13. § 13. Meaning of the Internal Principle.
§ 13. Meaning of the Internal Principle.
. To the principium externum, which was discussed in the previous chapter, there must correspond in man himself a principium internum.
By Herbert Spencer, Principles of psychology § 120, life is defined as the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations; and indeed all life in man rests on a reciprocal correspondence of subject and object.
Man is in every respect dependent on the world outside him; he is autonomous in no single domain, he lives from what is given, i.e. from grace. But reciprocally he is adapted to that whole world outside him, he stands connected with it through all kinds of relations. His body is taken from the dust of the earth, composed of the same elements as other bodies, and therefore akin to the physical world. His vegetative life is nourished from the earth; food, covering and clothing are bestowed on him by nature; light and air, alternation of day and night he needs for his bodily life; he is a microcosm, earthly from the earth. As anima sensitiva he received in the senses organs, by which he can perceive and represent to himself the world outside himself in its various relations. Through the logos that is in him, he
raises himself to the world of intelligible things and traces the logos that has embodied itself in the visible. And likewise man stands, religiously and ethically, in relation with a true world of ideal and spiritual goods and has received a facultas to perceive and [417] to know this world. The investigation into the essence of religion earlier already led us pp. 177, 212, to a certain religious disposition in man, to a receptivity of his nature to perceive the divine. Scripture expresses this thus, that man is created after God's image, that he is his offspring and that he possesses in the νους an organ to notice God's revelation in his creation. Religion presupposes that man is akin to God.
But even if this religious receptivity may be proper to human nature, it is nevertheless an abstraction and in reality never occurs in a pure state and without content. Whatever rich aptitude for science or art may also be hidden in a child, it is nevertheless born in a state of helplessness. It depends on the grace of its environment. Food and drink, shelter and clothing, representations and concepts, sensations and desires we receive from the circle in which we are born and brought up. Religion too is impressed upon us by our parents and caretakers. It is with religion as with language. We bring the capacity for speech with us at birth; but the language in which we shall later express our thoughts is bestowed upon us by the environment. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 6e
Aufl. II 181, therefore makes the correct remark, that religions enjoy a great privilege over philosophical systems, because they are impressed upon children from their youth. Religion grows up from childhood onward together with the most intimate and tender life and is for that reason also almost ineradicable. The rule is that someone dies in the religion in which he was born. The Mohammedan, the Christian, the Roman, the Protestant
commonly remain faithful until their death to the religion of their youth and of their parents. Except in times of religious crisis, such as at the rise of Christianity, Mohammedanism, the Reformation, conversions are rare; change of religion is the exception, not the rule. Indeed, most people live and die without ever being shaken by serious doubt in their religious faith.
The question why they believe in the truth of the religious representations in which they have been brought up does not arise in thought. They believe, find more or less satisfaction in their faith, and do not reflect on the [418] grounds on which their conviction rests. If faith is strong, there is no place for such an investigation into the grounds of faith. He who is hungry does not first investigate the manner in which the bread is prepared that is set before him. Primum vivere, deinde philosophari. There is a great difference between life and reflection. It is not a proof of richness but of poverty of religious life, if most attention is devoted to the formal questions. When philosophical power of thought is exhausted, one throws oneself upon the history of philosophy. When one no longer lives in the confession of the church, its origin and history are investigated. And when faith loses its power and confidence, an investigation is instituted into the grounds on which it rests.
2. Yet such investigation has its good and useful side. Kant has turned the whole of philosophy upside down into a critique of the faculty of knowledge. And no one will despise the investigations which since then have been devoted to the nature and the certainty of our knowledge. But yet too highly strained expectation here is always followed by disappointment.
The problems here are so complicated that solution seems unattainable. All attempts to arrive at a satisfactory answer in this question are weighed down by serious objections. Sometimes voices are raised which counsel
against further investigation, because it is completely useless. These formal questions have no influence on science itself. Whether one be idealist or empiricist, realist or nominalist, there is in any case no science to be obtained except along the path of observation and thinking. Also in theology and religion there is reason to warn against exaggerated expectations. The Erkenntnisstheorie does not compensate for faith; the pars formalis of dogmatics cannot replace the pars materialis. Indeed the investigation into the grounds of faith is much more difficult than that into the grounds of knowing. In the first place it is in general impossible for believers, in a scientific sense, to give an account to themselves of the reasons why they believe. Their life out of faith is for them themselves proof enough of the truth and value of that faith. He who is hungry and eats, thereby of itself experiences the nourishing power of the bread and has no need of investigation into its chemical constituents [419]. Further, it is also even for scientific theologians an exaggerated demand, that beforehand they must prove the scientific right of the Erkenntnisstheorie from which they proceed, before they may make a beginning with the theological labour, A.
Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik 1881 S. 38. A theologian is after all no philosopher. Even if philosophical formation is indispensable for the divine, he nevertheless does not need first to have investigated all philosophical
Erkenntnisstheorieën before he can appear as theologian. Theology brings its own theory of knowledge with it and is indeed dependent on philosophy but not on any philosophical system. And finally the object of the investigation here lies so deeply hidden in the life of the soul and is so intimately interwoven with the finest and tenderest stirrings of the human heart, that it almost entirely escapes our own and much more still another's observation. Religion is rooted deeper in human nature than any other
power. For it man gives up everything, his money and his goods, his wife and his child, his name, his honour, his life. Only religion has bloodwitnesses, martyrs. Preserving it, man can lose everything, with it he nevertheless preserves himself. But denying it, he himself is lost. Who then will be able to trace the root of this life, which is one with the life of man himself? Who will be able to lay bare the ground on which believing rests?
Faith itself is already such a wondrous and mysterious power. We describe it by knowing, assenting, trusting etc., but immediately feel the weakness of this definition, and after long reasoning in the end have still said nothing or very little. The question: how and why do I know, is so difficult that all philosophical power of thought has not yet found the answer. But still more difficult is the question: how and why do I believe? It is for ourselves a riddle, for we cannot descend into the depths of our own mind and cannot penetrate with our gaze into the darkness that lies behind our consciousness.
And for others it is an even greater hiddenness. For for ourselves as grounds of faith there still count all kinds of moods and emotions, deliberations and dispositions, which accompany faith and attach us inseparably fast to the object of our faith. But to others we cannot communicate these; they are destined for no revelation [420] and are not susceptible of any communication. If we sometimes attempt it, they lose under the communication their power and value; we feel ourselves least satisfied by it. And often the end is that what was indicated as ground cannot stand the test and proves to be no ground. Nevertheless faith, in spite of all reasoning, maintains itself and says: I cannot do otherwise, God help me, amen.
3. Therefore it causes no surprise that the grounds for religious and thus also for Christian faith are stated very differently. To the question: how someone comes to faith and why he believes, the answers diverge very
widely. Some are of the opinion that man in himself, in his own nature, possesses sufficient data in order to discern, to judge, and to accept a religious representation, the revelation, the Scripture. The organ for the judging and acceptance of revelation is sought in turn in the understanding; faith then rests on historical-apologetic grounds. Or reason is indicated as such an organ; faith is then built on speculative reasoning. Or also conscience, the disposition, the heart is regarded as organ for the divine; faith is then based on ethical-practical motives. But always, with these directions, a man is presupposed who perhaps in one way or another has been prepared for revelation, but who nevertheless in fact still stands outside the faith and for whom now the revelation must be justified by an intellectual or moral way.
The following investigation will teach that these grounds are insufficient and that the standpoint adopted by these tendencies cannot be accepted. But already a priori the inadequacy of these different methods can be seen.
Religion, after all, is an independent magnitude; it is essentially distinct from science, art, morality. It has its own principium cognoscendi externum, viz. revelation, and therefore also demands its own principium cognoscendi internum. Just as the eye corresponds to the light, the ear to the sound, the logos in us to the logos outside us, so to the objective revelation a subjective organ in man must correspond. Religious receptivity in general, the semen religionis, the νους cannot [421] be considered for that. For, in the first place, this never and nowhere occurs in a pure state and without content. From the first awakening onward it is always grown into a historical religion and accommodated to it. But, in the second place, revelation in Scripture proceeds from the presupposition that man is also corrupted in this his religious disposition and is in need of re-creation. It
would therefore destroy itself, if it recognized in the psychical man its competent judge. It places itself over against him in an entirely different relation. It does not place itself beneath him and does not submit to his judgment, but stands high above him and asks nothing but faith and obedience. Indeed, Scripture expressly declares that the psychical man does not understand the things of the Spirit of God, that they are foolishness to him, that he rejects and disavows them in enmity. The revelation of God in Christ asks for no support, no justification from men. It posits and maintains itself in high majesty. Its auctoritas is normative but also causative. It fights for its own triumph. It conquers for itself the hearts. It makes itself irresistible. Therefore revelation falls apart into two great dispensations. When the oeconomy of the Son, of the objective revelation, has ended, that of the Spirit enters in. Of this subjective revelation too God is the author. From Him the action proceeds. He is the first and the last.
Man does not come to revelation and does not seek God. God seeks man.
He seeks him in the Son, He seeks him also in the Spirit. If God in the last days has spoken to us through the Son, then the H. Spirit comes, who takes up the cause for Christ with the world, pleads his case, defends his word and inclines the hearts of men to obedience. The H. Spirit is the great, mighty Witness of Christ, objectively in Scripture, subjectively in man's own spirit. In that Spirit man receives an adaequaat organ for the outward revelation. God can only be known by God; in his light alone can the light be seen. No one knows the Father, except him to whom the Son wills to reveal him, and no one can say Jesus to be the Lord, except through the H.
Spirit. God is thus the principium essendi of religion and theology; the objective revelation in Christ, laid down in Scripture, is its principium cognoscendi externum; [422] and the H. Spirit, who has been poured out in
the congregation, regenerates it and leads it into the truth, is its principium cognoscendi internum. In this testimony of the H. Spirit revelation closes and reaches its goal. For it is the good pleasure of God to re-create humanity after his image and likeness. Objective revelation is therefore not enough; it must continue and be completed in the subjective revelation. Yes, the former is only means, the latter is goal. The principium externum is instrumental; the principium internum is the principium formale and principale, bl. 143.
Therefore the Christian church at all times made confession of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. God is the author of the external revelation; but He is also the one who elects the congregation, founds the church, and in it bears witness of Christ. Scripture is his word, the congregation is his temple. In so far there is unanimity in the confession of all churches concerning the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. Not the natural but only the spiritual man knows the things which have been bestowed on him by God,
1 Cor. 2:12 v. But otherwise there is nevertheless great difference concerning this witness of the Holy Spirit, especially between the Roman church and the churches of the Reformation. For according to Rome,
Scripture is given to the church, and indeed to the church as institute, and only through it to the believers. The church receives, preserves, authorises, explains Holy Scripture. All revelation of God to the believers is mediated through the institute of the church. The church always stands between God and the believers. The church is mediatrix, medium gratiae, principium externum. She is the temple of the Holy Spirit. The testimonium Spiritus
Sancti expresses itself in Rome only through the church as institute, through the ecclesia docens, through the magisterium, through the pope. But according to the Reformation the revelation, Scripture, is given, indeed also
to the church, but to the church as organism, to the congregation, to the believers. They are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The testimonium Spiritus
Sancti is the property of all believers. Where two or three are gathered in Jesus' name, He is in the midst. In Rome the institute is the essence of the church; according to the Reformation this is a temporary aid, but the essence of the church lies in the assembly of the believers. This is the dwelling of God, the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit. [423]