Part 3
other powers at whose mercy we are often held – entities that are hostile to the Spirit. All this is in itself proof that only God and his spirit can bring freedom.
Any other freedom is a lie. There is only one way for the indi vidual consciousness to become free from human servitude, for the nations and the masses to become free from enslavement – through the community of human spirits with God's spirit! Without this direct oneness with the whole, the individual soul remains enslaved, impoverished, confined, and limited.
The same happens to the collective soul of a family, a nation, a class, or any other social grouping. It leads deeper and deeper into ruin through the constant escalation of mutual hostility.
Ultimately, complete and true liberation will be given to us only when we allow God's unity to break in and take over.
The human soul is a subordinate unit of consciousness. In spite of all ungodly association with kindred lives, it remains lonely and thwarted until it is bound to the superordinate unity of God.
Fechner catches a glimpse of this highest unity of consciousness in the way people seek the truly eternal and unchangeable – the divine one who is always true to himself, who wants to be at work in us with rich variety and infinite diversity.* Without God's spirit we are changeable, inconsistent, and unstable – unbalanced and out of proportion and torn and hostile within ourselves and among
7 3 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L ourselves. Therefore it must be an experience of absolute unity and, at the same time, absolute disparity that unites the consciousness of the soul with God.
With such an experience, eternity is born in us, and we have to consecrate our life with complete dedication. This experience be comes new every day – a continual process of renewal. As often as we lay hold of life in God, our new beginnings, deeds, and actions are stamped with the seal of eternity. Eternity penetrates time. The spirit of creation seeks out the life of the earth. Being filled with what God's eternal will decrees can never result in alienation from life. On the contrary, the spirit of life can lead only to an unfolding of powers in all the diversity of life's relationships. In our families and in our professional lives, in our work and in our whole sphere of activity, in society and in community, the creative spirit wants to shape life into a productive unity.
As Jacobi put it:
The spirit that aspires to God
Must lift itself from dust.
But if on earth it does not truly live,
Neither will it live in heaven.*
Whoever is gripped by God's spirit turns to his creation with all the interest that comes from God's love. Life has one goal: God's king dom shall come to rule over all people on earth, and his will shall be done in our world just as it is in the kingdom of heaven; his name shall be honored in active recognition of his nature, and his holi ness shall never be desecrated by any unholy action anywhere – rather, faith shall bring forth a love that makes God's nature rec ognizable through deeds.
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It is through being ruled more and more by God's spirit, and in no other way, that the spirit of humankind can draw nearer to this high and final goal. Only the spirit that is ruled by God is able to see into the depths of revelation. Revealed truth was given on the basis of the prophetic word in Jesus Christ and in his apostolic church. God's spirit wants to lead the human spirit into this truth in such a way that lives become filled and determined by it.
The word of God pierces until it divides soul and spirit. Then we recognize without a shadow of doubt the unspiritual sensuality of the unredeemed life of the soul. The spirit, which thirsts for freedom, comes face to face with God's spirit. If in our inmost be ing, the spirit (as the breath of God) does not stand out quite sharply and clearly in contrast to the soul (as the impure stream of our blood), we remain in the torpor of spiritual death. Those emo tional people who allow the unpurified life of the soul to rule them are unable to receive the divine spirit. There is no sharper contrast to the consistent wisdom that comes from God than the worldly wisdom of the soul, which inevitably becomes entangled in un truthfulness when it tries to bring some semblance of harmony to its contradictory aims.
The way the world situation develops during war and the after math of war should make it clear to the blindest of the blind that the natural life of the soul is diametrically opposed to the life that comes from God. People believe that they have all the life they need in the evolution of humankind, in patriotic efforts, or in the struggle of their class for justice, just as if they did not need God.
They presume to lay claim to things that are God's alone. They even want to decide over the life and death of people and nations. They forget that it is the Lord who kills and makes alive. They scorn the 7 5 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L fact that God is life. Yet he alone is Lord over life and death. Who ever honors him in Christ cannot kill or judge any soul. People lose all feeling for the fact that life lies in his hand – that his decree alone has the right to determine the destiny of the soul. They lose all fear of him who can destroy body and soul. They stand before his judgment without awe. They lose all reverence for God.
We know that if the sun were extinguished it would mean instan taneous death for all life on our planet. We admit that an old river bed will not have running water anymore once the stream has been diverted. It is clear to everyone that even the best water becomes a miserable slough if it has lost connection with its source. Yet we try to silence our conscience when it cries out that every instance of irreverence deals our soul a mortal blow. We try to forget that ev ery sin – every violation of life – brings death to the soul: it means destruction.
Unspiritual desires and the lies that go with them, hostility and the lust to kill, mammon and possessions – they all hamper life and soul. For these are the forces that constitute the power inimical to life – that power that has separated itself from God. The spirit is bound up with the life of the soul: it cannot be pure if the soul does not live in God's purity, and every time the soul touches the rotten ness of impurity and allows itself to be contaminated, it is not liv ing in God's purity. The spirit is then tainted along with the soul and therefore is incapable of redeeming it. The spirit lives in the soul. Everything that goes on in the soul influences the spirit and all the movements of the spirit.
We should not imagine that the spiritual life can work indepen dently of the world of body and soul as if it were in splendid isola tion on an island, untouched by all that the soul experiences on the 7 6 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L mainland. The entire atmosphere coming from us influences our thinking. No vibration of the soul leaves our spirit unaffected.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the brain was thought to rule from an autocratic throne over the life of the spirit.
Recent research has dethroned it. The brain does not determine the soul's character or attitude as a whole with all its most important impressions, feelings, and emotions. A sick soul can have a brain that is completely intact. The soul can be healthy even when the brain is diseased.
The Old Testament is right in implying that the heart, the organ of circulation and all the structures belonging to it, and especially the various strains of blood itself, determine the character of the soul – the spiritual personality of a man (Deut. 30:14–20; Prov.
15:13). Blood and heart can disperse melancholy of soul and depres sion of spirit and provide the necessary constitution and frame of mind for the highest achievements – even abstract intellectual ones. Granted, the brain is a vital organ for the cognitive work of comprehending, thinking, and remembering, yet it is simply one of many tools in the life of the soul and the spirit. It is only one of its workshops or transmitting stations, which in a special way reflects the life of the soul and the life of the spirit; it is their place of ac tion.
We must not confuse the spirit with brainwork in general or with its more specialized intellectual functions. The human spirit repre sents much more the "practical reason" of the holy "thou shalt," which, according to Kant, makes its incontestable demands with the firmness of "thou canst because thou shalt." The spirit is not to be found in any specific place in the body. The bearer of the entire soul is the whole body. The human spirit and the basic character of 7 7 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L the spiritual attitude are breathed into the entire soul as its pro foundest and most divine element. This spirit is able to prove itself extremely independent of the body, and superior to it, as soon as it has experienced a decisive liberation.
Such a liberation remains an impossibility, however, unless it em braces all areas of the soul. The human spirit is inevitably affected by any lack of freedom and any defilement of life. The soul em braces all manifestations of life. It is the bearer of everything that is alive in us. The soul is the total consciousness of the individual: the combination of all the sensual perceptions as well as the con centration of all the higher and spiritual relationships. There can be no other life for the soul than in this consciousness with all it en compasses. In this consciousness, all we experience with our feel ings, thoughts, and will becomes reality and knowledge.
Our consciousness is that undefined place where all functions and organs become a unity. Unity of consciousness is the secret of or ganic life. Unity of spirit is the secret of our calling. As a living whole, we can recognize the body by the finger of the body point ing outward, the soul by the finger of the soul pointing inward, but the spirit we recognize by the finger of God pointing to his king dom.
The life of our physical frame – that which makes it into a living body – is its soul. Being life, the soul encompasses our spiritual ex istence just as much as our physical existence from birth to death.
Just as our physical frame without blood has no life, the body with out the soul is dead.
The physical body that has lost its blood has given up its soul.
Mephistopheles makes Faust sell his life with a drop of blood be 7 8 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L cause blood is streaming and flowing life. The evil spirit wants to have the whole of a person – the life, the soul. For this reason he has to get hold of blood. "Blood is a sap of quite peculiar kind."*
Therefore, according to an old version of Faust, just as Faust is about to use his blood-filled quill to sign the contract with the Devil, the blood congeals on his scratched hand to give a warning.
It congeals in the form of the words, "Flee, O man!" This cry to take flight is forced from the blood by the imminent danger of be ing gripped by evil. The divine life demands more. The spirit de mands that the soul resist to the utmost: "Resist to the point of shedding blood in the struggle against sin."
Resistance unto death is exceedingly rare because the blood is bound up through the soul not only with the higher, spiritual life but just as closely or even more closely with confused feelings and the basest impulses. There is something in the blood that weakens.
Emotional people in whom the blood is not ruled by the spirit are easily led in their sympathies, becoming weak and unobjective. Be cause of their lack of strength for vigorous action and their limp, unsteady compliance, they are easily led astray. Once on the wrong path, each successive emotional weakness causes the soul to wither away.
Whenever the individual or the nation is roused inwardly by an appeal to the blood or by an insistence on blood ties, the enfeebled soul is swept along. That is why mass suggestion is so successful.
Whether it turns the sexual life into degenerate licentiousness, in cites the masses to war or civil war, or shatters business habits of trustworthiness and entices people to luxury and extravagant liv ing – whatever it does, the surprising result is explained by the weakness of the emotionally impressionable masses. Each time that such weakness of life stirs the blood, it reveals the tyrannization of 7 9 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L the emotional life over the nobler life of the spirit – thus revealing the ignoble servitude of our highest possession to our lower nature.
An effective renewal of life can come about only when soul and blood are gripped and penetrated by the highest life, coming from the spirit. This new life must come from the spirit because only in the spirit can freedom and clarity begin. It has to penetrate into the blood-life of the soul if it is to be a reality in life. For blood builds up the human body. Without the soul or life in the blood there is no organic connection between the spiritual life and the physical existence of the body (Rom. 8:11).
For this reason, according to ancient mysticism, everything that has gained power over my blood has gained power over me. Here is the link between the inner world and the outer world. If we want to master things we need to muster courage and take heart – to quote Faust again, "Blood is the sap above all saps. It can nourish dauntless courage in the heart." The soul reveals the fact that the blood is the natural element of all our urges and feelings, includ ing – not least among them – the sensual ones. Because the blood communicates with every center of power in the body, a state of excitement in the blood is often an indication of an unspiritual life guided by natural instincts and impulses. The blood stream is the nitric acid that tests whether the spirit or the body rules. Which ever of the two comes through this test has won the battle.
However precious our blood is to us and however sacred our blood ties must be, we need a life that is guided and determined not by our senses and our blood but by the spirit. The life of the blood can be as thoroughly decadent as it can be noble. It bears within it the seeds of corruption. Everyone who builds on the blood is building on shifting sand. Blood is unstable and perishable. Only
8 0 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L the spirit remains alive. The storm of the spirit is stronger than any other wind. The life of the spirit alone stands firm when all other life is doomed to destruction.
In these critical times we need more than ever a testimony to the truth that God has given an eternal life – one that cannot ebb away with the blood because it is God's life and therefore indepen dent of the blood and the senses. According to the true testimony of the spirit, this life is in the Son. It comes to us through the Holy
Spirit. It gives our spirit testimony of another homeland, different from the land of our blood. It makes us sons and daughters of God so truly that we can represent no other interests save those of his heart and his kingdom. The spirit leads us to a people quite differ ent from the people of our blood. God's eternal life unites us with the people of God whose bond is not one of blood but of the Holy
Spirit.
Only those who are prepared to risk life and blood can find this kingdom of the spirit, for others can and will not tolerate the at tempts of this people to conquer the land. The path this people treads is strewn with the dead. By what he does to God's people, the god of this world reveals himself as the murderer from the be ginning. The spirit of Jesus Christ has never allowed his church to kill even one single person. His people, however, have continually been murdered just as Jesus himself was brought to execution by the best state (from the military and judicial point of view) and by the most outstanding nation (from a religious and institutional point of view), yes, even by the majority vote of those of his own blood.
Today also, people and nations, the state, and the institutional church will not tolerate witnesses to divine truth. It is not only
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Israel that cries out, "Away with him!" Voltaire's Écrasez l'infâme is the cry of the West. Whoever wants to represent the witness of Jesus in word and deed must be ready for death anywhere. The rea son is clear: any witness to the truth must tear down the disguises that have been put in place to conceal the workings of the prevail ing powers.
Jesus brought a revelation that destroys all delusions. It exposes the true state of the world and its kingdoms, its principalities, its god and spirit, as well as the true state of every single human be ing. It is only under his influence that we become free of the false idea that life consists in politics and economics, in power and prop erty, in violence and the struggle for existence, in eating and drink ing, in clothing and shelter, in pleasure and variety, in honor and reputation. The body is more than clothing. The soul is life and therefore more than food. The kingdom of God is more than all the kingdoms of this world. The spirit is more than the soul. What does it profit us to gain the whole world if we forfeit our life?
Life during the last war [World War I] and its aftermath of esca lating need and distress freed many from a narrow-minded, bour geois misconception: that the creature comforts of a pampered mode of life (faster transport and communication and better in comes) are necessities of life. Moreover, many consciences have been awakened from their torpid sleep and kept awake as if by a constant thunderstorm, realizing that in the face of the increasing distress everywhere they had no right to hold on to a privileged way of life. They have realized that they must come out of their castles and villas in order to search out and bring in those who have become destitute in the storm, without work or home.
Yet a life of true community with God encompasses the inmost fortification of our stronghold as well as the outer fortifications.
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When a soul has been fully awakened to the kingdom of God, the spirit who rules from that kingdom will not only tackle its current mode of existence, but shape it according to his will, down to the details. His goal is brotherly and sisterly love. This transformation will be so thorough that very few people can even imagine it.
However, before we can think of a new form for our outward existence, body and soul must be taken possession of by God. They must be changed to accord with his image. We have experienced in the history of our times how impossible it is to reconstruct an outer existence and build it up when inner strength has gone into a de cline. It is not only in the Russia and in the Austria of pre-World
War times that we can see how little even such great empires sig nify when their inner character begins to break up. What is a king dom that is divided in itself? "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet suffer harm to his soul?"
Nothing is more necessary than an inmost renewal of life. In this renewal our destiny, independent of all alien influences, shall unfold like a seed growing into a strong, firm tree, allowing our soul and its whole sphere of activity to become as it is intended. It is not in ourselves that we find the strength, inner peace, and free dom for the growth of this true and genuine life. Still less do these prevail in the world around us. Only the truly living one can give them to us. Only he brings life, its fulfillment, and with it the ac tive inner peace of his works. Only when he has become the loving, caring overseer of our soul can it find the strength it needs for a new, free, and active life. Only he leads to a life in which the soul, freed from turning around itself and circling around false planets, can live and work from the center of life.
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This life is God and his rulership. The light of the life given in Christ shines more brightly on our weak, selfish existence than the sun into our night. And just as the sun gives life and nourishment to this planet, Jesus alone gives his us the strength and nourish ment to begin a real life and build that up in place of our previous sham existence. Jesus is the bread of life for which we hunger. He has the water of life for which we thirst. His life, which far exceeds all other possible ways of living, merits our dismissing once and for all our own weak, selfish life and all ideals restricted and deter mined by our blood. We must turn away from all the will-o'-the wisps that flit around churchyards. We must hold his burning light firmly in the hands of our heart because he wants to bring life into every grave. Nothing should be in our hands but his radiant life, because it alone is victorious over all the worlds of death.
There is a legend about a soldier who for a long time seemed to seek nothing but murderous battle and vainglory. He devoted him self wholeheartedly to war, and even when he joined a crusade, vainglory seemed to be all he looked for. It so happened that he was the first to scale the walls of Jerusalem. He had the privilege of being the first to light his candle at the altar of the Holy Sepulcher.
This flame transformed his life, though. He forsook the prince dom that beckoned him. He took the candle. It became everything to him. He rode and traveled roundabout ways to bring this flame to his people without letting it go out. He was looked upon by many as a madman, for he held the burning light in his hands wher ever he went, never taking his eyes off it. In the depths of loneli ness, fallen upon by thieves, in want and exposed to storms, in hun ger and privation and mocked at by the crowds, he concentrated
8 4 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L on one thing: shielding the flame. From then on he could never have another thought but to protect each tiny flame of holiness.
His life became a vigorous light of love that spent itself for others.*
Whoever wants to protect the flame of God's love and guard the light of life will have to show the same attitude. Once we have kindled our life from the flame of the crucified one, his spirit with all its powers expresses itself in an undreamed-of way. We could never learn it elsewhere. It is the torch of his spirit that shows the way then. If we want to reach the goal of our destiny we can only do it by letting his divine love flood us with its radiance.
Wherever God's fire is kept burning in our hearts, it means life for the whole world. It stands as a light on a candlestick set up for everyone. It represents the complete community of faith that will bring light to the whole world as the city on the hill. Its innermost life gathers all members around the carefully protected central flame, as around a bonfire. Only those who protect this grail of the church know what wealth of life God sends out into all lands from his city.
Once we have come to recognize God as the only element of true life, all inner powers of the soul seek to unfold in order to come fully and completely into action, concentrated on him. The soul that is filled with God embraces the whole of life with all its activi ties, inner and outer, intellectual and physical. In order to bring life completely under the authority of God's vital power, its inner aspect must be brought under his influence first of all. The power of infinite life sinks its roots into the innemost depths of the soul before it has a strong and active influence on external life. The confession "Thou givest my soul great strength" can be made
The Sacred Flame.
8 5 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L truthfully only when this strength has begun to reign in our inner being.
The inmost heart of the believing church, in which God dwells, is like a well-watered garden, full of quiet, peace, and security. En emies cannot find the way in. A living wall of tall trees rooted in fertile ground protects it from the storms raging outside. The noise of the world outside does not penetrate into the secluded center of this garden, in which God's heart has its dwelling. And yet the gates of the garden stay wide open so that all that is living can go in.
They stay open because all the powers and capabilities of the soul are sent out to share in the world's distress and to bring help wher ever possible.
When we speak of the life of the soul, we usually think only of the innermost part of a believing spirit. But we have to remember that the soul embraces the whole of life. That is why the apostles of old exhorted the believers to become new in mind and spirit.
What the believer must do, therefore, is search his innermost be ing, because his life in Christ shall be hidden in God, so that from the bottom of his heart he can say, "I live, yet now it is no longer I but Christ who lives in me." The spirit is our inmost treasure. When it is illuminated by God's spirit, the Holy Spirit, our own spirit will be able to recognize what is in us. When it is led by the spirit of Jesus Christ, our spirit can become a lamp of God that searches the innermost reaches of the soul by lighting them up.
By and large, the heart embraces the inner aspect of life. There fore we find the manifestations of life in the heart – our thinking, feeling, and willing, our disposition and the character of our heart – ascribed to the soul as well. For the soul by its very
8 6 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L nature includes the heart as the inner core of life. We can imagine life as concentric circles of different colors superimposed on each other and enclosing each other. Our external, material body, part of nature as a whole, forms a comprehensive gray circle. A blue circle denoting the organic life we have in common with plants is just as big. The third circle, a red one, has the same dimensions and stands for the life of the soul in the blood, which, as a human per son, embraces the whole consciousness. This last circle of life is characteristic of the animal kingdom as well.
With the smaller circles it is different. In contrast to the large perimeter three times covered, the heart forms a smaller concen tric circle, perhaps best indicated by fiery coloring. This is made up of the life of inner feelings and thoughts and activities of the will, that is, the deeper part of a character. This alone is enough to dis tinguish us from all other living creatures. The spirit, however, forms the center that dominates the whole. It is a secluded, inner circle, which in view of our destiny should be colored white. This spirit is given solely to humankind. Schiller refers to this when he says: "Once I have searched the core of man, I know what he wants and what he is doing." It is this core that is all important. God's spirit wants to make his dwelling among us, beginning in our spirit.
The higher will of the soul is spirit. The spirit is the active and creative genius. The spirit is reason working constructively to meet the demands made by religion, ethics, and society. It is the spirit that directly perceives and experiences what is divine in the human heart. The soul on the other hand gets its feeling for life more through what is physical and determined by the blood. It includes all desires and longings and also what is purely receptive. The whole reception of all the outer stimulations of life takes place in the soul. It remains more sensual, more closely related to the body, 8 7 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L more strongly rooted in the body, and more firmly bound to it than the spirit. The spirit lives in the activity of the highest and freest relationships and aims of the will. It dwells in the most royal of all the chambers of the consciousness. For the spirit, the highest des tiny will be infused with the Holy Spirit.
The consciousness of the soul is a living mirror of all the rela tionships into which the life of humankind is woven. The influence of these relationships varies greatly according to their intensity. It is in the life of the soul that the decision is made as to which feel ings, desires, ideals, and thoughts we allow to cross the threshold of our innermost being.
As long as the feelings of the soul in the blood (which work in darkness) are controlled by the power of the spirit ruling in our hearts, they cannot grow into base intentions or evil deeds. Yet we see in all the excitement of our times how these feelings wait for a moment when the image of God and his influence grow weaker in us. From that moment on, the lusts and false ideals of the blood (allied to other powers of darkness) can cross the threshold of our heart. They become the will to do evil, and then they unite in evil action. Sin has come. "Lust when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full-grown brings forth death."
Joyless lust for murder and hate, poisonous readiness to accuse one's opponents and use lies to disparage them, loveless joy in property and other personal privileges, impure and unspiritual lusts of the body – all these lie in wait for the will with insatiable greed.
They have to capture the will with the dazzling temptations of fered by stolen and pseudo-spiritual virtues before they can work their evil.
The soul is able to ward off these temptations, but only when the 8 8 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L will that is good has found strength to resist, coming from a firm foothold. It finds this foothold when the content of the soul, what fills the soul, is clearly and definitely of the Holy Spirit. The will can reject all the enticements of seductive mental images; it can over come all the temptations of murky ideals and aims; but it can do this only when – through being constantly reminded by the Holy
Spirit – the soul's consciousness is firmly and clearly ruled by the unity that comes from the heart of God, by the unity of all the thoughts of his love, by the unity of all the pictures of his future kingdom and its powers, and by the image of Jesus with all his words and deeds. "Strength of character depends on this, that a definite unity of images and ideas continually occupies the conscious mind, weakening any opposing images and not allowing them to enter."* If the seductive powers of other aspirations are not to gain admittance and rule over our will, then the innermost chamber of our soul must always be filled with the spirit of Jesus
Christ. The chamber where our spirit is enthroned must always be filled with all his thoughts and with his will; that is, with every impulse of his heart.
Satan, the archenemy of our soul, always has a powerful band of accomplices at the ready to shatter and destroy it. But in the hush of night God speaks clearly and unmistakably to the soul to draw it away from destruction and make it his follower. He awakens our spirit and shows us the way to life. He wants to fill our awakened soul with his peace so that dark powers have no room. When the soul cries out for God, driven by the distress of our time, it will be led to the goal – to the church and to the kingdom – if by the will it is lifted up to Jesus Christ and stays concentrated on him alone.
*Johann Friedrich Herbart, 1776–1841.
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The Conscience and Its Witness
Life resists everything that threatens to destroy or kill it. It tries to build up its strength. It protects itself instinctively against all the influences of death and everything hostile and harmful. Only in a life that is going to rack and ruin – in one that has already come under the power of death – do the instincts fail and allow poisons to come in and destroy it. Every organism endowed with a soul tries to ward off what is harmful to body and soul.
The innermost part of the soul – the spirit – has also an instinct for life. This is the conscience. As a first sign of inner life, it has become a watcher at the threshold. It is the quiet, impersonal confidant of the human spirit. "For no one knows what is in anyone except the spirit itself, which is within" (1 Cor. 2:11). The conscience is one of the most primeval stirrings of life. The human spirit, as the profoundest part of us, has to represent our innermost calling. The most necessary tool for this is the conscience, an instrument that warns, rouses, and commands.
The conscience is the spirit's sensitive organ of response. Its task is to warn the character against degeneration and destruction. It is 9 0 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L there to preserve moral order. The conscience has to show the character where it can find healing, strengthening, and the direc tion in life it is meant to take. Every time the soul is deeply wounded, the conscience makes us painfully aware of it. It is a warning bell that sounds every time the spiritual life falls sick.
Above all, it gives warning of the deadly misery of isolation, when the soul has separated itself from the core of life, from the destiny of its being – when it has separated itself from God. Therefore with all the urgency of love, it demands reconciliation with God himself and, as part of that, a uniting with all people. For unity is the hallmark of life. Unity finds complete fulfillment in God and his kingdom.
The conscience in each individual arouses a longing to come out of all constraint and isolation and to have community with the highest consciousness, the all-embracing consciousness of God. As a result there will be a unanimous accord and unity of life with all who believe in God. This urge toward God and his community of life and faith accords with the nature of the human spirit as it was originally. Leibnitz described God as the only object directly per ceived by the soul that can be distinguished from the soul itself.*
God is in direct living contact with the soul and demands absolute love and community.
The conscience awakens a direct consciousness of good and evil – a knowledge of what promotes life and what destroys it. As such, it can never be separated from the spirit's direct consciousness of God. It plays a part whenever the certainty of an absolute "thou shalt" or "thou shalt not" penetrates the consciousness. In the ab soluteness of "thou shalt," God works directly on us. Our con science urges us to stand by our consciousness of God. It demands
9 1 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L obedience to him. With every warning it gives, the conscience tries to help our consciousness of God toward free and willing obedi ence in faith.
It is God who wants to determine our life and lay obligations upon it through the conscience. The conscience has been compared to a mountain range along which God's thunder echoes a millionfold. The further away the receiving heart is from the one who calls, the weaker will be the echo. The nearer we are when we receive the call of God, the more powerfully will our conscience be struck and impressed. There is always, however, a necessary dis tance between God's truth and our response. The conscience drives the anxious, hesitating heart nearer and nearer to the thunderous judgment of evil and the lightning-lit revelation of good. And yet at the same time it keeps us at a respectful distance. There can be no echo if there is no distance at all from the mountain wall.
"No one is good," Jesus tells us, "save God alone" (Matt. 19:17).
One alone is truly good. Those who blasphemously identify them selves with him cannot hear the voice of God. If in the soul there is something of the breath of this one and only being who alone is good, then even in depraved and irreverent souls there will be a live witness. This witness will demand a distance and yet press closer because it judges evil and engenders good. It is the conscience of the human spirit. When we do evil, it warns and insists; it smites and punishes. It makes clear to us how far we are from God. But it does still more. Even though there may be nothing good about us, this witness lives in our souls to make it possible for us to recognize good as good, to assure us that God is the only source of good, and to urge us on toward it.
Even where consciousness of guilt seems to have died out, we cannot feel at home in our selfish existence. We are well aware that 9 2 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L we lack inner unity and the community that takes shape as a result.
Even the hardest heart yearns for this. We were created for com munity. Our conscience fights against things being turned so up side down that life is destroyed by selfish isolation. It protests against every attempt to sever the living cohesion of things. When ever a thread of life is broken, the conscience shows that it is wounded. Every time our inner being is divided and, just as much, every time the community that must come to outward expression is disrupted, the conscience gives a warning – life is being threat ened by destruction. To the conscience, disharmony seems terrify ing and deadly because the very nature of the soul demands unity of life.
Any separation from God is bound to lead the human spirit to a deadly division within itself and cold estrangement from others.
When the conscience makes us aware of the urge toward God hid den within us, a conflict arises between the true calling of the ego and its actual condition. Every time we resist this urge and act against it, our conscience blames no one but us.
Julius Müller calls the conscience, even when it is utterly ruined, the divine bond that ties the created spirit to its origin.* It is the conscience that shows us we belong to the people of God, although we are degenerate and depraved members. It is the longing for God that rouses opposition to evil. This longing is for community in his kingdom of active love, brought about by him alone. It opposes the divisive power of the kingdom of mammon with its lies, murder, and impurity. The conscience makes us think about ourselves and our depraved condition and, at the same time, about the revelation of the higher truth of our original nature, our true nature. It shows at the same time our wretchedness and our greatness.
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The conscience is an inextinguishable part of human con sciousness. As such, it gives bold witness to the fact that the origin of the human spirit is noble and divine. It never lets us quite forget that as humans we have been called to be images of God, however weather-beaten our spiritual coat of arms, however deeply rusted, however thickly overgrown with moss. Even in the most erring off shoots of the human race, the memory of this image is never so irretrievably lost that it cannot be brought back to the light once more through God's intervention.
For this reason Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, testifies expressly that even peoples estranged from God have a conscience. Paul is so deeply convinced of the divine origin of all living souls that he sees the works of the law written in the hearts of so-called heathen. In every thing they experience and undertake, their conscience too gives wit ness through the conflicting thoughts that accuse or excuse them.
After all, the living book of God's creation lies open for all to see; it points constantly to the divine calling for which we were placed in nature. Nature is a continual admonition to us, for nowhere has God's creation departed so far from its origin and primeval purpose as in the human race. This is made obvious by the history of the human conscience.
Human beings were called to God's love. But once they gave themselves to murder and rebellion and refused to let themselves be judged and ruled by God's spirit, the pure, free spirit gave up pleading with them (Gen. 6:3–13). He no longer even wanted to plead with them. Violence presupposes a lack of freedom. There fore God sent man the law and conceded him the death penalty, at first in the form of the appointed blood-for-blood revenge: an eye for an eye! A tooth for a tooth! "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man again shall his blood be shed" (Gen. 9:6).
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Again, in their servile spirit, the children of those who were meant to be God's people wanted a human king instead of God's rulership, instead of his dominion. God in his wrath thus gave them a completely human authority to enforce severe punishment for murder and acts of wickedness (1 Sam. 8). Today we have long for gotten what we have lost through these historical facts. Yet these measures to check still worse instances of evil will remain as long as men refuse to let God's spirit judge and rule.
The inner acquiescence of the conscience can be seen in our atti tude to legal authority. For the sake of the conscience, everyone must still be subject to legal authority as to an appointed servant of God. For this authority judges and punishes evil as the conscience demands. Yet as soon as the conscience is roused through God's spirit, it demands – even in the face of authority – that we should obey God rather than people. God's kingdom claims recognition over and above all the kingdoms of this world. However, there is a prerequisite for this all-inclusive demand of God and his spirit. It is fulfilled only when this spirit who rules in God's kingdom really and truly rules over us, when he can actually plead with us and determine our whole life in an objective way according to God's kingdom.
Through the judgment and power of governmental authority, the conscience is punished and sharpened. Through God's kingdom and his spirit, it is set free and fulfilled. It looks everywhere for the source of the guilt that separated us from the rulership of God. In everything, the conscience wants to become clear in its judgment over the boundary between good and evil, because evil has sepa rated us from God. Evil is its enemy. It sees the enemy everywhere – waiting to the right and to the left, besetting us behind and before. The most dangerous outpost of all is in our heart. The evil
9 5 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L that surrounds and pervades our life is more than our enemy. It is God's enemy.
Murder, deceit, lust, and possessiveness – these are the faces of evil. Jesus called the evil spirit the "murderer from the beginning" and "father of lies," and he called his subordinate spirits impure spirits. Finally he has confronted us with a decision: "You cannot serve God and mammon." God's rule is incompatible with killing, with lying, with sexual immorality, and most of all with the rule of property. Therefore God's kingdom is diametrically opposed to the powers of death and sin. This is true not only for personal life but also for human society in general, which may try to subjugate evil and yet is mired in mammon and property: it cannot cut itself loose from lying and impurity, and is therefore driven to greater evil – even to mass murder.
Detection of the enemy, however, achieves nothing more than a reconnaissance before the battle. Even the progress of the battle, even the annihilation of the enemy does not mean that the victory is consummated. It is only positive reconstruction that gives triumph its value. Therefore the conscience longs for vigorous work at what is truly good in order to be able to celebrate victory over evil.
The life of Jesus had nothing to do with killing and harming oth ers, with untruthfulness and impurity, or any influence of mammon or property. And Jesus went even further: in dying he defeated this hostile power in its home territory and shattered every weapon of the enemy. But he did still more. He brought the kingdom of God down to the earth; he roused body and soul from death; he rose as the living one; and through his spirit he laid the foundation for a kingdom of complete unity for everything in heaven and on earth.
He broke down the barriers between nations, and he created the 9 6 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L unity of the body of his church as his second incarnation. This new unity and bodily reality of Jesus lives on our earth and in our human race.
We are called to this way as soon as we accept the call. When through Christ and his spirit we believe in the unity of God as the one and only good, when we live in faith out of his strength, we lay aside everything that is opposed to perfect love. We fight it to the death on every front; we live as believers in the church of full community, ambassadors of God's kingdom, representing Jesus
Christ and commissioned by him. In this fight for the recognition of God's rule, in representing the final kingdom in opposition to all governmental authorities and powers of the kingdoms of this age, the conscience is the quiet ally of the Holy Spirit.
The conscience is that faculty of sensitivity in our inner being which responds with pleasure to every good deed and with displeasure to every evil deed. It exposes evil as alien and hostile to our nature as it originally was, and as it is ultimately intended to be. Therefore no quasi-superior point of view and no knowledge that sets itself up as progressive can reconcile it to evil. As soon as God's spirit takes possession of the human spirit to make a common witness, the conscience develops a resolute firmness. It revolts with a revulsion that becomes almost unbearable every time love is wounded, every time love's obligations are neglected, every time love's justice is clouded, every time love's truth is betrayed, and God's kingdom misrepresented.
Whenever human self-preservation seeks an advantage, a pleasure, or an influence that is contrary to the pure, absolute, and all-embracing love of Jesus Christ, the conscience –being now an instrument of the Holy Spirit – raises its voice in sharp protest in 9 7 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L the name of the sovereign God and his absolute rule. With just as much intensity, it furthers every fulfillment of justice and social obligation, every disinterested act of devoted love, and every brotherly and sisterly uniting in full community.
The impulse of joyful agreement and inner satisfaction in our conscience when we have acted rightly in the works of love (at least as far as motive and aim are concerned) implies an assessment of values. In the same way, when evil and godlessness gain the upper hand in our life, the conscience experiences qualms of shame, disquiet, and silent self-accusation. These challenge us to evaluate our actions.
The conscience is the organ constantly at work evaluating and passing judgment. It evaluates by feeling. It has joy in what is good, for what is good is also just. It has joy in love, for love is also pure, and in genuine unity and community. It feels pain and revulsion against evil,for evil is injustice.It is pained by all that denies love; that is, everything that destroys community, everything selfish, impure, ungenuine, and untrue.
The conscience speaks as the divine voice within us. It strives to bring home to us what we are (although we should be different), what we are not (although we ought to know how we should be), what human society is like without community, and what the nations are like without the unity of the kingdom of God. The more the heart is touched by God's holy nature, the more clearly does the conscience indicate what the church of God is, and the more clearly does it also point out how, from the basis of this church, the believer should represent love, unity, peace, and justice, all of which bear fruit in community.
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When we examine ourselves in the light of the destiny God has ordained for us, we become aware of the sharp contrast between what we should be and what we are. The conscience belongs to human consciousness and yet represents a "thou shalt" that is quite different. The conscience is a decidedly subjective feeling. Yet it is based on and aims at an absolutely objective "thou shalt." Only when the demands of the conscience agree with the objective "thou shalt," do subjective impressions gain weight and meaning.
The conscience must represent an objective power that wants to take possession of us from within. It needs the Holy Spirit because within itself it does not have the power to rise above all that we are subjectively capable of. Without God's spirit it is unable to rep resent clearly the cause it wants to serve. And yet in remotest pa ganism also, the conscience remains active even though, without the spirit of the cause, its accusations and demands are distin guished more by unbridled ferocity than by shining clarity. Like the Furies of pagan mythology, it pursues those who flee and seizes those who resist, so that even such masters of evil as the emperor
Nero must undergo tortures of conscience.
The comparison of the conscience with the Furies, those relent less spirits of doom and vengeance in ancient history, is all the closer because the Furies served just as much to protect the good and pure as to atone for crime. They cannot point anywhere to God's rulership because they know nothing of his Holy Spirit. They represent the conscience that is not yet illuminated by Christ, that does indeed know of good and evil but misses the way to the goal.
They are handmaids of the holy order of natural life, which they strive to represent. Without it, the life that lives and moves in our blood inevitably destroys itself.
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The Furies are keen-sighted huntresses armed with whips and spears, bows and arrows. Shrouded in mist, they lie in wait for evil doers, ready to distract their senses, derange their spirits and suck their blood. For they too represent the old order – "blood for blood." Thus they correspond to the merciless authority of the criminal court, about which God spoke his awful word after the flood, when his spirit no longer wanted to plead with a perverse people: "I will demand your lifeblood. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man again shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image" (Gen. 9:5–6).
Throughout all ages, sin against the blood of a soul endowed with the breath of God has struck the conscience as the gravest crime, the capital offense against God and his order. Therefore avenging it is seen as the first duty of human authority. The avenging authority (representing human order) and also the wild raging of the Furies (representing the unredeemed conscience) are far removed from the spirit of the heart of God, and nothing can be found in them that reveals anything of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet hidden within them lies a corrective justice, a justice of wrath. It is the wrath of God, which through his judgment wants to make us ready for the perfect justice of love.
In this way the old Furies, as handmaids of punitive justice and as executioners of necessary law, are the strictest avengers of evil. But they are more. Like the authority of the state, they are intended to uphold and protect upright and law-abiding hearts. They hold their threatening snakebites in readiness for evildoers, but the good they meet with friendly eyes, bestowing their blessings as goddesses of the earth.
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The Furies are more tormenting than any judicial authorities can ever be, for they are an objective personification of the conscience that has not yet been gripped by the gospel of perfect love. They symbolize the same punishment of conscience that Pestalozzi describes so vividly when his character Hans Wüst rolls on the floor in torment over his perjury – howling like a dog whose entrails are torn.* When Hans tears his hair out and draws his own blood with his fists, the cry is wrung out of him: "Satan, cursed Satan, has me in his clutches!" Abuse, shame, and imprisonment are nothing to him compared with the horror, the despair, and the fear that God might never be merciful to him again in all eternity. Here, with the eyes of the modern world, we see the Furies come to life again as agony of conscience.
The same agony of conscience made Luther cry out, "Oh, my sins, my sins, my sins!" It is the same indescribable torture about which he said: I too know someone who declares he has often suffered this punishment. True, it did not last long, but it was so severe and so hellish that no tongue can tell of its severity, no pen can describe it, nor can anyone believe it who has not experienced it. If it had reached its peak or continued for half an hour longer –yes, for only a tenth of an hour longer – he would have been utterly destroyed and all his bones burned to ashes. Here God appears, mighty in his wrath, and all creation too, so no one knows where to turn. There is no comfort and everything is full of accusations.
Still at that time, Luther's conscience stood in the midst of this deadly fear of wrath and punishment, outside the gate and outside the grace of God, and yet he pursued the positive goal of divine justice. The conscience is more than a protection for what is good, *Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, –.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 0 1 which has to be guarded from evil. It is more than the terrifying discovery that there is nothing really good in us. It is more than the punishment of evil through the justice of God. Rather, through the devastating judgment of evil, the conscience must prepare our in ner vision for the restoration of what is good. When the conscience is gripped and illuminated by the spirit of God, it must prepare the way for faith and rebirth through deep repentance and a complete change of heart. The darkened inner eye must become like the sun so that it can see the kingdom of God. The conscience that is break ing down under wrath must be led to justice – making it possible for a new life of active love to arise from faith.
As part of the human spirit, the conscience can never reveal the kingdom of God of its own accord. It can only strengthen the echo when the call to repentance reaches the heart – a call from God, piercing the heart and directing it to the kingdom of God. The call to life can come only from the origin of life, from God's heart.
God's heart revealed itself in the voices of his prophets. In Jesus
Christ it reached man as fullness of beauty, grace, and truth. The conscience is a God-created organ that is part of the life of the hu man soul, but it can do no more than answer his call as a call from the Holy Spirit. What it can do from its seat in the human spirit is to accept, affirm, and represent the demands made by God, that is, by the divine life of Jesus.
The divine spirit wants to penetrate and rule over all areas of life.
Consequently, the awakened conscience cannot be restricted just to the area of morals. As the aesthetic conscience, it promotes joy in what is beautiful, edifying, and pure. From deep within, it cleanses our taste – also as regards the creation of art – from filth and ugliness, from artificiality and ungenuineness. As an intellec
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 0 2 tual conscience, it is the instinct for honesty and integrity; it has an understanding for what must be acknowledged as the truth, and expresses it in accordance with the facts. As a social conscience, it demands the dedication of the whole of our life, with all our faculties and possessions, to the service of love –to brotherliness, to justice, and to full community with the poor and oppressed. As a spiritual conscience, it desires all this for the sake of God's truth, for his love and justice – that is, for the supreme demand of unity with God himself and unity with his absolute sovereignty. Every where, the conscience is revealed as the heart's will for truth, jus tice, and unity. In everything, it demands obedience in the face of the objective absolute. It is the absolute will of God that challenges the conscience to let him become acknowledged as lord over all that belongs to life on earth.
Jesus Christ alone, in accord with the divine word of the Jewish prophets, proclaimed that the will of God's love is turned toward the earth and its peoples. He alone has brought the authority and reality of his kingdom to the earth.
The social yearning for brotherly justice and the longing for peace (which is born of active love for the enemy) are possible nowhere but on the ground of Christ, or under his influence and direction. This is why some individualistic anarchists argue that communism and atheistic socialism are secularized expressions of Christianity. And indeed, the assertion would not be thinkable without Christianity's love for one's neighbor, equality of birth, faith in the future as faith in a kingdom of peace and justice, and a social conscience awake to the stirrings of the divine.
When the conscience has found God's justice in Christ, it recog nizes human injustice as the opposite of his love and of his alive
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 0 3 ness. God's justice, which comes to expression in Jesus, is greater than the justice of the best human court, system, or code; it is greater than the religious and social justice of theologians and moralists. Like salt, like a light, like a tree, it is a real and living power of radiant warmth, strength, and protection – the real power of life in all its fullness. Therefore the life that God's justice gives birth to as perfect love must be completely different from the life born of any other justice, however socially admirable.
Even the social conscience of the believer does not exhaust the truth of this life (although this truth remains the most important expression of the social conscience). Christianity has shown that honesty with oneself is the most basic prerequisite for a Christian life. Even its bitterest opponents have to admit that the inner history of Christianity has produced an increasing exactness in the conception of truth. They can see that the sensitivity of the Christian conscience has been transferred to the scientific conscience, at times producing the finest intellectual integrity. The continual sharpening of the instinct of truthfulness has meant such a growth in scholarly exactness that Friedrich Nietzsche had to admit: "Conscientiousness in small things – the self-control of the religious person – was a preparatory school for the scientific or scholarly character and, above all, for the attitude in which we can treat a problem seriously without taking into consideration how it affects us personally."
The intellectual conscience of the believer also does not exhaust the truth of life. The conscience in Christ recognizes that what is untrue is the opposite of what is alive and essential to life. Truth means more than the intellect being indisputably right. Truth must seize onto the ultimate reality of life in all that is genuine and I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 0 4 essential to it, all that is unadulterated and clear, all that has effective strength and power. Consequently truth, in unity with justice, must show itself as the very marrow of life, as vital energy and courage, as a productive joy in creative work, and as the power of love. Truth, as love, is master of the essential nature of things.
The activity of the conscience is not exhausted by the condemnation of what is evil, unlovely, and wrong. It works toward the accep tance of all the life-energies of love, for they are the very core of life. Just as love itself never ends, so the conscience that works for love can never come to the end of its activity. The conscience can never put a stop to its working. Even though it may not always have to suffer to the same degree from the consciousness of what is evil, ugly, and untrue, and even though there may be nowhere any good in need of its protection, the work of the conscience will never come to an end.
A good conscience is more than just a conscience that is not bad.
It is not only a witness that condemns or approves but, above all else, a voice that impels us to loving dedication. We can see it perfected in the apostle Paul, when his heart beat for his people and demanded a readiness for the ultimate sacrifice. A good conscience never waits in passive silence; it always longs for action and drives toward it. It impels the will toward a truly loving life – ultimately, toward God and his kingdom.
Something of the demands made by the active conscience can be