaining to it, recurs in enhanced degree in connection with
the certainty of the Christian-moral state of fact. The / as
object of the experience and the I as subject of the same are
here so immediately side by side with each other, that the I
has only to answer in the affirmative to itself in order there
with to declare the reality of the actual existence of the
moral transformation. Not that they are absolutely identical
with each other, any more than regeneration and conversion
are so : but in that the / supposes its own doing and being —
and it cannot help doing this — it supposes at the same time
that which in this doing and being is not of itself; because
precisely this is its essential nature, not to be of itself The
difference between the reciprocity within this peculiar moral
experience and that of the moral and natural experience in
general — that here the spontaneity of the subject in the con
stituting of the object of experience is itself only the fruit of
the passively received impression, and that this spontaneity
is nevertheless the direct result of the life implanted in the
subject, undistinguished in point of time from this implanting
itself — this difference serves only in virtue of the blending in
one of object and subject, passivity and activity, to enhance
the certainty of the experience. And again, this certainty is
so much the more assured to the Christian, the less the moral
transformation which he has experienced is something attach
ing to the periphery of his nature, of which he could dispose
and yet remain none the less what he is : in oi*der to maintain
his existence he holds firmly to that constant fact, and the
instinct to preserve one's existence, dwelling in every living
thing, recurs at this highest stage of spiritual life. Such self-
affirmation and self-maintenance, however, on the part of the
new / is at the same time denial and refusing on the part of

122 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the old / — and in this refusing the assertion of its existence
as a real power, one checking the establishing of the new /
on every side, and striving to recover a lost ascendency — is
thus of itself the confirming of a moral transformation accom
plished, and still continually accomplishing itself in the
subject ; whereby the new I has established itself, and con
stantly maintains itself, in the central seat of dominion of the
old I which has been cast down therefrom.
§ 16. The transformation of his moral nature in regeneration
and conversion, vouched for to the Christian as real, assures
itself to him, simultaneously with its accomplishment, as
morally warranted and necessary, by a comparison of the
moral want with the moral reception ; of these, however,
the former also discloses itself to the subject only in and
with the transformation itself,
1. Of the reality of that which he has experienced, and
daily experiences anew, the Christian assuredly cannot enter
tain a doubt, but with this alone the full certainty is not yet
reached. For it is a question in connection with this certainty
not merely of the vouching for the present existence of a fact,
but likewise of showing that what is real legitimates itself to
the subject as that which is warranted, what ought to be
(seinsoUende), normal. There are realities of which the
subject is conscious as sickly phenomena of his nature, there
are fixed ideas in which the diseased one misplaces the centre
of gravity of his life and being, there are derangements of the
moral constitution of life, the reality of which no one calls in
question, yet nevertheless the certainty in reference thereto
does not admit of comparison with the Christian certainty.
Even on the part of those who have not made that specifically
Christian experience, it is not as a rule so much denied that
this experience rests upon an actual occurrence and event, as
rather that such event is warranted and a morally necessary
one ; and those who formerly possessed the Christian certainty
on the ground of their conversion, but afterwards have become
distrustful of it and turn from it, do so because they no
longer find any satisfaction in that moral transformation itself,
and prefer remaining in the natural condition. This is the

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 16. 123
point at which the difficulties for the understanding of the
Christian certainty, so far as its wholly independent existence
comes under consideration, crowd together in greatest number
and most densely. For there is wanting any higher instance
to which we might appeal, and there is lacking any deeper
basis, underlying the certainty, upon which it might be
founded. It would be only a misapprehension if we were to
appeal, for the normality of the transformation accomplished
in the Christian, to the revealed word of God, with regard to
which it is asked first of all how we are certain that it is a
revealed word of God ; and it would be an act of folly to fall
back upon any human agreement whatever with respect to
moral truth, since indeed the moral state of fact, of which we
seek to be assured, in great measure contradicts the natural-
moral truth. Nor would the community of faith on the part
of Christians, and the certainty (therewith connected) in the
Church, of itself bear in it that voucher which were in a
position to guarantee to the subject the necessity of the state
of life which he recognises as rea,l ; for there are wide-extend
ing realities of the moral life, generally present and held to
with subjective certainty, which the Christian is nevertheless
compelled to regard as anomalous and worthy of reprobation.
2. It is an answer which is perfectly valid, if the Christian,
in response to the question by what means the real condition
of the moral transformation experienced proves itself to him
as the normal one, appeals to the testimony of his immediate
feeling, which leaves him just as little in doubt with regard
thereto, as one who is beginning to recover from the condition
of bodily sickness can be uncertain whether the former or the
present condition is the one in harmony with his nature and
normal. Once enslaved by a foreign and hostile power, but
now set free ; passed from death unto life ; sometime darkness,
but now enlightened ; formerly encompassed by fear, but now
blessed in hope : ' that is the declaration of the immediate
Christian consciousness, in which it bears witness to the right
fulness and soundness of his present state of life in opposition
to the former one. Nor is the Christian consciousness shaken,
in the confidence with which it makes this assertion, by the
fact that cases may occur in which the sense of recovery is
1 [Allusion to the words of Rom. viii. 24. — Tb.]

124 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
a delusion and the disease inwardly makes advance. For the
delusion and untruth there does not invalidate the truth and
weU-founded certainty here, on the contrary serves to confirm
it : the deception one recognises as such only from the
experience of the truth ; and if one knew nothing of the sense
of actual health, there would be no sense of apparent health.
Yet, however justifiable this answer of the immediate Christian
consciousness may be, we cannot nevertheless scientifically
stop short at this, but must give place to the examining of
the question, on what that immediate confidence of the
Christian, this evidence of its normality inseparable from
regeneration and conversion, rests. It rests, we say, upon the
consciousness of the congruence of the moral need before the
transformation with the moral reception which is brought
about in the same and becomes ever anew the portion of the
Christian. A satisfying of the moral life has set in, which,
because of a moral nature, has respect to the personality of
the man in its highest aims and interests — not a partial one
sided satisfaction, but a total and absolute one, though as
such subjected to rise and growth, advancing towards perfec
tion. This presupposes that there is a moral want even in the
natural domain, before regeneration and conversion, and not
less that there is then a certain moral satisfaction, which, how
ever, in and after the transformation experienced proves itself
insufficient and only apparent. So Augustine found in the
Hortensius of Cicero, so Justin Martyr at last in the Platonic
philosophy a temporary appeasing of his moral want ; but the
food proved not to be that which it at first professed to be,
an entire, permanent nourishment for the inner man — the
moral need remained unappeased, until it found its full and
abiding satisfaction in the Christian truth. Accordingly the
impressions whence springs the experience of regeneration
implant themselves there, where until then moral experience
and moral certainty was present, and, inasmuch as here the
new result of experience enters into relation with the old,
the Christian certainty grows up and guarantees itself.
What then is this relation ? . There is found, according
to the testimony of experience, even in the natural man an
antagonism of his moral life, which bears an analogy to that,
in the existence of which we perceive the expression of the

THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 15. 125
Christian moral state of life. And this not merely in the
sense of the video meliora proboque deteriora sequor, according
to which the relation between the two motions of the will
would be simply the inversion of that existing in the
Christian subject. It is true, that which we have above
indicated as the characteristic difference between the state
of conversion and the moral life of the unregenerate continues
to hold good, that only with the specifically Christian experi
ence of regeneration the new spiritual I is implanted in the
subject, and with conversion attains to the ascendancy.
From this, however, it does not follow, either that a lower
analogue of that spiritual / is not present in the natural
man, or that the same in the conflict with the opposing
motion of the will necessarily and always suffers defeat.
There exists an antagonism not merely between the ethical
power at any time coming to consciousness, of which as
objective to the natural man we do not speak at this stage,
and this / in general ; but also between different impulses of
the will pertaining to the subject himself, which have their
starting-point in a twofold self-consciousness (Ichbewusstsein)
of the subject, and in connection with which it is possible that
the better gains the victory, permanently or for a time, over
that morally to be reprobated. This better self has now per
se as yet nothing to do with the spiritual / of the Christian,
because in reference to the central ethical position and
significance of the latter, it takes its stand after all only in
the moral life of the periphery, e.g. in the general welfare as
opposed to the selfish appetites of the individual, or in the
abstract notion of personal virtue, which in order to realize
itself already presupposes the condition of life which is to be
attained by it ; but inasmuch as it is relative moral posses
sions with which the natural I here identifies itself and for
which it contends, we may not place the conflict of the same
with the opposing impulses of the will upon a parallel with
that of the spiritual nature, created in regeneration, as some
thing analogous to that conflict. Now the moral certainty in
this lower domain of the natural life, whose peculiar assured
ness we have already recognised above, and specially the
experience of the opposition within this life, — an experience
vouched for to the natural man, — forms the point of connec-

126 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
tion for the certainty which ensues with the transformation of
the moral condition of life, a certainty not merely of the reality,
but also of the normality and necessity of this transformation.
For in the measure in which the impressions, which constitute
the Christian experience of regeneration, call forth into
existence the new / of the Christian, does the opposition
of the previously existing moral life change into one of other
nature, more profound, severe, to which now straightway the
same thing applies as to the former, only again in enhanced
degree. While formerly the subject saw himself constrained,
— even in the case that his better self succumbed to the
opposing impulses of the will, — nevertheless, involuntarily,
consciously or unconsciously, to regard the victory of the
first-named as that which ought to be, as in harmony with
his nature, this inner constraint now recurs at the higher
stage of the opposition, on the conflict between the new I
and the old, but with an enhanced certainty congruent to the
nature of the new /. Moral need was present before in the
measure in which the contradiction' between that which is
and that which ought to be was brought home to the con
sciousness or at least to the feeling of the man ; and in pro
portion as he understood and interpreted it, he had recourse
to that which seemed to him to minister to the appeasement
of the same, looked upon this, just because and in so far as it
satisfied this sense of need, as that which was right — now
the experience of this moral want is enlarged and formed
anew, and not less the experience of moral reception whereby
that need can be satisfied : his whole previous existence, so
far as it was of a moral nature, as also so far as he felt him
self thereby satisfied, he recognises, on comparison with the
life's aim and life's activity of the new /, as standing in need
of reformation and reversal; and even before this new I
attained the supremacy in him by conversion, he could not
help involuntarily and to his own shame admitting - its claim,
acknowledging the dominion of the same as the normal one,
3. We may conceive of that condition of the natural
subject, in whom the Christian certainty is to be formed, as
extended beyond the domain of the purely moral to which we
have in the meantime confined ourselves, and we still come
to the same result. To will and to maintain oneself, to obtain

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 16. 127
for one's own nature the satisfaction it requires, that is the
universal impulse proper to man as man, at whatever stage
of intellectual and moral development he may stand, and his
whole doings, moral or extra moral, may be traced back to
this self-asserting and self-affirming. This impulse is of
itself neutral, and manifests itself as well in the morally
good as in the morally bad behaviour of men, is thus by no
means interchangeable with the morally culpable egoism.
The believing Christian who bears his soul in his hands to
preserve it against the approaching day of Jesus Christ, and
the slave of sin, who seeks fleshly enjoyment wherever he
can find it ; the self-sacrificing friend, who yields up his life
in the service of the love, and the self-seeking egoist, who
subordinates all and sundry to his own gratification : both
follow that impulse of self-asserting and self-preservation,
and find their satisfaction in following it. They differ from
each other, however, in this respect, that it is a different self
whom these acts of self-affirmation serve, and according to
the understanding of that which the self of the man is does
that impulse take its direction. Now it is the definite and
universal experience of the Christian consciousness, that this
impulse to self-affirmation has attained, only with the entry
and the dominion of the new /, to the goal at which it finds
perfect satisfaction, without being charged with a negation
which impels it beyond the self-affirming and destroys the
satisfaction thereof. The Christian is conscious of having
found the point towards which his nature may permanently
gravitate, without being constrained by the sense of unsatisfy-
ingness to seek another centre of gravity : the egoism, which
till then could only assert itself in antagonism with others, as
base, self-seeking, therefore unsatisfying egoism, has now laid
aside this antagonism, has come from the false actuality to its
reality. His self-assertion is as such assertion of the other,
with which the / formerly collided in its self-affirmation ; nay
more, it is for the first time a breaking off of the previously
existing I from itself, only to find itself again in another, in
Him whence the life-creating impulses wrought upon the
subject. For he who loses his soul, the same shall find it.
For one can with the same justice and the same truth, with
which we designate that self- asserting and self-affirming of

128 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
the / as the universal impulse of the human subject, designate
such that of losing oneself in order to find oneself — the
involuntary and actual testimony of the soul, that the man as
he is in himself does not possess the ttoO aro) of his being.
He loses himself, he yields up his I, now to this now to that,
in which he hopes permanently to find himself, in which he
hopes abidingly to rest, whence he hopes to derive real and
constant satisfaction for his personal being. That is the
uncomprehended longing of the heart, when man ever afresh
loses himself and yet does not find, affirms himself and yet
retains in himself the sting of negation, seeks a master whom
one can serve in personal freedom, and yet finds only such as
enslave the personal self and suffer it not to come to itself.
There where this self-seeking, this impulse, comes to rest, —
where one has truly found oneself because one has lost one
self, where with the breaking through and the installation of
the new / in the centre of the personal nature, the irov o-tm
is gained — there with this personal transformation is at the
same time given the certainty that this new form and position
of the / is the true, the normal, the necessary one, to which
after all everything impelled which till then had most deeply
moved the subject, constrained him now to assert himself, now
to lose himself.
4. We can now already more definitely take into our view
and duly express to what extent the certainty of the Christian
state of life, which is assured of this state not merely as an
actual, but also as the true one, does, notwithstanding its
linking on to the moral want and impulse for self-satisfaction
on the part of the natural man, yet by no means find its
foundation in the foregoing verdict of the latter, but in itself
Doubtless the fact is well-grounded and comprehensible from
that which has been already said, that the moral transformation
wrought by regeneration and conversion will there with the
greatest difficulty gain for itself space and soil, where it is
met by no consciousness, or but a slight consciousness of
moral need, and where the natural heart experiences but little
the lack of satisfaction in the surrender and self-assertion of
the /. Woe unto them that are full ! woe unto the rich !
woe unto them that laugh here' — the publicans and the
harlots are able, indeed, sooner to enter into the kingdom of

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 16. 129
heaven. The relatively higher moral position, the fact that it
is a real moral possession in which the heart finds satisfaction,
may prove a hindrance to the bringing about of regeneration ;
and the depth to which a human being has sunk down, in
comparison with that which he recognises as a height to be
striven after, may become an incentive and impetus to give
himself up to the impression of the regenerating factors.
From this, however, it does not at all follow that in the latter
case the consciousness, which was present, of the moral need
would be the standard by whicli the subject then measured
the worth of the moral transformation and satisfaction afforded
and rendered possible to him in regeneration in such wise
that, as a result, the certainty of this its value and its
necessity should finally rest upon the moral verdict which the
natural subject brings with him. Nor does it follow that even
in the first case, by the dawning of the new life of regeneration,
in the involuntary experience of its impressions, an end may
not suddenly be put to the false satisfaction of the natural
consciousness, inasmuch as therewith the distance between the
apparent satisfying and that which the new I demands in its
breaking forth, is carried home to the consciousness and finds
recognition. In either case the matter so stands, that the
perception of the moral want itself is essentially only a
consequence and effect of the impulses which the subject
undergoes and receives into itself in the interest of regenera
tion. For in the first case there is present, it is true, a sense
of want, in which the subject first of all turns to that from
which he hopes to experience satisfaction of the same ; but in
the measure in which this takes place, there begins also the
experience that the lack was in reality quite different — more
profound, more comprehensive than it had at first appeared,
and, therefore, also the filling up of the same was other than
had originally been striven after. And now first is realized
that comparison between moral want and reception upon
which the Christian certainty, in virtue of its peculiar
experience, is grounded. Here, however, in the second case
there is from the beginning an experience which did not
result from the previous state of life of the subject, in which
the need itself was brought home to his consciousness ; and
the knowledge of this want, the tormenting sense of the lack,
I

130 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
which craved for appeasement, was likewise modified, enlarged,
and deepened in the degree in which, with the perception of
that which was new, the gulf between the former apparent
satisfaction and the real one, now tasted in its first beginnings,
the distance between the being heretofore and the ideal of being
(SeinsoUen) of which one has a glimpse, opened itself up. So
it is consequently the case under all circumstances, that the
certainty, as perception not merely of the reality but also of
the normality of the Christian constitution of life, is attached
to the actual rise of the last-named, and grows out of it.
There is no Christian certainty which did not spring from this
life-process of the moral transformation ; and the transforma
tion would not be accomplished unless at every point the
certainty of its legitimacy and moral necessity accompanied it.
And just as little as the experience of the moral transformation
has for its contents the supposition that such new formation
was produced in the power of its own factors, by the initiative
of the natural subject, but, on the contrary, the Christian is
conscious even of his own reciprocal activity for the bringing
about of conversion as an efflux and present personal implanting
of the life implanted in him ; just so little can the certainty
thereto attaching, that this change is a sound one, congruent
to his nature, appear to him as a product of the natural factors
of his moral experience and cognition ; not even in sucli wise
that the gift indeed which replaces the lack has been first
bestowed upon him in regeneration, while the sense of the lack
is brought with him to this, and the certainty grows out of
the combination of both, but so that the consciousness of the
defect — a consciousness on the ground and in the light of the
gift received— combines with the consciousness of the reception
as a reception corresponding to this lack.
5. Yet, however sharply we have to distinguish Christian
certainty in its substance and genesis from the natural, even
the natural - moral certainty, that it may be recognised as
having its foundations in itself, not as emanating from natural
principles or conditioned by them, it nevertheless does not by
any means follow therefrom that the process of assurance is
one abruptly (unvermittelt) arising in the subject, magically
accomplishing itself, remaining without inner relation to the
previous natural certainty. This just as little as we have

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 16. 131
learnt to know the moral transformation as such an one. We
have said above that the transformation only takes place when
it is accompanied with certainty. That is to say, there must
always, at each stadium of the moral process of regeneration
and conversion, enter into the consciousness the congruence
between need and reception ; and at the end of the same — so
far as one can speak of an end — stands the clear cognition
that the subject has now come to himself, that the desire for
satisfaction of his personal-moral nature, as it announced itself,
though uncomprehended, even before regeneration, is fulfilled.
It thus comes to pass indeed that the natural longing of the
unconverted man for the appeasing of his lack, for the removal
of the moral oppositions prevailing in him, induces him to lay
himself open to the impressions of the regenerating action ;
that, however, which he receives therewith is not that which
according to his previous intelligence he sought, but some
thing different, more important, which overthrew his previous
certainty regarding the character of the defect and its relation
to the longed-for reception, yet in this very way just perfectly
satisfied that defect now differently perceived. Thus the
original impulse and the certainty attaching thereto now feels
itself confirmed in that which it wished, and yet otherwise
than it wished it : the Christian assurance accomplishes itself
just in this way, that it overthrows the previous certainty,
and overthrowing nevertheless ratifies it. There fall, as it
were, scales from the eyes of the man who, in the uncom
prehended longing of his heart, has in vain wearied himself
out, who desires one possession after another, and in none has
found that which he sought ; so that he cries out, " That is
what I sought without knowing it, for which I longed without
being conscious of its real nature." And specially is this the
case as regards the moral oppositions between which the
subject hitherto saw himself placed, without finding full
satisfaction even when he assented to that which was morally
right, and helped it to the victory : now the conflict is raised
to a higher stage, in that the relatively moral possession, about
the acquiring and maintaining of which it was previously the
question, has transformed itself into something different, the
absolute good, which comprehends in itself the former, and
brings it to its full truth ; now the pledge of the victory is

132 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
given and recognised together with the prize thereof, because
the new / of regeneration arises with the claim and with the
power of a sole-ruling, and by its rule liberating, redeeming,
absolutely satisfying principle of life ; now the conformity
between moral need and reception, of the character of which
before only a shadowy reflection presented itself to the natural
consciousness, has been experienced — not as an unsubstantial
idea, nor as a mere postulate, but in virtue of the ethical
power which has factively come upon the subject and now
become the subject's own, which has begun entirely to cover
the whole disclosed need, and engages yet further to cover it.
Just in the fact that in this respect it is nothing absolutely
new, nothing imposed against his will upon the nature of the
man, which he shares by the experience of regeneration and
conversion, but precisely that of which the consciousness now
tells him that it has before been wanting to him as man — -
something by which the hitherto uncomprehended enigma of
his natural existence, of his disquiet, his conflict, his longing,
has been solved ; in this lies the certainty of the normality,
soundness, necessity of the moral process undergone and
recognised as real by the subject.
§ 17. The Christian certainty as such, which has reference
to the condition of life in regeneration and conversion,
claims to be distinguished, but not separated, from the
certainty which grows up out of this state of life. The
distinction consists in this, that the former has its limits
in the equalization of subject and object ; the latter, how
ever, — and just this proclaims its connectedness in fact,
— proceeds from this equalization and assures of that
which is further implied (mitgesetzt) in the object. On
both sides there is here displayed a peculiar homogeneity
between object and subject of experience as of cognition,
because the homogeneity itself first arises with the process
of experience, and the new life of regeneration, which life
is at the same time light, brings with it, and effects, intel
ligence of itself and of the fact'jrs from which it derives its
origin.

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY, § 17. 133
1. It is a question of the starting-point of the Christian
certainty, and that starting-point one whence and by which
the subject is assured of the complex whole of the Christian
truth. Namely, in such wise that the regenerate and con
verted man, standing in the certainty of the faith, bethinks
himself on the question how with this spiritual event the
assuring of the Christian truth in inner, if not in temporal
sequence, has been prepared for and accomplished. The
beginning must be simple and unniediated, inasmuch as it
does not constrain us to seek in a higher court of jurisdiction
the ratification of itself and of the certainty reposing therein.
The simplicity, however, must not be an empty one, an
abstract one, which no doubt might be certain, but without
affording the possibility of attaining and embracing from it
the concrete contents of the Christian truth ; but it must be
one filled up, in some way enclosing in itself the truth of
which it assures, and such we have undoubtedly found that
starting-point of the Christian certainty in regeneration and
conversion to be. For they are indeed no other than essential
portions of the Christian truth itself, which we have in those
events of the Christian life and designate by those names.
Men have not seldom it is true, in earlier and later times,
even where they felt constraint to locate the starting-point of
the certainty in the subject, nevertheless thought they ought
to go forth beyond the subject itself, and represented the
testimony of the Holy Ghost in the subject and on the
subject as the final point upon which the Christian falls
back on the impugning of his possession of truth. Strauss,
as is well known, calls this appeal to the testimonium Spiritus
Sancti — in connection with which, he tells us, the further
question arises. Who then assures us that this feeling within
us proceeds from the operation of the Holy Ghost 1 — the
Achilles' heel of the Protestant system ; to which it has been
replied on the other hand, that just on the contrary its true
strength is contained therein. Our position in relation thereto
needs no longer to be discussed at large, after that which has
already been said. The subject must unquestionably, what
ever he may owe in .this respect to the divine activity operat
ing upon him to this end, be himself, and of himself, assured
of the truth ; and that which we have before asserted, or

134 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
rather denied, of the Scripture and of the Church as the
supreme support of the individual certainty, will likewise of
necessity hold good with respect to the testimony of the
Holy Ghost, in so far as is meant thereby something which
as other (als Anderes) stands over against the subject. We
have here, it is true, in the way of exact systematic progress
nowhere to appeal for the truth of our statements to the
testimony of Scripture, of which itself we first purpose to
assure ourselves ; nevertheless, seeing it would at any rate be
a sad contradiction if the contents of that which we design
to show are vouched for to the subject did not accord with
the manner of our assuring, it may here be pointed out that
the Scripture itself also does not designate the testimony of
the Holy Ghost as the primitive one, that to which we must
finally appeal, but as that which accompanies, which is added
to the testimony of ourselves regarding our Christian state.
For from Gal. iv. 6, where the fact of our sonship in Christ,
in virtue of the accomplished act of redemption, explains the
sending of the Spirit who in us calls the " Abba,"— for that
sonship, in itself existing, is the final ground for the calling
forth of the filial consciousness by the Spirit, and the declara
tion of the apostle is not, on account of the change of person
[in the verb] to be applied in the first part to the Jewish
Christians, in the second part to the Gentile Christians, — we
cannot in any wise infer that the Abba-cry in us assures us
in a primary manner of the filial state, since in this con
nection it is not at all expressed how the personal certainty
of sonship on the part of the Christian stands related to this
testimony of the Spirit. In the kindred passage, however,
of the Epistle to the Eomans (viii. 15, 16), where the apostle
is not speaking as in the former case of the childship brought
about in Christ, but of the receiving of the Spirit, who
wrought the entrance into the filial relation for the subject,
the testimony of the same appears as one accompanying the
fiapTvpia of our spirit regarding our childship, one acceding
to it; as also the subsequent <TvvavTi\a/j,^dvea-6ai, wev. 26,
places the helpful action of the Spirit beside the own action
of the patiently persevering Christian. The matter will then
assuredly thus stand with the testimonium Spiritus Sancti,
that it does not form the last object of appeal for the

THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 17. 135
certainty of the Christian, but that it on its part witnesses
with [the believer] ; because recognised by the Christian
subject, in virtue of his self- assuring, as testimony of the
Holy Ghost — by another than such a subject it would not
be accepted as the testimony of the Holy Ghost. Only we
must at once add that the state of life of which the Christian
has become sensible as real and normal, is an effect of the
regenerating factors, thus — as we shall afterwards have
occasion to discuss more at large — of no other than the Holy
Ghost, who then gives that accompanying testimony ; so that
consequently the new /, converted by the energy of the
regeneration, recognises this testimony as that of the Spirit,
the / which has been produced [recognises] the co-testimony
of that by which it has been produced. How closely in all
respects the I of the Holy Ghost, who speaks in the believer,
stands to the pneumatic / of the believer thereby constituted,
in what measure they are with each other and in each other
— however little the one can be identified with the other — is
apparent, not merely from the fact that Paul, in the passages
referred to, there ascribes the Abba-cry to the Holy Ghost
immediately, here to the spiritual / of the Christian, but also
among other things from this, that at Eom. viii. 26 he repre
sents the Holy Ghost as interceding for the Christians with
sighs unspeakable, a mode of utterance which is that of the
Spirit only in so far as He is the one speaking in us, by us,
who makes use of us as His organ, and finds not yet in us
the fitting medium for His utterance. All this is to be
observed, lest it should be supposed that it is the natural /
which is constituted the judge, whether it be as regards the
truth of the personal state of the Christian, or as regards
the testimony of the Holy Ghost jointly vouching for this
truth. 2. Yet objections have been raised precisely on this point,
not in hostile but in friendly quarters,' which I will here
briefly state, together with the reply ^ already attempted by
me on a previous occasion, Carlblom draws attention to the
' Carlblom, Zur Lehre von der chr. GewissJieit, Leipsic 1874, and "Auch
ein Wort der Verstandigung, " Zeitschr. fur Protest, und Kirche, 1874, ii. 306
sqq. * Zeitschr. f. Prot. u. K. 1874, i. p. 102 sqq., ii. 306 sqq.

136 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY,
consideration that the pneumatic /"accomplishes its self- con
sciousness and its constant self-willing only by reason of its
theogenesy, so that it must say in its self-consciousness that
it lives only by the Holy Ghost. " The communion with
this [Holy Spirit] belongs consequently to the contents of its
self- consciousness. It can therefore never come about that
the pneumatic / should experience the Holy Ghost in himself
as another principle, foreign to himself For in this case the
pneumatic I must deny his theogenesy, the sacred testimony
within him must be perfectly unintelligible to him, and his
relapse into the natural consciousness would be inevitable.
The self-willed life of the pneumatic / is therefore inseparable
from the consciousness of the Holy Ghost in this self-willing.
This inseparableness at once affords the proof that the pneumatic
/ must regard the consciousness of the Holy Ghost in him
self not as something merely acceding (hinzukommendes), but
as something which constitutes the I, without, however, on
that account becoming identical with the Holy Ghost, the
supposing of which would be an enthusiastic fanatical point
of view." The objection is of interest because it repeats in
application to a single point what has been said also elsewhere,
in similar or in other words, of the relation between the
objective factors of certainty and the subjective possession
and perception of this certainty. That the Holy Ghost
has wrought the pneumatic /, that the former of these
dwells within the latter, that the latter is inseparable
from the former, etc., is true ; but who denies all this ?
What I teach is so little directed against this fact, that
without it it would fall to the ground. But if now,
as is expressly emphasized by Carlblom, the pneumatic
/ is by no means identical with the Holy Ghost, the
question must then surely first be permitted, by what mark
this pneumatic / recognises the testimony of the Holy Ghost
as such, recognises the Holy Ghost [Himself] as such. To
the Holy Ghost I cannot appeal in connection therewith,
since of course it is first a question whether what I receive
is testimony of the Holy Ghost ; exactly as I cannot appeal
to sacred Scripture when it is in question how I come to
admit the claim of Scripture to be sacred for me. In saying
which it always remains reserved, that the possibility and

THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY, § 17. 137
the actuality of the subjective decision immediately demanded
has been given only by the Holy Scripture and the Holy
Ghost. With this now the fact also corresponds, however
little Scripture gives immediate information upon such ques
tions, that at Eom. viii. 16 the testimony of the Holy Ghost
appears as co-witnessing (avfifiaprvpei). There accedes thus,
notwithstanding all conditionedness by the Holy Ghost, His
testimony to the testimony of the Christian /, the former
presupposes the latter, though therein is by no means implied
a temporal coming in after it.
3, Strictly thus we could not as yet at all speak of the
Holy Ghost here, however much it is for the Christian
beyond doubt that he owes to the power and energy of this
Spirit, as his Christian state, so also the certainty of it; and
therefore, after setting aside the difficulty which occasioned
this anticipating, we return to the point whence we set out.
We distinguish thus between the certainty as reposing in
itself, not as a beginning leading back to a higher principle
of cognition, and that certainty which from this beginning
takes possession of the complex whole of the Christian
truth; and consequently also we distinguish the certainty
which has respect to the actual fact of the Christian moral
transformation of life, from the certainty which at all results
therefrom for the Christian. In the former case we have
simple identity of subject and object, /=/, self-decision and
self-affirming of the /, namely, of the / which has arisen in
regeneration, and the certainty reposing in itself has in this
equalization at once its support and its limit. This equaliza
tion is not a formal, unmeaning one, in connection with which
the / affirms itself, without on that account being able to
say what it affirms by this, but the subject affirms thereby
its full contents (Gehalt), what it has become, and what it
is becoming, which is the essence of the /; in other words,
in supposing itself it supposes the reality and the necessity
of the moral transformation, in the accomplishment and con
stant renewal of which it has its continuance. Such supposing
of itself, however, is a supposing of the Christian truth,
inasmuch as we have to recognise in regeneration and con
version Christian realities, a supposing of these portions of the
Christian truth for, and in, the certainty of the subject. Here

138 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
doubt as to the reality of the object can the less arise, since a
going out beyond the / is not necessary for the presupposition
of the object, — it is the outcome of modern philosophy, for the
overcoming of the false dualism and criticism, transferred to
the Christian /. Only, in connection with the manner in
which the I equalizes itself with itself, we shall not be
constrained to turn aside into monism, but the reverse,
compelled to suppose the object of the Christian truth in a
certain sense identical with the /, then again in another respect
as distinguishing itself and distinct from it ; the one and the
other in virtue of the same experience whence the certainty
arises. The experience about which it is here, in the first
place, a question is not this, that the I of the man sees some
thing take place, something become changed in itself, in its
nature, and yet while this is so remains continually the same,
as with events of a physical, or intellectual, or moral nature,
— in this case it would be no identity, — but the / itself as
originated, previously not existing, is conscious and certain of
itself as having become and now being this (which it is). For
this very reason, however, that the / is an originated one (gewor-
denes), continuing to exist in the reciprocal operation between
regeneration and conversion, produced by an experience accom
plishing itself in reciprocity of subject and object, the certainty
of the / identical with itself now further distinguishes itself
from the certainty of all that which in its constituting was
implicitly deposited with it, without the depositing of which
with it (Mitsetzung) it would not be, or have become, this /.
It is distinguished, without on that account being separated
in point of fact ; for the principle of certainty, thus given,
merely evolves itself, in order to attain from itself to the
other, therefrom resulting certainty, to this extent distinct
from it; it is the elements (Momente) and factors of that
experience which constitutes the I whereof it (the certainty)
further assures itself, and only to this extent is there need,
in order to the production of the derived certainty, for the
going out of the former (certainty) beyond itself It is an
organic self-unfolding of the certainty from the germ, in which
already the whole of the organism was contained and pre
determined, without its being necessary on that account to
deny the influence from without upon that germ, and to

THE SPECIFICALLY CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 17. 139
maintain its development by itself alone. Only it is to be
remembered that all life which enters into relation to it from
without becomes its own life, assimilates itself to it, taken up
by it unfolds itself as its own, as this results from the nature
of all organism.
4. By the side of that congruence, which we have before
observed to exist between the spiritual and the natural expe
rience, there consequently here ranges itself the incongruence
in consequence of the singularity of the relation between
object and subject, as this underlies the Christian certainty.
Without homogeneity between object and subject, as we have
seen above, there is absolutely no experience, and this is true
likewise with regard to the Christian experience ; now, how
ever, that the nature of the Christian certainty, which reposes
in itself, has disclosed itself for us, we can and must maintain
that here there exists a homogeneity between object and
subject, such as nowhere meets us in the natural domain.
Everywhere it is there the natural /, between which and the
object the experience takes place, the natural /, whose genesis
is withdrawn from the consciousness of the man, and which,
despite all changes which it makes in consequence of the
manifold experiences, yet remains itself and identical with
itself The birth, the creating of a new / beside and above
the old one, this complete reversion and renewal of the
ethical life, does not at all appear in that natural domain, but
only the shifting of the centre of the personality from one of
the points of this domain to another, as expressed in dogmatic
language, within the domain of the temporalia, to which the
whole of the natural-ethical cognition belongs. Among the
philosophers it is Kant who penetrated to the frontiers of this
peculiarly Christian experience, when he said that the man
infected with the radically bad could not be delivered (gehol-
fen) by a gradual reform, so long as the groundwork of the
maxims remained impure, but this must be accomplished by
a revolution in the sentiments of the man : "A new man can
arise only by a sort of regeneration, as by a new creation "
(John iii. 5 ; Gen. i. 2). He was right, however, in adding :
how it is possible now, that a naturally bad man should make
himself into a good one, is something which passes all our
comprehension. Now just herein, in this rise and forming of

140 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
itself on the part of the new man, in this " subverting of the
supreme ground of the maxims," which Kant was able to
demand, but not to exhibit in its possibility and in its actual
accomplishment, because in order to do so it is a question of
establishing a point outside of the whole natural /, whence this
latter is to be thrown off its hinges, hurled out of its previous
centre, consists that peculiar, absolutely Christian experience,
which has not its like in any other experience elsewhere
occurring. We have thus homogeneity between subject and
object within a higher sphere, which is not attainable to the
natural / as such, according to the traditional dogmatic
expression, " within the sphere of the spiritualia ; '' and the
peculiarity is, in the first place, this, that the spiritual I is
itself produced and created by the objective factors operating
from that sphere, in such wise, however, that from the first
moment of the implanting of life the spontaneity of this
personal life (Ichleben) begins, a reciprocity, undistinguished
in point of time, on the part of the subject towards the object
from which it is derived. Accordingly the beginning itself is
absolute identity between subject and object, comprehension
of the truth in the subject, not as in another, but so that this
I itself is the truth, although not the whole truth, of the
ascertaining of which it is a question, — for the new spiritual T
forms a component element (Moment) in the Christian truth,
and this T is certain of itself in the twofold way above
explained. Beyond this, however, absolute identity does not
obtain, but homogeneity between object and subject, since the
/ produced by the objective factors of experience is homo
geneous, and knows itself homogeneous to these themselves,
and to the totality of the life, of the being, of the facts, which
are conditioned by those factors, or contained in them. In
both instances the relation is analogous to the equalizing of
the natural /with itself (only that the rise and self-constituting
of the natural / falls at a time of which we have no recollec
tion), and the congruence between subject and object, which we
have recognised as the condition of the natural experience.
And, that it may not seem as though these two orders of
natural and spiritual experience ran disconnectedly beside
each other, and, as is brought as a reproach on the Eoman side
against us Evangelicals, the unity of the personal life were

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 17. 141
thereby destroyed; we bear in mind, in so speaking, that
which has been said above concerning the relation of the new
I to the old, and concerning the man's finding himself again
in the finding of himself as a Christian. It is the man come
to himself, come to his true self, of which the new man has
become conscious and certain in virtue of his / now lying
beyond the tem.poralia, from thence dominating these things ;
and whilst' the natural experience, apart from the ethical,
remains as such, it becomes changed only in virtue of the
relation into which it has henceforth entered to the new
centre of the ethical personal life.
5. Whosoever, says Christ to the Samaritan woman,
drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall become in
him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. This
is that implanting of a principle of which we have before
spoken : the absolutely satisfying life, for ever stilling the
longing of the man who has received it, becomes in him a
beginning of life, in virtue of which he now bears in himself
the life welling forth from this principle, and this in such
wise that the direction taken by this forth-gushing fountain
is towards the same life from which it sprang. But the life,
it is likewise said in John, was the light of men ; was not
merely so, but is so, and not merely in the ethical sense, but
also in the intellectual. The light has its origin in the life,
and of this unity of light and life we must here further
speak, in order to bring completely within view the self-
supporting (in sich selbst ruhend) certainty of the Christian.
For the certainty never exists without cognition, without a
notion, to which the experience of the existence corresponds,
without the perception of such congruence. We refer in
connection with this fact to the Scripture ; not in order to
make our appeal to it as a basis and voucher lying without
us, but because, in the first place, we can fittingly indicate
the state of fact, on which we take our stand, in the words
thereof For just as certainly as the transformation of life
which the Christian experiences in regeneration and conver
sion is an essentially ethical act, effected by ethical factors
and leading to an ethical state of fact, just so certainly does
there inseparably attach to that transformation an element of

142 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
knowledge, in accordance with the reality that the life com
municating itself to the subject, renewing the subject, is at
the same time light, and brings about an enlightenment of
the subject. It rests upon a fact of the Christian experience,
[when we say] that a darkening of the heart and of the
ethical intelligence sets in at once with the morally faulty
position which the subject takes up towards the factors of
regeneration, and that therefore the apostle rightly represents
a (TKOTiaOrivai and fimpavOrivai, as taking place as a conse
quence of moral misbehaviour in the case of those in whom
the ryvwa-Tov tov Oeov is manifest by means of divine revela
tion (Eom. i. 19—22); and therefore also the gospel is veiled
in them that are lost, whose mind the god of this world has
blinded as unbelievers, et? to /j.rj avrydcrai, tov (peoTicrfiov tov
evayyeXiov t^? S6^r]<; tov XpicrTov ; while, on the other hand,
to the Christians apply the words, eKafi-\^ev iv rat? KapSiaii;
rjfjiaiv Trpo? ^(OTiafiov T?j^ •yvmcyeax; t^? 80^179 tov Oeov (2 Cor.
iv. 3-6). The contents, indeed, of the Psalmist's language, as
well as the succession of the thoughts, correspond to the
experience of the Christian, when the Psalmist prays
(Ps. xxxvi. 9) : With Thee is the fountain of life, in Thy light
shall we see light; and the same Spirit of God who effects
the life, creates also the knowledge as one indwelling in the
spiritual man (1 Cor. ii. 11-15). Just as the eye is the
light of the body, so with the normal ethical position of the
subject, according to which he has his treasure in heaven
(Matt. vi. 19-21), and consequently the Father in heaven as
his only Lord (Matt. vi. 24 sqq.), there is given the organ of
the inner light (to ^cS? to iv aoi, Matt. vi. 23), and with this
light it is as with the bodily eye : it is the subject's own, and
homogeneous with the light for which it was created. From
this relation of the life and the light is thus naturally
explained the ethical significance which the Scripture appro
priates, beside and with the intellectual, to the light ; so that
to be children of the light denotes an ethical quality, and
now on the one side it is said of these children of the light
that they know whither they go (cf John xii. 35, 36) ; and,
on the other hand, that they stumble not, because the light is
in them (cf John xi. 9, 10). All this, which the Scrfpture
teaches in various places, is for the Christian an adequate

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 17. 143
expression of his self-consciousness, a fact of his inner life
which has been constituted with regeneration and conversion ;
and it cannot by any means be otherwise, if everywhere in
connection with that ethical transformation it is a question of
the producing of a new spiritual I, distinguishing itself from
the natural. For to the essential nature of the T belongs
self-consciousness, the /'s knowing of itself, and of things on
the ground of that (and according to the standard of that)
which it is and has; and that which we have said above
concerning the satisfaction which ensues with the implanting
of the new man, concerning man's finding himself in sur
rendering himself to the factors of the new life, was in itself
already the announcement of the knowledge of this / of
regeneration, inseparably constituted with the constituting of
this / itself
6. The Z" is a birth out of the life which is light, and
therefore spontaneously living (selbst-lebendes) life and spon
taneously shining light in one. Or traced back to the formal
ground notions of the certainty : out of the experience flows
the knowledge, and in the notion the subject makes the
contents of the experience objective to himself Only here,
where we are moving upon the soil of the specifically Chris
tian certainty, with the difference that the homogeneity
between subject and object, there existing from the beginning,
must in this case first be created, because the I was created,
which is homogeneous primarily to itself as object, and then
further to the factors whence it sprang. As an effect of the
life, out of which the / is, and which is in the /, the latter
receives the spiritual /, with which it knows itself, compre
hends itself, the genesis accomplished in it, in the notion
which grows up for it out of this experience, and therewith
understands this existence, this genesis, as necessary. That
which was folly for the eye of the natural intellect, is now
intelligible, is comprehended by the spiritual / as " wisdom
among them that are perfect ; " not wisdom of this eeon, but
as wisdom of a higher order of life in which the / of the
regeneration stands, and which is just as little an arbitrary
and accidental one as that of the lower cosmical hemisphere.
The /, however, has as the standard of the necessity and
criterion of the wisdom in the order of the substantial fact

144 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
which it has experienced, and which it is cognizant of in the
notion, nothing immediately but this substantial fact itself,
which by itself evidences itself to him as truth and necessity ;
or, since that substantial fact is the / of the regeneration
itself, the new I is itself for itself guarantee of the truth,
standard of the necessity, judge of the wisdom. '0 irvev-
fiaTiKO<; dvaKpivei p,ev iravTa, avT0<i he vir ovoevo<i avuKpi-
veTai, 1 Cor. ii. 15. To the notion constituted by the
actual fact corresponds the experience of the existence, and
the perception of their congruence is the certainty. As,
however, the Christian experience found its satisfaction in the
conformity of the moral want with the moral reception, so the
notion — about which it is a question within this narrowest
circle of the Christian certainty — attaches itself immediately
to this so-constituted satisfaction, which is constantly renewed
with the constant renovation of the /; this satisfaction is the
idea by which the / in taking cognizance measures the real
state of fact, thus not an idea which the subject had of itself,
in order in this bad sense to set up itself as a judge over the
Christian truth, but an idea which it received in the same
measure in which it was itself produced [ward]. That is the
Christian certainty reposing in itself, an autonomy of the
Christian subject as guarantee of the truth, which bases itself
simply upon theonomy, or rather upon theogenesy, yet with
out locating the accomplishment of the assurance elsewhere
than in the self -decision of the subject.
7. Doubtless the foregoing argument, torn away from the
connection in which it stands, is open to misconception. It
has been objected thereto,^ that the spiritual subject has
become sensible of the fact that his spontaneity and his free
will, which make up the character of his present complexus
of life, could not be maintained without constant communion
with his life-fountain and without constant inflowing of its
contents. " With the spiritual subject it stands in this
respect entirely as with a man breathing in a fresh atmo
sphere of life. He knows that without constant communion
with such atmosphere he would not be able to prolong life.
Therefore he breathes willingly and gladly, and is clearly con
scious that this alone preserves him in a healthy existence.
' Carlblom, Zur Lehre von der christl. Gewissheit, p. 43.

THE SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, § 17. 145
His breathing itself is indeed autonomously willed, but so
willed as is the will to live." If this supposition is well-
grounded, and for my part I can only express my full assent
thereto, it seems that the locating of the accomplishment of
the assuring — notwithstanding the theogenesy maintained—
in the autonomous self-decision of the subject, may be called
in question. The expression " self - decision," Carlblom
thinks (p. 44), always too much reminds of what is called
" freedom of choice," and is incompatible with the theogenetic
basing of the Christian state of life. " In our estimation,
therefore, it would be better in keeping with the fact to say :
the accomplishing of the assurance is made on the part of
the spiritual subject by autonomous and constant willing of
itself, as spiritually renewed and endowed with the will unto
life. Least of all does the mode of expression, ' the new
spiritual J is a guarantee or voucher for itself,' seem to us to
agree with the manner of rise and the quality of this same
new I, as described by our author himself How can a subject
which owes its genesis and its continued existence to extra-
and supra-subjective powers of spirit, itself vouch for its life
and existence ? It could afford this guarantee only if it had
arisen of itself, which as we know it has not. Here an
insoluble contradiction seems to us to set in, if the self-
guaranteeing of the .spiritual /, and its constant living by the
energy of God [Aus Gott-leben], are to be simultaneously
retained in the consciousness " (p. 44). One sees here the
whole depth of the misunderstanding; and, since this same
mistake has occurred elsewhere, it seemed to me advantageous
to give it full expression here, along with the words to
which it has affixed itself The strong terms of designation,
" guarantee of the truth, standard of the necessity, judge of
the wisdom," conditioned in their choice and in the limit
of their notion by the connection, were selected in order,
within the question as to the assuring, to prevent the going
forth beyond the sphere of the subject to any objective
authority whatever. For in connection with this objective
authority the question would assuredly always recur, how the
subject conies to acknowledge it as such. Now, what has
been so meant has been misunderstood in the sense that the
new T guarantees to itself its life and existence. It would

146 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
be something frightful, if a Christian thought he could do
this. No, the establishing of the state of fact, in virtue of
which the Christian exists, and therefore also the guaranteeing
of the continuance of this state of fact, is an absolutely objec
tive one, having its ground in God's act, in the operation of the
Holy Ghost alone. Just because this is so, however (not despite
the fact that it is so), it is now the subject who experiences
this operation, and assures himself that it is an operation of the
Holy Ghost. No one — not even God, because He has willed
the personality of man — can force upon the subject the
decision that this is a divinely wrought state of fact ; but here,
I say here, it is the self-decision of the subject, which has
finally to determine for itself with regard to it. God works
everything in us, that we may be able, but finally we must do
it. Each must answer for this in his own person. And
because now in this system I proceed the reverse way,
namely, from the certainty which has arisen, from the
accomplished self-decision backwards to the objective factors
and realities, I cannot, to be sure, engage to take an objective
authority or reality as a starting - point! This also as an
answer to the trivial objection, that, on the assumption of
such subjective starting-point, in every religion and bent-of-
belief one can sustain the certainty by the allegation that the
subject feels himself satisfied therein, and on that account
decides for such truth. Well, let each one take the responsi
bility upon his own head, and let no one fancy he
can escape it on objective grounds. At last he indeed will
remain in the right, who from the standpoint of his own
certainty is able to discern the mistakes of others in the
accomplishing of their false assurance.

SECTION 111.
THE OPPOSITION IN PEINCIPLE.
§ 18. The central Christian certainty, whose essence we have
hitherto positively recognised, is accomplished in conflict
with opposing powers, by the overcoming of which it
becomes what it is, and remains what it has become. To
the exposition of the certainty in principle there thus
attaches that of its congruent, likewise principial, opposi
tion, the annulling of which is in fact already involved
in the former. The Christian certainty recognises this
opposition not less as relatively necessary than as absolutely
void of force, and the one and the other act of recognition
serves specially for the confirmation of itself
1. It is not by accident or arbitrary choice that we intro
duce after the article which treats of the specifically Christian
certainty in its central character, as resting upon itself, the
declaration regarding the opposition which is raised against
this certainty. The question as to the Why of faith, which
the Christian as theologian answers to himself in the system
of the Christian certainty, is from the first no other than that
of a " Why nevertheless," a Why, the answering of which
must take into account the oppositions raised at any time to
the positive establishing, in proportion as the certainty itself
does not by any means arise and continue without conffict
with the oppositions, without overcoming of the same.
The matter, it is true, does not so stand that the practical
Christian certainty should be conscious in its rise of this
opposition on various sides ; from this, however, it does not
follow that the conflict with the opposition was not actually
present in that process of life. The new /, of which the
Christian has become conscious as a morally necessary reality.

148 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
and in virtue of which he further assures himself of the
Christian truth, exists for him only in opposition to the old,
in an opposition not accidental but necessary, in one at the
same time whose nature helps to decide on the quality of
the spiritual /, and conversely is conditioned by the nature,
soundness, and vigour, or else the frailty and sickliness, of the
latter. And if, as we have seen, to the life of the new I,
which springs from regeneration, there belongs at the same
time the light of knowledge, as a result of which there arises
out of the substratum of its experience a new world of
notions and ideas, of conceptions, by which that which has been
experienced is recognised as necessary, it is of course clear
that these cognitions (Erkenntnisse) must come into a conflict
with the previous and continuing cognitions of the natural
man, like that into which the ethical life of the same has
entered with that of the regenerate man. The scientific task
is consequently an analogous and equally definite one, as it
was within the positive side of the Christian certainty, — that
of bringing the actual condition of the opposition, ranging
itself against the Christian certainty (and to be overcome by
it), into the consciousness, and precisely thereby exhibiting it
in its powerlessness.
2. As the Christian certainty in its principial and central
character accomplishes itself within the personality of the
man as such, rests upon a moral transformation and moulding
anew, consequently proceeds from practical, namely ethical,
factors and motives, to which then further the intellectual
knowledge and conviction attaches itself; so also the opposi
tion, which here comes in question, will not in the first place
be a theoretical, but a practical one, having its roots in the
moral position of the personality, conditioned by the bent of
will and of life on the part of the same, and only thence
advancing to the scientific fixing and formulating of the
contradiction. Just for that reason, however, will this
antithesis to the thesis of the principial Christian certainty be
rightly defined only when we comprehend it, in congruence
with the latter, as principle and source of all the particular
objections raised against the Christian truth ; as accordingly
it is a fact of the Christian experience that so soon as once
that central certainty has gained the mastery over the opposi-

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 18. 149
tion which stands immediately in its way, which fights against
it, therewith the whole edifice of objections and contradictions
resting upon that foundation is at once overthrown, or at least
these objections and contradictions are deprived of the force
which they previously possessed in their cohesion with the
fundamental opposition. For it may happen that contradictions
to the truth of the Christian faith are recognised by the
Christian as existing, as for the time being insoluble, without
its ever entering his mind on that account to become doubtful
of this truth itself; whereas with another the same contra
dictions pass as main arguments against Christianity. The
latter demands the solution of all contradictions before he will
give assent to the Christian truth, and yet the former has
attained to faith and to the certainty of faith, without such
condition being complied with for him. This diversity points
to the fact that the Yes or JVo of the Christian certainty is
decided at another point than that at which, externally
perhaps, the battle as to the truth of Christianity is waged ;
as indeed the case is not rare that the solution of a contra
diction, on the accomplishment of which the Christian certainty
seemed to depend, when really performed has not after all the
result of assuring — the counterpart to the case of the Christian,
who persists in his certainty even when an insoluble contra
diction meets him. It is with the vanquishing of the anti-
Christian opposition as with the healing of one mentally
diseased, who is perhaps the victim of a fixed idea ; it avails
nothing to prove for him the unreality of his imaginations,
not even by a fact lying manifestly before him to convict him
of his error — repelled from this point the morbid certainty
instantly seeks another to which it can attach itself; and it
is overcome only when one succeeds in penetrating down to
the lowermost source of these fictions, the real seat of the
disease, and there getting the mastery over them.
3. The annulling of the principial and central opposition,
of which accordingly we have alone to treat here, is already
virtually contained in the Christian certainty ; for otherwise
this would not exist. From this then it at once follows that
our task is not that of proving at the forum of universal
mankind, after the manner customary with apologetics, at the
tribunal of the natural judgment, the invalid nature of the

150 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
opposition ; but merely from the standpoint of the Christian
certainty, and for that certainty, to give an account to our
selves of the nature and the weakness of that opposition.
And that the Christian nevertheless pronounces this his
judgment as one of universal validity, as absolutely true, rests
upon the above discussed relation between the state of fact in
regeneration and conversion and human nature as such, which
according to the consciousness of the Christian thereby comes
to itself. What we mean then is this, that only the Christian,
who has actually overcome the opposition, really understands
it, and that the same is in itself so constituted as he under
stands and estimates it. He understands it in the first place
in its relative necessity. That is everywhere the right way
for prevailing over the oppositions, not to understand and
treat them as accidental, purely arbitrary and absolutely with
out support, but to take in their appearing in one grasp with
the inner factors of their origination, as a result whereof they
cannot be otherwise than they actually are. It has been said
that no one would condemn a man if he could perfectly look
him through and through and thus understood the inner
necessity, in virtue whereof he became and must needs become
that which he is. However little the Christian will agree
with this saying, there yet lies in it the important truth that
in the development even of that which is immoral, which at
last meets us as a result meriting reprobation, there is an
order and succession, in consequence of which this result must
necessarily come about. The statistics of crime, with their
regularly recurring or even increasing numbers, prove this
necessity, inasmuch as they thereby make manifest the fact
that it cannot be accidental, when amongst the same group
of men, at definite times, under like relations, the number of
those outbreaks of immorality conforms itself in accordance
with a fixed, recognisable rule. It is not unreservedly given
to the man in whom certain ethical factors have once become
operative, under the influence of definite circumstances and
powers soliciting from without, at pleasure to break off him
self and his genesis from the process of that genesis ; since he
after all wills the essential factors of the last-named, and
therefore also already occupies a position thereby determined
towards the influences operating from without. This know-

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 18. 151
ledge, towards which we are impelled by the results of modern
statistics, — in such wise indeed that the latter science has
been hurried away thereby into the support to some extent of
fatalistic consequences, — is no new one for the Christian, and
it can only be agreeable to him, that it should be confirmed
by the numbers furnished by statistics also. It must needs be,
says Christ, that offences come ; but without his on that
account withholding the woe upon those by whom they come ;
and according to the testimony of the apostle the wisdom from
God appears as a folly to the natural man, not as though he
could at pleasure regard it otherwise if he would, but it must
appear so to him, because as such he cannot -understand it.
By the recognition of this necessity of the opposition the
Christian is enabled to do justice in the judging and treatment
of the same ; he will thus also in the practical apologetic
action neither make claims upon the natural man, which the
latter as he is cannot fulfil, nor irritate him with the reproach
that the opposition depends merely upon an arbitrary, ground
less obstinacy.
4. But this concession to the relative necessity and inevit-
ableness of the opposition is only the first step to the second,
the recognition of its absolute futility. The Christian does
not deceive himself as to the tenacity of existence and the
severity on the part of the opposition, because he knows by
experience what is implied in overcoming it — ^just because he
knows that, however, he knows also its weakness, its inade
quacy, its nothingness. To the relative necessity of its
existence he opposes the absolute moral necessity for its
vanquishing and setting aside. The natural man cannot break
himself off, of himself, from the centre of his personality,
displace [transport] himself from a point within the natural
I to one beyond the same; but the Christian knows an
experience by the power of which this is possible, a point
outside of that /, from which point it is actually accomplished.
The lack of the central standing ground before the entrance of
the regenerate / caused a derangement of all relations, in
consequence of which the natural man could not but take
them up into his certainty in such deranged condition, and
from the standpoint of this certainty could not but regard the
Christian truth as perversion and distortion ; now by regenera-

152 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
tion placed at the point from which the previous confusion is
cleared up, the Christian not only sees otherwise than before,
but he likewise comprehends why he previously attained to
no distinctness, and why he combated as an error that of
which he is now assured as the truth. It stands therewith
somewhat as with the solution of a problem in Natural
Science, with regard to which one was previously in error,
because one started from an erroneous experience or from an
incorrect hypothesis. The conclusions to which one came
were in themselves rightly deduced and yet false in their
result, the whole was false ; after the right experience, how
ever, had been made the foundation of the whole, one came
not only to another result, which might perhaps be opposed
to the first with equal probability, but one comprehended also
along with the truth of the last the error of the first, — the
error not merely accidental, but under the given circumstances
necessary, — in such wise indeed that one therewith simul
taneously recognised the absolute groundlessness of that error.
And this knowledge then serves, as is self-evident, for the
confirmation of the certainty recently received.
§ 19. The fundamental contradiction to the Christian truth
rests immediately upon the incongruity between the natural
experience and knowledge of the subject, and the spiritual
realities of which it is a question in connection with the
assuring of the Christian. Clad in the garb of human
thought and human language, those spiritual realities, in so
far as they are so clad, admit also of an experience and
knowledge of a natural kind, which, however, owing to the
heterogeneousness between object and subject remaining
after all, necessarily offends against the natural - moral
certainty already present, and therewith challenges the
contradiction of the latter.
1. That a homogeneity between object and subject is
required for a real experience, which is sensible of the
objective being, and by knowledge founded thereon leads to
certainty, this was the general proposition which we found
confirmed as well in the case of the natural as in that of the

THE OPPOSITION IN PEINCIPLE, § 19. 153
specifically Christian certainty, although confirmed in a different
way. Therefore it lies already in the consequence of that which
has been heretofore discussed, that if the natural consciousness
does not attain to certainty with regard to the objects of
the Christian truth, — but, on the contrary, an opposition
manifests itself between them and this consciousness, — the
ground, not indeed the sole ground, but the immediate and
most essential ground for this must exist in the heterogeneity
between object and subject. And, after having above more
nearly indicated the proceeding by which that homogeneity is
first established in the interest of the Christian experience and
assuring, we need only to deduce from this declaration of the
Christian consciousness what is implied thereby as to the
relation of the natural subject to the objects of the Christian
certainty. It is true a homogeneity existing in itself (an sich
seiende) subsists here also as the highest previous condition for
the possibility of Christian experience at all (§ 13. 3) ; but
that whicli exists in itself is not yet on that account something
existing for, and accessible to, man in his concrete nature ; it
denominates only that which attaches to man with the design
in his creation, the ground of possibility for the real genesis of
that homogeneity to ^vhich the natural man, as distinguished
from other created beings, is able to attain, and is under obligation
to attain ; the capacity of the man for experiencing in himself
such moral transfoimation is thereby indicated — of experienc
ing this, and, on the ground of the regeneration, on his part
accomplishing it in himself, whereby the idea of his destina
tion, which, however, only with regeneration is recognised as
attaching to his essential nature, is realized. When, now, the
new I of the Christian knows itself as one that has arisen,
been brought about by an act of creative influence, in which
the identity and the homogeneity henceforth with the object
of the certainty (§ 17. 4) is itself one which has arisen ; there
follows therefrom, without further demonstration, the actual
concrete incongruence between the natural / and the object of
the Christian truth, in consequence whereof no corresponding
reciprocal action and experience can ensue ; and if the essence
of the moral transformation experienced consists in this, that
the / of regeneration maintains itself in continual conflict with
the natural I and its bent of will (§ 15. 6), this new /, however.

154 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
is conscious of itself as an essential object of Christian truth
(§ 17. 3), the deduction inevitably follows, that that relation
of incongruence involves at the same time the necessary
opposition, contradiction, conflict of the natural subject against
the Christian truth. For the Christian, accordingly, this
opposition of the natural man to the Christian truth is so far
from presenting something strange, unsettling to his certainty,
that, on the contrary, his certainty must needs be shaken if it
were otherwise ; just as certain as the Christian truth is for
him, just so certain for him is the necessity of the opposition,
without which it would not be this truth ; and just as it is
the case in the practical domain, that the Christian, if he is
in the right spiritual state of mind, " thinks it not strange
concerning the fiery trial which is to try him, as though some
strange thing happened unto him" (1 Pet. iv. 12), but rather
finds therein an occasion for spiritual joy ; so is it not less the
case in the theoretical, that, through the combating of the
Christian truth on the part of the natural man, this truth only
evidences itself to the Christian as that of which he is assured
with regard to it, and thereby his certainty is strengthened.
2. Nevertheless, it would be altogether erroneous to stop
short at this negative defining of the relation between the
O D
natural I and the Christian truth. For how would that
opposition, which we have just recognised as necessary, be
possible, unless it were founded on a positive experience of the
object on the part of the natural man, by means of which he
is challenged to a protestation against the same 1 In order to
contradict it he must in some way have become acquainted with
it, must have received therefrom an impression which is in
collision with the certainty dwelling in him ; therefore we
have denied above, not the reciprocal action and experience in
general, but that corresponding to, and adequate for, the natural
subject. And just this positive experience and cognition it is
which, in order to grasp the opposition by the root, we have
here to trace. The spiritual realities which make up the
Christian truth, although they are not of this world, as to
their genesis do not lie within the circumference of the natural
objects, yet, in accordance with their destination, enter into
this world, and clothe themselves — inasmuch as they are
apprehended, pursued, recognised, and expressed by men — in

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 19. 155
the garb of human thoughts and human language ; as, indeed,
this is the necessary consequence of the fact, that by the recep
tion of them the man comes to himself, and is in human
consciousness assured of their truth. We bear the treasure in
earthen vessels, not merely in the sense that this earthly,
universally human, is the place in which the elements of truth
exist ; but also in the sense that this truth itself has assumed
human nature and essence, has presented itself under a human
form,has embodied itself in accordance with the conditions of the
earthly-human existence. We are not at all speaking as yet of
the mingling of those elements of truth with human defect and
error, certainly also wrought hereby, and for the understanding of
theopposition likewise of great significance; but of the fact alone,
that it is the form of earthly realities, human thoughts, finite
images and conceptions, in which this truth takes shape, and
is now present as an object of the world of natural experience
like other objects. But because, and in so far as, this is the
case, there is also for the natural subject an experience and
cognition of the realities of the Christian truth, which stands
upon a like level with the natural experience and cognition in
general. We can form to ourselves a clear conception of the
matter by the analogy of the special experiences which, within
the natural domain, are made by individuals, and then become
object of universal experience and cognition. The peculiar
mental state of the poet, that which he inwardly experiences
when the spirit of poetic production seizes upon him, and
before his inner eye transforms the ordinary reality into poetry ;
or what, for instance, the composer feels when his emotion
pours itself forth in tones, and a corresponding musical thought
is called forth and fashions itself in him ; these and the like
are peculiar experiences made by none save those indivi
duals who are endowed with the gift of poetic or musical
production. The poets, the composers, however, have given
expression to that which passed within them in those moments
of artistic conception and creation, in the birth-hours of their
artistic productions, and what they have expressed clothes
itself in a form which admits of the universal experiencing and
cognition of that with which they have made practical acquaint
ance, in such wise that he, too, can understand and speak of it
who has not made personal acquaintance therewith. Now, it is

156 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
evident that the process of experience and cognition, whereby
the contents of that peculiar experience become a common
possession of knowledge, is other than that of the immediate
artistic experience (Erleben), and that the latter does not cease
to be a peculiar one, on account of the fact that, when it is
expressed, it assumes a universally human and universally
intelligible form. It may happen, however, even here, that
what is expressed is as such understood, it is true, but appears
absurd and ridiculous to him who hears it, when the experi
ence of the artist touches in him no chord at all akin — think
of that which men are commonly wont to call " absence of
mind " in those who, in the moments of intellectual or artistic
conception, are as it were snatched away from the sphere of
the natural, ordinary life. And yet it is here, in every case,
only the natural I which makes the peculiar experience, and
what it experiences is, just for this reason, in itself — apart
from the universally human form of manifestation — incom
parably easier of acces.s, than that which in its sources lies
absolutely beyond this natural /, in its genesis and nature is
experienced solely by the spiritual /, which latter itself arises
only from that which has been experienced in regeneration.
3. Now it will be clear when we say that an intelligence
of all the realities which constitute the Christian truth, in so
far as they have entered into the human form of appearance,
is possible to the natural subject, in accordance with the fact
that they meet him after the manner of natural realities.
This is the reason why there is a theologia irregenitorum.
Men compute, in the study of it, with the given quantities,
and the calculation may as such be correct ; just as in mathe
matics one can rightly calculate with definite formulas,
without needing to possess an acquaintance with the realities
to which they have reference. But then the relation between
the natural subject and the Christian truth is from the outset
vitiated by a contradiction, which conditions the fundamental
opposition to this truth, since, under the homogeneity which
renders possible the natural cognition, there remains the
inner and essential disparity between object and subject ; and
the latter now of necessity equalizes the spiritual realities, of
which he has become sensible by the way of natural ex
perience, with those which otherwise form the contents of his

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 19. 157
experience ; consequently judges of them, and must judge of
them, according to the standard of the natural certainty.
Let us try at once to make the matter clear by a concrete
example. The facts of sacred history, as they present them
selves to us in the Gospels, and as such form an essential part
of the truth of which the Christian subject is assured, are as
historic data, delivered to us in word and ¦writing, object of
the historic experience and cognition, just in the same way
as this is the case with other facts which have happened
naturally. Since, then, there dwells in the natural conscious
ness a definite certainty regarding the course of natural facts
in harmony with experience, — that experience, however, which
corresponds to the character and conditions of those evan
gelical facts is wanting to it, — it must of necessity apply to
them the standard of the natural experience and cognition,
and that which is contradictory in the same, as compared with
the character of the facts known from other sources, must
result in an opposition of the natural consciousness to these
heterogeneous realities - — an opposition the terminating of
which lies not within the power of the so constituted subject.
Therefore then either the simple negation, according to which
these contradicting facts are to be regarded as fables ; or, if
single ones of these facts refuse to be set aside by such
negation, the endeavour to discover, behind and between the
facts handed down to us, the actual history, homogeneous to
the natural certainty. Nevertheless we have not here to do
with a portion of the Christian truth lying without the subject;
but in the first instance with this truth only inasmuch as the
new I knows itself identical therewith, with that transforma
tion of the moral life which is accomplished in regeneration
and conversion. That the natural subject can acquire an
intelligence of this truth in the sense above indicated cannot
be doubted, and beyond the measure of this natural intelligence
we intentionally do not pass here ; it is equally certain, how
ever, that the natural I cannot but oppose that truth with
all its might, and the more intensely, the more it is conscious
and certain of itself. For thus much at any rate the natural
subject understands of the object approaching him as Chris
tian truth, that with this a verdict, a judgment is pronounced
upon his person — which judgment rejects and threatens with

158 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
annihilation not something about the person, but this person
itself in its present ethical quality ; and the less the possi
bility and the necessity of this subversion of the whole ethical
existence has become apparent for him in the implanting of
the new /, the less he is in a position to recognise this de
throning and slaying of the natural /, as something in
consonance with his true nature as man, — a knowledge of
which only the new man becomes conscious, — so much the
more energetically will the impulse towards self-preservation,
which is immanent in the natural subject, rise against such
an unreasonable demand and judgment ; so much the more
definitely the natural certainty deny to the approaching
object the character of truth. Nay, the collision must from
the nature of the case be here a more violent one, than
where it is only a question of an object of the Christian truth
lying external to the man himself, as in the instance above
adduced. For in that case there was at stake only the reality
of facts which, apparently at least, leave the natural subject
as he is ; past facts, whose claim to acceptance may be
judged of on its own merits, in so far as the subject has no
interest in expressing and following up the contradiction in
which, regarded in themselves, they stand with his certainty.
Thus accordingly a proclamation of the facts of redemption,
as of the economy of salvation, presenting itself in a purely
notional form, in the objective shape of doctrine, can under
some circumstances be listened to for a time without par
ticular contradiction on the part of the natural man ; whereas
the opposition becomes at once manifest, where the Christian
testimony makes itself felt in its immediateness and in direct
assault upon the state of life of the natural /. In every case,
however, this contradiction is possible only in so far as the
natural subject is able to acquire an understanding of that
Christian truth, which forces itself upon him, in the way of
natural experience and cognition, as the means whereby alike
the incongruence and antithetical character of the Christian
object is, as to its contents, brought home to his consciousness
and rouses the natural certainty against this object.
§ 20. The opposition of the natural 7" to the Christian truth,
already existing in itself, becomes so much the more intense

i i

THE OPPOSITION IN PEINCIPLE, § 20. 159
and vigorous, in proportion as, on the approach of this truth
to the subject, impulses proceed from it which — as dis
tinguished from the impressions of the natural experience
— bring with them the germinal beginning (Ansatz) and the
possibility for the transformation of the moral condition of
life, and hereby convert the moral antagonism, already
immanent in the natural man, into a decisive conflict
between the rising new I and the old / itself.
1. We appeal once more for the experience, to which we
have here to give expression regarding the fundamental anta
gonism towards the Christian truth, not to the assent
(admission) of the natural subject as it is in itself, — notwith
standing the fact that the opposition in question arises within
the natural subjects, — but to the Christian consciousness of
the regenerate and converted man, as one who first, in virtue
of the moral transformation he has undergone, understands
and appreciates the natural / as it is in itself. And we
believe we are in harmony with the experience of this Chris
tian consciousness when, — although in reality the spiritual
impressions of the Christian truth upon the natural subject
are wont frequently to be combined with the previously
discussed natural perception of the same \sc. truth], — never
theless, with a view to the cognition, we distinguish the latter
from the former, and now have regard only to the opposition
arising upon the accession of these peculiar impressions. Nor
can one assert, looking at the experience of the Christian
consciousness, that the spiritual influences of the Christian
truth had always and inseparably co-operated with the natural
perception of that truth as received in the form of a natural
object ; but it is the ubi et quando visum est Beo} which forces
itself in the first instance upon the Christian consciousness,
even though here it may not as yet be a question of the efficere
fldem, but only of the resistance in the natural man which
precedes this operation. We do not in thus speaking by any
means claim to have decided the dogmatic question, whether,
upon every contact of the subject with the object of the
Christian truth, spiritual powers may not proceed from this
• Augiisiana, art. 5.

100 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
truth and influence the subject ; for this fact were certainly
possible, without such constant influence being brought home
to the consciousness of the man : only we would not for that
very reason undertake to derive the proof for this from the
Christian consciousness, within the bounds of which we here
speak of such influences ; but this consciousness distinguishes,
in its recollection, times in which the natural subject came in
contact with the Christian truth in the form and with the
operation of a natural object, from moments in which the
spiritual impressions combined with those natural ones, or
were experienced in addition to the same.
2. Of the opposition of the natural / to the Christian
truth we thus say, that it assumes greater vigour and inten
sity, in proportion as those impressions, to which the Christian
su'nject owes his regeneration, attach themselves and gain
ground in the natural subject, and that from this point of
view we are able yet more definitely to comprehend the nature
and the necessary character of the fundamental contradiction.
We 'may recognise this even externally, in the fact that not
seldom, as a matter of history, as well in the life of the single
individual as in the periods of conflict of the Christian Church,
the strongest effort of contradiction immediately borders upon
a victory of the Christian principle, which follows upon it.
It is often only the last effervescence of the natural man
before his decisive defeat, which is manifested in the violence
of his antichristian behaviour ; and those periods of the
Church verily take not the lowest rank in the history of her
victories, in which the whole energy of the world-power was
concentrated, whether in outward persecutions or with the
intellectual means at its command, for one great assault upon
the Christian truth and its representatives. This is explained
from the fact that in such case the powers of regeneration
have already succeeded in penetrating into the citadel of the
natural /, and that the latter, now menaced in its existence,
summons all its forces to defend itself against the enemy
threatening it close at hand. For so long as the natural
subject knows himself secure in his possession, he can exert
his opposition to the object of truth — as recognised in the
natural manner — in the form of indifference ; and this will
now in the same measure give way to the interest in the

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 20. 161
removal and annihilating of that object, to personal excitement
and irritation against the truth, as the natural subject sees
itself impeded by this truth in the free exercise of its dominion,
or sees this dominion itself imperilled. Just thereby, how
ever, is here confirmed in this negative domain that which we
have above recognised in connection with the positive exposi
tion of the process of the Christian assuring, namely, that it
is in the first instance impressions involuntarily received
which, on the part of the factors of the new birth, exert an
influence on the subject, of such kind, however, as immediately
bring with them an /-forming power ; whence it accordingly
follows that a conflict for the dominion becomes at once a
conflict of the man with himself, with another I rising within
him. And this germinal beginning of the new I does not
appear arbitrarily at any point whatever of the personal life of
the natural man, but at that point where there is already
present, as we have seen above, in this personal life itself, an
opposition of diverse, morally conflicting motions of the will ;
while by the involuntarily received influence of the spiritual
factors that opposition is enlarged and deepened, in that the
whole natural life is recognised as a life in contradiction with
the Christian idea with which the spiritual / identifies itself
This knowledge, however, has such a far-reaching force,
threatening the existence of the natural I, because it recog
nises the latter as that which it is and was in its real
condition, and the idea of the Christian life as that to which
human nature in itself points [which is aimed at in the con
stitution of human nature] ; thus is not a knowledge of
something absolutely new, only now in its genesis, but of
something in itself having a being, existing, valid, — -which
only till now has remained concealed from the subject, — so
that now the natural faculties of humanity, hitherto detained
in the service of the natural /, immediately gravitate towards
that newly constituted centre of the nature, in order to place
themselves at its disposal.
3. If we now recall to mind the fact that the influence of
the factors of regeneration at once calls forth a spontaneity of
the subject corresponding to these impressions, in virtue of
which [spontaneity] one may attain to a spiritual experience,
and that with these elements of life is associated a knowledge
L

162 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
corresponding to them, we thus obtain, in the first instance,
an insight into the complicated character of the fundamental
opposition, which the natural subject takes up towards the
Christian truth. And if anything whatever can serve to
guard against the external mode of apprehending this opposi
tion, as though it might be set aside in the way of apologetics,
e.g. by the removal of an intellectual difficulty placed in the
foreground, and to bring about a discreet practical deportment
in the conflict with that opposition, it is such a knowledge of
the confused surging of conflicting elements, and of moral
decisions deep in the inner nature of the man, to which
[decisions] one here comes in the last instance. There is
need, in connection with these birth-throes of the rising
spiritual man, of a naievTiK-q te'^vi], in a sense higher than
the Socratic one, for him who will aid the new birth to a
successful issue ; and neither the TreiOol (70(f>La<i Xoyoi (1 Cor.
ii. 4) will accomplish it, nor yet that violent attempt to take
by storm, which calls forth the resistance and indignation of
the natural man. For things are now actually in such
position, that, with the enlarging and deepening of the moral
opposition, already present in the natural subject, into one
embracing this natural l itself, that freedom and self-decision
here returns which the subject already possessed in that
lower domain, the faculty for transposing the moral centre of
gravity of its being to the one side or to the other. It is
true, not at once ; the first consequence, on the other hand,
is the sense of disquietude on the question whether the moral
centre, about which the natural / gravitates, is one congruent
with human nature, according to its immanent aim (Bestim-
mung), now at single moments rising into the consciousness —
a light spontaneously shed upon this previous moral state,
which [light], however, is not yet within the power of the
subject, but rather convinces the latter at the same time of
the impossibility of defending this state of life, and of his
powerlessness of himself to relinquish it. And yet this
conviction of powerlessness itself is one of those impressions
by which is germinally implanted the power to yield oneself
spontaneously to the impressions : the thought which compre
hends the unstable and powerless /, which thereby opposes
itself to it, is itself the radiation of an infixed impression of

THE OPPOSITION IN PEINCIPLE, § 21. 163
the spiritual factors, an impression which, at first received as
something heterogeneous, may possibly become consolidated,
and shape itself into the centre of the new /. Yet with all
this, the natural / is at this stadium the centrally determin
ing and dominant subject, and it is explicable therefrom that
the energy of the conflict can on no point be greater, the
opposition nowhere of a more fundamental nature than here,
where it is not a question of the maintenance of this or that
particular object in the possession of the natural man, but of
his very own existence and dominion ; it is comprehensible
that all things which the natural / can oppose to the inroads
of its deadly foe — whether good or bad, moral or intellectual,
real or apparent reasons — are only so many weapons in its
hand ; it is intelligible that these weapons, however important
they may be for the decision of the conflict, are but means to
an end, that they are not to be confounded with the subject
who makes use of them, that we have to distinguish the anti
thesis of secondary rank from the antitheses in principle and
of a fundamental nature.
§ 21. As regards the object, the fundamental opposition is
conditioned by misapprehension of the treasure of the
Christian truth, which is communicated to the subject by
means of the Christian moral transformation ; in such wise,
namely, that apparent or real treasures, which the subject
possesses and understands, are opposed to the treasure of
the Christian truth, which he possesses and understands
either not at all, or but inadequately: a self-deception
partly involuntary, partly voluntary,
1. Hitherto we have taken into consideration solely the
particular condition (Zustandlichkeit) of the subject, from
which the fundamental contradiction to the Christian truth
develops itself. This condition is not one everywhere the
same, even where the simply natural certainty coincides with
the natural impressions and experiences of the Christian
objects, and still less where spiritual impressions come in
addition to these natural ones, and thereby enhance the oppo
sition while they afford the possibility of overcoming it.
Still, however, the mode of the conflict, so far as it is a ques-

164 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
tion of the opposition in principle, bears a character of unity and
uniformity, based upon the fact that even that which is anti-
godly is not something simply arbitrary, void of law, incalcul
able, but is accomplished in accordance with an inner logic, of
which we have already spoken above. There is method even
in madness ; and it is a rational consequence from delibera
tions, computations, resolves, in virtue whereof the man comes
to contradict the Christian truth, and to dismiss it from him.
It is just this method of carrying on the conflict which we
have now to take more particularly into consideration, to
observe the relation to each other of those objects which
constitute the prize and motive of the conflict; and it is self-
evident that the understanding of that objective side of the
opposition must entirely base itself upon the presupposed and
characterized condition of the subject.
2. It is a question apart, whether there can be a complete
acquaintance with the good of the Christian truth, combined
with a conscious, resolute, and permanent declining of this
good, — a question which, put in this universal way, can
receive its answer only perhaps in dogmatics and ethics, not,
however, in the system of the Christian certainty. For we
are not here touched by the difficulty whether one is able to
conceive that a being created by God as good, standing in
communion with Him the highest good, should be able, by an
act of free determination, to surrender the possession of this
good, and the blessedness of this possession, in exchange for a
good of its own choice, the vanity of which must, as it seems,
have been perceived from a comparison with that possession.
The condition of sinlessness on the part of the subject,
presupposed in connection therewith, withdraws itself from
the experience and the consciousness even of the regenerate
Christian ; ancl since our task is limited within the circle
enclosed by this consciousness, we are thus deprived of
the possibility of solving that problem with the means at
hand. Only to this extent do we approach it more nearly,
when the Christian knows a contradiction of the Christian
truth, a defection therefrom or in connection therewith, on
the part of those who have tasted and understood the good
thereof; and we should not do justice to the question before
us if we refused to take this contradiction — likewise funda-

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 21. 165
mental — into consideration. Though, however, the analogy
of the opposition to the Christian truth in this case may, on
account of the previous possession of that truth, warrant
inferences in favour of the possibility and the quality of that
primseval opposition ; yet we must not in our reasoning over
look the permanent difference which exists in the twofold
nature of the Christian, the division of his being into the
natural and sinful and the new, spiritual man.
3. The experience which the Christian makes — by reason
of his own conversion and the moral conditions which
preceded it, as well as in virtue of the understanding of
those conditions in others, yet unconverted, which is proper
to him alone — as to the character of the fundamental con
tradiction, is this, that the struggle against the Christian
truth is conditioned by the misjudging of its good in com
parison with the goods in which the subject till then sought
and found the gratification of itself. It is a self-delusion
in which the natural man is involved while maintaining this
opposition, and which, after the opposition is overcome, he
recognises as such. The prize, for which he is to surrender
the real or imaginary goods, seems to him not worth the
sacrifice, even though it should seem possible to him to make
it. For thus much, as we have seen, the natural man also
understands, — to whom the Christian truth presents itself in
form of a natural object, — that it is a question, in order to
appropriate the same, of giving up that on which his / had
hitherto rested, those goods with which till then his heart
had been inseparably bound up. These goods he knows and
loves, and not as isolated and accidental ones ; but, on the
contrary, his self-supposing and self-asserting is eo ipso the
supposing of these goods. We are thinking in the first
instance not of directly sinful enjoyments, of a self-grati
fication of the natural / which under all circumstances gain
says the verdict, powerless as this verdict may be, of the
better moral insight. Doubtless, in this case too, the objective
form of the conflict is the same, in so far as the unbridled
gratification of the sinful pleasure, in which he finds enjoy
ment, seems to the subject to be a higher good than the good
of the Christian truth, as regards which he instantly recog
nises that it will put an end to this enjoyment. But we are

166 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
thinking primarily of real goods, which afford real satisfaction
of its kind ; of goods which are so, too, in the eyes of the
Christian, save that he cannot accord to them the central and
fundamental position which the natural man assigns to them.
We need only to call tp mind, for instance, the times of the
first conflict between Christianity and the heathen Eoman
State-power, in order to have at hand the concrete examples
of such antagonism. The more earnestly disposed a Eoman
was in relation to his country, the more the spirit of his
ancestors animated him, the more he was filled with the
thought that only entire surrender to the aim and interests
of the State had made his country that which it had become ;
just so much more energetically must he struggle against the
Christian truth, which seemed not to protect, but on the
contrary to abandon the long approved good of patriotic feel
ing and self-devotion ; against this supposed good, which
demanded the tearing of the heart from the noblest treasures
of the national life, and divested them of their absolute
worth. For this highest good, which first assigns to the
others their place and restores them to the man after he has
sacrificed all other pearls for the one pearl, he did not com
prehend, whereas he knew and appreciated those which he
was called to surrender. Nor could he comprehend it, so
long as it presented itself to him in the form of a natural
object, so long as there was not disclosed to him, by some
spiritual experience or other, the essence and worth of that
which, naturally regarded and apprehended among the things
of natural experience, must appear to him as fanaticism and
world-shunning, if not even as something worse. Thus that
becomes again evident which we have called the relative
necessity of the opposition to the Christian truth. Where
heart and mind are thus disposed, it is not possible but
such antagonism should manifest itself Nor is it, rightly
regarded, at all to be wished or demanded that such an one
should forthwith thrust from him the goods upon which he
has rested his all (sein Selbst), in order to exchange them for
an unknown possession ; and those as a rule do not become
the most stedfast and faithful Christians who without con
flict and resistance embrace the Christian truth. The prize,
for which one yields oneself up, must be worthy of the

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 21. 167
sacrifice. Pascal is right when he says that " nothing is
more cowardly than wishing to play the hero against God : ''
but we must first have known this God, if we are to deride
the heroism of the natural man as cowardice ; and it is true
when he adds, " Christ alone is the God whom one approaches
without pride, and before whom one abases oneself without
despair ; " but in order that one may assume this position
towards Christ, a beam of the glory of Christ must first have
fallen into the heart. Nor does it happen in this way that
such misjudging of the good of the Christian truth now, after
the latter has entered into history and has to a certain extent
become naturalized, does not equally as before determine the
contradictory verdict of the natural man. What is of more
frequent occurrence than the misconception, that surrender to
the Christian truth makes the man unfree and deprives him
of perfect accessibility for the true and beautiful wherever it
may be found ? And who will deny that this accessibility
and receptiveness is a noble possession, and the uncorrupted
sense of truth, which fearlessly and in all cases looks the
facts in the face, is a real virtue ? Instead of this we are, it
is said, to tie ourselves to an alleged truth, which demands
absolute belief and forbids unbelief as sin, to a truth which
is jealous of its supreme and sole validity, a truth which pre
occupies the mind for whole domains of life and of research.
But the fact of this judgment itself is a proof that the good
of the Christian truth — whereby he who has surrendered
himself to it comes to himself and becomes master of himself
— has been misjudged and misunderstood by the man who
pronounces on it : otherwise just that would appear to him as
freedom which he calls false restraint, and that standing place
for observation would appear to him the normal one, which
has been transferred back from the periphery to the centre,
the centre of divine and therefore also of created truth. And
yet, on the other hand, the supposition is not incorrect that
those noble possessions, on account of which the natural man
withstands the Christian truth, must in the first instance be
surrendered by him, in order that he may receive them again
in greater plenty and purity ; for here also the twofold saying
of Christ applies on the one hand, " If any man hate not his
father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and

168 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple ; "
and, on the other, " Every one that hath forsaken houses, or
brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children,
or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive it an hundred
fold." 4. But in most instances the matter is not so simple as
here, where the fundamental opposition of the natural man is
explained from the naturally necessary misjudgment of the
Christian truth, to whatever extent we must always have that
primitive state of the case before the mind for the understand
ing of this misjudgment. For we certainly must not forget
that the gratification which arises to the natural man, from
the real or apparent possessions in which his / seeks its
centre of repose, is no complete and abiding one ; but one
which always leaves behind in him, consciously or un
consciously, a sense of lack and disappointment — the actual
proof for the contradiction, as yet unresolved, between his
inherent destination and his real existence, as gravitating
and fluctuating outside of the centre. Against this the full
and lasting force of the contradiction breaks from the first,
and the desire is enkindled for making the attempt also with
other possessions. And this in truth is only a part and mode
of expression of the conflict between the ought and the can,
between the sense of what one is and the conception of what
one should be, which, without being brought to a final issue,
stirs likewise the heart of the natural man. Then, moreover,
we have to take into consideration that which has been
observed above as to the connectedness of the natural impres
sions of the Christian truth with the spiritual impulses of
that truth, and of the implanting of a spiritual spontaneity in
consequence of this process ; in order now, out of all this
together, to understand the conflict for the possessions in its
concrete manifestation. Eegarded^er se (and consentaneously
with the normal course), taste and enjoyment of the spiritual
good, combined with the spiritual activity received in such
experience, would advance side by side with the sense —
awakened, or enhanced and refined, by the same impulses—
of the unsatisfying nature of those treasures hitherto cherished
and constituting the ethical basis of the subject ; and thus
accordingly very soon, in virtue of the forming of the spiritual

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 21. 169
/, of the ascending gradation of its strength, of the growing
estrangement from those comparative or unreal treasures, of
the enhanced consciousness of the absoluteness and fulness of
the spiritual treasure, the shifting of the centre of gravity to
this treasure in conversion would ensure. The process, how
ever, is no physical one, but an ethical one ; and at once, with
the spontaneity on the ground of the impressions received,
arises the possibility of conditioning the kind of further
influence by ethical conduct, of deranging it by misconduct,
and, by false refraction of the incident impulses, of setting
the Christian truth in a wrong light. This takes place
so much the more easily, the less the natural impres
sions are at once separated for the consciousness from
the spiritual ones, and the more the still ruling natural /
avails itself of this confusion of the impressions and of the
existing obscurity, in order to suppress the feeling left by the
spiritual impulses and thereby to maintain itself in its
imperilled dominion. Thence then arise " caricatures of that
which is sacred " in place of the pure and noble forms of the
Christian truth as this impresses itself — caricatures in which
one perceives that they are distortions of the elements of
truth, not such misconceptions and misconstructions as are to
be set down simply to the account of the incongruent natural
judgment and faculty. Thus the nature of the opposition
between the relative goods, which the natural man wrongfully
invested with absolute worth, and the actually highest good
of the Christian truth, now apprehended, may be an object
of misconception and misconstruction ; as in the Middle
Ages, and even earlier, true conversion not seldom coincided
with a monkish shunning of the world and a morbid ten
dency to asceticism, or, as in the Evangelical Church, pietism
was not able to discover the true relation between the
absolute and the relative goods. The good of the Christian
truth also, which in itself is not doctrine, but only in a
secondary manner clothes itself in the human form of
doctrine, may at once for the intellect identify itself with
this form, and may continue to identify itself with the latter
on all the sides in which it has been ecclesiastically moulded
and fixed ; in such wise that the inner relation — that of
the experimental appropriation to the treasure, and more

170 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
particularly to the portions of truth connected with this
treasure as the central object — is clouded, a phenomenon
everywhere apparent in the base external orthodoxy. Mis
constructions of this kind, which we can point to as actually
furnished in history, are not the result of the simple and
natural misunderstanding and contradiction, but the effect of
real spiritual impressions and experiences, dimmed, however,
by the impure medium of a faulty spontaneity, often likewise
determined by depravation of the factors in the hand of those
through whom those impressions reached the subject. As
opposed then to such misconstructions, the natural /, which
espouses the cause not of absolute untruth, but of that which
is relatively true and good, acquires a certain right, though
only relative right of resistance ; and the mode of conflict
accordingly fashions itself in such wise, that those relative
goods, which the natural man possesses, are opposed to the
accidental perversions and distortions of the absolute good,
and thereby appear so much the more to advantage. So
much dust is then raised that the true object of the conflict
is lost sight of, the sickly asceticism loses its cause against
the free unfolding of the fair nature, the pietists lapse into
rationalists, the idols fall before the champions of intellectual
freedom, the sickliness of that which is on account of its
Christian character a " beautiful soul " forms the relative
justiflcation for withdrawing from its influences. Above all,
however, it is the alleged moral failings of those who are
acknowledged as representatives of the Christian life, on
which the fundamental opposition of the natural T fixes for
the warding off of the spiritual impulses close pressing it.
However dull the judgment of the natural man may be when
it is a question of discerning his own moral state of life,
however liberal this judgment as to the failings of like-
minded men, it is proportionately severe with regard to the
moral defects of Christians. This is based in part upon-
the just recognition of the fact that the Christian truth
makes other and higher demands, upon the man who has
surrendered himself to it, than those which the natural man
is wont to make upon himself, and to this extent the greater
severity of the judgment is here well founded and warranted ;
if one observes, however, at the same time the satisfaction

THE OPPOSITION IN PEINCIPLE, § 21. 171
with -which the discovery of such defects is usually
accompanied, the zeal with which it is followed up, one easily
recognises that those who have been struck by the spiritual
impressions, and yet resist these impressions, are seeking
therein to obtain a hold for their resistance, a soothing of
their troubled conscience ; that they are glad herewith to be
able to break off — from the attraction and the call experienced
in themselves — the point which has smitten them.
5. In the fact that the natural I as long as possible does
not directly declare its contradiction to the Christian truth, but
puts forward motives for the same which are not the principal
one, nay, often serve merely as a pretext for refusal, there
expresses itself the involuntary consciousness that such con
tradiction is, in its true and innermost essence, an unwarranted
and indefensible one. Not that the natural subject is always
conscious of this its tactics, and purposes to deceive others
as to the true condition and as to the real motives for the
opposition ; it is just as frequently, nay, more frequently,
self-delusion, self-deception, with which the subject, in the
first instance, conceals from himself the state of the case, for
the reason that concealment contributes to the quieting of
himself. The example of the call of Moses, Ex. iii., iv., is
adapted to render apparent to us the accidental reasons for the
contradiction which the / advances, as distinguished from
the final and essential one. To the demand : Come now,
I will send thee to Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my
people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt, he replies, in the
first place: Who am /, that I should go unto Pharaoh,
and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of
Egypt ? Then the Lord removes for him this difficulty,
which one cannot speak of as other than well grounded, and
says : / will be with thee. Immediately, however, Moses
opposes to the call another and not less specious objection ;
Even though he mentions to the Israelites the name of the
God of the fathers as having sent him, will they really believe
him and hearken to his voice? And when the Lord now
furnishes him with miraculous signs, which will certainly
constrain the Israelites to the recognition of the divine
mission of him who has been called, he instantly finds another
obstacle : 0 mj Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore

172 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
nor since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant ; I am slow of
speech and of a slow tongue. Now, first, after the Lord has
shown to him the futility of this last pretext for refusal,
the innermost and direct contradiction — which was only
mancEuvring with all the counter reasons — driven from its
hiding-place, comes forth to the light of day : My Lord, send
whom Thou wilt send ! But when the disobedience of the
natural man appears thus nakedly and without disguise, it
manifests at the same time its invalidity and is broken.
Moses in all this was far from consciously wishing to deceive
Jehovah, but his natural / unconsciously deceived himself:
fallitur et fallit (cf. 2 Tim. iii. 13). From this, however, it
now follows as a final result, that the relative claim which
the natural / maintains in its conflict against the Christian
truth — whether by the putting forward of real obstacles and
difficulties, or by the stress laid upon relative goods in opposi
tion to the absolute good misunderstood or misrepresented —
proves itself simply and in its ultimate ground to be futile.
As we have found in the formation of the new / by regene
ration and conversion the independent (in sich selbst ruhende.'*)
foundation of the Christian certainty, so in like manner the
contradiction given to the Christian truth has led us back to
the conflict between the old / and the new, and the certainty
of the futility of this contradiction coincides therefore, of
necessity, with the positive certainty which is afforded in the
new life state of the Christian — as true, that which ought to
be, that which corresponds to the idea of man — for the I of
regeneration. § 22. The uncertainty, in which even the Christian feels him
self involved for a time with regard to the justice of that
gainsaying of the Christian truth, is in its ultimate ground
conditioned by the interruption and arresting of that moral
process of life by which the implanting of the new / con
stantly accomplishes itself.
1. If we felt constrained above to decline attempting an
answer to the question, how the contradiction to the absolute
truth primarily arose, we cannot, on the other hand, rid our
selves of the necessity for the investigation, how it is to be

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 22. 173
explained that the certainty, where it exists in the power of
a Christian life-walk, under particular circumstances relapses
into uncertainty, even if it is not altogether lost. For that
which is here in question is a fact, the occurrence of which is
attested as well by history as by the experience of individual
Christians, and one which as such is not even denied by those
who teach the impossibility of falling from a state of grace in
the presupposition of an absolute predestination.^ But on
our part we have not at all to do here with those dogmatic
articles which have reference to the possibility of falling from
the Christian state, but only with the psychological processes
and phenomena which characterize the uncertainty arising
for a time in the case of the Christian also, and wliich enable
him to comprehend the fact that, and the manner in which,
just that certainty may vanish which he possesses in the state
of regeneration. And it must be demanded from the outset
that the key to the explanation of those intellectual moral
processes be contained in that which precedes, since we have
here to pursue the retrograde process, in comparison with the
genesis of the Christian certainty above pointed out ; so that
thus the possibility of rendering that process intelligible with
the given means is the test for the accuracy of our presenta
tion of the rising certainty.
2. The basing of the essential Christian certainty, not upon
an intellectual, but primarily upon a moral fact, brings with
it the consequence that for the Christian too, despite his
certainty, a number of points are left uncleared up, enigmas,
doubts remain, as in the natural, so not less in the spiritual
domain ; which, however, in themselves are just as little able
to shake the existing faith as they were able to restrain and
hinder the rising faith. On the other hand, that which con
stitutes the Christian certainty as we have learned to know it,
is, corresponding to that state of Christian life which underlies
it, not in a condition of immobility, a possession conferred
once for all ; but, on the contrary, maintains itself like the
latter by a constant renewing of its foundation, and thus a
renewing of itself, in opposition to the ever afresh attempted
constituting of the natural I, along with the certainty attach
ing to it. In both respects the Christian subject, with the
1 Comp. Theol. der Cone. Form. iv. p. 223.

174 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
certainty appropriate to the same, is involved in a duplicity
and dividedness, which is experienced by him as a restraint
put upon his nature, formed as this is for unity and integrity.
And yet he is not in a position in such wise to terminate this
restraint upon his nature, — which by means of the Christian
truth has come to itself, — that the obscurity which still attaches
to his certainty should be dispersed, and the resistance which
the spiritual T encounters in its self-unfolding should be done
away with. The Christian must endure that his certainty
should be a light which shines in a dark place, and must
tolerate the discomfort that sin cleaves to him notwithstanding
the dominion of the new life. This bearing and enduring, if
of a right character, is not simply passivity, resignation, and
indolence, but moral activity, viro/jiovr], a running of the race
set before us with patient perseverance (Heb. xii. 1). And
for this reason it is only the converse of that consta.nt self-
planting of the spiritual /, that enthronement and establish
ment of the same in the centre of the whole human nature,
whence on all sides that nature receives its ethical directives,
in such wise, it is true, that for the sake of this activity, and
in the exercise thereof, it is to be passively experienced and
borne with, where this self-planting of the new / cannot be
carried out. The moral activity, however, is as such a matter
of freedom, and is subject as to its mode to the self-determina
tion of the / from which it proceeds. Not as though the /
determined itself without cause and in an absolutely arbitrary
way ; it has, however, the capacity for itself placing before it,
placing in this wise or otherwise, the cause in accordance with
which it determines itself; and the power of the naturally
selfish principle, although dethroned, influences the manner
in which the regenerate / exerts itself for its own maintenance
and establishment. Thus it may happen that that contra-
natural condition of dividedness, which is to be borne only
as something to be abolished, and with the sense of its
abnormality, is borne in another temper, as something after
all not to be altered, after all actually existing, to which one
becomes accustomed without, as at first, feeling its unnatural
character, with a gradually enhanced blunting of the sensibility,
indifference, indolence.^ The I is satisfied in itself, by that
' Comp. System der christlich. Sittlichkeit, i. p. 271.

THE OPPOSITION IN PEINCIPLE, § 22. 175
which it has become and is, and reposing in this satisfaction
it ceases to be what it is, in proportion as it neglects to become
that which it was becoming. The self-delusion, which is the
element in which the natural / has its being, exerts an influ
ence also upon the condition of the spiritual /; its life
depotentiatcs itself into an unreal life, in which the circum
ference of its dominion ever more and more contracts, and yields
to the natural / an ever augmented scope. Nay, it may come
to this, that the natural I is quite content to pursue its ends
under the imaginary domination of the spiritual /, in place
of striving after the pronounced domination of itself ; it feels
itself more secure under this segis than if it were acting in its
own name ; and the multiform lie now establishes itself, just
where apparently the absolute truth has its dominion, in the
hollowed, lifeless core of the spiritual /.
3. We started from the actual existence of the life of
regeneration and the certainty therewith afforded, but have
pursued the process of the enfeebling and destroying of this
actual existence only in the former respect [that of the life^
and not in the other [that of the certainty]. For we must
have the first-named present to our mind before we can com
prehend the latter ; and even in the former case it was not
within our province to bring into consideration, in a dogmatic
or ethical manner, the particular modalities under which a
declension of the Christian from the state of life proper to
him is at all possible and really takes place. We were con
cerned only to acquire a point of support for the right under
standing of the obscuration of the Christian certainty ; and
this we now possess, inasmuch as we are referred back as
regards this question from the periphery to the centre, where
alone, and finally, the decision is made whether the Christian
certainty shall remain or shall disappear. Not the assault
from without — neither that made directly upon the moral
dominion of the spiritual /, nor that which combats the
¦ certainty of this ethical reality — would be able in itself to
shake that ethical and intellectual constancy of the new man ;
for on both sides the superiority of this present ruler is a fact
proved beyond doubt by regeneration and conversion itself.
But the retrogression and falling off of that very life, whose
progressive and sound development led to the victory of the

176 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
Christian life-principle and to the constituting of the funda
mental Christian certainty, is the supreme cause of that
shaking, which then we admit can be occasioned by single
assaults on the part of the natural J, by certain remaining or
newly-appearing doubts and obscurities. In the same measure
in which the vigour of this life declines, or its clearness is
dimmed by self-deception, the activity of the natural I gains
ground, and the charm increases which is exerted by the goods
to which the subject before tended as its centre. We wish,
in connection with this matter, again entirely to leave out of
account the sheer illusions of directly sinful enjoyments, which
the natural man too, consentaneously with the moral opposi
tion present in him, afterwards involuntarily feels and
acknowledges to be such ; we keep to those goods which are
really so, and that too for the converted man, which he
receives again as relative goods, after he has broken with
them as absolute ones. Here, upon the standstill and retro
gression of the specifically Christian life, that self-delusion
enters so much the more readily ; inasmuch as it is a question
in such case not merely of the enjoyment permitted likewise
to the Christian, but at the same time of an ethical obligation
which is incumbent on the regenerate subject in relation to
these goods. For the soundness of the spiritual life in the
regenerate displays itself also in the fact that, after the
transition from the peripherical and relative to the central
and absolute truth has been accomplished, this position is
now really a central one — that is to say, not one isolating
itself, that of a centre without a periphery, but one which, from
the centre of its own nature, embraces all that belongs to this
nature, from the possession of the absolute good in reality
finds and occupies the true relation also to the relative goods.
The whole ethical development of the Christian personality
is accomplished in a twofold activity ; the preserving in purity,
and the strengthening of that central spiritual life on the one
hand, and the bearing and operation of the same upon the
powers, utterances, and possessions of the natural life on the
other hand ; and just as the moral failures of the Christian
become manifest in this reciprocal relation, so specially there
shall we have to observe and comprehend the shaking of the
Christian certainty.

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 22. 177
4. It is not, as a rule, the case that the Christian, who by
moral failure suffers injury in respect of his inner man, and
exposes himself to the peril of losing his Christian standing,
will acknowledge that he is upon the sloping path ; on the
contrary, he believes that he can and does maintain the
position taken up in conversion, despite the actual variations.
The power of the Christian life-principle, which has attained
to dominion in him, manifests itself as so prevailing and
victorious, that he still assents to it in thesi, while in praxi
he denies it. So also the shaking of the fundamental Chris
tian certainty is not, as a rule, of such nature that the
supposing of its antithesis on the part of the subject was at
once wittingly and willingly directed against that certainty.
This last has obtained possession of the converted man, with
an immediateness and firmness of conviction, against which
the direct assault is powerless; and sooner would the regenerate
person close his eyes to everything which is presented to him
as a contradictory truth, than he would be found willing to
sacrifice this certainty. But he may not close his eyes when,
as now, that process begins, in connection with which it, is
equally a question of the extending of the Christian certainty
beyond the central truth, to those truths associated with or
bordering on the same, as it is of the affirming of the dominion
of the spiritual I over the natural powers, and the ranging of
the relative goods under the supremacy of the absolute one.
If, now, that remissness sets in here, where the Christian feels
himself satisfied in the quiet possession of his spiritual life,
and of the certainty grounded thereon, there grows in the
same proportion the power of the impression made upon the
subject by the seemingly opposed realities ; and the more the
spiritual eye waxes dim, the more does the antithesis force
itself into the place of the Christian truth. One wishes to
retain the Christian certainty notwithstanding; but it has
been clandestinely severed from that constant experiencing
anew, in which it has its immovably solid ground and soil,
because this experience itself has begun to cease ; therewith
is lost the specific, incomparable character of the Christian
certainty, and the truth of which it assures itself is brought
more or less into one line with other truths which are incon
gruent with it. One possesses the certainty gradually more
M

178 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
in those forms of notional thinking alone, in which the
Christian truth, as we have seen, is accessible likewise to the
cognition of the natural man, — and now there is need merely
of a thrust, in order finally to bring to a tottering and a fall
this edifice already detached from the rock of experience.
5. The retrograde formation, out of the state of the Chris
tian certainty into that of uncertainty and antichristian
certainty, thus accomplishes itself conformably to the before-
described process of formation ; and the opposition to the
Christian truth, to which things gradually come, corresponds
to the opposition, such as we have learnt to know it in general
as fundamental. The more the close union of the / with the
fundamental Christian truth, of which it was assured, is
inwardly dissolved, the more the natural incongruence of the
subject in relation to this truth sets in again ; with the
cessation of the spiritual activity and power disappears the
taste for the good, in which the subject previously recognised
the satisfaction of his moral need ; the subject claims to be in
the right, while he lays stress upon the relative and apparent
goods in opposition to the absolute good, and locates the
centre of gravity of his being again in these. That which
formerly appeared to him the highest freedom, the being
bound to the Christian truth, now seems to the man an
irksome barrier ; why should he not overleap it ? " Can that
be the absolute truth which one is able to retain only with the
contemning or denial of other manifest truths ? Am I not
constituted for recognising and accepting the truth wherever
I find it, without reserve, whatever the final consequence may
be ? Is it not a duty for me to act this impartial part, and
do I not remain the same after I have abandoned an untenable
position ? Nay, rather, is not that a moral progress of my
inner man ? I appeal to my conscience, which bears me
witness that I am seeking nothing but the truth, whether it
is to' be found here or there ; to my scientific conscience,
which forbids me to recognise a self - contradictory truth.
Only look at the vain exertions, the pettifogging advocafcy of
those who are bent on setting aside or concealing these con
tradictions. They blind themselves to the truth. In the
name of morality, of veracity, of liberal science, free us from
these bonds." But you are already free from them, ere you

THE OPPOSITION IN PRINCIPLE, § 22. 179
sever this last thread, which only in semblance binds you to
that truth. You are free while, and just because, you place
the Christian truth upon one level with other truths, which
as such force themselves upon you. You no longer need the
Christian truth for your human existence ; otherwise you
could not wish to rid yourself of it, however much it might
oppose itself to your Christian certainty. Does one cease to
bathe his eye in the light, because perhaps there are points
not cleared up, or even contradictions, in the theory of light
and of the relation of the eye to the light ? Or do you
forbear to breathe, because — and so long as — it has not been
made clear to you how, e.g., the oxygen enters into the blood,
and what for the rest the air is in itself and in its relation to
other elements ? It may well happen that, on the rise of
unbelief, peripherical portions of the Christian truth — per
chance in close connection with their centre — or certain
conceptions of the same, which we had previously identified
with its essence, fall away on account of their real or apparent
contradictions. But there does not therewith fall away the
truth by which we live, to which we owe our birth, if we
stand firm under such assault, and hold fast to the certainty
in the midst of that uncertainty. Of this, however, we are
not here speaking, but of that retrogression in which one
ceases to live by the central Christian truth, and therefore
loses the certainty corresponding to that truth. Here the
reasons for which one renounces the Christian truth are
actually, even though unconsciously, only the symptoms,
appearing externally, of the much deeper-lying ethico-intel
lectual process of separation ; they are in reality only the
pretext, behind which the fundamental contradiction of the
natural /, which has now afresh recovered its vigour, hides
itself, and just therein is displayed the congruence of this
renewed opposition with that first one which preceded the
conversion. 6. Precisely because the Christian comprehends in its prin
cipial causes the possibility and the reality of a loss of the
certainty peculiar to him, — an understanding for which nothing
more is necessary than the experience preceding and constantly
underlying his certainty, — this renewed contradiction of the
Christian truth, on the part of those who were previously

180 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
assured of it, is just as little able to shake his certainty, as
was the opposition in its previous form-, which was yet sub
stantially identical with that which is here presented. The
enemy, who has been victorious there, is the same whom he
knows as vanquished, and who daily — as is well known to
the Christian — is intent upon converting into a new victory
the defeat sustained. If in this conflict his certainty has
begun to waver, there is no other means of supporting and
restoring it than that by which it was at first produced ;
what is needed is a renewing of the foundation, upon which
it has till then rested. And we have recognised it as a
fundamental fact of the specific experience in which the
Christian certainty has its root, that it is conditioned by the
operation of spiritual factors, by one's self-surrender to the
same. It is true the Christian will aim at the solution of the
particular doubts, obscurities, and oppositions which would
form the pretext for the shaking and destroying of his
certainty ; but he will not believe and make his funda
mental certainty dependent upon this frequently problematical,
and not rarely for the time being impracticable solution ; he
will by the firmness of the same withal be preserved from the
morbid haste to force this solution, from seeking to bring it
about with apparent and yet not valid arguments, as though
the Christian existence or non-existence were here at stake.
And again, in his practical deportment towards Christians
whose certainty is disturbed or lost, he will not be deceived
by the advanced posts of single doubts and difficulties, but will
seek out the enemy where he stands ; as an intelligent
physician he will direct his glance from the symptoms to the
root of the disease, and thereby determine his method of cure,
so far as this lies in the hand of man.

PART II.

THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY IN ITS EELATION
TO THE OBJECTS OF FAITH.

THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY IN ITS EELATION
TO THE OBJECTS.
§ 23. The central certainty hitherto described stands in
indissoluble relation to the complex whole of the objects of
faith, which constitute the Christian truth, and in propor
tion as these are likewise apprehended by that central
certainty, the Christian subject is assured of them as truth.
The relation itself, however, is not one without difference,
everywhere the same ; but assumes other shapes, according
as it is a question of immanent, of transcendent, and of
transeunt objects of the Christian truth.
1. The Christian truth, with the certifying of which we
have to do, is essentially only one, compact in itself, vitally
interconnected, — as such at the same time organic,- — and it
is therefore not possible one should possess and retain a
portion of the same, while yet not possessing, or rejecting, the
other portions. On the contrary, the member or portion of
the truth, which it had been thought to appropriate or
maintain alone, would by this very isolating cease to be that
which it was and is in itself : it would become an empty
form or husk, from which the life, the Christian reality, has
escaped. If, for instance, one would retain the fact of
regeneration, with the setting aside of the factors by which
the regenerate / was produced and exists, this fact itself
would at once disappear, and one wotild receive in place there
of an empty notion ; as may be observed in the case of those
philosophic systems which, while retaining the specifically
Christian terminology, sought to comprehend the contents of
the Christian truth as natural-human. Or if one would wish
to establish for himself the fact of the personal God, and in
doing so have no regard to the revelation of the same as

184 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY
triune, with this abstraction the first fact too would cease to
be that which it was for the Christian, and which it is in
itself : there would remain only the notion of the personal
Absolute, to which the actual contents of the Christian truth
would be wanting. Nevertheless we cannot here presuppose
this solidarity and connectedness of the objects of faith, which
together compose the one Christian truth, as already estab
lished ; our task, on the contrary, is this, from the central
point of the Christian certainty to obtain a more firm hold
of those objects as for the Christian, or rather, — lest it
should appear as though they were lying absolutely without
the Christian subject and the truth already guaranteed to
him, — to point them out as included in the fundamental
certainty, as in one way or other likewise vouched for by it.
At the same time we wish not to forget that it is one thing
to have and hold fast the Christian truth in virtue of the
moral transformation accomplished with the regeneration, and
another thing to recognise it as such in conscious and distinct
certainty, and in this wise to be assured of it as indissolubly
bound up with that central certainty. For we know not
merely, that there may be an erring certainty which possibly
rejects, as regards the cognition, that which it still actually
possesses, albeit unconsciously possesses, and for which it has
the permanent corrective in that which it possesses ; we
know also, that that process of cognition which is required
for the production of the conscious certainty, although not
foreign to the Christian as such, yet, in the extension with
which we here think of it, belongs only to theological scitoce,
and even by this can be accomplished only by degrees.
2. If we now ask in what manner the totality of the
objects of faith vouches for itself as Christian truth to the
Christian who is in possession of the fundamental certainty,
we must at once reject the imagination that it is here a
question merely of logical inferences, by which one is to
advance from the truth presupposed and attested for the
subject to other objects of truth, and the reality of these last
is to be proved. That there are such inferences even for
the Christian cognition, and that they occur within the process
of certifying, is self-evident — the Christian thinking has need
of them even as thinking in general ; on the other hand, we

IN ITS RELATION TO THE OBJECTS, § 23. 185
must guard ourselves from the outset against assuming that
we have to do, in connection with the certainty extending to
the single realities of the Christian truth, primarily with
logical operations or with speculative exercises. It is a ques
tion in the first line ot facts, of which the Christian is conscious
and certain on the ground of, and in virtue of, the quality of
a fact of which he has previously been made certain ; of facts
which it is true are not one with that fact in the sense of
absolute identity, but yet one in virtue of their real involved-
ness and their reciprocal relation of causality ; of realities,
of which the one whereof we are certain would not have a
being, did not the others, of which we wish to assure our
selves, exist and operate — wish to assure ourselves, in truth,
however, and only not yet for our scientific consciousness, are
already assured with [the possession of] that former one. Or,
at once to indicate the things concretely as they stand, it is a
question how, from the fact of the new spiritual /, from the
moral transformation wrought by regeneration and conversion,
— of which the Christian is just as sure as of his existence,
nay, in the strictest sense, of this as being his existence, — one
can deduce the actual existence of those Christian realities,
which faith holds fast as such, but which do not so immedi
ately as that fact constitute the essence of the existence of the
new man. And the thought is this, that, with that moral and
intellectual implanting of a new principle, there is at the same
time presupposed as real and certain — by the subject and for
the subject — the complex whole of the Christian truth, with
which it can consequently just as little part as with itself
3. But while the / of regeneration nowhere actually exists
without a continuity of life with the whole of the Christian
truth, it is yet by no means merely an abstraction and an
imperfection of the discursive thinking, when we are com
pelled to represent the single portions of the truth in successive
order as vouched for to the Christian ; but, on the contrary,
this apportioning and successivity will have its justification in
the varying measure" in which those single objects attach to
the life of the Christian subject, or actually condition it, or
are apprehended by it; yet at the same time also in the
measure in which these objects enter the consciousness of the
subject in the process of self-assuring. For certainly the one

186 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY
does not of necessity coincide with the other ; and while from
the former we deduce in general only the right of separation,
for the purpose of systematic presentation also, the manner
and consequence of the separation on the other hand will
receive their norm specially from the latter. That which for
the life of the spiritual / is the first, the conditioning, the
ever anew producing, is yet not the first for the Christian
certainty, which primarily attaches itself to the effect, to the
result, and from this point assures itself of that which was
implied in the same, by which it was produced. Thus then
arises a tissue, in, which all the single threads have their
place and their support only in so far as they are in con
nection with the central spot ; but the connection will be in
the one case an immediate one, in the other a mediate one,
and, farther on, the one mediately connected is constituted in
turn the centre and starting-point for another, which receives
its certainty from this, and thus in a twofold mediate way
from the fundamental certainty. The measure of the certainty .
does not coincide simply with the measure of the remoteness,
with the degree of the immediateness or mediateness of the
connection ; for in connection with the measure- of the
certainty there enters into consideration not only this reciprocal
relation of the objects to each other, but also the inner
quality of the objects themselves ; and it is in itself possible
that a mediately connected object should nevertheless, on
account of its quality, be more certain for the subject than
another immediately involved in the central certainty. Not
rarely, indeed, precisely that which is nearest at hand, that
which is conjointly implied in the instinctive expression of
life, most resists tljat objectivizing and elevation into a notion,
without which a certainty in our sense is not to be attained ;
not less easily does that which is accidental, albeit immediate,
that which is in adhesion with the life, and accompanies the
same, withdraw itself from the consciousness, and on that
account enters with less assuredness into the certainty, than
perhaps something which though influencing the subject from
without, determines the subject in his innermost nature, con
sequently is only connected with him by its causality. Apart
from these considerations, however, the measure of the cer
tainty, with which the single portions of the Christian truth

IN ITS RELATION TO THE OBJECTS, § 23. 187
are embraced "by the subject, depends without doubt very
essentially upon the nearer or more distant relation in which
they stand to the centre of the Christian certainty ; the energy
with -«'hich the Christian subject affirms the truth diminishes
in the same proportion in which this truth is remote from the
self, whose preservation would condition for the certainty the
supposing of the reality implied in this truth ; the Christian
/, when the process of ascertaining in the wider circumference
of the domain of truth comes to a standstill or falls into
confusion, can retire within itself, postponing for a while the
question as to the certainty of those peripherical portions —
without on that account being shaken and imperilled in its
central Christian position.
4. We distinguish the objects of faith, in their relation to
the certainty under which they fall, as immanent, transcendent,
and transeunt, and thereby express the order in which the
system of the Christian certainty will have further to unfold
itself For, after we have proceeded in the first part from the
self-apprehending of the regenerate / in that point where the
new subject coincides with the object of the Christian truth,
the further progress must of necessity be this, that we assure
ourselves of those portions of the same truth for which there is
no need of going forth beyond this subject as certain of itself,
which are thus immanent in the subject. Yet this existence of
the spiritual subject is, as we have seen, a constant arising ;
from the process of which, meanwhile, we have only selected a
definite point, the point at which by means of the experience
of regeneration and of the act of conversion the new / is
produced as the highest determining. ground of the now Chris
tian personality • this point, however, even as it in the first
place arose, is actually present only in the continued genesis,
in the repetition of the same ethical process, in the constant
implanting anew of the spiritual /; and is, on the other hand,
the source for a further genesis accomplishing itself within the
subject, the arresting of which were possible only with the
drying up of its source. We now extend our glance to the
total-domain of this genesis, while we hold fast our post in the
centre of the same ; in doing so we shall come upon a series of
objects of faith, which are not it is true identical with the new
I in its unity as a point, but yet contained in the life-process

188 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
of this /, are to this extent immanent for the Christian . sub
ject, and in virtue of such immanence first of all certain. But
now, in the second place, this process of arising is conditioned
by definite factors, which in their nature and their existence
lie beyond the subject, by factors to whose operation the sub
ject traces back that experience on which his Christian
existence and origin exclusively depend. Inasmuch as the
individual subject therein amplifies himself into the general
subject, and so recognises the human subject absolutely as
object of the activity of those factors, it is impossible for him
to seek the highest causality of that rise within the natural
continuity of mankind, within the complex whole of the
created (creatiirliche) factors, and there are guaranteed to him
thereby those transcendent objects of faith, whose nature and
existence indeed is in itself one belonging to another world,
one lying outside of the human subject ; whose nature, how
ever, on account of the causality proper to them does not
abide in such transcendence, but as operating enters into the
subject, thereby becomes matter of experience to him. Not
less, however, is it brought home to his experience that these
highest causalities of that state of fact in which the Christian
/ is placed are not the exclusive ones in the constituting and
maintenance of this state of fact ; that, on the contrary, their
influence communicates itself through the medium of created
realities, the existence and efficiency of which is simultaneously
rendered certain to the subject. These realities form the
third unit in the- relation of the fundamental certainty to the
objects of faith, in that they are, as such, certain for the sub
ject, only in so far as the connecting lines between the
transcendent factors and the immanent state of fact of the
Christian consciousness pass through them : received into the
middle position between the two, they obtain for the Christian
subject the character of objects of the Christian truth, and
participate, in virtue of this twofold support, in the Christian
certainty. It may be permitted us for brevity's sake to
designate these objects as transeunt — an appellation which
were to be justified by the circumstance that they come under
considera,tion as factors which bring about the transition of
those realities, transcendent in themselves, in their operation
upon the subject.

SECTION I.
THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY IN ITS RELATION TO THE
IMMANENT OBJECTS OF FAITH.

CHAPTEE I.
THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY.
§ 24. By reason of the relation which exists between the /
of regeneration and the natural /, the Christian subject
experiences and recognises first, that the natural / together
with the activities proceeding from it exists away from
the centre, to -which after conversion the human nature,
now come to itself, henceforth gravitates ; that is to say,
the fact of habitual and actual sin; and then, that in the
genesis of the new / the human subject is primarily only
object of the regenerating impulses ; that is to say, the fact
of the natural unfreedom of the will. The perception of
this natural condition as one in its beginnings of imme
morial origin, nevertheless includes in itself the recognition
of the same as something willed and brought about by the
subject, and to that extent culpable.
1. The new T, with whose genesis by regeneration and
conversion we have become acquainted, in point of fact exists
only in opposition to that condition of the subject out of
which the new formation was accomplished and against
which it continually reacts and thereby establishes itself.
Just as the natural man in his existence for himself, in his
seclusion from the regenerating influences, can possess no sort
of conception or knowledge of the state of the spiritual life,

190 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
so neither would the spiritual man understand his own nature
unless the contrast of the natural condition presented itself
to him, and by self-distinguishing from error the truth were
disclosed to him as such. Thus far we have on the ground
of the Christian consciousness no occasion to contradict the
proposition, that sin is a necessary turning-point (Moment)
for the development of the perfect state of life, corresponding
to the ideal state of man and to the certainty thereon founded,
and one without which neither that state nor this certainty
were possible. We guard ourselves, however, against stepping
beyond the limits of this consciousness and seeking at the
same time to determine whether that which is necessary for
the Christian consciousness, in the form it has now assumed,
will also be necessary for the consciousness of a human being
whose normal position, congruous with his idea, does not pre
suppose such altered conditions. It is possible that even in
that case the intellectual opposition would be requisite, in
order to recognise and retain with perfect distinctness the
essential consistency of that normality ; but, however this
may be, our position within the regenerate state relieves us of
the obligation for pronouncing, and even precludes us from
pronouncing, a judgment on that general question in this
place. The more distinctly, however, can we now express
the fact that there is no experience of regeneration, no
certainty on the , part of the regenerate subject, without a
simultaneous experience of the ethical opposition, and that
therefore the certainty as to the reality of this opposition is
necessarily included in that central certainty,
2. Those things which become manifest for the Christian
in virtue of such includedness in the fundamental Christian
certainty, we call objects of the Christian truth, even though
the realities themselves, which are here in question, were not
brought about by the supernatural divine revelation, as the
Christian faith receives this, and communicated to man with
a view to his restoration and perfection. The sense then in
which we here, in connection with the assurance rewarding
the corruption of the natural state of life, nevertheless desicr-
nate the object of the certainty as Christian truth, is this 
that the facts of the natural life in themselves existing were
first made known to the Christian consciousness as that which

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY', § 24. 191
they really are, and in such wise as they are, only by means
of revelation. With this, however, it is now further in keep
ing, that those facts do not disclose themselves to the Christian
consciousness as something absolutely new, till then altogether
hidden ; but that, even before, a knowledge of the same was
already existing and possible, the extent of which is deter
mined by the extent and character of that moral conflict
which is found also in the natural man prior to his conversion.
The conflict, however there constituted, and in whatever degree
it enters the consciousness, by its very existence involves in
the first place, for the natural man also, the moral certainty
of an anomaly existing in his nature. And since that conflict
did not first arise at a given point of life, for instance with
the dawn of the consciousness, the observation of the same
led to its being accounted an essential feature of man's very
nature: -n-ecj^vKaa-ov — says Thucydides, iii. 45 — aTraz/re? Kal
IBia Koi hrifioaia d/MapTavetv Kal ovk eaTt, v6/xo<!, oaTi^
d-rreip^eb tovtov. Herewith, it is true, no answer is furnished
to the question, to what extent this which is presupposed with
the rise of the man himself can yet be held a matter of
responsibility, and how that which has been handed down
with the nature stands related to the individual's own self-
conscious act. The distinction, indeed, which we elsewhere
find among the Greeks, — that the involuntary acts of trans
gression (rd aKovaia twv dfiapTTjfidTmv) meet with pardon,
while the voluntary ones do not, — does not reach down
to that question of man's Tre^vKevai [being born] with sin ;
for here the aKova-tov is traced back only to that which is
isolated, accidental : to fiev ydp aKovaiov dtidpTrjfia tjj? tv^t}<>
e'cTTt, TO Se eKovaiov T7]<; yvdofirj'; (Antiphon, v. 92). And not
less is it left out of the account, how the involuntary is in
reality by no means so sharply distinguished from the
voluntary that, without further consideration, without a more
precise defining of voluntariness, one could deny in regard to
the latter the possibility of meeting with pardon, if the former
receives forgiveness on its own account. When, moreover,
we reflect that the natural consciousness is unable to close
itself to the experience, that not seldom the occasion for
falling is furnished to man by a higher hand (6eo? fiev alTuav
<bvet j3poTol<;, oTav KaKoiaai Boofia Trap.infjhrjv BeXy, Aesch.

192 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
Frag. [Niobe] ; Hermann, Aesch. Trag. i. 352), and neverthe
less the responsibility and culpability is not thereby taken
away, we recognise how these portions of the truth, proceed
ing from the natural experience of the moral conflict and the
simultaneous perception of a moral order of the world, do yet
only as scattered fragments of a whole come up here and
there into the consciousness, without the relation of the one
portion to the other assuming any definite order and form.
And since, in this condition of the natural moral experience,
one does not come, as we have already found, to the know
ledge of the normal position, or to the abiding satisfaction of
the personality, so also the certainty regarding the opposite
of this normality is not able to attain to the appropriate goal ;
it will in the first place stop short at the phenomenon of sin
in its actuality and in its single manifestations, and, even
where it becomes conscious of the habitual character of the
same, the ultimate reason for this corruption in the displace
ment of the natural / must still remain concealed for it.
Therewith, however, precisely that remains concealed which
forms the essential and decisive characteristic in the Christian's
cognition of sin, the necessity and at the same time the guilt of
sin ; the incapacity of the natural man for delivering himself
out of the bonds of sin, along with the continuing responsibility.
3. The fact of the moral transformation in regeneration
and conversion, the certainty as well of the existence as of
the rightfulness of this fact, comprehends in itself a verdict
of the regenerate man on the moral state of the natural
I, from which the spiritual has wrested the dominion — a
sentence "of reprobation which is the inseparable antithesis
to that positive certainty. For only the consciousness of the
morally rejectable character of that bearing and tendency of
life which is peculiar to the natural / — a consciousness
acquiring force under the influence of the regenerating factors
— could render possible the turning away of the /, produced
from the seed of regeneration, from the intentions of its
natural life, and only so long as this consciousness endures
and is lively will the posture of the spiritual / remain that
which we have recognised it as being. A moral sentence of
1 Comp. on this matter in general, Nagelsbach's Nachhomer. Theologie, in the
section "Die Siinde und die Siihnung."

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 24. 193
rejection is pronounced upon the natural / in connection
with this consciousness of the moral transformation, in this
sense, that in conversion it is not a question of the adjust
ment or correction of these or those single impulses and
tendencies of the natural life within the abiding fundamental
constitution of the same; but of a breaking off from this
fundamental constitution itself, of the fixing of a supreme
aim and innermost centre of gravity for the human person
ality, of which neither the one nor the other had been
afforded until then. That, in the natural moral conflict,
which was recognised and had become certain as a moral
failure, now presents itself to the eye of the Christian
(after that conflict has been lifted into the Christian
sphere), as what it is, a product of that natural principle
which was not before recognised. And not the activity of
the natural / as such, its willing and endeavouring, its
thinking and planning, regarded in themselves, is that
which the Christian recognises as to be rejected — for a
corresponding actuality belongs also to his spiritual / — but
the motive - force which sets in movement this willing
and thinking; the power which works in them and impels
them to a definite goal ; a power which did not direct those
activities from without, but inwardly ruled in them, had
erected its throne in the centre of the personality. Yet the
Christian comprehends this power at the same time as an
alien one, not belonging to the proper nature of the man,
but one which has come upon and into the same, con
tradictory to that nature ; because the new power of life,
which through regeneration and conversion has attained the
dominion in him, is certain to him only in virtue of the
fact that it has restored him to himself, has proved itself to
him as that which corresponds to his moral need, as alone
entitled and called to bear sway. Herein is contained that
which we designated the certainty regarding the habitual
and actual sin, objects of the Christian truth which' in this
wise disclose themselves only to the Christian consciousness ;
since they are immanent and inalienable for that certainty
which results from the Christian's state of life, without being
identical with that state of life.
4. Let us look yet more particularly at that result, as it
N

194 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
has heretofore in general manifested itself to us. The ethical
bent of life, which through regeneration has attained to
dominion in the Christian, and in which he feels himself
absolutely satisfied as man, is indeed one positively willed by
himself, implanted by him in conversion, identical with the
innermost motive-power of his spiritual / ; at the same time,
however, it is recognised by him as an order of life not
derived from himself, but one standing above him, into which
he has entered by conversion — as altogether the norm of his
spiritual and his human life, which does not any the more
cease to be valid without him, and to stand over him, because
by conversion he has taken up his position in this order.
As it is a part of the natural certainty that the man recog
nises himself as not existing by himself (durch sich), and
that he knows the physical activities of life, which he wills
and puts into operation as those conformable to his nature,
to be subject to an order of life holding sway over him, i.e.
to a physical law ; so it is an inalienable portion of the
spiritual certainty, that the new man, in accordance with the
fact that he has not arisen by himself, but by objective factors
operating upon the subject, is, likewise in this his new-born
(gewordenen) life, amenable to a higher spiritual law, which
has an objective and unvarying validity, however much it
may be admittedly the law immanent in that life. Just as
certain, too, as this order of life, immanent in him, is for
the Christian, so certain for him is the fact, of which he
first became aware in its full extent at his conversion, and
which he henceforth daily experiences anew, that not merely
single impulses of his will but also the natural I in himself
from which these impulses spring, are in innermost conflict
with that order of life ; that another law of life is immanent
in that I which, as a principle of conduct willed by him,
put forth those single opposing activities ; that this anta
gonistic principle of life does not any the more cease to be
present because it seems at times to be without such impulses
and activities. This is that cognition of sin in its habituality,
of which we say that it is inalienable from the fundamental
Christian certainty, because, and in so far as, the latter rests
upon regeneration and conversion. It is a cognition which
exists only on the ground of the presence of the spiritual /,

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY', § 24. 195
conscious and certain of itself, and which we may therefore
designate an exclusively Christian cognition, the cognition
of an object of Christian truth. And with the certainty of
the habituality of the anti-spiritual tendency, is combined at
the same time an understanding of its actuality, as this can
not equally be the case outside of the specifically Christian
experience. For these actual impulses are only compre
hended as that which they are, when they are understood
as emanations from that habitual and principial power ; and
the conflict of the Christian principle in the regenerate person
against such actual impulses of the anti-spiritual tendency is
a successful one, only because they are attacked in the root
and are mastered simultaneously with this. The character
of such cognition as exclusively Christian is still retained, not
withstanding that which we have above observed as to the
possibility of inferring something analogous from the natural
moral conflict. For this natural cognition — since there is
wanting to it, along with the standing ground of the spiritual
/, likewise the standard for judging of the natural subject —
must waver in its decision between the two opposite courses :
in that, either, on the perception of the root of those morally
blameable impulses in the nature of man itself, it overturns
and annuls the judgment as to the blameableness of the same ;
or else, disassociating those actual impulses from the habit
whence they proceed, it retains indeed the blameableness of
the same, but does not understand them in their nature.
The history of the natural cognition of sin, not only in
heathendom, but also in Eationalism on the one hand, in the
Pantheistic systems of philosophy on the other, affords us the
necessary proof
5. It is thus the fact of sin, as at once habitual and actual,
of which, as Christians, we are assured on the ground of our
central Christian state of life and along ivith it ; just because
the power moving and dominating the natural I is recognised
as advancing against the highest moral norm and order of life
of the Christian and the man as such, as antagonistic to it.
We have not straightway designated this habitual sin as
original sin (^rSsiinde), nor could we do so, because the
experience and the cognition of the Christian is directed
primarily to the given moral character and condition of the

196 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY,
natural subject, not beyond the same ; and it is only a
subsequent question to what extent that which dogmatics
calls original sin is vouched for to the Christian as truth by
this experience. Now it is clear from the outset that, in
connection with this further question likewise, we can take
our standing-place nowhere else than in the Christian subject
itself ; since, if an answer to this question is anywhere possible
to us, it must be so from the standpoint of the central
Christian certainty, in its extension to that habituality of sin
which has been under discussion. For there is certain for
the Christian, along with this habituality, the immemorial
period (Unvordenklichkeit) of the entrance of the sinful power,
which constitutes that habituality. Whether now the Chris
tian is conscious of a definite point of time for his conversion,
one lying within the line of the clear remembrance of his life,
or whether the spiritual 1 has been present and dominant in
him from the first beginning of his conscious life ; in the one
case as in the other his memory does not extend beyond the
existence of the bent of life of the natural /, but he knows it
as having been present from the first, whether as actually
ruling, or as striving after the recovery of a lost dominion.
However much the essence of the natural / is found in the
fact that it reproduces itself, and constantly renders existent by
act of will that which it is in a moral respect ; yet just as
little is the individual as such conscious of a primordial act,
by which at first the present existence of the natural / was
called forth into being, out of an opposite moral condition.
Nevertheless, at the same time, it is for the Christian subject
impossible to regard this habitual proneness to sin, on the
part of his natural /, as something belonging to the essential
constitutibn of the human nature he has received ; inasmuch
as the certainty proper to his Christian state reposes precisely
upon the consciousness that what is therein restored to him
is that which he is to be in accordance with the design of his
being, and not only is to be, but also — as regards his idea —
actually is. The Christian certainty, as we have before seen,
stands and falls with the consciousness that that which has
arisen with the Christian moral transformation is that which
is normal, in the highest sense of the word natural, for the
human being, and that which is opposed to this is the

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 24. 197
unnatural, in itself alien to his true nature (Wesen), destructive
thereof; and consequently with the same certainty with
which the regenerate Christian holds fast to this his Chris
tian state of life as the normal one, he must regard the moral
habituality of the natural I as something not primarily in
dwelling in the very nature (Wesen) of man, but accidentally
acquired, not as planted simultaneously with this nature, but
as having arisen from a false development of the same. And
here, accordingly, is the point at wliich, by enlargement of the
individual consciousness into the general, there is guaranteed
to the Christian the ' fact which dogmatics indicates by the
name of original sin. Not, it is true, on all its sides ; but
yet in its main particulars. First namely, inasmuch as it is
a question in connection therewith of the sinful (siindhafte)
and guilty habituality of the natural man, which the Chris
tian — although as having existed from the earliest period of
his thought, and as having been received from another —
nevertheless, by reason of the constant voluntary constituting,
cannot avoid personally imputing to himself as a culpable
perversion of his normal being (Wesen) ; and then, inasmuch
as with regard to the genesis of this perversion he is, it is
true, directed back beyond himself as an individual — and, in
harmony with the enlarged consciousness, beyond the present
genus of mankind — but yet in the way of this regression finds
his limit in the certainty, that in that primary constituting of
the human being, whereby he received his normal aim of
existence, this perversion could not have been included.
Thus then the Christian is constrained, in virtue of that
which he is in opposition to the natural /, and that which he
recognises this / to be, to conceive of the moral condition of
the same as in its origin the act of the human race, which as
sin and guilt oppresses him, and in which — although he found
,this particular condition already existing in his nature — he
yet participates, inasmuch as he has from the beginning made
it his own. What is more than this, however, as regards the
peccatum originate, as regards the originator of sin, as regards the
rise of habitual sin from the primordial actual sin, as regards the
peculiar nature and measure of the same, as regards the mode of
propagation of the sinful condition, and the like, we shall have
to renounce all attempts at deducing from our presuppositions.

198 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
6. Not less is it the fact of the naturally unfree will, of
which the Christian becomes certain in virtue of the process
of regeneration and conversion. For the experience of this
fact coincides inseparably with the experience of that process,
inasmuch as this is just, in the first place, an experience of a
new birth. The implanting of the vital energies, whence the
moral transformation of his being was accomplished, the
regenerate knows — with the same certainty with which he is
conscious of himself as such — as not wrought by the subject
in which the regeneration took place, but as proceeding from
factors, over against which this subject at first stood as object.
And though, from the first moment in which the life of
regeneration was communicated to him by these factors, it
became his own life, the life of a rising subject whose
spontaneous reaction conditioned the further influence of those
factors, yet the converted person knows the existence of this
new (gewordenen) subject and the spontaneity appropriate to
it, as likewise the product of those primary and still endur
ing impulses of life, in virtue of which alone he has that of
which he is conscious as being his personal possession.
Herein, however, is manifestly to be seen the essence of that
which the Christian faith denotes by the dogmatic expression
of the unfree will as a fact of the natural moral habituality.
It is not therein a question of the natural will being unfree, in
so far as it is present as the will of the natural subject, and is
active with regard to the objects and goods which lie within
the sphere of the same. Here the self-determining of the
subject in the decision for or against these objects and goods —
without inner or outward constraint, although not by an act of
unaccountable caprice, but in accordance with the conception
of the good for which the will decides — is a fact of the
natural consciousness, which the Christian consciousness like
wise recognises in its reality. Even in the domain of the
moral conflict, in which the natural man, too, is involved with
himself, it cannot, as we have seen, by any means be asserted
that the non-accomplishment of the better thing which is willed
is the sole and always necessary experience. And the sense of
guilt which accompanies that experience is itself an efflux of
the consciousness, that one not only ought to have acted, but
could have acted, differently in the given case — that the freedom

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 24. 199
of choice in reference to the good recognised was not absolutely
wanting to the will which decided for the opposite. And all
the instances of natural virtue, surrender, and self-sacrifice for
a higher good,* as opposed to the base egoism intent only upon
the individual ease, serve as a proof for the truth of that
consciousness. Thus it is not this in which the Christian
certainty recognises the captive state of the natural will ;
however much the common experience that the man, despite
that freedom, frequently does not decide in favour of the better
thing of which he is conscious, points to that state of fact of
which he first becomes perfectly sensible under the influence
of the regenerating factors. But what is equally certain for
the regenerate as the fact of his regeneration and his really
existing spiritual /, is in the first place the impossibility that
that transposing of the centre of gravity of his personality,
which forms the essence of conversion, should have been
accomplished of himself. Free in everything — although in
differing degree — so far as the goods, even the moral goods of
the natural life are concerned, capable of locating the centre of
gravitation of his / now in this now in the other good of this
life, the subject yet could not free himself from the ground
and soil on which he stood, could not and would not lift him
self up and cast himself forth upon another centre lying outside-
of this sphere; but this displacing of his centre of gravity took
place by means of moral powers operating upon him, which
were resisted to the uttermost by the natural will, and the
spiritual / very definitely distinguishes the will which has
thence come to it, in virtue of which the spiritual / maintains
itself in that new centre, from the other, which even now still
aims at the undoing of that transformation of his personality
which has been accomplished. Just therefrom, however,
follows that of which the regenerate man is further certain as
regards his natural will, viz., that the matter does not so stand
with the incapacity of that will, as though this incapacity
lasted only up to the moment at which the factors of regenera
tion, the life and light thence issuing, influence the will ; in
such wise that in consequence of this influence the enslaved
will were restored to itself On the contrary, this natural will
continues, in the midst of the work of the new formation of the
spiritual / and of the impulses of the will proceeding from the

200 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY'.
spiritual I, desirous of occupying itself in its own way ; and
because it finds a barrier in that /, because it is deprived of its
power by the same, it begins at once a contest for its dominion
and for its existence, but shows precisely thereby that it is
not this will itself which has been liberated by regeneration,
and that consequently this will neither had the capacity of
itself for accomplishing the moral transformation into the
Christian state, nor was in a position on its part willingly to
surrender itself to the influencing factors of the spiritual life.
7. Of this second fact, however, the Christian now becomes
conscious and certain, not as of a fact standing side by side with
the former, and isolated therefrom, but as of one indissolubly
connected with the same. For just this will, free within its
own sphere, powerless for the production as for the reception
of the Christian bent of life, constitutes that ethical condition
of the natural subject, which we have already designated as
the state of sin (Siindhaftigkeit) on the part of the same. That
the natural will continually fixes the point of gravitation of the
personality upon some good or other, which is nevertheless
outside of that centre towards which, according to the testimony
of Christian experience and certainty, he ought to gravitate ;
that this will is continually present potentially, even when at
times it does not actually show itself in operation ; that, how
ever, e\ery manifestation of sin arises out of this habitual
under-current of the will — this and nothing else it is in which
the Christian consciousness recognises the habituality and the
actuality of sin ; and it is for him original sin (^rSsunde),
just because this determining of the natural will appears to
him as something existing from immemorial times, and not for
the first time accomplished by him as an individual, thus as
received in and with his nature, and yet in connection there
with constantly willed by him as a natural subject. The
question thus, whether — considering the unfreedom of the
natural will — the manifestation of the same in action, which
lie could not of himself alter, reverse, or omit, can be regarded
and imputed as sin, is, however difficult it may be for the
abstract ethical reflection to answer, already decided from the
standpoint of the concrete Christian experience, since the
Christian experience perceives the sinful state (Siindhaftigkeit)
of the natural / precisely in that which, according to that

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 24. 201
abstract reflection, seems to exclude the notion of sin. There
remains to the Christian, who is certain of his own peculiar
state of life, no choice whatever as to whether he will regard
that natural condition, that habitual and actual bent of his
natural will as infected by sin (siindhaft), unless he will part
with and give up himself as a Christian subject. Whether he
comprehends or not how that inherited fundamental tendency
of his natural being and will can be sin, we have here a case,
such as will yet frequently present themselves to us, in which
the recognition of a spiritual, ethical fact forces itself upon the
certainty of the Christian apart from its comprehensibility;
while, on the other hand, the attempt at comprehending is
first a consequence of that preceding recognition. For this
course of the intellectual process is confirmed for us in
connection with the establishing of the said objects of faith in
history, where in fact men did not first set about fixing them
as dogmas after they had overcome those notional difficulties,
and still firmly held them as dogmas, notwithstanding that
those difficulties again and again made themselves felt. If,
however, we thus, in accordance with the Christian experience,
bring the fact of the unfree will into the closest conjunction
with the fact of sin, nay, precisely in the peculiarity of the
former recognise the essential nature of the latter, yet the
MauichfEan substancizing of sin is for the Christian conscious
ness excluded by the fact that this consciousness is compelled
on the ground of the spiritual volition inherent in it — the
putting forth of life on the part of the new / — to distinguish
between the act of volition itself and regarded per se, and the
power impelling and determining the same. For formally
regarded, the volition of the natural and the spiritual / is not
different : it is different only in the tendency which it pursues
in the one case and in the other, in the factors which determine
it, in the spirit which animates and incites it ; and the lasting
dominion, the increased unfolding of the regenerate / consists
not merely in the beating down of the sinful (stindlich)
principle dominating the natural will, but at the same time
in the drawing over and rendering serviceable the natural
faculty of the will to the new spiritual power, in the with
drawal, to a certain extent, of the intellectual material with
which the sinful principle of the life was wont to work.

202 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
§ 25, In virtue of the process in which the /of regeneration
is produced and exists, the Christian is, moreover, certain
of the twofold fact: first, that he has therewith entered
into a relation of freedom from guilt — a relation existing
in itself and for him, which has not first been constituted
by him, but rather renders possible and conditions the
constituting of the new /; and, further, that this freedom
from guilt, designed for him, remains his actual property
only so long as he continues to maintain the position taken
up in conversion. Therewith, however, the two portions
of the Christian truth, which we may briefly designate as
the habitual and actual righteousness, and as the spiritual
freedom of the will, are guaranteed to the Christian.
1. From the objects of the Christian truth, which we
designate such, not because they are in their reality brought
about by divine act and revelation, but because they are thereby
existent (gegeben) for the knowledge of the Christian, we now
turn to those spiritual realities which immediately belong to
this God-given (gottgesetzten) truth, and characterize the new
state of life of the regenerate itself. Immanent objects of
faith it is, therefore, with which we have here to do, in a yet more
proper sense than are those hitherto treated of ; because these
are included in the central being (Sein) of the Christian of
which he is assured as truth, are to be recognised as integral
forces (Momente) of this being and life ; and herefrom thus
results first negatively, that which is implied by the relation of
freedom from sin as existing in itself, — of which freedom the
regenerate person is assured. We are not here speaking of
the objective fact of the atonement for the world, however
close the coherence of this latter with that relation existing in
itself, for we are fixing our glance exclusively upon the circum
ference of that which has hitherto become manifest for us as
certain spiritual reality ; just as little, however, do we speak
of a reality which, as such, first arose along with the rise of
the new man, but we speak of a, reality which, existing in itself,
becomes for him, of a relation in which he is placed, and the
actuality of which is for him equally certain as that of his own
central abiding life, because this latter is in its whole length

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 25. 203
and breadth upborne by it. Inasmuch as this relation is
recognised as one continuing to exist in itself, the object of
faith thereby denoted has a certain equality with those before
investigated; whereas, on the other hand, differently from
these, in and with the entrance of regeneration, it not merely
exists as that which it was, but likewise, in virtue of an
operation upon the subject, presents itself to him as something
which it previously was not. In this respect it forms the
transition to those other portions of the truth, which first
become real in and with the new constituting of the Christian
life. If any one would again take offence, as has been done
occasionally in the past, that we here part asunder that which
in fact is inseparably conjoined, the effect of the atoning act,
and this act itself, let such an one please to consider, that in
doing so nothing else takes place here than what we have also
done elsewhere, and must do in the future — a fixing of the
immediate, present, and immanent effect, in order thence to
advance to the cause therein manifesting and portraying itself.
And the earlier as well as the more recent attempts to retain
the freedom from guilt, without however tracing it back in the
same sense in which the Church has done to the atoning act
of Christ as its cause, show in their own way the possibility of
the separation.
2, The Christian who becomes conscious and certain of his
new spiritual /, possesses precisely therein likewise the certainty
that regeneration and conversion, as a fact, presupposes a posi
tion outside of the continuity with that sin and guilt, the
experience of which we have described in that which precedes.
For if we were to suppose this continuity first to be broken
by means of the influence of the spiritual powers which attain
to efficacy in regeneration, the procedure in connection with
that moral transformation could not be that which the Chris
tian has experienced it to be. He must have been formed
anew into the state of sinlessness, at one stroke, on all sides,
without intervention of an ethical arising. Since, however, he
has not been so formed, and despite the sin which still cleaves
to him knows himself, as to his person, delivered from the
state of misery and guilt, this state of deliverance cannot be
regarded by him as the consequence of his regeneration, but
only as its presupposition — a relation, in itself existing, of per-

204 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
so'nal freedom from guilt which becomes for him, into which
he is translated, in which he exists by virtue of the influence
acting upon him. For we know that the factors of regenera
tion only in such wise operate upon the person who is to be
converted, that they at the same time judge and reject the
whole sum and substance of the old man — an energy which
can be thought of as salutary only in the case that the subject,
side by side with the relation of guilt in which his natural
character has placed him, at the same time stands in a relation
of freedom from guilt, by reason of which a judgment can be
passed upon this last without simply annihilating the subject.
And if the fact that such influencing unto salvation, coming as
it does from without, at alb takes place, in itself vouches to the
man for the other fact that there is for him a place where the
relation of guilt attaching to him does not exist ; so more
particularly conversion would be impossible for him, unless the
reality of that presupposition were certain to him from the
beginning. That becoming one with the powers of the new
life in conversion, the turning of the new / to those powers
to wliich it owes its existence, would not admit of accomplish
ment, unless the opposition in which his natural state of life
stands to these powers could in itself be looked upon as
abolished ; if it depended upon our first producing that unity
by self-deliverance from sin and guilt. Every attempt at the
production of such unity would the next moment be brought
to nought, and the combination just aimed at — even though
it were possible for a moment — would the next instant be
broken up again by the continuing opposition of the natural
powers. Therefore the matter does not stand so, as has been
indeed surmised, that the reality of the freedom from guilt,
without the implanting of which the regenerate / cannot exist
and live, is founded on the comprehending in one of his whole
life from its first beginning to its consummation, and entire
self-liberation from sin, and indeed in such wise that in the
germ is already beheld the final and ripened fruit, and that
the subject, tlierefore, comes to stand from the first as free
from guilt. For, apart from the fact that at least in the
present life the development is uncompleted, whose actual and
total consummation alone could afford the basis for that alleged
apprehension of the subject as free from guilt, this view is in

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 25. 205
a twofold respect in contradiction with the experience of the
Christian, — first, in the respect that this development is by
far too little one in a straight line for it to be able of itself
at every point to assure the subject of its consummation ; then,
also, and most of all, in this respect, that, in order to be
accomplished really and to the end, it presupposes as real and
certain that which, according to the opinion in question, is first
to be effected by itself. And just as little can one say, that
for the first beginning of the spiritual life the certainty of a
relation of freedom from guilt — a relation existing in itself —
in which the subject stands, must indeed be present ; but that,
for the further advance of the spiritual life, this freedom must
be created by the conduct of the regenerate. In order to avoid
this error, the Christian needs not so much as to recall to mind
what has already been indicated in that which precedes, that
the said conduct is something in the process of formation,
incomplete, liable to become faulty; it suffices, on the contrary,
to revert to that principial experience of the Christian life, that
the progress of the Christian life is the constant new-consti
tuting of its beginning, and that thus of necessity the same
thing must be true of that life as of this beginning.
3. That which we have heretofore derived from the Chris
tian consciousness of experience might appear open to
objection, in so far as we speak of a freedom from guilt,
without as yet speaking of the relation to God, before whom
the Christian is sensible, as of his guilt so also of deliverance
from the same. Nevertheless this objection falls to the
ground, if we recall to mind that in the former part we were
able, and indeed obliged, in like manner to speak of sin,
without as yet involving the existence and character of God.
If in reality the Christian can become conscious neither of
the one nor of the other, without at the same time the absolute
personality thrusting itself upon his experience, in presence
of which he knows himself as sin-laden and guilt-laden, or
else free from guilt ; yet the question for us is what in the
first place lies within the circumference of the Christian
certainty, and the question refers us to the condition of the
/, which condition the subject experiences and recognises as
real. Just as in the defining of the fundamental Christian
certainty we were obliged there to decline the introduction of

206 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the testimony of the Holy Ghost as the primary testimony,
because the question first arises, by what the subject recog
nises this testimony as being such, so here we must not
attempt to speak of sin, guilt, and freedom from guilt, other
wise than as the consciousness thereof exists in the subject,
and so far as the circumference of the subject extends ; and
if the subject is from thence led further and forced to the
supposition of a personal Absolute, by whose causal relation
ship those moral realities first are that which they are, this is
exactly the way in which we gradually attain to the embrac
ing of the whole Christian truth. Yet we find also in
point of fact a consciousness of sin and guilt within the
sphere of the natural experience, without the distinct per
ception, as yet, that these realities in truth only exist
because there exists a relation of life between the created and
the absolute / — a relation which for the actual being of those
realities may indeed be the prius, while for the process of
assuring it is the posterius. If therefore at the point of the
certainty at which we at present stand, sin is that which is
in contradiction with the normal moral condition of which
the man has become conscious in regeneration, while guilt is
that relation of his person to the idea of his being, — an idea
demanding normality, — which relation results from the per
sonal responsibility for that contradiction ; freedom from guilt,
on the other hand, to which the fact of regeneration points
back, is that particular . position of the subject, towards this
idea and the thence resulting demand, according to which the
man, despite the sin yet present, is brought into unity there
with and now consequently recognises himself as regenerate.
We might call this the ideal position of the man as opposed
to the evil reality of his being, in which he feels himself to
be sin-laden and guilt-laden; were it not for the miscon
ception likely to arise in supposing this ideal to be there
fore less true and actual than that which is sadly real.
Yet, however surely this idea of his being not merely soars
above him as pointing to something he is destined to
become, but attaches itself to him, is immanent in him as
something which he is and which he may regard himself as
being, still the Christian recognises this his definite character
as not being one which of itself was equally inherent in his

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY § 25. 207
natural state, as was the opposite one of sin and guilt ; but
he knows it as his own in virtue of a constituting which has
taken place from without — a constituting homogeneous with
that to which he owes the regeneration and conversion.
For, since it is this transformation of life, this constituting
of his spiritual /, from which he cannot avoid pre-supposing
as real that character of his person ; these two realities
now lie for him upon the same level, inasmuch as he can
trace back the one just as little to his natural being and
doing as the other, only with the distinction that the one, of
which we are here speaking, appears as already implanted
from the time of the earliest thought, the other as breaking
in upon the course of his life and consciousness.
4. Existing in itself, proper to the subject as man, though
only by means of a constituting accomplished from without,
that relation now a,rises (wird) for the subject in regeneration.
And this arising places itself, according to the experience
of the Christian, upon a parallel with the rise of the
relation of guilt, in which he recognises his natural / as
placed. As here by the free entry into the natural character
of his being, which he did not confer upon himself by his
own activity, he appropriated the same as a natural man and
therefore must judge himself responsible for the same ; even
in such wise he there comes as a regenerate man to stand in
presence of that other character of his person, which the
factors of regeneration presuppose, that this becomes his, in
that he enters into the operation of the same, and in virtue
of such voluntary self-surrender becomes that which accord
ing to his constitution he was. Were it on that side possible
that the natural man should put away the character attach
ing to him as such, in place of himself willing and constituting
it as he does, it would indeed in itself be proper to him, but
not become for him : on this side, however, where that in
itself existing (das Ansichseiende) is not something given
with the natural human being, and the causality operating
upon him is something coming upon him from without, that
which in the former case is assumed only as a possibility
exists as real; and it may happen that, in consequence of
conversion refused, that does not become for the man,
which nevertheless in itself is proper to him. It lies in

208 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the nature of an ethical possession, such as we are here
concerned with, that it in reality belongs to the subject only
when the latter has by self-determination made it his own ;
and the fact corresponds exactly to the experience of the
Christian, as well in the beginning as in the further advance
of his life-transforming, that he knows himself in the state of
freedom from guilt, only under the condition that, and so long
as, the constituting of it which has come to him from without
is at the same time his own. Therewith that relation does
not cease to be the one existing in itself and preceding the
regeneration ; for what we have said above concerning the
necessary presupposing of the same for the accomplishment
and continued existence of regeneration still holds good, and
the fact that the Christian is conscious, from the experience
of his former life, that with the once or more frequently
occurring repelling of the powers of regeneration that rela
tion nevertheless did not cease to avail for him, definitely
to exist for him, but on the contrary none the less could
and did yet become his own by means of an operation not
proceeding from him, is on its part a proof for the posi
tion that with conversion this relation did not arise as such,
but only became for him. In no case can the man become
that which he is not in some way already, and he is not this
if he does not in some way become so — the spiritual being and
becoming, if it is not something alien to the man, arbitrarily
engrafted upon him, but the consummation of his being
corresponding to his idea, is subject to this universal order,
an order absolutely valid for the development of the man.
5, Herewith we attain to an enlarged conception of the
state of regeneration and conversion, from which state, as the
reality fundamentally certain for the Christian, we took our
start — a conception which follows from the nature of this
state, without the necessity for our going beyond it and
introducing other matters. For seeing it is the peculiarity
of this state to have been delivered from the misery
(Heillosigkeit) which rests upon the natural man, this
misery, however, has its source most of all in the fact
that he knows himself responsible for the deviation from the
normal position of his human nature, thus in the relation
of guilt; and since further, as we have seen, the moral

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 25. 209
renewal into which the Christian has entered, as regarded in
itself incomplete and only in the process of formation, could
the less assure him of freedom from guilt, the more he must
still attribute to himself the sinful tendency and actions of
the natural /: it follows that the consciousness of absolute
satisfaction, which accompanies the entry of regeneration and
conversion, as it likewise accompanies the state of the same,
can be explained only from the fact that the subject —
enabled thereto by the powers of regeneration — in conversion
assents on his part and for himself to that relation of freedom
from guilt existing per se, willingly enters into the same, and
thereby obtains that abiding position which lies at the
foundation alike of the consciousness of satisfaction as of the
further ethical genesis. What accordingly in the former
description of regeneration and conversion we indicated by
the general and abstract names of moral lack and reception,
unsatisfied and satisfied longing, relatively and absolutely
good things, for this we now acquire a more definite and
concrete expression, — which embraces not indeed the whole
of that which has been there designated, but yet an essential
portion of the same, — the enduring basis of that transforma
tion of life in its personal appropriation. And thus from
this point of view there is opened up for the Christian a
new aspect of that one and the same reality of his inner life,
whereby this reality is presented before his eye as other
and more enriched. Just as now the influence, which he
experiences from the factors of regeneration, proves to be
directed to the end that he may enter into that relation of
freedom from guilt, in itself applying to him, destined for
him ; so conversion manifests its essential character in this,
that the person endowed with the powers of regeneration
turns to that relation, thereby embraces it, and locates the
centre of gravity of his nature therein. So little, therefore,
is the one separated from the other, the reality of the new I
and the reality of the freedom from guilt as belonging to the
n.ew /, that the rise and coming about of the former is
nothing else than the removing of the centre of gravity of
the personality into the latter ; and though the fact of the
last named must in itself be regarded as the presupposition
for the accomplishment of the regeneration, there can yet be
0

2 I 0 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
no moment in which both would not be found simultaneously
present, possession of the freedom from guilt and existence of
the new I in conversion. The turning (Hinwendung) to that
which is in itself the determinateness of the subject, does not
first make this existent ; for unless it [this determinateness]
were so already the ttirning would not be possible, the powers
of regeneration would not exist and operate without it ; but
this turning to, precisely because such object exists for it, is
an effected removing of the person out of its previous ethical
hingings, an actual breaking off of its hitherto obtaining
gravitation towards the objects and aims of the natural life,
the ethical foundation act of the Christian whereby he
becomes existent as a spiritual /. Henceforth his spiritual-
ethical life is passed in the twofold endeavour — the main
tenance and constant taking possession afresh of that state of
freedom from guilt, whereby at the same time his spiritual
/ is constantly established and strengthened anew ; and in
the fashioning forth of the / thus risen and thus arising, the
carrying into effect of the life and action proceeding from the
same, as opposed to the complex whole and the opposing
forces of the natural life ; and yet these two endeavours are,
taken in their deepest meaning, one and the same ; for the
fashioning forth and carrying out of the spiritual man is only
that new constituting and new formation of the same, as this
accomplishes itself on the ground of given occasions, opposi
tions, tasks, etc.
6. We need only to recall to mind that, in connection
with what has been said, those portions of the Christian
truth have first of all guaranteed themselves to us in virtue
of the Christian's fundamental life - experience, which we
above briefly indicated as the habitual and the actual
righteousness. We have designedly chosen these expres
sions in order to preserve the parallel between the extra-
Christian, natural, and the Christian state of life ; the
relation of guilt in which the subject exists in the former
case, and that of the freedom from guilt in which he exists
here, together with the personal bearing on either side corre
sponding to the relation existing in each case. That the
parallel is no absolutely just one, that the habit of un
righteousness which, apart from the exercise of the same.

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 25, 211
belongs to the natural man, does not perfectly correspond to
the habit of righteousness which forms the abiding founda
tion and the unvarying possession of the Christian state,
must not be overlooked in the instituting of this parallel ;
without our having reason for giving expression to the
difference, otherwise than indirectly, by means of the pre
sentation in the one case as in the other. That habitual
righteousness thus — the righteousness of faith, as the Church
designates it — consists, according to the evangelical cognition,
essentially of a freedom from guilt which — as in itself the
determinateness of his person — the man at his regeneration
finds already existing, and which he makes his own in
conversion. Nothing is more certain for the Christian than
that this righteousness, which he can claim as his own, is not
a characteristic of his natural life ; since, on the contrary, he
recognises this life, on account of the abnormal bearing and
tendency of the natural /, as unrighteous and guilty; and
nothing is more firmly established for him than that just
this righteousness is not the fruit of the moral renewal first
accomplished in him, seeing that this moral renewal in its
beginning and in its progress is based upon the existence of
that righteousness. In this sense we can make our own
the expression of the Church, when with reference to this
righteousness, obtained by Christ and present in Christ, she
declares that it is extra nos posita, and that upon this fact
rests its irrefragable certainty, save that we do not as yet
have regard here to the author thereof. None the less are
we warranted in designating it as habitual, not merely
inasmuch as it has been appropriated by the regenerate, and
accordingly forms an inalienable, unvarying mark of his
Christian standing, but also inasmuch as, in accordance with
the doctrine of the Church — certainly in virtue of the
expiation for guilt rendered by Christ — even the natural man
is possessed of the in itself existing determinateness of his
being, which arises from this expiation, so that there exists
a freedom from guilt for him, of which the reality is pre
supposed by the forces of regeneration operating upon him,
and by the conversion which these forces render possible. If,
now, on this side the identity of the object of faith, which is
here in question, with the contents of the Christian experience

212: SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN_ CERTAINTY,
is clearly apparent, there is yet need on the other hand of a
further consideration, whether in that experience is likewise
contained that which the evangelical cognition teaches as
to the necessity of faith for the receiving of justification.
Manifestly, in order to attain to clearness on this point, we
have to set aside the purely historical elements of faith, in
the same manner as in connection with the question of
freedom from guilt we had to leave out of view that acquir
ing of the same which is given for faith in the person and
work of Christ. If we do so, we obtain as notion and
essence of faith that self-surrender of the subject — in virtue
of the forces of regeneration implanted in him — to that in
itself existing determinateness of his person, to that freedom
from guilt in itself availing for him, whereby coming forth
from that which had hitherto formed the centre of gravity of
his being he enters willingly into that relation (of freedom from
guilt), and in it finds the absolute satisfaction which he had
till then sought in vain. Faith, as a justifying one, is that
act of the person which as spontaneous reaction on the ground
of the regenerating influence takes in the real presupposition
of the latter, the relation of freedom from guilt, and thereon
bases its further ethical existence. Exactly in the same way
in which that freedom from guilt belonging to his nature is
something simple, whole, which cannot be divided, cannot
half exist and half not exist, so is this act of faith a simple
one, though the energy with which it accomplishes itself may
be in measure diverse and the process of genesis from which
it arises a gradual and complicated one. In the moment at
which faith becomes real it receives the righteousness, whose
existence in itself rendered possible the rise of faith, as the
own personal possession for the subject, as a habitus of the
Christian state, which clothes the spiritual / that has come
into being with the faith, conditions its growth without itself
growing or diminishing, so long, namely — but only so long —
as that first turning thereto in faith continues and is renewed.
With all this we do not exceed the compass of the results we
previously came to, when we were developing the contents of
the fundamental Christian experience without respect to the
ecclesiastical dogma of justifying faith, and the fact is proved
to be well grounded on this side also, that we possess^ in that

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 25. 213
principial Christian certainty, at the same time the certainty
as to the object of faith which consists in the habitual
Christian righteousness.
7. We have, however, made mention above not only of the
habitual righteousness, but also of the actual, and of this the
same is true as of the former. While for him who regards
objectively the dogma relating to this question some difficulty
is presented by the attempt rightly to distinguish and rightly
to combine faith as act of justification and as principle of the
moral renewal; and while not seldom, in the theological
presentation of doctrine, regeneration and conversion has been
clumsily separated from faith and works, in our case, pro
ceeding as we do from the Christian experience, which is
organically one, that difficulty falls away beforehand, and this
separation is impossible. For the same act of turning
towards, with which the subject appropriates the relation of
freedom from guilt, for the reason that he perceives in him
self, as regards his natural state, nothing on which he could
base his lasting satisfaction — thus that giving up of the false
selfhood (Egoitat) of the natural man — is at one and the
same time the decisive, the principial moral act, with which
the spiritual / attains to the dominion, and that bent of the
will is victorious, which now as constantly present affords the
characteristic mark of the converted man, of the Christian,
living in the new nature of regeneration and in sanctification.
And since the operation of the regenerative spiritual powers
not merely in itself, as we saw, presupposes the existence of
the relation of freedom from guilt, but also in the first place
aims at nothing else than that the subject should be thereby
enabled and prevailed upon, personally and by his own con
stituting, to become that which, according to his abstract
determinateness, he is and ought to be ; that he should find
that lasting satisfaction, and thereby enter into the normal
moral state, — the implanting of regeneration and conversion is
coincident with the justifying faith, with the state of justifica
tion, with the existence, the authority, and the dominating
activity of the new /, While, however, we comprehend in
such intimate union the habitual and the actual righteousness,
we are yet absolutely prevented by the same actual state of
the Christian experience, which afforded for us the certainty

214 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY,
hitherto possessed, from attempting to derive the habitual
righteousness from the actual, or to condition the former in a
causal manner by the latter. Against such mistake we have
only to oppose all that which has been said above as to the
necessary being of a freedom from guilt, existing in itself and
for the m.an, before the entrance of regeneration and conver
sion and with a view to the same. For conversion is effected
by no other means than that the individual laid hold of by
the regenerating factors recognises the possibility of becoming
one with God without first having to cast out from his nature
all the energies (Potenzen) of sin. That is to say, he appro
priates the freedom from guilt not first acquired by him, but
existing for him; "he apprehends," to make use of the
ordinary dogmatic expression, " in faith the righteousness of
Christ," without his having previously by actual righteousness
— such as he would have to attain to for this end — acquired
for himself freedom from guilt in the sight of God. Nay,
this actual righteousness, which consists in a gradual expul
sion of the sinful energies of the natural life and in a gradual
mastery over the same on the part of the spiritual /, would
not for a single moment advance or even exist, if the basis
of freedom from guilt, of which the regenerate one has been
made partaker, were to fall away from it. For therewith a
cleft would open up between the subjective moral state and
the moral requirement pertaining to it — a cleft which could
be bridged over or covered up by no moral' performance.
Thus, accordingly, the habitual righteousness, the appropria
tion of the freedom from guilt as a complete and constant
magnitude (Grosse), must always precede ere the actual
righteousness conies about. And yet not precede in a
temporal sense, since in truth the one can never be present
without the other. In the very turning to the freedom from
sin destined for the man is constituted the new spiritual /, by
which the actual righteousness is exhibited. That which
apprehends the profferred perfect righteousness is that new /,
born of the powers of regeneration. It is the essential
character of this new / not to be itself, but to have found its
centre of gravity in that point, in gravitating towards which the
man has come to himself And again, it is the nature of this
new f to have its place in the centre of the human personality ;

TJIE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 25. 215
that is to say, to be for all that belongs to the circumference
determinative, for all that is natural dominating. Just, there
fore, as it is impossible that this new /should exist save upon
the basis of the habitual righteousness, so also it cannot exist
without asserting itself in actual righteousness, whether it be
in opposition to the impulses and antagonistic motions of the
old man, in conflict with sin, or whether it be in the un
folding and continued formation of its own nature, which,
however, again can be accomplished only by means of conflict.
This actual righteousness is of itself just as little righteous as
is the new / by whom it is wrought, but it is so only because
and so long as the latter stands in a relation of freedom from
guilt, which relation is not subject to rise and growth, and
forms the abiding foundation and in itself immutable posses
sion of the person. This it is which the Evangelical Church
teaches of the righteousness of (ew, aus) grace alone through
faith, and of the necessity — not outwardly imposed, but
inwardly conditioned — of sanctification and good works
8, To the parallel hitherto drawn between the state of the
natural and that of the spiritual man in regard to righteous
ness, it corresponds that we can now also assure ourselves,
from the experience of regeneration and conversion, of the
spiritual freedom of the will as an immanent object of faith,
in the same sequence wherein above the knowledge of the
unfreedom of the will attached to that of the habitual and
actual unrighteousness. We have in doing so the same
advantage as there, that we have no occasion to begin with
general and abstract definitions of the nature of the human-
moral freedom, but are at once in a position to denominate in
a concrete way, from the experience of the Christian, that of
which he is conscious as a possession received in regeneration
and conversion in distinction from the former condition of his
will. It is a question of the entrance into that moral state
which the Christian has become acquainted with as, in
opposition to that of the natural man, the normal one ; of the
possibility of its accomplishment; of the act of the will
whereby it takes place and when accomplished continues to
exist; finally, also of the possibility of bringing that con
tinued existence to a standstill, and rendering the entrance
ineffectual. If the unfreedom of the natural will was this.

&

216 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
that, while possessed of more or less unhindered movement in
the domain proper to it, it was nevertheless unable to take
the decisive step whereby the personal-moral life is restored
oat of the perversion of the natural state ; so will the freedom
of the spiritual will at first consist in this, that it has received
and possesses the capacity for carrying through and maintain
ing the conversion. It is not a self-determination at large,
not baseless and aimless caprice, not the capacity for every
thing possible, which one can will and do because one likes ;
but as the willing and the doing of the natural man found its
standard and its determination in the goods which he
proposed to himself, in such wise indeed that this proposing
again was his own act, and was possible only within the limit
of the relative goods, so is the willing of the spiritual man
conditioned by the absolutely satisfying good, of which he has
become conscious by regeneration, in which he is now able to
find the gravitating point of his nature — in such wise indeed
that the fixing of this good, whereby the self-determination
here too distinguishes itself from mere caprice, is at the same
time his own act. The act of volition on its formal side, that
one wills and in willing is master of himself, is on both sides
the same, but that which one wills and can will is different :
the unfreedom in the former case consisted herein, that one
did not will and could not will — and that indeed in virtue of
unconstrained self-determination — that which one here, and
again in virtue of unconstrained self-determination, will and
can, viz. to break off oneself from oneself, to lay down a new
moral beginning, in which the man corresponding to his idea
has come to himself and is master of himself unto salvation.
Of this freedom of the -will as a gift of the regenerating
influence the Christian is just as undoubtingly conscious, as
he has become sensible of that unfreedom of his natural / as
a condition transmitted to him — conscious of it, however, as
a gift of which he himself now has possession, of which he
can by self-determination dispose, just as this is in general
the essence of his personal human nature to be able to assert
itself, to will itself as that, and to make itself that which it
is and has. The positive side of this freedom, however, is
not without the negative, and however little the latter ex
presses anything new, which is added to the former, it must

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 25. 2l7
still be brought home to the consciousness in order that one
may be fully acquainted with the positive side. The willing
and being able in reference to the moral turning in conversion
contains in itself, as an integral element, the power of not
willing, since otherwise the former would not be what it really
is, a free act. And this, too, not in virtue of a simple caprice
of self-determining, but by reason of the fact that the subject
is able to set before it a good which conditions this not
willing, inasmuch as it is the willing of something else. And
the freedom of the will in this negative sense consists now in
two things at once, in the setting up of that other good and
ground of determination, and in the willing of the attraction
which that good exerts upon the subject, so that it thereby
attains to another moral position than that which was aimed
at by the regeneration. Thus consequently the possibility of
falling from the state of conversion, nay more, the possibility
of not entering into the same, is a consequence of that
freedom of the will wherein the subject was placed by
regeneration, however much the incitement and solicitation of
the natural / may come into account in this connection. The
capability of using the gift first involves the possibility of its
abuse ; and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is not the less
true that in the given case the resistance to the drawing of
grace is a gift of grace, namely, a gift abused. It will hardly
be necessary, however, to add that we have exhibited this
freedom in its reality, without going forth beyond that accom
plishing of regeneration and conversion known and guaranteed
to us ; that its reality consequently is as certain for us as the
reality of that fundamental moral transformation, which
without it would neither take place nor continue to exist ;
and that we thus with justice reckon it among those immanent
objects of fa^th of which we are assured as real at the same
time with that transformation.
9. Little, however, as it can be open to doubt that with
the positive side of the spiritual freedom of the will the
negative is present, just as certainly, on the other hand, does
the Christian become sensible that, with the abuse of the
gift received the gift itself gradually disappears, and that
condition of unfreedom of the captive wUl returns, which
constitutes the mark of the natural man. This in itself.

218 , SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
which is brought home to his consciousness" in the manifold
checks and declensions of his spiritual life, is a proof for him
that, while the possibility of otherwise willing is indeed an
inalienable quantity in the rise of the positive moral freedom,
it is not in such wise inalienable that this possibility must
needs for ever attach to the same, not to say that it should of
necessity become a reality. The Christian, it is true, does
not altogether lose this consciousness of being able to will
otherwise, even where in most unrestrained energy he holds
fast and carries out the state of his new /; but in proportion
as this takes place, that consciousness recedes in him, and he
knows that if he were perfectly that which is contemplated
in his moral transformation, it would be impossible to him
henceforth to will otherwise. This fact of the Christian
consciousness, as combined with that first named, at once
then affords the last particular which we have in this place
to derive from the experience of the Christian : that the
measure of the existing freedom of will is the measure of the
habitual and actual righteousness maintained and carried into
effect, and the converse. Nay, we can go a step farther, and
add, in parallel with the relation of the natural unfreedom of
the will and unrighteousness, that there is no essential differ
ence in the meaning, whether we ascribe to the new man
personal righteousness or spiritual freedom of will. For this
righteousness exists for the Christian only as willed and
implanted by him, thus by means of the practical manifesta
tion of that freedom of the will ; and the practical manifesta
tion of the same in the positive sense indicated, its growth to
the point at which the possibility of willing otherwise — that
is, of the new implanting of unrighteousness — has more and
more receded, with the tendency altogether to disappear,
essentially coincides with the practical manifestation and
growth of the righteousness, which will first be a perfect
righteousness when it unfolds itself without conflict and
without constraint. Yet in connection with this strict com
prehension in one, we do not forget that not the act of voli
tion in the formal sense — according to which it belongs not
less to the state of unrighteousness — can be identified with
the existence and manifestation of righteousness ; but only the
will as materially defined, as directed to the spiritual objects.

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 2C. 219
as free in opposition to caprice, since it suffers itself to be
determined by nothing, save that which, congruent with the
idea and essential nature of man, precisely therein corresponds
to the knowledge which has arisen for him in regeneration.
§ 26. In the installing of the new I in the centre of the
human personality and in the present continuance of the
same, the Christian has the pledge for the future sole
deterihination of his whole personal and natural existence
from that centre, the certain hope of ethical perfection and
personal blessedness.
1. Hitherto it has been portions of the Christian truth
belonging to that which is present which we have contem
plated as immanent in the condition of regeneration and
conversion, guaranteed in and with this state. Now, however,
our glance falls upon those realities of the Christian faith
which are not accessible and present to our experience in the
same measure as the former, but which are nevertheless
preordained and involved in the present character of the
Christian state, and in this sense vouched for to the Christian.
In considering them we keep before our mind the fact that it
is immanent objects of faith which we have here throughout
to deal -with, and that consequently the eternal future (das
Jenseitige) of the Christian life, as such and in itself, cannot
be made the object of our investigation. If we were com
pelled in that which precedes so to apprehend the objects of
the Christian truth as to leave out of account the purely
historic side, for reaching which our means of assurance
hitherto, do not suffice, much more will this be the case here,
where it is a question of the eschatologic dogmas of those
realities whose proper nature — which is first to be developed
in the future — for this very reason lies in great part outside
of the present experience of the Christian. Yet it is never
theless a fact of the Christian faith that the hope of the
ultimate possession is not, as might appear for the profane
eye, divorced from the present experience of the Christian :
eaTiv he iriaTii; eX'jri^ofievcov viroa-Tacri^, irpayp.dTaiv eXej^o^ ov
^XeTTOfievcov, Heb. xi. 1. Just as there can hardly be a
greater misconception of the Christian faith, however often

220 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY,
this misconception may occur, than to suppose that the
conviction and confidence peculiar to it rest upon an
authority external and foreign to this faith, to which without
adequate grounds it yields itself in blind obedience ; so it is
no less a perversion of the character of the Christian hope
when it is supposed that it receives its contents only from
without, even though it be by the communication of a divine
revelation, in regard to which one then surely has reason to
ask how it proves itself to the man as certain truth. For us
now it is from the outset an established fact, that however
much awaits the Christian according to the revelation in
Scripture, as a glory only in the future approaching and
coming upon him, however much that is new, till then
unheard and unseen in the way of bliss, the future may
conceal within itself for him, none of this can befall him
abruptly (unvermittelt), by dint of a magic transformation
and glorification, without inner reference to his present condi
tion and possession ; and [so likewise] that his confidence in
the expectation of this new and surpassing glory is a neces
sary one, distinguishing itself from all fantastic imagination,
because it is founded upon the reality of the present posses
sion — because the object of hope is inseparably linked
together with the object of faith. The matter thus stands
with the self - assuring of these future realities of faith
similarly as with that of the realities lying behind the
present constitution of the Christian life : as little as these
are simply past, so little are the former simply future alone ;
but both are likewise integral elements of the present Chris
tian state, the one as disappearing the other as unfolding, and
are by reason of this their immanence comprehensible.
2. As everywhere where a process of genesis is in question,
specially within the organic world, so also in the case of the
Christian life, there is deposited in the beginning the poten
tiality of the end, the consummation ; for without this it
would not be such beginning. It was the nerve in the
process of self-assuring, as we observed this in connection
with the bringing about of the Christian state, that the
moral transformation to be accomplished was recognised not
merely as something actual, but also as that which is normal,
that which ought to be, that the man thereby is restored to

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 26. 221
himself, comes to himself The actual and absolute satisfac
tion, which becomes the man's possession upon the advent of
regeneration and conversion, in distinction from every kind of
apparent and relative satisfaction, is not conceivable without
the certainty that now is being actually and absolutely
realized, as regards him and in him, that which has been
made known to him in regeneration as the highest destina
tion, as the final aim of his nature and life. The Christian
can bear the thought that the lower, relative aims of his life
remain more or less unattained, the powers and faculties of
his nature corresponding to them, partly undeveloped ; for
they serve on either side only to the realization of his highest
aim and the development of his innermost spiritual capacity,
and can render this service without for themselves attaining
to perfection. But for this very reason he would not bear to
conceive that the same thing is the case with the perfection
of that which forms the centre and goal of his being and life ;
and the Christian knows the thoughts of this kind as of the
nature of a temptation, which, if they attained the dominion
in him, would annihilate the very beginning and continued
existence of his present Christian life. So indissolubly thus
is the entrance of the new, implante.d in regeneration,
combined with the consciousness that this is an entrance for
perfection, that a separation of the latter would be a deadly
incision in the life-root of the former ; and again, the Chris
tian consciousness is assured only by means of that entrance,
in the power and in the consequence of the same. But that
which in such wise represents itself as a fact of the Christian
consciousness is so only because the state of fact of experi
ence underlying such consciousness involves that other fact.
It is not a question of a postulate of the consciousness, which
would be taken up and held to with tenacity, in order to be
able to retain that which it covers, but of a quality of the
possession, which constrains the consciousness to apprehend
and hold it as that which it is, with the tendency and power
for perfection inherent in it.
3. The state of life into which conversion transplants the
Christian is a being and an arising at the same time, and on
that account such an one as forbids alike his apprehending it
as at present perfect, and his not apprehending it as to be

222 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
perfected in the future. If it were only an arising, a self-
developing of the new 1, to the end of finally effecting a
perfect righteousness, then truly, considering the fluctuations
to which that development in the Christian life is subject,
nothing more would force itself upon the consciousness than
this present imperfection ; nay rather, as this arising, placed
alone, must, according to that which has been previously dis
cussed, sink in ruin, so would it not only be the case with
that consciousness, but the latter in place of being linked with
the certainty of perfection would at once pass over into the
consciousness of instability and nullity. If it were only
a being, namely, the having been moved into the relation of
freedom from guilt and of righteousness, then there would
fall away, in the consciousness of the totality of this being,
alike the sense of the present imperfection and the certainty
of the future perfecting (consummation) ; it would, however,
be an imaginary, unreal blessedness, which must every moment
be liable to suffer shipwreck on the realities of the actual
Christian life, with its oppositions, difficulties, and defects —
a fiction on this side ; exactly as we previously recognised
the reception and the possession of the habitual righteousness
without a simultaneous entrance of the actual, this ethical
arising, as an impossibility. We are indeed saved, but in
hope : the being into which the Christian enters is not im
plicated in the process of arising, is to this extent perfect ;
just in order that thereby may come about a corresponding
genesis, that the complete restitution may be rendered possible
and realized, that the new / which has attained to the
dominion may not only keep down the oppositions which
stand in its way, but may utterly put an end to them.
The experience of the Christian life is on this side similar
to that which is made by the natural man also, in those
domains of knowledge and of power into which he is competent
to enter, that only when he has become something, the hope and
confidence of becoming, of gaining the object in view, arises
for him. We can therefore, without in any way stepping
beyond the circle of the Christian experience, let fall the
whole weight thereof upon the future, the perfection : that is
its essential characteristic, that it is endowed with a hope
which was alien to the natural experience, the confident

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 26. 223
certainty, on the ground of the constitution of the life received,
of being now able actually to reach the goal, in which the
destination of humanity, of which it, the Christian experience,
has become conscious, is realized.
4. The imperfection, which is presupposed in the Christian
state as alike real and something to be overcome, is brought
home most immediately and clearly to the consciousness in
that twofold character of the / as spiritual and natural, and
in the uninterrupted conflict hereby occasioned. If anything
whatever has become certain for the Christian in his regenera
tion it is this, that the position into which he has entered,
the good -which he has received, avails and is destined for
him not merely on a single side of his nature, but in his
totality. With the altered direction of his personality in its
supreme aims and life principles, a change is at the same time
introduced and promoted in the shaping of the lower aims of
his natural life, as this is turned towards the world, in the
way of manifesting this life, in the motives determining this
activity, etc., — a change which is so far from being as yet
actually accomplished, that on the contrary an evident dis
harmony, a manifest conflict between the spiritual / with its
tendencies and the natural / with its endeavours, is the note
of the present Christian state. This disharmony was above
regarded by us as the proper characteristic of the Christian
state, to the extent that the reality of the latter was seen to
be conditioned by the existence of this disharmony ; but yet
only for the reason that in the midst of the abnormal life of
nature the spiritual / cannot otherwise be born and continue
to exist than in conflict with that life, so that under the given
circumstances the conflictless condition would be a sign of the
spiritual death, which is yet present or has again set in. This
conflict, however, was begun and is continued only in the
hope of victory, in the confidence that the new powers of the
spiritual life are able to overcome the resistance, and ulti
mately to resolve the disharmony into perfect harmony of
the man with himself, into an accord of all the utterances
of his person and nature with the recovered keynote of his
being. Thus then the hope of the Christian is in the first
place directed to that at which his intention aims in connec
tion with the enduring conflict ; to wit, that the natural /

224 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
not merely remain outside of the centre of his personality,
not again become fundamentally determinative, but that it
likewise be deprived of its efficiency even at the point whither
it has retired and clandestinely settled, that it may now also
really die, after the deadly wound has been inflicted upon it in
conversion. For only when this has been accomplished will
he have become partaker, without peril of forfeiting and with
out any limitation, of that good to which he is now already
attached by the innermost fibres of his personal life, only
then will he be perfectly master of himself, in accordance
with the design of his being for organic, self-effected unity,
and thus consequently free. And the matter does not so
stand, that with this disappearing of the " other law in the
members," the change towards which the Christian struggles
on, and for which he waits, were accomplished only in these
outworks of his nature, while as regards his inner man he
remains what he is ; but the first stands in indissoluble rela
tion to the second, the unfolding and complete formation of
the new T ; since assuredly the strength of the natural I is
the weakness of the spiritual, and the strength of the spiritual
is the weakness of the natural. If, in presence of this divided
ness of his being, which is at the same time unfreedom and
unhappiness, in the experience of the inconstant progress in
its removal, in the consciousness of the weakness and waver
ing even of his spiritual life, the sigh is forced to the lips of
the Christian : " 0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me ? " yet it remains the characteristic of his nature as re
generate, that he can and must add : " I thank God, who
hath given me the victory, now already in the freedom from
guilt and the innermost emancipation of my person, a victory
which in itself vouches to me for the conducting of the conflict
forward to the ultimate and entire consummation."
5. The hope of the Christian, which extends in the first
instance to the narrower circle of his own person and nature,
and is certain of the perfecting of the same after the
standard of its present possession, is not able to stop short
at this, but of necessity reaches forth further to those portions
of the spiritual and natural life with which he is conscious
of being organically connected. For in the first place there
is for the man absolutely no individual consciousness which

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 26. 225
were not compelled to enlarge itself into the general, con
sentaneously with the fact that he is a member of the
organism of mankind ; and we have seen before that the pro
cess of self-assuring in itself demands and presupposes this
going forth out of himself on the part of the individual
subject. And then the contradiction which the present state
of the Christian presents for the individual Christian subject
as one to be terminated, is not merely existent and active in
the Christian's own nature, but not less so in his further sur
rounding, which forms for him as well the means as the
object of his self-manifestation, and the strength of the dis
harmony prevailing in him is essentially conditioned by the
fact, among others, that it finds occasion and support from
without. While consequently that experience, by means of
which the Christian is assured of his individual perfecting, is
doubtless of an individual kind, he is yet not able to suppose
this perfecting without likewise supposing it in the case of
others, to fellowship with whom his spiritual consciousness
is enlarged, and without conceiving of the hindrances as
removed, within that circumference of the natural life which
he comprehends in one with his own by the natural individual
consciousness. This twofold supposing no doubt bears in a
higher degree than the former, which had reference only to
one's own person, the character of a postulate, and is not
equally as in the former case a fact of the future already
contained in the actual constitution of the present. The
perfecting of the present state of fact is for the Christian
under all circumstances sure, so long as he is assured of the
reality of his Christian life ; but because it is sure for him,
he cannot fail to demand that that likewise be real without
which he is not able to conceive the realization of the former.
Yet it would certainly be wrong to resolve the certainty in
question, although we have to distinguish it from the former,
into nothing more than a postulate. We shall be led in a
subsequent part of our system to the recognition, and must
here content ourselves with referring thereto, that there is an
experience of Christian communion which cannot be severed
from the experience of one's own Christian state ; and there
fore it is not merely a demand, but a supposition resting
upon experience, albeit mediate experience, that the perfecting
P

226 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
of the individual takes place not without the perfectmg of
that community, even as the present individual Christian
state does not exist without a general one. If this is the
case, however, then therewith first of all the contradiction of
the natural sinful powers present within this community,
affecting in his measure likewise the individual Christian
subject, the disharmony thereby wrought in the spiritual and
in the total life of this community, is thought of (gesetzt) as
something to be abolished, and with this a part at least of
that is fulfilled which we had before to maintain as a demand
from the standpoint of the individual perfecting. Then it is
a further experience of the individual Christian life, which
now, in accordance with what has just been said, has again its
reality and its certainty for the community, that the resolving
of the disharmony, in which the ethical conflict of the
Christian life consists, into harmony with the highest spiritual
principle, accomplishes itself not alone within the person and
nature of the Christian, but likewise in a primary stage, and
partially in the world of objects with which and in regard to
which the Christian manifests his own life ; and since now
between the struggling of the Christian in the carrying out of
his spiritual life and his hoping there exists an indissoluble
continuity, the struggling maintains itself only in hoping,
and the , hoping in struggling, we are also therewith pointed
beyond the narrow limits at first drawn, and forced to the
supposition resting upon experience, that the world of natural
things, penetrated by the sinful agencies (Potenzen), must
likewise in some way participate in that consummation guar
anteed to the Christian subject.
6. However little, according to the experience of the
Christian the state of life, into which he has entered by
conversion, can be an unchanging, reposing possession, — on
the contrary, the conflict which is inseparable herefrom must
from its nature issue in victory or defeat, — yet just as cer
tainly it is a fact of the Christian life, that even in the best
case the victory, that is, the prevailing over the dishar
mony which exists within him and without him, is neither
uninterruptedly continued, nor does it in the course of the
earthly pilgrimage attain that goal which is constantly before
the eyes of the Christian amidst his struggling and hoping.

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 26. 227
The old man with his forces and lusts, continually incited by
the powers of the external world, powers homogeneous with
itself, lives in him a life, depressed indeed, but withal
relatively independent, and very frequently, whether on his
own impulse or on a given occasioning, the motions of the same
appear in the foreground, become an inner or outward deed
before the repression on the part of the spiritual / gets the
mastery over them, renders them powerless by appropriation
of the natural material on which and in which they operate,
and puts an end to the semblance of personal satisfaction
which accompanies these motions, by manifestation of the
absolute good. So far is it from being the case that this
separate life of the natural / is at once, with and after con
version, near to disappearance and death, that on the contrary
it is even an advance of the Christian state if the two
domains of life, of the old and the new man, become clearly
and distinctly separate from each other, and if the Christian
is only always on his guard, to meet as it were on the
threshold the sinful motions by which he is unwillingly
surprised. For as the essence of sin is a lie, the deluding
with apparently satisfying goods, this lie now, when the only
real and absolute good has been found, makes its influence
felt, or at least attempts to do so, in that it conceals the
intentions of the natural man under the tendencies of the new
/, which is the rather possible, since the material of its
appearing, the action in which it comes to expression, is
identical. Here, then, it is rightly said : Duo cum faciunt
idem, non est idem, and it is in itself something if the
Christian does not compose himself to rest with the thought
that after all the goal to be attained, the act to be accom
plished, corresponds to his Christian vocation, if he no longer
suffers himself to be deluded even with this lie. Nowhere,
however, does it stand within the power of the Christian, be
he never so energetic and faithful in accomplishing and
renewing his conversion, haply to annihilate the old / with
one stroke, but he must put up with its still living on ; and it
is already something again, when he always experiences this
continued life of the old / only passively and painfully, and
not as the source of occasional pleasure. This annihilation
can be and ought to be only a gradual thing ; partly by the

228 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
inner, repeated, ever more entire self-surrender to the forces
and the good of regeneration, whereby the incitement of the
sinful motion is deadened and broken ; partly by the with
drawal of the material on which it is kindled, the organs with
which it works, whereby the fire, smouldering within, is from
without repressed and stifled. But — this is the experience of
Christians as individuals and in their totality — that life of
the natural man is not entirely broken and stifled even in the
best case until death, and the hope of the Christian were
vain, if its fulfilment extended only to the limits of his
earthly existence. And yet the matter stands not so, that
the Christian could, on account of the non-fulfilment on this
side of the grave, surrender the hope inseparable from the
reality of his Christian state ; we mean, that he should on
that account have reason to surrender it. For that the
power which has come upon him at his regeneration, and
with which he has been endowed, is stronger than all opposi
tions, whether they be in him or outside of him, that it is
stronger even than death, just that is the Christian certainty
in which he stands ; and the consciousness thereof does not
abandon him even then, when he is at times surprised and
overpowered by the adversary. He could not be what he is,
unless he could and must become that which he hopes : with
this confidence based upon facts he enters the gates of
death. 7. If now, having reached this point, we take a view of the
result of our investigation hitherto, and compare it with the
objects of faith which are afforded by revelation to the Chris
tian hope, we are first of all struck with the fact that we are
here yet farther removed from having embraced the single
particulars of the Christian truth in their sharply outlined
concrete form, than was the case with the previous objects of
faith. Nor can we wonder at this, if indeed the spiritual
realities, to which hope relates, are accessible only in their
potentiality (Potenz) to the present Christian experience ; only
with a certain limitation could we reckon them amono- the
immanent objects of faith. But however much we may recoc-
nise this limitation, this distinction in comparison with the
forementioned elements of the truth, we shall nevertheless be
able to remain conscious of that which is contained in this

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 26. 229
potential establishing. The one thing, in itself significant
enough, by which the Christian certainty characterizes itself
in this respect, is this, that the hope growing out of the funda
mental Christian state is entirely congruent with that which,
as objective truth relating to the future of the Christians, is
from without furnished to this hope, fitting it as the key fits the
lock, opening up mysteries which otherwise, despite all revela
tion, remain veiled. This is, as we have said, no small matter,
for thereby all merely external relation to those things of
revelation comes to an end ; they inwardly interlock with the
hope resulting from the state of regeneration, filling up and
satisfying this hope with the positive contents for which it was
constituted ; they are as it were the homogeneous notes,
which with the keynote there supplied make up the full har
mony of the Christian hope, in relation to which it is precisely
the keynote. But — and this is the further particular which
claims to be added — in the keynote itself already resound
those other notes also, and he who has a more acute spiritual
sense hears them therein. It is true it is a wrong translation
to take the faith in Heb. xi. 1 as the substance of things hoped
for ; the thought, however, is correct, and in accordance with
the experience of the Christian. As the Old Testament
singer amidst the failing of his flesh and heart knows and
praises God as his rock and portion for ever, in the cleaving
to the eternal God preserving himself, his personality, above
the stream of transitory things with which as regards his
natural consciousness he is being carried away; so, much
more, has the Christian in the everlasting life, standing out
above all that is temporal, on which his spiritual I reposes
and which it embraces, the present surety for the preservation
of his person in the midst of the hostile powers seeking to
destroy it, and not alone for its preservation, but also for its
perfecting. For it is not the abstract continuance of exist
ence, immortality of the soul, or whatever one may call it, at
which his hope aims by reason of its present possession, but
the perfecting of his person and therefore the preservation of
the same, however and wherever, yet only in such wise
that this perfecting be congruent with the beginning thereto
laid out. The Christian knows this beginning as of such
kind as not to apply to a single part, a certain side of his

230 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY-.
human nature, but to himself as man, knows it as the begin
ning of an end, which must be restitution of the human
nature in its totality ; he knows that though the moral trans
formation which he experienced by regeneration had not its
seat in the outward physical nature, it nevertheless at once
"aimed at the dominating, penetrating, appropriating of the
same, that this nature may become adapted (adaquat) to the
new moral principle ; he has therefore in his experience no
occasion whatever to seek that perfecting, and therefore pre
servation of his person, in the continuing annihilation of his
physical life, as though abstract ghostliness were the perfect
state ; he has no experience that the present consciousness, in
the form in which it is constituted by the reflection of the
discursive thinking, is inseparable from his person, on the
contrary his spiritual /, in the supreme moments of its exalta
tion, leaves this reflected, mediated consciousness to recede,
and has its being in the immediacy of the surrender to the
factors of regeneration ; not less is it certain to him from
experience, that likewise the strength of the expression of his
spiritual life depends upon the victorious power of the same
as immediately, unreflectingly, pouring itself out, unfolding
itself ; that, however, with that immediacy as with this the
personal character of his life does not vanish, but rather rises
to the full freedom of that self-movement which is homogeneous
with his innermost nature, and which is for this very reason
accompanied by the sense of bliss. Thus it becomes evident
that certainly faith germinally includes in itself the substance
of that which is future, hoped for, in the first place as regards
the Christian individual subject ; but also further as regards
the total subject of Christianity, without which the individual
subject would not be what he is, nor could be perfected to that
which he hopes ; and, finally, as regards the world of natural
things, in and on which he occupies himself along with the
total-subject, and without whose conformation and renewal,
homogeneous with his own, in keeping with the freedom of the
children of God [cf. Eom. viii. 21], that perfection, freedom,
blessedness were not possible.

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 27. 231
CHAPTEE II.
THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM.
§ 2 7. The contradictions, against which the Christian certainty
in its extension to the immanent objects of faith has to
maintain itself, must equally be derived and comprehended
from their source, the fundamental opposition above
examined, as must the practical certainty from the pure
and principial certainty. Inasmuch, however, as the oppo
sition, alike as regards its inner nature as its outward
manifestation, characterizes itself as a growing one, which
just for this reason is not always directed with equal
energy and distinctness to all objects of faith ; we have thus
here, in the first place, to contemplate that form of the
same which specially opposed itself to the certainty regard
ing the immanent objects of faith, namely, Eationalism.
1. It is not merely for the sake of systematic congruity
that here — as already above in connection with the question
as to the central certainty — we follow up the positive stating
of the certainty with a separate exhibiting of the opposition
and its nullity. For of a truth, wherever a Christian main
tains his certainty against hostile attacks, and even where this
certainty develops itself in spite of opposing contradictions,
the two are always most intimately connected — the positive
perception of the Christian truth, with its power and energy
producing conviction in the subject, and the negative self-
defence against the seductive and hostile untruth, so that the
latter in every instance is possible only by means of the former,
and every other weapon proves in the long run ineffectual :
albeit the matter does not stand so, that it were on every
occasion all the oppositions, and always the same oppositions,
with which the certainty has to contend, much less that they
must of necessity confront it in a fully developed scientific
form and setting ; and often the estimation and surmounting
of the same is more or less an unconscious one. The very
fact that the defensive can be assumed with success only from

232 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the Christian position renders it desirable and necessary first
completely to treat of this ere we apply ourselves to that ;
and the more the understanding of the oppositions in their
origin and their connectedness is necessary for the repelling of
the same, so much the more will it be incumbent upon us to
deprive them of their isolated character, in which they might
there easily appear. In reality, the opposition with which we
have here to do, stands in one respect on a level with the
constituting of the certainty ; that, as the latter develops itself
out of the central certainty, so it on its part develops itself
out of the fundamental antithesis with which we have already
become acquainted, and the derivation thence is both in one
— understanding of its nature and recognition of its nullity.
Wherever the one stands out in the consciousness of the Chris
tian distinctly and separately opposed to the other, the reality
included in the central certainty, which he must hold fast by
reason of that certainty, and the negation of that reality, con
tained with other negations in the fundamental antithesis of
the natural /, there for the Christian every doubt and every
disquietude comes to an end, there is fides and certitudo divina.
He knows that it cannot be otherwise ; the non-contradiction
would be a source of anxiety for him, the negation is for him
a proof of the truth. But in fact this clear separation and
recognition is by no means always at once afforded; on the
one hand, we discover human-natural grounds also, on which
the weakness of the negation or dissimilar statement may be
inferred, — since the human lie is indeed engaged in a process
of self-consuming, — by which the negation as a matter of fact
proves itself null and void ; on the other hand, it may remain
questionable whether the contradictions, to which the realities
of the faith appear to be subject, arise only from the false leflec-
tion of the natural / on the things removed from its experience,
or at the same time from the defective experience, and from
the wrong understanding of that which has been experienced,
on the part of the spiritual /. In the former case the Chris
tian may come falsely to mix up the fides humana, which in
every instance affords only relative security, with the fides
divina ; it becomes for him a staff of reed, which occasionally
pierces his hand. In the second case, the natural reflection
which recognises the contradiction and relies thereon, may

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 27, 233
claim to be in the right as opposed to the erroneous supposi
tion of the Christian certainty, whereas at bottom it is never
theless in the wrong, since it is not the realities themselves,
but the apprehension and understanding of the same, which
give rise to the faultiness. We must bear in mind these
possibilities in conducting the investigation, lest we mingle
together what is in point of fact separate and distinct.
2. If we may then, even under the given restrictions,
designate it a fact that the contradictions applying to the
single objects of faith are derived from the fundamental
opposition as their common source, the question now further
arises whether we are warranted in bounding off from each
other the contradictions which have thus arisen, in such a way
that they correspond in their bearing upon the objects of faith
to the extension of the Christian certainty to the same. For
we should act amiss, if merely for the sake of systematics we
should divide them from each other, and in opposition to
their actual form and combination would here speak only of
those which refer to the immanent objects of faith. Never
theless, even regarding the matter only from an external and
historic point of view, it cannot be denied that in the final
shaping and fixing of the oppositions a process of development
unfolds itself, in connection with which not everything that
lies before us as specifically Christian truth is at once called
in question and rejected. For what a manifest difference
between the rationalists of the earlier kind and the generation
which has been reared by them ! What an advance, from the
first stirrings of the unchristian and antichristian spirit in the
past century to the present materialism ! It is not indeed to
be assumed that this advance was everywhere a symmetrical
one, as though the different stages of the same could be
marked out in point of time. In single circles, in single
personalities, the development, which is elsewhere accom
plished slowly and by degrees in the course of generations,
may crowd itself into a human life, into the period of a few
years. In others it may apparently or in reality come to a
standstill for a while, or be checked by peculiar surroundings
and influences. As early as the close of last century we meet
with antichristian tendencies which had virtually reached
the point at which the most advanced materialism stands in

234 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
the- present day. And right into the present there have
existed here and there solitary stragglers of that earlier
class of rationalists, with all the sincerity of their religious
belief and all the severity of their religious earnestness. But
then does it follow from this that there is no development
and no advance whatever in the elaborating of the opposition ?
that it starts up in a complete form, sometimes in one way
sometimes in another 1 Assuredly not. We have only in
the first place to distinguish the total-development from the
progression within single circles, and for the time being to
confine ourselves to the former. And then we have to regard
the historic process in its inner factors, where in place of the
external, temporal successivity the causal order and succession
presents itself to us, which as such remains essentially the
same, whether the temporal course of the phenomena thereby
conditioned be a slower or more accelerated one. For not
everywhere is the soil whence the germs of the opposition
shoot forth equally prepared, and in many places the KWTe'^ov
which restrains them is stronger than in others.
3. Accordingly it can no longer wear the semblance of
caprice or false systematizing, if, of the oppositions against
which the Christian certainty has to maintain itself, we first
take into consideration those which relate to the immanent
objects of the faith. For if it is true that the certainty rest
ing upon the experience of regeneration and conversion is
assured at the same time of definite realities, which are in fact
involved in those acts of the experience, and if the opposition
everywhere has its roots in the defect or cessation of this
experience ; then that which there most intimately concerns
the assertion must also here most intimately concern the
negation, and those portions of the spiritual truth will first be
lost which were most immediately embraced by the vanishing
fundamental certainty. We will try at once to make this
clear by a concrete example. It is indeed undeniable that the
fact of the atonement, the substitutionary satisfaction of
Christ, became very early an object of the antichristian
attacks, and one might conclude therefrom externally regarded,
that this portion of the Christian truth, which belongs not to
those which are immanent, were touched earlier than these, or
at least simultaneously with them, by the opposition. But in

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 27, 235
point of fact and in reality the matter stands rather thus, that,
after the distinctness and certainty regarding human sin and
guilt, after the understanding of the removal of the relation of
unrighteousness and guilt — a removal of necessity preceding
all deeds of human righteousness — has been lost, then first the
foundations are given on which the denial or misapprehension
of the redeeming work builds itself up. It is further rightly
said that the mystery of the Divine Trinity very early gave
offence, and was denied, on account of the difficulty of its
comprehension under the human categories of thinking ; but
does any one then imagine that a Christian holds fast that
mysterious fact just because he has comprehended it intellec
tually, or just so long as it is possible to him in some way to
form a conception of it (sich vorstellig zu machen), and not,
before everything else, because he is able to understand and
maintain the Christian state, in which he exists, in itself only
as the operation of the triune God ? But if this is so, it will
be primarily owing to a mutation and falling off in his Chris
tian state, if the incomprehensibility of the mystery exerts upon
a man the effect which it had not previously, that on this
account he calls in question the fact of the Trinity ; and we
are thus once more pointed back to the immanent objects of
faith as those which are first shaken. It is by no means
necessary that the denier should be conscious of such intimate
connection, or that the historically manifest sequence of the
denial is always this, that the negation, proceeding from the
immanent objects of faith, advances to the transcendent ones ;
but it is the truth regarding the matter, that the progress is
accomplished in such wise, and we are so far removed there
with from doing violence to the facts in the interest of
the systematizing, that only in this way are the manifold
contradictions deprived of their outwardly and seemingly
accidental character, and shown up in their real and necessary
sequence. 4. We designate rationalism as the opponent with whose
contradiction the Christian certainty within the circle of the
objects of faith here lying before us has to join issue ; and if
it is in itself convenient to give to the antithesis a definite
historic name, that it may not seem as though we had to do
with imaginary oppositions, it becomes clear on the other

236 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
hand, from the preceding argument, with what reason and in
what sense we assign to rationalism its place just here. For,
in the first place, it is historically certain that rationalism
stands at the head of that actual series of oppositions against
Christianity which, since the breaking off from the faith in
the second half of last century, have in an ever more definite,
self-consistent, comprehensive, and radical manner set them
selves to withstand the Christian truth and the Christian
world of thought; and accordingly, even if for no other
reason, this opponent has a claim to be mentioned in the first
place. In thus speaking, however, it is at the same time
further expressed, that, viewed in relation to that which
succeeds, rationalism marks the first stadium of the departure
from the specifically Christian truths in which accordingly
must be tested that which has been said of the congruence
between the positive affirmation (Setzung) and the opposition
as regards the Christian realities first touched thereby. The
very man, indeed, who has with a certain amount of justice
been styled the Father of Eationalism, Semler, shows the very
close contiguity of the declension, which begins with him,
with that Christian certainty for which he struggled in vain
even prior to his entering upon what are strictly speaking
theological studies. That Semler was not able to penetrate
into this certainty and sealing, which it is true was not
seldom presented to him in a pietistically distorted form ; that
he had not learnt to know, by dint of specifically Christian
personal experience, the Christian state of life in conversion
out of which that certainty springs ; that therefore the Chris
tian truth was laid hold of by him in the form of an external
object, with the means of the natural experience and cognition :
this it was whence the total position which he then took up
as a Christian and a theologian resulted, in such wise, namely,
that in place of that central ethical transformation, regenera
tion and conversion, in which for the Christian all the rays of
the Christian truth converge, the " moral reparation " of the
man is put, to which now as a natural consequence all
portions of the Christian revelation and doctrine are to be
brought into relation, and by which they are to be measured.
Thence then, to remind of the instance above adduced, Semler
among others does not see that all men must first presuppose

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 27, 237
a satisfaction for their sins, " in order to be able to advance so
much the farther in their daily veneration of God as Christians
by their doing and avoiding." -^ So it stands also with the
doctrine of the Trinity, of which one ought not to say it has
been " ordained of God, in respect of all men, as the ground
of all human well-being and participation in God." ^ Semler
is lacking, as in the living experience of regeneration and
conversion so in the understanding and the certainty of the
state of sin and guilt, as in like manner of that of the
habitual and actual Christian righteousness ; and only from
that fact is comprehended the further negation and abridgment
of the Christian truth, in which his critical and sceptical bent
of mind found exercise. By this, too, is characterized in con
nection with this beginner of rationalism the whole subsequent
tendency of rationalism, that it stopped short at half way in
the negation, and now being assailed by the representatives of
the faith on the one hand and those of resolute unbelief on
the other, it not only fell into manifold personal distress, but
likewise disclosed the instability of its theological and scientific
standpoint in general. It is precisely the case as a rule, that
a new principle arising in history displays in its first days the
different forces (Momente) which are introduced therewith,
and which then recurring and living on in subsequent pheno
mena, together constitute the tendency conditioned by that
principle. Therefore it would be out of place to expect, that
in the life of the single rationalists of after years exactly the
same characteristic marks should be repeated, which we there
find together in the inception : they must be apprehended and
appreciated as a whole, as a general unity. Of this unity,
however, we can say, that it occupies a like position towards
the Christian experience and certainty as, for instance, Semler :
destitute of the specifically Christian principle of experience
and cognition, the rationalists lived and conducted their
research under the last reflection of' the former light ; while
the fountain of light, whence those yet remaining beams were
derived, had already sunk, or was in the act of sinking, below
the horizon. The really religious disposition and seriously
moral bearing which this rationalism retained, by no means
owed its origin to the said rationalism, as the latter was wont
1 Cf. Schmid, Theologie Semlers, p. 153 sqq. ' Ibid. p. 147.

238 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
to suppose, and as might appear for the superficial observer to
be the case, from that which was proper to it, but, on the
contrary, from that which in its essence was alien to
rationalism, what it was on the .point of putting away from
itself — an unchosen heritage of bygone days. Therefore also
it was doomed to be outstripped by its own children and
pulverised by the two oppositions, between which it soon
came to lie ; as a scientific movement it was not able to hold
out, and even in practice its disciples became unfaithful to it ;
the churches of the rationalistic preachers emptied them
selves, since one set among their pupils desired no longer
a Christian instruction of this kind or of any kind, the
others, to whom the better part of rationalism had passed
over, were attracted by the newly awakening preaching of the
faith. 5. In this sense we here take rationalism not merely as a
definite so-called historic phenomenon, but as a type for the
first stadium of the opposition raised against the Christian
certainty in general, just as in dogmatics we are wont to
treat of single historic heresies, as, e.g., the Ebionite, the
Docetic, the Pelagian, and the Manicheean, as such types.
And only in this way do we acquire the right here further to
occupy ourselves with this opposition ; since the historic
phenomenon of rationalism is one which in this form has
lived itself out, into which we should otherwise not have more
minutely to enter, seeing that the Christian certainty along
with its contradictions can assuredly only be described as
present at a particular time in the theological subject. For
in point of fact, who is there, whether standing within or
without the Christian camp, that asks much about that
rationalistic " Vernunft " [Eeason], which was then applied
as the standard to all objects of the Christian faith of revela
tion, as though it were the absolute, everywhere alike present,
and historically unchanging criterion ? It was nothing more
than a comprehensive name for that natural certainty in
religious and ethical matters which dwelt in the conscious
ness of the age, immediately after the detachment of this
consciousness from the traditional belief of the Church and
under the reaction of this belief, of which certainty it was
falsely assumed that it would continue always to retain this

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 27. 239
quality in essential respects ; it was the decoction which still
remained over at a certain stage in the evaporation of the
Christian spirit, and which was looked upon as the quint
essence of the Christian and religious truth. But the
evaporation still went on, and after a time the decoction
presented quite another appearance, and indeed first laid
claim to be the absolute reason. Nevertheless, though in
consequence of this historic process the former rationalism
has ceased to be a dominating or in any way influential school,
it yet continues to exist as a type of a certain class of heresy,
inasmuch as under like conditions the like phenomenon
repeats itself in the individual, although as a rule only as a
form of transition. Where the religious need is not yet
extinct and still the certainty of the full Christian faith has
not yet been attained by regeneration and conversion, or has
been abandoned, there the opposition sets in in a similar
manner, and the ecclesiastical practice has long had to
contend with rationalism in the Church, when no one would
any longer think of espousing it in the domain of theological
science. Nay, it is not unlikely that just at the present
time, when there lies behind us a period of reawakened, now
in many respects declining faith, we are approaching a renewal
of rationalism, howbeit under another form. Already we
hear again, in opposition to the doctrine of the incensed God,
for whom there was need of the sufferings and death of
Christ as a satisfaction for our sins, a commendation of the
" paternal kindness of God " as the " positive Christian funda
mental view of the enlightened theologians." ^ Luther's
distress of conscience and its tranquillizing by faith in the
meritorious and satisfactory work of Christ is regarded as an
individual experience, albeit Luther counts upon the universal
necessity for the same ;^ those powerful words, with which
Luther bids test the Zwickau prophets and their allegation of
colloquia divina (De Wette, ii. 125), num experti sint spirit-
uales illas angitstias et nativitates divinas — for only through
death to life does the path of the Christian lead, even as that
of Christ — these had primarily only the meaning of " putting "
^ Ritsohl, Christl. Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versohming, i. 417
(2nd ed.).
' Ibid. i. 642.

240 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
those fanatics " in the wrong ; " ^ with such postulates one
may indeed " call forth a sect," but not " exclusively define
and limit the piety which is possible and legitimate in the
Church." ^ To be sure, one must appeal much and often to
Luther in direct opposition to the " Lutherans " and their
misinterpretations ; but " he who has to explain Luther's
services in a really historic way, and in accordance with his
design, must himself in some measure come forward as a
reformer, to oppose misconceptions which overshadow and
render indistinct the true state of j the case;^ heretofore the
practical foundation thought of Luther's Eeformation has not
been installed in full clearness and force for the regulation
(Normierung) of all problems of Protestantism, particularly not
yet been applied for the ordering and bounding off of theology
against useless forms ; " * "I might assert that Protestantism
has not yet emerged out of the epoch (!) of children's diseases,
and that its independent walk begins when the theology is
reformed, the ecclesiastical teaching fructified, by the pene
trating knowledge of its practical foundation thought," etc.*
Therefore also the Augsburg Confession, and specially the
seventh Article of the same, has only recently been rightly
interpreted in opposition to the merely dogmatic apprehension ;*
and inasmuch as the hymn, " 0 Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,"
however beautiful it may be in itself, still bears a mediaeval-
Catholic stamp, and " lays down no testimony to the universal
reconciliation of believers by the death of Christ," " the true
Church hymn for the celebration of our reconciliation by-
Christ has yet to be composed." ' In general, the higher con
ception of Christianity attained by Luther was thrust back
again by the stream of Catholic devotion which burst into
the Lutheran Church immediately after the conclusion of the
Formula Concordice ; ^ the thought of " Converse with the
1 Vol. i. 180, 2nd ed. ' Vol. i. 599, 1st ed.
' Ritschl, Festrede are Luthers Oeburtstag, 1883, p. 5.
* Ibid. p. 23. s Ibid.
* Cf. Ritsohl, " die Entstehung der Intherisehen Kirche," in Brieger's
Zeitschr. fiir K. G. i. p. 51 sqq.
' Idem, "Ein Beitrag zur Hymnologie der deutschen Luth. Kirche,"
Deutsch-evangelische Blatter, 1881, ii. p. 93 sqq. (The same judgment in a
moderated form in the Lehre von der Rechtf. u. Versdhnung, iii. 527 sqq 2nd
ed.) 8 ^i^_

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 27. 241
Lord Jesus " is a " play of fancy ; " ^ pietism and mysticism
must be banished from the realm of Protestant devoutness.^
But even the Formula of Concord, after the conclusion of
which that Catholic devotion burst in, was notwithstanding
only a " theoretical petrifaction of Luther's Eeformation," for
" the most numerous and the most prominent combatants (of
that time) were, despite their Lutheran name, monk's heads,
incapable of distinguishing little from great, self - willed,
passionate." ' On the questions about regeneration and con
version and the inner process thereof, on that of synergism,
which at any rate occupies some considerable place in the
conflict of the Evangelical Church with the Eomish, one does
best to be silent : " I take the liberty of calling the attention
of certain readers to the fact, that I also recognise mysteries
in the religious life, but that I retain silence just on the
point what is and remains a mystery ; " * the begetting anew
(Neuzeugung), which he makes equivalent to adoption, takes
place, he tells us, within the Church of believers conformably
with the propagation of the gospel and the development of the
personal characteristics of Christ in the Church, but " how
this effect is brought about equally withdraws itself from all
observation, as does the development of the individual
spiritual life in general." ° If in addition we take into
account the position which this theology occupies towards the
Trinitarian and Christologic determinations of the Church, in
that under the title of false metaphysics, which has insinuated
itself from without, he rejects and invalidates these decisions,
then we must certainly be devoid of all historic training and
all Christian experience, if we did not recognise again in
this apparition now going its rounds here and there the
features of the defunct rationalism, which delights in wander
ing in new drapings through the ranks of a new generation,
that no longer has known the face of the long departed one,
and in offering the old wisdom in a fresh garb. The author
of this new theology has declared, not without a sense of his
own worth, that his theology finds no room within the frame-
1 Ut supra, p. 240, note 7.
2 Idem, Gesch. des Pietismus, i. 1880.
^ Ritschl, Rede zu Luthers Oeburtstag, p. 18.
* Ritschl, iii. p. 563 of 2nd ed., note. ° Ibid. p. 562 sqq.

242 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
work of the party divisions hitherto prevailing ; and I for
my part, on the first appearing of the work " On Justification
and Eeconciliation," at once recognised the eminent import
ance of the same.^ No one will deny that the achievement
of this theology stands incomparably higher than that of the
old rationahsm ; and least of all shall I forget in this case
that which I have before said in general, that the exponents
of rationalistic thoughts nevertheless do not on that account
become simply rationalists. But that the theology here in
question bears essential characteristics of rationalism, this
judgment I cannot withhold, and I look forward with calm
ness to the verdict of history on the point.
§ 28. So long as the man involved in the natural moral con
tradiction is conscious of being able to terminate it and to
satisfy the moral demands made upon him, without the
necessity for the shifting of the centre of gravity of his
personality and the renewal of the principle of his moral
life to this end, he must regard the fact of the habitual
sinfulness as likewise that of the unfreedom of the will, as
a fiction, or at least as an exaggeration. Eeflection on the
possibility of habitual and transmitted sin, which is really
this and not merely an ill, and on the conceivableness of
an inherited unfreedom of the will, which is yet none the
less responsible for that which it is not able to accomplish,
aggravates this denial. But it attaches merely to the lack
of experience and to the incongruence, thereon grounded,
between the fact in itself and its apprehension on the part
of the natural subject. If, on the other hand, even for the
Christian there does not at once open up, with the certainty
of the fact, the complete insight into the conditions of its
possibility, yet there lies therein for him, as one for whom
its reality has guaranteed itself in advance, no reason
whatever for doubting the fact itself.
1. We know that also outside of the province of specifically
1 Ritschl, iii. Pref.
^ Zeitschr. fur Protest, u. Kirche, 1871, i. p. 252 sqq. ; 1872, ii. p. 231 sqq.

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 28. 243
Christian experience a moral contradiction is brought home to
the consciousness of the natural man, which may be looked
upon as a lower analogue of the conflict which enters in and
with conversion. The moral demands of which the man
becomes sensible in connection therewith relate to definite
moral spheres, and to the particular conduct which is or
appears right within the same. The moral certainty in a
natural sense, of which we spoke before, bases itself upon this
experience. The experience is no absolutely false one. Not
even in this respect, that it is placed within the power of the
human will to live in accordance with those moral require
ments. The man discovers in himself the antagonism between
the sensuous impulses which on their own account seek
gratification, and the command to remain master of these
impulses : if he gives rein to them, yet he is accompanied by
the consciousness that he could and ought to have held them
under control. He is able, at least at a certain stage of his
moral development, to lay hold of and to tighten these reins ;
he can compel and get the mastery over himself, that the lust
bestirring itself do not obtain its desire ; he can gradually
acquire a facility in this self-conquest, so that one must rightly
ascribe to him the virtue of self-restraint; nay more, the evil
lust, which with all this is present although held in check,
may, in consequence of such domination, itself become dimi
nished, under the influence of religious dispositions and feel
ings and in the enjoyment of nobler intellectual pleasures.
With respect to these moral demands, of which we have here
instanced only one, the man observes that his conduct
harmonizes with some of them, without its having given him
any special trouble to bring about this harmony. He needs
not, e.g., first to compel himself to show sympathy in presence
of human misery, when it presents itself to his eye : he has
naturally a good heart. It costs him no effort to guard against
prodigality : he has the virtue of thrift. From early youth
he experiences a lively impetus to activity, and therefore it is
no toil to him to labour industriously in his calling : he
possesses the virtue of diligence.
Yet of a truth on setting before the mind the totality of
those moral requirements, and on the honest comparison of
his moral behaviour, he cannot conceal from himself the fact

244 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
that full many a one of these virtues is as yet wanting to
him. He is able perhaps to rise above the vexations which
he encounters only with great difficulty if at all ; to show-
patience in suffering is a thing he has not yet learnt ; he is
forgetful of gratitude for benefits received. Well then, that
is just his moral task, to acquire by the straining of every
nerve the virtues yet lacking to him : to appropriate them
one after the other, at last to make them all his own, thus
gradually to press forward to moral perfection, that is the goal
of his moral destination, and this goal is attainable. It must
be attainable; for upon every failure the consciousness of
guilt sets in, and that on the ground of the certainty that one not
only ought to have acted otherwise, but was able to do so.
2. Thus there is formed a moral certainty of the subject,
on the ground of a perfectly accurate, yea necessary sequence,
which is opposed to that of the Christian as respects sinful
proclivities and the unfreedom of the will. And not merely
opinions are ranged against opinions, but facts against facts.
These contradictory facts are indeed of the same kind as can
be pointed out in the life of the Christian himself. For is it
perhaps otherwise with you Christians ? Have you perhaps
now in the state of conversion, as you call it, not also as we
other children of men still to contend with single weaknesses
and sins, the overcoming of which is difficult for you, whilst
in other respects you know or fancy yourselves to be in
harmony with the moral law ? And if you have really made
the experience of deep-rooted sinfulness (Siindhaftigkeit), how
do you prove to us that you did not possibly first fall into it
by your own misconduct, or at least become reduced to it
through unfavourable circumstances although not without
your own fault ? One easily recognises that in connection
with such an opposition of the natural and the Christian
moral certainty, the conflict cannot be decided with Treidol'i
cro<pla<; Xo^oi?, not with the means of human disputation.
For these means do not suffice to enforce the experience of a
fact which does not exist for the opponents. And there is
not merely wanting to them the intellectual medium for the
understanding of this experience, but in place thereof another
experience guarantees itself to them, the reality of which, it
seems, excludes even the possibility of existence for the former.

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 28. 245
The only means, not indeed of proving to them the reality of
the fact guaranteed to the Christian, but yet of convincing
them of the insufficiency and relative error of their peculiar
experience, would be the showing up of the contradictions in
which that wrong fundamental assumption must at last
involve them. For certainly it is the character of truth to
be always consonant with itself Though, however, this is the
ordinary historic method, in which false systems are subverted,
yet after all the contradiction which appears may be equally
terminated by the rejection of the still remaining elements of
truth which on their part conditioned it, as conversely by the
removal of the errors which combat those elements of truth.
And the more radically one proceeds in this respect, the more
will one have in his favour the appearance of consistency and
freedom from contradiction. The " halves " are of a truth
always at a disadvantage as compared with the " wholes ; "
but one may also surrender himself " wholly " to the lie, and
then be in harmony -with himself, or at least appear so for a
time. Most of all, however, that method fails of leading to
the goal because, considering the limited domain of recognised
or recognisable truth, the possibility no doubt is presented of
observing or adducing, within a certain smaller circuit, an
accord of apparent and actual facts, which nevertheless is not
a proof for the truth ; and then, because he who believes
himself to be in possession of a fact will always be more
inclined to regard the contradiction in which it involves him
as only apparent, than that he should question the accuracy
of the supposed fact. For that repeats itself here on the
opposite side which we have recognised, and shall yet further
recognise, as a characteristic of the Christian certainty
itself, that one first gives credence to a fact experienced, and
in the certainty thereof rather supposes the contradiction
flowing therefrom, which one is unable to solve, to be unreal
than one will surrender the actual experience. So thus it
can here also be a question only of the Christian's rising
superior to the certainty opposed to him, from the vantage
ground of the certainty of the special facts guaranteed to him,
while for the convincing of the opponent he knows no other
medium than that whence the Christian experience proper to
himself is derived. What enables the Christian to bo certain.

246 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
despite the opposition to his faith, is the fact that he has
made both kinds of experience, and precisely in doing so has
become conscious of the pre-eminent, the absolute character of
the Christian experience. Or more definitely ; the peculiarly
Christian experience does not leave that apparently opposite
one standing outside, as something alien, inaccessible, but
explains at the same time why that other could be ex
perienced, nay, must be experienced; it understands the
relative truth of this experience, which might assume the
appearance of being the absolute truth. For it is quite true
that in the single moral spheres, which were there in question,
the two things are both possible and actual, an accord of the
natural man with the postulates therefrom resulting and a
failing to reach the standard of the same ; and that this
repeats itself in like manner in the Christian moral comport
ment. But the experience of the Christian goes beyond this,
and behind the similarity is concealed the difference, which,
as such, is manifest only to the spiritual eye. A man may,
not in appearance only, but in reality, fall short of another in
the conformiffy of his conduct to definite moral postulates,
and nevertheless there has been awakened within him the
spark of life, which bears in itself the pledge that he shall
yet distance those righteous ones. And one may, within the
single moral spheres, distinguish himself by virtue, and yet if
those spheres are disengaged from the unity of the divine
temperature, and if they are not embraced by the life
principle of the spiritual /, these virtues are incapable of
bringing the man nearer to the goal of his moral destination,
whatever value one may assign to them in other respects.
The natural I does not any the more cease to seek the centre
of gravity in itself, because it ceases to be attracted by
particular sins, and begins to appropriate to itself single or
more numerous virtues. The philosophic glance of Kant,
penetrating to the unity, combined with the reflex light which
the Christian moral truth of his boyhood training still cast
upon his later life, led him to recognise, as we have previously
seen, this necessity for a " revolution " or " regeneration " in
man, as such preceding all further moral development, the
necessity for a " single unchangeable decision," by which the
whole being of the man is changed in the depths of its

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 28. 247
maxims, so that then first that self-cheating is brought to an
end, by which otherwise we deceive ourselves and others in
respect also of our good actions. This is, as we believe, the
extreme point to which the eye of the earnestly investigating
natural man can pierce, and indeed there, too, not without the
light of Christianity nevertheless shining in the darkness ;
only that postulate has Kant expressed. To say how this
transformation is possible and how it takes place, no one is
able save he who has experienced it. One may then indeed
describe the process and comprehend it in words or notions,
as all that is humanly experienced ; and the other, to whom
one relates it, can understand and repeat it; but that is
another experience, which is either not certain of that which
is related, or is certain only " by hearsay." And yet the
certainty of those realities, of the vouching for which it is
here a question in opposition to that which is laid down by
rationalism, reposes first upon that which is undergone, not
upon the postulate, and still less upon the purely natural
experience. It has been proved to the Christian, on the
ground of his conversion, as an actual deception, be it a
voluntary or be it an involuntary one, when he previously
thought he could make amends for his moral lack in becom
ing, by the appropriation of certain virtues, that which he is
not already in himself in the depth of his nature ; for the
abnormity of this inner depth, of which he has become con
scious in connection with this attempt, of necessity corrupts
the moral endeavours likewise, which, looked at in themselves,
are congruent with the moral postulate. And that which
externally regarded is morally true and right, may and must
become untrue and- false when it advances out of the
relativity which is proper to it, and lays claim to the
character of absoluteness. The virtue of diligence and of
fidelity in the earthly calling, and so every single virtue
which one may display in the various moral spheres of human
life, becomes vain and sinful, if it does not stand in the right
relation to the centre of the moral order of life, if it does not
occupy the becoming relation to the absolute aim and goal of
life ; and neither that centre nor this goal has been found, so
long as the / has not been set free from itself, so long as it
continues to gravitate to itself.

248 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
3. The defect of experience of such moral lack, and of a
corresponding satisfaction of the same, is identical with the
defect of the intelligence of the habitual sinfulness and of the
existing unfreedom of the will in the natural man with refer
ence to that inner revolution. It is the first motive influence
in connection with the denial of those immanent objects of
faith, just as for the converted man that experience is the
ultimate ground for maintaining them. This position, how
ever, is not taken up by the opponents without its being
fortifled by arguments which, derived from the natural
reflection on the possibility of those realities, are, as a rule,
advanced as though they were the uppermost, motive of the
denial. The abnormity of the natural /, the sinfulness
resulting therefrom, is one in which the man finds himself
at his conversion, which is, to this extent, habitual to him,
and which he recognises not as constituted by himself, but as
transmitted to him. That is a contradiction which stamps
the assumed fact beforehand as impossible, as a fiction. For
according to the judgment of reason that only can be looked
upon as sin which is, precisely what the sinful state is here
recognised as not being, brought about by one's own respon
sible act. And how can the natural will, which according to
the evangelical view is evil, be responsible for the evil which
it does, seeing that it is unfree for the good and cannot do
otherwise than act amiss ? This undoubtedly contradicts the
first principles of righteousness, as these dominate the whole
individual and social life of men ; it contradicts likewise the
natural experience according to which the will feels itself free
for the good as for the ill. What one ought to do, that one
must be able to do : ultra posse nemo dbligatur. The peculi
arity of these ancient Pelagian and afterwards rationalistic
propositions, which likewise in the present day come afresh
to the light here and there, is again this, that you cannot
reject them as altogether false, and the seductiveness of their
impression lies essentially in this their relative truth. They
will also always retain their force, whether rationalism as a
theological system find acceptance or not ; they have in them
selves a certain clearness, from the influence of which no one
can withdraw himself. But so much the more enigmatical
does it then appear, that just very eminent men, whom this

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 28. 249
clearness certainly did not escape, nevertheless did not suffer
themselves thereby to be drawn away from the assertion of
original sin and the enslaved will. Was not Augustine more
gifted than Pelagius, and Luther of greater weight than
Erasmus ? Do not misunderstand us. We do not at all say
this in order to fight under the shadow of authorities, as
apologetics indeed does. These authorities form no basis for
Christian certainty, nor will it be difficult, either, to discover
important names which stand on their side. Eather would
we by that which has last been said bring home to the con
sciousness the fact — and this we can do — that it cannot
possibly be those easily accessible arguments which give the
turn to the balance, and that the Christian certainty will
come to a right understanding with them, only if it does not
recognise them as that which gives the final decision. We
have not in the positive establishing placed the hereditary sin
first, as that to which the certainty of the Christian is first
led, but it was only the inevitable deduction from the two
fold fact, that the bent of the natural / as such is one con
tradictory to the highest moral aim, and that the entrance of
this bent is found to be of immemorial origin. Thus also this
will be the first thing to which the Christian holds fast in
opposition to those objections ; and he will designate that
abstract reflection as a wrong path to the knowledge of the
truth, since men would there, before everything, decide
whether sin can be called hereditary [originalis'], in order then,
by the help of the logical negation thus obtained, to pass with
nimble foot over the facts themselves. For surely in the
grasping of a truth everything depends on one's seizing it on
that side on which it is approachable. The Christian cannot
be in doubt on the question whether the abnormal tendency
of his natural /is sin, the main and fundamental sin of his
being, from which all single sins are derived, and by which
also all actions, regarded in themselves good, are corrupted ;
for the reality of his regeneration and conversion, which was
possible only with reference to the sin and guilt of the natural
/, and the reality of his Christian state, as that which con
tinues to exist only in conflict with this depotentiated /, are
a perfectly valid testimony of this. And the matter does not
so stand, that this natural tendency should first become sin

250 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
for him from the moment at which the factors of regeneration
and conversion began to operate within the subject, while on
the other hand the same impulse was before then a morally
indifferent one, a weakness or disease of nature ; but rather as
that which it is in and of itself, what it is everywhere, what
it is from the beginning, was that impulse manifested to him
in connection with the transformation, and is proclaimed to
him in his daily conflict. If the opponents went with us as
far as this, they would hardly make use of that abstract
proposition to contest the possibility of a sinfulness habitual
to man and not first incurred by himself, but would say
something like this : We do not understand how, with this
fact which we cannot help maintaining, the proposition
harmonizes, the truth of which is also manifest to us, that
anything not first brought about by the man himself is not
sin for him.
4. It occurs likewise not rarely within the purely human
experience, that something actually takes place, of which we
thought we might assume with the greatest positiveness that
it was impossible. Our judgment, which was crossed by the
fact, was, regarded in itself, not unsound ; we can maintain it
even afterwards in the sense in which it was meant, but by
means of the fact it has been made evident that this judg
ment was not in strict accord with the same, that it was
heterogeneous to the fact, that in forming the said judgment
we have not foreseen all the conditions under which the fact
could be realised. The judgment here in question may be
perfectly right in being willing to comprehend sin only as
an act of the man ; but in doing so it starts with the tacit
presupposition that this act is nothing, and can be nothing,
but an individual act. If the act is not this, the judgment
ceases not indeed to be warranted, but it instantly assumes
another form, and is freed from a one-sidedness which must of
necessity bring it into conflict with the facts. Now, whether
we have respect to natural or to spiritual experience, nothing
is more certain than that there is a sin of the whole body, and
therefore also a guilt of the whole body, which is something
different from the sum-total of the sins of individuals, as these
present themselves at a definite period in a definite community
of men. Just as a nation is more than a merely fortuitous

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 28, 251
concourse of such and such a number of individuals, but
rather an organic unity, in connection with which — as is the
case in all organism — the whole stands above the parts and
exists earlier than the parts ; so also that which forms the
character and nature of the people, its intellectual and moral
qualification, will enter into this organic connection. History,
in making us acquainted with national developments, risings
and sinkings of the national spirit, and the decaying and dying
out of nations, has from antiquity borne witness to this, equally
as in recent times the data of statistics, which with their
regular numbers point to the recurrence of moral phenomena,
the progress of unhealthy manifestations in the moral life of
social communities. Hereby, however, we are forced to the
assuming of a moral dyscrasy in the national body, of which
those eruptions regularly making their appearance, of which
statistics take cognizance, are just the symptoms. A habit of
immorality underlies those single phenomena, of which the
intensity and strain will be more severe in single members
than in others, which may settle more in particular groups of
the community than in the rest ; by which, however, all parts
of the organism are in one form or other jointly affected, so
that they have cause to be ashamed with the others at the
grievous outbreaks of sin among their fellow-countrymen, and
that when they have to smart with others under the con
sequences thereof, they have no right to boast of themselves
as absolutely innocent sufferers. We treat those eruptions as
sin, which brings guilt and punishment in its train : the
offenders in whom they manifest themselves are held
accountable, and come within the grasp of the criminal law.
If it is right that this should be so, it will likewise be right to
look upon the moral factors, from which the act of transgression
springs, as sin for which the man is to be held to account, for
this act is assuredly nothing else than the upshooting flame
of the fire burning within. The fire, without or within, is
essentially the same, and incurs the same ethical judgment :
nay more, it may depend on accidental things, casting no
weight into the ethical balance, whether the flame bursts forth
or not. Age, temperament, social position, occupation, etc.,
may, as is once more shown by statistics, operate in connection
therewith as incentives or restraints, and we shall surely not

252 SYSTEM of' THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
rank higher in a moral respect the coolly and cunningly
calculating sinner, notwithstanding he does not allow matters
to come to an explosion, than he who in the impetuosity of
youth has suffered himself to be hurried away on the first
assault of the sinful allurement. It is thus certain that we
cannot rate the appetence, whose concrete, visible manifesta
tion is the act, otherwise, morally, than this act itself; and
now, if we go farther back, from the quickened appetence to
the moral condition out of which, as this individual fruit, it is
born, we shall be able only at the price of inconsistency to
escape extending the moral judgment to this condition,
inasmuch as it is the root without which this plant of sin
would never have arisen. And yet the fact repeats itself here
too, that it may be things possibly not falling directly within
the domain of ethics which stirred up the roots, in such wise
that the sinful motive-force of the same was exerted on
precisely this side, and not on some other, that this particular -
species of sinful lust germinated here, while another did not.
Thus we arrive naturally at the fact of an habituality falling
under the conception of sin, and indeed in accordance with
the presuppositions above established, not merely that of an
individual-personal, but that of collective-personal habituality,
which compels us to modify the abstract and hasty judgment
by which we thought ourselves called upon to impugn the
possibility of transmitted sin. For those regularly recurring
morbid phenomena of the moral life of a people would be
inexplicable, if every individual in the nation stood absolutely
by himself, and he with his moral life began absolutely from
the beginning ; yea more, unless this generation now living, to
which a definite moral character pertains, had in some way or
other inherited it from the generation of which it is the child,
5, There is no doubt a means of escaping the force of
these facts, which confirms to us the truth of the universal
proposition above uttered, that the contradiction in which a
false presentment is involved does not with certainty lead
back from the path of error. If it is found impossible to
recognise the particular sin as real sin, while the moral collective
state, out of which the former comes to light, is looked upon
as a disease for which the man is not responsible, one may
certainly recover consistency if one denies the particular sin.

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 28. 2oo
likewise, to be sin, and transforms it into a disease for which
the man is not to blame (unverschuldete). Then, it is true;
all contradiction comes to an end, and this has in fact been
the way in which that opposition which has advanced beyond
rationalism has reconciled itself to the data afforded by moral
statistics. There exists neither moral laws nor ethical freedom,
but for the deeper insight the former resolve themselves into
physical laws, and the latter is resolved into natural necessity :
we have but closely to study and follow up the path upon
which a transgressor has been led to commit the evil deed,
and one would just as little be able to attribute blame to him
as to the stone which injures a man by falling from the roof
These are mental diseases, which stand on a level with the
physical disorders, and must be treated as they ; or rather,
since mind and matter are one, they, too, are just physical,
bodily diseases, only of another kind. Thus, as we have said,
the contradiction is put out of the way, and once more grounds
are not wanting for defending this presentment. Those very
data of moral statistics to which we have appealed, — the
regular recurrence, the symmetrical augmentation of trans
gressions, of suicides, etc., — are they not a distinct proof that
the freedom of the will, which we regard as underlying the
notion of sin, exists only in appearance ? What becomes of
that freedom, when from the statistical tables we are able to
calculate in advance, with no small degree of confidence, the
number and the nature of the offences which will be com
mitted in a particular nation in one year ? So the consistent
materialism ; of whose propositions we have not here reminded
on its own account but on that of rationalism, which extends
its left hand to materialism, as it does its right to faith. We
comprehend that rationalism cannot hold its ground in the
intermediate position peculiar to it, without either being drawn
forwards or backwards ; and this very perception confirms the
position which the Christian certainty takes up in opposition
to the rationalistic negation.
6. We have above desisted from the attempt directly to
combat the proposition of rationalism, viz. that only what is
brought about by one's own responsible act is really sin, and
we have expressly acknowledged the relative truth of this
proposition. We are now in a position more closely to define

254 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY,
and limit that truth. It is perfectly correct that even the
Christian could not comprehend and maintain that the habitual
declension from the normal posture and bent of human nature
indwelling in him is sin, if he could view it otherwise than
as the very act of the man himself But now this personal
act is that of mankind in general, not of the individual apart ;
and yet, as we at once add, at the same time of the individual,
namely, in his connectedness and unity with the genus. We
say this last not merely on account of the logical relation in
which the individual stands to the genus, but before all things
on the ground of the actual consciousness that, although the
individual recognises the abnormal tendency of his natural
being, on the one hand, as primordial and of immemorial
origin, which as such seems to exclude the notion of sin and
guilt ; yet, on the other hand, the individual ascribes to himself,
as his own responsible deed, all the actuosity of this tendency,
all that moves therein and proceeds therefrom, provided that
he does not deceive himself by false reflection as to the true
facts of his moral consciousness. The contradiction which
lies in it for the superficial contemplation is resolved upon
the apprehending together of the twofold fact — that the
Christian, the more he recognises in the moral transformation
which he has experienced the restoration of his person corre
sponding to the idea of the human being, the less can compre
hend the opposite condition as attaching to the human nature
in itself, but only as having arisen by the man's own culpable
act ; and that now, enlarging his individual consciousness into
the general, the " own act," which as a separate individual he
must disclaim, he ascribes to himself in the conception of his
solidarity with the race. We are not here speaking of the
descent of men from a single pair, of one first progenitor, in
and with whom, at the same time, all his posterity have
sinned ; in doing so, we should pass by anticipation beyond
the limits of the fact of the consciousness here lying before '
us. But this is the declaration, in the making of which these
facts warrant us, and to the making of which they constrain
us — that that habitual depravation which the Christian finds
in himself must be grasped by him as self-imposed by the
human race, and as his own choice in the same measure in
which he is included in the human race as an organic member

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 28. 255
of the same. With this the negation thus remains completely
preserved, that he must disclaim for himself the primordial
causality for the producing of that depravation, in so far as he
regards himself as this individual, severed from the com
munity; and there is, at the same time, retained in full force
the proposition that only that which is freely willed and
wrought by the man is sin. The sinful condition is by him,
the individual, freely willed and chosen, because and in so far
as it must have been so chosen by the race ; and therefrom is
first explained the fact that, although he is not able to acknow
ledge the sinful tendency as a primordial act of himself alone,
he is nevertheless constrained to impute to himself this sinful
tendency, and all that is derived therefrom, as sin and guilt.
Thus we have withal the logical solution of the contradiction,
against which we had before to content ourselves with con
tending only by facts : the proposition of rationalism is
sound, and the proposition of the Christian experience, against
which this was directed, not less so. They are not mutually
exclusive, because the Christian experience assigns to the
former its due place within its own province, in which it is
first freed from the contradiction in which it had become
involved with the opposing facts. The cause of the collision
lay not in the propositions in themselves, but in the false
application which was made of them : by the aid of the facts
the relativeness of their validity, and therewith likewise their
accord with each other, has been brought out. For we can
now also say conversely, it is equally incorrect to combat the
reality of sin, as an act of personal responsibility, by means
of the habitual and inherited sinfulness, as to combat the
latter by the former; and just as the assertion that sin exists
only as the result of a personally free act, taken as an absolute
and unlimited declaration, is false, so also would the asser
tion that sin exists in man as something transmitted, taken
absolutely, be false.
7. Let us not deceive ourselves as to the measure of know
ledge we have thus gained. Between the certainty that the
objection of rationalism is baseless in logic as in fact, and
the understanding, on all sides, of the facts whence we arrive
at this certainty, is still a wide distance, -which we are far as
yet from having traversed. The fact of the general and

256 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
habitual sin, as also the fitting in of the individual sinful
condition within the same, is for us established ; but the how
of this fitting in is withdrawn in great part from our vision.
The question in presence of which we here find ourselves is
this, how we have to conceive of the social subject, and more
particularly the common sentiment (Gemeingeist) of the same,
in relation to the individual subject and its moral tendency ;
and it is especially this, what' bearing the responsibility of the
single individual has upon the relation of dependence in
which, as a matter of fact, he stands to the total subject. On
the one hand, these questions carry us back to the old
problems of cognition, to the controversy of realism and
nominalism ; on the other hand, they are raised afresh by the
results of statistics, with their demonstration of a moral total-
process on the ground of the regularity of their phenomena.
It is in the highest degree wonderful, and affords much
material for reflection, how this utterly mechanical science,
combining and summing up all that is individual as such, —
this, I might say, extreme nominalism, — does in its results
force one back to a strict realism, in connection with which
all individual life appears determined by the factors of the
total-life. This phenomenon, as one may contemplate it in
the domain of the natural sciences, where the most resolute
empiricism, which will admit of nothing more than what can
be proved by means of experiment and of perception by the
senses, is on the point of turning round into an idealism
which loses sight of the external world, and retains only the
impressions of which the subject becomes conscious in himself,
the multiplicity and difference of which is to be traced back
to the diversity of the organs. Now it is certainly not in
this way that statistics should be in a position to point out
to us the innermost and decisive factors whence the perceptible
phenomena, and those of the moral phenomena accessible to
statistical computation, proceed. Let alone that it is always
only, or at least for the greatest part, the history of the dis
orders of the moral spirit whose data admit of statistical
manipulation, but not, or to a much smaller extent, the
expressions of moral health ; it is again only certain isolated
symptoms of this disorder with which we here meet, and
from which it is highly precarious to make any deduction as

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 28. 257
to the moral condition, flrst on account of their incompleteness,
and then because their occurrence or non-occurrence affords
no certain criterion of the greater or less degree of intenseness
of the immoral propensity. It is, e.g., an entirely erroneous
calculation when it is thought one can discover, from the
greater frequency of suicides in particular lands or circles, the
measure of the common morality of these lands or circles ; for
that which elsewhere restrains from suicide may equally be
something morally bad, or at least morally indifferent, such
as cowardice, insensibility, a cooler temperament, etc., as it
may something morally good, religious feeling, elevation of
character, trust in God, etc.^ Out of the subsoil of moral
depravation, which is absolutely inaccessible to the means at
the disposal of statistics, grow in accordance with the influences
of favourable or unfavourable conditions the concrete fruits of
immorality, as it is accordingly a noteworthy and warning
(admonitory) fact that the progress of moral misdemeanour,
in one province of moral action, does not by any means run
parallel with the existence and progress in another. By the
observation that statistics is able to give us no information as
to the factors of the absolute frequency of certain trans
gressions, but only as to the rise and fall of this number, —
as to the occasions which condition the plus or minus of the
same, — there is drawn a limit to our acquaintance with the
social moral state, which conceals from our gaze that which
is precisely the main thing. Only the fact, doubtless a very
significant fact, is guaranteed to us thereby, that there is a
moral habituality of the community, by which the individual
is first conditioned before he in turn conditions, an habituality
of the moral corruption in the social body, without which that
regularity in the progression and in the relation of the moral
phenomena provable by statistics were inconceivable. Nor
can this permanent condition be an unvarying magnitude
(algebraic quantity), since of a truth the occasions to which
the relative frequency of the transgressions is traced back by
statistics, — thus, sex, difference of rank, education, calling in
life, dwelling-place, etc., — do not condition or explain the
difference in the absolute frequency. While, however, a halt
' Comp. on this point in genera], System der chr. Sittlichkeit, § 5 ; as also
Zeitschr. fiir Protest, und Kirche, 1865, i. 199 sqq., 1870 ; ii. 75 sqq.
E

258 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY,
is here called to our knowledge, another difficulty presses
upon us with twofold force simultaneously with the eliciting
of that fact itself ; the old, and here newly-emerging, question,
how then the self-determining of the individual person com
ports with the reality, which has become manifest, of his
having been determined by that whole which precedes him,
and embraces him within itself The return to the ways of
rationalism, which represented all morality, and sin in par
ticular, as being wrought by the individual act, is and remains
closed for us; the advance upon the paths of materialism,
which takes away the dependence of the individual upon the
whole body at the price of the annulling of every kind of
moral responsibility, is impossible not to the Christian alone,
but to all those for whom the facts of the natural moral
consciousness also are still firmly established. Here there is
an intermingling of conditionedness and conditioning, of
necessity and freedom, of receptivity and spontaneity, of
misfortune and guilt, the disentanglement of which and
tracing of which back to its several constituent parts surpasses
the skill of any human hand. Enough that we as Christians
can be certain of the twofold fact : first, that the habituality
of the morally abnormal tendency which we discover within
ourselves, or, what is the same thing, of the will to this
extent enslaved, is not to be traced back to an individual act
of ourselves in the isolation of our person ; and then that
wherever, specially in the process of conversion, this moral
declination of our natural man is brought home to the con
sciousness, we become sensible of it as sin, as a condition
involving guilt, and contractive of guilt. Our inability, which
is made manifest in connection with conversion, for coming
forth by our own strength out of this morally abnormal con
dition is so far from doing away with the consciousness of
guilt, that precisely in this inability, in this fact of being
surrendered to the power of sin, do we recognise the guilt-
fraught character of the natural /, For that we are volun
tarily, and not against our will, that which we are or were, it
is this of which we must accuse ourselves, and without this
self-accusation conversion would be impossible. We Chris
tians may stedfastly maintain the certainty of these facts,
without deluding ourselves as to how much is still wantin"

THE OPPOSITION TO EATIONALISM, § 29. 259
to the complete understanding of the conditions of their rise
and continuance ; and without having reason to fear that the
results of the sciences applied to these facts should cause us
to hesitate in this certainty, provided at least they do not
warp the data of experience by arbitrary conclusions and
cheap reflections,
§ 29. The contradiction made to the facts of the habitual and
actual righteousness, as likewise to the freedom of the will
therewith connected, results of necessity even from the
opposition to the first kind of the immanent objects of
faith, but must here come forth the more strongly in pro
portion, as in this domain a natural - moral experience the
less stands side by side with the spiritual experience.
The contradiction is summed up in the one proposition —
that all righteousness of the man must first have been
acquired by the moral doing of the same. While this pro
position is from its nature immediately directed against the
relation of freedom from guilt and habitual righteousness,
recognised by the Christian as an actual relation, yet it
likewise applies indirectly to the objects of the actual
righteousness and freedom of will, against which, outwardly
regarded, it does not so much contend. What serves for
the maintenance of the Christian certainty, in presence of
this contradiction, is the recognition that the latter does not
reach up to the objects which it calls in question ; and that,
so far as a truth underlies it, this truth receives its due
recognition precisely in the facts it contests.
1. If we transport ourselves back into the continuity of
the objects of faith here in question with those before dis
cussed, as this discloses itself to the certainty of the Christian,
then it becomes evident, in the first place, that the gainsaying
of the first-named, resting as it does on a lack of experience,
inevitably draws after it the gainsaying of the others. For
not only must the moral need, of which the man is conscious,
assume other form where there is wanting the knowledge of
that moral abnormity which is vouched for to the Christian as

260 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY,
a fact ; but it must further be acknowledged that in actual
life both kinds of experience are, as a rule, and properly, made
together, as two mutually corresponding sides of one and the
same spiritual perception, which becomes sensible here of the
extra-centric position of the natural /, and there of the rela
tion of freedom from guilt which avails for the subject,
observes these, and relates them to each other. The conflict
of the Christian with the opponents as to the truth of his
belief will therefore on this point prove a hopeless one, inas
much as there is no common basis at all on which it could be
waged, and at most the question admits of discussion, whether
that is in any way to be regarded as conceivable which the
Christian asserts as a real fact. But apart from the considera
tion that even the bare supposing of the objects, in virtue of
their relation to that which has been already proved, conceals
within itself a sting of judgment which irritates the natural
man, — for the judgment must appear to him in this form an
unwarranted one, — the previous circle of experience, more
over, forms the standard by which likewise in connection with
the abstract question as to the possibility of a fact, either
tacitly or consciously and avowedly, that possibility is wont to
be measured ; and the more these objects belong to a new
order of things beyond the sphere of the natural reality, not
merely in degree, but specifically different from it, the less
prospect is there of coining to an understanding with the
opponents even on this question, in itself one for disinterested
examination. And if it were the case that we came to an
agreement as to the possibility, it will be perceived that by
this the end would not be at all attained at which the apolo
getic endeavour was aiming, that of convincing the opponent
of the reality of the thing which has been proved to be
possible. Now, however, there has to be taken into account,
in distinction from the previous character of the opposition,
likewise the additional feature, that while there a natural-
moral experience of sin and guilt was at any rate present,
which did not in that respect contradict the Christian experi
ence, here there is wanting even such an analogue to which
the further proof can attach. This accords with that inner
difference of the objects of faith, according to which the one
consist of objects of faith, which in themselves already present

THE OPPOSITION TO RATIONALISM, § 29, 261
within the domain of the natural life are merely disclosed by
the Christian truth as they really are ; whilst the others, not
belonging at all to this sphere of life, first present themselves
to the man in their nature and constitution only with the
advent of the Christian truth. There is among men, as they
actually are, no moral consciousness which is not at the same
time a consciousness of sin ; and because the first exists,
therefore also the second, although as an imperfect and erring
consciousness. For the corroboration of the Christian certainty
we were able to adduce facts, like those brought to light by
statistics, which are accessible to the natural cognition also.
All this is here impossible to us, and so much the more will
the Christian certainty, in its self-maintaining against the
rationalistic contradiction, fall back upon its own position,
whence it is able rightly to estimate both — the reality of
the objects of faith vouched for to it by experience, and the
necessary character as well as the erroneousness of the plea
set up against it on the part of the natural cognition.
2. The contradiction, as it historically presents itself mainly
in rationalism, has, following the course of dogmatics, directed
itself, in the first instance, against the dogma of the atone
ment and the vicarious satisfaction, as that on which the
relation of freedom from guilt, with which we have here to
do, rests for support. The present shows, even though we
had not been able already to discover it from the past, that
this was not accidental. It is, however, self-evident that we
cannot follow the opponent in this domain ; since that fact
belongs to the transcendent objects of faith, the verifying of
which we have to reserve for the subsequent chapter. We
thus exclude at this place all questions affecting the work of
Christ, equally as -we did so in the positive enunciation, and
take up the opposition merely on the side on which, and
under the limitation within which, it contends against the
immanent object of faith. We do so not in the interest of
system, so that we might be accused of not letting the
objection be expressed in the form historically given to it ;
but we deem it, as was above observed, a fact which must be
insisted on, that the denial of that work of Christ which
underlies the relation of freedom from guilt, is not the
primary motive in the contesting of the latter, however much

26 2 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
this is wont always to present; itself in the train of the
former. Had that experience been made in the case of the
opponents which dwells in the Christian, that the moral trans
formation of regeneration and conversion is nothing else than
the personal translocating of the subject into a place where
sin is no more and guilt is cancelled; that this spot must
exist, that this place must be ready, that this relation must
have been founded, in order that the translating hither
may take place ; that, likewise, this relation in itself must
avail for the man, in order that it may become for him and
he for it : then the contradiction made to the fact of the
vicarious satisfaction of Christ would be essentially modified ;
the difficulties for the understanding of that fact would cease
to appear an adequate ground for its denial; the one fact,
namely, the objective, would establish itself for the subject by
the other fact, namely, the subjective, even as this latter is
objectively based upon the former. Thus, it is consonant with
the real state of the case that we separate and consider by
itself that element of the opposition which directly and imme
diately faces the object of faith here in question, and we may
comprehend it in the thought that all righteousness of man is
first acquired by the moral action of the man,
3. And in reality what can be more evident than this pro
position, which we adopt as a rule in all moral estimate made
of the man. Not that which we have without toil, with which
we are furnished, which is given to us, affords the basis of
our moral worth ; but the way in which we turn to account
that which has been received, that which we make of ourselves
by ethical self-determination, that which we win by our own
labour. An inherited morality is no morality, and an habitual
righteousness which has not become habitual to us by personal
act is something self - contradictory. We have here the
distinct parallel to that which holds good of sin, of the sinful
condition. As it is a contradictio in adjecto to speak of a sin
inherited or in anywise come to us from without, so it is a
self-contradiction to suppose a righteousness of the man
which had been brought about and appropriated to him by an
act other than his own. The man is by nature constituted for
becoming conformed to moral rectitude, he has received the
capacity for doing so ; but in himself he is neither good nor

THE OPPOSITION TO EATIONALISM, § 29. 263
bad, he can only make himself so in virtue of the self-deter
mination inherent in him. The conflicting impulses of his
nature are not in and of themselves sin, but in themselves
legitimate, natural tendencies, of which each one on its part
may seek satisfaction ; they first become sin when they revolt
against the higher control of reason. It may be that single
evil qualities are innate in the man ; and so also, on the other
side, certain good ones : neither, however, are the former in
and of themselves already sin, nor do the latter as inherited
confer upon the man any moral worth ; but in the one case as
in the other, it will depend upon his doing whether they can
be put down to him as good or bad, and the strength for such
doing is in every case given to him. But, now, how are we
to reconcile these propositions, harmonizing as they do with
reason and experience, with the supposition of a righteous
ness which, in the first place, must be present outside of the
man, in order then, as by a touch of the enchanter's wand, to
become the man's own ? The existence of a righteousness
outside of him, a righteousness not acquired by him, which
nevertheless is to become for him, — and that by an act not
proceeding from himself, — to be appropriated to him, is in
contradiction with the primary and fundamental notions of the
refined moral understanding. For if there is indeed a
righteousness anywhere, which has not been earned by the
man, this is the property of him who has earned it, and of no
other ; for the others the existence of such a righteousness is
to a certain extent a matter of indifference, inasmuch as they
at any rate are not made righteous by it. And if there is a
righteousness within the man, this may no doubt be stimulated
from without by precept, instruction, example, etc. ; yet what
confers upon it the character of righteousness is not this
outward thing, but the man's own moral doing. There is the
less need for a relation of freedom from guilt, as also of an
exemption from the existing guilt, for the commencement of
the moral life, since at this commencement guilt dees not as
yet exist at all. If, however, in the course of the moral life,
on account of faulty moral practice, guilt sets in, even then
the sinner can hope with confidence for a forgiveness of the
same only when he ceases from the wrong-doing ; and whilst
he is in this way personally set free from the condition of

264 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
guilt, he can comfort himself as regards the transgressions
committed— which neither he nor God Himself can make
undone — with the reflection that these evil deeds do not con
tinue to operate with ill effect through all time, but fall into
oblivion, and are deflected into harmony with the good. Thus
is unfolded and thus grows the righteousness of the man in
accordance with the law of gradual progress, to which all
creaturely rise and genesis is subject; while, on the other
hand, there an incomprehensible righteousness, which has
become complete outside of the man, is supposed in an incom
prehensible manner to be suddenly made over to him as
complete. And how does it chime in with this, that this yet
again, on the other hand, is received as something incomplete,
which has first to be realized in sanctification ? If the pre
supposition is right, that a perfect righteousness exists for the
man and becomes his in conversion, then the necessity for, and
the incentive to, moral exertion, by which after all the
righteousness must first be acquired, falls away, as indeed this
danger has often enough practically manifested its dubious
effects. And how does the other statement accord herewith,
that such freedom from guilt is a destined goal of man
existing in itself; one rising before him and appointed for
him, while it is first existent for him, so that he may really
call it his own, by means of a personal act in conversion,
albeit an act rendered possible by an influence from without ?
He is free from guilt, and yet again not free ; and if he thinks
himself to be entirely so by a believing apprehension and
reception of righteousness, he is again not so — for daily he
accumulates new guilt, which convinces him of the fact that
he only succeeds in becoming a righteous man in the measure
of progressive moral action.
4. Now, however flagrantly the contradiction becomes appa
rent where it is a question of the flrst order of the immanent
objects of faith which are here in question, yet it seems as
though it did not equally bear upon the others, upon the actual
righteousness and the spiritual freedom of the will. For if
the Christian is certain of the fact that he has need of a con
tinual conflict of sanctification, of an ever-renewed manifesta
tion of righteousness, provided he is not to fail of attaining the
goal of his destination, and if, moreover, he can be in no doubt

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 29. 265
as to the reality that a freedom of will dwells in him ; then
this is just what the proposition of rationalism maintains, and
one might suppose that all contradiction here comes to an end.
Nevertheless, the agreement lies only on the surface, and even
if the opponent would in this respect offer us the hand, we
could not accept it without being untrue, and compromising
our own cause. For in reality the contradiction affects those
other objects of faith, although not expressly and immediately,
in no less degree than the former ; as, indeed, it cannot be
otherwise, if we have rightly determined the relation between
the actual and the habitual righteousness, and the spiritual
freedom therein manifested. There is here no actual righteous
ness whatever, that does not entirely rest upon the habitual
righteousness which is perfected in itself, and received in con
version. And ju,st this it is which rationalism denies. The
Christian certainty knows nothing of a sanctification which
has any prospect of consummation, if it is not essentially a
new constituting and complete fashioning of the spiritual /
created in regeneration. But rationalism gainsays the existence
of this new /, and the necessity for its creation. Eationalism
asserts a freedom of will where the Christian cognition sees
only bondage of the will — how shall that, which is the fruit
of the spiritual freedom of the will, in this instance, have an
equality with that assumed natural freedom of will ? Men
who have been most deeply penetrated with the diverseness of
the spiritual and the natural man, have with drastic expression
characterized the good works of the latter as splendida vitia ;
they were to this extent right, that these works could not be
fruits of the new / which alone occupies the morally normal
fundamental position, nor could they be products of the habi
tual righteousness from the possession of which the actual
proceeds. Not often, however, has a proposition given such
great offence to rationalistic and rationalizing doctrine as this.
Consequently, it cannot be a question of the Christian recog
nising himself to be at one with the rationalist as regards the
proposition that the righteousness — to wit, the actual — is the
fruit of the personal moral endeavour of the man. Yet even
if we abandon the comparison of the significance of this
proposition in the mouth of the opponent, and take into con
sideration its validity in the peculiarly Christian domain as a

266 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY,
separate question, we can then only admit it within certain
limitations. It is no doubt true, and is a rule not at all
abolished by the Christian doctrine of the operations of grace,
that every one will at last receive according as he has done in
the life of the body, that thus the Christian shall be finally
estimated not on the ground of the talent with which he has
been entrusted, but after the standard of the labour he has
bestowed upon this talent ; none the less, however, it has for
the Christian a strange ring, — because it is not the just
expression for his experience, — when he is told that he has
by his own performances to acquire the righteousness, in the
full possession of which he will have attained the end of his
being (seine Bestimmung). For with equal justice might we,
on the ground of Christian experience, utter the proposition,
that the condition under which that goal is attained is this,
that one renounce all his own doings, not merely at the
beginning, but likewise in the progress of the Christian life.
This self-renunciation is the ethical foundation act of the
Christian, as at his conversion so in his continued renewal ;
he gains himself only in that he sacrifices himself; every sort
of moral act of his life has worth, only if it bears about it
something of this sacrificial fiagrance. Alway are we -who
live delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of
Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh (2 Cor. iv. 11)
— this saying of the apostle we may apply in a wider sense to
our own life of self than that in which it is there employed.
And when the sacrifice has been offered, and it is then said: ejoi
rihr] a-TrevBofiai (2 Tim. iv. 6), then the Christian can add : the
good fight have I fought, the course finished (2 Tim. iv. 7).
But neither is this act, either — occupying a negative position
to all moral performance by which the man might become
something from the starting-point of self — born out of the
man's self, but as regards its power implanted in him by the
factors of regeneration, so that he thereby only becomes (wird)
what he is, and receives what as a regenerate man he is
and has.
5. What the Christian experiences on hearing the objections
which are derived from that fundamental proposition of
rationalism, that is, in the first place, not a disquieting of his
certainty, but the dim or more distinct sense that the contra-

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 29. 267
diction does not at all extend to the realities which it supposes
it is overthrowing or exhibiting in their nothingness. Nor
can he be surprised at the contradiction, or become irritated
thereby ; for if that character of the moral opposition, which
is found in the life of the natural man, is reckoned to be the
normal one, this endeavour after the realization of the righteous
ness yet lacking is the best than can be rendered from this
quarter. It is something, and is on that account not to be
lightly esteemed, if a man, in the things which his natural
moral consciousness recognises as right and enjoined, struggles
hard to fight, and to wrest the victory from the opposing
forces ; he is thereby retained more nearly at that point of his
inner life, at which in conversion the power of the regenerating
factors finds entrance, and brings to a decision the moral
opposition till then existing ; he preserves to himself in this
way a moral judgment, whereas the dissolute man, not engaging
in such conflict, may be hurried on to a moral dulness in which
the senses for distinguishing between the physical and the
moral world fade away ; precisely herein is confirmed to us
anew the fact 1}hat we are here placed in the first stadium of
the opposition raised against the Christian truth. But if, now,
such an one were really to attain to the position of acquiring
the righteousness after which he strives, of fulfilling all the
commandments of which he has become morally conscious, yet
the Christian knows that the eye of love looking upon him
(Mark x. 21) must say : "Go thy way, sell what thou hast.
Thou art seeking precious pearls, it is true, and hast found
many a one ; but the one pearl which outweighs all others thou
hast not yet — sell what thou hast." Yet though we also say
that to him, he will, nevertheless, not understand us, unless
the powers of regeneration operate through our words, and
afford him an experience, or at least a distant conception of
that one pearl of great price ; and just as little will the con
tinuance of the labour hitherto pursued of itself enable him to
find it ; for though it is found also amidst this quest, yet he who
thus finds it is like that other, who in digging comes upon the
treasure hid in the field. That which they find surpasses that
of which they were thinking, or which they were seeking.
Will now he who has found the pearl be disturbed by that
which another, who is still seeking for jewels of his under-

268 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
standing, would fain persuade him as to the value of these in
comparison with that ? Of course he cannot speak otherwise,
because he does not understand the matter otherwise. Or
will the Christian be reduced to perplexity if it is objected to
him on that side, that all seeking, all labouring, all moral
activity must now cease for him ; while precisely this is the
destination of the man, ever to press forward from one stage
to another, ever to discover and appropriate something nobler,
gradually to force his way to moral perfection ? It is true,
that kind of wrestling which the Christian has learnt to know
as ineffectual and prospectless, because it lies within a province
whose possessions cannot assuage the moral want of the man,
is brought to an end ; but only to give place to another kind
of wrestling and striving, which, by that which it has from the
beginning received and possessed, guarantees the result of the
moral labour. It is true that the Christian does not recognise
the destination of man in hurrying and running, though it be
with the exertion of all the moral strength, in such wise that
he rushes forward at random upon any path on which a moral
good beckons to him ; but he begins his course only after
he has been placed upon the king's highway, at the outset of
which he already obtains a view of the goal which wings his
steps. In brief, it is certainly so as we have said, that the
Christian does not feel himself reached by the contradiction
which is couched against this his way of manifesting righteous
ness, because the objection always assails something else than
that of which the Christian is assured by force of his specific
experience — a distorted copy of the object, distorted and
deranged by reason of the disparity of the object with the
nature of the perception and cognition in which it is appre
hended by the opponent,
6. And yet we do not, as has been already indirectly
stated, assume such position towards the objection of ration
alism, as that we should reject the purport of the same,
considered in itself, as absolutely erroneous. That is just
the peculiarity of human error, that it attaches itself to an
element of truth, that it is itself an element of truth, torn
asunder from the continuity of the whole and urged at a
wrong place, so that what in itself is truth becomes thereby
error. If, therefore, the Christian certainty will adequately

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 29. 269
and victoriously defend itself against this error, it has in such
wise to set the objection to rights, that on the one hand the
truth of its contents is recognised, and on the other the non-
contradictoriness of this truth, as such, with the contents of
the Christian's declaration is exhibited. The truth is this,
that the man as a moral being can only by a genesis attain
to that for which he is designed and constituted, and that
such genesis must be accomplished by a personal self-con
stituting and self-determination. That is not a proposition
which we derive and appropriate to ourselves from general
reflection or from any philosophic speculation, but it is a
declaration which we base upon the same experience whence
we have hitherto drawn the certainty as to the immanent
objects of faith. The fact of regeneration, however definitely
apprehended by us as a fact realizing itself upon the man
and in the man, had still precisely this as its aim, that that
becoming, that self-constituting of the man might be made
possible and arise, as that whereby he is to attain to that for
which his nature is designed. From conversion to the last
breath, to the last effort with which the Christain maintains
against the terrors of death his incipient being — his whole life
is such an arising and becoming, a free labour of his innermost
personality, by which he wills and accomplishes that which
has been made manifest to him as the end of his existence,
and the moral judgment regarding the Christian is determined
according to the measure of the fidelity with which he per
forms and has performed this work. If thus one should call
the aim for which the Christian strives in such labour —
which during his earthly pilgrimage he has not yet attained,
but to which he gradually approaches nearer — the state of
righteousness, that condition in which he has now by dint of
his own free constituting become that which according to the
idea of his being he was and ought to become ; we have then
discovered and recognised that very thought of rationalism,
that the righteousness of the man must be the result of his
own free moral performance, as a portion of the Christian
consciousness itself. But pne now perceives likewise that
this is an abstract proposition, in the enunciation of which
per se nothing is implied as to the nature of that righteous
ness which the man has to realize, nor anything as to the

270 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
manner of the self-constituting by which the realization takes
place, nor as to the possibility whereby, considering the con
crete moral state of the man, such a self-constituting, unques
tionably necessary as it is, is to be brought about. And this
proposition, true in the abstract, is now turned by rationalism
not against its opposite, not against a proposition which
declared the contrary of this to be true, but rather against the
mode in which, according to Christian experience, that abstract
truth becomes in the life of the Christian concrete and actual.
The answer of the Christian to the objecting of that proposi
tion is accordingly to this effect : just because it is so, because
the eventual and perfect righteousness of the man must be his
own doing, do I need that received and habitual righteousness,
that freedom from guilt, the existence of which you will con
test to me by means of that proposition. The argument which
you advance against me becomes a demonstration in favour
of it. Without being from the beginning freed from the
community with sin and guilt, without being in the centre of
my nature fitted into the normal position, without having
received this righteousness from the first, every particular of
my moral labour would be misplaced, all becoming [genesis] a
morbid one, the whole activity of my / in its depths vitiated
by a fault, which, in striving to advance, it would never be
able to lay aside.
7. Thus that objection of rationalism is an abstract pro
position, in connection with whose application to the man
the preliminary question is first of all to be disposed of,
whether the man in his concrete appearing, as he is naturally
constituted, is in a position to be subjected to the require
ment of that proposition. For thus much is at all events
admittedly certain, that in order to effect a righteousness by
that which he himself renders, the subject must have some
thing with which the rendering is made. This preliminary
question is tacitly looked upon in connection with that pro
position of rationalism, when it is to be urged as an objection
to the Christian truth, as already decided, and indeed as being
decided in a sense conflicting with the Christian cognition as
with the facts of the case. If the subject, whose the render
ing is to be, is not placed within the line, the prolongation of
which leads to the possession of the perfect righteousness ; or

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 29. 271
more explicitly, if the starting-point of the moral activity, the
irpMTov KLvovv by which it is brought about, is not in accordance
with the standard of righteousness, then it is comprehensible
that this fundamental error of the moral doing, which already
precedes all utterance of the same, cannot be set aside by this
utterance itself in its further progress ; just as in mathematics,
for instance, an error in reckoning or a false supposition at
the start of the mathematical operation is not annulled by the
fact that the further computation has been rightly made. But
the matter does not even so stand in this case, as might
appear from the comparison, that the further moral activity
regarded in itself might possibly be right ; but, inasmuch as
all further moral movement is of necessity conditioned, con
stituted, penetrated by that first motive power, the erroneous
ness of the last-named must thus enter and make its presence
felt at every subsequent point in the movement. By this
we are likewise led back to the difference between the Chris
tian certainty and the assumption of rationalism which was
discussed in connection with the first class of the immanent
objects of faith, and the Christian must deny the applicability
of that abstractly correct' proposition to the concrete natural
man, so long as a change has not been wrought in the starting-
point. But what now does rationalism on its part presuppose
at that starting-point, by which, as we have seen, the quality
of the further moral operation is determined ? Not righteous
ness, since this is first to be the fruit of the moral performing.
And not sin ; because it denies that this exists save on the
ground of personal act. There remains nothing over but the
assumption of moral indifference and neutrality, whence now,
in virtue of the free exercise of the will in action, righteous
ness or its contrary is to result. Wherever in later times
rationalism breaks forth again one will not have far to seek
for this or similar propositions. Let alone, however, that
such indifference cannot hold good in presence of the facts
of the natural life, as we have become acquainted with these,
particularly at the hand of statistics, this supposition is from the
outset contradictory to the notion of a personal self-determining
being, as which, even according to the assumption of rational
ism, we have to regard man. For to will what is morally
indifferent is not to will; whereas we surely have to think

272 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
of the man, because thinking of him as man, as therefore
willing. If an idea rises before the man, if an order prevails,
with reference to which his willing, his self-determining, is
a normal, legitimate one or not, then it can be a question in
connection with this willing only of one of two things —
whether the same corresponds to that idea or not, whether it
is a right or a wrong one ; and a third, neutrality, can be
come existent only if one strikes out the will itself. Nor
would it warrant a distinction for the matter as it here lies
if one would have recourse to the assumption, — untenable,
because in contradiction with the facts, — that the man exists
in the first place not as willing, consequently as personal,
but gradually develops himself into such out of a natural
being endowed with morally neutral impulses ; for the ques
tion is thereby only pushed aside, or thrust forward to the
point in which the entrance of the self-determination is
placed, and here then the difficulty lies just as before. After
the fixing of this point we should only be brought face to
face with the choice, whether that which determines the act of
will in the man is congruent or not congruent with his moral
idea ; in the latter case there can be no working out of right
eousness which is not infected by the first determining motive ;
in the former case, the necessary presupposition for such
working out of righteousness is the existence of a rightly
constituted state in the centre of the personality, which thus
cannot first arise as the consequence of the moral perform
ance of the man. The hypothesis akin to this"" l4,tter, which
likewise shares with it the contradiction to the facts of the
natural life, — that the act of the will, contradictory to the
moral norm, an act from the first present, only becomes for
the subject sin under the influence of definite factors operat
ing upon the subject, and of the moral cognition thereby
conditioned, — does, presupposing that real acts of the will,
acts of the personality and not of the nature, are understood
thereby, at once assume the anomalous character in the first
determining motive ; it can therefore suppose an effecting of
the righteousness by this determining power, either not at
all or in a consistent way only by assuming that beyond
this first motive power, which determines the act of the will,
there is another and very first, which is congruent with the

THE OPPOSITION OF RATIONALISM, § 29. 273
moral idea, and for which the acts of will of the other would
now become the object of its rectifying infiuence. The result,
however, is for us the same in the one case as in the other,
that either the production of the righteousness which corre
sponds to the moral idea pertaining to the man is not accom
plished ; or else, if it is accomplished, in the effecting agent
must be already existing (gegeben) a righteousness, i.e. a
condition in virtue of which it is conformed to the moral
idea ; that consequently this proposition of rationalism, taken
in its concrete truth, demands for its realization precisely that
which it is to be employed for combating.
8. If we before started with the fact of the freedom from
guilt, into which relation the Christian is conscious of having
entered at the same time with his regeneration and con
version, and which formed the presupposition for the possi
bility of the manifestation of actual righteousness, we have
here conversely come, by the recognition of the rationalistic
contradiction in its abstract truth, to the demand for a
righteousness standing at the beginning of the Christian
path, with which now that experienced fact corresponds.
We know, namely, that this righteousness at the beginning,
which we have learnt to recognise as that of the new /,
cannot be merely a righteousness existing in him, personally
attaching to him, that rather it must be a relation of freedom
from guilt existing in itself, existing outside of the subject
and above the subject, into which he is placed as righteous,
in such wi^e indeed that the bringing in itself coincides with
the reception of personal righteousness ; for otherwise neither
the guilt attaching to the natural /, nor the guilt accumulat-
ino- anew on the path of the further manifestation of right
eousness, would suffer the new / to continue in existence
and the moral labour of the same to attain to success. From
this is now also comprehended a difference, which has his
torically manifested itself, between the ethical instruction
from the standpoint of rationalism and that on the basis
of Christian experience and certainty. However certain it
may be for the Christian that no side of his personal and
natural life, or of his relations to the world surrounding him,
can remain untouched by the new life-principle implanted in
him, inasmuch as the accomplishment of the actual righteous-
s

274 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
ness assuredly consists in the penetrating of all these sides
and relations of his nature with that principle ; yet the fact
forces itself ever afresh into the foreground of his conscious
ness, that nothing is really accomplished by such penetrating,
nothing by such acquirement of actual righteousness, unless
before all things the life-principle, the fountain-head of the
ethical strength and activity, is still preserved and retained
in its purity, specially since the ethical manifestation in
detail is nothing else than the carrying out and enforcing of
the principle in definite cases and in connection with single
occasions of the practical life. Hence then in Christian
instruction this constant recurrence to the centre of the new
ethical life, to the apparent neglecting, or at least not equal
regarding, of the peripherical portions, as for instance with
Paul, with John, with Luther, — this writing and saying of
one and the same thing, which to the man standing at a
distance, the one devoid of experience, seems like monotonous
repetition, whereas it is as far from wearying the experienced,
the man acquainted with the Christian life, as is the daily
bread which he ever afresh requires and enjoys. For this
central invigorating and renewing serves just to the Christian
not merely for the maintenance and shaping forth of the
centre of his Christian personality, but likewise for the
nourishing, advancing, and shaping forth of his whole
Christian being, even to its single relations and expres
sions. Quite otherwise is it there with the ethical in
struction of rationalism. Though men may also in theory
have laboured to discover and set up a moral principle,
which should comprehend in unity the single moral in
junctions and performances, yet there was manifested,
even in theory and still more strongly in practice, the
inclination and endeavour to fix and separately describe
the single performances and virtues of the moral life; as
is abundantly evident from the rationalistic ethics, and
specially from the rationalistic sermons. The whole is here
to be won by means of the particular and individual ; as
everywhere where mechanism takes the place of the living
organism, the individual, the part is ranged before the whole.
We understand from the standing-ground of the Christian
cognition why this must be so, and why this way to the

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 29. 275
accomplishing of a perfect personal righteousness must be
one without a prospect; upon the fact that we understand
both particulars at once rests our certainty in opposition to
the contradiction of rationalism.
9. Nevertheless, here also the assurance of the Christian
in presence of the contradiction is not identical with perfect
certainty, i.e. one in which the complete and accurate cog
nition of the objects of faith exactly corresponded with the
complete and accurate experience of the same. The realities
in point are beyond doubt vouched for to us ; but it is one
question as to the conditions and factors of their existing and
so-existing, their relations to each other, etc., and another as
to the measure of consciousness and distinctness to which
the certainty present penetrates in the individual Christians
and at the different periods of the Church. We can indeed
say that there has never existed any Christian for whom the
one and the other was not established — that relation of
freedom from guilt and of habitual righteouness into which
he has entered, and the fact of actual righteousness which
thereby realizes and must realize itself: but then how that
being and this becoming blend together and yet are at the
same time distinct, as regards this both the experience may
be defective and the cognition, the notional apprehension of
the same, non -corresponding to the experience. We need
not therefore at all go back to the ancient Church, of which
it would be folly to assert that those realities were not
certain for it'; while that Church assuredly did not attain
to distinctness as to the relation of the same to each other.
Even the Eeformation age, the Evangelical Lutheran Church,
wavered, as is shown by the doctrinal controversies of the
time, in that fixing of the relation ; and it would be an
injustice to those who gave an inaccurate expression to the
relation to deny to them on that account the certainty as to
the realities themselves, and thereby to pronounce against
their Christian character. Indeed to the present day — notwith
standing the abundance of fresh and deeper experience, as of
a cognition growing out thereof, which in these particulars
was given to the Church by the Eeformation — the relation
between the existence and the growing up of the righteous
ness in the Christian has become the object of repeated

276 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
attempts to clothe what is as a fact certain in a form ever
more corresponding to the Christian experience, and must
still remain so, if the progress of Church and theology is to
be a sound one. That which calls for an answer in con
nection therewith is, apart from the objective preliminary
conditions of freedom from guilt, of which we have not at
this stage to speak, specially the question how that which
exists independently of the Christian, in such wise indeed
that his moral genesis and growth rests precisely upon this
independence, this objective placedness, yet again, in order
for the Christian to become what he is, appears placed in
dependence upon a moral act of the Christian, so that for
him it ceases to be, if this fact no longer continues. For
nothing is more mistaken than to base the justification of
the Christian upon a preceding moral act, and nothing is
more erroneous than to separate the entrance of freedom
from guilt for the man from the moment at which he obtains
possession of it through faith, through the turning to that
in itself existing relation. Side by side with this question
is the other, respecting which the Christian certainty in its
present state has not yet arrived at a conclusion, how the
twofold character (Duplicitat) of the old and the new /, not
merely as regards the genesis and the existence, but specially
as regards the gradual rise, presents itself in the unity of
the person of the Christian ; inasmuch as this duplicity is
certainly not to be thought of as unchangeable, but of
necessity as disappearing, and moreover the acts of the
natural will and cognition, formally regarded, are common
to both. So far as seemed needful for the present task we
have already given our judgment on this and cognate
questions in the positive statement of the certainty; and
the separate discussion thereof would lead us away into
the province of dogmatics, to which it belongs in contra
distinction from our science, to expound those spiritual
realities which have become certain for the Christian, in
their objective - causal connectedness and in their quality
herefrom resulting.
§ 30. The lack of acquaintance with the normal position of
the man, into which he is in principle placed as a Christian

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 30. 277
conditions for rationalism — despite an outward agreement
with the supposition of a consummation to be attained and
of a life everlasting which reaches beyond the death of the
body — the contradiction to the Christian certainty respect
ing the third kind of the immanent objects of faith ; a
contradiction which manifests itself particularly in the
assumption of an infinite perfecting of the man, and in the
abstract proposition of the immortality of the soul. While
from the nature of this rationalistic hope the Christian com
prehends the fact that it has been unable to hold its ground
against the onset of the oppositions, called forth likewise
against it, at the same time the basis of his peculiar Christian
hope, which is not reached by those oppositions, approves
itself to him against the objection of rationalism itself
1. If we now fix our attention upon the human subject in
himself, as we must still do at this place in the system,
without taking into account that which comes to him in
such or other wise from without as an authority, it is perceived
that the hope of a consummation of the present earthly life,
the expectation of a continued existence of the personality on
the other side of the temporal death on behalf of that
consummation, is essentially conditioned by the present
possession, by the state of the human being now, whence
the lines are drawn over to the farther side. It is certainly
not the abstract thought of the indefinite continuance of
life in itself to which the hope of the future, however
multiform in other respects, attaches, — a thought which as
such would have about it at least as much of that which is
terrifying for the man as it would have of that which is
attractive ; but the realization of an aim, the satisfaction of a
want, which is looked for from such continued life. In a
conversation between Kant and Jachmann, his subsequent
biographer, the question was raised, as the latter tells us,
what a sensible man, with full possession of his intellect and
mature consideration, would choose if an angel from heaven,
endowed with aU power over his future lot, should appear
to him before the end of his life and offer him the
irrevocable choice, and should leave it to his will whether

278 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
he would exist through an eternity or would entirely cease
to be with his life's end. Kant was of opinion that it would
be highly venturesome to decide in favour of an utterly un
known and yet ever-enduring condition and arbitrarily to
surrender himself to an uncertain fate, which, notwithstanding
all repentance of the choice made, notwithstanding all
weariness of the everlasting sameness, and notwithstanding
all longing for a change, would nevertheless remain unalter
able and eternal (p. 121). So it is in reality, and if it is
further related to us of Kant that he once affirmed in a com
pany, he would take it as no bad sign of his future dwelling-
place if his servant Lampe (whom he had, it is true, after
wards to discharge on account of unfaithfulness) and other
like honest men should come to meet him (p. 123) : this
moderate degree of demand upon the future condition is surely
in itself a proof for the correctness of the statement that the
idea, the expectation, the hope of a continuance of life after
death is based upon the present possession and sense of need.
The impulse to self-preservation, in so far as it stands
associated with the hope of a continued life, or a living
again after death, and sustains this hope, can yet accom
plish the latter only if it is a vita vitalis to which the
man clings, or if a defect of this life is brought home to
the consciousness, the removal of which forms the object
of the hope. There is no experience and no perception of
the future condition as such, and therefore the present
experience must serve alike to guarantee the hope of the
reality of the same and to endow it with qualities and
possessions which make it appear worthy of the hope.
Looked at on this side, the way in which the Christian sub
ject attains to the grounding (Setzung) of that reality and its
nature is analogous to that in which that hope and the quality
thereof is produced in the universal consciousness of mankind.
2. If matters so stand with the foundation of the hope
directed to the continued existence of the human personality,
and if it is in general the case that this hope admits of
guaranteeing by the existing and so-existing of the human
being; then in connection with such guaranteeing no less
than everything will turn on the question whether one has
rightly fixed that foundation, and defect in the one part

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 30. 279
must at once entail defect and failure in the others. We
do not ignore the fact that it was at any rate something
considerable when rationalism, from its emphasizing of the
moral side of human nature, attained to the demand for
the moral perfecting of the same in the other world, — we may
set this down, too, as a portion of the heritage which it has
received, though unconsciously, from the preceding age of
unbroken Christian faith, and the later advance of the anti
christian opposition, beyond this hope also, can only serve to
enhance the value of this heritage ; yet with all this it was
only the shadow of the Christian realities, a shadow projected
into the next stadium after the loss of the Christian certainty,
and then gradually disappearing ; and the broken foundation
was not able long to sustain the superstructure of the hope.
Because rationalism had no experience and no certainty of
the character of the moral restitution of the man, as this is
accomplished by regeneration and conversion ; because there
fore the present possession could be for it no pledge and no
earnest for the possession of the future : therefore, in order to
retain this hope it had to seek for other guarantees, and since
it had no others than those afforded by its erroneous cogni
tion of human nature as it now is, the error and uncertainty
in the presupposition could not thus fail of reflecting itself in
the erroneousness and unstedfastness of its hope. So-called
proofs were exhibited for the immortality of the soul, the
laying down and the character of which was in itself a posi
tive proof that the peculiar Christian certainty, which knows
only a vouching by facts for the hope, was lost. Hence then
more acutely thinking men, such as Lessing, at once gave
utterance to the impression which such proofs produced upon
them, to the effect that they had never more doubted the
immortality of the soul than when they had heard it proved
in such a way. It is characteristic, and serves for the con
firmation of our apprehension of the rationalistic position,
that precisely Kant, who had laid down the proposition of the
radical evil and the demand for a radical transformation, a
regeneration of the man, now here too, in connection with the
question as to the continued existence of the human person
ality, approached more nearly to the Christian truth ; inasmuch
as he dismissed the proofs for the immortality of the soul in

280 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
general, and most intimately combined the postulate sub
stituted for them with the moral character of the man as he
understood it. But verily a postulate, if it is nothing
more than this, is, not able to restore the lacking certainty,
and no one was less deceived in this respect than Kant
himself; only if with the supposition of that which is
present, that which is in the present real, at the same time
that which is future is involved, is contained in it ; if the
future actually, as to its substance, imprints itself on the
present, and a maintenance of the latter is not possible -with
out retention also of the former, then the certainty of the
object of faith in the Christian sense is present.
3. If we take the proposition with which in particular the
rationalistic belief in immortality seeks to establish itself —
namely, that man as to his true nature is constituted for an
end which he does not attain on this earth — in its abstraction
and generality, one will not discover therein as it stands its
direct contradiction to the Christian truth as we have above
defined this truth. For such a consummation of that for
which he is designed the Christian likewise expects. The
question, however, is now, what that end is and what is the
guarantee which engages for its attainment. And here at
once the wavering sets in, that in place of something bearing
the stamp of unity, something central, to which everything
else is placed in ministering relation, we are pointed to a
vague perfectibility which attaches to the " intellectual
endowments " of man, reason, freedom, and sensibility ;
according to which a " logical, moral, and sesthetical perfect
ing " proceeding ad infinitum would thus be the end. This
thought of infinite progress then ranges itself in contradiction
with the Christian hope, which knows nothing of such ever
lasting advancing towards, striving after, the abstract goal of
the perfection of all natural endowments, which withal as
infinite is never fully attained, but just the reverse, has as
its object the complete possession of that one goal and end,
manifested, set before him, and placed within reach of attain
ment in conversion. It is evident how this affirming and
counter-affirming of rationalism arises, and it is not less
apparent why it is not adapted to disturb the certainty of the
Christian. The thought of an infinite perfecting of the

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 30. 281
" moral capacity," to stop short at this for the present as the
main thing, results from the false premiss that righteousness
is simply the earnings of the personal moral deed ; in which
case truly a progressus in infinitum would be necessary in
order to advance by means of the individual performance to
the possession of perfect righteousness. If, however, it is in
this way psychologically explained how the hope of the
future here shaped itself, yet the Christian knows that there
does not exist any kind of guarantee for such infinite
approaching in this way to the moral goal, and he knows why
it does not exist. There exists for him, on the contrary, in
virtue of his Christian experience, the certainty of the opposite
— that by means of such moral performance, however highly
rated, which does not proceed from a being, a possession of
righteousness, the placing of the man in the normal moral
state can never be accomplished ; that thus this " moral
capacity " contains in itself anything but a pledge of eventual
consummation. And if we further take into account the fact
that by the guilty personal act, not indeed of the individual
as such but yet of man in general and with him of the
individual, this continuing defect, this abiding aberration has
been occasioned, how then shall there still be afforded, in the
recognition in itself of this defect, a pledge that the same
shall and must eventually, one knows not how or why, be
done away with ? The favourite comparison with other
natural beings, which fulfil the end of their being assigned to
them in creation, — apart from the consideration that even in
their case we often enough perceive developments broken off,
— is before all things unsatisfactory on this account, that in
the present instance we have to do, not with a being physi
cally developing itself, but precisely with a being having self-
control, a being responsible for its development. But besides,
the other intellectual faculties, the " logical and sesthetical "
ones, how came these of themselves to guarantee a continuance
of the personality, whereby they must attain to the goal of
perfection possible to them ? Are we to assume that in that
life we grow up into perfect logicians, who wield with the
skill of an adept the forms of judgments and conclusions, into
perfect artists and art-critics ? He who here discovers in
himself some talent for statesmanship or for generalship, but

^82 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
finds no opportunity in his walk of life for the culture of
these gifts, shall he therefore be able to count with certainty
upon an immortality for his soul, and upon a life beyond
the present, in which he will then become a distinguished
politician or an excellent general ? We need in sooth only
to think out in the concrete those abstract thoughts of
rationalism in order to recognise the instability of this
foundation for the hope. And how inept, to postulate the
infinite perfecting of the intellectual faculties, while side by
side with this the body is consigned to destruction ; whereas
its aptitudes and resources are likewise capable of a far
greater development than it now brings them to ! Those
intellectual faculties, moreover, in great measure demand the
existence of the physical, the earthly life, yea, as, e.g., the
ffisthetical, of a life fraught with sin and evil ; thus on the
one hand the possibility of further perfecting is snatched
from them, while on the other the necessity for the same
is affirmed and made the basis of hope. The main error,
however, lies in the fact that elements of the human
nature, which as such have only relative importance, are
co-ordinated with that central point for which they alone
exist, and from which they are to be appreciated ; that
those manifold intellectual capacities are placed on a level
with the moral faculty, with which, even regarded in them
selves, they certainly have no equality.
4. Thus precisely in the notion of perfecting, which at first
seemed common to us with the opponents, do we now find
the contradiction which rationalism puts forward against our
Christian certainty. And that essentially also as regards the
moral perfecting on which in the case of the Christian hope
no less than everything depends. Eationalism pronounces
the judgment that a moral perfection, in connection with
which even the possibility of sinning should cease, cannot be
looked for, " because this exists only in God, and for creatures
there is no absolute perfection." And just this perfect right
eousness, wherein the will of the new /is the alone dominating
energy in the human person and nature, in which the human
subject in the full and untroubled possession of the highest
good can by no means any more persuade itself that it would
find satisfaction outside of the same and destitute of the same,

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 30. 283
is the object of the Christian longing, and it hopes with con
fidence for this, because the actual present experience points
to this goal. But how can one conceive, we are asked, that
abiding satisfaction, everlasting blessedness, takes place where
the goal of the longing is completely attained, and the enjoy
ment of the highest good is a never -interrupted, constantly
present one ? " Every pleasure becomes by frequent repeti
tion, every form of happiness by prolonged and uninterrupted
continuance, first a matter of indifference, then wearisome,
finally intolerable." Only in an everlasting becoming, which
from its notion excludes perfection as a possession acquired, in
a continued striving after the goal, can real bliss consist. — One
sees at once from this objection the want of experience whence
it proceeds, the equalizing of relative pleasures and joys with
the enjoyment of the highest good, which latter surely would
not be that which according to its notion it admittedly is,
unless in distinction from the relative goods it afforded absolute,
infinite satisfaction. But whatever one would reply from the
standpoint of Christian cognition to such objections, in what
ever way one might attempt to afford a conception of such
condition of everlasting satisfaction, we should in so doing
quit the firm position of Christian certainty which we have to
maintain. For in reality has a Christian ever held to the
hope of consummation because he is able to think it out, or
to form a conception of it ? or has he ever rejected it because
he is unable to do this ? Dogmatics, which starts with the
presupposition of the certainty of those realities, to unfold the
system thereof in itself existent, may doubtless attempt to
penetrate with the spiritual eye into these distances and to
obtain an intellectual conception of them. The Christian
certainty has nothing to do with this ; and woe to the Chris
tian who, after he has recognised the state of consummation as
conceivable or capable of intellectual presentation, now would
build upon this staff of reed his confidence in presence of death.
The Christian hope has to do with very different things
from the question here put forward, how we are to conceive
to ourselves of something which has not yet become actual,
something belonging to an order of things obtaining in the
world beyond the grave. As the hart pants for the water-
brooks, so our soul thirsts for the highest good, for that

284 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
righteousness wherein we are completely that for which we
were designed in creation ; and because we have tasted some
thing of the life which quenches this thirst, because we have
become conscious of a righteousness which has power to
subdue our sin, therefore we are certain of this life, as one
leading to consummation of this righteousness, as one which
will ultimately take entire possession of us, draw us into itself.
All airy speculations and possibilities of thought recede far
away behind these realities to which our certainty attaches,
to which it holds fast as to an anchor of the soul, both sure
and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil
(Heb. vi. 1 9). And if, then, the question as to the How presses
itself upon us, it is for the Christian easy to say : That I do
not know, but I shall know it from experience hereafter.
Once I knew nothing of the possibility of a regeneration
either, which has lifted up my innermost being into a sphere
with which I was before unacquainted, and yet I have expe
rienced this to be real; so will it also be with the new
regeneration which still awaits me, yea, I can indeed much
more readily think what this is than I was able to think
what the first was. I have the beginnings of that life for
whose complete unfolding I wait.
5. The possession of intellectual endowments, particularly
moral ones, was that whence rationalism attained to the thesis
of the soul's immortality, and because the destination assigned
to these endowments was an erroneous one, therefore also the
thesis was of necessity unstable and at the same time contra
dictory to the Christian truth. Well now, the other side also,
— of which we said that it serves, together with the former,
as the substructure of that belief, — the consciousness of defect,
was, to be sure, already contained therein, inasmuch as these
endowments appeared to be for the present but imperfectly
cultivated, yet capable of development. Nevertheless we have
now further to direct our view especially to thig consciousness
of defect as the source of the rationalistic hope, since in this
likewise the opposition to the Christian certainty becomes
manifest. It is a question in connection with it of the con
tradiction in which the human subject finds himself placed,
and the abolition of which he looks for in the future, because
the present allows it to exist on unresolved. The contradic-

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 30. 285
tion admits of being differently formulated, whether it be in
such wise that one fixes the attention upon the opposition
between the requirement of the moral law and the demand of
the sensuous nature for gratification, or in such wise that the
incongruence between the moral rendering of the man and
his sense of pleasure and satisfaction is specially regarded.
And if we let the matter rest with this general indication, the
observation already frequently made is repeated, that thereby
forces and motives are expressed which in their nature recur
likewise in connection with the Christian hope. The warring
lust in the members, this other law which continually demands
satisfaction, and to which we are nevertheless always to refuse
it, the feeling of being rent in twain which not seldom takes
possession of the Christian amidst this unceasing conflict,
which is far from being always crowned with success, directs
his longing to the calling forth of a harmony without which
there can be no blessedness for him. And we think in this
connection of the body, just as the apostle thought of it, as this
body of the flesh, which specially occasions for the Christian the
experience of the existence of another law antagonistic to his
/, the continuing contradiction between his inner and his
outward man. Nor, on the other hand, can the Christian
conceal from himself the fact that to the perfect satisfaction
and blessedness to which he aspires, yea, which was in the
truest sense the motive in his conversion, the uninterrupted
pressure of the suffering which assails him, the pang of the
sacrifice which is demanded of him, opposes itself with
restraining effect. For the Christian is no Stoic, who has per
suaded himself that these outward sufferings, these manifold
ills of the outward life, are no His, or who has deadened his
sensibility against the feeling of them. This condition he is
unable to think of as the ultimate one, and he is called forth
from such a frame when the apostle says : If in this life only
we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable ; if
after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus,
what advantageth it me ? (1 Cor. xv. 19, 32). Though, how
ever, these particular considerations may appear as factors in
the rational Hope, in like manner as they appear as motives
for the Christian hope ; yet we have only to analyse them
into their elements in order to recognise, on this point too.

286 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the difference, nay, the relation of opposition. It is for the
Christian not at all the contradiction, in and of itself, between
the demands of his inner and those of his outward man, which
could, in the first place, afford him a well-grounded hope of
the ultimate resolution of the same. He may long to be set
free from this opposition, may sigh. Who shall deliver me
from the body of this death ? But in this longing, this sense
of pain, he has no pledge for the fulfilment of his ardent desire.
Only because he knows something of a victory which has been
conferred upon him, already now, and even earlier than now,
not first in the future, because he has become acquainted with
the power of a love which has taken possession of him, and
of which he ha,s taken possession ; therefore that sense of
dividedness now forms, not only a motive for his longing, but
in association with that first fact an element of his hope, which,
on account of the same, has good reason for looking upon this
present condition as a merely transitory one. And again,
the bitterness of suffering, the pain of relinquishing, of which
the Christian has to speak amidst the consciousness of glory
already received, cannot in and of itself strengthen him in the
hope that he will one day be recompensed for this path of
suffering : such experiences are a shrill dissonance as con
trasted with the sense of peace and joy which entered into
him at conversion ; not, however, in the dissonance itself lies
the certainty of its future dissolving, but in the keynote
already penetrating the whole, above which the dissonances
only play themselves out, in order finally indeed to blend
harmoniously with this. It is true, the Christian wrestles
for a prize in relinquishing all things, and this prize is the
object of his hope ; but the lofty spirits who look down with
contempt upon this eudaemonic morality have not understood
that it is a question, in connection with such relinquishing, in
the first place of the retaining of the treasure already bestowed,
and only then of the obtaining of the prize. " Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die : " that, no doubt, would be the
consequence of the surrender of the Christian hope ; but yet
only for the reason that then there could be no more word of
that possession, in the maintenance of which the Christian
knows a higher enjoyment than that of sensuous pleasure.
Now, in all these particulars the difference and the contra-

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 30. 287
diction of the rationalistic conception manifestly appears, in
such wise, indeed, that if one understands it in its depths, and
compares its thesis with that of the Christian conception, there
is therewith likewise pronounced the self-maintaining of the
Christian certainty in presence of the objection. For there it
is the opposition conceived of in the abstract between the
sensuous and the intellectual or moral side of the human
nature, and the thought of the unconditional demand of the
moral law, whence hope takes its start ; whether then it be
in such wise that the existence of this unconditionally
demanding law, a law even claiming, if the occasion should
arise, the sacrifice of the earthly life, does of itself guarantee a
higher and future life, — for otherwise the demand would be a
foolish one, — or in such wise that one brings into relief the
thought of reward, of the equalization between virtue and
happiness, and from the lack of such equalization in the
present infers the fact of its existence in the future. In
either case, however, the conception of a dividedness of the
human nature underlies the hope — a conception which stops
short at the opposition between mind and body, intellectual
and spiritual life; while this state of opposition indeed
present, which is likewise recognised by the Christian, is not
as in the Christian conception explained by destruction and
dislocation of the human nature, which destruction and
derangement, as primordial and causal, precedes this opposi
tion. If this state of opposition is, as according to the view
of rationalism it must be, one existing in itself ; if, therefore,
that relation of disparity, too, between moral performance and
satisfaction, "\"irtue and happiness, which rests essentially upon
the twofold character and non-relatedness of the intellectual
and the sensuous Kfe, is not one which has first arisen [i.e. one
not present from the first], one in contradiction with the idea
of man in his constitution : how in the world shall this
opposition, painfully indeed as it may affect the feeling of the
man, be able to lead him forth beyond the pain to a hope, not
merely ardently desired, but also well grounded, that such
contradiction will yet be brought to an end 1 We have as
yet entirely left out of consideration the false contrasting
there made of -virtue and reward, above which even Kant
never rose, however much in other respects he excluded from

288 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
the moral action all motives derived from the happiness to be
obtained. Virtue, says Kant, is the highest condition of all
that which may appear to us to be desirable ; it is therefore
the highest good (supremum bomtm) itself It is not, however,
on that account of necessity the whole and completed good
(bonum consummatum), for to this, even in the judgment of
impartial reason, happiness is requisite. For to be in need of
happiness, to be worthy of it, and yet not to be a partaker of
it, can by no means consist with the perfect volition of a
rational being who should have at the same time all power—
if we only conceive of such an one as a test. The pre
supposition of this judgment of Kant's, which recurs with
such or other variation among the rationalists, is that
dualism of body and soul, of sensuous and intellectual life,
which we have already rejected as a groundwork for the hope.
The application of the same to the individual man, especially
the personal application of it by the subject to himself, whose
personal hope in itself is of course at stake, involves the more
than questionable premiss, that he is absolutely and beyond
doubt convinced of his personal worthiness. And, finally, the
contrasting of happiness and virtue introduces into the con
sciousness of the man an opposition which the Christian is
not able to recognise as primordial. The matter does not so
stand in the conversion of the Christian, that he just now
conforms himself to the moral idea as this has become known
to him, because he ought to do so and can do so, but in
coimection therewith retains the secondary thought of a
happiness which will hereafter be bestowed upon him in
return. On the contrary, because he finds his full satisfaction
as man in and with the act of conversion, just as he had
previously felt himself as man to be deprived of the highest
good, therefore he becomes converted, and all lack of happi
ness, of which henceforth it is true he becomes conscious, can
consequently be appeased and satisfied for him only from the
possession in the enjoyment of which he stands, not on the
ground of an external apportioning of happiness to the worth
of his moral performance ; satisfied, we say more explicitly, by
the complete, unfolding and shaping forth of that good and
possession with which then the existing disharmony is brought
into accord. The notion of reward which there (notwith-

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 30, 289
standing the emphasising of the disinterested virtue) plays so
prominent a part, has in this sense no place here ; because
the possession is present from the beginning, and indeed on
the ground of the regeneration; because all moral development
and shaping forth of the subject is essentially only maintaining
and renewing of the good received; because the balancing
between the moral performance proceeding from the man on
his own account, and a good conferred from without in return,
contradicts the first principles of his moral genesis.
6. The " proofs for immortality " enjoy as a whole just as
little of a special scientific reputation as do the " proofs " for
the existence of God ; and we have on our part expressed the
fact that, and the reason why, these demonstrations, which
attained to perfection at the hands of rationalism, were not
able, so far as they have hitherto come under review, to afford
the certainty which is the possession of the Christian, yea, that,
more closely regarded, they are found rather to be opposed to
that certainty. It is therefore, also, comprehensible that they
were not able to withstand the onset of those waves of
unbelief which came surging in after rationalism. No one
in the present day would entertain the confidence of being
able by means of such proofs to force upon another the
conviction of the soul's immortality. It is well that it has so
fallen out, that the false props have been broken. The
Christians are thereby made only more certain of their
possession, which they have not rested on these props, and at
the same time are not any longer troubled with the false
apologetics. It is, however, far from being the case, on the
other hand, that the more advanced unbelief, after having
exposed the insufficiency of the rationalistic thesis, should
now be able to establish itself calmly and unassailed within
its own position. It denies the existence of the soul, and
then, it is true, no longer needs specially to contest the
immortality thereof. But is it haply certain of its assertion ?
and has it not been proved to it by exact investigators that it
is impossible from this standpoint to explain the physical
functions ? If we would take the general opinion, we should
doubtless find that denial of the soul and of its continued
existence to be widespread, — but perchance also certainty in
connection with this denial, subjective, albeit erroneous,
T

290 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
certainty ? To the rationalistic argumentation from the
necessarily progressive cultivation of the human capacities,
the proposition has been opposed that this cultivation has
reference only to the genus man, not to the individual, of
whose capacities just so much attains to development as is
compatible with the development of the total capacity of the
race. But does one venture to apply this proposition likewise
to the moral development, in connection with which a trans
ference of the individual deed to the race is not by any
means equally possible as perhaps in the cultivation of
intellectual gifts ? Well, it will be done at the price that
one strikes out the moral as such, and ranges the same under
the head of the physical. But is it thought that one has
approached more nearly to the goal, and has got rid of the
further contradictions ? They will only make themselves the
more acutely felt, since one has here reached the point at
which the facts also of the natural-moral life, of the whole
social life, revolt. And the more one conceives of the mental
life as lost in the physical, freedom in necessity, the more
difficult will it be to deal with the impulses, everywhere
manifesting themselves in the history of mankind, to think of
the immortality of the soul or a living again after death as
real. It has been said with justice that if the thoughts of
man are nothing more than secretions or activities of the
brain, these ideas, too, like God and immortality, must be such
secretions, and indeed normal, healthy secretions, since they
are met with in the case of an incomparably greater number
of human beings than the opposite. That approximating of
man to the beast, in order to prove his hope of immortality
null and void, renders the fact of this hope only so much the
more inexplicable. For while in other cases we say of the
animals that instinct leads them right, one would now, in
regard to the belief of the noblest animal, which belief must
nevertheless be lowered to something of the level of an instinct,
be compelled to maintain the opposite. "I once read,"
observes Fechner,^ " how the stag-beetle builds for itself in its
chrysalis state a larger dwelling than it needs for filling with
its coiled-up body, in order that there may be room left for
the horns eventually to be developed. What does the larva
' Drei Motive und Oriinde des Glaubens, p. 117.

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 30. 291
know of its future life, its future horns ? As little as we do
of our future life, our future mode of existence. Yet it
constructs its house already with a view to them, and would
not be able without doing so to develop itself aright even for
the time being. Are we to think that the same power, which
created the stag-beetle and man, enclosed truth in the instinct
of the beetle and falsehood in the belief of the man, which
leads him already to construct his present life with a view to
the future, and to lay it out on a wider scale than would
otherwise be the case, — a behef which just as necessarily
develops itself in mankind, and is just as necessary to the
development of mankind, as that instinct perforce develops
itself in the larva, and is necessary to the development of the
larva?" We by no means assert that with such considerations
and comparisons a strict proof is afforded, which does not in
any way admit of defects or doubts ; this, however, we do say,
that it will prove a hard task for materialism to reconcile the
constant starting forth of that belief, with the assumption of
its baselessness. We add : spite of all oppositions, belief in
an everlasting life will just as certainly break forth ever
afresh as the belief in a personal God ; for facts are stronger
than dialectic exercises, and the fact that man's nature has
been disposed by God for an everlasting life has imprinted
upon him, even in the midst of sin and corruption, a character
indelebilis, which impels him consciously or unconsciously to
the presupposing of this life, and suffers him to enjoy no
abiding repose in connection with the limitation to the present
life. But, of a truth, these thoughts, hopes, or fears ever
afresh arising, these probabilities, analogies, or inferences, are
to be distinguished from the Christian certainty; which in
another way, one accessible solely to the Christian experience,
attains to this conviction (Setzung), and on the ground of that
which has been experienced perseveres therein. As little as
this certainty seeks any prop for itself in the rationalistic
arguments, since it rather perceives in them the tacit or out
spoken contradiction of the Christian truth, so little does it
feel itself affected by the negation which the more advanced
unbelief offers to rationalism. The arrows thence directed
against it fall short of reaching the fortress wherein the
foundations of its confidence are laid: for what does this

292 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
unbelief know of that moral restitution of human nature
which has become a fact for the Christian, — a restitution
which bears in itself the pledge of its consummation, and
indeed of its individual as well as its general consummation ?
7. We recall to mind, finally, the extent to which we have
here, no less than in the laying down of the Christian certainty,
to exhibit and maintain the realities of the consummation as
being vouched for. A series of arguments which are likewise
advanced in proof of the personal continuance in existence,
and are as such impugned by the opponents, — as that derived
from the being and attributes of God in their relation to men,
or that based upon the nature of the soul as distinguished
from the body, finally, that drawn from the resurrection of
Christ and the testimony of the Scripture, — withdraw them
selves from critical examination in this place, since the facts
or presuppositions which are appealed to in connection there
with are not recognised by us as absolutely immanent. We
need hardly, indeed, guard against the mistake of supposing
that we should know anything in a Christian way about the
consummation of the Christian in the world to come or of the
future of the man in general, unless the existence of the
personal God, the resurrection of Christ, and the testimony of
Scripture entered into this certainty. We should know just
as little thereof as of regeneration and conversion. But that
which is immediately certain is that which is wrought, not
that which operates ; the actual sum of life of the Christian,
not the factors which condition it. Only on the basis of the
former does the certainty attain to full assurance with regard
to the latter, and then in turn makes this last to be for the
man that which it is in itself, the ground for the former.
The resurrection of Christ is an historic fact, which, as such,
can be firmly believed without its becoming the basis of a
sure hope, and in any case one must have reason for accepting
it as certain before one can make use of it as such basis.
For those it is perfectly certain, and constitutes the foundation
of their hope, who have been made partakers of its effect, and
have become conscious of the same in regeneration and con
version. And the like is to be said of the personal God and
of the testimony of the Scripture. Consequently we were
obliged, and are still obliged, as in the defining, so also in

THE OPPOSITION OF EATIONALISM, § 30. 293
the defending of the Christian certainty, to pass over these
portions of the truth, not only important, but also in the
strictest sense fundamental, as they are in themselves. When
it shall hereafter be possible to possess ourselves of those
objective realities from the point of the immanent objects of
faith, and to assign to them their place in the system of the
Christian certainty, we shall assuredly, at the same time,
perceive that there exists an interlocking and a reciprocal
relation of the one with the other, whereby the certainty
regarding the third class also of the immanent objects of faith,
like that of the previous classes, acquires a new form. It
may indeed be that then, in the consciousness of the Christian,
the order shall reverse itself, and that now that shall occupy
the first place which we were compelled to put in the second :
the God with whom I am united in faith will not leave my
soul in death ; the Prince of Life who for me overcame death
will raise me up ; the testimony of the Scripture which I
have recognised as truth assures me of this. Just herewith,
however, we pass over into the dogmatic certainty, which, in
order to be able in such wise to form itself, presupposes the
process of self-assuring which has been exhibited by us.
Matters might seem to wear another aspect as regards the
argument from the constitution of the human soul, which, in
contradistinction from that of the body, is supposed to pre
clude the possibility of its destruction in death. For here,
truly, it is not a question of a reality lying beyond the
subject, but of one which is verily immanent for the subject.
It might seem so ; and yet we should deceive ourselves if we
would avail ourselves of this argument, formerly so much in
vogue. For as regards the relation of mind to matter, and on
the point whether the substance (Wesenheit) of the former
of itself affords a guarantee against its destruction or trans
formation, after the manner of the transformation of material
substance which is accomplished in nature, the Christian has
no immediate experience. The whole argument rather is
derived from the natural contemplation of things, which sees
the body die and become dissolved, and therefore surrenders
this to death ; and, on the other hand, believes itself justified
in excepting from this death the personal /, which lived in
the body and distinguished itself from the body as its organ.

294 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
This natural view, however, presupposes an acquaintance with
mind, which in truth it does not possess ; and again, that
which the Christian possesses, and whereon he grounds his
hope, is likewise not this knowledge, but an experience and a
certainty regarding his personal /, in accordance with which
this last, death notwithstanding, may hope with confidence for
the consummation. And, as was already expressed in the
affirmation of the certainty regarding the consummation, the
Christian from that position does not at all attain to the con
clusion of rationalism, according to which the bodily life shall
be excluded from the consummation ; but he knows the new
/, which has become a participant in the powers of everlasting
life, as standing in relation to the totality of his being, to the
corporal side of the same likewise. Therefore the retreat
which rationalism makes, in presence of the perishing of the
body in death, upon the immortality of the soul, would be for
him no solution of the enigma at all corresponding to the
facts of his certainty ; but rather a contradiction of the
experience that the bodily life, too, is capable of the renewal
and glorification which, from the centre of the new /, is
destined for the whole man, and in its beginnings likewise
has been conferred upon him. If one asks the Christian,
however, how this is possible, since, of a truth the body
manifestly passes into corruption in death, he has in reply no
other answer than this : it must, at all events, be possible in
some way ; for my regeneration and conversion is indeed
actual, and my consummation as man is thereby certain
for me.

SECTION II.
THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY IN ITS EELATION TO THE
TRANSCENDENT OBJECTS OF FAITH.

CHAPTEE I.
THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY.
31. The self-assuring of the transcendent objects of faith
is accomplished on the ground not only of the central
Christian certainty, but, at the same time, also, of that
relating to the immanent objects of faith, consequently
that derived from the^ former. In the actual state of
the Christian subject, herewith vouched for, the realities
of faith in themselves belonging to another world are
accessible to experience and cognition as factors operating
in such or other wise, just to the extent to which they, by
means of their effect, impress themselves thereon as exist
ing and so existing. This fact thus, that they do not
abide in pure transcendency, but as operating enter into
the subject, and the other, that with the life -state of the
subject thus wrought, there is implanted, at the same time,
the principle of a cognition, with which that which is to
be known is, as factor thereof, homogeneous, conditions
the possibility and determines the manner of the assurance.
If now, on such extension of the certainty, heretofore
exhibited to the transcendent portions of the Christian
truth, these are, as single particulars, brought successively
under review, the same thing must here be said with
regard thereto as was said of the successivity in the self-
assuring with regard to the immanent objects of faith.

296 system OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
1. The way in which we gradually attain to the including
of the whole complex of the Christian truth under the
certainty of the Christian, or the exhibiting of the same as
included thereunder, will be a sure and scientifically correct
one only if we are really in a condition to take the step
further in advance from the stage at any time reached and
occupied, in such wise that all the grounds and guarantees for
the certainty again to be found are contained in that which
has already been established. Of course we do not mean by
this that the objects, whose certifying is here in question, are
altogether unknown from any other source, so that we should
have in some way to discover their very names by reflection
upon the facts of the Christian existence and consciousness.
The objects are historically known as those which lay claim
to be the Christian truth, without distinction, whether the
object bears the name of regeneration and conversion, or
whether it bears the name of the Trinity or of the person of
Christ. The question is, in the one case and the other, what
means we have of ascertaining the reality and truth of those
objects; whether, in the first place, their conceivableness, or
their purely historic support, or whether it is the actual
experience of them as influencing the Christian subject, and
thereby, as in a special manner, vouching for themselves to
him. We remain thus upon the same path which we have
followed from the beginning ; and only this is the new
feature, to which attention may be here called at the very
outset, that the basis whence we have to possess ourselves of
the further realities as certain, has become, meanwhile, a
broader one, inasmuch as the whole domain of certainty, of
which we have before assured ourselves, now forms the
groundwork for the further advance. In proportion as we
succeed in rising thence to the transcendent objects of faith,
and in proving their experimental certainty, will the
systematic course which we pursue then also be justified.
In thus rising it will become manifest that the difference and
multiplicity of the immanent objects of faith is closely con
nected with the diversity and plurality of the transcendent ;
as was only to be expected if the actual existence of the
former is, as regards the thing itself, or at least as regards
the cognition, brought about by the latter. And just this is

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 31. 297
the decisive reason why we have to link the new section
directly to that which precedes; yet without being able to
dispense with reference back to the principial Christian
certainty as the point of unity for the whole.
2. The ascending from immanence to transcendence is
manifestly that point in the development of the system at
which doubt and contradiction can most easily take root.
It may perhaps be admitted, what we have previously
advanced, that, with the reality and normality of regeneration
and conversion, for the subject which has experienced the
same, are thereby likewise guaranteed as real the other
changes accomplished in him : but this proceeding forth out
of the subject, out of the circle of the realities included in
him, will for many appear to be a leap, of so much the more
doubtful character inasmuch as it is here a question not
merely of the " thing in itself " as object of the sensuous
experience, but of realities of the unseen world. Even on the
part of those who are not unacquainted with the Christian
experience it will possibly l^e objected to us, that this is a
perilous subjective method of assuring ourselves of the
Christian truth, and that at best the agreement with the
revelation objectively present is attained only by tacitly
keeping before the mind the contents of the same, as a standard
in connection with the analysis of the experience. The right
mode of becoming acquainted with those transcendent truths
is, we are told, only by drawing from divine revelation, from
Holy Scripture, or also from the tradition of the Church, and
receiving with faith that which has been thus acquired.
Now these persons — and we have foreseen that there would
be many of them — we are not able otherwise to direct than
by referring them to the fundamental portion of our system ;
and we therefore only address to them here the question. How
they come then to accept that revelation, or whatever may be
the source of their knowledge, as attested ? We will hope
and presuppose that they do so not on the grounds of purely
natural experience, but at least, also, on the grounds of spiritual
experience. Others, however, who from the standpoint of
the natural, philosophical cognition put forward a protest
against overleaping the gulf between immanent and trans
cendent, we shall not, it is true, be able to convince, if the

298 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
specifically Christian experience is wanting to them ; never
theless they would perhaps be able to concede to us one
thing, that if there should really be such an experience, one
would also have a right on the ground thereof to designate
the factors whence it arises ; and with this hypothetical
formal concession we must here content ourselves. We may
be permitted a comparison. If the spectral analysis has suc
ceeded by dint of observing the broken light in the spectrum
in pointing out to a certain extent the chemical constit^ents
of the solar body ; inasmuch as the sunlight shining around
us and enabling us to see is no other than that which has
beamed forth from the sun : why should it be contradictory
and unfeasible to read in the spectrum of the regenerate
human personality, and to recognise what that sun is whence
the rays proceed which enter there ? That we, as regenerate,
walk in the light is in virtue of our spiritual experience
equally certain, as for the natural man who is able to open
his eye, it is certain that the light of day surrounds him.
Well, then, let us endeavour to analyse the spiritual light in
the spectrum of our heart, and make trial thereon, whether it
proves itself that which the revelation objectively given to us
declares of it. It is not needful that we should recognise
therein each and every thing which is presented in the form
of doctrine, and the Christian knows likewise why it is not
possible : the imperfection of his Christian state of life hinders
these realities from fully and completely reflecting themselves
therein, and his knowledge is only a gradually augmenting
one. But so far as this transformation, in virtue of which he
first became a Christian, and whereby he henceforth still grows
as a Christian, has accomplished itself in him, he may attempt
to observe therein the factors by which it has been produced
and by which it continues to exist. If he has only in this
way discovered a series of those factors, and has recognised
the main features of the same, there follows as a necessary
consequence an inner relation between him and the revela
tion objectively and historically coming to him ; and he can
confide in it as to its other parts also, to which his subjective
experience, as at present 'constituted, does not extend.
3. We perceive thus, at all events, from that which has
been heretofore said, how the matter stands with the domain

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 31. 299
of the transcendent, to which we wish here to rise. It is
accessible to us, because and in so far as it does not continue
in the transcendence which is proper to it in and by itself,
but in such manner becomes immanent for the Christian that
its essential nature (Wesenheit) can be recognised therefrom.
We have notably hitherto fixed our attention only on the
fact of the moral transformation of the Christian, and the
immediate result of the same for the certainty, without being
able to speak of anything respecting the originating of this
fact and of that which constitutes the objects therewith pre
supposed, farther than as factors of this result. For since
this sum-total of life was characterized as something which
had arisen, it required for its rise operating causes, concerning
which we have in the meantime recognised only one things as
implied in the fact itself, that in their starting-point they do
not proceed from the causality of the man, but on their part
produce the spontaneity of which there is assuredly need in
order to conversion. Thus it was to factors operating upon
the man from without that he owes his regeneration ; and,
since the individual consciousness in connection with this
result at once enlarges itself into the general, recognising with
the incapacity of the individual subject for regenerating him
self straightway also that of the total subject of the natural
humanity, these factors are thus characterized more precisely
as operating from above, i.e., as transcendent in contradistinc
tion from those immanent in the natural humanity. And
now the question further arises, to what extent in connection
with such operating the character and the nature of that which
works has impressed itself, and still goes on to impress itself,
upon that which is wrought ; consentaneously with the fact
that the operating is in the one case complete in itself, and in
the other case a continuing one, and that it is indeed of one
kind, harmonious in itself, but yet a manifold one, condition
ing a plurality of experiences. The existence, the being of
that which operates, is therewith immediately made good
(gegeben) for the experience and the certainty of the Christian,
but at the same time, also, — since the effect must be homo
geneous with the cause — the thus-being, the quality of the
operating power ; although with the limitation that only that
side of the operating power which is turned to the subject

300 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
comes under experience, not the existing-in-itself apart from
the causality, in other words, that the measure of the operat
ing is the measure of the acquaintance. The Christian
speculation may then perhaps go forth yet beyond this
measure and seek to investigate, from the stage herewith
attained of the acquaintance with the transcendent existing
for us, the essential character of that existing in itself; we
will by no means deny its right thereto : only we have on
our part no occasion to follow it upon this path ; and thus
much is clear without further proof, that the certainty of the
knowledge will be somewhat different in the first case from
what it is in the second.
4. If thus the immanence and the immanent efficacy of the
realities in question renders possible the experience and
knowledge of the same, yet this is at the same time still
recognised — and that is the abiding distinction in comparison
with the former — as immanence of that which is in itself
transcendent, as to its essence lying beyond the subject.
For it would be in contradiction with the very nature of the
Christian experience itself, if we would stop short at the sub
jective proceeding and not recognise the efficient energy as
essentially different from that which is effected, as existing
beyond the province of all human subjects, of all finite causes.
And here now, in order to comprehend the cognition as
adequate, the proposition advanced in the fundamental part
of our system must likewise be considered, that the life
wrought in the Christian subject is at the same time light, a
capacity wrought by experience for the knowledge which is
proper to the new / as such. This lives and exists under
the constant influence of the transcendent, and the enlighten
ment of which it has thereby become a partaker creates in it
an organ of cognition for the transcendent, in which it lives.
The eye of the new I is sunny, because produced by the in-
beaming of the everlasting light, and is able therefore to look
even into this light, — it feels itself at home in the regions of
the higher world. Thus then is fulfilled the requirement of
the natural speculation, which has there impelled to a Monism
acquired by force ; while yet the well-grounded Dudism, the
separating and distinguishing. of the subject from the Trans
cendent, remains at the same time preserved. We acquire, in

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 31. 301
taking up this second particular in addition to the first, a
correspondence between that which is in itself transcendent
and the Christian subject, a correspondence which entirely
sets aside the thought of our being able by a leap to pass over
the gulf between the two. On the one hand, the higher
worid sinks down upon the Christian, environs him, enters
into him, nourishes him and thus makes him an organic
member of itself ; so that it may be said to him, in a sense
yet more comprehensive than that in which Paul uses it
(Eom. X. 6 sqq.) : Say not in thine heart. Who shall ascend
into heaven, i.e., to bring Christ down, or. Who shall descend
into the deep, i.e., to bring up Christ again from the dead ;
but the word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart.
And, on the other hand, the light and life produced in the sub
ject rises on high to the world whence it originates, penetrates
into the life beyond, drinks it in, learns more and more to
see amidst the splendour which breaks forth thence, amalga
mates itself with the higher world, and knows it as its own ;
so that to him the saying of the Epistle to the Hebrews
(xii. 1 8 sqq.) applies : Ye are not come unto a mount that
might be touched, but unto the city of the living God, to the
heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads, the assembly of angels
and congregation of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven,
and to the Judge, who is God over all, and to the spirits of
just men made perfect, and to the Mediator of the new
covenant, Jesus, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh
better than Abel. In what measure now the Christian is
capable, in virtue of this twofold connection with the trans
cendent realities, — wherein the one side resembles the recep
tivity in regeneration, the other the activity in conversion,
— to certify himself of them by experience and cognition, is
not yet the question ; and it was incumbent on us only to
establish in advance the fact that for the Christian as such
the way into the domain of the transcendent is not closed.
5. If we have rightly indicated the path upon which the
self-assuring of the Christian further leads, there is need now
only of the reminder that the transcendent objects of faith —
as which we particularly denominate God the personal and
Triune One, the person and the work of Christ — by no means
enter successively into the experience of the Christian, but

302 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
that simultaneously with that transformation in which the
Christian comes into existence those realities at once and in
inseparable connectedness implant themselves in the subject,
and become for him effectually immanent. This fact, which
certainly itself can be derived again only from the experience
of the Christian, corresponds to that before pointed out in the
domain of the immanent objects of faith, and in connection
therewith the normal course of regeneration and conversion is
presupposed. The history of ecclesiastical dogma may mean
while afford us a hint that we are in the right with regard to
the fact asserted. The process of the formation of dogmas
in the Church is at bottom nothing else than a process of
self- reflection and self- assuring on the part of the Church,
with regard to the realities which she has experimentally
possessed from the beginning, as included in the faith. For
nothing can surely be more unhistorical than the supposition
that the dogmas gradually determined in the way of ecclesias
tical controversies, as for instance that of the Trinity, and that
of the person of Christ, first began to be present for the
Church's faith with the controversy waged thereon, or with
the ecclesiastical determinations successively accomplished.
They have not been added to the previously-existing contents
of the faith ; but, because they were deposited therein from
the first, they were now by reason of historic inducement and
compulsion brought into relief out of the same, and lifted into
the conscious certainty of the Church. This work of ascer
taining likewise was carried out, specially in the early Church,
not by an appeal in the first instance to the authority of
Holy Scripture ; but the point of faith newly brought under
examination was judged of from the Church's experience of
the faith, and what this taught was found confirmed in Scrip
ture. Only, we need not say, that mode of the Church's
self-assuring as to the contents of her faith, in other respects
similar to ours, distinguishes itself therefrom in this respect,
that it was there historic occasions by which the Church was
led to the investigation of the single doctrines of the faith,
whereas in our case the question is raised on its own account,
and in the interest of systematic certainty, in what way the
complex whole of the Christian truth guarantees itself for the
Christian. We maintain thus, and the subsequent historic

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 32. 303
presentation will serve as a proof of this, that just as there are
no really regenerate and converted persons who have hot made
at once the experience of sin, of righteousness, and of the
consummation, so also there are none on whose experience of
faith the operation of the personal and triune God, the influence
of the person and work of Christ, had not simultaneously, and
at the same instant, been impressed and made perceptible.
But just as certainly as the sin of which the regenerate is
convicted, is not identical with the righteousness into which
he entered at the same moment with that conviction, nor this
synonymous with the consummation which he looks for in
consequence thereof ; so certainly also will the operation which
assures of the reality of these objects, with all simultaneous-
ness and unity of nature, be a manifold one, which as such
gives us the right to separate the transcendent realities them
selves according to the diversity of their operation, and, not
withstanding their unity of nature, bringing them successively
into presentation.
§ 32. With the fact of his inner transformation the Christian
has become conscious of a power which has guaranteed
itself to him by its operation as transcendent, absolute, and
personal; and the determining of the existence and the
personality of God thus coincides with the determining of
the reality of his Christian state. That this knowledge of
God is possible and demonstrable not within the range of the
Christian experience only, the Christian comprehends from
the peculiarity of the natural condition, the changes in
which, at the same time, essentially condition the differing
degree of the certainty regarding the matter.
1. If dogmatics really had a right to do what it has often
done, namely, to lay claim to prove within its system the
certainty of the existence and the personality of God, we
should here, it is true, be brought into an inextricable conflict
with the same, and the distinction of a system of the Christian
certainty from that of the Christian truth would therewith be
shown to be groundless. Yet it is a fact well known, that the
so-called proofs for the existence of God have from the time

304 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
of Kant and Schleiermacher fallen into discredit, not merely
in the abstract, but especially as employed in dogmatics ; and
where, haply, something of the kind is still attempted in
dogmatics, this can take place only from a misapprehension of
the peculiar task of dogmatics. For, be the latter understood
as it may, one thing at least ought to be in every way settled,
that the dogmatic explication of the Christian truth is intended
for those to whom a proof for the existence of God, the
fountainhead of that truth, is no longer necessary. And
especially if we are right on our part in assigning to dogmatics
the scientific explication of the consciousness of salvation on
the side of the relation of causality of the facts of salvation,
as this relation presents itself to the believing subject as
existing in itself, it [dogmatics] can manifestly not go back
behind the principium essendi ; but it has to begin with God
as the highest principle of being, in presupposing the certainty
of His existence. Something quite different is it, from a dog
matic point of view not only permissible but also necessary,
when it is now further declared of the reality of God, presup
posed as certain, what it is, what it includes in itself, how we
have to think of the life of the same in itself, and in its rela
tion to the world, etc. In this way dogmatics remains within
the limits becoming it, and in making this investigation we
have merely to regard the fact that that existing-in-itself can
be apprehended only because it is the necessary presupposition,
the actual background of the existing-for-us. If, however, it
has overleaped these limits, and has entered upon the " proofs
for the existence of God," in order, for the benefit of those to
whom it will state the Christian truth, before all things to
establish the principle of the same, then this endeavour  and
that is the second thing about which we have here to come to
an understanding — has manifestly been a fruitless one. For
it is not likely that any one in the present day will be so bold
as to maintain that the attempt has ever been successful in
this way to constrain an atheist, pantheist, and the like, to the
recognition of God, the personal God ; but either those to whom
the dogmatic proof was addressed were already convinced
beforehand, and therefore willingly accepted the argument, or
they were not so,— now, in this latter case, it would be difficult
to bring forward a single instance in which the proofs as such

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 32. 305
accomplished that at which they aimed. We may even say
that from the first men have had recourse to the proofs for
the existence of God, not because they would in this way
convince themselves or others of the reality of God's existence,
but because they were already convinced of it, and now sought
to give expression to this conviction in the form of proof. So
that the application which was afterwards made of these proofs,
to produce belief in the existence of God, is in reality in con
tradiction with the genuine character of the same.
2. Just for this cause, however, that upon the setting in
and prevalence of the pantheistic and atheistic spirit within
recent times one could not close one's eyes to the fact that the
reasoning attempted did not lead to the goal, it became the
fashion to look down with an air of contempt upon the proofs
for God's existence, resolved by Kant and thus rendered
obsolete, as those of which there is no need whatever for the
Christian. It was thought, perhaps, that this ungrateful task
might be left to the rationalists, who at anyrate, even after
Kant's criticism, continued in great measure to employ those
arguments ; and if people found themselves compelled to give
the reason why the existence of God as the personal God must
be held to be certain, whether in dogmatic or apologetic
interest, they fell back upon some such ground as that of the
absolute dependence of man, the sense of which as a universal
element of life completely replaced for the doctrine of the
faith all so-called proofs for the existence of God ; or upon
the "immediate God-certainty in our spirit," by reason of
which we cannot at all rid ourselves of the thought of God ;
or, finally, they brought forth the old proofs again, in a new
dress. To this uncertainty and wavering we have to put an
end : and while we abide, it is true, by the statement that
dogmatics ought not to prove the existence of God, and
apologetics, as it is ordinarily conceived of, cannot prove it,
we must so much the more definitely insist that the Christian
who believes in the personal God, is able to say, and is under
obligation to say, why he believes. A Christian must know
why he believes ; he must know also why he believes in the
living God. And this Why must include within itself a
perfectly adequate demonstrative proof; otherwise he would
have no right to believe, and could not satisfactorily account
u

306 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
for such belief even to himself The Christian may at the
same time be conscious that, while expressing this ground of
his faith, the same has no constraining demonstrative force
for anyone who denies the existence of God ; but it is far
from being the case on that account, as has been said by some,
that he has only subjective, not objective, adequate grounds
for his opinion, — that such powerlessness arises from a defect
in the argument itself ; on the contrary, he holds the same to
be absolutely and universally valid, and would not believe
unless he did hold it to be so. He who is illumined by the
light of day will not doubt the reality, or regard it as a merely
subjectively certain fact, because he is not able to demonstrate
that light to a blind man ; and he whose eye has been opened
by regeneration to the experience and knowledge of God, will
not look upon the process of demonstration by which he has
been assured thereof as objectively inadequate, because the
eyes of others, few or many, are still closed. Only we must
at once observe in this connection, that this Why of the
certainty, so far as the Christian is experimentally conscious
of it, is by no means without qualification an interchangeable
term with the Why, so far as he is able scientifically to
express it, as though one might insensibly substitute the one
for the other. The first is completely present for the
Christian, just as for the child who lies on the mother's breast
the mother is present. The second, the scientific utterance, is
not at once for the Christian afforded by the former, because
the way from experience to cognition is a gradual one, and
the full experience does not easily enter in equal proportion
into the knowledge. It is possible that the Christian wUl be
able only stammeringly to express that Why, and that he can
reply to the objections of unbelievers, it may be as to the
personality of God, only inadequately, according to his own
conviction, inadequately; but the issue in this case, pre
supposing that he still is what he became, is not doubt, but
the Nevertheless of the Psalmist : Nevertheless I am still with
Thee. And even though he is able to regard his knowledge
as more or less corresponding to the state of fact, yet if he
takes up a right ground he will base his certainty not on this
measure of knowledge in itself, as though he believed on
account of such knowledge; but because the divine reality

THE AFFIRMATIOK OF THE CEETAINTY, § 32. 307
has become experimentally certain for him, therefore he
strives to raise this experience to conscious cognition, and only
in this sense is the above demand to be understood, that a
Christian must know and be able to say why he believes in
the existence of the personal God.
3. The experience of regeneration and conversion is in
itself, apart from everything that it brings with it and brings
to light, the experience of a spiritual power, by the operation
of which this result is produced. That which is the essential
feature in this result is this, that it is not effected by a
personal development of the spiritual or moral powers existing
in the man, but by an action from without which confers
upon the subject that which he had not, and makes of him
that which he was not. Kant said of regeneration, to the
demand for which he rose, that it surpasses all human con
ceptions ; but in his opinion it must yet be possible, because it
is morally necessary. The natural man who hears regenera
tion spoken of, and is able notionally to take in the fact
described, will perhaps assert that this is an event similar to
other commotions and transformations of the human nature
and personality, and, like these, traceable to natural causes.
The Christian, however, who has experienced regeneration,
and has appropriated it in conversion, is absolutely and
without exception conscious of the fact that it is the opposite
of natural development; and if haply before his conversion
he believed himself capable of accomplishing that transforma
tion, yet, on the other hand, with the entrance of the same
there is present for his consciousness the fact that it neither
did nor could proceed from him. " Thou hast been too strong
for me, and hast prevailed," — that is, without exception, the
confession of the converted man. Now, we are not here
speaking to those for whom regeneration and conversion are
- fictions, or, if realities, are only sickly realities ; but we pre
suppose, as just the twofold particulars of which we have
before spoken, the actuality and the normality of such experi
ence, and not less the correctness of the representation given of
its course. For the Christian, consequently, the two things
coincide in one, — the reality of the effect which he experiences,
and that of the effecting power by which he experiences it ;
for the former would not exist without the latter. The

308 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
question can therefore be only this, whether or how the
Christian comes to designate this efficient power by the name
of God. For however certainly the factor whence the opera
tion proceeds is not to be found in himself, yet the objectivity
of the factor is in itself no proof for the divine character of
the same, or, more definitely, that God is the operating One.
On the contrary, the Christian experiences the powers operat
ing upon him as those immanent in that human life into
which he is fitted as one of the links, and what falls to his
lot he receives as standing within a series without which he
would not have become that which he is. Even if we
suppose the case that a human being, altogether isolated from
other men, or at least from Christians, should through a
written word experience the power of regeneration, and in
consequence thereof become converted, nothing would be
altered thereby in > the nature of the matter itself ; for this
word is, as such, a human word, couched in human language
and discourse, and in this form delivered by a human hand.
Thus it would seem that we do not in this way advance at
all beyond the immanence of the factors ; whereas the first
thing of which we have need for certainty of God is the
transcendence. Yet it only seems so, and in opposition thereto
we may point, in the first place, to the fact, that it does not at
all enter into the mind of those by whom the effecting of the
regeneration in others is mediately brought about, in the last
resort to ascribe to themselves as men the efficient powers,
that, on the contrary, they will be looked upon only as bearers
and organs of these powers. The immanence of the factors in
the progressive process of the general human life is in itself
no proof at all for the supposition that these factors are derived
from that same life ; and only this is to be inferred therefrom,
that if these factors do not end with being immanent therein,
if they are at the same time to be thought of as transcendent,
they must be adequate to the conditions of human experience
and cognition. While, however, we attain in this way, it is
true, only on the one hand to the possibility, on the other
hand to the probability, that we can and must apprehend
those immanent factors as in their origin transcendent, the
experience of regeneration, on the contrary, itself affords us
the pledge and assurance that the cause underlying this effect

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 32. 309
is to be sought beyond the life of the natural man, beyond the
life and existence of the creature in general If it was there
conceivable that a human word should work the regeneration
in him who hears or reads it, without the transcendent power
which lies therein coming home to the consciousness of the
subject ; here, on the other hand, it is absolutely inconceivable
that he who listens to that word with the effect of the speci
fically Christian transformation should remain in doubt as to
the power working through the same. We have regard, in the
first place, to the fact itself, and then to the ground of the
same. It is not possible for the Christian to accept regenera
tion as a reality, as a result which has been produced, and
yet to withdraw himself from the causes at work ; for these
causes go on constantly to operate, and only in that he suffers
himself to be wrought on by them does he remain in the
Christian state into which he has entered. And so little is it
further possible to the Christian to trace back these causes in
the last instance to human powers or other powers of the
creature, that in the same moment in which he should wish
to do so he would be on the point of going forth from the
state of regeneration. The Christian knows as an assault the
thought, whether that which he has experienced as a regene
rate man is indeed a human event like other human events ;
and in proportion as, by return to the sources of his Christian
existence, regeneration becomes for him that which we have
above recognised it as being, in the same proportion does that
thought vanish, and the consciousness of owing it to men in a
human way does not exclude the certainty that this power is
one given to them from above, one in itself transcendent. If
we now make further investigation as to the ground of this
fact, we shall be entitled"" to say, indeed, in the first place,
that there is inherent in man — in virtue of his homo
geneity with all that is human, and by reason of his
constituting the standard of all natural being — a consciousness
of that which surpasses the limits of the former and of the
other ; nay, more, we shall be able to say that, since the
regenerate knows himself, as such, to be lifted into the normal
state of man, there dwells precisely in him the capacity for
taking the measure of that which is humanly and naturally
possible. By means of the same cognition by which the

310 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
necessity of a central moral transformation of his being opens
up for him, it becomes also manifest and felt that such a
thing is " impossible with men," and yet he experiences this
impossible thing to be actual, and just thereby this impossi
bility becomes right certain for him. For there must be
considered here, also, that other peculiarity, which we have
observed as an experience of regeneration, that the individual
subject in regeneration straightway comprehends himself in
one with the total subject of the natural mankind, and only
as member of that totality acknowledges himself to stand in
need of that which he receives in regeneration. Notwith
standing that he knows the reception of the gift to have been
made possible to him by human instrumentality, yet the
individual subject ranges all others, even those from whom
that gift was received by him, in one order with himself, as
those in whom the same moral lack must be satisfied, or have
been satisfied, by the like moral reception. The judgment on
the state of moral ruin (Verlorenheit), which is conditioned
by the existing of the natural man away from the centre, is
pronounced as a universal one ; to however great an extent
the individual upon whom the factors of regeneration exert
their influence recognises in himself, in the first place, the
actual grounds of this judgment, and is therefore led to look
upon himself as " the chief of sinners." And just as universal
is the judgment which is framed on the incapacity of the
natural man of himself to put an end to this lost condition,
and to restore himself to that centre, whither, in virtue of the
experience of regeneration, the destination of his being points
him. The judgment on this matter could only in one case
become wavering and uncertain,^ — if it were a question in
regeneration only of an alteration in and about the man, and
not of a setting the man himself right, in presence of which
all other differences of the natural humanity recede into the
background, and the one and equal need of all alone remains.
On this supposition, however, the idea and the truth of regenera
tion, as we here presuppose it, would at once also be sur
rendered. When the Apostle Paul had experienced that
radical change within, from which he dated his existence as
a new creature, he set going no inquiries as to whether any
human being exists who does not by nature stand in need

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 32. 311
thereof, or who is of himself capable of producing it ; but
what he had personally experienced was at once regarded by
him as alike necessary and designed for every human being,
and he deemed it to be his vocation to warn every man and
teach every man, in order to bring every man to the perfec
tion proper to him (Col. i. 28). Consequently, if the matter
thus stands, and if it is moreover impossible to trace back
the ethical effect of the specifically Christian experience to
the physical causes of the natural world, — for the physical
lies below the level of the ethical, and the world-freeing effect
of regeneration cannot have been caused by the same world-
power which held the natural man captive in its chains, —
the certainty is therewith afforded that the power operating
upon the subject in regeneration, is one in its origin and nature
transcendent, lying beyond the world of men- and the world
of nature : this experience then coincides as a matter of fact
with the experience of regeneration.
4. We continue thus, while we advance to the transcend
ence, nevertheless completely within the sphere of the Christian
experience, as likewise within that form of self-assuring accord
ing to which we possess, not in logical deductions or postulates,
but in the events of actual experience, the guarantee for other
facts and realities. And in this way we are not less safe
guarded against the rocks and shoals of Dualism than against
the perils of Monism. For it is not the case now, that the
immanence of the operation should prevent us advancing to
the transcendence of the operating power, — that we should
be able to retain the experience and yet recognise the sup
posing of the transcendent as a dialectic illusion, — that it
should in any way be permitted us to restrict ourselves to
the world of the subject ; on the contrary, precisely the im
manence, this so constituted immanence, includes in itself the
supposing of the transcendence of the immanently operating
factor: the experience of the immanent operation is eo ipso
and inseparably an experience of the operating transcendent.
And again, the experience of the Christian does not suffer us
to take that transcendence as, so to speak, the other phase of
the immanence ; in such wise that such real causality would
indeed be present, but yet in its essence as not distinguished
from the essence or essential causality of the /, as this in its

312 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
other mode of existing or in its supposition in itself; for in
this case the subject which experiences the regeneration must,
in the act of regeneration, be something more than merely the
object of the regenerating operation ; which something more
would be contradictory to the experience itself, and would be
radically destructive of the notion of regeneration. Never
theless that necessary supposition, because experience, of the
transcendent as the effecting power is only the first step, or
the first element, in the series of those perceptions by which,
in the process of regeneration, the subject is assured of the
personal God ; for the transcendent is in itself not of neces
sity the divine, and hence there comes into consideration, as
a second particular, the fact that the transcendent is experi
enced in its operation as something absolute, as the absolute.
Not as though the experience were a divided one, and first
became conscious of the one, then of the other : it is necessary,
only on behalf of the apprehending thought, to divide what
there lies inseparably combined. The transcendent power is
experienced as absolute, in virtue of the absolute culpability
in which the subject recognises himself to be involved in his
natural state, and by reason of the absolute satisfaction which
he receives in regeneration. We have not to do in this con
nection with the notioji of the Absolute, as this can be constructed
in the dialectic way : and still less does it enter into our
mind to wish to think out the existence of the same from its
notion. When Kant had discovered the Categorical Impera
tive, then — whatever exception may be taken to this way of
apprehending the matter — the absolute itself in its moral
aspect had nearly approached him, and he treated it as abso
lute in that he said something was not good because God
willed it, but God willed it because it was good. Nothing
could be more senseless than now further to append to this
the postulate of God, conditioned by the absolute moral law,
— of a God thus who with the supposing is instantly abolished
again, or Himself must abolish that whereby His existence is
established. What there already manifests itself in the
domain of the natural experience and speculation, this im
mediate and involuntary approach of the absolute, this meets
us in its reality and truth as a specifically Christian experi
ence. The consciousness which is now in the process of

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 32. 313
regeneration distinguishes itself by the fact that it is no
longer, as before, relatively valid powers and authorities in
regard to which he feels himself as a sinner to be culpable,
but an absolute and supremely valid one, which comprehends
and embraces within itself those relative ones. To know
oneself relatively sinful, to acknowledge oneself guilty of
relative deviations from relative norms, even though they
may at any time appear to be absolute, this is the charac
teristic of the natural acknowledgment of sin ; to accuse
oneself of the absolute perversion of the natural /, as that
which has fallen away from the absolute centre of being and
of action given to it, that is the peculiarity of the Christian
consciousness of guilt. The measure of the guilt corresponds
to the measure of the obligation. That the ethical point of
gravitation for a being does not fall just there whence the
working of the regeneration comes to him, but that his
gravitation is towards himself, towards his I which exists for
self, and towards the possessions of the world, this it is of
which the man is constrained to accuse himself while subjected
to the power of the factors of regeneration. But nothing in
the world, of which he recognises himself as part, to which
he knows himself, as a member of equal rank, placed in a
co-ordinate position, has a right to make this claim upon him,
— in regard to it and its demands he knows only a relative
obligation. That to which one feels oneself absolutely and
without restriction under obligation, and as a consequence
knows oneself inculpated with guilt, this He or It must also
be free of every limitation of finiteness, of every measurable
degree of claim upon the subject, — only the Infinite, the
Absolute, stands to the man in such relation of limitless
supremacy, as that such a claim can proceed from Him.
Either the Christian consciousness of guilt is a false conscious
ness, or it is a consciousness of guilt in relation to the absolute :
tertium non datur. We cannot find fault with the natural
man if he struggles against making the admission of absolute
culpability, if, in the words of Pascal, he will play the hero
against God : he can and must do so, as long as he does not
know God, as long as the absolute being of Him to whom he
is to regard himself as bound has not been manifested. Only
to the strongest would Christophorus become a servant. But

314 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
for this very reason the establishing of the reality of the
absolute coincides inseparably with the reality of that culpa
bility of which the Christian is conscious: the immediate
contact of the absolute with the subject in the effecting of
regeneration produces the certainty of absolute obligation and
culpability, and the certainty of this actual state, whence we
took our start, guarantees the truth of that reality without
which this state itself would not have been. We come to
the same result if we reflect upon the good of which man in
regeneration recognises himself as being in want, and which
has been conferred upon him as a Christian. For this good
can from its nature, if it is to appease the guUt-laden man,
the man feeling himself lost, be only the. opposite of the lost
estate, the opposite corresponding thereto. Having clung to
finite goods, having sought his satisfaction now in this and
now that, and yet not having found the full satisfaction, that
is, the acknowledgment to which he comes in regeneration:
the fact that now under the influencing of the regenerating
factors a full satisfaction sets in, is of like import with the
fact that the same is wrought not by a finite good, pertaining
to the world of finite things, — my soul thirsteth for God, the
living God. In conversion the subject lets his gravitating
point fall there, whence the factors of regeneration wrought,
and whence they brought about for him the consciousness of
absolute obligation ; that to which in conversion he turns,
that which in this turning thither he embraces, can also, so
certainly as he receives absolute satisfaction in connection
therewith, bear only the character of absoluteness.
5. That the transcendent power, whose working the Christian
experiences in regeneration, is at the same time the Absolute
One, this result of our investigation hitherto is not without
further explanation identical with the supposing of the
absolute, simply and in- itself. For we have not in the way
of Christian experience recognised the absolute in itself nor
in all its relations ; but solely the power which exerted its
influence upon us, the authority which manifested itself to us
in connection therewith, the good of which we thereby became
possessed, approached us in the form of absoluteness. It may
be so, that the absolute, in the first instance, reveals itself to
us and vouches for itself as real, only in these single relations ;

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 32. 315
yet in this lies at once the necessity for apprehending the
same as absolutely one, as the absolute simply and in all its
relations, including those in regard to which we do not
straightway become conscious by experience. When Kant
had shown the insufficiency of the ordinary proofs for the
existence of God, and had remarked thereon that all axioms
of the intellect are of immanent use, while for the cognition
of the Supreme Being a transcendent use of the same is
demanded, for which our intellect has not been adequately
endowed, he added by way of limitation that it would be
different if only in another, perhaps practical, relation the
presupposition of a Supreme and All-sufficient Being could be
acquired, and therewith that could here be attained to, which
is there denied to us : then one might exactly define this
notion on its transcendent side as the notion of a necessary
and most real (allerrealsten) Being, and might remove from it
everything which is in contradiction .with the highest reality.
Kant had manifestly before his mind in thus speaking the
method -which he afterwards pursued in the Critique of the
Practical Reason. For us matters wear the same aspect ;
save that by an experience of a peculiar practical nature we
have become conscious of the absolute in its influence upon
the subject, and therewith in its reality. If we have once
experienced this, we not merely can but must apprehend it as
the absolute, which is the same in regard to the world in
general as it is to us : for it could not be the latter, unless it
were at the same time the former, and in regard to us and to
the world it would not be that which it is, unless it were in
itself the absolute. Only it is a question for the Christian,
in this case, too, not of a mere thinking process, which
attached itself to the experience made, but the relations of the
absolute to the world in general lie in great part comprised in
the relations between this and the regenerate person as such,
and can accordingly be derived therefrom. The influence of
the absolute for the producing of the new spiritual / would
not be possible, unless the absolute factor thus operating were
at the same time holding sway over the natural man in whom
that change takes place ; and again, the natural man is on all
sides in such close contiguity with the world of natural things
in general, that in order to hold sway over him in the manner

316 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
indicated, the mastery in regard to that world also would be
imperatively necessary. We can express this thought in the
simplest practical manner. In connection with the calling
forth of his Christian state, in connection with the bringing
in of the birth-hour of his Christian existence, the Christian
ordinarily experiences such a co-operation of manifold facts —
of which some stand in more mediate, others more immediate
connectedness with the ultimate result— that he cannot by any
means avoid tracing back even the shaping of these events of
his common human life, as of the natural life in general, to
the same absolute factor to whom he owes regeneration.
Great and little, external and internal things, the vicissitudes
of his own life and the experiences of others, were made to
concur in the event of one and the same moment ; and little
as it can enter the mind of the Christian to conceive of the
ethical transformation of his being as the natural result of
such coincidence, yet he is equally certain that without the
same the peculiar act of the new birth and conversion would
not have taken place at that moment. It is, he must
conclude, the same hand which shaped and guided those
accompanying and preconditioning events, and which accom
plished in me the peculiar work of turning me in the contrary
direction. The absoluteness of the factor in the one case, as
regards the one relation, involves the like absoluteness as
regards the other side ; and the thought which now further
ponders on the absolute, has also its support here in a reality
experienced. But if now this thought subsequently abandons
the domain of experience, and haply in connection with
the speculative configuration of the notion stumbles upon
difficulties, incomprehensibilities and contradictions, the man
has therein, it is true, a reason for doubting the soundness or
qualification of his thinking, yet none for doubting the reality
of the absolute, so far as this latter has entered within the
sphere of experience.
6, The transcendent absolute, of which we have been
assured by means of its immanent energy, we have a right to
designate as God ; and only the question remains for us now,
whether in this experience of the transcendent absolute the
personality of the same is mirrored forth. At any rate we
are advantageously placed, — in that we, here too, pursue

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 32. 317
the method hitherto followed of assuring ourselves of the
transcendent realities, — as compared with other attempts to
comprehend the absolute as personal, whether it be on the
side of the possibility or of the necessity. For that is a
problem which the thinking proposes to itself when it has
comprehended the notion of the absolute, and brings the
being thereof thus conceived of into comparison with human
personal being : for the Christian certainty the genesis of the
personal, if it combines with the absolute, must lie in quite a
different domain, in one where in the first place only the fact,
and not the conditions of its possibility or comprehensibility,
comes under consideration. Once more, however, it is a gain
for this further investigation that we do not in any way set
out from physical experience, in connection with which it
always remains difficult to apprehend the factor to which it
points back — save as also physical — as a personal one. The
experience on which we ground our certainty is an entirely
ethical one, and from the outset it is clear how closely allied
is ethical with personal. Wherever even in the natural
experience moral powers are active, and exert an influence
upon the human subject, there this subject traces them back
to personalities, and is not able to conceive of them without
personalities. It is a fact which has been confirmed by
modern materialism, that at the moment in which the moral
is traced back to the physical, instead of asserting for it its
place in the personality, the notion and the substance of the
moral at once also vanishes. And, if a moral power and
efficacy is ascribed to a community, whether it be to the State
or to the Church, this yet takes place only inasmuch as
personalities in organic union are the bearers of such common
life, and we therefore in so speaking signify these themselves
as moral persons. Now the influence which the Christian
experiences in regeneration is one of a pre-eminently and
absolutely ethical nature, since it unveils and determines the
personality of the man in its highest relation and tendency ;
and it does not at all enter the mind of the Christian in con
nection with such experience to imagine that this influence
can have its starting-point in a thing and not in a person. It
is persons by the medium of whom he becomes sensible of
that operation; but we know already why it is for him

318 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
impossible to stop short at them as the final points of the
causality operating : in that he passes beyond these and
advances to the transcendence, he continues, of necessity, to
occupy the line of the personal, and he becomes sensible of
the personal absolute, by which he knows himself conditioned,
not otherwise than in the form of personality. How the
absolute can be compatible with the personal is a question
that does not disturb him in this connection ; the thought
that it may be incompatible therewith does not so much as
enter his mind ; and if it were to occur to him, it would not
at all impair his certainty. This may be censured as folly, —
at bottoto, however, it is still only the same course which the
man ordinarily takes in assuring himself of realities, that they
first attest themselves to him in their actuality; and all
demonstration that the thing cannot be so effects nothing in
opposition to this certainty of experience. The knowledge of
the personal absolute thus acquired extends' no further, in the
first place, than that this absolute is manifested to the Chris
tian subject as /, which as confronting him addresses him
with Thoit ; without such constituting of itself as / in the
consciousness of the Christian detracting aught from that
absoluteness, in respect of which he has become conscious of
the transcendent. For this absolute — and therewith we
come to a further particular in the experience of the absolute
as personal — has, because ethical, in point of fact wrought
upon the subject, and this deed is the correlative of the
personality. There is nowhere any deed of a thing, least of
all if this deed is of a moral nature, and produces moral
effects. Now the Christian is conscious of his regeneration
not as a process of nature, but he is conscious of an act which
intervened in this process, and made him something which
in himself he was not and could not become, — an act of con
vincing of the guilt-laden and lost condition of his natural /,
and an act of leading to the reception of a position which
includes in itself the full satisfaction of the human personality.
Precisely here lies the nerve of the proof which is given to
the Christian for the personality of God, that regeneration and
'conversion is something falling abruptly into the natural life ;
consequently it lies precisely in that which we know as the
specifically and exclusively Christian experience. It is true the

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 32. 319
natural man also knows his life as something received, but yet
only in the form of natural development ; in connection with
which it may be open to doubt for him whether he is com
pelled to forsake the series of finite causes by which he knows
himself conditioned. As accordingly the historic fact is well-
established, that the natural man with all his consciousness of
dependence as regards his human existence, received and con
stantly conditioned as this is, either does not get beyond the
circle of the finite factors, or, if impelled also to the supposing
of a transcendent and absolute, yet either does not discover
the personality or the same with certainty, or else denies it.
For the Christian, on the other hand, there exists, so long as
regeneration is for him, that which it stands for with us, — i.e.
so long as he is a Christian, — no choice whether he will trace
back this, and with it his whole spiritual and natural existence,
to the operation of the personal absolute ; since that which
may there give occasion for doubt, the originating by means
of successive natural development, here falls to the ground.
And this so much the more, if we at last fix our attention yet
more definitely upon the result of the factively influencing
moral power, upon the creation of a. new /, a spiritual
personality, such as did not previously exist in the man. For
looking at this, the peculiarity of that experience is yet
enhanced, which contains in itself the manifest impression of
the personal absolute. Here is an utter ceasing of every
kind of analogy with natural ethical experience, such as we
might perhaps still find in the ethical influence in connection
with the act of regeneration, and the image of the personal
God reflects itself in the copy of the personal new birth, the
spiritual man created after God. Here appears such a contact
of person with person, such a personal life on the ground of
personal operating and creative act, that in accordance with
it those born of God recognise in virtue of an inner kinship
the Father who has begotten them, TrvevfiaTtKa wvevfiaTiKot';
<TvyKplvovTe<i, dvuKeKaXv/i/Meva Trpoad)Trui ttjv Bo^av Kvptov
KaTOTTTpi^ajjuevoi.^ The children know themselves such on
account of the Father : the Father is for them certain, as
certain as the childship, and this childship is given them in
the experience of regeneration. 1 1 Cor. ii. 13 ; 2 Cor. iii. 1 8.

320 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
7, Without absoluteness — which, since it is after all
brought into relief out of the Christian consciousness, no one
could intelligently apprehend as " standing in no relation at
all to others" (Eitschl) — and without personality there is
nothing whatever that is divine, at least not in the sense in
which religious life appears as the correlative of it. On that
account it was necessary to bring into relief, out of the speci
fically Christian consciousness, which in virtue of regeneration
and conversion has become conscious of God as love, that
predicate of God without which also the love would not be
divine love. Eitschl regards the combination as possible,.
" that the same who, as the Father of Jesus, has proved His
love to us by the giving up of Jesus to death for our sake,
and thereby has established the certainty that He gives us all
good things, must yet be thought of in the first order as the
Almighty ; thus we believe in Him as Omnipotence which has
the attribute of love to the Church of His Son. Behind His
love we have to believe in God as the subject of Omni
potence.'" This combination thus Eitschl holds possible, and
I have no other objection to make to it than the incorrectness
with which a single divine attribute, omnipotence, is put in
the place of the absoluteness, manifestly in consequence of
the above-mentioned untoward apprehension of the latter.
" But," continues Eitschl, " this combination is not the only
one possible ; as distinguished from this, God is likewise
conceivable as the will of love, who in the tendency towards
the Church — which He has chosen to Plimself before the
creation of the world, that it may worship Him — embraces
the world ; and therefore is recognised as the love which has
the attribute of omnipotence."^ And this combination is
supposed to be more closely than the other in accord with
the prevailing mode of presentation in the documents of the
New Testament. I am astonished at the frailty of the shield
with which Eitschl seeks to cover his false position, and at
the bluntness of his weapons. What he is concerned about,
is how to append in a secondary place the omnipotence which
he there put at the head. But how he succeeds in thinking
of a " will of love," which, before the creation of the world, in
" Theologie und Metaphynik, p. 15.
' Comp. also Rechtfert. und VersShnung, 2nd ed. iii. p. 222.

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 32. 321
the tendency towards the Church, embraces the world, without
the subject of this will of love being not only the Almighty,
but also the AU-Wise, the Eternal, etc., consequently the
Absolute Personality, that indeed will for ever remain his
secret. More acutely and speciously has this erroneous
thought been taken up by Eitschl's disciple and adherent,
W. Herrmann. " To the love which we mean we need add
nothing in order to raise it to the sphere of God. What love
is we understand, because we understand the living will in
the working of Jesus. To this reality we stand so related,
that we experience it as the deepest satisfaction of our own
will."^ Only one thing has not been clear for me in this
statement, why then we experience the "deepest" satisfaction
of our own will precisely in " this reality," namely, in the will
of love which we meet with in the working of Jesus. For
there is yet other love which satisfies us, which however is
distinguished from this, in the respect that it does not afford
the " deepest satisfaction." Well, we will not of course say
why it is : that the ground of that fact lies herein, that the
former is divine love, the latter human love, the love of the
creature. For therewith the delusive veil would be rent
away. We rather content ourselves with saying, it is the
love " which we mean." Yes, truly. And without doubt
one need add nothing to the love "which we piean," "in order
to raise it into the sphere of God," if — yes, if from the first
we mean divine love.
8. We have deliberately refrained from basing, e.g. the
certainty concerning God, in a way which has of late been in
favour here and there, upon the human or Christian " sense
of one's own worth " (Selbstgefiihl), which, by the supposing
of God and by self-surrender to God, maintains itself in
opposition to the world. For that is only a portion of the
Christian experience of God, and not the first one. Nor is it
at all a specifically Christian experience. And therefore it
lies open to the objection : " Who bids you in such sense of
worth exalt yourself above the world ? Precisely this is the
progress of knowledge which we enjoin upon you, that you
renounce that false sense of your own worth as opposed to
the world, and learn to feel yourself a homogeneous, although
' Theol. Lit. Zeitung, 1881, p. 528.
X

322 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
sublimated, constituent part of the world." Just with this,
however, we come to the fact that assurance of the existence
of God, and indeed of the personal God, in various degrees
both of confidence and of knowledge, is to be found even
among those who do not possess the specifically Christian
experience ; and since we must attribute to the Christian
cognition the capacity for understanding the religious-moral
state of the natural man, we should not be doing justice to
our task if we were not able, from the point of view of the
certainty peculiar to us, to clear our mind of all obscurity
with regard to that fact. We have here to do with a twofold
phenomenon, which claims to be equally appreciated on both
sides, — first, with the universality of the belief in God, how
ever varied the contents of this belief may be in detail ; and
then with the fact that, alike for whole circles at definite
periods of human development as for single individuals, the
certainty of God is lost, without the traditional proofs for the
existence of God effecting anything of importance against
such doubt or such denial It avails nothing in presence of
this latter experience to close our eyes, and to assert that any
one may indeed deny that he possesses the certainty of God,
but that in reality he cannot divest himself of it. Least of
all can this assertion be made good in the present day, when
notoriously whole groups of society have no longer any belief
in God, — and among them by no means only resolute deniers
of God, who make a boast of having rid themselves of all
religious life, but also doubting and anxious hearts, who long
for certainty, and yet are not able to emerge from their
doubts. If it were simply human, particularly intellectual
reasons, by which the certainty of God is produced, this
vacillating, this deviation from the apparently universal rule
of belief in God, would be inexplicable ; and if the customary
proofs for God's existence really indicated the method in
which the consciousness of God in the man was to be
irradiated and fortified, then again it would not be compre
hensible why these refuse their service at a time when this
consciousness of God has waxed faint or has disappeared.
Eather must the Christian, consentaneously with the certainty
regarding the transcendent, absolute, personal God, which
results from the Christian experience, come to the conclusion

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 32. 323
that, wherever in the natural domain a certainty of God is
found, the same is brought about by something analogous to
the experience peculiar to himself
There must be a witnessing, an influence of God in relation
to the human personality, and a reciprocal action between this
personality and God, according to the degree of which the
measure of the natural consciousness of God and the natural
certainty of God is determined. We now discover the parallel
between 'the fact which we traced in the beginning of the
first section of these investigations — according to which the
Christian cognition of sin has its analogue in the consciousness
of sin on the part of the natural man — and the fact which
here presents itself to us at the beginning of the second
section : here, as there, is to be found a certain resemblance
of the Christian and the natural consciousness, and so far is
this correspondence from being accidental that we have rather
to say, becaiise it is present in the former case, therefore it
will also recur in this place. In the measure in -which, by
the witnessing of God in the heart of the natural man, and
by obedience yielded to the same, the moral consciousness of
the man has become active within the limits indicated, in the
same measure does the bridge still exist on which the man
attains to the certainty of God. Factively, in the moral way,
the living personal God vouches to the man for His existence ;
and if this bond, which precedes all reflection on the existence
of God, has been loosened or severed, no argumentation is
able to make good the loss. Whence came it, then, that
precisely Kant could demonstrate in his day that all methods
by which man attempts to pass over to the transcendent God
are nothing but a deceptive dialectic form ? and whence came
it that he was successful in this demonstration ? The bridge
was already broken away ; else he would not have succeeded
in this proof, or rather he would not have undertaken it at
all. Nor is the counter-evidence of Kant by any means
absolutely true, but only upon certain historic and ethical
presuppositions ; and not at all times have those erred who
saw, it may be, in the existence and the character of the
physical creation the hand of the living God. God is actually
near in His works, and has imprinted upon them the yvaaTov
of Himself; Claudius could never go through the forest

324 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
without flnding Him there. But with dialectic arguments
God is not to be apprehended, notwithstanding this His
nearness, and only to the man who has felt His hand in the
heart will this hand be manifest in the works of creation.
It is true God lives and moves in the natural man likewise,
and he is called upon to seek Him in virtue of the fact that
God attests Himself to him ; but he will not discover Him
outside of himself if he has lost Him within ; neither the
distances swept by the telescope, nor the things at hand
disclosed by the microscope, will reveal God to him, if it has
become desolate within his heart and the secret bond is rent,
which even in the natural man unites the / to God. Simply
for this reason it is incorrect to say that man must absolutely
possess the certainty of God's existence, and that he deceives
himself if he asserts that he does not possess it. He can
become on his part godless (severed from God, "gott-^os"), not-
-withstanding that God's breath surrounds him and God's
power sustains him ; he can proceed so far, that the conduct
of the transgressor shall appear to him equally nature's order
as the conduct of the upright man. Only God reserves
it to Himself, at the times which He has chosen, to bring
Himself into the remembrance of men ; so that they willingly
install Him again in His rule and sway, after they have
wantonly decreed His deposition therefrom. The significant
feature, therefore, in the proceeding of Kant, who, as the
interpreter of his age, drew the facit of its development on
the negative side, was that he did not confine himself to this,
but with perfect distinctness likewise pronounced the judgment
that what had been lost was to be acquired again only in the
moral way. But the gate which opens upon this way to the
attainment of the certainty of God's being remained closed to
him, although he penetrated as far as to the postulate of
regeneration : to the regenerate it is open.
§ 33. To the oneness of the operation in the fact of the moral
transformation of the Christian corresponded the oneness of
the factor, the transcendent, absolute, personal God, of
whom the Christian becomes conscious in that operation.
Since, however, that fact in itself is, as we have seen, a

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 33. 325
manifold one in the midst of its unity ; so this manifold-
ness can be experienced and comprehended only on the
ground of a correspondingly varied influencing on the part
of the factor, without prejudice to His unity. The factor,
is, according to the experience of the Christian, Other in so
far as He conditions the consciousness of sin and guilt ;
Other, in so far as the relation of freedom from guilt must
be traced to Him ; Other, in so far as the subject knows
himself placed by Him in that relation ; and yet it is the
One absolute personal God, to whom we owe the one
regeneration and conversion which embraces in itself all
this. In such wise and to this extent the Christian is
assured, by means of the regeneration and the immanent
objects of faith implied in it, at the same time of God
as the Triune God.
1. In connection with our traversing the way which led
us over from the immanence of the Christian experience into
the domain of the transcendence, and here immediately to
the knowledge of the personal God, it was the one fact of
regeneration and conversion on which, as guaranteed, we based
the further certainty. Not in such wise that we had in this
advance lost sight of the immanent objects of faith, the reality
of which became certain for us simultaneously with regenera
tion ; but we conceived of this fundamental fact of Chris
tianity as concrete, filled up -with these realities, and just as
we had to say of the moral transformation of the Christian
in general that the immanent effecting of the same assures us
of a transcendent factor constituted in such and such a way,
so we attached this assurance also to the particular portions
which are included as immanent objects of faith in that
fundamental fact. Everywhere, however, in so doing, we
cast back the light upon the fact as one, notwithstanding its
pregnancy (Erfulltheit) and concrete multiplicity, as it has
actually proved itself in that which precedes : the manifold
elements thereof constitute just its unity, and if one of them
were withdrawn, with it the others also, and therewith the
fact itself, would disappear. But now we turn to the con
templation of the other side, — ^without departing from the

326 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
solid basis, only taking up again that which we have dis
covered to be the case with regard to the first transcendent
objects of faith, — and reflect upon the plurality and multi
plicity of that fact of experience, which, as we know, does
not exclude its unity, If we were hitherto in a position, in
the immanent operation and experience of the transcendent
factor of regeneration, to recognise this factor Himself, to
assure ourselves of Him as a definite reality ; the further
assumption, that the division (diremtion) of that operation
into different elements (momente) corresponds to a division of
the influencing factor, which has left its impress in the multi
plicity of the experience, is one which is involved from the
first as a consequence of the course we have already followed.
We have thus a right further to investigate this matter ; in
such wise, indeed, that we stop short at the factor in its
transcendence and absoluteness, and exclude the intermediate
links of its activity within the world of men. This limitation
will prove not only legitimate but also necessary, when it is
seen, upon a closer observation of the facts of experience,
that they are not by any means explained in this their mani
fold character from the human agency of the absolute factor ;
even as in reality the proof for this position has already been
furnished by the consideration that the motive forces
(momente) on which we are reflecting have been seen to be
integral components of the one fact of regeneration. For
concerning this regeneration simply, together with the elements
constituting it, the objects of faith vouched for by it, we saw
that only the transcendent, absolute, personal God corresponds
to it as a factor. What we have therefore now to derive
from the Christian's consciousness of experience is primarily
only this, that the one personal God has impressed Himself
in the actual state of regeneration as Other, inasmuch as the
subject knows himself absolutely culpable toward Him ; as
Other, inasmuch as a relation of freedom from guilt has been
constituted by Him, of which the subject becomes conscious
as being constituted for him ; and as Other, inasmuch as by
Him the subject has become for this relation, and thereby has
been made a new /.
2. Only the experience of an absolute power, or, as we can
now say, of the absolute personal God, — as under fealty to

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 33. 327
whom the / of the man has yet become selfish and sinful, —
was it from which we were able to explain the absolute con
sciousness of guilt on the entrance of regeneration. The
absoluteness of God, which is now for the Christian no airy
supposition of the thought, but a reality of his experience,
involves the consequence that, as no kind of being can exist
beside Him and apart from Him without being constituted by
Him, so likewise the same could be constituted by Him only
for Him the absolute One. For if, regarded in a purely
speculative way, it might seem to be implied in the abso
luteness of God that the separate existence of any being
distinct from God is impossible, because a limit to His
absoluteness, — in such wise that we should be constrained
in Spinozian fashion to transpose ourselves as beings, and
all being in general, into the absolute being of God, and thus
to identify the two, — we are in virtue of the Christian experi
ence sufficiently guarded against this by-path of speculation ;
inasmuch as precisely in the inner perception of the difference
between the subject and the absolute, and in the abiding
distinguishing of the two, that experience has its essence and
its continuing duration. The relation between / and Thou,
this fundamental relation between the man and God, —
which in regeneration discloses itself to distinctness, — and
consequently this fundamental fact of the Christian life
in general, would fall to the ground with that supposing
and identifying : it is therefore for the Christian equally
impossible as the renouncing of all claim to the reality and
truth of his Christian state. Now, however, since the abso
luteness of God is nevertheless an established fact for the
Christian consciousness, it is able only so to apprehend the
relation between God and itself, — or, inasmuch as it interlocks
with the world as an organically connected part of the same,
the relation between God and the world, — as we have above
said : namely, to apprehend this other being, beside and out
side of God, as a free constituting of the absolute personal
God, which as such is not a limitation, but rather a manifesta
tion (Bethatigung) of His absoluteness, and which further
does not result to the detriment of His absoluteness, because
and inasmuch as that which is constituted exists for God.
Just as there is herein afforded to the Christian the certainty

328 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY'.
of the creation of the universe, and indeed. of a creation from
nothing, and not less the certainty that God created all
things for His own sake, " to His glory," — articles of faith
of which, consequently, the Christian consciousness can
never rid itself, — so also the certainty that the moral law, by
force of which he knows himself to be absolutely bound to
God, is nothing else than the requirement, proceeding of itself
from the recognition of the absolute, of the being and life of
the creature, of the creaturely /, for the same, for the
absolute God. Of whom, however, it is true what the Scrip
ture says : ef ov tu ttuvtu, of Him it is also true : et? avTov
Ta irdvTa} And while the irrational creation has received
unalterably from God the tendency et? avTov, — ^the heavens
declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth forth His
handiwork, — the sin of the self-determining creation, endowed
with reason, consists precisely in this, that it has, so far
as in it lies, broken away from this et? avTov, that in
place of being centripetal it has become centrifugal. For
what the moral law demands from the man is in reality
nothing else than that all the doing of the man, in whatever
single action the same express itself, be directed to God — irdvTa
TTotelv et? Bo^av Oeov — and proceed from this fundamental
bent. This is, as is easily perceived, only another expression
for the demand that all our doing proceed from love to God :
for love is not merely an emptying of self, but at the same
time self-surrender, a striving to attain to the beloved one in
order to union with him ; love to God is centripetal, in
opposition to self-love, the centrifugal.
3. If we apprehend thus the normal ethical relation to
God, as this is disclosed to us by the factor of regeneration, —
and the right so to apprehend it has been given us by the
cognition of the absolute God, — we acquire before all things
an insight into the necessity of the divine requirement of that
relation or determination of the creaturely /, and into the
impossibility of a relaxing thereof. To that which the imme
diate experience of the Christian teaches regarding sin, we give
in this way intellectual expression, that God, the Absolute
One, can suffer no abatement to be made in the fundamental
relation in which the created subject stands to Him, but must
^ Eom. xi. 36.

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 33. 329
at all events demand the maintenance thereof in its integrity.
Every derogation therefrom would be a derogation from His
absoluteness, a negation of His Godhead, an impossibility.
We do not in thus speaking subject God to a compulsion, to a
necessity prejudicial to His freedom, and to a certain extent
placed above Him ; but because He wills Himself as the One
that He is, and because He is as the One whom He wills
Himself to be, because in virtue of His immutable identity
(Selbstgleichheit) He cannot otherwise will or otherwise be,
therefore He must also demand and impose that relation
between Himself and the created subject. No freedom of the
creature, no self-limitation of God, however it may be thought
of as an act of the Absolute One, can make any change in this
respect. And now we go still further. Not only must God
demand and impose this determination of the creaturely / et?
avTov, but He must bring it about in some way or other, if He
will not cease to be the absolute One. Just as it was the
essential nature of sin which previously disclosed itself to us
more fully in presence of the demand, not to be evaded, of the
absolute God ; so now it is the essential nature of the guilty
responsibility and punishment which we determine from that
demand, yea rather, from the necessary bringing about of that
which the demand contains. God cannot cease to require that
relation of the man to Him which results from His absolute
ness ; and the fact that He does not cease to require it, even
where this relation is destroyed by sin, conditions in the first
place the guilt of the man to whom the unfulfilled command
is addressed. This guilt cannot be abolished, so long as the
sin is not abolished, for the requirement cannot be abolished.
Hence arises the feeling of infinite guilt which seizes on the
sinner in the light of the factor of regeneration, and which has
been erroneously derived from the consideration that sin is an
offence against the infinite God. Not in the abstract infini
tude of God has the infiniteness of the guilt, and consequently
of the punishment, its foundation ; specially since the notion
of infinitude on the one hand, where it is pressed down to that
of an endless duration, does not at all correspond to that
notion on the other hand ; but it results from the absoluteness
of God in His relation to the creature, constituted for Him
and yet apostate from Him. The reflection of the absolute-

330 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
ness of God in the judicial administration of God upon earth,
causes that everywhere, even in this world, beside the demand
ing law there stands the ordaining of the penalty with which
that law enforces itself, upon the person and at the cost of ths
man who resists it. For nothing could be more superficial
than to detach the notion and the necessity of the civil
punishment from the ethical soil whence both grow, and from
the relation of man to God, without which an ethos exists
neither as individual nor social. In that reflection we recog
nise the sun of the absolute God, which in regeneration has
shone into the depths of our sin and of its relation to Him ;
yea rather, conversely, we learn therefrom to understand and
appreciate that reflection in the human economy of justice.
That the creature, bear it what name it may, is for God and
to God, even as it is from God, remains for ever immovably
fixed. Only upon this condition could God create the world,
and can He maintain it. One thing, however, He certainly
cannot do : He cannot, after He has created beings endowed
with freedom, treat them as though they were on a par with
the unfree creation. He cannot with physical compulsion
introduce them afresh into the normal relation of will to Him,
which they have forsaken with free resolve. He cannot do so,
because He will not do so, — because He does not subsequently
reverse His own will, which manifested itself in the creation
of such self-determining beings. That ought to and must be
abided by which was involved in the appointment of free
beings, because it was an appointment of the absolute One.
But again it is a thing we must abide by, that in such irrevoc
able constituting God continues, as at the beginning so at
every further point of the world's development, to be the
absolute One ; that there is no being which could exist other
wise than as for Him, et? avTov, et? Bo^av avTov. In this
twofold relation lies the idea as also the necessity of punish
ment. The very creature who, voluntarily centrifugal, turns
away from God, and whom God neither can nor will hinder
from doing so, must in so doing, nevertheless, against his will
be for God, at every point of the flight from God passively serve
God while rebelling against Him, render to Him the glory which
on his own part he refuses Him. All doing of the creature
must redound et? Bo^av Oeov, in heaven, on earth, and also in

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 33. 331
hell ; only the How is different. Certainly punishment may be
looked upon in most cases as a minutio juris {" Eechtsvermin-
derung," Eitschl, after Heinze) ; but this notion is a purely
negative one, in which neither the ground for such diminution
nor the extent of it is expressed, one for us unserviceable.
Punishment, as we have ethically to comprehend it, and there
fore to derive it, from the relation of the man to God, is the
maintenance and enforcing of the absoluteness of God upon
the sinner, who thereby fulfils the law of God against his will,
the passive bowing under the sole glory of the absolute God,
on the part of the man who disdains the active bending to
which God cannot constrain him.
4. It is the satisfaction (Siihne) which the violated law
receives by means of the penalty. We understand now why
this law demands satisfaction, and why it is the punishment
by -which it is satisfied. Where the living, absolute God has
been changed into a thing of the imagination, to which the
man ascribes anthropoeidic qualities according to his personal
vein and sentiment, there one may indeed say that God can
acquit the sinner out of free goodwill and recall the verdict of
punishment pronounced upon him, — with God no need exists
of an expiation of sin ; for the Christian, who has not to do
with conceptions of God formed at pleasure, but with the
actually existing absolute God, whose absoluteness must just
as certainly be maintained against every sin as His Godhead
must be maintained, these false ideas vanish of themselves,
and for him it has become a fact of experience that as against
God there is no sin which does not call for expiation. Yet it
is likewise untrue from a human point of view, that moral per
fection everywhere displays itself in the free forgiveness, apart
from expiation of the transgression ; since, on the contrary,
wherever any earthly law and a representative of such law
exists, we are compelled to look upon the satisfaction to be
made to that law as outraged, as something morally good, as a
demand of the law itself, and as a duty of its representative.
And precisely here is the identity, or at least the similarity,
between the human relations and that of God to the sinner ;
not, however, in the relation of man to man as such, where
the demand for forgiveness, without full satisfaction rendered,
is on its part first based upon the grace which has been

332 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
bestowed upon the person wronged by human sin. Hence,
accordingly, in the ancient world, in heathendom, where this
grace had not yet been made manifest, or had only partially
been made manifest, the moral demand for such forgiveness
could find no fixed home, yea, rather could alternate with the
demand for retaliation. And even the grace that is shown,
and in certain cases ought to be shown, by the bearer of the
law, whose duty it is to render satisfaction to the outraged
law, has for a background the existence of another grace, by
which we all, even those clothed with authority, do live, —
apart from the special consideration, that human application
of law and interpretation of law, by reason of its imperfection,
by reason of the summa injuria with which the summum jus
may be combined, in order to be really just has need of a
supplementing by grace. Of this law of grace, however, with
which the Christian of a truth is acquainted in addition to the
law of retaliation, we do not yet speak here, do not yet know
at this stage how it could be realized : this only was to be
made manifest here, that, even where men are the representa
tives of the legally demanding power, the moral postulate of
the satisfaction is not annulled by the law of grace, and that
it is an unwarranted procedure for one to draw, from the
reality of grace among men, which is first derived from the
divine grace, a conclusion which would destroy the absolute
ness of God in the vindication of His law. It will hereafter
become evident that that absolute demand for expiation is so
far from being set aside or curtailed in its operation by the
law of grace, that, on the contrary, the latter can acquire con
sistency only by the full satisfaction of that former one. We
say thus, not misled by the introduction of an element which
here does not as yet at aU come under consideration, that the
demand for expiation immediately results for the Christian as
a fact, from the fact of the absolute personal God in its falling
in with the fact of human sin. This satisfaction (Siihne) has
in and of itself nothing whatever to do with forgiveness, with
the cancelling of guilt, whereby the sinful subject on his part
is freed from the burden. This satisfaction has respect
primarily to God, and not to the man. The expiation is that
satisfaction which is rendered to the absolute God by the
forcible replacing of the sinner, who will be somethino- for

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 33. 333
himself, into the existing-for-God. Whether the sinner volun
tarily renders this expiation, willingly pays the penalty, has no
essential significance for the nature of the expiation. The
absolute God, in the satisfaction which He must exact for the
maintenance of His absoluteness, of His Godhead, — yea, which
is itself the maintenance thereof, — cannot wait until the
sinner, if ever, voluntarily affords it. Nor can He, as we
have seen, so constrain the man, or in such wise create him
physically different, that he shall have, or give effect to, that
will. In like manner, the human law which has been trans
gressed is repaired (gesiihnt), in that its dominion, -which had
been prejudiced and set aside by the transgression, is restored
and maintained by means of the penalty. Whether the trans
gressor bewails his sin and acknowledges the right of the law
to punish him, is for the satisfaction of the law in itself with
out importance, however important it may indeed be for the
moral condition of the sinner. Moreover, the law has no
further claim to make upon the sinner, in order to its satisfac
tion, than that he suffer the penalty. The civil law exonerates
the prisoner after he has undergone the punishment, whether
he suffered it willingly or unwillingly, — only with the condi
tion understood, that he henceforth satisfy the law, whether by
obedience or by renewed punishment. Thus then the punish
ment is the satisfying of the outraged law, and the guilt the
burden of liability to apprehension for such satisfaction.
5. If the Christian experiences regeneration in general
to be an operation of the personal absolute God, it follows
that the particular side in the process of regeneration, which
we have before recognised as the consciousness of sin and
guilt, is traceable to the same factor, but as such as He has
left His impress in this special operation. The consciousness
of an absolutely lost estate, of being held captive under the
ban of guilt, of being marked out for punishment, this con
sciousness, which in virtue of experience is the copy corre
sponding to the actual condition, knows itself and this condition
to be called forth by the reality and the real influence of the
absolute personal God, for Whom the human subject must be,
even after, having lost the centre of gravitation in Him, he
has become for self and therewith against Him. His law,
such is the testimony of this consciousness, must be ful-

334 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
filled ; so certainly as this law is nothing else than the living
expression of His absolute being. Beyond evasion the subject
¦recognises himself to be bound by this law, to be held respon
sible by this God ; and the incapacity of which he is at the
same time conscious, of bridging over the gulf, and of volun
tarily transposing the centre of gravitation of his being back
again into God, is for him so far from being an extenuation
of his guilt and liability to punishment, that on the contrary
the everlasting satisfaction to be made to the law, a law for
ever unfulfilled, results therefrom for him as a divine
necessity. For that is the difference between the infraction
of the earthly, human, civil law, and the transgression of the
divine law, — of which the sinner in the act of his conversion
recognises himself as guilty, — that it is there a question of
single, relative offences within the lower sphere of morality,
according to which the isolated punishment expiates the
transgression ; here, on the other hand, it is a question of
something total and absolute, something affecting the whole
moral position of the man, according to -which it is his person
itself, not merely something about him or in him, which in
its totality has been inculpated and is forfeited to the law
which demands satisfaction. There the man has still some
thing with which he can deliver his soul from under the ban
of the transgressor : when he has subjected himself — or has
been subjected — to the punishment, then the law discharges
him ; here, on the other hand, he has nothing to give, by
which as an expiation of his sin his person should now be
set free, for it is just this person itself on which the law
must be satisfied. We saw that the civil law relinquishes
its hold upon the sinner after expiation of the offence has
been made by the punishment, and now makes no further
claim upon him than that of its fulfilment henceforth,
whether it be by obedience or by the paying of the
penalty. It can and must set free the transgressor, even
though he still inwardly resists the law ; for what it demands
is only the outward act adequate to this law, which act may
also be accomplished reluctantly ; but the divine law, which
demands the undivided and willing being -for- God of the
person of the man, — that which the man recognises as a
task impossible to him to accomplish, — ^just for this reason

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 33. 335
cannot release him, and he for ever is and feels himself to
be, as to his person, under arrest for the fulfilment of the
law by means of the punishment attached to it. This then
is the consciousness of God, based on actual experience, to
which the man comes in virtue of the consciousness of sin
and guilt in conversion ; and so real is this experience of
the absolute God, who maintains His law in that He
maintains Himself, that it can be annulled by nothing, by
no other element of the Christian experience, if the process
of regeneration in the Christian is not itself to be annulled
and his Christian state itself to be broken up. It will here
after become apparent, what we here for the time being
wish only to indicate, that even for the reconcile.d conscious
ness, for the / of the Christian at one with God, the reality
of this absolute God continues to exist with the undiminished
energy of the operation of this reality in opposition to the
sin and guilt of the creature.
6. It was the first of the immanent objects of faith, in
the experience and cognition of which we saw reflected the
absolute personal God, or more precisely, whose so-existing
we saw conditioned by the influence exerted upon them by
God. It is possible, certainly, that under the influence of
the regenerating factors, in consequence of human perversity
and sin, this producing of the consciousness of sin and guilt
remains for a longer or shorter time the only effect ; in that
case, however, conversion is never reached, and from this
as an accomplished reality we at first set out. As such, then,
as we are accordingly justified in making the basis for our
further progress, it [conversion] involves what we recognised
as the second of the immanent objects of faith, the relation
of the freedom from guUt as constituted for the man, — a
reality which here comes under consideration as wrought, not
merely, as previously, as one existing. Now of a truth the
same can neither be known as wrought, nor can the factor
operating be revealed in this its effect, in so far as this
reality is an abstract one, though it also be for the man ; for
in respect of that which exists in itself (das An-sich-
seiende) there is no experience. But we know that this
reality is nevertheless perceived as one existing abstractly,
as in itself having a being, as preceding and rendering

336 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY,
possible all human conversion, and perceived in connection
with this conversion itself, in the formation of the new /,
which the subject as converted recognises to be absolutely
conditioned by that actual presupposition. For the new /,
as one that has arisen, lives its life henceforth essentially
only by reason of the fact that it has been introduced into
that place of freedom from guilt in which sin and liability
to punishment is not, and it lives only because this place,
this relation, existed for it before it arose and in order that
it might be set therein. To this extent thus there exists,
what at first sight might appear impossible, actual experience
of this being-in -itself, — we become sensible thereof as the
condition of the being-for-us ; and of this experience, of the
reality of which it is the experience, we say here that it
guarantees itself to the Christian as wrought by the personal
God, but by Him as other than in the experience of the
relation of guilt.
7. That this working is a working of the personal absolute
God, in reality no longer requires proof, after the Christian
has in relation to the totality of regeneration and conversion
become conscious of Him as the factor of the same. Only
this fact now appears in a particular light, after we have
seen that the consciousness of sin and guilt presupposes the
personal absolute God as factor. For the position of freedom
from guilt evidently stands in relation to that other, in which
the man exists as regards his natural /, it is the opposite of
this ; and since now the latter is experienced as wrought by
God, and embraces the whole man as involved in guilt, how
could the opposite by. any possibility be a reality save as
wrought by the same God who has pronounced the man as to
his whole person to be under guilt and penalty ? What
power were there beside which could loose where He has
bound ? He and no other bringeth down to the grave and
bringeth up ; He maketh sore and bindeth up ; He woundeth
and His hands make whole. We have before, indeed, spoken
of this new position, in which the man finds himself under
the hand of the renewing grace, the position outside of the
continuity with sin and guilt, as an idea which is inherent in
his nature, one which points out to him what he is notwith
standing, and what he may all things notwithstanding look

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 33, 337
upon himself as being ; but this idea is not a human idea, or
it is a human idea only because it is a divine, God-constituted
reality, — for if it were less than this, it would be dissipated
as smoke before the tempest of that judgment by which the
sinner is overtaken and hurled to the ground in presence of
the living God. But neither does the matter so stand, that
haply this new feature in the experience and consciousness of
the Christian comes in to the abolition or detriment of the
former consciousness, whereby, e.g., that absolute relation of
God to the man, whose result is the absolute guilt and ex
posure to punishment, suffers diminution, in some such way
as the rationalistic doctrine of the atonement dreams. For
it would surely only be a play of thought, not a dealing
with realities, if the first did not continue to stand while we
are in the act of proving the second ; and whether or not
we are able to comprehend this co-existing, has in the first
instance nothing to do with the thing itself. Precisely this
is the advantage of our mode of procedure, that we have in
the first place to do with the facts ; and instead of asking
how a thing could take place, in order that it may then take
place, we rather ask what has really taken place in order
then, where possible, to understand how it can have taken
place. Thus that reality continues to exist, as surely as the
Christian is conscious of it ; in his own experience it will be
realized, if he comes forth again from the place of freedom
from guilt which has opened up for him, so certainly as his
life in penitence and faith is nothing else than a constant
fleeing out of the realm of guilt into the realm of grace.
But who has opened this place of grace ? To whom do we
owe it that such relation of guilt is not the only one which
exists for us ? That it must be the same personal absolute
God we know ; but He cannot be the founder of this place
of grace as He who laid the man under the ban of guilt and
punishment. Nor can we say in accordance with the know
ledge we have acquired that something would be wanting to
God if that relation [of guilt and punishment] were the only
one in existence ; that He mitst have prepared that place of
grace in order to be God, namely the God of love. For
God loves not as one who needed us that He might love ;
but He loves, in that He determined all that exists for His
Y

338 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
own sake, for Himself, and intended blessedness for it in virtue
of this being for Him. God needs not our obedience, how
ever, that He may abide that which He is, and where the
obedience of the being-for-God has been changed into the
disobedience of the being-against-God, there that being-for-
God remains, only that which was designed for the happiness
of the creature, now realizes itself in the unhappiness of the
creature. If nevertheless this relation is not the only one,
it cannot be a contract with the creature, the fallen one,
which determined Him to constitute the reality of the
freedom from guilt, nor a contract with Himself, in the
sense of His owing it to His Godhead — to speak in a
human manner ; but a contract with Himself, whereby He
renders a satisfaction to His absoluteness out of pure love,
due neither to Himself nor to mankind, without nevertheless
satisfying it in that form which is the immediate result of its
bearing upon the fallen creature. We cannot of course here
— where for the Christian consciousness the person of the
God-maw, comes at essentially the same time into considera
tion, by whose work that satisfaction has been rendered —
develop the total declaration of the Christian experience
regarding the given effecting of the freedom from guilt, on
the contrary must reserve this side of the matter for sub
sequent exposition. But we must restrict ourselves to
giving scope for utterance to the Christian's experience as
respects the divine transcendent factor in itself, to which
assuredly the Christian traces his conversion ; and if this
is an abstraction, yet it is certainly no other than we have
made already in the division of the different elements of
experience, particularly since, in the objective Christian
doctrine also, the disposition within the Godhead (inner-
gottliche) to the accomplishment of the work of redemption
is distinguished from the bringing about of the same in time
on the part of the God-man.
8. We are thus, in the flrst place, called only more nearly
to define the positive declaration to which we have advanced.
It is a secondary, not the primary, demand of the divine
absoluteness, that the being-for-God of the creature endowed
with freedom accomplishes itself in the depression of that
creature as fallen and anti-godly. The fact of the freedom

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 33. 339
from guilt which the Christian knows as real would only in
one case contradict the first experience, if it had not as its
aim a lifting of the sinner into a being-for-God, in which
alike the sin and the guilt is no more. And it would be
impossible only in the case that the expiation which the law
of the absolute One demands as against sin were not rendered
to it. If, however, expiation were possible without the per
dition of the man in expiating his offences, if on the ground
of such expiating a restoration of the fallen man were possible,
in virtue of which he might nevertheless eventually be with
freewill adapted and made to enter into the order of the
absolute God, should we then still have reason for deeming
the relation of freedom from guilt an impossibility ? Yet
we must invert the order of our words, for the fact, on the
possibility of which we reflect in accordance with the certainty
of experience hitherto existing, indeed stands fast according to
the same experience of the Christian; and therefore the Christian
who has known in himself that which the first experience
comprehends, and who has likewise become conscious of the
second experience as real, cannot at all avoid supposing as
real on the part of the divine factor that which we have
deduced from previous experience as being the conditions of
possibility for that other fact. For it was certainly no empty
reflections, freely indulged in, which we made on the possi
bility of divine forgiveness and acceptance of the sinner, as is
done by those who seek to prove out of their own head the
necessity, e.g., of the incarnation of God in the interest of
redemption. We do not calculate beforehand how God must
set about the matter, in order afterwards to find that He has
so gone to work, but after God has brought home to. our con
sciousness the norm of His absoluteness by means of Christian
experience, and after He has attested to us the fact of freedom
from guilt, we reckon back to His action, or better, we find
this His action to have left its impress on that fact of our
experience. Just herein has the regenerate man the certainty
of the freedom from guUt, that he is certain of the work of
expiation demanded thereto as real, and that he is certain of
his reinstating as therein already predestined, and to be
realized in accordance therewith. And since he must regard
this whole which he has become as the operation of God, so

340 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
also these several parts — conditions of the possibility we called
them before — which go to constitute for him the fact of the
freedom from guilt. How these realities, with which the fact of
freedom from guilt stands or falls, have been brought about,
he does not yet know, and of human mediation he does not here
think as yet ; only for God they must be real, that he knows ;
for the God who, on the one hand, pronounced upon him the
sentence of condemnation, and yet has at the same time
opened to him a place of grace and restitution. That which
is eternally real in God reflects itself again in his experience ;
and even as it is a new creation of which he knows himself
made partaker in his regeneration, and which he knows to
have its foundation in the relation of freedom from guilt
existing for him, so he must trace back this latter itself also
to a creative, life -fraught, energetic thought of God, to a
thought which He formed, not as the One in whom the order
of things imposed in creation, the order existing in nature, and
particularly the relation of the natural -moral life to the
absolute, is grounded. For as this He is the absolute One,
who must determine for Himself the totality of that which is
created, including the creature rebelling against Him, in the
¦form which not only He has given to the creature, but also
the creature, as free, has given to himself; within this whole
there is no outlet which should lead out of the particular
determining of this freely God-hostile creature to that being-
for-God, which takes place by means of punishment. If,
however, a new position, beside and above this old one, has
been given in freedom from guilt, then the ground of the same
must, according to the experience of the Christian, lie away
beyond the old one, in a creative idea and act of love on the
part of the absolute God, which He has formed and purposed
to Himself as another, and yet as the absolute One who like
wise therein continued to determine the creature for Himself.
The eternal decree of redemption concluded in relation to the
falling world, — rising up into and operating within the expe
rience of the regenerate man, there attaining to its object,
there by its operation impressing itself in its transcendent
reality, — is a contracting of God with Himself, wherein, as
the Absolute, He stands objectively (gegeniibertritt) to Him
self as the Absolute, making for Himself a way of contentment,

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 33. 341
wherein He should render satisfaction to His absoluteness,
not to the condemnation, but to the weal of mankind.
9. If we now proceed further upon the path entered, we
have, as the third particular in the experience of regeneration
and conversion, to take into consideration, and view in rela
tion to its divine factor, the act of transplanting the subject
into the relation of freedom from guilt, or, what is to the
same effect, the creation of the new /. For as certainly as only
with the creating of the new / the subject becomes sensible
of that relation, in itself already constituted, so certainly we
yet need to be reminded how greatly the one differs from the
other, and how precisely by this distinction the very possibility
of real conversion is conditioned. By the one (the relation of
freedom from guilt) is expressed that which the subject finds
already existing before it in a similar though not identical
way in which it does the fact of sin and guilt ; the other
again implies what it becomes or has become with reference
to the first and on the ground thereof. Thus then the factor
of the latter will in consequence also have to be distinguished
from the factor of the former after the analogy of its opera
tion, in such wise, indeed, that we abide by the reality that it
is the One personal absolute God to whom we owe this motive
power (moment) of regeneration, even as we owe regeneration
in general. The factor of the other, that is the first thing
which forces itself upon us, can come into operation only after
that of the first has wrought and produced that to which the
other places us in relation. Or if, instead of the relation of
things into which the regenerate man is brought, we mention
the person of Him who is the author of this relation, we
shall be warranted in saying that the Christian subject is
compelled to distinguish between the absolute personal God,
to whom, as the factor of the in-itself existing freedom from
guilt, he is conducted by means of conversion, and the absolute
personal God, by whose hand apprehended he was enabled to
enter into the place of freedom from guilt, into the communion
of its Author and Guarantee, and therewith to become a
regenerate /. It is true the Christian is conscious, on the
ground of his experience, of the fact that the operations to
which he owes his new birth issued forth from the selfsame
place to which they have drawn him in connection with his

342 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY'.
conversion : that place where grace dwells, where sin and guilt
is no more, he knows as the fountainhead of those powers of
life which have been shed abroad in him, and have accom
plished in him the work of new creation. And thereby the
state of things found in this place is manifestiy distinguished
from that of the former, where it was impossible to say that
from the absolute Author of the given natural development of
the worid, from Him as such, that effect had proceeded which
we perceive in the existence of grace. But nevertheless the
twofold operation which is in our case in question does not,
as regards the factor, blend in one for the consciousness of the
Christian ; in the first place, because the one is the abiding
presupposition of the other, and further, because the hand of
the guide which raises him to the throne of grace is other than
the hand which is thence stretched forth to him, and which
he first grasps in conversion. An immanence of the operating
divine factor, the absolute personal God, is here present, which
by the manner of its operation, and by the experience thereby
conditioned, clearly distinguishes itself from that before in a
twofold manner presupposed. The subject immediately feels
and recognises himself to have been apprehended, just as he
was in his natural state, by the power of this factor, under
whose life and light creating influence the germ of the new
life and the spark of the higher light acquired an existence in
his heart ; whereas the impress, in the experience of the
renewed subject, of the factors previously discoursed of is first
effected through the medium of this. For though the efficiency
and reality of those factors are then, it is true, recognised in
their priority, yet they are as such recognised only under and
in consequence of the operation of the last-named ; and the
subject becomes actually sensible of that which in itself
orginates in the worid beyond, the transcendent, perceives it
in its acting and existing, in and with the influence of this
factor operating' within him (Diesseitige), producing the
new /.
10. Here accordingly is the place where, within our system,
the testimony of the Holy Ghost must be spoken of, the
adducing of which for the basing in principle of the Christian
certainty we were obliged in another place to decline. Only
it is self-evident that we can here just as little employ the

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 33. 343
name of " Spirit " in the form in which it has been rendered
current in Scriptural and ecclesiastical usage, as we were
able in the preceding context to employ the names of the
"Father" and the "Son." For it is not the name which
leaves its impress upon the experience, but the reality ; and
only after we have acquired possession of this does the fact
become clear to us, that what is contained by the experi
mentally certain reality, and what is implied by the name
objectively presented to us in Scripture and the Church,
entirely or partially corresponds. Under this reservation,
however, we speak indeed of the operation of the Spirit;
since language has no other expression which would more
adequately denote the thing about which we are concerned.
It is an operation of the Spirit to which the regenerate man
owes the genesis and the continuance of his spiritual /,
operation, namely, of an absolute personal Spirit; and
that the efficacy and immanence of this power of the
Spirit is other than that of the former factors we have
already seen. Now in virtue of this immanence of the
Spirit, producing and sustaining the regeneration, there
ensues an affinity (Eapport) between the factor and the
product, by reason of which the latter, the new /, becomes
conscious of the former as personally in him operating,
moving, testifying ; so that now first the otherness of this
factor in comparison with those previously spoken of comes
fully to light. Just as the Christian state, as an habitual
one, continues to exist only in the actuosity of constant
renewal, so likewise the operation of the divine producing
and sustaining factor is a continued one, and for this reason a
reciprocal relation is called forth between this latter and the
regenerate person, in accordance with which the spiritual
senses of the subject distinguish that absolute spiritual higher
power to which the spiritual / owes its existence from the
product of the Spirit, as which the new / is distinguished
together with the activities proceeding therefrom. A reci
procal relation in mutual attesting, — in that, in the first place,
the state of regeneration together with all that it brings with
it gives testimony to Him whose operation it is ; and in the
second place, but not on that account distinct in point of
time, the truth and reality of that state is attested to the

344 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
subject by Him to whose spiritual power it owes its origin.
And we know the fact that, and the reason why, this power
of the Spirit presents itself to the experience and the con
sciousness of the Christian as an absolute personal power.
This personal power of the Spirit thus, which on its part
assures the Christian of his Christian state, places him in
relation to that God who is the author of the standing of
freedom from guilt, and causes him not to tremble before the
God in whose debt he formerly stood as this natural man.
In that the Christian turns thither in virtue of the capacity
conferred upon him in regeneration, he feels this capacity
supported and sustained by that personal spirit-power ; and,
as regards the insufficiency of this his activity in such
turning, he feels himself calmed and consoled in the con
sciousness that behind this activity stands Another, whose
working covers and supplements his in its defectiveness.
Eecognising himself as an inadequate organ of the power of
the Spirit coming upon him, he experiences precisely in the
wide difference between this power and that organ the personal
subject of the absolute Spirit, which impels and upholds
him as (even after regeneration) a finite subject ; impels him
to the absolute subject, in whose communion he is absolved
from sin and blessed, free from sin in presence of the absolute
subject who pronounced him as a sinful creature under guilt
and punishment.
11. Have we now, however, with this, comprehended the
whole circle of the factors of regeneration, in themselves
transcendent and yet immanently effective ? For everything
which the state of regeneration contains within itself at any
stage whatever of its development, to whatever extent jointly
conditioned by the activity of the new /, the Christian
subject yet knows to be in the first instance something
wrought ; and we have above recognised the progressive
sanctification and eventual consummation as integral elements
of this Christian state. But to perceive herein the activity
of a particular divine factor beside the others, one must
forget what has been explained above as the essential
characteristic of these elements, namely, that they are pro
duced only, but likewise necessarily, by renewal and constant
maintenance of the condition into which the Christian has

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 33. 345
entered at the first by conversion. Now the solidity of the
Christian hope, the confident certainty of the consummation,
rests just on the fact that there is no need in order to this
certainty of anything else than what has been implanted
with the regeneration and conversion itself: and the word of
the apostle : TreTrot^cb? avTO tovto, oti 6 ivap^dfievo^ iv
vfiLV epyov dyaOov iTriTeXecrei aT^/ot? ^/Mepa<; 'Irjaov XpicTTOv
(Phil. i. (^), is not less the expression of such hope based upon
the possession of the Christian than the other, wherein the
realization of the hope appears as the smaller thing in
comparison with the wondrous entrance into the state of
righteousness : ttoXXm oiv fidXXov BiKaicoOevTe^ vvv iv rqj
at/iaTi avTov a(t>07)cr6fieOa Bi' avTov diro T7i<; opyij'i (Eom. v. 9).
It is thus absolutely impossible on the basis of the immanent
objects of faith to attain to a further supposition of trans
cendent divine factors than has been obtained hitherto from
the experience of the Christian : with this triplicity the
matter must of necessity rest. Nor is it the case that, for
example, the operation of the Spirit, to which the Christian
traces the creation of his new /, should alone come under
consideration with regard to the gradual perfecting of his
Christian state ; but as for the bringing about of this product
the co-operation of those three factors, each in His measure,
was requisite, so also for the maturing thereof the concurrence
of the same divine causalities, each on His part, will be
requisite. 12. If we now take a survey of the result obtained in the
course of our previous investigation, it is confirmed to us, in
the first place, that the Christian is indeed assured, by his
regeneration and the objects of faith implanted in it, to a
certain extent, of God as the Triune God. For while he is
compelled on the one hand to look upon the total-effecting of
that which he has become and is becoming, equally as one in
its nature, namely, as an effecting of the one absolute, trans
cendent, personal God — as he recognises the product of such
effecting to be one; yet on the other hand he cannot but
distinguish the factors of this product, in accordance with the
different constituent elements and realities embraced by this
product, and indeed cannot but distinguish them as personal,
— for only as personal, we saw before, is the divine influence

346 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
anywhere operative. The actual effecting of the one places
itself, according to the experience of the Christian, primarily
in correlation to the actual effecting of the other ; since both,
of a truth, are effects produced by the absolute One: the
arrest under the sense of guilt, into which God brings the
man, ranges itself over against the freeing from guilt, which
He has as Other constituted in relation to the first-named
effect. And the actual effecting of the third has for its pre
supposition, for its ground of possibility, the twofold causality
of the two first factors, while this also is an effecting of the
undivided and indivisible absolute ; and as the operation
itself proceeds therefrom, so does it place the subject who
experiences its effect himself in relation to that absolute
One. Nevertheless we must say, after attaining to this
result, that the identity of the same with the declaration of
the Church's dogma of the Trinity is only a partial one.
Before everything it is clear that the experimental certainty
of the Christian upon the path we have trodden, while
extending back at all events beyond the immanent operation
of the divine realities to their transcendent entity, yet
extends to this only in so far as this entity as active gives
expression to itself in the product of its operation, — in the
product, not in its being-in-itself, apart from this causality.
If thus the dogma on its part speaks not only of the Trinity
in "the economy of salvation" (okonomisch), but likewise of
the " immanent " Trinity, i.e. the Trinity as existing in itself,
and takes the accepted doctrinal formulas as an expression of
the latter, then we are forbidden by the nature of the source
of knowledge employed by us to follow dogmatics into that
absolutely transcendent domain: we have to do with those
realities only in so far as they shed their life and light
creating beams into the heart of the Christian. The system
of the Christian certainty cannot, accordingly, desire to say
anything on the relation of the Father to the Son in itself,
namely, of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father,
nor of the eternal proceeding of the Spirit from the Father
and the Son : and just as little are we here in a position to
determine anything on the nature of the eternal co-existence
of the Three Persons, how this is to be thought of or haply to
be represented. And even as regards the ceconomic Trinity,

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 33. 347
it must not pass unobserved that the operations, and there
with the essence, of those divine realities have disclosed them
selves to us only from one point of view, that of the regenerate
/; whereas the relations which dogmatics supposes between
them and the creature are of a far more comprehensive nature.
Manifestly it is not implied by this that we have any reason
for denying or calling in question those testimonies of dogmatics,
— we are just as little entitled to do so, as we are to affirm
or defend them. If dogmatics possesses other sources of
knowledge than we, if it is at the same time qualified and
constrained to proceed beyond that which is actually made
known (Gegebene), and to penetrate to the underlying
existence-in-itself of the divine realities, then its declarations
can and will be perfectly legitimated in their place. Only the
twofold fact unites our testimony with that of dogmatics —
and therein is beyond doubt afforded that which is fundamental
to the dogmatic presentment — that the one absolute Being,
in His causation of the total condition of the Christian, has
manifested Himself to the Christian as the personal absolute
God, and that likewise in the threefold act and ethical working
to which this total-condition is to be traced, the Absolute has
attested Himself at three times as Other, not merely in relation
to the Christian subject, but also in relation to Himself, with
out in this personal otherhood ceasing to be Himself, the
absolute One. If any one, therefore, would find in the
separation of the divine persons the occasion for ascribing to
the one or the other a less degree of absoluteness, — truly even
in itself an unaccomplishable thought, — or no absoluteness at
all, as is done by the . subordinational and the Arian heresy,
the Christian experience would equally remonstrate against
this as it would if, after the manner of Patripassionism and
Sabellianism, the absoluteness should be insisted on at the
expense of the personal otherhood. And the objection is
entirely unreasonable which has been recently brought forward
on the part of a Eomish critic,^ that " the dogma of the real
distinction of persons in unity of the nature is by no means
proved by such deductions, and if it were proved it would no
longer be this. For even the Lutheran doctrine notably admits
no distinction of persons in the activity of God outwards :
> Hettinger, Die Krisis des Christenthums, p. 93,

348 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
opera ad extra sunt indivisa, quia tunc tres personce sunt simul
et simul operantur, is here regarded as an axiom, in distinction
from the opera ad intra." Notably, however, the earlier
dogmatics added to the proposition, opera ad extra sunt
indivisa, the nearer definition, servato tamen ordine et dis-
crimine personarum, and would with good reason have
taken it very much amiss if any one had, on account of the
former proposition, ascribed the incarnation to the Father, or
the sanctification to the Son. Since then we have in all
places held fast to the unity of the absolute personal factor,
without prejudice to the otherhood existing in connection
therewith; a considerable measure of dulness is required, to be
sure, for the attempt to refute, by means of that dogmatic
proposition, the process of assuring followed by us. Just as
little to the point is the objection ^ that it is not in harmony
with the intimations of Scripture regarding the Trinity, when
the Father is made the principle of arresting under guilt and
punishment. For if surely according to the Scripture the
access to the Father is first opened to us in Christ, if the
Father for us existed at all only in the Son, it follows of itself
therefrom that this God, revealed as Father in Jesus Christ,
stands towards us repellingly, charging us with guilt, so long
as the guiltrfreeing operation of the Son does not intervene.
And this fact becomes only the more clear if we consider that
in Scripture God absolutely is placed upon the same line
with the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ; so that thus the
character of the Godhead, i.e. of absoluteness, is referred
primarily to the Father, who then is Father only in the Son
and the Holy Ghost. From all this, however, it is likewise
comprehensible that the Church was obliged not merely in an
externally exegetical way, but even on the ground of its inner
consciousness of faith, in proportion as this consciousness
broke through into clearness, to defend itself against those
errors, against which the Trinitarian confessional formularies
are directed. For the rest, we have acquired no other
cognition with regard to the " persons," to which we were led
by the experience of the motive-forces contained in regenera
tion, than this, but this undoubtedly, that the Christian as T
knows himself placed in presence of them as a threefold Thou,
^ Gottsohick, Studien u. Kritiken, 1874, p. 391.

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 34. 349
and that this triplicity, which confronts the / of the Christian,
involves in itself, at the same time, a triplicity of Thou and /
within the Absolute, or personal Absolute itself, without
which that former triplicity would not be what it is. We
see from this how little, even apart from the method of
discovery, the contents of the reality attained to by the
dogmatic determining and development — which must have
this our path behind it — advances beyond us ; but not less, how
here an inner relation of certainty is gained for the material
of dogmatics, whereby also the particular dogmatic assertions,
which are derived in the first instance from Scripture, adapt
themselves as adequate and homogeneous to the Christian's
consciousness of the faith.
§ 34. The necessity and the reality of the expiation which
is rendered to God, or which God has rendered to Himself,
in order that the relation of freedom from guilt might be
realized, was brought out hitherto as a fact of the Christian
experience, without the contents of the experience with
regard to the accomplishment of the act of expiation as yet
finding complete expression. That expiating, however, has
left its impress, because as real, therefore, as that which it
is, upon the experience of the Christian, namely, as rendered
at the hand of man by God to Himself ; and the fact of the
God-man as the expiator, the sinless, substitutionary One,
triumphing over death, is consequently vouched for to the
Christian by the fact of his regeneration and conversion.
1. It may appear questionable whether it was well done
first to seek to establish the reality of the God-man, and the
work wrought by Him, to a certain extent by way of
supplement, from the contents of the Christian experience,
after speaking not merely of the effect produced by Him, but
also of the divine factor of this effect. For if the freedom
from guilt, into which the subject is placed, is to be recognised
as an effect of the expiatory act of the God-man, and if only
from thence the morally new-creating powers act upon the
man, by which as a converted person he is put into the place
of freedom from guilt, one might infer therefrom with some

350 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
show of justice that the factors of such effects could not be
spoken of at all, without giving precedence to the person and
work of the God-man, Nevertheless, we should surely, even
from this point of view, not have been able to treat of the
God-man as factor of our new state of life, until from the
consciousness of guilt the person of the absolute God had
been brought forth to light ; and while, by the comprehending
in one with the second member of our preceding exposition, a
greater completeness in the treatment would arise, yet at the
same time a piling of the materials would ensue, which must,
without doubt, prejudicially affect the distinct cognition.
The question first of all was definitely as to the way which
opens up for the Christian, in virtue of the experience peculiar
to hiin, to the realities in themselves transcendent ; and, on
this account, the interest of the systematic cognition required
that we should in the first place direct the attention to this
simple transcendence, -whereas in the person of the God-man
this transcendence is no longer unmixed, but by reason of
the human side of the same borders on the presently to be
examined transeunt objects of the faith. We need not say,
however, that this interest of cognition and system is to be
pursued only in the case that those real influences, in whose
prime causality the Christian recognises his state of life to be
founded, can actually be proved without detriment to the fact
which yet at once suggests itself, that thereby the measure of
those factors is by no means exhausted. And that this
condition can be fulfilled, we believe we have not merely
shown by its actual fulfilment, but this likewise follows from
the simplest Christian consciousness, which does not as yet at
all go forth in quest of further knowledge, — a consciousness
which knows its state of salvation to be founded in the Triune
God, without this fact appearing to it to be inaccurately
designated, even though the person of the God-man and the
work of Christ is not at once mentioned. For the one does
not exclude, but, on the contrary, includes, the other; and
that we must take up portionwise, beside and in succession to
each other, the objects of faith, which are in themselves closely
associated, is certainly nothing which we here meet with for
the first time. Only this is to be minded, that by the
selection of a single element from the complex of the -whole,

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 34. 351
which of a truth can be comprehended only in the connected
ness of all its elements, the false appearance of an actual
dividedness do not arise ; and for this reason we have already
above indicated in passing the point at which this new
element actually and pre-eminently finds its place. — ^Eather
might exception be taken on another side, that averse to
" subjectivism," to a procedure whereby an historic person
and, with this, objective facts, taking place amidst the events
of the world, should be deduced and vouched for in their
reality, from the experience of the Christian subject. It is
true, not an exception in the sense that " accidental truths
of history,'' as Lessing said, could never be the proof for
" necessary truths of reason," and that therefore the former
could never be deduced from the latter, — for we have here to
do neither with accidental truths of history, nor with necessary
truths of reason, but with a state of life which is the product
of effecting realities and of historic potentialities (Potenzen), —
but, indeed, in this sense, that it is a perilous venture to seek
from the unstable ground of the Christian subject to attain
to, to determine, and to measure those objective realities ;
whereas, on the contrary, it is becoming to receive them as
objectively made known, and to determine ourselves by them.
Nevertheless, the question arises just here, what we surely do
not need to bring forward anew, how that which is objectively
made known (Gegebene) proves itself to the subject as not
merely actual, but as the absolutely true, and this proof can
never be otherwise than subjectively brought about; and
t'hen, if it is truth which the apostle speaks (Eph. ii. 10),
that we as Christians are God's iroirj/ia, KTiaOkvTe'j iv XpuTTm
^Ir)a-ov, born of Him as the second Adam, must not then of
necessity the reality of this historic person be vouched for in
the new existences which are created in Him, born of Him ?
You must first destroy the conformity between effect and
cause, first degrade the facts of redemption to " accidental "
truths of history, before you could deny d priori the possi
bility of such certifying. And here too, as previously, it is a
question not of this or that detail, which no doubt can only
be historically ascertained and established on the ground
of Holy Scripture, but, on the contrary, of that which is
essential and principial, which then, consentaneously with its

352 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
nature, manifests itself in each single and concrete particular,
by reason of which this last itself enters into a closer, more
intimate relation to the fundamental Christian certainty, than
if it had been appropriated by this certainty on the ground of
historic attestation alone.
2. That a relation of freedom from guilt for the man
exists, that it has been provided by God, that this providing
rests upon a transaction of God with Himself, whereby, as
other. He has made satisfaction to the demand of His right
eousness upon the sinner ; that the reality of the guilt-cancel
ling thus involves the reality of the expiation rendered : this
it was which we heretofore found occasion for concluding
from the state of life of the Christian, in reference to its
highest factor, and only the How of the actual expiation
remained undetermined. If now the expiation in itself,
having respect alone to the absoluteness of. God in relation to
the sinner, consists in the fulfilment of the law upon the
sinner, and consequently by himself, in the form of punish
ment, while, at the same time, this expiation would not avail
anything for him, — who would thereby be for ever lost, — but
would only avail for God ; there is thus contained, in the fact
that the converted sinner recognises himself as freed from
guilt and delivered, on the ground of the expiation rendered,
the other fact that here an expiation of a peculiar kind has
taken place, one, namely, whereby on the one hand satis
faction was made to the outraged law, and on the other hand
this satisfaction redounded to the advantage not only of God,
but also of the sinful man. And again, our previous cogni
tion led us to the point at which we perceived the in-itself-
existing possibility of such expiation without prejudice to the
absoluteness of God, in the fact that the being-for-God of the
sinner by depression of the sinner is not the primary demand,
but only a secondary one, while, on the contrary, the primary
demand restricts itself simply to the being-for-God. Inas
much thus as the freedom from guilt of the Christian is a
fact, and inasmuch as on the ground of the same he knows
himself lifted into a being-for-God of his spiritual /, which
being-for-God includes in itself and guarantees to him his
personal blessedness; the Christian has thus therein the
certainty that the expiation has been accomplished, in a

THE AFFIRJIATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 34. 353
form whereby God made it possible to the man to enter
again into the being-for-God, as this was originally designed
with regard to him, despite the sin adhering to the man, and
to the vanquishing of the same. Or, to put it still more
explicitly, it is here the question of an expiation, by means of
which the man, giving satisfaction in the form of suffering the
penalty to the law violated by him, giving satisfaction to the
absolute God, is transferred back from this secondary mode of
being-for-God into the primary one. And it is now clear,
without further explanation, that the providing of such
expiation, however decidedly it presents itself as a free act
of God, which He owed neither to the fallen man nor yet
even to Himself, to His absoluteness, to His love, or whatever
name may be given to it, could yet not simply proceed from
and be' wrought by God ; but that the act of expiation must
there have its place, its accomplishment, its subject, where
the transgression of the law drew down upon itself the
expiatory penalty. Where the sin was committed, there it is
to be expiated ; and the free act of God's love in connection
therewith can only consist in the fact that He procured an
atonement by which something further was wrought than
merely satisfaction of the law, rendered by punishment, an
effecting of salvation on the ground of the expiation.
3. But then of what nature is this expiation which must
take place, because the consequence of the same — the freeing
of the sinner from the ban of guilt — has, according to the
experience of the Christian, taken place ? Even the natural
consciousness has a dim conception and a certain knowledge
thereof, in the measure in which the moral sense is alive in it.
The transgressor who has sinned against the civil law is, as
we have seen, set free by this law when it has received by
means of punishment the expiation due to it. But yet only
because, and in so far as, the demand for obedience expressed
in that civil law regarded the act corresponding to it in the
light of something taking place externally ; so that accordingly,
also, the circumstance of having suffered punishment could
and must be held to be an adequate expiation of the dis
obedience. But, inasmuch as in the legal requirement there
is contained, at the same time, a moral one, or, in other words,
the former is the effiux of the latter, the act can neither be
z

354 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
looked upon as the rendering of obedience, if it is nothing else
than that outward act, nor can the expiation be looked upon
as corresponding to the demand, if it is restricted to the
suffering of the legal punishment. This alone is counted even
by the natural consciousness as a true fulfilling of the law,
where the acting one has taken up into himself the motive of
the law, and has united himself to the law alike as respects
his will as also his intellect; and this appears to him the
true appeasing of the violated law, where the guilty one,
recognising as a moral obligation the satisfaction to be
rendered to the law, and having become one in will with
the requirement of the violated law, offers himself spontan
eously for the punishment, for the purpose of unburdening his
conscience. That the natural man, too, can comply with this
twofold demand of the law as an isolated demand, and why
' he can do so, has already been explained at a previous place ;
and that such possible verdict and conduct of the natural
man is a morally right one is confirmed by the ethical
certainty of the converted man, inasmuch as he feels con
strained to bestow his approval upon the same. That which
there can happen, here mtist be the case, provided the con
version is a real one. It is not of necessity a conversion if
a transgressor, smitten by, his conscience, presents himself
voluntarily to the law for punishment. But certainly con
version cannot exist so long as the man, with all his inner
remorse on account of the transgression, seeks to withdraw
from the avenging arm of the law. Conversion is present
only where the transgressor has become so one with the law,
that he is -willing to suffer the punishment imposed by the
law. And while we receive satisfaction from the standpoint
of the law when it succeeds in laying hold of the fugitive and
reluctant transgressor, that he may render, though it be by
compulsion, what the outraged law demands of him ; yet we
experience satisfaction not only from this standpoint, but also
from that of the transgressor, when inwardly impelled to
oneness with the law he offers himself willingly for the
payment of the penalty. So far as that having become one
with the law extends, which he manifests in the willino-
suffering of the penalty, not only the civil law which he has
transgressed releases him, but also the moral law which finds

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 34. 355
its expression in the civil law : his act is in so far expiated
for him, to his benefit, and not merely for the law.
4. We have herewith approached nearer to the answering
of the question, of what kind that expiation is by which the
man, in place of for ever satisfying the law by punishment,
is, on the part of the law as appeased, discharged from its
arrest. However certainly the Christian knows that he
personally has not provided such an expiation, and cannot
provide it, — and we here simply refer to our previous dis
cussions, — since of a truth the birth of the new / always
presupposes the freedom from guilt as already objectively
present ; yet equally little can he doubt as to what satisfac
tion must be rendered to the law, in order that it may resign
its claim upon the sinner who has incurred its penalty.
That must have taken place, of which precisely at his con
version he recognised himself as incapable, that a unity of the
guilt-bearer and one under arrest for punishment, with the
law, or with the will of the Absolute, was present ; in accord
ance with which, here, in this highest domain of moral
demand and rendering, that is repeated which we just now
observed in the lower domain of the civil law and the moral
indi-vidual actions thereto attaching. If the same person, upon
whom falls the punitive reaction of the law on account of sin,
had now, in the suffering of this blow, fully received into
himself the law, in such wise that henceforth absolutely no
hiatus should exist between himself and the law, and in this
sense the enduring of the punishment were one in harmony
with the mind of God ; then the judicial claim of the law
upon the subject would cease to exist simultaneously with the
undergoing of the punishment, and an expiation would be
there of which the effect were acquittal. Here, then, it
would come to pass, that from the being-for-God, as this is
accidentally and secondarily realised on the man in the
punishment, there would arise a being-for-God in the primary,
original sense willed by God ; that the subject determined for
God in the punishment at the same time determines himself
for Him in perfect unity of his own and the divine will.
And, since we now know that the law which is here in
question is a unity, the demand of the absoluteness of God in
relation to the self- determining creature; a unity, also, inas-

356 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
much as the law's demand for punishment is only the other
side of the demand for obedience ; it follows therefrom that
the subject of the expiation of which we speak must, in his
suffering and during the same, not merely have willingly
surrendered himself to this suffering, but also have rendered
to the law that complete, positive obedience, without which
the unity with the law were not possible and not real.
5. If we have thus at an earlier stage concluded from the
existing freedom from guilt, which is certain for the Christian,
that an expiation for sin must to this end in some way have
intervened, we are now justified in adding that an expiation
so procured underlies this fact. We cannot, however, stop
short at this, but must of necessity more closely regard the
subject who has made the expiation. On this side, too, the
elements which constitute the essence of the reality here in
question are contained in the Christian experience, and thus
from within vouch for the object of faith which by actual
operation from without has approached the subject. We
bear in mind in connection therewith, in the first place, what
was the result of our previous investigation, that the regene
rate person recognises the freedom from guilt, upon the
existence of which beforehand the possibility of his regenera
tion and conversion is based, as an act of the absolute
personal God, who as Other has provided for Himself as Other
that which realized this freedom from guilt existing for the
man. For conformably with the process of the enlarging of
the individual subject into the general, the matter does not
so stand that, while haply the individual Christian indeed
knows with regard to himself that he did not and could not
personally render this expiation, he might still suppose it
was perhaps rendered by another, — in other respects on an
equality with him, — for himself or for this man. The
absolute character of the Christian truth has as its conse
quence — we have already seen this in the part which deals
with first principles (grundlegende) — that the Christian knows
this truth as determined and existing for him as man, and
thus for man as man ; and consequently just as he recognises
the condition natural to him as universal, so he recoo-nises the
state of life into which he is brought by regeneration, and
the way which leads thereto, as appointed for all and

THE AFFIIiMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 34. 357
necessary for all. What thus is true of the individual
Christian, that he was not as a natural man born again on
the ground of an expiation accomplished by himself, one
which enables him to attain to freedom from guilt, this is
equally true of all who as naturally sinful men stand in need
of regeneration and are made partakers of it. And yet it is
absolutely impossible, in connection with this comprehending
of the natural total - subject as incapable of itself rendering
the expiatory offering, to advance so far as to make the
assertion that the subject of the expiation in any case
must be found, or may be found, outside of humanity. The
fact of the expiation has naturally its place there, where lies
the sin and guilt calling for the expiation ; and however
surely the Christian must look upon the constituting of the
freedom from guilt as an effecting on the part of God, yet —
because the same is brought about by expiation — that effect
ing can only be comprehended in the sense, that by the
gracious disposal of God an expiation was made within man
kind itself, the consequence whereof was, and was designed
to be, no other than the freedom of humanity from guilt.
The matter stands here, thus, similarly as in a former place
(§ 24. 5), where we were compelled in connection with the
supposing of the entrance, from time immemorial, of the
sinful power (Potenz), which constitutes the habituality of
sin and guilt, to proceed not less beyond the act of the total-
subject which embraces the individual within itself, than to
proceed beyond the act of the latter ; and yet in making
this regression into the immemorial character, we could not
help presupposing the act of defection from the normal being
of man as human, as primordially human. The Christian
must comprehend it as the act of mankind, of which sin and
guilt could not otherwise be predicated, since he does not com
prehend it as a primary act of himself and those to whom
he enlarged his consciousness ; and therefrom then results for
him the inner relation of certainty to that truth not follow
ing directiy from the experience, but historically disclosed,
that the beginner and first father of mankind, in whom
individual subject and total-subject coincides, wrought that act.
So then, here too, the actually existing expiation, availing for
us, points us indeed beyond our own causality, and beyond

358 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
that of one on a level with us, but it forbids us at the same
time to go out beyond the circle of humanity, which must
in some way be the subject of the expiation, because
humanity could not otherwise be looked upon as reconciled,
by expiation made free of guilt in the sight of God. Nay,
we can and must now draw more close the bond which
connects us with this expiation as rendered on the part of
man : even as we were compelled to look upon ourselves as
likewise subject of the sinful act by reason of which we
come to stand before God as sinners and guilty, although it
was not our own act, as of these individuals, so we must,
in that we presuppose the reality of the expiation which has
been made, include ourselves also in the subject of such
expiation, as those who have rendered it in and with that
subject, however little this has been wrought, or could be
wrought, by us as individuals. An individual subject must
have accomplished the work of expiation, with whom the
total-subject, who was bound to render it, was one and the
same ; and however little we are minded to deduce the
historic person of Christ, as an historic person, from
the Christian experience, yet the fact of an accomplished
expiation, which stands fast in the consciousness of the
Christian as one free from guilt in the sight of God, is the
voucher for the existence of an expiator, in whom we have
rendered that which must be rendered to God in order that
we might be made partakers of the freedom from guilt.
6. Herewith we have advanced to the presupposing of a
second Adam, in whom that expiation has been made by
mankind as included in Him, and to this extent for mankind,
which was necessary in order that the guilty humanity
should come to stand before God as free from guilt. And
thereby just that state of freedom from guilt, which we were
obliged to suppose as existing in advance for mankind, first
acquires its firm support and its definite place. Both things
are now clear : to what extent we must look upon the
freedom from guilt as provided from without the natural
man, and before his entrance into the Christian state, and
why we must nevertheless regard this very freedom from
guilt as a real idea, inherent in the man, as such by reason
of an implanting made from without. In Him, the Beginner

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CEETAINTY, § 34. 359
of a new race of men delivered from sin and guilt, who has
rendered the perfectly valid satisfaction (Siihnung) to the effect
ing of salvation, we are potentially included in accordance
with the character pertaining to Him, so that in the creating of,
the new spiritual I's, — that is, in the putting forth of the
same from Him, the second Adam, — we come to stand to Him
in a spiritual relation, as in a natural relation the posterity
of the first Adam to him. In Him, the Beginner of the
new humanity, we have already in point of fact, before our
becoming, that which we afterwards become through Him, —
created in Christ, as the Scripture says (Eph. ii. 10), to the
new ethical state into which we have entered by regeneration
and conversion ; even as in the first Adam, the beginner
of the natural mankind as fallen away from the centre, we
were already what we, as born from him, are and become.
Nor is this side of the parallel wanting either, that we
can and must actually appropriate that which is beforehand
existing for us on the one side and on the other, only
because we do not stand related to those two beginners
simply as others beside another ; but because, in virtue of
the origination of our being — whether it be a natural or a
spiritual being — in this head, we are and will the same as
He, so that accordingly only that man can in reality be
assured of freedom from guilt as his own, who, born of the
second Adam, has attained to conversion, — just as also the
natural man has to ascribe the sin and guilt of the first Adam
to himself, only because the will of this progenitor has
become his own will, the guilt of the same his personal guilt.
Now, also, we first fully understand what was before demon
strated on the ground of Christian experience, that the
regenerating factor, bringing the new / into existence, acts
upon the man from that place where the freedom from guilt is
constituted for him beforehand, and that only the existence
of the same in advance renders possible this creation of a
new spiritual existence. If, however, in all this an unmis
takable homogeneity between the moral rise and continuance
of the natural and the spiritual man exists, we must yet not
overlook the fact that we have never discovered within the
process of the natural humanity, as such, the factors of the
spiritual genesis and its conditions; that everywhere the

360 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
operation effecting this renewal bore the stamp of transcend
ence and absoluteness ; that therefore, also, the expiation of
which we here speak, as rendered on the part of man, can
only be designated aright, i.e. in accordance with the Christian
experience, if we designate it as one procured to Himself by
God, the absolute factor, at the hand of man. For that
which we have before found to be the fact must not be set
aside, tha,t only the absolute personal God could release from
the ban of guilt, which by reason of His absoluteness He
must lay upon man, as He who Himself provided a satis
faction to Himself with a view to this releasing ; and there
merely enters into this reality another reality, the expiation
already insisted on above, and now more nearly defined. The
nearer defining of the expiation led to a new subject of that
expiation, which we before characterized as in some -way
provided by God to Himself, — to a human subject of the
same, whom God selected to this end, and in whom He
wrought that which we must recognise as His deed. God
has, as this other in relation to Himself, provided in the man
appointed as the subject of this expiation, the second Adam,
that which -was needful in order that by means of expiation
the human race should, as planted anew in Him, be freed
from its arrest of guilt. Therewith we stand in presence of
the God-man.
7. After having attained to this point, we will not spare
ourselves the trouble of further expressly pointing out that
our way to the assurance of the divine human expiator, from
the starting - point of the central Christian certainty, has
nothing in common with the manifold attempts at proving
and grounding the necessity for the incarnation of God, or
however else it may be named. Of such objective necessity,
whether it be apart from sin or after the entrance of sin, we
know nothing ; and much rather must the Christian say that,
according to the testimony of his experience of sin and its
removal, such necessity does not exist. Neither in the being
of the absolute personal God, nor in His relation to man as
created and ' fallen, has such a necessity confronted us ; and
the demonstration of it, if successful, would on the contrary
prove to the detriment of an essential article of the Christian
consciousness, namely of this, that the gracious act of God,

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 3-1. 361
on behalf of the restoration of man to the normal position
primarily designed for him, was one which He owed neither
to Himself nor to man. Something totally different from this
is it when, upon the presupposition and after the guaranteeing
of the fact of the freedom from guilt, involved for the Christian
in regeneration and inseparable from the Christian conscious
ness, we proceed to speak of the factor by whom this fact is
brought about ; and in doing so entirely renounce any claim
on the part of such proof for the existence and qualification
of the factor to possess universal validity, i.e. demonstrative
force for those, too, for whom that fact of the Christian experi
ence does not exist. If then single propositions in our
reasoning, taken alone, seem nevertheless to bear a resemblance
to those attempts previously declined by us, this is explained
by the consideration that there the Christian consciousness, —
but without clear distinction from the natural consciousness,
rather in a false blending with the same, — formed the starting-
point for the argumentation ; and that objective universal
validity of the Christian truth, of which the Christian con
sciousness as such is assured, was conceived of as certain
likewise for the natural, the universally human consciousness,
or at least as accessible to this consciousness. This might and
must be the case at times when within particular circles and
communities of the people the Christian truth appeared as
objectively valid, to a certain extent, even to the natural
consciousness ; whether it was owing to a Christianizing of
the popular mind, in which the individual participated as a
member of the community despite the lack of personal Chris
tian experience, or -«'hether it was — and here in a much more
imperfect, merely seeming way — on the ground of philosophic
presuppositions, in accordance with which the Christian con
sciousness, with the truth peculiar to it, was regarded as a
phase in the development of the universally human conscious
ness, to which as such a natural, though only relative, necessity
is to be ascribed. Neither, however, corresponds any longer
to the position which the Christian consciousness occupies in
the present day towards the natural consciousness, and already
on this account the Christian certainty, in its expounding of
itself, would be compelled to avoid those attempts to prove
the reality of the God-man as a necessary one before the

362 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
forum of the universal consciousness, even though they were
not in themselves false and worthy of reprobation, — as yet
they are, for the reason that the opposition between the
Christian experience and certainty and the natural experience
and certainty is one never removed, or removable by natural
means. And therein also lies the difference in the pre
supposing of the reality here in question, and that of the
former presupposing of the personal God, where we had to
regard the endeavours of the universal consciousness to assure
itself of the existence of God as not in every respect erroneous
and vain, inasmuch as there is a naturally moral disposition
and experience from which the reality of God is, however
imperfectly, attainable ; here, on the other hand, it is a
question of a specifically Christian experience, which is
foreign to the natural consciousness, and from which alone
the object of faith is accessible to the cognition,
8. However little a knowledge of the God-man can be
obtained, by the method pursued by us, which should admit
of comparison in any way with that of dogmatics, — for we
have reached only the simple fact, from -which dogmatics, as
standing within the objective economy of salvation, and aiming
at the determining of this in its connectedness, takes its
start, — it will yet be of interest to see whether a series of
other realities is not presupposed with the presupposition of
that reality, and thus is made manifest an inner relation of
the Christian certainty to articles of faith which dogmatics
receives and handles as truths afforded in the objective rela
tion, and fully established for the faith. We are not indeed
now in a position to declare anything more precisely on the
coinciding in one of the twofold subject, which should reach,
namely, beyond the above-determined reality, and should
make known the How of the same ; not even to this extent,
that haply the expiatory act of the human subject first derived
from the divine subject, at the same time implied in it, that
infinite worth of which there was need for the cancelling of
the infinite guilt of the human race. We know that there
is an infinite guilt, and how this arises ; but it encountered
us there, where it was a question of that satisfaction of the
absolute God which consists simply in the punishment of
the man alienated from God, not at that other place, where

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY', § 34. 363
the inquiry was as to an expiation in virtue of which the
freedom from guilt were effected, and a redintegration of the
subject were accomplished ; and the unconditional necessity
of the divine factor for the bringing about of the freedom
from guilt lay rather in this, that the freeing could proceed
only from the same God to whom the arresting for punishment
is to be traced, and that we were accordingly compelled to
look upon the freeing expiation as one procured by God to
Himself at the hand of man. On the other hand, the
sinlessness of the human expiator, in whom God as subject
brought about for Himself this expiation, is already involved
in the essential character of this expiation, and we can there
fore expressly insist upon this fact as attested by the experi
ence of the Christian. The complete unity of the one
making the expiation, in the suffering of the penalty, with
the law imposing the same, was the fundamental condition,
without which there could be no word of a redeeming and
liberating expiation ; for since it is not here single demands
of the law which are in question, but the one absolute will
of God as opposed to the total bearing of the human creation
towards Him, it is clear that at no point can the human
person of the expiator, upon whom falls the reaction of the
punishing law, be in a difference with the same, without
bringing to nought the work of expiation. And since the
subject, against whom the punishing reaction of the law is
directed, must be the same as in the enduring of this punish
ment renders the expiation, it follows that the same subject,
who as sinful draws down the punishment upon himself,
must be a sinless one, because he could not otherwise render
the expiation with the result of freedom from guilt. Para
doxical as this may sound, yet it is definitely the expression of
that same experience which the Christian has made regarding
the freedom from guilt as accomplished by expiation ; and
we should have to adhere to it, even though - the resolution of
the apparent contradiction lying therein should be denied to
the Christian reflection. For we have to do with a fact,
which is not first rendered possible by our thinking, but
which as existing constitutes the existence of our Christian
being, and which is based upon the fact of the expiation
rendered.

364 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
9. Side by side with the fact of the identity of the subject,
who on account of sin experiences the penal effect of the law,
and who suffering in full accord with the law accomplishes
the liberating expiation, stands the other fact, that the indivi
dual subject — who as sinful knows himself obnoxious to the
punitive law — has by means of his Christian experience the
certainty of not having personally made that expiation. And
from this results for the Christian consciousness the further
certainty, that it is a vicariously rendered expiation to which
the Christian owes his liberation from guilt. This certainty
is the more definite, in proportion as the Christian holds fast
to the knowledge that from him as a sinner the absolute God
demands the satisfaction which is rendered to His absoluteness
in the punishment ; and that if this satisfaction is to avail
not only for God, but also for himself, the nature and the
rendering of the expiation must correspond to this demand.
There can accordingly in truth be no thought that the subject
of the God-man, as whom we have recognised the Expiator,
should have been subjected, or should have subjected Himself,
to that punishment in the suffering of which the essence of
the Qx^iaXion prijnarily consists, apart from the freeing of the
sinner thereby to be effected, with reference to the absoluteness
of God which is to receive satisfaction. For in suffering this
the sinful man would not have attained to the freedom from
guilt of which as a Christian he knows himself partaker.
And on this side the impossibility is at once seen of ascribing
to the divine-human Expiator a vicarious suffering of the
penalty, which should admit of comparison with that whose
expiatory operation is defined by the character of everlasting
perdition. For neither would this be an expiation whose
result could be the deliverance from guilt, since its very
nature consists in the abiding presence of the guilt; nor would
that be a substitutionary act, which it nevertheless is to be,
since such a rendering fails to render precisely that which
the sinner acknowledges himself under obligation to render in
order to be absolved from guilt. On the other hand, however,
the punishment which is borne in the life-bringing expiation
can be no other than just this which consisted in the reaction
of the absolute God upon the sinner, and which in this its
essential character remains the same, whether it be taken upon

THE AFFIEMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 34. 365
oneself willingly or unwillingly. For the heterogeneousness
of the punishment in the first case consists only in the hetero
geneousness of the subject who endures it, not in the diversity
of the resisting energy constituting it on the part of the abso
lute subject who imposes it ; consists, consequently, only in
the necessary cessation of this resisting energy after, in the
enduring thereof, the subject who bears the same has perfectly
identified his will with the will of God who imposes it, which
then likewise alters not the nature of the punishment in
itself. This other view must be combined with the former in
order for us to recognise the essence of that substitutionary
representation by reason of which the Christian knows himself
delivered from guilt ; and it is to be explained herefrom, what
may here be observed incidentally, how the Christian conscious
ness could come sometimes to affirm, sometimes to deny, the
identity of that suffered by the divine -human Expiator with
that which the sinful man would have to suffer without this
liberating expiation. In reality the absolute affirming, if we
go back to the genesis of the same in the Christian experience,
is just as little right as the unqualified denial ; and much
more fruitful than the answering of the question wrongly put
a priori would the investigation be, in what then that reaction
of the absolute God against the sinner displays itself, which in
any case — without respect to its duration and its reception on
the side of the subject — is correlative to the sin. We on our
part can, with the means furnished us hitherto by the interro
gating of the Christian experience, only establish the twofold
fact, which indeed as that which is general underlies all the
concrete declarations of revelation, and to this extent attaches
the same to the Christian certainty, that it is in this connec
tion a question first of the punitive rejection of him who
offends against the divine law, but then, and at the same
time, of a punitive subjection of the same to the absolute will
of God, from which he emancipated himself in sin ; for this
twofold fact is comprehended in the maintenance of that
absoluteness wherein the punishment has its actual ground.
That rejection is, because such, separation from Him in whom
the Christian knows the only fountain of life, of real, true, and
therefore blessed life, to be hidden, is therefore death in the
widest signification of that word ; and this subjection, because

366 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
such, is the constituting of a being-for-God which excludes
every kind of self-satisfying of the sinner in that wherein he
has sought his pleasure out of God, the opposite of the love
which draws to itself, a drawing back of the fugitive to God
against his will, a dragging down to a life that is no life, away
from the life of semblance, and away from the life of reality.
And these two things are not separated, but are found in one,
a life in death and a death in life ; even as the sinner also in
the light of the drawings of grace, and the Christian in his
experience of sin, perceives this, that sin, on the one hand,
separates him from God the supreme good, and yet affords
him no abiding enjoyment of the possessions after which his
perverted heart has lusted — a life, and yet no life. But if
now this punishment strikes the divine-human Bearer of sin, it
can be comprehended that the punishment is transformed, on
account of the unity of His will with the will of the absolute
God, in the same measure as the punishment of a sinner
would be transformed, who should be able in the midst of the
punishment enfolding him to become one with the will of the
God who imposes it. He experiences as a sinner both alike,
the rejection and the subjection ; but, nevertheless, as one who
can call His God the God who has rejected Him, and who,
while the will of wrath of the absolute God goes forth upon
Him, and delivers Him up to the judgment, nevertheless can
pray : Not My will, but Thine be done. With this the
expiation is then accomplished, by reason of which the penal
law has no more claim to make upon the sinner ; and because
the Christian knows the freedom from guilt as a fact existing
for him, while he yet knows that he has not made it, nor
could make it, for himself, the substitutionary work is for him
certain, by means of which the di-vine-human Expiator has
rendered that for him which the sinner must have rendered,
in order through punishment and judgment to enter into
the condition of freedom from guilt, and that of blessedness.
— Nevertheless, it must not pass unobserved in connection
with this establishing of the fact of the substitution, that the
reality of the expiation made for us as thus apprehended is by
no means the exact equivalent of that before recognised by us ;
that, on the contrary, regarded in this light, it labours under
the defect of a one-sidedness, an abstraction, which as such must

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 34. 367
be brought home to the consciousness. The substitutionary
character of the expiation rendered has truth in the same
measure in which there is truth in the isolation of the sub
ject, — for whom the freedom from guilt exists without his
meriting it, — from the divine-human Expiator as another.
Inasmuch as the sinful individual subject knows, and ought
to know himself as another in opposition to that Other as
likewise a subject, to this extent the substitution has reality^-
to this extent, not more and not less than this. Even in the
act of thus expressing it the one-sidedness becomes apparent ;
and the reality of the expiation would present itself in a
partial and distorted light, if it were contemplated only from
this point of view of substitution. For it is not less true,
nay, rather it is the immediate truth to which the analysis of
the Christian experience has led us, that the individual subject
who is made a participant in the expiation rendered does not
stand to the Expiator as other towards another, anymore than he
so stands to the founder of the natural race of mankind. Pre
cisely because He is not an individual beside individuals, but
because He is the second Adam, in Himself comprehending
the totality of all individuals, has the divine-human Expiator
accomplished the expiation ; in Him humanity has rendered
it, which therefore was rendered for them ; and this is the
first thing which results from the experience of the Christian,
and which must remain the first thing if the fact of the expia
tion is not to appear in a false light. But because now this
constituting of a new beginning is one brought about as
opposed to the natural mankind by God Himself, and by His
free love alone ; because this divine -human Expiator did not
naturally grow up out of the natural humanity, but was given
to it by God to be the second Adam, and as such wrought
out the expiation ; therefore it is truth, though not the whole
truth, and not the first truth, that the expiation rendered in
Him by mankind, and for mankind, is a substitutionary one,
in place of those v/ho, as children of the first Adam, have
never rendered it, nor could render it, and who become
children of the second Adam, reconciled children of God,
only because He has accomplished the expiation for them,
and anterior to all their rendering.
10. They are historic facts which authenticate themselves

368 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
to US from the Christian consciousness, without our laying
claim to become acquainted with them, in this way, in their
historically definite character. Historic they must be, in the
sense in which the immanent realities of the Christian con
sciousness have historically arisen and become present ; for
these exist only as products of the congruent historic factors
in their constitution. Now we have possessed ourselves of
the fact of the God-man as the sinless and substitutionary
Expiator, particularly in taking as our basis the first orders of
the immanent objects of faith ; whereas the last, the certainty
of the personal consummation of the regenerate, has neither
here nor previously, in connection with the question as to the
absolute Triune God, been brought under a closer considera
tion. Why it is absolutely impossible to trace back this
portion of the Christian experience to one special divine
factor beside the others, this we have seen above ; and however
certain it is that this reality, too, is one effected, yet the
manner of its effecting can only in such wise be presented to
the intellect as it reflects itself in its result, that is to say,
not as something acceding to that previously existing, some
thing new, but as something already implanted in the former,
something following therefrom. As this, however, that effect
assuredly can and must come under examination ; inasmuch
as the character of the Christian life — in virtue of which it
bears in itself the germ and the pledge of consummation —
arises out of the character of the effecting factor, by reason of
which it is qualified to produce, with the one, likewise the
other. We might say, it is true, in the form of simple
inference, that the nature of the divine-human Expiator, as
we have hitherto recognised this, involves in itself the actual
necessity that His life should be a life which triumphs over
death, a life breaking through to consummation, — and that
statement would be in itself a perfectly just one. For it is
verily the essential nature of the expiation wrought by Him
to lead back out of the disunion and variance with God
occasioned by sin to a perfect communion of life with Him ;
and it would be a direct invalidating of the knowledge
hitherto attained by us, if we should refuse at the same time
to enlarge it into the recognition that a life absolutely uncon
ditioned, set free from every check and limitation, must be

THE AFFIRMATION OF THE CERTAINTY, § 34. 369
the fruit for him of the expiation wrought by the God-man.
And again it must be a life which, as regards its contents and
its manifestation as complete, corresponds to that which it
was in the person and in the acts of the divine-human
Expiator. These and further inferences would be in them
selves correct ; and yet we should in connection with them
be going forth beyond the limits of the task assigned to the
system of the Christian certainty. We should proceed from
a fact, derived doubtless from the Christian experience, in
order now — leaving on one side that experience — to move
altogether within the objective domain, the domain of the
objective reality, and mentally to decide what in accordance
with given premisses must be contained in this reality. But
it was not upon decisions, inferences, postulates, and the like,
of this sort, that we hitherto based the certainty of the tran
scendent realities, however little we are disposed to contest to
the cognition the right to presuppose as real that which is
- necessary for the thinking. Our deductions are those from
facts of the Christian experience to those realities whose
causahty is reflected and impressed on those facts, and to this
mode of cognition we have, here too, to restrict ourselves.
The guarantee for the consummation, for the final and com
plete mastery over all oppositions, with which the life created
in regeneration comes forth from the first, and without which
it would not be that which it is, is involved in the fact that
the life of the divine-human Expiator, from which and into
which the new / of the Christian is born, bears in itself the
ground and source of such effect. And of a truth one brought
about in the same measure as this is the case in the life of
the Christian /. The transference into the place of freedom
from guilt, we may now say more concretely — into the person
of the divine-human Expiator, is the birth of the new /,
incorporation into the new humanity which has in Him its
second Adam, and therewith is produced, as we know, the
experience of a life which guarantees itself to the regenerate
man as able to cope victoriously with death ; thus then this
pledge must attach causally to that expiation which has pro
cured the freedom from guilt, there must flow forth from this
expiation itself, archetypally for the person of the Expiator,
that life which overcomes all oppositions and hindrances ;
2 a

370 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
otherwise the participation of the regenerate in the expiatory
work could not have for him the consequence of the assur
ance of life which it actually has. And this is the case the
more and the more certainly, the less the Christian has the
assurance of the consummation in that which he himself
possesses, so far as this rests upon his own act and his own
disposing, but in that which is given him in regeneration — in
his own act of holding fast this possession only in so far as
he recognises this, no less than other gifts, as God's gift and
God's power which is mighty in him. His life he recognises
as overcoming all hostile forces, because it is not his, is not
derived from him, because it has raised himself out of the
dominion of the God-opposed powers, and so has been given
to him as his own : all stress thus falls back, in connection
with that assurance of consummation which we have observed
to be the characteristic of the Christian state, upon the factor
who is author of this life certain of itself ; and this it is
which, from the standpoint of the Christian experience, impels
us to the declaration of this certainty, and justifies us in
ascribing to the divine-human Expiator a life victorious over
death. It is a fact, which we establish upon the ground of a
fact of our Christian life. And now we can proceed more
precisely to define this fact. We have found above that
there belongs to the essence of the punishment, suffered in
the expiation, that rejection by God which we could designate
as death in the most comprehensive sense of the word ; and
of this death we must now say that it must have been over
come, so certainly as the expiation wrought by the God-man
was a salvation-fraught, guilt-effacing one. For union, a
communion with the absolute God, hindered no more by inter
vening guilt, is — according to our presuppositions — the
necessary result of such expiation ; and if therefore the
God-man as- Expiator was given up to death on behalf of such
expiation, that could only be a death which was abolished
with and after the finished expiation. We express nothing
as yet as to the How of the abolition, nor do we speak
directly of the historic fact of the bodily resurrection of
Christ; for that which we mean by death embraces more
than merely the outward phenomenon of the bodily death.
And under this more must be included also that subjection to

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 371
the will of the absolute God, which is inseparable from the
rejection. We know, however, from previous examination,
that the Christian has in his peculiar experience no ground
for the opinion, that the life of the spirit freed from the fetter
of the body is the perfected life, the life at one with God,
which he looks for, — since, on the contrary, the power
separating from God, which opposes the life given to him,
penetrates his whole natural being as respects body and soul ;
and again, that death, which we have recognised as belonging
to the essence of the expiation, unquestionably comprehends
the physical death in itself, and therefore that applies in the
case of this last which has been said of the abolition of the
former. Thus it will be understood that the Christian
acquires, to the fact of the resurrection of Christ, which as an
historic one is made known only in the historic way, an inner
relation in virtue of his experience of faith, whereby the
certainty of that fact for him rests not merely upon historic
arguments, but essentiallj'- and at the same time upon the
inner reference and adequateness of the historic fact to the
immanent spiritual realities of the Christian state. That,
finally, this life of the divine - human Expiator, as thus
vouched for, is not a life shut up in itself, but a life for him,
the Christian, for the new humanity born, and to be born, of
Him, — this follows once more, not only in itself from the
nature of the person whose life this is, by the method of
objective inference ; but from the experimental certainty, that
all powers of life which effect and sustain the work of
regeneration and conversion, in the individual Christian as in
the community under which he includes his /, constantly
proceed, from that transcendent spot, where sin and guilt and
death is not, and to have entered into communion with which,
and to abide therein, constitutes the essential reality of the
Christian state.
CHAPTEE IL
THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM.
S 35. The Christian certainty holds fast to the transcendent
objects of faith in opposition to pantheism, under which as

372 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
a general type we comprehend the various negations of those
essentially divine realities. The contradiction which pan
theism gives to the existence of the personal God does
not touch the course by which the Christian has attained
to certainty on this realitj'^, but fastens — after the dwarfing
of the religious-moral experience — in defect of the speci
fically Christian experience, upon the intellectual difficulty
of comprehending the infinite in its relation to the finite,
and in particular of comprehending the absolute as per
sonal ; and just herein is to be found the reason that the
Christian, even apart from the possibility of obviating that
difficulty, is not shaken in his certainty by such objections.
1. In that we at once attach a definite name, viz., that
of pantheism, to the opposition against which the Christian
certainty maintains itself in the case before us, we can refer
back, as regards the sense in which we do this in general, to
that foregoing section wherein it was a question of the oppo
sition of rationalism. Be it so, that the contradictions to the
reality of the transcendent objects of faith, or to a part of the
same, proceed by no means exclusively from the pantheistic, but
likewise and even previously from the rationalistic, mode of
thinking, — as, of a truth, materialism, which has advanced yet
beyond pantheism, is not less at one with its predecessors in
the negation of these portions of the Christian faith, — never
theless it is at once apparent that the denial of the trans
cendent realities here in question, realities essentially of a
divine-personal nature, must there present itself to us as most
clear and sharply defined, where the transcendence and the
personality of the absolute is immediately made the object of
the negative criticism, in the systems of pantheism ; and we
have not to fear that, as a consequence of the prominence given
to this opponent, important objections of the others will pass
unnoticed. Historically regarded, the system of pantheism,
among the anti-Christian systems of modern times, succeeded to
that of rationalism ; and this temporal sequence was the less
an accidental one, inasmuch as, after the installing of the
natural / as guarantee of the religious as of the historic truth,
the pantheistic philosophemes merely drew the just conse-

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 373
quences from this premiss, and only laid claim to giving
expression to that objective " reason," of which rationalism
had been the subjective and wild-growing product. We can
perfectly understand this succession, too, from the Christian
knowledge hitherto acquired. For if for the Christian the
guaranteeing of those transcendent divine realities is based, as
we have seen, upon the certainty of the immanent realities as
effected, it follows of course as a necessity that from the
negation, from the partial or entire disappearance of the latter,
the doubt and contradiction must straightway advance to those
portions of the Christian truth, of which the existence had
been assured to the subject by their operation. In connection
with this fact, it is not excluded that, inasmuch as pantheism
raised itself from the substratum of rationalism as thus
understood, it not only took over and fully shaped out the
elements which had prepared the w^y for its rise, but likewise
rejected those others whose defectiveness and crudity would
not have suffered it to continue in the earlier posture of the
opposition. We must not indeed be misled by the antagonism
of the monistic systems towards rationalism, as this presents
itself to us in history, into the false supposition that the
relation of the former to the latter is a purely negative one, —
just such a mistake as if, from the mockery which the
materialism of the present day, pluming itself on the exact
ness of its investigation, pours upon the fantastic and empty
systems of monism, we should conclude that modern materi
alism stands related only antithetically to the systems of
monism. It follows from the nature of the case that every
newly arising intellectual tendency must, in the first place,
make good its claim and conquer its position by negation of
the former, into whose place it will force itself, without
previously taking into account, and often without becoming
conscious of, its inner continuity with the latter, and how the
latter itself furnishes the means for terminating its dominion.
Thus it was the half-and-half character, the narrowness, the
subjectivity of rationalism, lacking as this is in guiding
principle, which was abandoned and contested by the more
advanced philosophic systems ; and because rationalism, as a
particular historic phenomenon, had identified itself with
these defects, it wasthus rationalism itself against which they

374 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
turned, which they rejected and deposed from its dominating
position. The conflict was justifiable, one really provoked by
the weaknesses of the rationalistic system, and the defeat of
the latter thus an inevitable one. From this, however, it by
no means follows that the victorious powers did not derive
their strength precisely from that intellectual tendency, of
which they demolished the form become at a particular time
historic, inasmuch as they maintained in all earnestness the
autonomy of the natural subject as against the hasty and
half-completed deductions of rationalism. Thus also in reality
every such position bears within itself, in the light of
Christian intelligence, this negativity as its innate character,
in virtue of which it turns against itself ; without however by
reason of such negativity ceasing to be itself, but, on the other
hand, becoming thereby more and more what it is in itself.
And just as this happened to rationalism, so it presently took
place also with the pantheistic monism, in the case of which
the unconditioned autonomy of the natural subject, placed
foremost in thesi, changed immediately into the entire con
ditioning of the same by the natural process of the universal
genesis, into the position of a fleeting element in the ebb and
flow of life in general, and further on into the extreme of a
machine devoid of spirit, produced and driven merely by the
powers of the material world. It does not, however, at all
necessarily follow that the individual representatives of the
more advanced opposition are in their position towards
Christianity personally that which they are as exponents of
the opposition which has historically come to a manifestation
in them ; for they are not as to their persons entirely absorbed
in the representation of that opposition ; and as rationalism
in its time attached to men who in heart perhaps were better
disposed towards Christianity than many at the time of the
unbroken belief on the part of the totality, so may there have
been representatives of that pantheistic tendency, who withal
stood inwardly nearer to the faith than the former rationalists,
yea, truly, gave an energetic impulse to the renewal of the faith.
2. The more separate and peculiar the path upon which the
Christian attains to certainty regarding the transcendent
objects of the faith, and indeed, in the first place, regarding
the existence of the one personal God, the less shall we have

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 375
reason to fear that the objections of pantheism, which from ¦
their nature start from very different points, will be in a
position to damage this certainty. It is not the case, it is
true, that for the Christian the difficulties of the cognition,
from which doubt and denial derive their sustenance, do not
exist just because he has been led by another path to the
cognition : that would be a fancy which does not hold its
ground in presence of the truth ; but yet the decision of the
question whether he remains certain of those realities or not
depends by no means, as there, upon the question whether he
is able or not by thinking to master those difficulties of the
intellect. For the measure of the comprehensibility is not for
him, as it is there, the measure for the certain or less certain
supposing of the existence of the object to be comprehended ;
as truly, the full possibility of conceiving of an object which is
to be supposed, does not in itself by any means guarantee the
reality of that object ; but after the existence and the character
(Sosein) of the object has disclosed itself to him from the
living operation of the same, those questions as to the intel
lectual comprehensibility, the thinking, reproduction, and
grasping in one of that which in the actual operation mani
fested itself as of this or other nature, as thus or otherwise
combined, now present themselves to the subject. We may
therefore proceed a step further in the criticising of the
negation also, and affirm that, even for the opponents, the
ultimate ground of decision is not to be found in that domain
which is wont in the scientific discussion to stand first in
order ; and in proof thereof we need only to refer the reader
to that which has been previously discussed (§ 32. 8). From
this it became at the same time apparent how it comes about
that the certainty of the being of the personal God may,
although by no means must, exist even where specifically
Christian experience is wanting ; whereas, on the other hand,
an actual and more than traditional certainty regarding the
other transcendent objects of faith is neither conceivable nor
demonstrable without the former [certainty]. For Kant,
apart from other things, the main ground for the denial of the
knowableness and certainty of God was the assumed lack of
experience in this domain, — an assumption which, for the
rest, was in direct contradiction with the supposing of that

376 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
experience which, from his own showing, consists in the
perception of the categorical imperative ; for this was accord
ing to Kant himself a perception of the absolute, to which he
erroneously appended the postulate of the personal God
(comp. § 32. 4). Inasmuch now as Kant transferred this
actually absolute and transcendent, which is only immanently
operative, to the human nature itself, and, not distinguishing
between its objective operating and the reception thereof by
the subject, identified the absolute and transcendent with this
subject, he had already to this extent passed over to the stand
point of pantheism, while he still continued on the theoretic side
at that of dualism. We have thus also no occasion whatever,
in connection with the objections against which the Christian
certainty maintains itself, to discuss separately the objections
of the critical philosophy side by side with those of pantheism.
3. But is it not precisely the notions of the absolute,
infinite, transcendent, personal, to which the Christian attains,
- — albeit in the way of the experience peculiar to him, — in
which, whether they have been found in this way or another,
that contradictory character lurks, wherein the objections in
the first place to the existence of the transcendent personal
God find their support ? And if for the Christian all these
are not merely " notions," which he could separate from the
realities, but the realities themselves as comprehended on the
ground of experience, how should he retain them and combine
them with each other, in case the contradiction attaches to
their essence and their supposing ? In reply to these ques
tions the fact may in the first place be emphasized, that in
connection with the statement of the phenomenological pro
cess of the Christian certainty in this particular such
contradictions did not encounter us ; which they surely must
have done had they lain in the essence of those realities.
On the contrary, we were not at all able there to lay hold of
or retain the one element without at once involving likewise
the other : the absolute proved itself straightway as the trans
cendent, and both as the personal. This is explained however
by the fact, that those realities were apprehended and con
templated not under the category of the metaphysical, but under
that of the ethical, ethically effective. The certainty of the
transcendence of the factor of regeneration rested upon the

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 377
fact of experience, that the regenerating operation of which
the subject recognises himself as generally in need can be
derived in the last instance from no power within the man
himself and from no physical power ; the voucher for the
absoluteness of this power was to be found in the absolute
culpability, — having respect not to the finite as such, — as
also in the absolute ethical satisfaction coming in with con
version, one not to be attained by the turning of the subject
to the finite, to that which stands co-ordinate with himself ;
the assuring of the personality of the transcendent absolute
rests upon the experience of his causality as simply and pre
eminently an ethical one, as an ethical deed striking into the
course of the natural-moral life, which has as its correlative
the personality of the factor. This moral domain of assurance
is the one from the first peculiar to the Christian, and the meta
physical contemplation fits on thereto only by way of accessory ;
hence it is comprehensible that the metaphysical cognition of
the absolute, the capacity for thinking out or representing the
same in its essential character, may have different degrees
and stages, and that neither the faculty for such knowledge
and its advance at a particular time will in itself enhance the
certainty, nor the weakness and defects of the same will in
themselves diminish that certainty. We should also in truth
upon such assumption be brought into palpable contradiction
with the fact, that with the mastery obtained by speculation
over transcendent realities the correspondingly enhanced sted
fastness in the certainty of faith is by no means ensured, that
on the contrary there lies therein the temptation to depart
from the solid ground of facts of the faith which alone vouch
for those realities, and that this temptation can be successfully
met only by constant practical descending anew into the life-
soil of faith and the certainty of faith ; whereas not rarely the
incomparably stronger certainty is found where the process of
cognition is a defective one, the capacity for the intellectual
apprehension of that which has been experienced a slight one.
By this we do not mean to say that the state of certainty in
the latter case is, regarded in itself, a more perfect one, since
it can distinguish itself by greater firmness only subjectively
and in a comparative way ; while to the full notion of
certainty it belongs also that the intellectual appropriation and

378 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIA:;^ CERTAINTY.
elaboration keep pace with that which has been experi
mentally perceived : the uncertainty in some cases arising on
the way to the higher cognition is only the point of transition
to the attainment of the goal, at which both sides of the
certainty, that of the experience and that of the notion,
correspond with the utmost possible exactness. Moreover it
belongs precisely to the experience of which the Christian on
the way to the consummation is conscious, that those trans
cendent objects of faith surpass the human and even the
Christian cognition, and the fragmentary and incomplete
apprehension by the understanding, instead of being an
argument against the reality of those objects, rather accords
with the character of the same : they would not be what they
are, if they were not recognised as surpassing our knowledge.
4. We thus bear in mind the fact for all that follows, that
the moral reciprocal relations between the absolute and the
Christian subject afford to the latter the standing ground and
the point of rest, whence he will be in a position to defend
himself against the pantheistic oppositions and on his part to
resolve them, and whence he will attempt to do so : not here,
either, with the design and in the hope- of convincing the
opponents of their error and winning them over to the
Christian truth, — for to that end there would be need before
all things of the producing of those moral relations and bases,
— but with a view to the personal testimony why, notwith
standing the objections made, he holds fast to the truth
assured to him. In connection with these objections it is a
question primarily of that self-enfranchisement of the natural
/, as cognitive, from the limitations of a dualism, which in
an unnatural way had prevented and shut up for him the
recognition of the existence in themselves (An-sich-sein) of
natural things, and still more that of the transcendent realities.
It was only the completion of the process of constituting the
natural / as autonomous, already begun in deism and ration
alism, when for the cognitive subject every kind of limit of
duality, of the world beyond, and of transcendence was
abolished. After the natural / was once exalted to be the
measure of all things, its cognition to be the norm of their
truth, it could not fail of coming to pass that every impedi
ment, whether it consist in the otherhood of the phenomena

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35, 379
surrounding the subject in this world, or in the transcendence
of the divine realities till then retained in faith or in the
idea, should be rejected by this subject and, at least in theory,
treated as non-existent. It is nevertheless also a truth which
underlay this impulse, viz., that in reality this world of natural
existence, and not less that world of supernatural entities
exist for the man, that they would be nothing and count for
nothing for him if they did not enter the sphere and come under
the conditions of his experience and cognition ; that to this
extent every kind of dualism which would forbid this must yield
to that instinctive impulse. In like manner it is certain that
there can be no more complete abolition of the limits which
would hinder the subject from the cognitive apprehension of
the objects, than if the distinction between these and the sub
ject be conceived and thought of as non-existent, if the subject
is able to recognise the apparently other and strange as
belonging to itself, entirely to locate itself in the same and
completely to take over the same into itself But, apart
from the web of self-delusion which one thus weaves around
oneself by speculation, and which even becomes apparent as
such in the proper subject thereof, since this subject does not
get free of duality in himself, this violently effected monism
can in fact not otherwise realize itself than by drawing down
that which stands above the subject to the level and within
the limits of the subject's own physical and personal life.
It is therefore fully comprehensible that after the trans
cendence and the transcendent had been first for a while
suffered to remain in the thoughts, but in such wise that
the bridge thereto became more and more inaccessible
and was at last broken off altogether, men would know
nothing further of it whatever, and all that which till
then had been believed or presaged or thought of beyond the
physical world, as the infinite and absolute, was now entirely
taken into this visible (diesseitige) world, and it was thought
that in this world itself, pre-eminentiy in man, the final result
and manifestation of the same was to be found. For assuredly
man, placed in this world of the finite, mutable, imperfect,
cannot dispense with thinking the thought of the absolute, so
long as he thinks at all ; and it is an actual, not merely
ficTuratively so designated, brutalization, when the conscious-

380 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
ness abides in the finite as such and is no longer able so much
as to rise in thought beyond it. So long now as it is a ques
tion with regard thereto only of a process of thinking, this
monism may, for aught we know, rest content with represent
ing the world of the finite, relative, limited, as an efflux, or
final result, or self-movement and process of genesis of the
infinite and absolute, in such wise' perhaps that the absolute
thereby becomes for itself that which it is in itself, or however
else it may be explained ; but the realities of the moral world
are more stubborn, and cannot with their oppositions and
their postulates so easily be resolved into that process of
genesis, whether conceived of as physical or logical, or be in
any way ranged under the self-modification of the absolute.
It is significant, that the monistic systems, whether we
think of the Spinozan or the Schellingian or the Hegelian,
have their most vulnerable points just -where they attempt
to admit the facts of freedom, and indeed of moral freedom,
of personal responsibility, and of sin, within the framework
of their whole conception, and to assign to them a due
place within the same ; and as even at this stage it was
not found possible to accomplish this without doing violence
to the facts, or to the system, or to both at the same time, it
is accordingly explicable that monism at the debased stage of
materialism — at which man in place of drawing up the
things of nature to himself is on the contrary himself drawn
down to them — is not able otherwise to maintain itself in
presence of those facts than by simply effacing them and
converting the ethical into the physical, liberty into necessity.
If now there is already afforded in the natural-moral con
sciousness, and the more lively that consciousness the more
abundantly afforded, a stay and prop against such per
version, it will be comprehended how the Christian con
sciousness, which develops itself in the domain of those facts
and recognises in its truth the moral position of man, should
possess, precisely in the peculiar experience underlying this
consciousness, the perfectly adequate means for defending
itself against that monism, and indeed primarily on the side
of the mingling of the transcendent with the immanent, the
resolving of the former into the latter. That theory which
renders absolute the human T and therefore denies the tran-

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 381
scendent, and which in its consequent application comes into
conflict with the moral facts of the natural life, the Chris
tian overcomes from the moral basis upon which he has
been placed by regeneration and conversion. He does so
without the necessity of forsaking the domain competent to
him and entering into metaphysical discussions. For it is a
fact equally certain for him as the actual life into which he
knows himself transported, that a causality, and thus a Being
(Wesenheit), absolutely not to be confounded with physically
immanent life, with that which is finite or pertains to the
creature, is the effectual cause and abiding foundation of this
existing life. And that absolute difference between the
transcendent and yet immanently effective and all that is
mundane and finite so little prevents his making this tran
scendent the object of cognition for the finite subject, that
just on the contrary the same experience which assures him
of the former qualifies him at the same time for the cognition
of the transcendent and specifically different. Therein how
ever is straightway to be found implicite a further particular
of which the Christian first becomes fully conscious when
he makes this twofold fact the object of scientific investi
gation, — the particular, namely, that the transcendent and
specifically different is nevertheless capable of entering into
reciprocal action with that from which it is different ;
that its operation upon the finite subject, without itself
becoming finite, nevertheless conforms to the conditions of
the finite existence and cognition ; that accordingly, despite
the specific difference, a homogeneity exists and is brought
about, which renders possible to the subject a cognition of
the transcendent proportioned to the measure of his experi
ence. Otherwise, and more dogmatically expressed, this is
affinity of man with God existing in itself and the likeness of
God restored by regeneration, which kinship and likeness,
however, comprehends within itself the truth of monism as
it does that of dualism. With the autonomy of the human,
not to say the natural /, all in truth is over according to
this cognition ; but so far is the Christian removed from
findin" herein a circumscribing limit of his being and his
knowing, that he rather perceives in the true and just con
ditionedness of the same, now become manifest for him, the

382 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
position befitting him, the one really making him free, in
place of that imaginary lordship of self, which at every step
is put to shame by the facts even of the natural life. And if
it is a truth for the Christian also, that every object of cogni
tion must be constituted such for the / and by the /; that
thus the / indeed decides to a certain extent autonomously
what shall be recognised by it as reality ; then here this
right and this necessity of constituting, this true autonomy
of self-assuring is completely preserved, in that, namely,
the autonomy based upon the absolute theonomy now first
perfectly and in truth comes to itself Eendered accessible
to the world of the transcendent in virtue of the fact
that the life-powers of the same have been implanted in
him ; inserted in the divine centre, in which is found the
objective unity of all being, even that of the creature, but
without confusion and without obliteration of the diversity of
essence ; the Christian has acquired a position in which, on
the one hand, he can do justice to the elements of truth in
monism and pantheism, and thereby withstand the seductive
force of that erroneous opinion, on the other hand can set
aside the dualistic and deistic misconception which, by
reason of the false severance of the transcendent from the
cognitive subject, impels ever afresh to that erroneous opinion.
And so little is the Christian bound and prejudiced by this
his position, that it rather guarantees to him the right and the
possibility of being able to draw near to all the objects of the
visible and invisible world, perceiving and knowing in accordance
with the reciprocal relations existing between him and them.
5. Apart, however, from the self -liberation of the cognitive /,
which in the more recent philosophic systems cast down the
limitation of the falsely apprehended transcendence, it was even
at an earlier time the notion of the infinite, the absolute itself,
whence men were impelled to abolish the wall of separation
between this and the world of the finite, and to mix up the one
with the other in pantheistic fashion. Not therein does this
confusion consist, that the infinite is thought of as existing in the
finite and the finite in the infinite, and in such sense the trans
cendence of the absolute is denied ; nor yet in the assumption
that the absolute appears in the phenomena and noumena of finite
existence ; but it consists in this, that the process of genesis

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 383
of this finite is conceived of as in some way a self-unfolding on
the part of the absolute, as a self-modification of the same,
and thereby the essential otherhood of the absolute and the
finite, in which it comes into manifestation, is abolished. It is
possible indeed that a transcendence of the abstractly absolute
should here be spoken of, that the transcendence should be in
a certain sense retained ; but this same transcendent absolute
is represented as becoming, in virtue of a process of genesis,
immanent and finite, in such wise that the whole world of
the finite participates in this process of the absolute : with
such an acceptation of the transcendence pantheism is not
excluded, but in the strict sense involved. Nor is it excluded
when this world of the finite is traced back to a constituting
by the absolute, which is the ground of the existence of the
finite, although in itself non-existent, yet the immanent
ground of all that exists, in such wise, to be sure, that the
finite spirit, unfolding itself on the basis of the nature-exist
ence, is essentially identical with the absolute spirit. For
this always remains the decisive question, whether the finite
spirit becomes conscious of the absolute as something in its
essence different from himself; or whether as identical with
himself, although, it may be, separated from himself by the
intervention of the nature-basis. If it is said, finally, that
God and the world stand to each other as unity without
plurality to plurality without unity, and are yet just as little
to be severed from each other as to be counted one and the
same time thing, — " for God is not without the world, and the
world not withoiit God : " there lies in the first statement
nothing which would indicate the specific difference between
the divine Being and the existence of the creature, and in the
second nothing which would exclude it; the negation, how
ever, of every supposition of God as present in any way for
the human sense of dependence, so that one cannot speak of
an influence exerted upon God by man in prayer, denies
precisely that which within the religious reciprocal intercourse
is equally essential as the influence of God upon man. Never
theless this last, notably Schleiermacherian, conception of the
absolute in relation to the world, strictly speaking, comes
first under examination where it is a question of the nega
tion of the personality of the absolute ; whereas we have here

384 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
to do with the relation of the absolute, the infinite, to the
finite in general. It is a simply formal intellectual operation,
whereby the natural intellect sees itself compelled so to appre
hend the absolute, that finite being is absorbed into the same.
As certainly as man is impelled beyond the finite, limited,
temporal, and transitory to the notion of the eternal, bound
less, infinite, absolute, in such wise that he cannot but form
this mental notion, however little he may be able to conceive
to himself that which is thus thought, just so certainly lies
for him in the notion herewith obtained, thought of as real,
the further necessity for excluding any and every other entity
as existing outside of and beside that of the absolute, and
therewith of setting aside the limitation, the supposition of
which would be destructive of that of the absolute and
infinite. Every reality must be included in the absolute,
beyond the infinite there can be nothing whatever, — a pro
position which forms the true basis of the pantheistic monism,
which, however, has been equally employed by Christian
theologians who were far removed from pantheism, a proof
that it contains a truth of which the pantheistic misapplica-
is possible but not necessary. The absolute, the infinite is
not merely the negation of the finite, but at the same time
the affirmation (constituting) of all finite being, because that
of all being whatever. For it is surely a piece of ingenuous
ness which lays no claim to refutation, but merely to astonish
ment, when recently Eitschl, who " still has a dim recollection
of his occupation with this word in his youth," with an appeal
to the derivation from absolvere to such extent limits and
deprives of force the notion of the absolute, as to make it
signify " what is detached, what occupies no relations to
others." ^ But in that we recognise the affirming of all finite
being as contained in the absolute, we stand first at the parting
of the road which separates theism from pantheism, and now
first approach the difficulties which the notion of the absolute,
in relation to the finite, presents to the human thinking for
solution. For if, on the one hand, it seems to be the most
natural thing, and that which is imposed on us, to embrace
all real being of whatever kind in the being of the absolute,
that the absolute may not, by supposition of a being outside
' Theol. und Metaph., p. 16.

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 385
of itself, be subjected to a limitation in contradiction with its
nature ; so, on the other hand, it is not less necessary to keep
separate from it this being as finite being, that its essential
character as infinite being be not thereby destroyed. Thus
accordingly monism is not in a position to maintain the
complete identity of the cosmical being with the being of the
absolute ; and yet it is just as little able to surrender the
identity altogether, which as it seems can be put an end to
only at the same time with the truth of the absolute itself
Monism is thus compelled to assume a self-modification of
the absolute, in virtue of which the latter puts forth the
finite being from itself, as another mode of being (Anderssein)
of itself, which, however, remains identical with it, the abso
lute ; to change the being of the absolute, the absolute sub
stance, from the rigidity and immobility, in which it was
before conceived of, into a process of life, of genesis, in which
it becomes what it is in itself ; finally, to apprehend the finite
existence simply as a point of transition in this development,
with which then the distinction of the same from the absolute,
as it is in itself, and the equalization with the same as it is
and arises in its self-movement, is to be rendered possible ; or
else, perhaps, to represent the absolute being, as pure spirit-
being, as constituting in the first instance the world of the
finite as a basis to itself, a basis of the same which does not
in itself exist but is the immanent ground of the existence
[of the absolute], whereupon the spirit identical with itself
unfolds upon the finite nature - basis as finite spirit, to this
extent opposed to the pure, absolute spirit, as spirit however
of the same substance with it. That which first strikes one
in these and similar attempts at determining the relation
between the infinite and the finite is this, that they take their
start merely from that logical postulate to which we have
above given expression, and that in connection therewith the
presupposition obtains, that no other satisfaction of this
postulate is conceivable than that, in virtue of a self-modifica
tion of the absolute, this latter itself passes over into finite
ness. In the first respect it is the intellect divorced from
experience, reckoning with abstract notions, which seeks such
a combination of these items as shall be free from contradiction;
in the other respect there already underlies the calculation a
2b

386 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
decision, with regard to which it must first be asked with
what right it was accepted as correct. And has any one in
reality ever succeeded in rendering intelligible the proceeding,
or the constituting, or the setting free, of the world of the
finite out of the absolute spirit and by the same, in such wise
that anything more was expressed thereby than the fact that
it is so — a fact which must have taken place and must still
take place, just because only in this way the absolute —
thought of as real — remains, as opposed to the really existing
finite, that which it is and ought to be ? And again, even
if one takes that fact for granted, has anyone ever succeeded
in making it comprehensible how that which is as to its
essence infinite, constitutes itself not merely the basis of
the finite, but likewise converts itself into the finite ; divesting
itself of that in which it had precisely its essence, and yet in
so doing remaining identical with itself ? However intelligible
it may be, therefore, that on the side of natural speculation
men should come to abolish finite being as a limit to the
infinite, and to absorb it in the latter, it is just as little in
telligible how one can insist on the results of this conception,
looking at their comprehensibility ; and, if men nevertheless
insist thereon, if men even oppose, as the truth, such results
of the thinking to the Christian conception of the diversity
of nature between the divine and the creaturely, the reason
for this must be other than that of the complacency in a
thought free from contradiction.
6. Were this however not the case, and were it possible on
the part of monism to discover a statement of the relation
between the infinite and the finite, in connection with which
the contradiction of the intellect were reduced to silence, there
would still by no means arise therefrom the necessity for
regarding this uncontradictory conception as on that account
the true one ; since the freedom from contradiction for the
thought does not of itself afford any guarantee for the truth
and reality of that which is thought. The less any real
experience of the subject underlies the conception with which
the thinking in thih, case sets out, the conception of the self-
modification of the absolute, — for, on the contrary, this con
ception is one formed on the ground of a logical postulate, —
so much the greater is the field of the possibility in which

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 387
the calculating intellect here moves, and it can there spin
about it a web of thoughts which are free from contradiction
among themselves only because the constraining experience,
whose protestation would cramp and thwart them, is wanting.
Beyond one or other of these alternatives, — that upon the way
followed the logical contradictions either refuse to be solved,
in that, avoided at the outset, they recur in the course of the
further advance ; or else, as solved in this or that way, never
theless afford no certainty whether the reality of which the
thinking would assure itself corresponds to the uncontradictory
thought, — the speculation of the natural subject does not get ;
just for the reason that there is wanting to him as shut up
within the circle of finite events the immediate experience of
the absolute in its influence upon the flnite subject, and there
with the firm point of rest, whence alone the comprehending
activity can attain to the goal. We, of course, hereby take
the natural subject as at that stage of God-opposed develop
ment, to which the opposition here in question points us. We
know that, as for the Christian the perception of the immanent
objects of faith is the decisive thing for his assurance with
regard to the transcendent, so likewise the measure and dis
tinctness of that which we have recognised as the natural
analogue of the former, specially the experienced and retained
attesting of God in the conscience, is determinative for the
supposing and cognition of the personal absolute on the part
of the natural man. This natural experience of the God influ
encing the man, of a God absolutely distinct from the man's
own being, is here silent or is forced back and overpowered by
the violent effort to pass beyond the limits of dualistic and
therefore unsatisfying cognition ; on which account this inner
attesting of God, where it is still heard, is in the interest of
system twisted round into an attesting of the impersonal
absolute foundation in the human finite existence, in opposi
tion to the human individual subject in which the absolute
itself comes, though in a finite manner, into manifestation ; and
since this attestation is not something incidentally entering
into the natural life and its development, but rather something
accompanying it from the outset and constantly, it may so
much the more easily happen, that here the immediateness of
the experience of the absoluteness, which therein proclaims

388 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY,
itself, vanishes, and this experience is placed upon a level with
that conditioned by finite things. Quite otherwise is the com
plexion which the matter wears, where in the peculiar opera
tion of the personal God of M'hich the Christian becomes
conscious in regeneration a firm support in fact is afforded for
the cognition of the absolute, as immanently effective, it is
true, but as at the same time surpassing all finite being,
radically to be distinguished from it. The absolute is here
recognised, in the first place, on its moral, ethically operating
side, and all the widely ranging thoughts on the infinite in its
relation to the finite receive thereby their direction, aim, and
limit. The absolute does not make itself felt as a conception
of the thinking, in connection with whicli it is left to the
thinking, without detriment to the necessity of this conception,
to reason it out in accordance with the canon of freedom from
contradiction and in its relation to the finite ; but as an
energetic real power, superior to the man, by which he recog
nises himself as laid under arrest and in which he perceives
the highest aim of his being, so that he is for this reason com
pelled to regard it as without qualification the absolute. Now,
it is true, the demand presents itself, from which we just now
saw the false consequences of the pantheistic involving-in-one
of the infinite and the finite, and presents itself to him as a
thinker at the moment when he has apprehended that absolute
power, as he must do, as the absolute : viz., to acknowledge
and allow to exist no being whatever beside the absolute, and
as limit of the same ; but the way has been pointed out to
him in which he can and must satisfy this demand without
being led into these erroneous consequences. With creative
efficacy, as nowhere else in the course of the natural life, has
the absolute entered into his experience, producing in him
new spiritual realities, a new /, whose otherhood as compared
with the creative factor is for him just as certain as his own
bearing of the image of God, his kinship with God, in which
he stands as a new creature, as a child of God ; and as with
the maintenance of the latter reality the former is not for his
consciousness surrendered, so with this former reality the
truth is by no means surrendered, that no other being what
ever can exist outside of and beside the absolute, as a limit of
His infinitude. The implanting of the new realities as not

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35, 389
identical with the absolute was so far from being experienced
by the Christian subject as an abrogation of His absoluteness,
that rather, on the contrary, this absoluteness was thereby
made perceptible and proved itself; and what in this par
ticular case disclosed itself to the Christian as the relation of
the infinite to the finite, that he has a right to apply to the
same in its widest extension. For assuredly God's creative
activity in the work of regeneration and conversion is experi
enced only as consummation of that which was from the
outset contemplated in the being of man, thus in and with his
primeval constitution ; so that this second creation, which we
have experienced in ourselves, vouches for the first creation,
which we have not experienced, and — in accordance with the
position occupied by man as microcosm of the irrational world
— at the same time for the creation of this also. We attain
thus from the starting-point of the specifically Christian experi
ence to the proposition, that precisely the Absolute as such has
manifested and manifests (bethatige) Himself, in that He
called and calls non-existent things, as different from Himself,
into being ; and that there cannot possibly be found a limit
for the Absolute, to the prejudice of His absoluteness, in that
wlierein the power of the Absolute affords demonstrative evidence
of itself. A limitation of His -absoluteness would have been
entailed in the existence of finite things, only in the case that
these did not exist, or had not arisen, by Him and in Him
and for Him (zu ihm) ; that is to say, if they existed otherwise
than as the expression of His absoluteness, than as having
their basis and continuance in His absoluteness, than as a
satisfaction of His absoluteness. It is not a lack, for the
making good of which the absolute constitutes a world of the
finite, but abundance; not compulsion, even though it be
compulsion of His own being or of His love, by which He
was constrained to bestow happiness upon beings of other
nature, but a free exercise of His creative power ; and it is not
the constituting of an aim beyond Himself, the Absolute,
which was contemplated in the creation of the finite, but the
constituting of Himself as aim alike of the creating as of that
which is created, and all love to the latter, all destination of
the same for the highest good, all dignity of man as determined
for God (zu Gott), is contained therein. On this account I

390 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
cannot make my own the expression, that God as love " sets
the aim of His being (Selbstzweck) in the formation of the
human race for the kingdom of God as the supra-mundane goal
destined for man himself," or that " the kingdom of God to be
formed from among men is the correlative of the aim of God's
being, as well as the aim in the creation and governing of the
world." ^ It is at least open to misinterpretation to suppose
the "aim of God's being" to conssist in any relation whatever
to the creation, even though it were the spirit world, in its
calling forth and government ; for in proportion as the self-
sufficiency of God is therewith abolished, is also His love as
divine love brought to nought. And what would avail us
all abundance of love, if it were not divine love ? All
self-devoting of God to the world, every combining of the
" Selbstzweck " (aim of being) of God with the aim and end
of the world or of mankind is to be estimated from this point
of view. Then nothing lies in the way, on the ground of that
presupposition to lay most emphatic stress upon the self-
devoting of God to the world, the condescension of God towards
the world. Though, however, God has in the calling forth of
creatures endowed with freedom set a limit to Himself, to His
sole activity, yet this limit is not a derogation from His
absoluteness, but an asserting of the same, which would suffer
infringement only in the case that the exercise of the freedom
of the creature, even in its God-opposed tendency, ever took
place otherwise than as in accordance with the will constitut
ing that freedom, and to another end than that of the doom of
the Absolute. Towards the thinking of the Absolute in His
relation to the finite more has been therewith accomplished in
reality, however much may still remain unfathomable in con
nection with it, than by the assumption that the infinite, by
some process or other of genesis, transforms itself into finite
being. For while the logical postulate, which seemed to impel
to that assumption, has here found its full satisfaction in
another way, there disappears at the same time the unrealizable
thought that the infinite, whose essence it is to be this, should
have transformed itself into another, whose essence it is not
to be this. And whereas the human thinking is forsaken by
every kind of experience and conception, were it only in the
1 Ritschl, Rechtftrt u. VersShnung, 2nd ed., iii. p. 263.

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 391
province of a lower analogy, when it is a question of thinking
out tiie self-finitizing of the infinite, an analogy, on the other
hand, is not altogether wanting for the thought of a creative
constituting of the finite, as diverse in its nature, on the part
of the infinite, — an analogy which, lifted from the level of the
finite to that of the absolute, renders possible a conception of
that which is thought of. This analogy is found in the free,
artistic creation and formation of man, which, although on its
part presupposing and taking up as existent alike the material
and the inspiring (durchgeistende) form, nevertheless within
these limits by no means merely repeats and imitates that which
is before the artist, works freely-producing and therein develops
a creative activity akin to that of God. If we think of this
creating as an activity of the absolute, we must indeed at once
think of it as a calling forth of finite beings out of non-exist
ence into existence which rises above all human analogy; but
side by side with this leap, which is unconditionally demanded
by the transition to the absolute, there still exists the analogy
that also the creative works of God, like those of man, are the
expression and impress of His own being in another which is
not Himself For that is the creating and fashioning on the
part of God that He reflects for Himself in that which is
finite, and in accordance with the limit of the finite, His own
infinite being, the cause of those antinomies on which the
intellect wearies itself in vain, that this world of the finite
nevertheless bears in itself the character of the infinite, the
infinite in space, time, number, form, plenitude, in its totality
not less than in its parts. And here thus assuredly is the
point at which the human thinking is constrained to terminate
the contradictory opposing of the infinite and the finite, and
to apprehend the primary forms of finite existence, space, and
time, as ektijpa of the being of God, which is beyond space
and above time ; in such wise, namely, that a self-distin
guishing in God, as archetype above space and time, underlies
that which — with the constituting of finite being distinct
from God, a being co-existent in its parts and successive in
its rise — is present as space and time. For surely in the
opposite case a timeless working of God in the course of time,
and a working of God unbounded by space in the different
localities of space, were not conceivable ; we know and experi-

392 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY,
ence as Christians the operation of God in time and space,
and it does not enter our mind to deny to it, because it is
this, the character of absoluteness.
7. Yet we should overstep the bounds of our task if we
should seek further to enter upon the questions here raised,
as those of pure or even only of Christian speculation. It
must suffice us to have shown how the peculiarly Christian
experience, whence we before derived the certain knowledge
of the absolute, protects the Christian against the erroneous
path and against the contradiction of the pantheistic mingling
of the absolute with the finite, without our being able, or
wishing, to lay claim to convince those for whom that experi
ence does not exist. But with this the position which
pantheism occupies, towards the Christian experience of God
and cognition of God, is indicated only in one-half of its
extent. For until now our attention has been directed solely
to the relation which exists between the absolute and the
finite, and the question as to the personality of the absolute
receded into the background. It is true there already lies
implicite in that putting of the relation, as it is taught by
pantheism, the negation of the personal God ; for only of the
impersonal absolute does pantheism mean to say, and can it
mean to say, that it unfolds itself as finite, afterwards to
receive back this finite into the infinitude of its existence in se
and per se (An-sich-sein) ; and implicite lies in the apprehension
of that relation in accordance with the Christian experience
the supposing of the absolute as personal, — for only under
stood of the personal absolute has it a meaning, when we
speak of the creative production of the finite. But while
retaining this fact in mind, we may not spare ourselves the
trouble of yet taking into separate consideration the contradic
tion which the natural cognition thinks itself justified in
perceiving and maintaining between the notion of personality
and that of the absolute, a contradiction which admits of
formulating in this sense, that personality as limitedness ex
cludes absoluteness, and absoluteness as unlimitedness excludes
personality. The presupposition therein is this, that person
ality predicates a quality of finite being, and that the essence
of personality consists only in being of a finite nature. It is
all one for the thing itself how it is expressed. Personality,

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35, 393
we are told, is self-concentrating existence as against that
which is other, which by this self-concentration it separates
from itself; absoluteness, on the other hand, is the embracing,
unlimited, which excludes from itself nothing but just that
exclusiveness involved in the notion of personality, absolute
personality is therefore a nonens, a term which expresses no
meaning (Strauss). " What do you call personality ? " asks
Fichte, in that he declares himself opposed to the course of
those who, proceeding beyond the moral order of the world,
assume a personal and conscious being as the author of the
same, " what do you call personality and consciousness ?
Surely, just that which you have found in yourselves. But
that is not conceivable without limitation and finiteness." In
like manner says 0. Pfleiderer : " It is not to be denied that
by a personality we understand not merely self-consciousness
and freedom in general, — -in that case the question whether the
notion of personality can be applied to God were to be
answered in the affirmative, — but both in that form in which
they are found in us, and precisely in which they cunnot be
thought of in connection with God." Or — where finiteness is
made to consi-st in not being spirit, while spirit, on the other
hand, as such is the one identical with itself, absolute — we
are told that personality has as the constituent element of its
nature that which in the finite spirit composes the finiteness
about it, that is the not being spirit ; individual corporeality
is the necessary presupposition thereof For even though man
as spirit, and only as spirit, is a personality, yet it cannot be
said of the spirit in itself, but only of the whole concrete
man that he subsists as personality. " This concrete personal
subject, however, is not simply spirit, but finite spirit, spirit
with a non-spiritual sensuous presupposition about itself, both
as an indivisible unity. Personality and spirit coincide in
man, because man is finite spirit, not simply because he is
spirit ; personality and finite spirit are notions of the same
extent of significance " (Biedermann), In connection with all
this, accordingly, the opposition between infinite and finite,
which we have but just now discussed, forms the background,
and the essence of personality is ranged under the category of
the finite. It will therefore be in place to regard the objec
tion to the personality of the absolute in the first instance

394 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY,
from the point of view which the preceding investigation has
opened up to us. Inasmuch as the human personality belongs
to the finite entities (Wesenheiten), which, according to the
proposition previously enunciated, cannot exist side by side
with the absolute as a limit of the same, but, according to the
pantheistic view, must be apprehended as in some way a self-
working-out of the absolute, it is not the case that the notion
of personality in .general is to be opposed to that of the
absolute, and to be held aloof from it; but that exclusion
takes place only in the existence of the absolute per se, or as
existing in itself After the absolute has transformed itself
into the finite, or in whatever way it has constituted the finite
out of itself, it personifies itself, at the same time, in the finite
spirits, and assumes therewith a form which, in its existence
in and by itself, would be contradictory to it, an abrogation
of its own nature. There recurs, consequently, the above-
mentioned difficulty, how we are to conceive that the absolute
in its self-development attains to a form of itself, which is
nevertheless the direct opposite of its own nature. And since,
according to this doctrine, the constituting of the finite by the
absolute can never without inconsistency be taken as anything
else than as self- constituting, as self-modification of the
absolute, it follows therefrom that likewise the personality,
into whicli it changes itself, cannot either be altogether incom
patible with the absolute in its existence in itself, but is of
necessity potentially included in it. For from the absolute
nothing can proceed, according to the view here taken of it,
nothing become actu that which it was not already potentia,
and there exists now, as it would seem, no logical ground
which should constrain or permit us to think the personality
as actual to be in contradiction with the absolute, while as
potential it is not so. Or shall we assume that that which
potentially exists is, as to its essence, different from that which
actually exists ? This would be nonsense. If, however, it is
the same in essence, only one of two things can be thought :
either the essence of the personality contradicts the essence
of the absolute, and in that case it likewise contradicts it as
potentially included in it and must be eliminated from it ; or
else it does not contradict it, in accordance with the fact that
it is thought of as contained potentially in the absolute as this

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 395
exists in and by itself, and then we have to assert the same
thing of the personality at the stage of actuality. Another
fact, however, must likewise be taken into account here. It
has its foundation in the nature of the human being and
therewith likewise of his thinking, that the man cannot other
wise conceive of the divine Being than after the manner in
which he apprehends and understands himself as an intel
lectual being. He thinks, and must think, of the absolute as
the sum of all reality, as he has become acquainted with it in
himself as intellectual reality, but free from those limits within
which his being as finite is restricted. He either does not
conceive of the absolute at all, therefore, or he must think of
the same as knowing and willing, however greatly he may
distinguish the knowledge and will of the absolute from that
of the finite, and may raise it above the finite. And is not
then the personality just such reality as that of the knowledge
and will, of which the same must be true as of these ? Or
does the latter stand to the former in such wise that the
personality were only an accidens for the realities of the
knowledge and will, a defect which attached to the man, and
which, therefore, on the transference to the absolute, must be
laid aside ? One might almost believe, since all stress is
wont to be laid thereon in the conflict against the personality
of God, that precisely the consciousness of the /, which con
stitutes the essence of the human personality as bounding
itself off from others, is to be denied to the absolute as exist
ing in and by itself. Now there exists conversely in the
province of human experience a knowing and willing only as
expressions of that selfhood which, in the consciousness,
concentrates itself against that which is other, or personality ;
and there remains, therefore, nothing for us but to find the
limitation, which is repugnant to the notion of absoluteness,
equally in the essence of the knowledge and will, as in the
personality to which knowledge and will pertain. How,
therefore, the distinction which Schleiermacher emphasized,
between the personal God, whom it is difficult, he tells us, to
think of as infinite, and the living God, the idea of which,
according to him, suffices as a mark of separation from
materialistic pantheism and from atheistic blind necessity, is
to be maintained is not very clear; provided that by the

396 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
term living God more is understood than the blind impulse,
devoid of either knowledge or will, which underlies all in
dividual conformation. Just as little is it discoverable -what
is to be effected by that modification of pantheism, in which,
holding fast to the relative difference between the finite and
therefore personal mind, and the infinite and therefore im
personal mind, — the identity of substance in the same being
affirmed, — one now ascribes to the absolute also essentially the
same processes of mind as are proper to the finite human
intellectual life, only with the total abolition of this essential
identity which is demanded. Essentially the same process of
mind, it is here said (Biedermann), which, in the finite human
mental life, constitutes the essence of the will, is, in the actus
purus of the absolute mind, the eternal and omnipresent
putting - forth from and beyond itself (objectivizing) the
infinite process of existence of the world, to which its
absolute spaceless and timeless being is immanent at every
moment of the finite existence beyond it, as the foundation of
this existence. This " putting forth from and beyond itself,"
however (" Aus-sich und Aussersich-setzen "), which, it is
alleged, is essentially equal to the will, proceeds not from an
/, whose the will is, and who knows and wills this his voli
tion as his own. Whence then does it proceed ? From a " pure
fia;is^m^-for-and-in-itself," which we are told is essentially the
same process of mind in the actus purus of the absolute mind,
as the feeling or immediate self-consciousness coinciding with
the condition of the subject (not distinguished as object) in
the finite mind ; which, however, in fact, is neither feeling
nor self-consciousness nor anything of the kind, but the
abstract and colourless thought of the X not yet thought of
as " constituting," which, as an unknown and non-existent
magnitude, underlies all the known and existent magnitudes.
And likewise the objective consciousness of the human mind
is, we are told, contained as to its essence in the actus purus
of the absolute mind, namely, as the immanence of its space
less and timeless absolute existence-within-itself (In-sich-sein)
in all finite moments of the natural process of existence of
the world, according to which it is the absolute principle, the
ground and aim, of the world ; and with which, at the same
time, all that exists at every moment of its finite process of

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 397
existence is reflected into the eternal and omnipresent exist
ence-within-itself of God, i.e. is a subjectivized object of the
absolute mind. So far, however, is this from being objective
consciousness, that the absolute is immanent in the world as
ground and aim without being conscious of this save in the
finite mind, and the reflection of that which exists into the
eternal and omnipresent existence-within-itself of God takes
place without the absolute existing-in-itself knowing aught
thereof. And when it is said that the self-consciousness of
God cannot stand in opposition to His world-consciousness,
because He would then have need, for the termination of this
opposition, of a higher unity above Him, and would thus
Himself be subject to a divided existence ; the self- conscious
ness of God must be one with His world-consciousness, the
latter forms only the developed totality of the contents of the
former (0. Pfleiderer) ; we have, in this case, a twofold self-
consciousness of God, a developed and an undeveloped one,
while yet the consciousness of God and of the world are said
to be one, and besides it is a conception unrealizable not less
for the thinking than for the faith, to make the consciousness
of the totality of the finite one with the self-consciousness of
the infinite. In comparison with this and similar attempts
at softening down monism and pantheism to such an extent
that at least in appearance the possibility of a religious life
should remain, it has certainly the advantage of clearness and
honesty when it is said that God is the eternal movement of
the universal, ever making itself the subject, and in place of,
on our part, personifying the absolute, one must learn to com
prehend it as that which is for ever personifying itself
(Strauss). But with this also we are now brought to stand
immediately before the door of exit from pantheism, namely,
at the point whence the bridge leads over from pantheism to
materialism. For why still wander aimlessly about in that
" universal," whence the individual conformations of this
finite world proceed? In the last resort they are purely
mechanical and chemical forces, forces inherent in matter,
from which those individual conformations, and with them
that of the human personality, are to be explained and
derived ; and now the question whence after all these forces,
too-ether with the material with which they are indissolubly

398 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
connected, whence the manifoldness of the individuation to
which they expand themselves (sich auswirken), is one that
troubles us not. But we have not yet to do with materialism
here, and only point out the fact that, with that latter appre
hension of the absolute, the notion of the same, from which
the argument against the personality ascribed to the absolute
was taken, has been surrendered ; for now it belongs strictly
to the essence of the absolute, in order that it may become
what it is, that it assume the shape of finite existence in
general and finite personality in particular. The absolute
becomes finite and yet is not so, becomes personal and is not
personal, — he who is able to believe this, let him believe it,
for it certainly does not admit of being thought out ; and, in
order that the measure of the task which is hereby set for
the thinking may be full, it must be added that only
in this way, and by the return of the infinite which has
become finite to itself as infinite, does the absolute accomplish
itself. 8. We should nevertheless greatly err, if on account of
the difficulties and impossibilities in which the thinking of
the absolute as impersonal is involved, we should be minded
straightway to advance to the conclusion that accordingly
the absolute must of necessity be thought of as personal.
Without doubt it lies in the consistency of the thinking which
rises from the nature of the human spirit to the absolute
Spirit, not to exclude from the absolute Spirit, as such, the
reality of the personality which is fundamentally essential
to the human spirit ; and just as certainly the man is absol
utely unable to think of the constituting and realization of
an aim, which penetrates and dominates all genesis of the
finite, as the efliux of an impersonal life, an impersonal
germinative force. But then, when the thinking turns to
the other side, it nevertheless does not attain to repose, so
long as it is just a question only of a process of thought, of
possibility and necessity of thinking ; because, despite the
necessity of thinking of the absolute, the forms under which
it is thought are derived from finite things, and therefore
it is the finite personality after the proportions of which the
absolute is to be comprehended. And that the finite per
sonality is from its very nature subject to a limitation, which

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 399
cannot thus be transferred to the absolute, is not less palpably
manifest than that, upon the withdrawal of this limitation
to the thought, the personality itself is in danger of being
lost sight of. We do not thus withdraw from the difficulties
for the thinking there to find none here; but they repeat
themselves here, only in another form, and if it is also a well-
founded belief that these latter are easier to vanquish than
the former, yet the possibility of thinking, with difficulty
brought about, still affords no certainty. Not as though the
possibility of thinking were at all irrelevant, — as surely as
we think, so surely do we experience it as a pressure to be
removed, if we are not able to think out with freedom from
contradiction the reality -which thrusts itself upon us, — but
there is need truly, in order to certainty regarding the reality,
of another ground than the possibility of thinking, and the
necessity of thinking in any particular case ; and so we
naturally find ourselves already impelled forth beyond the
purely dialectic discussion into the province of experience,
and indeed the peculiarly Christian experience, wherein also
this certainty as to the personality of the absolute has, for
the Christian, its roots. Or rather, the way in which from
the outset we became as Christians certain of the personal
God, and remained certain in opposition to the objections of
pantheism, was not this, that combating pantheism in the
dialectic domain, we had eventually taken up our ground in
the Christian experience, — that will be the case only with a
peculiar kind of conversions, — but we were certain of Him
as converted men, and inasmuch as we are this, we defend
ourselves effectually against the objections which, by alleging
the impossibility of thinking of the absolute as personal,
would stint and deprive us of that certainty of experience.
For by far the minority among Christians are so much as
conscious of the logical difficulties of their idea of God, and
if the opponents of the faith hold up to them these difficulties,
they beat them down not with logical arguments (or with
logically very inadequate arguments), but rather always in
the first place with arguments drawn from their Christian
life-experience. And he who has really succeeded in over-
cominc' the doubts likewise by the method of the dialectic
unfoldin"- of thoughts, and of acquiring for himself an uncon-

400 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
tradictory idea (Begriff) of the personal absolute, will, it is
true, experience therein a sense of satisfaction, but, in so far
as his Christian certainty rests on the true basis, not without
the consciousness that this satisfaction forms only an accidental
element in his Christian confidence respecting the personal
God. We have above indicated that in the relation of the
Creator to the created, as the Christian in consonance with
his experience must think it between the Infinite and the
finite, the fact of the personality of God is already included.
And the positive method, by which the Christian attains to
certainty regarding the personality of God, led to this in
virtue of the ethical effect which is produced in the Christian
by deed of the Absolute in the act of regeneration and con
version. Here now these two realities, which for the thinking
of the natural experience are so hard to combine, the absolute-^-
ness of the operating factor and His personality, lie not merely
side by side with each other, — not to say, do not appear at
variance, — but are entirely blended in one. Just this power
which operates in the way of deeds, and therefore with the
character of personality, is the absolute ; for the reality of
conversion would vanish without the latter, and this power
operating with the character of absoluteness is personal : for
only upon a deed of the absolute, accomplishing itself ethically
in the man, rests the truth of the conversion. That thus the
absolute as T brings about the conversion of the man, and
that the / influencing him and converting him is absolute,
this it was of which we were previously assured ; and this is
consequently the position proper to the Christian, from which
he will estimate and successfully withstand the contradiction
of pantheism. The character of that absolute / is determined
by the Christian experience, in the first instance only inasmuch
as the fact experienced is its correlative, and the human / is
brought face to face with this factively operating power as a
Thou. And as the first of these, so also will the latter be
taken as strictly and objectively as possible. Nothing would
be more radically destructive of the experience which affords
the cognition of this absolute /, nothing more utterly repugnant
to this cognition, than the supposition that only within the
domain of the subjective conception this energizing absolute
assumes the character of an /, with which the human / fancies

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 401
itself to be confronted without actually and objectively being
so. But is not the absolute / in this way brought down to
the human level ? Is it not, by reason of the affecting and
counter-affecting which takes place between it and the human
/, itself thought of as finite ? This may be in the first place
admitted, in so far as the action which the subject experiences
takes place with him, and becomes a matter of consciousness
for him, only under the conditions of human existence, — that
conformity of the divine operation with the human existence,
without which there could not be at all for man experience
of the divine, — but we know that this very power, operating
upon him and in him in accordance with the conditions of his
human nature, bore precisely the character of the absolute
action, of the deed of the absolute ; and it follows therefrom
that the same relation, which formerly resulted between the
absolute and the finite, here repeats itself with regard to the
absolute and the finite /. Just as little does the human /,
in that it is brought face to face with the divine as Thou,
constitute itself a limit and abrogation of the latter in its
absoluteness, and just as little does the divine / place itself
in connection with this process upon an equality with the
finite, as with the constitution of the finite, distinct from the
absolute, the latter was, according to Christian experience and
cognition, abolished in its absoluteness and infinitude. The
constituting of the finite was for us not the abridgment of the
absolute, as though it had a limitation in the same as different
from itself, but manifestation in act, creative manifestation
of the absolute, in connection with which the proposition,
rightly understood, retained its entire validity, that beyond
the absolute there is nothing : thus accordingly, also, the
relation between the human personality and the divine is not
so experienced and thought of by the Christian that the divine
has its bounds where the human begins, that it assumes
towards the latter the position of other toward other, and
therewith comes under the category of finiteness. But the
essence of the absolute personality characterizes itself for the
Christian precisely by this, that he is sensible thereof as of
that which calls into being finite personalities, which then in
their existence no more limit and render finite the personality
of the absolute, than the existence of the finite as constituted
2c

402 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
by the absolute abolished the infinitude of the absolute. For
it is the creation of a new / which the Christian has experi
enced within him as effect of that absolute /, so that it is
thus an impossibility for him to place the first-mentioned on
a level with the absolute /; and since this new / is conscious
of itself as that for which its human nature, its human per
sonality in general was designed, — so that thus here also the
second creation points back to the first, — that, consequently,
which is true of the new T is of necessity also true of the
human / purely and simply. The Christian experiences and
recognises the personality of God precisely as absolute / as
that without limitation opposed to the finite, as not in any
way limited by this latter, because first creating this finite
of Himself, and conditioning solely for Himself, the Absolute ;
and it is not therefore at all true as regards the Christian
experience, when it is asserted on the pantheistic side that
the divine personality is thought of by the Christian only
after the analogy of the human personality, consequently as
finite and limited. With this now our former declaration
of the actual operation of the divine /, as corresponding to
the conditions of human nature, is not invalidated, but this
parity is constituted on the ground of disparity : the absolute
personality, beyond which there is nothing existing in and by
itself, — so far is this personality from being determined,
conditioned, or bounded by anything whatever as a limit of
itself, — has not only, as we saw above, impressed upon finite
existence in general, as the creative assertion of its absolute
ness, the infinite character of the Godhead, but in particular,
also, has called into being a finite copy of its personality, with
which it now holds intercourse as with another constituted
by itself, and which holds intercourse with this absolute
personality as with another. One may call this a limit, but
it is in reality only a self-limitation, i.e. a manifestation in deed
of the limitless divine absoluteness, which as such is con
stantly present in the continual act of self-limitation ; and
one must designate this as an action and reaction between
divine and human personality, wherein the former accom
modates itself to the conditions of human existence, thus to
this extent enters with its action into finiteness ; but it is so
only in virtue of an absolute creative operation, which willed

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 403
and constituted itself in this finite as a relatively independent
other, constituted other by it, in such wise that precisely in
that self-submission to the conditions of finiteness the uncon
ditioned, only by itself conditioned, manifestation of the
absolute in deed is constantly present.
9. The argument of pantheism, that man knows nothing of
personality, because he experiences nothing of it, save in the
bounding off of the personal being from another which is not
this being itself, — the assertion that personality in its idea
includes finiteness and thus denies the absolute, has proved
itself for us to be erroneous. The Christian has experience,
and in virtue thereof knowledge, of absolute Personality, one
whose essence it is precisely to be absolute, and of the
personal absolute, which in harmony with its effect cannot in
any wise be thought of save as personal. Something very
different is the question which eventually attaches to this
result, whether or how the Christian is able now to think out,
and to form a conception in its self-existent reality, of this
personal absolute, this absolute Personality, the necessity of
thinking which is established for him by means of its causal
reality. We might leave this question unanswered, without
having reason to fear that we had not done justice to our
task ; for only the same thing applies now in the last
instance to the absolute Personality, after we have shown the
necessity of thinking it, as applies to the absolute in general,
which we are also obliged to think of, yet without being able
to think it out. Nevertheless, we will not avoid the question,
since it might appear, according to the objections of pantheism,
as though it must be asserted of the same thing which we
have recognised as necessarily to be thought of, that it is on
the testimony of the natural cognition something in itself
contradictory, impossible to think of As concerns, in the
first place, the proposition omnis determinatio est negcttio in its
application to the defining of the absolute by the predicate of
personality, the same is not only false in this application, but
false absolutely, in so far as it has reference not merely to the
notion as such, but likewise to the thing denoted by it. The
determination of the notion may equally contain a freeing from
limits as it may a limitation of the object comprehended in
the notion, as is at once evident in connection with the notion

404 .SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
of the absolute. It is a determination of the notion when
we separate the finite, temporal, space-bound from the notion
of the absolute; it involves no less a negation when one
determines the notion of substance, in the Spinozian sense, to
be quod in se est et per se concipitur : to no one, however, can
it occur to affirm that a limit is put to the absolute itself by
such determination and negation, which should abolish its
character as absolute ; even as also in connection with the
defining of the notion of finite things the bounding off in
conception may equally well attribute to them a reality as
deny this with regard to them. Nothing whatever thus is
as yet decided by the fact that the absolute is defined as
personal — so far as it is a question herein of a determination
of the notion — as regards the question whether the predicate
of personality is one repugnant to the nature of the absolute,
or congruent with the same, demanded by it, contained in it.
We are thus referred, in the second place, from that absolutely
nothing-deciding proposition to the other question, whether in
that of which the human experience and cognition becomes
sensible as personality the character of finiteness is in such
wise inherent, that a transferring of this character to the
infinite would be a contradictio in adjecto. In principle this
question has been already decided, if the matter in reality so
stands as we have above pointed out, that the Christian has
not come to the supposing of a personal God by a simple
transference of the personality, as he finds it in himself as
man, to the absolute. For the objection proceeds essentially
upon the assumption that the man, in thinking of God, endows
Him with those realities which he has perceived in himself,
thus also with personality, only with the setting aside of all
the limits which characterize those realities as finite. This
assumption, however, has proved itself erroneous : it has
originated in a method of establishing the personality of God,
which is certainly not the specifically Christian one. We
might thus acknowledge the truth of the objection, without
being in any way touched thereby in the position maintained
by us. One thing only remains over for consideration:
whether the Christian is able — after he has been assured of
the personality of God not by the transference of the human —
to conceive of this personality of the absolute, which is

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 405
beforehand certain for him as a fact, whether it can be
conceived of or not. And on making this attempt, upon the
success of which the Christian certainty does not depend, the
Christian is indeed compelled to take into account the nature
of personality as this presents itself to him experimentally in
man, but with the addition of the specifically Christian
experience. It is true, and must not be denied, that the
nature of the personality judged of from that of man cannot
be thought of without limits, without another, in opposition to
whom it fixes and comprehends itself in itself. The htiman
/, in that it wills and knows itself, and to this extent
manifests itself as / by self-consciousness and self-deter
mination, thereby bounds itself off from the not-/; or, more
accurately, by means of the limits formed by the not-/, there
enter into the consciousness of the subject the outlines of its
own being, it comprehends itself as /, as person, as this
person, in opposition to the not-/. One will not be able to
affirm that it must of necessity be persons who as not-/
condition the constituting of the individual / The self-
discriminating, self-constituting of the / accomplishes itself
in any case in relation to that which is other, though it be
another thing, which sets limits to the /; even as the child at
first thinks and speaks of itself as object, as opposed to other
objects, and then again subjectivizes these latter, — in the
former instance a lowering of itself to those objects, in the
latter a raising of the same to the level of its /. If we
invariably see the human /, within the province of our
experience, form itself in reciprocal action with other human
personalities, this arises from the fact that man actually exists
and is designed to develop ¦ himself as a social being, as a
member of the race. The first man, however, bounded off his
consciousness — the consciousness of his / as individual and,
at the same time, as general (01??) — as against the animals,
which God brought to him (Gen. ii. 19, 20); and even the
man who will not acknowledge this account as historic will
not be able to avoid thinking of the first constituting of the /
of the rising personality as accomplishing itself in a similar
manner. Nay more: the'o^Aer, in opposition to which the T
fixes and distinguishes itself, is not merely other in general
in distinction from that which belongs not to the individual

406 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
human nature, but is this nature itself, which the / conceives
of as its own, yet by this very act distinguishes from itself.
And here we come upon the most profound and essential act
of the human /-constituting, for which the afore-mentioned
only qualifies the man, — upon the true self-constituting of the
man into a personality, — that, as already constituted by
nature, he now constitutes and wills and knows himself such
as he is ; and not this alone, but that also, within certain
limits not here to be more nearly defined, he can will and
constitute himself otherwise than he recognises himself as
constituted. This self-constituting, as act of the cognition
self-consciousness, as act of the will self-determination, is the
essence of personality, as man perceives this personality in
himself Of this we must indeed say that it is always of
necessity circumscribed ; not merely inasmuch as it attains to
that self-constituting not otherwise than by reciprocal action
with others, by an incitement on the part of others con
ditioning that act of self-constituting ; but above all and in
the last instance, inasmuch as it is this definite, so-existing,
circumscribed human nature to which the act of self-con
stituting has respect, which the / wills and knows as its own,
and between which and itself the I thus at the same time
discriminates. But with this we have now also attained to
the clear knowledge that, when we ascribe personality to the
absolute, an apprehension of this personality in the sense
of human personality — consequently a setting aside of
the absoluteness by predication of the personality — could
proceed only from misconception and incapacity for dis
criminating. For this is precisely the nature of the absolute,
that it is nothing beyond itself into which it converts
itself: a being of itself, and by itself, and in itself. To
be constituted, that is the character of the finite, of the
creatural in general: self-constituting on the ground of
having been constituted, that is the character of finite
personality ; simple self-constituting, which excludes all havino-
been constituted before or beyond the self-constituting, that is
the character of the absolute, and — so we now add — likewise
the character of the absolute Personality. The self-knowin"
and self-willing (Selbstsetzung) as constituting the personality
remains here also ; the characteristic of the same as finite and

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 35. 407
pertaining to the creature vanishes. This absolute personality
cannot bound itself off from any other which is not itself, for
were there such other, a conditionedness by the same would
arise, which would exclude the absolute self- constituting. We
can only say, although the inadequacy of the expression at
once forces itself upon the mind, that, whereas the human /,
has in the not-/ the boundary as opposed to which it fixes
itself in itself, the absolute divine / constitutes itself in
opposition to the absolute non-existence, the ovk ov in the
strictest sense of the word ; and we may now add, in accord
ance with the relation between the absolute and the finite,
which we have above determined: the absolute divine /
knows and wills Himself bounded by the non-divine realities,
which owe their finite existence to the divine constituting,
and yet this boundary is not one which annuls or derogates
from the absolute self-constituting. Thus precisely that
creative activity of the absolute, of which the Christian sub
ject becomes sensible as the immediate actual proof of His
personality, this, taken in the most extensive sense of the
word, involves for God a bounding off (Abgrenzung) of His
person, as opposed to other entities and persons, which is not,
however, a limiting (Begrenzung), but an evidencing, a proof
of His absoluteness. For since these created entities and
persons exist according to the creative idea from eternity in
God, so likewise this bounding off of the personality of God
from the same is one constituted from eternity in God, not
one which has first come in for Him in or with time (zeitlich).
Only this always remains, in connection with this constituting
of limits for God and in God, the primary consideration in His
self-constituting to personality, — that His essential being, as
absolute, is unlimited, unconditioned self- constituting ; and
certain as it is that we must think in such wise of the
absolute, if we are to think of it at all, yet just as little
can we refrain from the confession that this absolute self-
constituting, thus also the absolute personality, withdraws
itself from every human conception. He for whom the
possibility of the conception is the measure of the truth
has doubtless therein a reason for calling in question the
personality of the absolute, but he will likewise be compelled
to admit that the like difficulty of conception attaches to the

408 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
thought of the absolute itself As accordingly it can every
where be proved alike, historically as from the nature of the
case, that pantheism traces back the denial of the personality
of the absolute, so far as it is a question in connection there
with of speculative motives, much less to the difficulty of
apprehending the absolute as personal, than to that which we,
too, have rendered prominent as the main point, that the
absolute, to be so in truth, must swallow up and absorb into
itself everything that is finite ; whether it be as the one
substance, which tolerates no other beyond itself, or whether it
be the one life, — mind, idea, or however else . it may be called,
— constituting all that exists, which now first entirely excludes
the dualism of man's bemg and knowing.
§ 36. The position of the Christian towards pantheism must
necessarily precede that towards the objections raised
against the Trinity of God, inasmuch as by the first-named
the real nature of the personality of God is absolutely
abolished, and therewith in principle is set aside the possi
bility of knowing God in threefold personality. In the fact,
however, that pantheism is the most radical negation of the
divine Trinity is likewise to be found the explanation of
the peculiarity, that in its opposition to the reality of the
triune God it has essentially appropriated and repeated all
the objections which the intellect, devoid of experience, and
moving in endless categories, has from the beginning
advanced against this Christian dogma; only in this case
with the application of that monistic doctrine in accordance
with which the Trinitarian being of God was changed into
a process of the absolute, in virtue of which it produces the
finite out of itself, and receives it back again into itself.
As now, for the standpoint of the Christian certainty, to
which we have already advanced, that whole determining
of the relation between the absolute and the finite has
proved itself worthless; so also it is seen, upon a com
parison of the objections to the dogma of the Trinity with
the way in which the Christian has attained to certainty

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 409
regarding the triune God, that these objections attach only
to the human forms of presentation, which as derived from
finite things the Christian himself recognises to be in
adequate. It is equally clear that he must be disconcerted
at the doctrine of the Trinity, for whom the reality of the
matter is bound down to the form of its presentation, as
that the man will not feel himself and his certainty affected
by the objections to this form of presentation, for whopi
the divine realities, to which the human presentation
seeks to give expression, have guaranteed themselves by
means of Christian experience. From this very considera
tion it becomes manifest, in the last place, why the
Christian — despite the disparity of which he is conscious
between the form and the fact — nevertheless cannot cease
in thought to arrange and classify (verarbeiten) the
experience and to express it in the form of human think
ing ; while, on the other hand, it would never enter his
mind to base on this form of expression the certainty
which dwells within him, or therewith to convince the
gainsayers. 1. The observation forces itself upon us at the first glance,
as we advance to the negation of the triune nature of God,
that the contradiction of this transcendent object of faith,
historically regarded, set in at an earlier period than the
denial of the personality of God altogether ; and that many
indeed held fast to the personality of God after they had
ceased to believe in the triune God, while no one, on the
other hand, could hold fast to the latter, in the sense of the
Christian faith, after the personal God had become lost for
him. There is need therefore of a brief justification of the
order in which the position of the Christian towards the
denial of the triune God appears in the system, as after that
of the Christian towards pantheism, in place of preceding it in
harmony with the historic rise of the contradiction. We have
already at an earlier place (comp. § 27. 3) expressed our
judgment on the point how, notwithstanding that the denial
of the Trinity is most strictly characteristic of the rationalistic

410 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
stage of the opposition to the Christian faith, yet the incom
prehensibility and logical objectionableness of the mystery,
whereat externally regarded the contradiction was enkindled,
could by no means be looked upon as the actual inner ground
of this opposition ; and we have derived therefrom the right
at that place to take into account the rationalistic opposition
only in its reference to the immanent objects of faith. If
then, even where the experience of regeneration and of the
immanent objects of faith implanted therein becomes obscured
and brought to a cessation, a certainty of the personal God is
present, although by no means always must be present (§ 35. 2
and § 32. 8), this was explained from the fact that there is
present even in the unregenerate, natural man, a moral energy
(Machtwirkung) of the personal God, — analogous to that in
the consciousness of sin on the part of the regenerate, and
becoming manifest in the conscience,-— whence this natural
certainty is derived in the last instance, and from the changing
relation of which to the human moral spontaneity the waver
ing of this certainty, as well as the possible loss of the same,
may be comprehended. But just as the natural consciousness
of sin and guilt first penetrates to its truth in the process of
regeneration, in that it is lifted to a higher level at which the
Christian consciousness alike subverts and acknowledges the
former natural consciousness, so there is now first afforded
that certainty of the personal God, in which, on the ground of
the regenerating divine exertion of power, the Christian
rejoices. We could thus take as opposite of this peculiar
Christian experience, which guarantees for us the personal
God, only that stadium of the want of experience, wherein at
the same time the natural moral reciprocal action between
God and man is in such measure relaxed and obscured, that
even the natural perception of a personal influence of God is
lost, or at least has retired behind the intellectual doubts.
For only as against this stadium of the opposition does the
peculiar Christian position become clear, not merely in itself,
but likewise in relation to the natural certainty of God, which
thereby receives its light ; even as the natural consciousness
of sin flrst comes to a complete understanding under the light
which falls thereupon from the consciousness of sin at regene
ration. The characteristic thing, however, about this Christian

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 411
assurance of God, precisely in contradistinction from the
natural, is this : that God reflects Himself in regeneration
not merely in general as personal, but inseparably therefrom,
according to the different phases of regeneration He is straight
way reflected as Trinitarian, threefold Other ; for which reason
thus there can be no word at all for the Christian of the
personal God, save in the sense of the triune God. The
personal God in whom the Christian believes, of whom
as a regenerate man he is assured, is the triune God, — that
is the real, living God, beside whom every " God," though he
be thought of as personal, is made manifest as a figment of
the brain, or at best only as a dim reflection of the living God.
It is accordingly necessary, — on account of the outward but
not real harmony between the natural certainty concerning the
personal God, which herein continues to exist, and the Chris
tian certainty which is eo ipso certainty of the triune God, —
in the assuring of the former to exclude that of the latter,
and, consequently, in the self-maintaining against the opposi
tion to the personal God to exclude that against the contra
diction given to the triune God. If therefore the Christian
certainty takes up the conflict with the objections to the
Trinitarian God at the point at which these objections are
raised, not by the yet remaining certainty of the personal
God, but by the pantheistic assumption of the impersonal
absolute, it must assuredly not be forgotten that the contra
diction proceeded already from the former certainty also,
because God makes Himself known as the triune God only
in connection with specifically Christian experience of God ;
nevertheless, it is not to be feared on that account that any
essential particulars of the objections from the earlier stadium
of the opposition may have been lost sight of at the later
stage, in proof whereof we may refer in general to the rela
tion above discussed, between the pantheistic systems and
rationalism (§ 35. 1). On the contrary, the matter so stands
that the contradiction is first met with in its full severity at
the pantheistic stage of the Antichristian development, inas
much as here the earlier antitheses have not merely been
adopted, but likewise to that degree enhanced, that any
personality whatever of God is deemed incompatible with
the nature of the absolute. And just that apparent recog-

412 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
nition which has been accorded to the Trinitarian idea of
God in the monistic system — where the process of the abso
lute, in its self-finitizing, and its withdrawal again out of the
finite state, has been thought of as Trinitarian, and this has
been designated the truth of the Church's conception — is
rather the strongest form of opposition to the truth of the
faith ; inasmuch as here there is combined with all the
customary antitheses against the threefold hypostasis of God,
as existing in and of itself, the negation of His personality at
all, and the abrogation of the specific difference between the
divine nature and the nature of the creature.
2. Even for the natural eye it may become to a certain
extent manifest that, in the case of the exception taken on
the part of the human intellect to the reality of the triune
God, the object to which the protestation has reference, and
which it endeavours to prove self-contradictory and inconceiv
able, does not straightway coincide with that which is intended
by faith, and of which faith is assured as being a reality.
For if anything whatever is to be learnt from the history of
the dogma, from the ecclesiastical conflicts regarding the same,
and from the attempts scientifically to apprehend and explain
it, it is this, — that the consciousness of the mystery, of the
incomprehensibleiiess of this divine reality was most lively
precisely where men held most resolutely to this dogma : cum
qiueritiir, says Augustine on one occasion, quid tres {sint),
magna prorsus inopia humanum. laborat eloquium ; dicticm
tamen est tres personce, non ut illud diceretur, sed ne taceretur.
The case in truth so stands, that the Christian is certain of
the reality not because he can in thought fathom and give
expression to the mystery, but just notwithstanding that he
cannot otherwise express it, despite the defectiveness of the
forms in which the matter clothes itself for his thinking ; his
life as a Christian depends upon this reality, that he experi
ences and knows, he cannot deny this reality without denying
and annulling himself, his state as a Christian, and therefore
he cannot indeed avoid embodying it in human conceptions,
thoughts, words, while in doing so he remains at the same
time conscious of the disparity between this form of appre
hension and its contents. A strange conflict, therefore, is
it in which the Christian here sees himself involved, a com-

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 413
bat in which the combatants do not come to close quarters,
wherein the Christian can only speak in forms which he is led in
many respects to surrender to the opponent, and the opponent
cannot fail of identifying these forms with the truth intended,
and supposing that his objections in assailing those had
reached this also. And just for this reason the Christian,
nevertheless, fights for these forms, because he knows not how
in his thinking to bear the " treasure " otherwise than in
these " earthen vessels " ; but in fighting for them he is
fighting for something other than what the opponent contests.
If he is vanquished, the defeat does not discomfit him, as
though the triune God the less existed for him, because he
can speak of Him only in finite contradictory forms ; and if
he has repulsed the assailant, he still does not count it a
victory, as though he had now convinced this man of the
reality of the triune God. Nothing can more sharply mark
the difference between those who seek in a -purely dialectic
v/ay to possess themselves of the object of faith, or to free
themselves therefrom, and those who by the way of Christian
experience have become conscious and certain of this object,
than that saying of Schleiermacher's, in the Appendix to his
Glaubenslehre : " If the relation is not to be thought of after
this type (namely, after the type of the generic notion, and
that of the individuals comprehended under the same), we
should not be able to think of anything definite at all in con
nection with it, and consequently also have no real gain whatever
from it." Just this is recognised by the Christian as the
irp&Tov ¦yjrevBo'i of the opponent's position, that for it the " daran
haben " (having some real gain from it) coincides with that
other, " the being able to think of something definite in connec
tion with it," as though one should say : because I am not able
to think of anything definite in connection with the term life,
therefore I have no real gain from life ; or because I do not
understand how the infinite God can take up His abode
in the little finite human heart, therefore I have no gain
from the indwelling of God in me. Eather, because we have
" something " dependent on the triune God, namely, that we
are through Him, and through Him alone, " something " to
the praise of His glory (Eph. 1 12), and in this lies the
guarantee likewise for the fact that there is '' something " in

414 SY''STEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
the certainty of the triune God, therefore we endeavour also
to form for ourselves a definite conception of this reality,
however ill or good may be our success ; ^ and to the conflict
ing propositions, in which human thinking is here involved,
we nevertheless ascribe greater truth than to their dialectic
solution, — for this we can indeed think out, but "have " nothing
dependent thereon.
3. Now, however, we shall have to bear specially in mind
that it was not the dogma of the Trinity in the forms gradually
devised for it l)y the Church to which the self-assuring of the
Christian led us, but the actual subsistence of the divine
nature, wherein the threefold personal otherhood coincided
with the supposing of each of these other as absolute, as the
absolute ; and yet the unity of that nature formed, not merely
logically, but rather on the ground of experience, the presup
position, as such based upon the unity of the experience made
in regeneration as also of the state of regeneration itself It
is at once manifest that a threefold influence has operated
upon those ecclesiastical formularies in giving them the historic
shape they now bear, namely, — besides the method of cogni
tion on the ground of Christian experience which we have
heretofore followed, — ^the comparing of passages of Scripture
which treat of the one personal God, and more in detail of
the Father, the Son, and the Spirit ; and a combining, reflect
ing activity of the understanding, which sought to comprehend
in one, intellectually and in accordance with the laws of
language, the result of the two, in order to possess this
in the form of human thinking. These two latter factors,
in the constituting of the given ecclesiastical dogma, have
hitherto remained far away from us, and therein lies
the difference between our problem and that of the Church,
a relative difference — inasmuch as our declaration, restino-
' o
solely upon the facts of belief and their transcendent causa
tion, a declaration therefore as yet quite indefinite, is not at
once the exact equivalent of the dogma formulated in the way
of ecclesiastical controversy — in such wise, indeed, that the
harmonizing of that difference, the advance from that more
indefinite apprehension to this more definite one, will be
accomplished in the measure in which the Christian subject
' This against Herrmann too ; see above, p. 37.

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 415
assures himself of the Scripture as the documentary divine-
human testimony concerning the reality of his personal
Christian experience. However closely combined the two
may be in the Christian consciousness, in particular when, as
in the case of the evangelical consciousness, it has its life in
the Scripture, yet it is of importance for the scientific appre
hension (on our own part) of the Christian certainty, and not less
also for the understanding of its historic confirmation, to keep
these two elements distinct ; as accordingly again the third,
the reflecting combination and intellectual construction, sets
in only, although then inevitably, on the ground of the real
possession conferred with these two. Eegarded in the light
of Church history it would involve a contradiction with patent
facts if we were to assume that the utterances of the Trinitarian
dogma are the simple result of the faith in its betaking itself
to the Scripture, reproducing in itself the testimony of the
Scripture on the divine nature of the Father, and the Son,
and the Spirit ; whereas, on the contrary, the formation of the
dogma was rather accomplished in such wise that the self-
utterance of that faith which had arisen under, and rests
in, the real influence of the threefold personal absolute God,
recognised itself, and proclaimed itself in the form in which
the divine nature is spoken of in Scripture, as Father, Son,
and Spirit. The one entered into reciprocal action with the
other, the one supported and conditioned the other; the
Christian subject learnt to understand the contents of his
experience by the aid of Scripture, and eagerly seized on the
testimony of the same regarding the Trinitarian God as con
gruent with his experience, and the Scripture was understood,
taken up, and interpreted, in its statements regarding the one
personal God, the Father, Son, and Spirit, in accordance with
the inwardly constraining experience, which became conscious,
and distinctly informed of its contents by contact with Scrip
ture. If, however, we look at the real priority, we shall have
to affirm without hesitation, that first of all that immediate
certainty of belief was present, which had in itself the reality
of the triune God, and for that very reason also recognised in
the Scripture the adequate expression of the same ; for in this
experience was first to be discovered the actual reason why
for the Christian subject the Scripture was valid as a testimony

416 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY,
of truth in this and the other particulars of the Christian faith;
and that is accordingly the positive reality in the proposition,
half true, half false, that the formation of the ecclesiastical
dogma has been conditioned much more by ecclesiastical
tradition than by Holy Scripture. The ecclesiastical tradition
again is itself only something composite and derived, which
as such could the less immediately determine the formation of
the dogma, inasmuch as there was need to this end of the
separation of its purer and less pure elements, consequently
the criterion must lie beyond this tradition ; and only thus
much can we say, that this ecclesiastical tradition had as one
of its most essential factors that consciousness of experience,
which then again occupied a critical position towards the
tradition as not being simply constituted by the same, whereas
in Scripture, even when it took this into consideration by way
of supplementing, it discovered the documentary testimony of
its contents. In that we resolve into its separate elements
that which in the development of the ecclesiastical dogma
lies before us as the common precipitate of different factors
we attain not only to the possibility— of which we shall
hereafter have to speak — of defending ourselves from the very
outset against assaults aimed at the truth of this object of
faith ; but we comprehend also that at which the greatest
offence has always been taken, the declaration of necessity to
salvation, which the Church in one of her oecumenical formu
laries of belief has ascribed precisely to this dogma. For
nothing of a truth can be more offensive for the' natural
thinking than to see those harsh propositions, so repugnant
to the possibility of thinking, of the Symbolum Quicunque,
combined with the assurance belonging to that confession
itself, that he who does not keep this faith whole and unde-
filed (pure) shall without doubt perish everlastingly. The
natural thinking is perfectly right in this respect also, that
no kind of acceptance of such transcendent incomprehensible
truths can decide the question of the salvation of the man,
and the Church is in the wrong as opposed to this thinking in
maintaining such formularies as an outward law, and believing
salvation to be conditioned by their acknowledgment. There
are no truths whatever clothed in the form, of human thought,
the acknowledgment of which as such could contribute anything

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 417
to the salvation of the man ; but if it is true, as has been shown
above, that the new state of regeneration, upon the entrance and
preservation of which salvation assuredly depends, is absolutely
constituted and exists by the influence of the divine factors,
as whom we have recognised the one absolute God operating
as a threefold other /, it needs not proof that no one can be
saved except he has this God, and in faith retains Him. And
in so far as the gainsaying of the statement — formulated by
the Church in accordance with the Scripture testimony of the
Father, Son, and Spirit— of this possession, inalienable for the
Christian, is a token of the non-possession of that state of life
in which one also of necessity has and retains the triune
God as a transcendent reality, to this extent it is true which
the Church teaches, that without this faith one is lost. But
of a truth we have still to distinguish between the possession
and the full knowledge of the same ; and those indistinct
conceptions, of that which men not less really possessed in
the first three centuries, than afterwards in connection with a
rightly formulated doctrine, did not in themselves detract
anything from the truth of the thing possessed.
4. However entirely we may disregard the names and
forms in which the declaration of Scripture, and the dogmatic
labour of the Church, has clothed the transcendent reality of
the triune God, we have nevertheless been assured of this,
that not only in relation to us God the absolute One is active
as threefold Other in the work of regeneration and conver
sion, but that this threefold personality (Ichheit) has its place
likewise in God and for God Himself, and that there can be
no word of a distinction of absoluteness within this threefold
/. And here now truly the contradiction at once strikes in,
which is formulated something after this fashion : If unus
Deus, then not tres personce, but either only three different
modes of manifestation of the one Godhead, or beside the
one God the other persons not essentially divine ; if, how
ever, tres personce to the Godhead, then not unus Beus, but
only una Deitas (Biedermann). Now of this the first alter
native is at once to be absolutely dismissed, — that beside
the one God the other persons, if there are such, are not
essentially divine : for if anything whatever is inalienable for
the Christian experience, as accordingly from of old this was
2d

418 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAISTY.
the main argument against every kind of Arianism, it is this,
that it is an immediate (not unmediated, unvermittelt) and
essential divine operation, which has provided for the man
freedom from guilt, and which has put him into the place of
freedom from guilt. Upon the essential absolute divinity of
these " Persons " depends nothing less than the whole reality
of the Christian state. We should thus be straightway
thrown back upon the other alternative: three different
modes of manifestation (Erscheinungsweisen) of the one God
head are supposed to be spoken of as manifestations of the
one personal God. We might for a moment make the
attempt to harmonize this expression with the experience of
the Christian. Unquestionably God " appears " (erscheint)
to the Christian as another, according as the Christian has
experience of Him as the Absolute, who shuts him up as
sinful under the law of His absolute relation to the world ;
or as the One who provides a satisfaction for this law with the
effect of deliverance from guilt; or as the One who brings
him into this new position of the man towards God, which
has in itself been constituted ; but the meaning of that
expression is, that the God who together brings about all this
is not in Himself that which He " appears " to the Christian
according to bis experience, and against this distinction the
experience of the Christian enters the most decided protest.
The operation of the Spirit, whereby the converted man has
become a new /, and exists as such, leads him to address this
Spirit and to obey Him as a Tliou, by whom he was led to
a Thou, by whom he knows himself sheltered before the
presence of the Thou, whose condemning operation he has
experienced ; and it does not so stand that by such tripli
city of the divine / only the different stadia are indicated
which are passed through by the experience and the con
sciousness of the Christian, in such wise that God first
" appears " to him as the one, then as the other, then as the
third ; but that tripersonal operation, the subjecting to the
influence of the threefold other, is one present for the
Christian, inseparable from his experience, at every point of
his state of salvation. He always experiences the personal
operation of the one only with that of the other, and with
reference to that of the other. With this the statement is

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 419
not in keeping, that God is not in Himself a threefold per
sonal One, but only appears as such according to His mode
of operation, — least of all, as we have seen, when the other
hood in God's personal action upon man assures the man at
the same time of the otherhood in reference to Himself, God.
We cannot thus take up our ground at this second alternative
either, in order thereby to escape the censured contradiction ;
and there remains nothing to us, if we will not deny the
peculiar Christian experience, but to return to that mode of
apprehension : three Persons and one God, one God and three
Persons. And just herewith we have reached the position
which is spoken of as absurd, because it " requires us to com
bine in thought an absolute contradiction." Wherein lies
the absurdity ? It may be imagined, as is ordinarily the
case, to consist in this, that unity of the Divine nature is
to be thought of in combination, with triality of the person.
Now this is assuredly not an immediate logical contradiction ;
for the combination of triality and unity would be impossible
only in the case that the triality had respect to precisely
the same thing as the unity. By the supposition, however,
not this but just the reverse is the case. In order thus to
complete the contradiction, another presupposition is assumed,
— namely this, that person and nature must be thought of
in accordance with, or after the analogy of, the relation in
which the human nature stands to the human person, after
the analogy of the generic idea, and the individuals com
prised under it. It is here accordingly easy to show that
nature and person are associated together in a way whereby
the strict assertion of the unity of the former would conflict
with that of the plurality of the latter. Every human
person is such only because he has in himself and represents
the human nature in a special manner, different from other
persons : the identity of the nature, as this is demanded in
the ecclesiastical dogma, herewith ceases, and we should be
able to think of the Trinity only as a threefold constituting
of the divine nature at the same time with the three
Persons, thus in the form of Tritheism ; or else we maintain
the unity and the unalterableness (Selbstgleichheit) of the
divine nature in the strict manner demanded, but then We
do not advance to the constituting of the three Persons : the

420 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
unity opposes the triality, as there the triality the unity.
But who bade us think of the relation of the Trinity after
the analogy of the human nature of the race and the
individual personalities comprised under it ? The specifically
Christian experience, by which we were assured of the triune
God, is innocent thereof This merely taught us to know
the one absolute divine Being in threefold personal other
hood ; and all the rest was an addition of our thinking,
which involved itself in contradictions in that which it
added of itself The contradiction was inherent in the
incongruence between the means of presentation, derived
from finite things, and the object of the same, of which we
nevertheless know that it does not come under the categories
of the finite. It may be that the Scriptural designation of
the divine Persons, particularly the name of the Father and
the Son, gave occasion for that presentation ; one may add
that it is the manner of human presentation to think of the
divine after the analogy of the human nature ; one may also
admit, finally, that this mode of thinking is not without a
certain actual warrant to be found in the fact of man being
created in the image of God : all this detracts nothing from
the truth, the evidencing of which is here primarily incumbent
on us, that the contradictions do not inhere in the realities them
selves, as these in their operation enter into the experience
of the Christian, and as existing in and by themselves reflect
themselves in him; but in the conceptions which the human
subject brings to those realities out of the sphere of the finite
in which he lives and moves. He for whom these two things
coincide, he who has no other organ for the apprehension of
the transcendent divine realities than just those finite-human
forms of thought, such an one truly must regard the contradic
tion in these as a contradiction of that itself which is com
prehended under these forms, — there remains for him no other
choice whatever. And this is the reason why the Christian
cannot here come to an understanding with the opponent : for
the latter it must appear obstinacy, " blind faith," to maintain
anything as true, the absurdity of which can yet be so
manifestly proved ; and the former has the confirmation of his
certainty precisely in the fact that he sees the opponent
floundering about in this absurdity, without the capacity for

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 421
finding the point, whereon for the Christian's consciousness of
his experience the reality of the triune God depends.
5. We have nevertheless in this reasoning proceeded upon
the assumption that the contradiction is found, as ordinarily
is the case, in the supposition of one nature and three
persons ; whereas in the above cited formulation it was
rather put thus : if one God, then not three Persons, and if
three Persons of the Godhead, then not one God. Here
doubtless the two suppositions, of the unity and of the
triality, which there related to the nature (Wesen) and the
persons, are brought into incomparably sharper collision ; since
of a truth the one God, who subsists in threefold hypostasis,
must be thought of not only as Being (Wesen), but as
Personality. To this extent then one might say : the One
personal God is the tripersonal God. If now, indeed, this
were affirmed in the sense that the one God is to be thought
of, in the first place, as personal, namely, as of one person, but
then also in addition as tripersonal, we should obtain a con
ception of which it must be said that — otherwise than before
— not the addition of the human thinking, but its contents,
the reality itself, labours under a contradiction. But we
need not further trouble ourselves with this contradiction,
since the state of the case from which it results is a fictitious
one, foreign to the Christian experience. We have above
given expression to the truth that the peculiarity of the
Christian self-assuring of God, in contradistinction not merely
from the denial of God, but also from the natural recognition
of the personal God, is this, that in regeneration God, while
becoming known and certain as personal, therewith likewise
and inseparably becomes known and certain as threefold
personal. In this sense we can repeat the proposition
without fear of contradiction: the One personal God is the
tripersonal God, i.e. He is personal in that He is tripersonal.
If we apprehended regeneration and conversion, as it is in
truth, as a single act of divine causality, we thus arrived at
the one personal God as the Factor of the same ; if we con
templated the different phases which this fact passes through
in its accomplishment, and which are permanently included
therein, we became aware that the very unity of the fact was
produced and is maintained only by the constituting on the

422 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
part of God as thrice other, as a threefold /.- it is accordingly
altogether impossible for the experience of the Christian to
think of the personality of the one God who has regenerated
and converted him, as side by side with His Trinity, as some
thing existing outside of the Trinity, coming into conflict
with the same ; but just this and nothing else is the per
sonality of the one God, that He is Trinity. Of a contradic
tion within the transcendent reality itself, of which the
Christian is assured, there cannot be a question, but only an
acknowledgment that for this unique mode of being, for this
existence of the absolute Personality as Trinity, there is
wanting to the Christian, in the first place, any kind of analogy
from earthly, finite, human existence ; that this unique
existence as person must be measured, not by something
else, but only by itself: in se est et per se concipitur. Such
impossibility of ranging under the categories and forms of
finite being, which likewise involves the inexactitude of any
designation in words, is for the Christian no ground of
uncertainty ; because that which is there incomprehensible
has in the ethical proceeding forced itself upon him as com
prehensible, nay, rather, in virtue of ethical effect, as real, a
transcendent reality for which the metaphysical contemplation
is always the posterius after the prius of the ethical experience,
so that even when the former cannot attain to the goal, the
latter remains consistent with itself and certain in itself It
is true the Christian, after he has in this way become sensible
and certain of the triune God, sees himself compelled to speak
of God in the forms of human conceptions and thoughts, for
everything which is experienced is laid hold of by the appre
hension ; it is also open to no doubt that this intellectual
conception cannot be absolutely false as compared with the
reality of that which has been experienced, for we know no
absolute contradiction between the infinite and the finite,
upon which latter, as created by God, the former impresses
itself, and the constant influence and operation of God upon
the man and in the man, which makes him a Christian,
excludes the supposition of an utter disparity between the
finite and the infinite. All this explains indeed how it comes
about that the Christian clings to a certain formulating of the
contents of his faith, because he recognises therein those

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 423
contents in their intellectual exposition ; that he contends for
the same as for the truth of his faith, and perceives in other
descriptions thereof a falsification, a heresy ; that thus the
maintenance of the true doctrine is for him a matter of con
science, because ' by the surrender of the same he would
sacrifice or prejudice the very thing in which his spiritual
possession consists, — on the other hand, we do not in so saying
at all imply that these formulations are moreover the fully
correspondent expression of the contents of tlie faith, in
relation to which the Christian would not have to remain
conscious of the earthly vessel in which he bears the heavenly
treasure. The Christian, for whom subsequently, as we shall
hereafter see, the Scripture has become sure as a God-given
and divinely accredited document of his faith, speaks of the
Trinity in the words of Scripture, with this designating the
threefold Other, and in Himself one, as Father, Son, and
Spirit : yet the fact does not remain concealed for him,
however closely he may attach himself in the denominating
of the contents of his own experience to the language afforded
him by the Scriptures, that these names bear a human character,
and that at the moment when one yields compliance to this
human side of the conception in its application to the absolute
contents, the contradiction must become manifest. The con
ception of the Father and Son supposes a dependence of the
one upon the other, as likewise a temporal succession of the
generated to the generator, supposes a relation of being
(Wesen) and person to each other, etc., which is hetero
geneous to the contents of the experience, to the being of the
Absolute as tripersonal ; and it calls for no special art to
discover this disparity and the contradictions resulting there
from. The Church strove, it is true, while it combined the
utterances of Scripture with its experience of belief, in its
formulations to set aside that finite element in the form of
the Scripture utterances, in that it bade its members apprehend
the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit as
an eternal act, to divest the conception of the semblance of
dependence and inequality, to think of the relation of the
Being to the Persons otherwise than after the standard of
human personality, and the Christian on the ground of his
experience of faith understands and approves of these more

&

424 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
explicit formulatings : for the natural thinking, however, which
regards these formulas by themselves, the contradiction is
thereby rather augmented than obviated, inasmuch as what is
yet continually expressed and represented in finite forms, is
not allowed to be that which it represents itself to be, — an
affirmation and negation at the same instant, of which the
second seems ever anew to abrogate the first, and the first
ever anew to abrogate the second.
6. If we are right in our setting forth of the state of the case
as regards the Christian certainty in presence of the objections
of the natural thinking, we shall certainly have to forego the
attempt, — which in itself also belongs not to our task, — by
any presentation whatever of the doctrine of the Trinity,
by any quest of analogies to the divine Trinity in the domain
of nature, and of human life, etc., — to render acceptable in the
eyes of natural speculation the truth which is vouched for to
us. When we thus speak we must not be misunderstood.
Nothing can be more natural to the believing consciousness,
— the consciousness of the man for whom the triune God
is by reason of his moral Christian experience a reality, —
than the thought that, just as in general God has left the
impress of His eternal, invisible Being upon the visible world
which exists in time and space, so also the traces of His
threefold hypostasis might be recognisable in the works of
creation, and in particular in those wherein personality as
finite has its place. To seek to follow up these traces, to
become absorbed with eager expectation in the endeavour to
decipher the Trinitarian inscription of God in the world, —
provided that we are on our guard in doing so against a vain
play of the imagination, — that will be a joy and, in pro
portion to his mental endowment, a necessity for the man
who in faith has become certain of the triune God, even as
it is a joy and a necessity for the man who has recognised
.the living God as the Lord of his life to discover His hand
in things great and small : but to try to derive from those
traces a proof of truth for the reality of the triune God as
against those who have not God and know not God, is not
only a bootless but likewise a perilous undertaking. For
since all those copies, even those which one may perceive
within the personal life of man, are more or less inadequate

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 425
to the original and archetype, — the threefold constituting of
the / is everywhere -wanting, — this incongruence must
at once become manifest, and the means of demonstration,
in place of leading to the desired goal, only augment the
material on which the contradiction is nourished. One may
indeed assert with confidence that a man was never brought
by such defective argumentations to the recognition of the
triune God ; and were it the case that he was, what would
that amount to for the Christian worth of his character and
his conviction ? Would there not be found to exist therein
a twofold delusion, — first, the delusion of fancying he had
thereby approached more nearly to Christianity, and then
that of regarding as Christian certainty what is not really so ?
There is no means of becoming certain of the triune God,
save in experiencing the operation of this God in regenera
tion and conversion, and for the apologetic labours of the
Christian towards those that are without there is no weapon
for winning them over to the truth of the Christian belief
regarding the triune God, save a Spirit -filled testimony,
whereby the three -one God acts upon the hearts of men to
produce a radical change. Worse, it is true, than this well-
meaning but unsuccessful apologetic -were and are those
miserable helpers who, approving of the polemic of the
natural understanding against the dogma of the Trinity,
think they must rush to the aid of the hard pressed
Christian truth in that before all things they remove out
of the way the real offence for the thinking, the truly exist
ing threefold selfhood (Ichheit) of the one God, and now
substitute for the dogma a figment of the brain, of which
they say that it is its "proper truth." If here the self-
transforming into the finite on the part of the, in itself,
impersonal absolute, by which it enters at the same time
upon the process of finite but only temporary personification,
and the return of the same accomplished out of finiteness
into itself ; if in any way the becoming manifest of the, in
itself, impersonal absolute Spirit in the finite, human, and
therefore personal spirit, which however as spirit is identical
with the former, is represented and recommended as the
truth underlying the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, a
truth now freed from its contradictions, such endeavour has

426 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
for the Christian, who is certain of his faith, and possesses a
clear view of its contents, only the sense that here the devil
of the contradiction of the intellect to the divine mystery is
to be cast out by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. For
thus not only everything is acknowledged which the natural
intellect has to object to the dogma, not only is the essence
of the dogma, the per se existent threefold selfhood (Ichheit)
of the absolute, effaced, but yet further the personality of the
absolute in itself, even as individual personality, uncon
ditionally denied, and consequently that which is ^divine and
that which is of the creature blended confusedly together.
The absolute perversion, which the Christian perceives in
these caricatures of that truth vouched for to him and of
which he is conscious, is but little diminished, for the
intellect rather aggravated, when men, retaining on philo
sophical grounds the threefold selfhood in God, represent
the second person as having passed into the world and being
meanwhile merged therein, in order that here monism may
have its due, and there the truth of the Christian faith. For
now we have no longer that [Monism] in which the natural
speculation sought its satisfaction, nor this [truth] in which the
Christian found his satisfaction, — with the triune God of the
Christian we have not here to do, but only with a caricature
of the same. If, further, one takes away the threefold self
hood, this over-against of the T and the Thou in the divine
Being, in order to substitute for the second and third person
any ideas whatever, however conceived of, particularly in the
second place the idea of the archetypal Son of Man, who as
such is likewise the Son of God ; or if the tripersonality of
God is made a threefold mode of existence of the one personal
God, in such wise, indeed, that each of these as a mode of exist
ence of the one personal God, mediately and in the, eternal
unity with the other modes of existence of the divine Being,
" may be called " personal, where then again in the mode of
existence of God as the eternal Son, there is found like as
the absolute image (Ebenbild) of the Father, so also the
archetype (Urbild) of the world and of mankind, one un
doubtedly " sets to with (others) on the work," — namely, with
those who think to help the Christian truth, whether it be in
deceitful or injudicious friendship, in that they break out the

TOE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36, 427
true centre and heart of the same and cast this as an offering
to the beast. But they will not with this satisfy the beast,
nor with this " save " the Christian truth ; or rather the former
has won, when the Christian sacrifices to it that which consti
tutes the essence of his Christian experience of the triune God,
and this (truth) is lost if it is thus helped, — for of this the
saying holds good which is written : Mine own arm had to bring
salvation unto me, and of the people there was none with me.
7. The disapproval of the ordinary apologetic procedure,
of striving by any scientific proof whatever to reduce the
opponent to silence and bring him to conviction, involves
likewise the right of dogmatics, as we ha-ve before understood
this science, to try in any manner which may be satisfactory
to the believing thinking, whether it can render the mystery
of the Trinity, as this is revealed to us, more intelligible for
the understanding. It is not at all our meaning on this
account, that such attempts ought to be absolutely discontinued,
as fruitless or of questionable tendency. For if we elsewhere
admit the right of theology to ponder and reflect on the
revealed truth of the faith, in order to produce a correspond
ing representation thereof in the thought, why should we deny
it on this point, albeit here the transcendent character of this
truth presents special difficulties for the thinking ? But
assuredly it can only then be a question of such constructions
of the Trinitarian dogma, when the problem which now pre
sents itself to us is that of systematically bringing home to
the consciousness, and representing in language, the whole
of the assured truth of the faith, in its connectedness as
this exists in itself, in its organic unity ; which then it is
true can and must be effected by the individual in any
case only as a living member of the community of faith — for
he has not the knowledge to himself alone ; but yet by him
as a relatively independent member of the same, — thus as the
common experience and common knowledge has shaped itself
in him personally. But of a truth the matter is never so, as
it has been foolishly asserted, that the Christian, the dogma
tist, supposes himself to possess in this conceptional or
speculative apprehension the " proper " truth of the faith, in
distinction from the merely experimental, uncomprehended
truth ; but the reverse is the case, and the attempt at com-

428 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
prehending is only the consequence of the actual possession
and of the confidence that what has been experienced is the
-proper truth. At all events we have not further to speak
thereof at this place, and even when we shall have after
wards advanced to the self-assuring of the Christian subject
regarding the Scripture, we have no occasion to return to
the single particulars, of which the Christian is therewith
assured : it must suffice us to show how the whole of the
revelation deposited in the Scripture enters within the
range of the Christian's certainty, which then also, as is
self-evident, enlarges itself with respect to its object. Only
to one point indeed have we been immediately directed by
the course we have pursued, and from this we do not wish to
escape, namely, how the essential being of the absolute Per
sonality, in accordance with the definitions previously dis
covered with regard to it, stands related to the threefold
self-constituting (Ichsetzung) of God as the triune One. If
we have there learnt to recognise the self-constituting, in the
twofold sense of self-consciousness and self-determining, as
the essence of personality ; in such wise, certainly, that God
is in reality that which He constitutes Himself (zu was er
sich setzt) and constitutes Himself that which He is ; so,
inasmuch as the Christian has experience of the personality of
God as threefold selfhood (Ichheit), this triplicity of the
/-constituting must for Him consist in the very same thing in
which the personality consists. The relation between human
and divine personality, which we there defined as that of
self-constituting on the ground of being-constituted as the
creature and absolute self-constituting, conforms itself thus
more precisely to the relation of simple self-constituting, of
him who knows himself constituted, to threefold self-constitut
ing of Him thereby absolutely constituting Himself. Or, in
order to make choice of the Church's expressions, God's self-
constituting to the threefold / of Father, Son, and Spirit
constitutes His personality. There is here no being-con
stituted, save upon the ground of self-constituting ; and there
is no Before and no After, but in that God constitutes Him
self as Father, He constitutes Himself therewith at the same
time as Son, and in that He constitutes Himself as Son, He
constitutes Himself precisely therewith as Father — the same

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 429
is true with regard to the Holy Ghost. It is not the case
that we could place the three in juxtaposition, like three
human persons, of whom we may remove one at pleasure, and
the others remain just what they were. But the person of
the Father is this person only inasmuch as, by the same act
of the divine self-constituting, the Son and Spirit are there
as Others of the Father ; and the person of the Son is this
person, only inasmuch as by the same act of the divine self-
constituting the Father and the Spirit are there as Others of
the Son. This, it is true, and as we have no wish to conceal,
is not an immediate declaration of the Christian experience,
whence we have derived the fact of the divine personality as
threefold hypostasis, but only a consequence of this fact, as
we believe, however, a just one ; and it is further no explana
tion of that which the Church intends by the generating of
the Father and the being-generated of the Son and the pro
ceeding of the Spirit, but only a presupposition for its right
understanding, but, as it seems to us, a necessary one. For
only with this does it become evident what is meant in
saying that the personality of God constitutes itself as Trinity
and exists as Trinity, which assuredly cannot have the mean
ing that the personality of God is resolved into three persons;
and only hereby does it become clear that those opera ad intra,
as dogmatics terms them, do not call forth a division in God,
whereby the persons, as separately existing, would mutually
limit and destroy their absoluteness, since it is on the
contrary the one act of self-constituting as Father, Son,
and Spirit, with which the one absolute God constitutes
Himself as personal. Only as starting from this pre
supposition, and within the limits traced thereby, will
dogmatics now be able to proceed so to define the par
ticular act which by the generating is ascribed to the
Father, by the being-generated to the Son, by the giviiig-
forth (Ausgehenlassen, iK-n-opeveiv) of the Spirit to both, by
the proceeding to the Spirit, that this corresponds to the
different elements which attach to the self-constituting of
God as Trinitarian and therewith as personal. God is, in
that He is the One constituting Himself, with this also
the One conditioning Himself, consequently also the One by
Himself conditioned ; and we come thus to a constitutedness.

430 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
a conditionedness in God, which, on the one hand, is per
fectly real, and yet, on the other, is not an abrogation of His
unconditioned self - constituting, but a manifestation, an
expression thereof Since, however, in conformity with our
human thinking we are always directed, in rendering per
spicuous the personal being, to the human personality,
consequently the only right way of approaching in thought
the divine reality will be this, — that one observe in con
nection with the manner of the human self-constituting, in
making an abstraction of the previously existing being-con
stituted, to what extent elements are contained therein to
which the thought of a threefold self-constituting of the
personality can affix itself All that may otherwise be
spoken of, as threefold gifts, powers, etc., in man, enters only
into the relation of those more remote analogies, which one
may also endeavour to discover in the impersonal world.
Whereas, certainly, in the human /-constituting three elements
(Momente) are distinguishable, in which the I itself recurs as
on each occasion other and yet the same, involved in its
triplicity in the one /-constituting : the / as constituting, the
/ as hereby constituted, the I as therein constituting the
identity of itself with itself I know and will myself as the
one whom I am, and do so only inasmuch as I remain
conscious to myself that I am so. The difference between
this human /-process and the divine is not to be sought
primarily in the fact that not one of these elements, in which
the human / appears, of itself alone makes up the human
personality, that rather in the combination of the same the
man presents himself as personal : for the same or some
thing similar may also be affirmed of the personal God,
that He is so only inasmuch as He constitutes Himself as
Father, Son, and Spirit, and that not one of these persons in
Himself and without the others constitutes the personality of
God. But the difference lies in this, that what there appears
as part (Moment) of the process, here itself becomes person
ality, not indeed by itself and apart from the others, but yet
in combination with the others ; that, consequently, in the
second and third place, instead of mere being-constituted, self-
constituting takes place, and to this extent, also, in the first
place a being-constituted. The Son constitutes the Father

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 431
inasmuch as He constitutes Himself as Son, and the Holy
Ghost constitutes (setzt) the Father and the Son, inasmuch as
He constitutes Himself as Holy Ghost. The act of the
absolute self- constituting of the, in this way personal, God is
just this, that, in the three components (Momente) of the
/-process, constituting and being-constituted are one, which
however so much the less compose a threefold Divine Being,
inasmuch as each individual / is so only by constituting of the
two others, and in virtue of the being-constituted by the others.
8. Only he who proceeds from those two propositions,
¦ which are immediately guaranteed bj"- the experience of the
Christian, that God is personal, and that He is so in threefold
selfhood (Ichheit), will feel himself induced or impelled, in
such or similar manner as this has been done by us, in some
measure by reflection to apprehend and set forth to himself
the Trinity of God which constitutes His personality ; and we
lay stress once more upon the declaration that in so doing we
have wished merely to deduce consequences from the facts
which precede our reasoning, consequences for the thinking,
which do not however lay claim to carry out to its ultimate
issue the process of thought which attaches to the facts of
experience. But on another side, too, it will be permitted us
to point out consequences which follow, for the understanding
of the relation between the absolute infinite God and the
finite world of the creature, from the above state of the fact.
We have, it is true, before assured ourselves -with good right,
namely, on the ground of the experience which the Christian
as such finite man makes of the relation of the absolute to
the finite, of the fact that the constituting, and thus the
existence of the finite essentially distinct from God, is not a
limitation but a manifestation of the divine absoluteness :
nevertheless, however perfectly the believing consciousness
feels itself satisfied therein, and apprehends the operation of
God in time and space as self-evident expression of His
absolute being, yet herewith the difficulty for the thinking is
not overcome, how it is possible that the infinite, transcendent
God should enter with His operation, and consequently with
His existence, into the limits of time and space, into the
limits of finiteness, without rendering Himself finite. Now,
doubtless, it is true that time and space, however we may

432 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
comprehend these conditions of the finite existence, present
for the human conception and thinking the character of
infinitude, so to say of a finite infinitude, i.e. of one in which
the constituting of the temporally and locally limited, yet at
the same time ever afresh includes an abolition of this limit ;
and in respect of this we were justified in saying earlier that
the very essence of the creation and the world of the creatures
thereby constituted consists in this, that God caused His
infinite Being, His dtBio'i Bvvap^i'i Kal OeioT7j(s, to be reflected
and impressed (abbilden) in and upon the same. Neverthe
less, this again is only a fact whereby we are impelled to
seek an inner relation between creaturely infinitude of space
and time, which attaches to the temporally and locally finite
as a condition of the same, and the essentially divine infini
tude, in connection with which, as existing in and of itself,
we have to put aside the conception of space and time — to
seek this inner relation, inasmuch as certainly that infinitude
together with the finite comprehended therein, is to be
acknowledged as constituted by this [divine] infinitude. And
it is here, as we have already indicated before, that the fact
of the personal God, constituting Himself and existing as
Trinitarian, renders an important service for our thinkino-.-
For in any case, however one may be able to apprehend the
absolute process of the constituting of personality on the part
of God, therewith a causality is supposed in God, by which
He constitutes indeed nothing other than Himself, but yet
Himself as three times other. And herewith we have of a
truth neither time nor space in God : for in that constitutino-
of the personality there is no Before and After, as that wherein
the essence of temporal succession consists, uno eodemque actu,
God constitutes Himself as Trinitarian in that He constitutes
Himself as personal ; and just as little is there here a juxta
position of more than one, as that wherein the essence of
existence in space expresses itself, — Himself, the absolute, and
no other, God constitutes as thrice other. While, however
we have not therewith in God time and space as the forms of
existence conditioning the being of God and attaching to the
same, we yet acquire therewith the ground of the possibility
in God, to constitute time and space as the infinite forms of
existence of the temporally and locally finite with this finite

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 433
and for this finite, to constitute the same as something which
could be constituted by Him, because not absolutely contra
dictory to His being. That causality in God, which in the
eternal act of constituting personality is conditioned by no
Before and After, is the ground of possibility, the eternal type
for that causality of God, operating in an ectypal manner,
with which is constituted the infinite time and in it the finite
temporal succession of that which takes place; and that
otherhood in God, which in the eternal act of constituting
personality is no existing of others side by side, but only an
otherhood of Him who is, in His being. One, this is yet at
the same time the ground of possibility, the type existing
beyond space, from which, without contradiction in God, it is
comprehensible that He has constituted the infinite space as
foundation-form of the finite existence in space, an existence
as other and side by side (nebeneinander). That, however,
which is true of the creative constituting, now at once entitles
us to proceed further, and to extend the same to the relation
between the absolute infinite God and the world existing in
time and space. Time and space form for God no limit
which should prevent God's existing and operating in time
and space ; and His immanence in the world, which can be
thought of only as immanence in time and space, is not a
laying aside of His timeless and spaceless being. Himself
constantly spaceless, God makes Himself discoverable in
space, in the works of His hand ; and Himself timeless, in the
eternal actus purus of His self-constituting. He makes His
action recognisable in the temporal succession of finite events.
It is no imagination of believers when they perceive the
presence of Him, the eternal transcendent God, in a temporal
event, within an existence limited by space, when they say,
this or there is the hand of God, when in the character and
in the result of a temporal act they recognise the operation
of the absolute God. The world is, as this entity bounded
by time and space, in God, as its eternal and non-space-bound
foundation of life and existence, and just on this account also
God as the eternal and omnipresent One is in the world,
everywhere in the temporal and space-bound being, operates
in the same in accordance with the forms of the finite being,
and makes Himself manifest, in that He does this, for the
2 E

434 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
human experience and the human consciousness as the
eternal, infinite, and absolute God.
9. The apprehension of the personality of God as Trini
tarian, in the sense heretofore developed, frees us finally from
a contradiction which might attach to the genesis of the
Christian experience and of the Christian consciousness of the
reality of the triune God, — namely, that the action of the
transcendent factors, of which the Christian in the constituent
acts (Momente) of regeneration becomes sensible as being other,
involves a dividedness of the same inter se, therewith a
rending of the one divine Being, consequently an impossi
bility. If in the experience of the Christian there was given
not only the impress of the efficacious bearing of the threefold
Factor upon him, with a view to the producing of his state of
salvation, but at the same time the impress of the reciprocal
relation of the threefold Other to Himself, in such wise that
it might seem as though in connection with this experience
God is as the Other on one occasion absolutely only suhject,
on another occasion only object, of the manifestation (Bethati
gung), yet this seemingly natural inference is from the very
first opposed by the unity of the experience which, without
prejudice to the further resolving into its parts, traced back
the whole regenerating operation to the one personal God,
which plainly would not be possible without unity of the
action and without unity of the Agent, notwithstanding the
otherhood of the subject. That, however, which we have
here already been able to derive from the close consideration
of the material of the experience, proves to be the immediate
result of that which we have recognised with regard to the
co-existence, with each other and in each other, of the three
persons of the one personal God. For if it is true that there
is no /-constituting in God, which is not therewith a con
stituting of the personal otherhood, that thus the threefold /-
constituting of God is only the, imo eodemque actu accomplished,
constituting of Himself as threefold other, so can neither  in
connection with the influence of God upon the world and
upon man — the operation of the one personal factor be
thought of in isolation from the other, nor can we assume, in
connection with the self-distinguishing of the threefold / in
God with a view to this influence, or in consequence fo the

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 36. 435
same — as, e.g., in the case of the expiation provided by God
to Himself — such isolation of the divine Persons from each
other, in consequence whereof this person were in the one
instance only subject, in the other only object, of the divine
action. The shutting up under the ban of guilt in conse
quence of sin, the deliverance from the ban and thrall of guilt
by the providing of a place of freedom from guilt, the trans
posing of the individual man into this new relation of grace,
all this is such operation of the in threefold otherhood personal
God, that in the same measure in which God can constitute
Himself this individual person only at the same time with
the others, so now this operation which is in the first instance
proper to the one /, must be comprehended, though not on
that account without distinction, as likewise operation of the
others. We acquire to this extent an inner relation of the
Christian certainty to the dogmatic proposition opera ad extra,
sunt indivisa, and recognise therefrom that this proposition
has not merely a theoretical, but an especially practical
significance. The Christian has a direct interest therein,
because it corresponds to the character of his experience,
tha^ he can say without any limitation : It is the one
living, personal God to whom, on account of my sin, I know
myself held amenable for guilt and punishment ; it is the
same one God who in free compassion has provided and
opened to rt\e; lost and condemned man as I am, a place of
grace ; and it is again the one and the same God who has
laid hold of me by His gracious and almighty hand and trans
formed me into a new man. And yet it is and remains the
case, that according to the same testimony of the Christian
experience all these are not merely different modes of opera
tion of this one, but operations of a diverse subjecthood of
this one, and that the Christian consciousness does not endure
the blending of this personal otherhood and its resolving into
abstract unity. Hence, accordingly, dogmatics to that former
proposition added the second : servato ordine et discrimine
personarum. While however the necessity for holding both
proportionately in our thinking is already based on that
practical compulsion, in the actuality experienced before any
conceivableness, and the same necessity further resulted
theoretically from the nature of the threefold /-constituting of

436 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY'.
the one personal God, the difficulty thus of attaining to in our
thinking, or at least more nearly approaching in thought, this
which is necessarily to be thought, lies merely in the fact
that every natural similitude under which we would contem
plate it, every category of the understanding under which we
would classify it, proves inadequate, and we must therefore
dismiss it. If we would say, e.g., that the community of action
resembles that of three human persons who, in accordance
with a resolution formed between them, carry out by means
of one of their number, according to the will and at the man
date of the others, that which they had resolved on, the
thought would be misleading ; because the relation of three
human persons to each other, and consequently also the
manner of their acting on each other, does not correspond to
the threefold subjecthood constituting the personality of God,
and the form, herefrom following, of its activity, proper to
the one subject, and consequently also to the two others. Or
if we would assume that the action of the Son is perhaps per
accidens the action of the Father also, and the operation of the
Spirit per accidens also the operation of the Father and the
Son, this is a transference of the category of substance and
accident, derived from earthly things, which is absolutely
inapplicable to the divine Being, and that both as regards
the personality and as regards the attributes, and therefore
once more leads astray. It will therefore be nothing surpris
ing to the Christian if the opponents, while they attempt in
this or similar way to think out the separate, and yet
combined, activity of the three Persons, come upon difficulties
and impossibilities for the thinking, and on that account
deny the reality of the object itself : the question is, whether
anything does not exist because it cannot be classified without
contradiction under finite categories, and as to the answer to
be given to this question the Christian cannot be in doubt.
There exists for God's Being and Person no other standard
than that of Himself, and the peculiarity (Eigenartigkeit) of
that which belongs to God, which is to satisfy the postulate
made not by something else, but by itself, the Christian
experiences elsewhere also, where it is not a question as here
of transcendent, purely divine objects.

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 437
37. The contradictions also, against which the Christian
has to defend himself in connection with his faith in the
God-man and in the expiatory work of the same, are of
such nature that, while they were, it is true, already raised in
the critique of rationalism, they have yet been developed
to full intensity only by pantheism. To the pantheistic
negation of the personal God on the ground of the proposi
tion that the absolute, infinite, is not capable of enduring
beside it the finite, as different in nature from itself,
corresponds the negation of the God-man on the ground of
the proposition, which is only the reverse side of the
former, that the finite — here the finite man — is not capable
of receiving into himself the infinite God in personal union.
And if, nevertheless, on the pantheistic side a God-manhood
is spoken of, that is not a reapproximating to the Christian
dogma, but, in accordance with the presuppositions regard
ing God and man, the most resolute renunciation of the
same. The same thing holds good of the work of the
God-man, of His expiatory death and the terminating of
that death conditioned by the character of the expiatory
suffering ; inasmuch as here the objections of the intellect
to the necessity for the expiation, to the quality and effect
of the same, in particular to the vicarious satisfaction, are
not merely recognised as legitimate in their own place, but
are further augmented in this respect, that in consequence
of the negation of the divine personality, and by reason of
the misconception of the nature of expiation, which is of
necessity brought about by such negation, even the possi
bility disappears of comprehending the expiation as that
which it is, as accordingly also by those presuppositions
the root is cut through, of that which for the Christian
follows, from the nature of the expiation made, in regard
to the life of the God-man arising again out of death. The
knowledge of the Christian, in what way and by what
factors he had been brought into the state of salvation,
renders possible to him alike to comprehend the hostile

438 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
oppositions in their historic rise and in their inner neces
sity, as also to hold fast the position peculiar to himself, in
the first place as actual, but then also as intellectually free
from contradiction and legitimated, even though the solution
of the difficulties here presented to the understanding will,
from its nature, be only of gradual attainment.
1. The matter so stands, in this particular also, with the
certainty of the Christian, that he defends himself against the
objections of the opponents by this means, that from the
standpoint of his Christian cognition he understands and
appraises them in their principles. Thus there is at once
combined here, too, with the understanding of the relative
necessity of the contradiction, the understanding of its nullity.
For the contradiction proceeds from a point which the Christian
in virtue of his experience recognises as erroneously assumed,
and yet by reason of lack of experience as assumed with
relative necessity, and by means of this cognition the Christian
judgment, with its appreciation of the contradiction, soon
reaches for itself the goal, while from the same cause the
conflict with the opponents does not as a rule come to a final
issue. We say thus that the essence of the contradiction
with which we have to do, as respects the fact of the God-man
and the salvation brought about for the Christian in Him,
first comes to its full and principial expression in pantheism,
however much precisely the dogma of the God-manhood, the
doctrine of the vicarious satisfaction, etc., comes to the fore
front in the controversies between rationalism and the
doctrine of the Church. Even to the present day the argu
ment against the fact of the God-manhood which appeals most
to the commonsense of men is this, that God cannot become
man, man cannot become God, without, on the one hand, the
nature of God ; on the other, the nature of man being thereby
annihilated. This argument appeared where the reality of the
God-man was not itself denied — as in the Eeformed theology
— in the form that, while the personal union of God and the
man was indeed admitted, the real communication of the
divine properties to the man as a finite creature was
so much the more distinctly denied. If omnipotence, it
was said, if omniscience, if omnipresence, if Infinitude,

TIIE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 439
etc., indicate the Divine prerogatives, by which God
is distinguished from all created things, however high
they may stand, then nothing of that which is peculiar and
essential to God, no attribute and no operation of God, can
really befit, or in any way be communicated to, a being which
is not God (^ausser Gott), a created existence, such as is surely
the humanity of Christ. It was now certainly a strange thing,
that in connection with this kind of argumentation they could
still speak at all of a God-man, of personal union of God and
man in Christ, since the compatibility of the finite and the
infinite, admitted on this innermost point, carried with it also
the same in the peripherical domain of the idioms, and denied
in the latter province at once becomes impossible in the
former. The principle of negation was there, but as yet
restrained and held in check by the faith. It was now the
simplest conclusion to be drawn on the part of the world, by
which, without addition of the restraining power of the
Christian experience of faith, one does not comprehend why it
was not drawn before and from the very beginning, — the
conclusion to which Socinianism advanced, — that entirely
opposite properties, as those of the divine and the human
nature, could not be predicated of one and the same subject ;
that for the same reason for which the communication of
idiomata is impossible, likewise the uniting of God and man
in one person, consequently the God-man Himself, is an
impossibility. That principle of negation, however, which
advanced so gradually to the consuming of the reality of the
faith, was expressed in his own way by the pantheist Spinoza,
with whose supposition of the relation between the infinite
and the finite we have already been occupied above, — that
the affirmation, God has assumed human nature, is not less
absurd than if one should assert that the circle has assumed
the nature of the square."- It is thus the simple logical con
tradiction which is called forth by the dogma of the God-
manhood, and this contradiction is based upon the fact that
the logical acceptation of the infinite and the finite excludes
the coalescing of the two into one subject. We are thus led
back to that point on which fell the decision of the question
as to the personal God in His distinction of being from the
1 Epist. xxi. ; cf. Opera Posthuma, p. 450.

440 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
world, and we shall comprehend therefrom that only in the
mouth of pantheism, and indeed primarily of the Spinozistic,
that objection of the natural understanding attains to its full
strength and significance. For now that objection no longer
stands there as an isolated one, but is only the necessary
result of the fundamental apprehension of the relation between
the infinite and the finite, from which the pantheistic system
as a whole resulted. If the infinite does not at all tolerate
beside it another substance beyond the one which itself is, but
merely modifies, transforms itself, or however the change may
be expressed, into the form of other and finite existence ; if
in virtue of the same notion of absolute it likewise rejects
that comprehension in one and control over itself in which
the personal life consists, — then certainly the supposition of a
personal union in the sense of the Christian faith is an
absurdity which yields to none in its magnitude, and the
unio personalis appears as a multiplication of the contradiction
which forbids in general the uniting of the Absolute with an
individual finite being. Every kind of maintenance of the
irreconcilable opposition between the infinite and the finite
at the former standpoint of theism, and in particular also of
deism and rationalism, is characterized in contrast therewith
as a half measure and uncompleted deduction ; because the
substantial diversity of God and world, at which the matter is
here still left at rest, excludes the absolute relation of opposi
tion between the finite, in which as created the infinite must
in some way be present, and the infinite itself, and therewith
in the last resort cuts through the nerve of the proof For if
it is not repugnant to the nature of God to be in some way
immanent in the creaturely being, different in nature from
Himself, neither can it be held impossible, in every respect and
from the outset, that God allies Himself with human nature in
personal unity, — it cannot be already impossible for the reason
that infinite z-nd finite of necessity exclude each other. Or would
the whole fulness of the finite be, for the reason that it is
such fulness, for God the Infinite less finite, less in contra
diction with His indwelling, than the human nature in this its
individuality, of which it is rather, in the first place, a question
whether it was not created precisely for this indwelling of
God ? Thus that argument, handed down from antiquity, of

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 441
the finitum non est capax infiniti, by which men assailed, first,
the communication of the properties of the divine to the
human nature {communicatio idiomatum) in the God-man, then
the reality of the God-man Himself, first proves to correspond
— when it is apprehended and applied as the other side of the
infinitum non est capax finiti — to the proposition that the
notion of the infinite excludes '"the existence of a finite
beyond itself. We do not imply by this that then the
thinking has come to rest, — for how the absolute itself
transforms itself into the finite, and whether in so doing
the old contradiction does not nevertheless recur, this no
master has yet taught us ; and the immediate consequence
will certainly be the denial of the absolute itself, i.e. strict
materialism, — but this we say, that first at that height of
pantheism has the former contradiction assumed that shape to
which in the earlier stages it was only striving to attain.
2. The opposition, thus, so far as it proceeds from the
abstract notion of the infinite and the finite, is explained by
the fact that men have possessed themselves of the absolute
as over against the finite in a purely logical way, in place of
knowing and understanding it experimentally in its living,
personal energy as exerted upon the finite and in particular
in the finite man. Divorced from experience, and indeed from
the Christian experience, men have given free rein to the
ima.gination in framing the notions, have drawn the logical
deductions which follow from the notion of the infinite, this
negation of the finite, and have thence very naturally obtained
the result, that there can be no more question of a co-existence
of the same, in accordance with which both may be alike pre
dicated of one and the same subject. For us, who know that
that whole foundation on which the logical contradiction rests
is false, who know that the absolute personal God by no
means stands merely in the relation of opposition to the world
which He has created, the contradiction has therewith — in the
first place at least in this form — lost its significance, however
little we have therewith already gained a positive understand
ing of the manner in which the infinite and the finite co-exist
in the God-man. And if now on the side of pantheism there
is retained, despite that strict negation at the outset, the idea
and the realization of the God-manhood as a philosophic truth.

442 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
with which at one time it was sought to support the false
theologic conception, we recognise therein not an approxima
tion to the Christian dogma, in comparison with the simple
denial of rationalism, but, on the contrary, an enhanced
removal and renunciation, which however at the same time
exposes to the light the untenable character of the first nega
tive position of pantheism. For the supposition of the God-
manhood is here rendered possible only by the overthrow of
all the foundations on which the dogma till then was raised,
and which rationalism too, after its manner, still recognised ;
and as this, looking at the thing itself, is not any re-introduc
tion whatever of the truth previously assailed, but only a
caricaturing of the same, so, regarded from a scientific point of
view, it cannot be designated a singular act that one should
solve the difficulty of comprehending together in thought
entities of opposed nature by effacing the opposition and
making of the duplicity a unity. Moreover, the solution
itself is only an apparent one. If before, with a view to the
denial of an ecclesiastical dogma, the infinite had been falsely
opposed to the finite, this is now amended by a false identifi
cation, i.e. the assailants pass from one extreme to another ;
and since now the absolute and the finite, both as real, ought
surely to be held fast in connection therewith, the solution is
only a feigned one. The declaration that the absolute exists
in the finite as an other of itself, that in virtue of a self-
modification, a process, etc., it finitizes itself, that therefore the
God-manhood realizes itself as human spirit-life, which, because
only arising by reason of the self-manifestation (Selbstbethati-
gung) of the absolute spirit in the natural human / is in its
very self a divine-human one, — these and similar declarations
are both absolute negations of the reality believed by the
Christian, and, on the purely scientific side, no solutions;
because the self-constituting of the absolute into the finite,
the immanence of the former in the latter, and what coheres
therewith, are no more than merely postulates, with which the
philosophic problem is not advanced a hair's breadth. Or
shall it really pass for a solution of this problem, — the imman
ence of the infinite in the finite, — when it is, with Strauss,
declared to be the key to the whole of Christology, that as
subject of the predicates which the Church assigns to Christ,

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 443
there be substituted, in place of an individual, an idea, in the
sense of a real notion pertaining to the race, Gattungsbegriff?
Since, however, according to Strauss, the Gattungsbegriff of
mankind does not exist as such, but only as it is dispersed
among the individuals comprehended under it, we have in this
way by no means got beyond the opposition between the
infinite and the finite. For either the idea of the race is the
infinite itself, and then it is asked just how this infinite can
" disperse " itself in the finite, in finite individuals; or it is
not the infinite itself, but the idea of a finite organism of man
kind, which has in some way been constituted, produced by
the absolute, called into existence in and with the individuals,
and then it is just a question again, how in this -way a God-
manhood can be possible and result. Everywhere this whole
perversion of the Church's dogma, which boasts itself as being
the means for its rectification, springs from a rudely empiric
reflection on the relation of the individual to the race, inas
much as the individual, as indeed is evident from the nature
of the case, always only in conjunction with all the other
members of the race brings the idea of the same to manifesta
tion. The argument has a meaning only where the fact of the
God-man in the ecclesiastical signification of the word has
been surrendered, and in place thereof has been substituted a
primary man, a human exemplar, such as the God-man is
termed, inasmuch as in this individual the idea of man is said
to have been absolutely realized. Then, accordingly, this
" Son of man " as such is already the " Son of God," and there
is no longer any need of a reconciliation of the opposites, — for
the simple reason that they no longer exist. Divine and
human nature, so it is here said, stand to each other in the
relation of unity, the eternal Son of God is the archetype of
man, and it was therefore His destination from eternity as Son
of man to become flesh, in which character now, representing
the idea of man, he is at the same time Son of God. We
leave herein, for the time being, untouched that which corre
sponds to the Christian's consciousness of experience, and
therefore do not concern ourselves with that objection either
which is raised on the side of strict pantheism against this
apprehension of the God-manhood : what is alone incumbent
on us is to furnish the proof that here a layer of the pantheistic

444 SY'STEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
parasite plant fixes with pernicious effect upon the healthful
plant of Christian cognition, and that with the delusive
semblance of thereby advancing the latter in its development.
Pantheism begins everywhere where the difference of essence
is abolished between the absolute personal God and the world,
in the midst of which man knows himself placed. As cer
tainly as the man, who as converted becomes sensible of his
everlasting destination, knows himself constituted for God, a
finite vessel for the reception of an infinite fulness of God, so
certainly does he in this action place himself on the side of
the world created by God, the world in so far different from
Him in nature, and every involving of his being in the being
of God is for him a perversion of both at the same time. A
distinction cannot be drawn between one who is for instance
the " Son of man " KaT i^o^nv, who only as such is the Son
of God, and the children of men who nevertheless have
remained within the limit of the created being; for what they
are in themselves according to their idea, and what they ought
to be, comes indeed to a manifestation, and must come to a
manifestation, in the eternal head and archetype of mankind,
and any kind of difference of nature between Him and the
humanity comprehended under Him would destroy His
character of " Son of man." The thought thus that the Son
of man as such is the Son of God, and that therewith the
enigma of the God-manhood is solved, is an essentially
pantheistic thought ; and it is only a relative difference
whether one affirm this, or assert that the human personal /
is the realization of the absolute mind on a finite basis of
existence, or that the in itself impersonal absolute attains to
consciousness of itself in man, or that the totality of all finite
existence whatever is the self-outworking of the absolute.
Neither the Christian nor the natural thinking, however, is
helped by this assertion : to the former it means nothing more
and nothing less than the destruction of the basis of experi
ence on which it rests ; for the latter it is a half-measure,
which neither takes away nor constitutes the dualism of exist
ence and of cognition, a first step without the courage to take
the second one, necessary on account of the first.
3. Not essentially otherwise is the state of matters where,
as lately Eitschl, one allows Christ as the Kingly Prophet to

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 445
be the perfect revelation of God, admits Him to be equal
with God by reason of the motive of love completely filling
Him,^ as this realizes itself in the kingdom of God. Such
" estimation of Christ as God," inasmuch as He has made the
divine aim of being (Selbstzweck) His own, wears a very
peculiar complexion. "It is a question," says H. Schultz,^
" in Christ not of two substances or natures, but of a twofold
manner of regarding His person. If along with us we
oppose Him to God, thus as subject of piety and morality,
then He is nothing but man, pure, perfect man, — the perfect
devout One, the bearer of the highest moral appointment. If
together with God we oppose Him to us, thus as Eevealer of
the divine aims, the love and faithfulness of God, and the
world-dominating sway which is directed to the Church, then
He is for us nothing but God, is for us that personality
in which God becomes manifest for us and to which our
religious relation towards God is attached." Notably that
apprehension of the divine Sonship (Gottessohnschaft) of
Christ which obtains with Paul and John, whence subse
quently the Church's Christology proceeded, has been termed
on the part of these theologians a heathen leaven, a doctrine
resting upon a heathen-metaphysical basis. The matter will,
of a truth, unless I am greatly mistaken, stand somewhat
differently from this. Nothing can more completely dissipate
and destroy the essence of the Christian notion of God, as
the Church has in harmony with Scripture maintained it from
the beginning, than the assumption that a man, albeit he is
such an one as has made the divine aim of the world his
own, should be "estimated as God." Certainly, if Jesus was
such pious man. He has not gone so far, as has likewise
been asserted of Him, as to " estimate Himself as God."
But just He would have contended to the uttermost against
His being " estimated " by His followers " as God " ; for here
there confronts us that mingling of the divine and the
creaturely, against which the Christian consciousness will
ever re-act, and the purer it is the more will it do so. Here
we have that pantheistic, heathen-metaphysical leaven before
spoken of, which met us already in the identification of the
' iii. 358 sqq. 2 Anfiage.
2 Die Lehre von der Gottheit Chri.'iti, p. 536.

446 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
Son of God and the Son of man as such, only again in
another variety. And for this very reason it was in place
to attach this newest perversion of Christology to those
above mentioned, to which we have assigned them their place
within the antitheses of the faith,
4, Herewith we have spoken of those oppositions to the
reality of the God-man, which are either comprehended in
pantheism as their culminating point, or while yet standing
in relation to it, seemingly opposed only to the dogmatic
apprehension of the object of faith and not this object itself,
claim to be judged of in accordance with the principles of
the first-named. We have with, design here primarily and
principally set them forth in the form in which they corre
spond to the objections with which we have hitherto had to
do with regard to the nature (Wesen) and personality of
God, in order that the inquirer may become sensible of the
close connection between the two, and thereby, at the same
time, the connectedness of the Christian antitheses against
both . may become apparent. It is of importance for the
Christian, not only in a theoretical, but also in a practical
respect, to know and recognise that the negation of the
Christian contents of faith is at bottom one, though it may,
I admit, subjectively resolve itself — in proportion as the
individual surrenders himself to it — into different stages and
degrees ; just as the affirmation of the faith and of the truth
of the faith is only one, however great the difference and
the multiplicity in which this unity concretely and subjec
tively manifests itself But it is characteristic for the nature
of the contradiction and for the Christian certainty at the
same time, that the former sets in at the point where for the
latter there is present not the actual ground of its declara
tion, but deductions from the same. For no Christian comes
to the supposition of the reality of the God-man from any
theory, which may have disclosed to him the relation of the
infinite to the finite, the possibility or the necessity of an
immanence of the former in the latter, and in particular of
the incarnation of God ; but after it has become certain for
him that his personal Christian state is the effect of an
expiation procured by God on the part of man, that the
radii of this effect proceed back to a human subject in whom

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37, 447
God wrought the expiation, then truly the necessity of the
supposition becomes manifest to him, that the infinite God
cannot stand in the relation of absolute opposition towards
man, — for this relation, existing in itself, of the merely
relative state of opposition is the precondition of that reality
experienced by the Christian. The fact is thus at once
brought out which it is our main business to make clear, that
the Christian certainty must trace back that most essential
objection to the reality of the God-man to the lack of that
experience which has guaranteed to the Christian, along with
the actual state, and in virtue of this primarily, the possi
bility of a relation between the infinite and the finite, such
as constitutes this actual state. And just because the
Christian, if he understands himself, cannot at all do other
wise than appraise the contradiction in this way, the same at
once loses its significance and power for perplexing him ; only
if he would enter with the opponents on the way of that
speculation which starts from the abstract oppositions of the
infinite and the finite, would first think out in a meta
physical manner the possibility of an immanence of the one
in the other, would make the supposition of the actual state
dependent on the accomplishment of this labour of thought,
then the contradiction would shake his conviction, in propor
tion as he failed of bringing out in logical clearness the
real existence in each other of the infinite and a finite being
different in nature from Him. Nay, even presupposing the
success of the last-named attempt, — which in any case would
only be a defective success, — there would be afforded by this
possibility of thinking something quite different from that
which forms for the Christian the essence and the ground of
his peculiar conviction. What has to be established is con
fessedly the fact, which it is not possible to derive from that
pure possibility of thinking and that freedom from self-con
tradiction. Something more is yet necessary. Though haply
it might be said that the reality of the absolute and the
finite, and with this the reciprocal indwelling (das Inein-
andersein) of both preceded, even for the natural thinking, as
a fact, and that therein that process of thought assuring itself
as to the possibility and the manner of the indwelling has
its support ; yet precisely that co-existence of absolute and

448 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
finite in one, as the Christian faith recognises it in the God-
man, is something so special, peculiar, remote from the
natural experience, that between that general fact and this
special one there lies open an hiatus which cannot be filled
up. The attempt has been made, it is true, to fill up this
hiatus, and that not merely on the side of the Antichristian
speculation, which therewith seeks to destroy the dogma in its
foundations, but also on the side of the Christian specula
tion, which therewith aims at rendering service to the
Christian. With the former we have here nothing to do,
after that as which we have above learned to estimate it in its
relation to the faith ; on the other hand, it is the second
which lays claim to deduce for us the necessity of the incar
nation of God, of the real God-manhood, from the nature of
God and of man, and with regard to which it there
fore becomes a question whether we are to accept the
aid therewith profferred. We must decline this help, and
that not merely in the form in which the substructure of this
demonstration has above exhibited itself to us, as doctrine of
the oneness in itself of the Son of God and Son of man,
but in every shape whatever, that it may assume. Where the
being (Wesen) of man is as to its idea confounded in
pantheistic manner with the being of God, one does not by
any means reach the goal by such cutting through of the
knot alone : from that oneness in itself the necessity still
does not follow that in other than a general manner, a manner
accomplishing itself by the reciprocal complementing of the
individuals, — that by means of a singlg individual exhausting
the idea, corresponding to its fulness, — the God-manhood
realizes itself To this end there is need of the subsidiary
proposition, which itself, however, is destitute of foundation,
that the general realization is in itself no realization, or one
in itself imperfect, or one to be attained to by means of the
individual realization accomplished. From the idea in itself
one will be able to prove nothing of all this, — one has need
to this end first of a glance at the reality, at the degenera
tion of the race, on account whereof the end contemplated in
the race would not be attained without the perfect Thean-
thropic head. But then we must first take up again into
the idea this evil reality, on which the necessity to be proved

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 449
rests in the last resort, must suppose it as necessary in the
being and will of God ; in order that from thence, and not
from a fact to be ascribed merely to human freedom, thus
" accidental " fact, the necessity for the individual God-man
who makes good that defect may result. Now the degenera
tion of the human being as an actual one is not compre
hended from the standpoint of that metaphysical pre
supposition so long as the latter still remains within theism,
inasmuch as the same would in an unendurable manner place
not only the necessity of its rise in God's will, but also itself,
this degeneration, in God's being, would intertwine it with the
same ; it is comprehensible only from the presupposition of
decided pantheism, at which, however, the character of the
degeneration as sin in the Christian sense would at once
cease, would transform itself into a defect, a negativity, which
is then simply terminated by the .general development itself,
so that now the necessity for an individual God-man for the
removal of that defect absolutely no longer follows. Never
theless this is but the one way, infected with pantheism and
leading back to it, in which the vain endeavour to prove the
necessity, and therewith the reality, of the God-man displays
itself The other, which does not share the fundamentally
destructive presupposition of the oneness in itself of the Son
of man and Son of God, seems at first sight to enter into a
friendly relation towards the Christian faith, inasmuch as it
derives that -v\'hich the latter maintains as a fact from a
necessity existing in God Himself And yet it rests upon a
serious misunderstanding when such like attempts are made
by Christians, we have rather in truth to rank these attempts
among the oppositions with which the Christian certainty has
to contend. This mode takes its departure from the same
state of the fact which has hitherto disclosed itself to us, even
though one may apparently have derived the same only from
the objective attestation, in the Scripture. On the ground of
this state of fact one then advances further by reflection on
the character of God, whose action is never and nowhere an
accidental one, to the conclusion that the fact of the God-man,
historically realized by the action of God, involves a necessity
in God, not, it is true, one forced upon Him from without,
but yet one resulting from His nature ,(Wesen), — a necessity
2 F

450 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
constituted by Himself, and not in contradiction with His
freedom, — to accomplish that historically existing realization
of the God-man. This reflection, however, is so far from
resting upon the Christian experience which guarantees to us
the state of fact, that it rather contradicts the same, and
proves on a closer examination to be a foreign addition to the
Christian knowledge. Of the necessity of an expiatory
redemption of man, consequently of a necessity of the incarna
tion of God by which that was accomplished, there was not
only nothing to be observed in the process of regeneration
and conversion, but, on the contrary, it was one part of the
experience founded on this process that for God a necessitating
to such deed exists neither on account of man, whom He has
created for Himself, nor on His own account, as though some
thing would otherwise be wanting to Him. It is the inborn
quality of free grace by wbich the Christian lives, or, accord
ing to our expression, of the relation of freedom from guilt
into which he is placed by conversion, that he cannot think
of the same as a necessary constituting without destroying
the character of that which he has experienced it to be. And
we have likewise seen from the nature of the expiation, as it
is in itself in relation to God, and as it shapes itself as a
liberating expiation, setting free from the arrest of guilt, why
the matter thus stands, and why for God a necessity of expia
tion in the latter sense does not exist. Now it is true the
thinking comes in subsequently and deduces for us from a
notion of God, that for Him an " accidental " character of His
doing does not exist, that He has not the choice between doing
and not doing, that all that is possible is for Him actual, and
all that is constituted by Him as actual is the necessary
expression of His unchanging being, that His aim of being
(Selbstzweck) coincides with the aim of the world, and that
therefore " on higher grounds " He must interest himself on
behalf of the fallen world ; these theories, however, are
derived, not from the Christian experience, but from reflec
tions of such or such nature having their roots in the natural
thinking. In place thus of correcting the Christian experi
ence from this point, we shall rather have, on the ground of
the latter, and of the cognition included therein, to reform
and redress that absolute and self-framed notion ; the same

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 451
freedom in God, in virtue of which He has constituted the
world of the finite, not as limit, but as effect, of His absolute
ness, and without, on his part, having any need of it, the
same freedom is it also which the Christian adores in the
work of redemption, this second creation ; God has, without
being constrained thereto by His divine nature, also not in
virtue of a compulsion of love, but for His own sake, that is
to say, in virtue of a free exercise of His absoluteness, realized
the God-manhood with a view to the redeeming expiation.
The free manifestation of His absoluteness, in virtue of which
He to His glory constitutes as actual that which, according to
the relation between Him and the free finite creature, is the
manifestation of His compassionating love ; even as in the
creation His love displayed itself in the fact that He created
this, not on account of the created being, but on account of
Himself and for Himself.
5. In opposition thus alike to those who, on account of
their theories of absolute and finite, represent the God-manhood
in virtue of which we as Christians live, as impossible, as a
logical contradiction, as also to those who will demonstrate it
to us in some way as for God a necessary constituting, we hold
fast that it is a necessarily existing reality only inasmuch as
our Christian state is the actual result of its existence and of
its operation. Wherein lies first the opposite of a necessity
in itself existing, since the Christian knows nothing of a com
pulsion of God to place him' again in the normal relation of
the being-for-God ; then, however, likewise the affirming of a
possibility in itself existing, which is the presupposition of
the reality experienced by him. This possibility alone it is
which the Christian has to maintain in the conflict with the con
tradictions here encountering us, not merely in opposition to a
logical or physical necessity, but also in opposition to an ethical
necessity ; ^ and while for the simple faith of the Christian
and the certainty given to it, the question stands not other
wise than in the case of reahty of every kind, which is for
him self-evidently possible because it is real, the theological
cognition is free to attempt, in the interest of scientific self-
assuring, by thinking to grasp those conditions of being, on
the part of God as on the part of man, in virtue of which
1 Corner, Glaubenslehre, i. 643.

452 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
that possibility exists. This is in truth after all just the
same method which the science occupying itself with the
finite, physical realities pursues ; that these existing realities
must of necessity exist, that is not what it asks about and
what it affirms ; but because they are existent, therefore it
asks about the conditions of their possibility, and recognises
these as necessary upon the presupposition of the reality. So
far now as it is here a question of the ultimate ground of that
possibility, the relation of the uncreated absolute to the created
finite, we have already determined the same : we found in the
self-constituting of God as the triune God the spaceless and
timeless type for the constituting of space and time as the
objective forms of finite space-bound and time-bound exist
ence, and saw that this temporal space-bound world forms no
limit for the immanence of God in the same, because its
existence forms no limit for His absoluteness. On the con
trary, just as the latter is a manifestation of His absoluteness,
so also the immanence of God, His immanent presence and
energy in the world, in accordance with the forms which by
His free and absolute will He has given to the existence and
rise of the world, will be a manifestation of His absoluteness.
Here, however, it is no longer a question of that general
relation, but one as to the possibility of the God-man ; that
is to say, of an immanence of God in man, in virtue of which
the subject of the two coincides. The former is only the
remoter presupposition for the latter. Now we shall certainly
have to recall to mind that the way of our self-assuring led
merely to the fact of the God-man, i.e. to the point at which
the expiatory salvation-bringing operation manifested itself as
at once divine and human, and therefore vouched for a human
subject of God, or a divine subject of man, as the subject of
His operation. The work must be the act of a human sub
ject in whom the totality of mankind accomplished it, and
this act at the same time and inseparably an act of God the
absolute One, namely, as other in relation to the God placing
under the arrest of guilt and punishment, and as other in
relation to that God who transforms us into members of that
new humanity. Although now the reality of the God-man
as thus determined in accordance with the Christian's experi
ence does not absolutely correspond with the Church's dogma.

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 453
against which the contradictions are directed, notably for this
reason, that here nothing more precise is affirmed with regard
to the How of the subject-unity; yet it becomes at once
evident that the substance of the dogma is therewith given,
and that the contradictions having primary application to the
dogma are in their essence repelled with the rejection of
those which concern the state of experience of the Christian.
Of the reality and of the character of a subject which is
human subject of God and divine subject of man in one, the
Christian has indeed no immediate experience, since the unity
of this subject of two different natures (Wesenheiten) leaves
its impress upon him only in virtue of the operation of this
subject. This notwithstanding, the Christian has an experience
not merely of the fact that divine nature as absolute enters
effectually into his human finite nature, and that in conversion
the divine factor co-operates in unity, and yet without mingling,
with the human factor thereby constituted, but also of the
manner in which divine subject as such unites, not it is true
in one subject with his human. Christian /, but yet enters
into the most intimate relation and reciprocal operation, — a
condition of things which excludes absolute disparity between
the divine subject and the human. While the assuring our
selves of the personal God by reason of His ethically trans
forming act was there, where we contemplated this as a unity,
one of the transcendent but immanently operating God, there
was manifested, on the resolving of that act into its parts in
the latter place where we were speaking of the Spirit, an
immanence of the operating absolute God, in virtue of which
we had to speak of a subject of God immanent in us, manifest
ing Himself to us. In us, in our /, we perceive another /, as
supporting personal foundation of life for the same, certainly
therev/ith at the same time distinguishing Himself from us,
but standing in closest reciprocal relation with us, with our /
embracing and upholding it, constantly exerting an influence
upon it, so intimately associated with it that the Christian is
constrained to trace back that which he does and accomplishes
as a Christian at the same time to this divine subject along
with his own subject, the human finite one. Here is an
inter-penetration of person and person, an inter-existence of
subject and subject together with the reciprocal operations.

454 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY',
which, entirely foreign to the natural experience, for the
Christian , approximately sets forth and renders clear the
possibility of divine and human subject-unity ; in such wise
that that which happens to him as a man of God is a copy,
although no perfectly corresponding copy, of that which is
embraced in the divine-human life. The error of supposing
that the Holy Ghost, who as other is distinguished from
(gegeniibersteht) the Father and the Son, is absolutely only
the Spirit of communion of believers, has about it this truth
to which it attaches, that the essentially divine, not human.
Spirit personally indwells in the congregation of believers,
personally immanent in the persons, an image of the incarna
tion of the God - man in the humanity of God. We can
accordingly say that, just as it is in general the peculiarity of
the creaturely-finite, in its finiteness and despite the same, to
reflect the dtBic; ^etor-jj? of the infinite, so in particular man
as the centre and crown of the creation, and indeed in virtue
of his personality by reason whereof he is this, is adapted to
be a finite vessel for infinite contents. The self-constituting
by which he is distinguished from all the physical creation as
that which simply follows out the law of its constitutedness,
is .upon creaturely ground and soil an act corresponding to the
divine self-constituting, which for this reason by no means
stands in a relation of absolute opposition to the human
self-constituting. For neither should we otherwise have had
any right to determine the nature of the divine personality
by the standard of the human personality, albeit to the
exclusion of that which makes it a creaturely personality,
and to acknowledge a relation of man to God, and conversely
a relation of Thou and Thou, to exist, which without a
certain equalizing, notwithstanding all inequality, would not
be possible. Not merely to be that which he is and which
he has been made, but to make himself that which he
becomes, — therein consists the equality of the human with
the divine self-constituting; and if man, in virtue of his
creative activity, puts forth successive series of acts, above
which he stands as the / constantly abiding itself, we have
therein an image of the eternal absolute /, who creatively
working causes the temporal form of the created things, as
of something successively rising and forming, to become

THE OPPOSnioN OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 455
real, without Himself becoming subject to the category of
time. 6. Nevertheless, in order to demonstrate from our Christian
experience the possibility in question, we shall have to add
yet something further. For if we have now also observed one
side of the human /-constituting, in connection with which
the human person, despite its finiteness, stands in ectypal
(abbildliche) equality with the divine, absolute person; yet
now, as it seems, the other side, which we had meanwhile left
out of consideration, presents itself to us as a hindrance, this
namely, that the finite self - constituting rests upon being-
constituted, and only upon that. For how can we think of
the union of subject and subject as possible, when that which
belongs to the essence of the one must be excluded in order to
indicate the essence of the other ? The difficulty which here
discloses itself could be solved only in the case that, as on the
human side the state of being-constituted was no hindrance
to the accomplishing in this state, and> on the ground of
the same, of a self-constituting which as such resembles the
divine, so on the divine side the absolute self-constituting is
not in every respect a hindrance to having a constitutedness in
Himself which is not indeed a human, finite one, but is not
any more on that account none at all. Now we have in
reality seen, and should be compelled to hold to this even if
we leave out of consideration the interest of cognition here
weighing with us, that the unity of the divine and the
human subject did not become manifest for the Christian
at any point whatever in the threefold selfhood (Ichheit)
constituting the personality of God, but only there where the
absolute God as other satisfies Himself as other. The
fact of accomplished expiation in relation to that God who
demanded it unconditionally for the maintenance of His
absoluteness — and indeed its accomplishment in such form
that therewith mankind was presented before this God as a
reconciled humanity — led us of necessity to the perception
that the second / in God, and this alone, neither the first nor
the third, stands in that unity of subject with man in virtue
of which the life-bringing expiation was realized and exists
for us. And just herewith we come to a constitutedness of
the absolute /, whose unity with the human / is the pre-

456 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY
supposition of our reconciliation, — to a constitutedness of
the same which does not cease to be this because it is
a self - constitutedness (Durch-sich-selbst-Gesetztheit) of the
absolute, and in so far the opposite of human, creaturely
constitutedness. God is not only the self - conditioning
one, but likewise the one absolutely by Himself con
ditioned. The self-constituting of the Father — we use here
the ecclesiastical expressions only for the sake of brevity of
designation — is eo ipso constituting of the Son, consequently
constitutedness of the Son, whose self-constituting then again
is of a truth constituting of the Father, consequently con
stitutedness of the same. We find thus constitutedness,
conditionedness of the absolute God, on the ground of His
self-constituting, in the first place in the case of the Son,
although not in Him alone : we find it in the place at which
our Christian experience located the subject - unity of that
factor who effects the salvation-bringing expiation. We have
here, accordingly, that which we were above forced to demand
from the standpoint of the human personality, in order that
the opposition as absolute and contradictory should cease, in
the interest of the possibility of the personal union, — self-
constituting on the ground of constitutedness on the part of
the absolute personal God, which now presents itself to us
as divine type of the human, finite self - constituting on the
ground of constitutedness. Here is to be sought the truth
which lies before us as a caricature in the sophistical pro
position of the unity per se of the Son of God and the Son of
man, the truth to which, moreover,the Scripture bears testimony,
that the Son is the eternal archetype of man, that He is in an
archetypal, eternal manner that which man is in an ectypal,
finite manner. If then we recall to mind, likewise, that with
that self-constituting in God, whose consequence is the con
stitutedness in Him, there is given also the divine original-
type of time and space as the forms of tiie creaturely-finite
existence, — as such, forms not unconditionally opposed to
God, — if in addition we consider that in man, as spiritual-
corporeal /, the world of creation is comprehended as in its
point of culmination ; there arises further for us a dim
apprehension of the fact that the Son is not merely the eternal
archetype of man, but also the eternal archetype of the

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 457
world ; inasmuch as He could not be the former without like
wise being the latter, and the world in a creaturely, finite way
reflects the inflnite glory and fulness of God_, as corresponding
copy of the eternal and essential reflecting of the Father in
the Son, on the ground of the divine self - constituting to a
constitutedness of the other of Himself That is the truth to
which, as a caricature, there has been attached the delusive
proposition — which is itself only an amplification, only a
necessary complementing of the last mentioned one— that in
some way the world - being (Weltwesen) coincides with the
being (Wesen) of the Son, the Son with the surrender of His
personality has been merged in the world, in order by virtue
of the world-process to emerge from it again, or the hke ; and
it will be only another expression for the truth herewith
declared, when the Scripture says that by the Son, or in the
Son, the world, the universe was made. Yet we have with
this already transcended the limits of our immediate task,
which had respect to the possibility of that whereof the
believer is conscious as real, and which is vouched for to him
as such, and have passed to intimations which lead over into
the dogmatic domain, and which should simply point out the
relations which ensue between the propositions found by us,
and the propositions of dogmatics reposing in the first place
upon the Scripture revelation. We turn from them, since we
must leave it to dogmatics, on the one hand, further to pursue
this connection between the Second Person of the Trinity and
the human, as also cosmical, image of the same, on the
other hand, to indicate in particular the form in which the
so-disposed consciousness-of-eternity of the Logos blends in
unity with the so-disposed consciousness of temporality and
constitutedness of man, — for here points come into considera
tion, which we neither have touched nor, from the nature of
the case, can touch. We turn from them to dispose of
questions which lie immediately on the path by which we
have hitherto advanced, the questions how then the Spirit,
whose essential characteristic is in the first place constituted
ness, and the Father, whose essential characteristic is not
indeed in the first place constitutedness, but yet is also con
stitutedness, stand to man as creaturely personality. It is
then according to our presuppositions in truth comprehensible

458 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
that precisely the Third Person of the Holy Trinity enters, and
can enter, into such close relationship to man, as we have
above developed ,this from the consciousness of experience,
whereas the First Person, not per se, but yet undoubtedly by
the mediation of the Third and the Second Person, manifests
Himself to the human subject, and becomes immanent in him.
The possibihty of the immanence of the Holy Ghost rests not
merely upon the fact that the Holy Spirit works for the
Christian and in the interest of regeneration from thence,
where in the person of the God-man the freedom from guilt
has been realized and at the same time the closest conceivable
union of divine and human nature is present ; but it rests
likewise and primarily upon the position which the Spirit as
the third / - constituting of the personal God occupies within
the divine Trias. For just as it must lie in the nature of the
Son in Himself that the subject-union with human nature,
without which the procuring of a salvation-bringing expiation
would not have been effected, was possible to Him as this
divine /; so must it also have lain in the nature of the
Spirit in Himself that a personal entrance, a personal im
manence of the same in the depths of the human nature,
without which the producing of a new / in the man would
not be accomplished, was competent to Him precisely as this
divine /. In that we amplify the position of the Spirit to
the divine Expiator, — from whom and unto whom His
immanent operation takes place, so that as such this operation
first becomes matter of consciousness to the Christian, — to the
adequate position of the same with respect to Him in whom
we have recognised the divine archetype of man, and with
him at the same time of the universe, we acquire a reference
to that portion of revelation according to which it is the
Spirit by whose operation, immanent in the world and in
man, was realized from the beginning that ectypal character of
man and the world, thus that relation between the Son and
the world which in itself existed. On the other hand, there
could fall from hence a light upon that fact, which is likewise
primarily guaranteed to the Christian from the Scripture, that
the person of the Father is for him at first a distant, inacces
sible one, and then again one truly accessible, brought near,
nay even immanent. There, where the person of God is

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 459
absolute self-constituting, and in so far as it is this, in the
person of the Father, the man — to speak figuratively — who
revolves round this eternal sun, feels himself, so to say, in
the aphelion : he cannot thus, without intervention of the
other persons, approach the same ; here, however, where the
infinite, eternal God in Himself, by virtue of the constituted
ness accomplished in Himself, turns archetypally towards the
finite, he stands in the perihelion, and that not first as a
regenerate man, but from the outset, as regards his nature in
itself as created, finite. If it is then the case, as we have
previously endeavoured to show, that the three divine Is
constitute the personality of God by the constituting of each
other One in the constituting or being constituted of each
One, we may conclude therefrom, not merely in general that
there is no separate operation of the One in relation to the
finite world and to man, — the operation of the One is, because
His, therefore at the same time and in this an operation of the
Others, — but also in particular, that in the Son and in the
Spirit the Father is present, with them and through them
near to the world and to man, enters into them, is immanent
in them. The Father is as constituted present in the Son and
in the Spirit, not alone on the ground of the expiatory work,
whereby the Son rendered it possible to Him, and He rendered
it possible to Himself, again to turn graciously to man and
the world ; but apart therefrom, looking at the relation of the
world to God in itself, as it forms the presupposition for that
which takes place in the work of redemption and on ground
of that work.
7. We hold firmly to the position, whence we took our
start, that the Christian seeks in some way to apprehend in
thought the possibility of the God-man, not haply from hence
as the first stage of cognition to advance to the necessity or
reality of the incarnation of God as a second, dependent on the
attainment of the first ; but because in the reality of which he
is assured the possibility is comprised, and the cognition of the
actual of itself impels further to apprehend the conditions of
the possibility which as actual it presupposes. Therefrom
then follows at once that, without detriment to the Christian
certainty as respects the reality of the God-man, we can
calmly concede that in any case we have only made an

460 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
attempt at apprehending the conditions of that possibility, an
attempt which, so far as the same in the character of concept
can be detached from the facts of experience, might be
surrendered without our being on that account shaken in our
conviction of the reality of the God - man, — similariy as, for
instance, Luther, after the presence of the body and blood of
Christ in the elements of the Supper had become certain for
him as a fact, set about to indicate the " way " in which this
takes place, and yet in doing so remained conscious that God
has of a truth " more ways," and stands as little in need of our
understanding of the possibility for the realizing of a given
fact, as we stand in need thereof for becoming assured of it.
We will not allow the opportunity to pass for, here too,
protesting against the supposition that because we go forth in
our thoughts, with a view to understanding, beyond that
which is given actually and for tiie faith, we therefore make
our faith dependent on the thinking, and must refer our faith
to that which is thus thought as the true reality. Not
otherwise does it stand then with regard to that point to
which we can now first advance after we have investigated
the conditions of possibility for the God-manhood in general,
the question as to the quality (Beschaffenheit) of the human
subject, in whom the expiation to be procured by humanity
has been realized. To the negation of pantheism, according
to which the subject to whom the God - manhood pertains
is riot any individual subject, but the general subject of
mankind, — really existing in the individuals comprised under
the same, — we could not oppose the thesis that the idea of
man in itself demands the realization of itself in the person
of an ideal man, who, arising archetypally in the course of the
general development, comprehends in himself that which lies
there ectypally and individually dispersed in the mass of
individuals. And yet in connection with the positive estab
lishing of the Christian certainty we are driven back upon the
fact of the second Adam, in whom we, humanity, have
rendered that which it was incumbent upon us to render,
while we are conscious that, neither as this individual nor as
this natural mankind, we could render it, or could have
rendered it. We spoke thus of the necessity of a second
Adam in the sense, and in this alone, that the reality of the

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 461
expiation, of which the benefit accrues to us, presupposes the
reality of this second Adam as essential factor ; expressly con
tested the opinion, however, that the providing of this expia
tion appears in accordance with the Christian's consciousness
of experience as in any way necessary in itself, namely, as
looking at the relation between God and the free creature in
itself. We are thus in the like case as before, in that the fact
which we know as real imposes on us the task of bringing out
the conditions of possibility for its existence which lie in the
fact itself, and even this not as though the measure in which
the Christian could or ought to hold fast the object of faith
as real, were dependent on the measure of the discovery and
making good of these conditions. In connection herewith the
question is for us quite a remote one, whether in some way,
apart from the entrance and the existence of sin, the appear
ing of the second Adam was possible or necessary, perhaps
with reference to the perfection to be attained by the human
race, the realization of which is (sei) conditioned by the exist
ence of an archetypal head, comprehending under himself the
race. Of this we know nothing whatever within the sphere
of experience in which our cognition has its roots, either on
the side of the possibility or on the side of the necessity ; and
whether one may know anything outside of the same does not
concern us. That is therefore also a point for us lying apart,
which is wont to be discussed in connection with the question
of the archetypal man, how one has to conceive, or can con
ceive, that in him all capacities and perfections, not only those
of an ethical and religious nature, but likewise the artistic,
intellectual, social, and other capacities and perfections are
existent and combined. The first and essential point of view,
under which the question as to the second Adam presents
itself to us, is that of the expiation procured : it is a question
of the possibility and quality of a human subject comprehend
ing the race under himself and in himself, who, entering into
the continuity of the sinful race, became in virtue of the
expiation wrought by him the primogenitor of a race in him
reconciled to God. Whatever the nature of this beginner of
a race, at first potentially constituted in him, and then actually
brouo-ht into existence, may have been in other respects, we
ask what his nature must have been in order to effect the

462 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
salvation-bringing expiation, — all the rest is accidental and
can be derived for us only by way of deduction from the
first-named. 8. If one now treats the question as to the possibility of
the second Adam, as archetypal primogenitor of a new human
race, abstractly, namely, apart from the particular quality of
this race, and consequently also from the particular relation
to the primogenitor, there lies in the natural experience no
valid ground whatever for contesting this possibility. Even if
the natural experience pronounces the descent of the human
race from a single pair, thus from one primogenitor, to be with
its means undemonstrable, it will yet, specially as matters at
present stand, with a little sobriety, not venture to maintain
the absolute impossibility of such descent. What is demon
strable within the natural course of history, that greater divi
sions of the human family, races, peoples, tribes have sprung
from one primogenitor, why should this be counted impossible
for the thinking with regard to the human race as a whole
which consists of those main divisions ? since in order to
attain that possibility we have only to rise from the more
special to the universal. The ground on which the latter,
which is only the logical consequence of the former, has been
rejected lies not in the inconceivableness of the matter in
itself, but in the empirical difference of the races, which
seemed to exclude the common descent from one primogenitor.
And if in the primogenitor, so far as we can naturally pursue
his relation to the race produced from him, the physical and
intellectual character of this race is represented, so that the
idea of the whole, dispersed in the individuals of the race, is
personally incorporated in him, the primogenitor, as in one
individual subject; there lies in this way no logical difficulty
whatever to our supposing the same thing in the relation
between the primogenitor of the human race, thought of as
possible, and this race in its totality, in such wise that in the
former, as the archetype, there had been, from the first, indi
vidually realized the idea of man, elsewhere realized only in
individual traits, partially and with limitation. If, however,
even in accordance with this abstract conception of the natural
speculation, we cannot admit the right to deny the possibility
of a personal individual archetype as a real embodiment of the

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 463
idea scattered in the individual copies; yet we must not
overlook the fact that in our case, in connection with the ques
tion as to the second Adam, matters wear altogether another
complexion, inasmuch as, while here indeed a beginner is sup
posed, whose likeness those who are sprung from him bear,
each in his own limited measure, it is a beginner within the
general development long ago set in motion, a beginner in a
domain which as such is inaccessible to the natural specula
tion. We cannot feel surprise, if we are unable to compel
that assent for this concrete case. Though it may be that
even in the course of the natural development of the race
individuals emerge above the surface, in whom the otherwise
isolated peculiarities of families, tribes, peoples blend as in
some measure personal individual incorporations of the total
idea, — personalities who consequently as archetypes operate
again with intellectual productiveness and give forth from
themselves a human community of individual copies, — yet
this analogue, for we will not dispute that it is such, does not
reach to the idea of the second Adam, inasmuch as the total
race of mankind, that, too, which in point of time lies in the
past, appears spiritually and potentially represented in Him,
as the other Father of the race, whereas this mode of appre
hending the matter, alike in the case of the first Adam as in
that of the incorporating of the national spirit at any time,
can be thought of only with reference to the future. We are
thus, in order to think of that possibility, directed beyond the
circumference of the natural experience to the province of the
spiritual experience, the very same experience according to
which we know ourselves as spiritually descended from a
Primogenitor whose character and nature has been ectypally
produced in us in regeneration. Here, too, there thus meets
us again that which forms the fundamental thought of our
system, that the Christian truth in virtue of its peculiar
character will be measured by its own standard, however little
there may be wanting nearer or more remote analogies of the
same in the natural domain. We do not reach our goal, but
find ourselves from the first upon a false track, if we attempt
to underprop the foundation attested by itself and dependent
on itself. For the Christian thus, who has personally experi
enced the spiritual creative powers to which he traces back

464 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CEETAINTY.
his existence as a new /, who, comprehending himself with
those like him regenerate, has become sensible of the spiritual
family connectedness of this totality, whereof he is as an
individual only a solitary ray of the idea which is realized by
the whole, — for the Christian, I say, the possibility of an
archetypal primogenitor, from whom these individually dis
persed rays proceed, is just as logically conceivable, as in the
former case, within the natural continuity, for the natural
reflection the possibility of a common physical primogenitor.
And here then, also, the universality of the relation, according
to which this second Adam comes to stand spiritually towards
the whole race of men just as the first Adam stands physically
towards the same, forms no difficulty for the thinking, nay,
rather is a requirement which follows for the Christian from
the character of the new life which has come into existence
for him as an individual. The freedom from guilt, constituted
in itself and for him, is either none or else it is one in itself
constituted for the whole human race : for the guilt, under
the penalty of which he existed at the time of the regenera
tion, rested upon him as a member of that whole with which
he interlocked in general unity ; and if then the fact of the
freedom from guilt had, to any point or part of the same
totality, no corresponding reference, if it could not be said of
this point or part, that the freedom from guilt is in itself one
for him, then in virtue of the general continuity of the parts
the retro-action therefrom must affect this individual also, who
nevertheless as regenerate knows himself absolutely freed from
the guilt, — the fact of the latter is a proof that it would be an
error to suppose the second Adam to stand only in immediate
relation with the generation immediately succeeding Him in
time, that we have in the Christian experience peculiar to us
no reason against, but, on the contrary, one in favour of, think
ing of the archetypal second Adam likewise as really Adam,
as a Beginner of a new human race, analogous to the first
Adam. Doubtless this thought is one which carries us over
into the domain of miracle ; for we cannot conceive of His
realization without therewith going out of the natural order
and succession of things, even apart from the fact that for the
Christian the subject of the second Adam coincides with the
subject of the absolute God, by reason of the oneness of opera-

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 465
tion : without our wishing, however, here to anticipate the
subsequent investigation with regard to miracle, which will
find its place in connection with the self-assuring regarding
the transeunt objects of faith, the reason may be already
mentioned, why the Christian does not find therein, as the
natural speculation is constrained to do, a hindrance to think
ing of the archetypal second Adam as possible. The fact in
question lies neither more nor less outside of the line of
natural events than the entrance of that state of life in which
the Christian recognises his new essence, peculiar to himself, —
and by this he judges of the possibility of the first-named, to
doubt which would be nothing else than to doubt of the possi
bility of this his state of life after he had experienced it as
actual. The entrance of a man into the Adamic human race,
in its totality involved in guilt, for the constituting of a
Deutero- Adamic race, which has in that man, in virtue of his
expiatory work, been delivered from guilt, is possible in the
same measure in which my egress, that of the individual
Christian, out of the continuity of the guilt-laden human race
into a place of freedom from guilt has been possible ; and of
this place of freedom I have become conscious as open for me
simply as a man, as a member of the race, consequently as
open for this race itself So we thus come back to the
recognition that all questions as to this possibility receive their
answer for the Christian from the reality of that which has
been experienced by him ; because he has not to meditate on
abstract possibilities, but on those which have proved them
selves to him as possible by their realization, and the fact has
become manifest, which we emphasized above, that the arche
typal character of the second Adam is by him in the first
instance recognised and made to consist in that wherein the
expiation of guilt, in the sense previously discussed, has its
essence. The perfection of this last Adam in other respects is
only a supposition consequentially forcing itself upon the
Christian, in this sense, however, beyond doubt a necessary
supposition ; inasmuch as he has recognised the constituting of
his Christian state as a redintegration of his human nature,
accordingly can look upon the Primogenitor, to whom he traces
this back, only as true man, one absolutely realizing the idea
of man.
2g

466 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
9. The second Adam, this results from what we have here
tofore said, cannot be the new beginner of a new race, in Him
free from guilt, in such wise that He had entered absolutely
from without into the Proto-Adamic race, — for the expiation
is required of this human race, which on account of its guilt
requires it ; and unless it were in some way rendered by this
race, it could never redound to its benefit. The possibility
thus of thinking of the second Adam is, more precisely
defined, the possibility of conceiving of an actual member of
the natural mankind, essentially one with the race, who was
qualified, by means of an operation lying beyond the forces
of the natural humanity, to accomplish the expiation in such
wise that His expiating subject was potentially the subject of
that mankind which stood in need of expiation, this nature
thus knows itself in Him, the second Adam, reconciled to God,
equally as in the first Adam it recognises itself by reason of
sin implicated in the debt of guilt to God. In saying this,
however, we have already passed over from the person of this
archetypal Man to the work of the same, and the question as
to the possibility of the person has been transposed for us
into the question as to the possibility of the work, in the
accomplishment of which just this person makes himself known.
If we thus now give prominence to the opposition raised
against the expiatory work of the God-man, in order to mark
out the position of the Christian over against this opposition,
we do not in reality proceed beyond the question as to the
second Adam, nay of the God-man who is the second Adam,
but only approach it at another point, and continue mindful
of the fact that, as on the side of the opponents the objection
to the person of the Mediator of salvation, believed in by the
Church, has corresponding to it the objection to the expiatory
work of Christ, so for the Christian the establishing of the
one indissolubly coheres with the establishing of the other.
The Christian would have no interest whatever in speaking of
a second Adam, of a God-man who is the second Adam,
unless He had proved Himself to him, by that which He has
done for him, to be the second Adam, the God-man : the
reality of the latter is for him the reality of the former, and
he reaches the goal in thinking out the possibility of the
person only at the same time with that of the work. Here

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 467
too, however fiercely the Socinian and rationalistic opposition
has raged, precisely on this point, and has made the vicarious
satisfaction the butt of its polemics, we may regard pantheism
as that antagonist in whose propositions the former objections
accumulate and culminate. True it might appear at first
sight a re-approach to the Christian idea of the reconciliation
of man with God, when the pantheistic doctrine insists, — in
opposition to the "vulgar conception" that the individual
human subject can by his own act bring about this reconcilia
tion, — that that which is thus constituted likewise exists per
se : that this perseitas (An-sich-sein) is the presupposition of
the constituting : that God has manifested Himself as recon
ciled to the world. The point of the vicarious satisfaction of
Christ, we are told (comp. Biedermann), is the expression of
the truth, that not the subjective self-consciousness of the
human / itself is the causa efflciens of the atonement, but the
absoluteness of the Spirit, therein disclosing itself to the sub
jective appropriation. This in-itself-constitutedness of the
reconciliation, however, which outwardly regarded might seem
to bear a resemblance to the in-itself-existing freedom from
guilt of which the Christian as regenerate is conscious, in
cludes within itself all the negations which the natural
intellect advances against the fact of the atoning God-man in
whom the reconciliation of the race has been effected, and
destroys in addition what of truth regarding the consciousness
of sin and the need of reconcilation still exists in the natural
/. It holds fast before all things to that proposition, first
emphasized by Socinianism and then not less by rationalism,
that, with a view to the forgiveness of human sin, God needs
not first an expiation of the same ; and the further enhancing
comes in, that for God there is need of no purpose of forgive
ness, of which moreover as being impersonal He is incapable,
but that the reconciliation is a no less necessary part in the
process being played out between the absolute and the finite
mind than is the alienation. It still looks upon a vicarious
intervention of the one for the others as incompatible with
the notion of sin, as also of the personal moral rendering;
only that, besides this, in the pantheistic doctrine evil is
reo-arded as the finite nature in its existence-for-itself against
God, and therewith — since the process of self-finitizing is

468 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CERTAINTY.
nevertheless for God a necessary one — this doctrine strikes at
the root of all human morality, of sin, and of ethical renewal.
All those objections, such as this, that the active obedience of
Christ could not have wrought vicariously for us, because as
true man He was bound to render perfect obedience on His
own account ; or that Christ's passive obedience, even though
He had suffered everlasting death, which He did not suffer,
could have been no equivalent for the countless everlasting
deaths which men had merited by their sins ; or, finally, that
— such twofold vicarious rendering on the part of Christ being
presupposed — the human race must now of necessity on its
part be free from the obligation to obedience, as also from the
peril of incurring everlasting death, — these rationalistic
objections not only retain their force from the pantheistic
standpoint, but are further amplified by the fact that the
remainder of abiding significance of the atoning work of
Christ is entirely expended : for the actual history, from
which the idea (of the atonement), which has gradually
matured in the course of the religious development of man
kind, haply found occasion for coming forth into the conscious
ness, there is left no kind of essential importance, and the
determining the more precise circumstances of its occurrence
is to be assigned merely to the province of historic criticism
(Strauss). It is a delusion when, returning in the religious
interest from this pushing aside of the historic person of
Christ, it is supposed that one can reinstate it in its signifi
cance for the faith, by ascribing to it for all time the
significance of a world-historic example, as such affording a
guarantee for the efficacy of the principle of redemption (Bie
dermann). For the warranty lies by no means in this
example ; neither in such way that the example guaranteed
in general the reality of the redemption, — the guarantee for
this lies in the nature (Wesen) of the absolute Spirit, nor in
such way that we should have in this example the pledge for
our own redemption, — the example gives and pledges nothing
to us, but demands from us that which it would be an
illusion to imagine we could render. On the other hand we
shall certainly recognise in Schleiermacher's conception a
return to the truth believed by the Church, in so far as the
common act of the Eedeemer is here constituted the inexhaus-

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 469
tible source of a spiritual and blessed life ; while the here
existing defectiveness of the notion of expiation conditioned the
twofold opposition to the Christian truth, that the satisfaction
accomplished in that common act was not substitutionary, and
the substitution, as a suffering of ills which the Eedeemer had
not merited, was not satisfactionary. For in that defect justi
fication is given to the opinion that we cannot be called upon
to begin this spiritual life out of ourselves, — the demand for
expiation unquestionably addresses itself to those who have
need of it, — and moreover to the opinion that it is a question
of the suffering or experiencing of " ills " which Christ has
not merited, whereas that expiating which is identical with
the satisfaction is the enduring of the reaction which pro
ceeds from the absolute God against the sinful race.
10. If we take a general survey of these objections to the
object-of-faith of the expiation accomplished by the God-man
as the second Adam, we shall from the outset receive the im
pression that, in the peculiarity of the Christian self-assuring
as we have learnt to know it, is afforded the perfectly adequate
means for the self-defence of the Christian against these
assaults ; just as, conversely, for the Christian the existence
and relative necessity of these contradictions is explained
from the lack of that experience which underlies his certainty.
Nothing is more natural for the intellect, reflecting without
experience upon the ohjeet brought externally before it, than
the inference that if the God-man vicariously performed and
rendered for the others that which the law demanded with a
view to expiation, then those on behalf of whom He inter
vened are free from all obligation towards the law fulfilled.
But just this inference, of which so much haS been made from
the time of Socinianism down to that of Schleiermacher and of
pantheism, can appear only void of meaning tothe Christian,
who in the sense of grief over his alienation from God, and in
the consciousness of the lost estate thereby occasioned, has cast
himself into the arms of the God-man Expiator, thereby to
recover the gladdening position to God, for God, and in God,
 it would appear to him void of meaning, because thereby
precisely that effect is taken away from the work of Christ,
for the production of which the Christian has recognised it
as existin"-. Those demands mutually involved in each other.

470 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY,
the work of the God-man and the end for which it was
wrought, these are rent asunder and mutually opposed in
that conclusion of the intellect; a thing which could not
happen, if one had become sensible of the effect of that
work, and therewith of the work itself, in living actuality.
Even in the case that a living Christian were unable to find
the form in which he might ward off that objection, the same
would not trouble him so long as those two points, alleged to
be contradictory, are in him combined into a living unity.
And the question may well be addressed to the opponent,
how then it is to be explained that for the Christian con
sciousness the apparent contradiction, to come upon which
is easy enough to the intellect, has thus about it nothing
whatever of a hindering or disturbing character. If, however,
we inquire scientifically as to the ground of this phenomenon,
we shall find it in the peculiarity that that abstract conception
of the vicarious work, to which the contradiction attaches, is
not conformable to the fact as the Christian by experience
becomes sensible of it. The things do not actually so lie, as
the intellect construes them, out of the notion of the substitu
tion taken alone, that the Substitute as the one person 'Should
stand on this side, and those into whose place He entered, as
the others, should stand on the other side, where indeed then,
by a simple balancing, there is laid upon the one that which
would of right pertain to the others, and on the part of these
neither a moral work is demanded nor any guilt whatever is
to be feared. In reality the matter presents itself, as we
have before seen, rather in this way, that the second Adam
stands to the race redeemed by Him by no means as else
where, two subjects confronting each other in sharp separation
(Flirsichsein), but as He in whom this race is included, as
that to be produced from Him, by Him potentially created ;
and that His work on behalf of the human race, into which
as Expiator He has entered, bears in itself as an essential,
indissoluble tendency, that from it there should actually come
to realization that which is potentially, but not on that account
less actually, present in it. The contradiction thus arises
from this source, that a single particular entering into the
fact, a particular which maintains its truth only in the
connection and in the unity with others, is by them isolated

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 471
and taken per sc, — the contradiction rests upon a falsification
of the fact. It is the manner of the intellect to generalize
the single phenomena, and to comprehend them under a
universal notion which is formed by abstraction from these
single phenomena. So the object of the substitution presents
itself to the intellect, and in order intellectually to grasp this
object it submits the same to that general notion which it
has derived from the single phenomena of substitution
wherever they occur. It thus not only tears out that one
element (Moment) from the continuity of life in which alone
it retains its truth, but likewise disposes it under a general
norm of which we must now further say that it is an
inadequate one. For the fact of the vicarious expiation is
so unique in its nature that the substitution here before us
cannot be measured by a canon which we have derived from
vicarious actions elsewhere occurring, but is either not to be
comprehended at all or is to be comprehended from itself.
That the human race as apostate and anti-godly was under
arrest for the rendering of a death-bringing expiation unto the
absolute God, and that by means of the second Adam given
to this race the same absolute God procured the rendering of
a life-bringing expiation, by which the race was restored to
that position towards God corresponding to its idea, — where
else had this fact a parallel, on account of which it could
be classed with others under a common norm and rule ?
Anomalous in itself it is not, by any means, on this account,
but the rule which it follows is the idea of the second creation
whence it arises ; as we have accordingly developed tlie inner
coherences, to a certain extent, the divine logic which expresses
itself in this fact, in the positive statement of the certainty.
That is the meaning of the apostle when he proclaims that
which, measured according to the standards of the natural
actions of men, appears folly, as nevertheless wisdom among
them that are perfect ; for all activity of the cognition and
all apprehension of truth on the part of man proceeds from
facts in which the truth is made known to him ; and for
those who possess these facts the idea lying in the same,
realizing itself in them, is truth, whereas for the others it is
either a phantasmagoria, or, measured by incongruous facts
derived from elsewhere, a contradiction, — nonsense. That

472 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
we are not hereby led to a Manichsean separation between
the natural and the spiritual world,- — whose scientific expres
sion is the false proposition, espoused now and again by the
theologians, that what is error for philosophy may be truth
for theology, and vice versd, — this we need not particularly
point out, after we have previously recognised that the man
as spiritual first understands how to judge aright of himself
as natural, a state of things which of necessity in like manner
holds good of the two worlds and complexes of truth in which
the man moves as spiritual and as natural man. Our task,
nevertheless, here in connection with the self-defence of our
Christian certainty is just this, that we resolve from the
standpoint of the Christian truth those contradictions in
which the natural thinking must become involved, so soon
as it attempts to include the Christian truth among the
objects of its cognition, — a task wherein it merely becomes
evident in a special case what is there maintained concerning
the relation of the spiritual and the natural man to each
other. 11. The result thus of our previous investigation — that
it is in principle false to apprehend the work of the God-man
primarily as vicarious, whereas the substitution has its perfect
truth when it appears as an element in the relationship
between the new Adam and the individual member of the
new humanity thereby realized — serves us for repelling the
false conclusion which the badly abstracting intellect draws
from that one element torn from its connection and placed in
the foreground. Because the mankind to be created anew
already exists as natural mankind, and because it is therefore
a question of bringing this mankind out of the being-against-
God into a spontaneous being-for-God, the fact of the vicarious
expiation can thus only have the sense that this mankind
existing in a natural manner is thereby restored to the position
of spontaneous and actual being-for-God, or, what is the same
thing, that the second Adam, as is becoming to Him as such,
produces from Himself a race which is created after His
image. But because this last is exactly of the same import
as the former, and because the redintegration of the fallen
race must be congruous with the conditions, i.e. can be accom
plished only under preservation of the self-determining of the

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37 473
man, without which he would cease to be man ; therefore it
is possible that this individual natural man, or a certain
number of the members of the natural race, withdraw from
the transforming operation of the second Adam directed
towards them, there-with isolate themselves from the new
humanity, and so abide in the condition from which, by the
vicarious satisfaction, they were to be raised. The work
ceases not therewith to exist for them and to have respect to
them : but they reject it and cast it from them, as they have
the power to do, and must have the power to do as self-
deciding creatures ; and the sin of such, by which they are
brought to perdition, corresponds to the sin of the first Adam,
constitutes a new beginning of sin, whereas all previous sins
were only the outworking of the transmitted power of sin.
In that we have herewith set right the fact from the per
version of which the reflecting intellect takes its objections,
we recognise, at the same time, the weakness of that other
objection which springs from the same source, that the
substitutionary representation could at any rate only be in
the suffering of the penalty, because the second Adam owed
the obedience on behalf of Himself We perceive here the
same abstract opposing of the second Adam and the humanity
destined to arise, and arising, from Him, to which we can now
answer with the converse proposition, that on the contrary, just
because the second Adam rendered this obedience for Himself,
He rendered it likewise for the totality of those for whom He
assumed the Deutero-Adamic position. The wrong abstraction
to which the contradiction of the intellect here attaches itself
is the takiiig of this Man as a single person, as an individual
like other human individuals, who, confronted by the divine
law, are under obligation to obedience each for himself, so
that when they render it this can avail only for themselves,
but not for " others " ; whereas the concrete fact of our Chris
tian experience shows us a Man whose essential character it
is to be for others, for the oUiers, that wliich He is for
Himself, and whose positive and negative work is to be
measured by this destination. The extreme limit of this
mechanical view of the relation appears in the other proposi
tion which associates itself with that objection, that the
quantity of the deaths which Christ would have had vicari-

474 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY'.
ously to endure and undergo must be equal to the total
number resulting from addition of the deaths incurred by all
individuals. There we have a human race, represented as an
immense multitude of individuals, who, reckoned together,
form mankind, and among these One, herein of like worth
with them, who is distinguished from them only in the
respect that He vicariously discharges the whole sum of their
death-obligations. Apart from the crudeness and clumsiness
of this conception, which equally ignores the unity of the
death-power, which works itself out in the death of the indi
viduals, as it does the organic unity and connectedness of the
human race, we further perceive the false abstraction whence
the contradiction is conditioned, in the rending asunder of
the elements of the salvation - bringing expiation, united as
these are in absolutely indissoluble coherence, an abstraction
which is not less a caricaturing and falsification of the actual
fact than is that former one. It is true the logically divid
ing method of the earlier theology, mechanically analyzing
and juxta-positing that which is organically interwoven, has
contributed its part to this misconception, to which the addi
tional error acceded that no distinction was made between
the expiation in itself and the expiation which profits the
subject. The natural understanding, however, in that it cast
itself upon this inadequate presentation and turned that
second proposition, by the aid of the first, into an absurdity,
has thereby only proved that the basis of experience was
wanting to it, from which tlie presentation, liable to misap
prehension and incongruent as it is, is of necessity corrected ;
and the more clearly the nature of the salvation-bringing
expiation is recognised in connection with the one power of
death shutting up under itself the human race, the more readily
do the contradictions which attach to those abstractions sink
into nothingness. The one (einheitliche) rendering of that
which the absolute God had to demand of the anti-godly
human race, as the unconditionally necessary expiation, was
to avail, not only for God, but also for the race ; this subjec
tion under the power of death, alike in all and everywhere
identical with itself in perfect accord with the one (einheit
liches) law from which it proceeds, this rendering on the part,
not of an individual, but of Him whom God has constituted

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 475
the second Adam for the human race, is for this very reason
in its unity a vicarious rendering on behalf of the race whose
Adam Ho became, and which in Him as such accomplished it.
12. If we have, consequently, nothing more to do with the
proposition, that substitution of the One for the others
destroys the character of human morality and personal re
sponsibility, since we have perceived the opposite at all
points, if only the substitution is not taken in a falsely
abstract manner, the contradiction thus finally concentrates
itself in the proposition that God has no need at all of an
expiation in order that He may remit to man the guilt resting
upon him. Here, in truth, thesis and antithesis stand directly
opposed, whereas hitherto we were obliged to recognise the
contradiction as relatively warranted, inasmuch, namely, as it
results of necessity from the derangement and falsification of
the actual state of things. There is need of an expiation, of
a complete expiation, which I cannot render for myself, but
was bound to render in order to return from the separation
from God to unity with Him, — this expiation has been ren
dered, because it is the presupposition of my Christian state,
and alike the necessity, as the quality of the same has proved
itself to me just from the experience of regeneration and
conversion : that is the declaration of the Christian, who now
with the same distinctness controverts the declaration that
God needs no expiation, since it is precisely a part of His
divine perfection to forgive by a free act of His loving will.
With Eitschl, too, the contradiction is concentrated in the
declaration that God has no need of expiation in order to
pardon; and that this contradiction presents itself in the
name of the pure " Christian idea of God " is at least not new.
They fix on those declarations in the discourses of Jesus and
in the apostolic writings in which the " pardoning " on the
part of God is placed in juxtaposition with that on the part
of men, and if nevertheless even in the former, and certainly
with the apostles, statements are met with which represent
this "pardoning" as conditioned by an expiatory rendering,
ways and means are found for escaping the demonstrative
force of these passages. The original, genuine thought was
just the idea of that pure forgiveness, according to which the
contradiction in which sinners stand to God — a contradiction

¦^76 SYSTEM OF THE CHEISTIAN CEETAINTY.
expressed in the guilt — does not, we are told, hinder that com
munion of men with Him which He aims at "on higher
grounds" (iii. 60). This is not the place for entering into the
exegetical argument ; but from the rationalistic time we know
that this alleged purer notion of God has found a lively
assent on the part of that natural understanding and that
enervated religious school, for which the seriousness of the
divine law and the burden of the sense of guilt have been
lost. And in opposition to such assent it is certainly a
significant fact that a man like Luther, to whom after all
some degree of religious depth and some amount of Christian
experience cannot be denied, most emphatically rejects such
forgiveness not brought about by expiation. In a sermon {Be
Buplici lustitia) held at Marburg on the 5th of October 1529,
and recently for the first time given to the world,^ Luther
asks : Sed unde venit ilia remissio peccatorum ? Jam prae-
dicant and will call remissionem peccatorum an immediate*
righteousness. Velim vocari ut Christus earn vocavit. Thence
comes remissio peccatorum, quod Christus Bei filius pro nobis
mortuus. Nam Judaei et Turca laudant Bei misericordiam et
nemo in terris est, qui non sit simia. Omnes dicunt : Beus est
rnihi propitius et jactant illam remissionem. Sed they are mis
taken. Ideo discendum, that we find the true righteousness.
Si vis scire, unde veniat : noli cogitare ut Judaeus vel Turca,
qui cogitant Beum propitium esse and come before God sine
¦mediatore. No good will result therefrom, quia peccatum est
peccatum. Since Christ teaches, quod ilia remissio peccati non
venit ad nos a Bco sine medio. Quia Christus Bei filius et homo
has taken our place, mortuus est et resurrexit. Ex hoc facto scio,
quod Christus pro peccatis satisfecerit, alioqui si peccavisti, con-
scientia statim dictat : ergo damnatus, etc. That is innate in us.
Paulus vocat Chirographon, quod nemo potest delere. Judas non
potuit delere. Haec scientia est Christianorum. Accusante ergo
peccato et Biabolo, etc. Christianus novit Christum peccala in
collum suum suscepisse. Ideo remissio peccatorum venit ex gratia
Bei; sed tamen per medium, quod Christus hath put away
iram Bei et nos cum patre reconciliavit, ut omnes credentes in
1 Puhlished in the Zeitschrift fiir Kirchliche Wissenschaft und Kirchliches
Leben, 1884 ; 5 Heft, p. 270 ff.
^ Gestrackte, direct = without the mediation of Christ.

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 477
eum habeant remissionem peccatorum. If, to be sure, one looks
upon the experience of sin and grace such as was made by
Luther as a singular one, which lays no claim to be of
universal application, one will come to another judgment
regarding the forgiveness of sins; just as, for us too, the
decisive point, whence we affirm the fact of expiation made
for our sins, is the experience of regeneration and conversion
in the sense previously determined. Indeed we may regard
the mediating of the grace of God by the merits of Christ,
however indefinite and multifold the conception thereof may
be, as from the first a common element of Christian experience
and cognition, and this community serves very essentially to
strengthen the certainty of the Christian against the objec
tions. We have already seen (p. 240) how Eitschl has
observed with regard to our Passion hymns, in particular the
hymn, " 0 Haupt voll Blut und Wunden," that the true
Church hymn for the commemoration of our reconciliation by
Christ has yet to be composed. I could nevertheless imagine
that many a scientific theologian would give all his learned
works to have been the author of that hymn. In general I
have a pretty sharp eye upon the theological productions
issuing from that camp ; there are gifted persons to be found
in it, but the poet of that hymn of the future I have not yet
been able to detect there. So we must be content, meanwhile,
to sing on in the words of the old Passion hymns, albeit they
fall behind the required " level " (" Hohenlage ").
13. An accommodation of these oppositions is here, as I
have elsewhere expressed,^ not possible ; the- ordinary attempts
at convincing the opponents fail of their object. One may
doubtless point to the fact, that even in the natural religions
the need for expiation has widely asserted itself, and that a
truth must underlie this phenomenon, — the truth, namely,
that God cannot receive the sinner again into His communion,
and this fact, indeed, is perfectly intelligible for us in accordance
with the relation, on which we have dwelt, between the natural
and the Christian consciousness of sin and guilt ; but for the
opponent the decisive point lies in the heterogeneous experi
ence of sin and grace, and only if an adjustment of the
differences should be attained to on this point could an
1 ZeiUchr. fiir Prot. u. Kirche, 1874, ii. 274.

478 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
agreement be hoped for in the intellectual domain. From
this radically different mode of contemplating one will rather
imagine one discovers there elements of untruth in those
significant preludes of the truth within the sphere of the
natural religions, elements which now, too, have mingled in
the pure Christian truth, and even so early as in the teaching
of the apostles have corrupted it.^ If such, however, has
been the ground of the contradiction from of old, and is so to
the present time, we now comprehend why this contradiction
should hardly in connection with any other object of faith
have been, and still be, so violent and passionate as here.
The " blood and wound theology," the " wrathful " God, who
thirsts for vengeance and does not rest until He has appeased
His desire in the blood of the guiltless, — these it is, by which
the commonsense and the distinguished science cannot pass
without shaking the head and clapping the hands. It is the
old offence at the crucified Christ which thus repeats itself
merely in another form, and it is a characteristic fact that the
measure of the polemic directed against this offence is only
reached, perhaps, by that with which the article of the total
corruption of the natural man, this " theory of hereditary sin,"
is combated. The root of the contradiction is in reality the
same, and no kind of human argumentation is able to do away
with it, unless in the light of the cross of Christ alike the
guilt of mankind, which has raised this cross, and the grace of
God, which has raised it for us, assures itself to the heart. It
would accordingly be only a repetition of our previous thetic
assertion founded upon the experience of regeneration if we
should seek to prove, in opposition to the gainsaying, the
necessity, the reality, and the quality of the expiation of which
there was need alike for the sake of God as of man. For that
argument, too, a favourite one from the time of rationalism,
that God must after all be able to do that which man is able
and is under obligation to do : to pardon of free love, without
satisfaction, rests upon a misconception of the relation of God
to the creature, as this has previously disclosed itself to us on
the ground of specifically Christian experience. This argument
falsely equalizes the relation between God and men to that
between man and man, whereas at most it finds its like in
' Comp. Ritschl, iii. 245, 442.

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 479
the earthly images of the divine rulership, where yet appears
at once beside the right of grace at the same time the necessity
for punishment. Instead of reasoning at pleasure from below
upwards, from man to God, we shall rather be mindful of this,
that all grace upon earth has first been acquired and condi
tioned by the divine ; and that if the human pardon demands
no satisfaction, this very fact is owing to that divine love
which has effected a perfect satisfaction even for the man
who is called to pardon. It is a characteristic and involun
tary testimony to the truth, that where the necessity for an
expiation is contested people yet suppose fixed conditions
for the man, under which he becomes partaker of the freely
forgiving love of God. They demand, for instance, to this end
corresponding change of mind, they require, as in the case of
human forgiveness, that the offender " must have recognised
and acknowledged the wrong he has done, thus must have
craved the forgiveness." ^ Now it is certainly a fact, according
to Christian experience also, that no one is made partaker of
the grace of God, who does not come to meet this grace with
contrition and sorrow, in penitence and faith. And yet the
one by no means coincides with the other. The change of
mind in the former case is a piece of legal action, which in
some measure is presented as a substitute for the obedience
called for by the demand in itself existing, and not to be got
rid of ; whereas, on the other hand, the penitence in the latter
case is based upon the full satisfaction which, in accordance
with the divine decree of love, has been made to the law.
The more seriously any one there regards the matter the less
is he able to come to inward peace, because the measure of
his change of mind is an inadequate one ; whereas here the
penitence itself arises from the mediatorial rendering of
obedience, and in its defectiveness is covered by this same
rendering on account whereof we have peace with God. One
sees from all this the half-and-half character and superficiality
of the rationalistic position, which recedes far behind the full
expression of the Christian ecclesiastical experience, and yet is
still intent upon preserving remains of the same ; so that, for
this reason also, we can perceive the completion of this opposi
tion only in pantheism, in which the notions of sin and grace
• Comp. Ritschl, iii. 58.

480 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
are dissolved, and alike the degeneration as the rehabilitation
of man is resolved into a necessary process. Here is consist
ency and clearness, which thoroughly disposes of those feeble
remnants, of the rationalistic waverings and half measures ; it
is true a clearness and consistency which in turn conflicts with
moral facts, — facts not only of the Christian, but also of the
natural-moral experience.
14. If, now, after thus entering into the objections brought
against the work of the God-man, which however stand in
indissoluble connection with the question as to His person, we
turn immediately to the last named, then the conclusion
resulting from that which has hitherto been advanced is the
strict negation of the pantheistic proposition, that the Christian
" principle " must be liberated from the false identification of
the same with the historic person of the Eedeemer, in whom
the same only historically appeared for the first time. This
God-man is, in virtue of the expiatory work rendered by Him,
the personal principle in whom that which was to be rendered
by the fallen human race already exists for this race, — is the
principle of its creating - anew as being this person, and is
this person only as such principle, which is just saying. He
is the second Adam. Only one question could be asked
in connection with this. Whether, according to the under
standing of the Christian also, perfect satisfaction would not
be done to the postulate of expiation if this second Adam
had been absolutely a mere man, — a man so qualified that
as the beginner of a new race he had accomplished the
expiation for the same. Why could only the God-man be
the second Adam ? The answer which the Christian gives
to this question can, according to our presuppositions, be
derived only from his experience with regard to the expiation
made for him, not from any considerations besides. From
the testimony of this experience we know nothing of the neces
sity that, in order to the covering of the certainly existing
infinite guilt, the rendering of the man should have been
enhanced by the subject- unity of the same with the infinite
God, in order that the infinitude of the suffering might corre
spond to the infinitude of the guilt. But we do know that
the effecting of the freedom from guilt, the providing of the
salvation-bringing expiation is experienced by the Christian as

THE OPPOSITION OF PANTHEISM, § 37. 481
an act of the absolute God, who as Other rendered possible to
Himself as Other, by means of expiation rendered, the freeing
of the human race from the ban of guilt. The certainty of
the forgiveness of sin immediately includes in itself the pre
supposition, that is the causative fact, that God Himself has
freed where God Himself had bound, and that the form of the
deliverance in the human expiation is that made by God
Himself Even the sinless man, who had proceeded by
operation of divine power from the Proto-Adamic race, would
not have been able to stand fast without falling from unity
with God, under the absolute reaction which ensued on the
part of God against the anti-godly human race, and consigned
it to the infinite expiation of a lost estate, and the appeal to
the divine omnipotence which could have qualified the man
thereto,'- goes far beyond the mark; since one could credit
that omnipotence, apprehended in the abstract, with many
other things besides, e.g. with this too, that for the cancelling
of human guilt it would have had need neither of the God-man
nor of a man at all as a Mediator. The relation of the second
Adam to the race descending from Him is not a natural,
physical one, as that of the first Adam, but a spiritual, hyper-
physical, creatorial one, which as such has not less necessarily
the God-manhood of the same as its presupposition. By a
creatorial act, by divine causality, the Christian knows himself
transformed into a new /, and if he is sensible of this genera
tion to a new personality in the first place as an operation of
the Holy Ghost, yet at the same time in this wise, that this
Spirit is the Spirit of Him in whom the deliverance from guilt
was provided, and is present, and into whose communion this
Spirit transposes Him : this operation of the Spirit would not
be what it is, an absolute, creatorial, divine operation, were
not He, whose the Spirit is, at the same time divine subject,
even as He is human subject, as in Himself slaying the old
humanity, and in Himself potentially embracing the new
humanity. Beyond this fact, however,— which then hkewise
includes in itself the other fact, that all redeeming action of
the God-man is, in consonance with its subject, at the same
time a divine -human one, so far as, and because, it is a
redeeming one, — this source of knowledge does not in the
1 Philippi, V. 2. 63.
2h

482 SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
first place lead us, and we stand therefore, here too, upon the
threshold of those problems which dogmatics must attempt to
solve. Nevertheless, this fact suffices us as a firm support
against the contradiction which, it may be upon this point,
could assert itself in opposition to the reality of the God- man,
and what for the rest is to be said from the standpoint of our
bases as to the possibility of a divine-human unity of subject,
of this we have already had occasion to speak. It is the
peculiarity of the defence incumbent upon us, that, while the
objections are from their nature and origin directed against
the historically existing dogma of the person of Jesus Christ,
we could here take notice of them only so far as they affect
the result obtained by our cognition of experience, which is
by no means of exactly the same extent of significance as the
historic-ecclesiastical dogma; and therefore we shall not be
able either to take further into account the contradictions to
the fact of the resurrection of Christ, and that which attaches
thereto, so far as these proceed from the essentially historic
material, but content ourselves with having gained in the
positive unfolding of the certainty an inner relation to that fact,
a relation which establishes the same as to its substance, without
as yet supposing and containing anything more precise as to
the manner of its realization. Only with the addition of the
transeunt objects of faith do we enter upon the question and
the investigation how far the historic source of knowledge,
from which the Christian faith and dogmatics has drawn, is
also comprehended under the Christian's certainty of experi
ence, so that then that which is included in the former as
vouched for enters into inner relation with the result of our
previous self-assurance.

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