15. § 15. The Speculative Method.
§ 15. The Speculative Method.
. Supranaturalism fell under the blows of Rousseau and Kant, of Lessing and Schleiermacher. A mighty reversal followed. Classicism gave way in every area to romanticism, the dominion and autonomy of the subject. In the first period, with the feeling of freedom, this reaction went so far that it eliminated everything objective and held the subject to be sufficient unto itself. The subject thus produces, if not the matter (Fichte), then at any rate the form (Kant) of the world. The non-I is a product of the I, the moral world-order comes into being through man himself, and the moral law is freely and royally set by genius [432] itself. Schleiermacher too at first adopted this standpoint. But this absolute idealism led to all kinds of dreadful consequences. The French Revolution showed the dangerousness of this autonomy of man. Yet there had to be something objective, that stood firm and had authority. Thus came the restoration, i.e. the attempt, while retaining the same point of departure, nevertheless to come back from the subject to the objective. Of that restoration Hegel was the philosophical spokesman. He elevated the subjective, ethical idealism of
Fichte to an objective, logical idealism, and replaced the idea of being with that of becoming. The whole world became a process, a development of the logical idea. In this evolution religion too has its place. But that religion veils itself in forms and symbols, which can be understood in their deep meaning only by speculative reason. Rationalism understood nothing of that, and simply set aside the dogmas of the church, not knowing what to do with them. But those dogmas are full of deep, philosophical meaning.
Hegel's spirit threw itself upon those dogmas, stripped them of their historical symbolic forms, and traced the idea in them. History is only the shell, the covering; the kernel itself is deep, true philosophy. Not the rationalistic doctrines God, virtue, immortality, but the highest and deepest dogmas of Christianity, such as the Trinity, the incarnation, the satisfaction, become the object of bold, philosophical speculation. Outside Scripture and outside any authority, those dogmas are derived as necessary from reason and proved as supremely rational. Theology and philosophy were apparently reconciled, faith was transformed by speculative reason into absolute knowing. This speculative method was adopted and applied to dogmatics, indeed with very different outcome, by Daub, Markeineke,
Strauss, Feuerbach, Vatke, Weisse, lastly by Biedermann. Biedermann deviates from Hegel on important points and does not accept his a priori method; but proceeding from the Christian dogmas, he nevertheless attempts, in the same way as Hegel, to analyze these into the religious principle that underlies them and the historical expression which they have assumed, and then further to develop them speculatively and practically,
Christl. Dogm. 2e Aufl. I 15, 16. And likewise in this country Scholten has attempted, in the Reformed dogmas [433] to distinguish between clothing and idea, and to interpret them in a monistic and deterministic sense.
2. But this speculative method has also found acceptance in the school of Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher had in common with Hegel the subjective point of departure, yet he took his position not in reason but in feeling.
Religion is a peculiar determination of feeling or of immediate selfconsciousness. Further, he did not conceive that feeling individually, but historically, as it existed in a religious community and in the Christian congregation in particular had been formed by Jesus as the Erlöser. And finally he saw in dogmatics no speculative development but only description of the pious states of mind or of the faith of the congregation;
Schleiermacher opposed in theory all mixing of theology and philosophy.
But on the other hand Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre nevertheless showed that his own religious experience deviated very strongly from that of the Christian congregation and very certainly had also been formed under the influence of Spinoza; and in his Kurze Darstellung he gave the first place to philosophical theology, which was given the task of determining the essence of Christianity. In fact, in Schleiermacher theology became wholly dependent on philosophy, Kurze Darst. § 24, 32 f. cf. Christl. Glaub. § 2 f.
The Vermittelungstheologie, with Schleiermacher, took its standpoint in consciousness, in faith, the confession of the congregation, but combined therewith the speculative method of Hegel, in order thereby to elevate faith to knowledge and to make authority yield to independent rational insight.
Twesten strives, by means of reasoning, to derive an orthodox-Lutheran dogmatics from pious feeling, Vorles. I2 21 f. Müller wishes by a regressive way, through reflection on his own experience, from the religious certainty of faith to arrive at an objective knowledge of God, Dogm. Abhandlungen
1870 S. 1-42, and art. Dogmatik in Herzog1. Martensen assigns to the reborn consciousness the task of reproducing scientifically from its own
depths the doctrine of Scripture and of the church, Dogm. § 31 f. With Dorner the Glaubenslehre is not merely descriptive, but also constructive and progressive; it brings religious knowledge to systematic Begründung und Entfaltung and attempts to demonstrate the Christian idea of God [434] as necessary, by indicating that it is the supplementation and completion of the concept of God überhaupt, Glaub. I 155 f. Especially in Rothe this speculative method of the Vermittelungstheologie clearly emerges; the consciousness of God is the idea from which he, with the aid of Hegelian dialectic, derives the whole creation, nature, history, sin, redemption, Theol.
Ethik § 7. Among the Vermittelungstheologians there is moreover great diversity, but they all have point of departure and method in common with one another; they proceed not from some or other authority, but from the Christian consciousness of the congregation, and seek the proof for the truth of faith not in an appeal to some or other authority but in inner evidence, in logical necessity.
3. Even outside the circle of those theologians who, in a stricter sense, attach themselves to Hegel and Schleiermacher, this method has found acceptance. Hofmann does indeed not conceive dogmatics as a description of states of mind, any more than as a reproduction of Scriptureor churchdoctrine and also not as a development of Christian knowledge from a general principle, but he nevertheless, like Schleiermacher, proceeds from Christian piety. Dogmatics is an unfolding of that which makes the Christian a Christian, of the personal communion of God with man mediated by Christ. Die Erkenntniss und Aussage des Christenthums ist vor allem Selbsterkenntniss und Selbstaussage des Christen, Schriftbeweis, 2e
Aufl. I S. 5-16. Philippi, Kirchl. Glaub. I 52 f. 108 f. Kahnis, Luther. Dogm.
I 7, 8 have this same subjective point of departure. Ebrard attempts in
dogmatics to demonstrate the truth and necessity of the Erlösungsthatsachen, by comparing them at all points with the scientifically developed Erlösungsbedürfniss, Dogm. § 52. etc. Frank in particular has, in his System der Christl. Gewissheit, 2e Aufl. 1884, taken over and elaborated this thought. Hofmann took his standpoint in the factual state of the communion of God with man. This rests and bears the certainty in itself, and Scripture bears witness to it. Here, therefore, there was no place for a system of Christian certainty. The Christian is conscious of himself, and with that everything is said. But Frank does not stop here; he attempts to give an account why the Christian believes all that [435] which his faith contains. He thus constructs a System der christlichen Gewissheit.
Theology, so he says, must, in distinction from philosophy I 26 f., place itself not outside but in the midst of Christian consciousness, and from there survey and judge everything, also the natural, S. 31, 32, 119, 137. Christian certainty, after all, has its foundation and essence not in all kinds of external proofs, nor also in an external authority, but in the Christian himself, in his moral experience and self-determination. This particular moral experience is regeneration and conversion, S. 113. The Christian knows that a change has taken place with him and is still continually taking place, so that there now dwells in him a twofold direction, a twofold I, S. 120 f.; and he is as certain of that as a sick person who recovered is conscious of his former sickness and his present health, S. 129. From this experience of regeneration he now of himself and at once posits the whole content of Christian truth; he does so by virtue of the nature of the new life bestowed on him and can divest himself of this truth of faith as little as of himself, S.
193. In three circles that Christian truth of faith groups itself around the experience of regeneration. First the Christian, by virtue of his new life,
posits those truths of faith which are given directly and immediately with the fact of regeneration, namely the reality of sin, of righteousness, and of future perfection. This is the domain of the central, immanent truths, which still belong entirely to the self-consciousness of the Christian. Around this there forms a second circle of truths; the believer can namely explain this new condition only by the reality of the personal God, the existence of God as Triune, and the reconciliation acquired by the God-man. These three together form the group of the transcendent truths, and indicate the factors which have brought about that moral change of regeneration in the Christian. And finally around this there forms yet a third circle of truths, namely the transeunt, which indicate the means by which the abovementioned transcendent factors effect the experience of salvation in the Christian; and these are church, word of God, Scripture, sacrament, miracles, revelation and inspiration. Finally, Christian certainty also includes yet a definite relation [436] of the regenerate person to natural life, to world and humanity, S. 191 f.
4. This speculative method had important advantages over the apologetic one of the rationalistic period. The clarity which in the previous century was held to be the standard of truth had changed revelation into a doctrine, the church into a school, regeneration into moral improvement, the crucified Christ into the wise man of Nazareth. Rationalism had falsified the whole Christian religion. With contempt the cultivated turned away from revelation and religion, from congregation and faith. It required courage, as Schleiermacher and Hegel did, to go back to the congregation and its dogmas and to discover therein, even if only in a certain sense, deep religious truth. It was a display of moral strength to break with the rationalistic demand for clarity, to take up the cause of the despised religion
of the congregation and once again to pronounce the right and the value of the Christian faith. More still, there lay in the point of departure of Hegel and Schleiermacher a glorious truth. Thinking and being are most intimately related and correspond to each other. Rationalism tried to justify religion before the incompetent tribunal of common sense. But Hegel and Schleiermacher both saw that religion occupies its own place in human life, that it forms an independent magnitude and therefore also demands its own corresponding organ in human nature. Hegel and Schleiermacher differed among themselves in the indication of that organ; the one sought it in reason, the other in feeling. But both nevertheless rose above vulgar rationalism and both pointed to the harmony of subject and object. If with their subjective point of departure they had meant nothing else, their victory over rationalism would have deserved only assent. For the objective does not exist for us except insofar as it comes to our consciousness. It is not to be approached in any other way than through consciousness. And religion therefore is also no reality for me, except insofar as I have taken it up in feeling or reason, or whatever its organ may be in man. But Hegel and Schleiermacher did not content themselves with the proposition that [437] thinking and being correspond to each other; they identified both. This identification of thinking and being is the πρωτον ψευδος of speculative philosophy. Plato already proceeded from that, when he held the ideas to be the true world. Cartesius took it over in his cogito ergo sum. Spinoza spoke in the same sense of a causa sui, cujus essentia involvit existentiam. Fichte brought it to dominion in modern philosophy. The great question in that connection is this: do we think something because it exists, or does something exist because we must think it necessarily, logically? Speculative philosophy said the latter. But between thinking and being, however great
an agreement may yet exist, there is a no less essential distinction. From thinking there is no conclusion to being, because the being of all creatures is no emanation of thinking but rests on an act of power. The essence of things is to be ascribed to thinking; existence only to the will of God.
Human thinking therefore presupposes being; it first rises on the foundation of the created; we can only reflect on what has been pre-thought for us and comes to our consciousness through the world. If, however, with modern philosophy one rejects all material that has come to us from outside, and takes pure reason or abstract feeling as one's point of departure, one retains nothing, or at most such a general, contentless and vague principle that nothing, let alone the whole world, or the whole Christian revelation and religion, can be derived from it, cf. above p. 148 v.
The philosophy of Hegel was therefore not so innocent as it could originally seem. It was the elaboration and application of Fichte's proposition, that the I posits the not-I, that the subject creates the object.
Schleiermacher in theology went back to this principle, because for him all authority in religion had fallen away, the rational and historical proofs for Christianity did not satisfy him, and God also in his opinion was unknowable to reason. Just as Kant wanted to restore by practical reason what he had lost by the critique of pure reason, so Schleiermacher too saw no possibility of saving religion except by proceeding from the religious subject, from feeling, from consciousness. From that it followed that dogmatics could be nothing other than description of states of mind and [438] thus properly belonged in historical theology. Theology became anthropology, pisteology, ecclesiology, and ceased to be what it had always claimed to be, knowledge of God. But Schleiermacher could nevertheless not stop there; also in religion it is not reality but truth that concerns us. The
justification of Christianity was therefore in the first part of the encyclopaedia assigned to philosophy. Because there is no other ground any longer on which the Christian faith rests, philosophy receives the task of maintaining religion in its right and value. The Vermittelungstheologie took over Schleiermacher's subjective point of departure, followed the track drawn by him for the defence of religious truth, and thus of itself came to an alliance with the dialectical, speculative method of Hegel. It could not be satisfied with the empirical knowledge of the content of Christian consciousness. Such a knowledge was, after all, no science. Not the fact of faith alone had to be ascertained; also the right and the truth of faith had to be demonstrated. And because one had no other proof, recourse was taken to speculation. The speculative theology that arose after Schleiermacher strove for a higher knowledge of Christianity than that which rested on authority and was obtained through faith. It was a renewal of the old
Gnosticism. The Christian dogmas, such as the Trinity, the incarnation, the satisfaction, had to be not merely confessed as articles of faith but also be seen through and understood in their necessity. The that is not sufficient; the how and why must also be understood.
The speculative Vermittelungstheologie therefore sought to escape the lower standpoint of authority and strove to make Christianity rest as absolute truth in itself. It did indeed proceed from faith but set knowledge as its goal. Necessity of thought was for it the proof of truth.
That this method would lead to no desired result either in philosophy or in theology was foreseeable and has been strikingly proved by history.
Refutation is almost superfluous. Speculation has long since had its time.
The philosophy of Hegel led, in Feuerbach and Strauss, to rejection of the whole Christian faith. The philosophical treatment of orthodox dogmatics
by Schweizer, Scholten, Biedermann has only for a short time covered the [439] dogmatic poverty of modern theology. The more orthodox
Vermittelungstheologie can with justice boast of the works of Rothe, Dorner, Lange, Martensen, Müller etc., which are full of deep and beautiful thoughts; but it has nevertheless absolutely not answered the expectation which it had aroused. It did not succeed in changing the foolishness of the cross into a wisdom of the world; it did not succeed, by its profound reflections, in winning the children of this age again for Christ. On the contrary, the mediation resulted in an even more radical separation of believing and knowing, of theology and philosophy, of congregation and world. The speculation, which was pursued by a part of the Vermittelungstheologie, also proceeded from the incorrect presupposition that Christianity was a logical system of thoughts, from whose first member all the following could be derived by thinking and reasoning. But if the being of things in general already rests not on thinking but on willing; if history, however much an execution of a counsel of God, is nevertheless something essentially different from an arithmetic example; then all the more is the Christian religion distinct from a logical system of thoughts. For Christianity is history, it is a history of grace, and grace is something other and something more than a logical conclusion. In the Christian religion, therefore, even the deepest thinker never gets beyond the childlike standpoint of authority and faith. See, besides the literature mentioned above on p. 151, the art. Specul. Theol. and Theosophie in Herzog1. Pelt,
Theol. Encyklopädie 1843 S. 532 f. Rothe, Theol. Ethik, 2e Aufl. § 1 f. J.
Müller, Die christl. Lehre v. d. Sünde, 5te Aufl. I S. 1-31.
5. The theology of Dr. Fr. H. R. Frank, professor at Erlangen, † Febr.
1894, deserves separate discussion. Frank combats as strongly as possible
the so-called prolegomena of dogmatics, System der christl. Gewissheit 2e Aufl. 1884 I 36 f., and gives in their place a System der christlichen
Gewissheit. This title, however, is not particularly clear. Certainty, assurance is a state of the soul and as such excludes system. If, however, certainty is here taken for the objects of faith, of which the Christian is certain, then System [440] der christl. Gewissheit is as much as System der christl. Wahrheit. That cannot be the intention, for Frank has given precisely this title to his second important work. In his System der christl. Gewissheit
I 48 he explains himself more precisely and says that this system has as its object the Gewissheit, insofar as it extends to the zu verbürgenden
Wahrheitsgehalt, i.e. certainty as a psychological state with all that which it assures insofar as it assures it. The system of Christian certainty consequently amounts to a formal schema of the different kinds and degrees of certainty, which proceed from Christian self-consciousness with respect to the objects of faith. Now, however, it is not Frank's intention that the objects of the Christian faith would not already exist beforehand and would not be known. He expressly declares the contrary, Gew. I 313. Neither does he deny that Christian certainty would arise through the word, Dogmatische
Studien, Erl. u. Leipz. 1892 S. 56. He does not wish to derive those objective truths from the reborn subject, ib. S. 68, 69. More still; when he has derived all that which follows from Christian self-consciousness from it, and has developed and completed the whole system of Christian certainty, then he says in clear words that there now follows a reversal, and that the last becomes the first. The Christian has, out of and through his own certainty, found the objective ground on which he rests with his life of faith, namely the grace of God in Christ, and from there he now builds up the system of Christian truth, Syst. der chr. Gew. II 281 f. Frank's intention is
only to give an answer to the question: how does a human being come to it, to rely on those objective factors of salvation, God, Christ, the H. Scripture, etc., to accept Scripture without qualification as God's word, S. der chr.
Gew. II 285 f. Dogm. Stud. 56. In the system of Christian certainty, therefore, Frank develops not so much the grounds of faith as the ways along which a human being comes to certainty concerning the Christian truths of faith. And in general Frank now says that a human being obtains this certainty not through historical or rational proofs and likewise not through authority, church, tradition, etc., but only through the experience of regeneration, S. d. chr. Gew. I 314.
The question which Frank has set before himself to answer, [441] is therefore of the very greatest importance; it is also necessary and good, for Christian certainty does not speak of itself and is often subject to doubt. The answer, too, which Frank gives to that question, is to a certain extent correct. Just as the eye is necessary in order to behold the light, so regeneration is needed in order to see the kingdom of heaven. But doubt may arise whether Frank's System der christlichen Gewissheit corresponds to this his good intention. And for that doubt there is ground. For the whole system as such is in conflict with that expressed intention. If Frank had wished to do nothing other than describe how the believer comes to certainty, then he would only have brought to light the origin and the nature of that certainty and would have ended with that. Just as the Erkenntnisstheorie only develops the grounds on which belief in the external world rests, but does not derive every object in that world from this certainty, so the system of Christian certainty ought to have been content with indicating the grounds of certainty but ought not to have discussed its content. Then, however, there would also have been no system in the proper
sense of the different objects to which certainty relates, possible. Frank, however, does much more; he gives a system. He derives all truths of faith successively, indeed not in a temporal but yet in a logical, causal sense,
Gew. I 47, II 290 from regeneration. He has the Christian gradually come from the experience of regeneration to all Christian dogmata, "as if" he previously and by another way knew nothing of them. Thus Frank does with all dogmata, of sin, guilt, God, Trinity, incarnation, resurrection, etc.
We get the impression as if all these truths, apart from Scripture and church, can be derived by the Christian from his regeneration. Frank continually confuses with one another the causa essendi and the causa cognoscendi, the objective ground of the truth of faith and the subjective way by which someone comes to certainty of it. He exchanges and identifies objective truth and subjective certainty. More than once he expresses himself thus, as if the regenerate person simply posits the objective truths of faith as realities by virtue of his spiritual experience, Gew. I 94, 193. He speaks of an Autonomie des christlichen Subjektes as Garanten der Wahrheit, I 151.
[442] 6. All this is rooted in Frank in a peculiar theory of knowledge. He goes a good way along with the idealism of modern philosophy, I 58 f. The object as object, i.e. for the subject, is present only through that Setzung durch das
Subject, ib. 61. Indeed Frank acknowledges the reality of the objective world, be it also not in an empiricist and sensualist sense, ib. 59, 60. But our knowledge never has to do with the Ding an und für sich, but always with the Ding für uns. That we ascribe to the object an existence in itself, comes from the fact that we see ourselves compelled to posit the object thus and not otherwise. Both directions, both empiricism and idealism, do that; they differ only in the manner in which they do it, ib. 61. Certainty is therefore
always certainty concerning an object. It consists precisely in this, des Objectes inne zu sein als der Wahrheit, ib. 63. We do not get further by this reasoning than that our mind is so constituted that it must assume the objective reality of the objects of which it is certain; whether, however, the human mind does this rightly and does not suffer from hallucination, is for Frank no question. The necessity of the Setzung is for him the ultimate ground of objective reality. Certainty is for him not essential but, in terms of epistemology, the guarantee of truth. Reality is indeed the ground of being of certainty, but this is the ground of knowing of reality.
This epistemology Frank also applies to the Christian faith. The objective truths and facts of Christianity do indeed essentially and causally precede faith, but in an epistemological sense they follow upon it. Just as he now in philosophy takes the self-consciousness of man as his point of departure, so in theology he proceeds from the self-consciousness of the Christian, from the experience of regeneration. But against this point of departure and against this method there are many objections. a) This regeneration of the Christian and likewise all his other spiritual experiences, including even his certainty, have not arisen spontaneously in the Christian, but from the beginning and continually stand in connection with the objective factors of Scripture, church, etc. Frank himself acknowledges that repeatedly, I 123,
124, 191, etc.; but wrongly he then detaches spiritual experience a priori from those objective factors, in order to place it by itself and to let it rest in itself. [443] Frank's point of departure, viz. the certainty of the Christian, is a mere abstraction; that certainty rests from the outset and always on the objective factors of salvation coming to the believer from without. b) By, as was remarked above, in the System der chr. Gew. II 281 f. acknowledging that the order now reverses, Frank himself concedes that regeneration offers
no sufficient certainty for the objective truth of the Christian faith. For if the objective, causal order is indeed such as Frank indicates it in his System der christlichen Wahrheit, viz. such that the objective precedes, then this must also be the order of the whole system. The system must be an imprint of the order of being, not of the way in which someone comes to knowledge and certainty of the objective truth. For this way is so different that it is not susceptible of any systematic description, cf. above p. 50. c) The method according to which Frank constructs the objective dogmas out of the certainty of the Christian is one that does not fit in the Christian religion and theology. It is borrowed from speculative philosophy. Just as this took its point of departure in a general, from everything abstracted, vague principle; so the self-consciousness of the Christian detached from all objective factors, his certainty an sich, is the cogito ergo sum, the δος μοι που στω for Frank. From that he concludes first of all to the immanent truths of faith. Subsequently he calls the method of natural science to his aid and concludes regressively from the effect to the cause and wants to explain the new life of the Christian wholly according to empirical method,
I 39. As the physicist by spectral analysis seeks to learn to know the chemical constituents of the sun, so Frank attempts to reduce the life of regeneration by analysis to its objective factors, I 315. The Christian, reflecting on his spiritual life, can explain it in no other way than by assuming that God is triune, that Christ became man and has made satisfaction, etc. d) This method is also in conflict with all Christian experience. Thus never did any Christian come to certainty concerning the objective truth. It goes entirely outside reality. Moreover it is impractical, for in doubt and unbelief the Christian lacks precisely that certainty which alone, according to Frank, can guarantee him the objective truth of his faith.
In [444] such times he has need precisely of an objective word, an objective act, which sustains him and to which he can cling and from the depth of doubt and temptation can again lift himself up. e) Finally there are still various other objections to be raised against Frank's system. Thus the transition from natural to spiritual knowing and likewise the connection between both in Frank suffers from lack of clarity. The distinction of a twofold I in the regenerate is liable to all manner of misunderstanding; in regeneration no new I is created in man but the I of the psychical man is renewed. The splitting of dogmatics into a system of certainty and a system of truth is not to be maintained, because the certainty of the Christian cannot be described without the truth to which it applies. But the above is enough to show that the accusation of subjectivism, even if it is vague, has not been brought wholly unjustly against the theology of Frank, just as against that of Ritschl. Cf. on Frank: Henri Bois, De la certitude chrétienne.
Essai sur la théologie de Frank, Paris Fischbacher 1887. O. Flügel, Die spekulative Theol. der Gegenwart 2e Aufl. 1888 S. 188 f. Dr. A. Carlblom,
Zur Lehre von der christl. Gewissheit, Leipzig 1874. Dorner, Christl.
Glaubenslehre I 1879 S. 37 f. Pfleiderer, Die Entwicklung der protest.
Theol. usw. 1891 S. 183 f. Polstorff, Der Subjektivismus in der modernen Theologie und sein Unrecht, Gütersloh 1893. Gottschick, Die Kirchlichkeit der s. g. kirchl. Theol. 1890 S. 110 f. Ernst Haack, Ueber Wesen und
Bedeutung der christl. Erfahrung, Schwerin 1894.