HC1310

1
HC1310

• Europe in the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and
  Twentieth Centuries

2
Enlightenment

• The German concept of Aufklärung, defined by
  Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in 1784 as both a
  spiritual force and method of truth that rejects
  self-incurred tutelage to authorities that
  represent old ideas of the past. To be mature and
  free, a person must analyze the reality of the
  human condition apart from the conventional
  wisdom of religious dogma and the divine right of
  kings. Sapere aude, said Kant, Dare to use
  your own reason!that is the motto of
  enlightenment.
• Kant on History, ed. Lewis White Beck, p. 3.

3
Baruch Spinoza 1632-1677

• (21) The universal rule, then, in interpreting
  Scripture is to accept nothing as an
  authoritative Scriptural statement which we do
  not perceive very clearly when we examine it in
  the light of its history.
• (28) I call passages clear or obscure according
  as their meaning is inferred easily or with
  difficulty in relation to the context, not
  according as their truth is perceived easily or
  the reverse by reason.
• (29) We are at work not on the truth of passages,
  but solely on their meaning.
• (30) We must take especial care, when we are in
  search of the meaning of a text, not to be led
  away by our reason in so far as it is founded on
  principles of natural knowledge (to say nothing
  of prejudices) in order not to confound the
  meaning of a passage with its truth, we must
  examine it solely by means of the signification
  of the words, or by a reason acknowledging no
  foundation but Scripture.
• (41) Such a history should relate the environment
  of all the prophetic books extant that is, the
  life, the conduct, and the studies of the author
  of each book, who he was, what was the occasion,
  and the epoch of his writing, whom did he write
  for, and in what language.
• Theologico-Political Treatise (1670) ch. VII

4
Pierre Bayle 1647-1706

• "God does not want our minds to find a standing
  ground too easily and set traps for it on all
  sides."i
• i... Pierre Bayle, The Great Contest of Faith
  and Reason Selections from the Writings of
  Pierre Bayle, tr. and ed. with intro. Karl C.
  Sandberg (New York Friedrich Ungar, 1963) 54.

5
Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712-1778

• Individual apart from state is not adult
• Claim of the state on the individual is unlimited
• Private association is a danger to society
• Social Contract 1762

6
Religion, considered in relation to society,
which is either general or particular, may also
be divided into two kinds the religion of man,
and that of the citizen. The first, which has
neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is
confined to the purely internal cult of the
supreme God and the eternal obligations of
morality, is the religion of the Gospel pure and
simple, the true theism, what may be called
natural divine right or law. The other, which is
codified in a single country, gives it its gods,
its own tutelary patrons it has its dogmas, its
rites, and its external cult prescribed by law
outside the single nation that follows it, all
the world is in its sight infidel, foreign and
barbarous the duties and rights of man extend
for it only as far as its own altars. Of this
kind were all the religions of early peoples,
which we may define as civil or positive divine
right or law. There is a third sort of religion
of a more singular kind, which gives men two
codes of legislation, two rulers, and two
countries, renders them subject to contradictory
duties, and makes it impossible for them to be
faithful both to religion and to citizenship.
Such are the religions of the Lamas and of the
Japanese, and such is Roman Christianity, which
may be called the religion of the priest. It
leads to a sort of mixed and anti-social code
which has no name. IV/8
7
. . .the religion of man or Christianity not
the Christianity of to-day, but that of the
Gospel, which is entirely different. By means of
this holy, sublime, and real religion all men,
being children of one God, recognise one another
as brothers, and the society that unites them is
not dissolved even at death. But this religion,
having no particular relation to the body
politic, leaves the laws in possession of the
force they have in themselves without making any
addition to it and thus one of the great bonds
that unite society considered in severally fails
to operate. Nay, more, so far from binding the
hearts of the citizens to the State, it has the
effect of taking them away from all earthly
things. I know of nothing more contrary to the
social spirit.
8
Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826 (portrait of 1821)

• The Declaration of Independence was, he said,
  "the signal of arousing men to burst the chains
  under which monkish ignorance and superstition
  had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to
  assume the blessings and security of
  self-government." If the American experience
  teaches anything, it is "the palpable truth, that
  the mass of mankind has not been born with
  saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted
  and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by
  the grace of God."i
• i. Thomas Jefferson, Writings, ed. Merrill D.
  Peterson (New York Library of America, 1984),
  1517.

9
Hermann Samuel Reimarus1694-1768

• it is certain.. .no book, no history in the world
  were so full of contradictions, and therein the
  name of God so often and shamefully misused
  Since all the persons who are cited here as men
  of God, their sum total, give sheer offense,
  annoyance and aversion to a soul which loves
  honor and virtue. In the whole series of this
  history one finds neither patriarchs, judges and
  kings, nor priests and prophets, whose real and
  earnest purpose had been to disseminate a true
  knowledge of God, virtue and piety among men to
  say nothing of the fact that one could encounter
  in it one single great, noble act useful to all.
  It consists of a weaving of sheer stupidities,
  shameful deeds, deceptions, and horrors, for
  which clearly selfishness and lust for power were
  the stimuli.i
• i. Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Apologie oder
  Schutzschrift fuer die vernuenftigen verehrer
  Gottes (Frankfurt Joachim-Jungius-Gesellschaft
  der Wissenschaften Hamburg, 1972) 671-674, 678f.

10
There is a clear contradiction between the
disciples' constant hope for a temporal
redemption, for an earthly empire, and such
speeches of Jesus as indicate a spiritually
suffering Redeemer. . .If he had wanted to rid
ideas of temporal honor and power totally from
their minds, why then does he promise them they
should have such a share in his kingdom?. . .The
shattered hope in an earthly kingdom which no
longer found nourishment after the crucifixion
birthed the new system of the apostles. .
.i i... Ibid. 141-142.
11
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing1729-1781

• Accidental truths of history can never become
  the proof of necessary truths of reason
• On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power 1777
• Revelation gives nothing to the human species,
  which the human reason left to itself might not
  attain only it has given, and still gives to it,
  the most important of these things earlier.
• The Education of the Human Race 1778

12
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749-1832

• Prometheus
• Cover your heaven, Zeus,With cloudy vaporsAnd
  like a boybeheading thistlesPractice on oaks
  and mountain peaks--Still you must leaveMy
  earth intactAnd my small hovel, which you did
  not build,And this my hearthWhose glowing
  heatYou envy me.
• I know of nothing more wretchedUnder the sun
  than you gods!Meagerly you nourishYour
  majestyOn dues of sacrificeAnd breath of
  prayerAnd would suffer wantBut for children and
  beggars,Poor hopeful fools.

13

• I pay homage to you? For what?Have you ever
  relievedThe burdened man's anguish?Have you
  ever assuagedThe frightened man's tears?Was it
  not omnipotent TimeThat forged me into
  manhood,And eternal Fate,My masters and yours?
• Or did you think perhapsThat I should hate this
  life,Flee into desertsBecause not allThe
  blossoms of dream grew ripe?
• Here I sit, forming menIn my image,A race to
  resemble meTo suffer, to weep,To enjoy, to be
  glad--And never to heed you,Like me!
• Translated by Michael Hamburger,in Goethe,
  Selected Poems,edited by Christopher Middleton,
  1983

• Once too, a child,Not knowing where to turn,I
  raised bewildered eyesUp to the sun, as if above
  there wereAn ear to hear my complaint,A heart
  like mineTo take pity on the oppressed.
• Who helped meAgainst the Titans' arrogance?Who
  rescued me from death,From slavery?Did not my
  holy and glowing heart,Unaided, accomplish
  all?And did it not, young and good,Cheated,
  glow thankfulnessFor its safety to him, to the
  sleeper above?

14
French Revolution 1789

• July 12-14 1789
• The Fall of the Bastille. Parisians, many from
  the class of artisans and journeyman workers from
  the Faubourg St. Antoine, are alarmed by the
  gathering of troops, angry at the dismissal of
  Necker and the price of grain. They seek to
  protect themselves from feared attacks of the
  mercenary troops with 3,000 rifles and some
  cannon seized from the Invalides. They march to
  the Bastille and demand that it be opened and its
  gunpowder delivered to them. The Swiss Guards
  inside fire on the crowd. About 100 persons are
  killed. An attack begins and the Bastille falls.
  Though it held only seven prisoners, the Bastille
  was one of Europe's most famous symbols of cruel
  and arbitrary power.
• July through August
• The period of the so-called "Great Fear," when
  peasants feared the revenge of the nobles.
  Peasant riots occur in many regions of
  France. August 4-11
• The National Assembly abolishes most feudal
  privileges still held by the aristocracy and the
  clergy, including taxes, tithes, obligatory labor
  on roads and payment of crops. August 26
• The National Assembly adopts the Declaration of
  the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It is
  translated into several other languages and
  quickly condemned by the Spanish Inquisition.
  This declaration is inspired by the American
  Declaration of Independence of 1776. The Bill of
  Rights, in the form of the ten first amendments
  to the American Constitution, would be passed on
  September 25, 1789.
• November 2
• All church property is expropriated. 

15
The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 28 July
1794)

• The Terror took the lives of between 18,500 to
  40,000 people (estimates vary widely, due to the
  difference between historical records and
  statistical estimates). In the single month
  before it ended, 1,300 executions took place.

16
Romanticism as Counter Revolution

• A new aesthetic ideal emerged in music and
  poetry, as these arts were thought to be the
  highest forms of human expression. The romantics
  claimed that they were the origin of human speech
  itself. The inexactness of meaning attached to
  music and poetry was not thought of as a
  liability, but an advantage to learning. Such
  forms, it was believed, are able to disclose the
  fundamental human yearning for an Infinite Other
  which determines existence and bestows upon it
  both beauty and unity.

17
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller 1759-1805

• Deeper meaning resides in Märchen (fairy tales)
  told to me in my childhood than in the truth that
  is taught by life.
• The Piccolomini III,4

18

• In romantic opinion, truth, including the truth
  of the sacred, is not a matter of exact
  definition or fixed proposition. Rather it is
  known best when invoked by metaphor and emotional
  effect. The value and authority of a work of
  art, a text, or even a social institution,
  resides in its ability to serve as a vehicle for
  contemplation and commitment to the deep and
  abiding mystery that stands at the center of
  life.

19
Friedrich von Schlegel 1772-1829

• A classical text may never be fully
  comprehended. But those who are cultivated
  gebildet and who cultivate themselves must
  always be willing to learn more from it.
• Lyceum Fragments

20
Historicism

• A method of knowing the past that rests on an
  empathy for it it operates with two axioms
• 1) the individuality of truth
• 2) the development of truth

21
Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803)

• Has not each man, each nation, each period, the
  center of happiness within itself, just as every
  sphere has its center of gravity?
• (Werke, V, 509)

22
Time and Truth

• The resistance of truth to fixed propositional
  form made subjectivity important for
  comprehension. In the romantic view,
  subjectivity is not the enemy of truth, but its
  companion. To know the truth of something,
  whether that something is artistic, social, or
  religious, is to enter into its mystery, to
  investigate it from all perspectives, learn what
  it means by becoming familiar with it. Hence it
  was typical for romantics to use subjective
  language when speaking of all sorts of subject
  matter.

23
Novalis1772-1801

• The object is allowed to be only the seed, the
  type, the fixed point. . .Expressed differently
  the object should determine us as product of the
  self, not as sheer object.
• Fragemente und Studien, Novalis Werke, ed.
  Schulz, 314
• Wahrheit immer wird, nie istSchiller

24
Idealism

• Vernunft was the means to penetrate the veil of
  accidental events, to interpret them as a
  purposeful, dialectical process of various forces
  to be intuitively grasped and reflectively
  reconstructed as a progressive "development" of
  ideas. Historical change is not arbitrary and
  meaningless, but rather the essential form of
  truth and being. History takes place at the
  behest of "Spirit."

25
Friedrich Schleiermacher 1768-1834

• You might entirely exclude other thoughts.
• Speeches, tr. Oman, p. 26.
• Piety was the mothers womb, in whose sacred
  darkness, my life was nourished 9

26

• Herrnhuter (The Lords Watch) 1722
• Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf 1700-60

27

• Ordained 1794
• Speeches to the Cultured Despisers 1799
• Teaches at Halle 1804
• 1809 Professor at Berlin
• Religion as the feeling of absolute dependence

28

• This is Schleiermachers hermeneutic the
  universals which in the Enlightenment existed in
  the world of abstract truth have become
  particularized in the individual stuff of life.

29
Definition of Religion

• The contemplation of the pious is the immediate
  consciousness of the universal existence of all
  finite things, in and through the Infinite, and
  of all temporal things in and through the
  Eternal. Religion is to seek this and find it in
  all that lives and moves, in all growth and
  change, in all doing and suffering.
• Speeches, Oman tr. p. 128

30
Religion and Diversity

• Do not be scared either by mysterious darkness or
  by wonderful dazzling grotesque traits. Do not
  admit the delusion that it may all be imagination
  and romance Dichtung. Dig even deeper where
  your magic rod has once pointed, and without fail
  you will bring for the heavenly stream to the
  light of day.
• Speeches, 147
• As nothing is more irreligious than to demand
  general uniformity in mankind, so nothing is more
  unchristian than to seek uniformity in religion
• 252

31
Knowledge as Identification

• Consider how you delineate an object. Is there
  not both a stimulation and a determination by the
  object, at one and the same time, which for a
  particular moment forms your existence? The more
  definite your image, the more, in this way, you
  become the object, the more you lose yourselves.
  . .The greater your emotion, the more you are
  absorbed into it, the more your whole nature is
  concerned to retain for the memory an
  imperishable trace of what is necessarily
  fleeting, to carry over to what you may engage
  in, its colour and impress, and so unite two
  movements into a duration. . .
• 42

32
Dogmatic Theology

• Dogma general expressions for definite
  feelings. They are not necessary for religion
  itself. . .but reflection requires and creates
  them. . . 87
• Miracle Every finite thing. . .is a sign of the
  Infinite. . .Miracle is simply the religious name
  for event. 88
• Revelation Every original and new communication
  of the Universe to man is a revelation. . .every
  moment of conscious insight. . . 89
• Inspiration . . .that action that springs from
  the heart of man. . .regardless of all external
  occasion. . . 89
• Grace . . .interchange between the entrance of
  the world into man, through intuition and
  feeling, and the outgoing of man into the world
  through action and culture. . . 90
• Scripture Every sacred writing is in itself a
  glorious production, a speaking monument from the
  heroic time of religion, but, through servile
  reverence, it would become merely a mausoleum, a
  monument that a great spirit once was there, but
  is now no more. 91

33

• . . .we must learn to think of the law-governed
  course of nature not as being blindly mechanical
  but as being pervaded by the presence of the
  living God. The world as such has meaning and
  purpose it does not acquire religious
  significance by virtue of periodic divine
  incursions. At the bottom of things,
  Schleiermacher found a creative impulsea divine
  decree as he called it in the old language that
  directs nature and history to a specific end. He
  identified this end as the raising of humanity to
  a higher level of consciousness, which, simply
  put, is personhood.
• Gerrish, A Prince of the Church (1984), 19

34
Church

• the social union of the pious
• 153
• As soon as a prince declared a church to be a
  community with special privileges, or a
  distinguished member of the civil world, the
  corruption of that church was begun and almost
  irrevocably decided.
• 167

35
Meta-doctrine of Ecclesiological Separation

• Roman Catholic
• Christ
• Church
• Individual

• Protestant
• Christ
• Individual
• Church

36
Family

• Nay, at the end of our future culture we expect
  a time when no other society preparatory for
  religion except pious family life will be
  required.
• 178

37
Christ as Urbild

• Yet Christ never maintained He was the only
  mediator, the only one in whom His idea
  actualized itself. All who attach themselves to
  Him and form His Church should also be mediators
  with Him and through Him. And he never made his
  school equivalent to His religion, as if His idea
  were to be accepted on account of His person, and
  not His person on account of His idea.
• Speeches 158

38
Idealism

• The philosophical partner of Romanticism
• Truth is bed down in tradition shapes itself in
  epoch and nation
• Truth is a developmental force in which duration
  and the accumulation of experience are
  constitutive elements
• Romantic truth is contingent Idealism wants to
  explain the necessity of the contingent pattern
  of historical events

39
Immanuel Kant 1724-1804

• HUMAN reason has this peculiar fate that in one
  species of its knowledge it is burdened by
  questions which, as pre- scribed by the very
  nature of reason itself, it is not able to
  ignore, but which, as transcending all its
  powers, it is also not able to answer.
• Preface to the 1st ed. Critique of Pure Reason
  (1781)

40
Verstand/Vernunft

• Verstand Knowledge of Phenomena

• Vernunft Knowledge of noumena, Das Ding an Sich

41
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel1770-1831

• Der Vernunft (reason) the means to penetrate the
  veil of accidental events, to interpret them as a
  purposeful, dialectical process of various forces
  to be intuitively grasped and reflectively
  reconstructed as a progressive "development" of
  ideas. Historical change is not arbitrary and
  meaningless, but rather the essential form of
  truth and being. History takes place at the
  behest of "Spirit."
• Der Begriff (concept)
• Die Vorstellung (representation)

42

• The truth revealed in the Gospel is universal. It
  is integrally related to every possible source of
  truth

43
Positive Religion

• A religion is positive to the extent that it
  demands belief in and obedience to that which
  human reason and intuition cannot discover on
  their own. Thus is required a source outside of
  reason.

44
The Gospel according to Hegel (Crites)

• The Fall
• The Fullness of Time
• Incarnation and Death
• The Church
• Philosophy of Religion

45
Problems

• Christian Theology practiced as Christendom
• Confidence in Reason and Progress
• Identification of Kingdom and Church

46
Oxford Movement

• 1828 Test and Corporation Acts
• 1829 Catholic Emancipation
• 1832 Reform Bill
• 1833 Irish Temporalities
• John Keble 1792-1866

47
July 25-29, 1833

• Hadleigh
• Association of Friends of the Church
• Tracts for the Times
• William Gladstone 1809-1898
• 1836-1838 60,000 tracts sold

48
Edward Bouverie Pusey 1800-1882

• High thoughts of the two sacraments
• High estimate of episcopacy as Gods ordinance
• High estimate of the visible church as the Body
  wherein we are made and continue to be members of
  Christ
• Regard for ordinances as directing our devotions
  and disciplining us such as daily prayer, fasts,
  feasts, etc.
• Regard for the visible part of devotion such as
  the decoration of the house of God which acts
  insensibly on the mind
• Reverence for and deference to the ancient Church
  of which our own Church is looked upon as
  representative to us, and by whose views and
  doctrines we interpret our own church when her
  own meaning is questioned or doubtful in a word
  reference to the ancient Church, instead of the
  Reformers, as the ultimate expounders of the
  meaning of our Church.

49
Oxford Movement

• Christian life is an ecclesial experience shared
  among the people of a nation
• A people need a definite Creed at the center of
  their being as a nation
• Can a society live on the resources of private
  conscience alone?
• The Oxford Movement theologized about the church
  as a public, historical institution, burdened,
  yet enriched, with the accretions of thought and
  practice from many ages
• Church as the principle of Incarnation
• The Incarnation is thoroughgoing

50
John Henry Newman 1801-1890

• The antecedent probability of the truth of the
  object of faith, a probability based on personal
  judgment and disposition that embraces the
  facts of faith, accepting them in the heart,
  apprehending them by an act of the entire self
  and then reasoning about them

51
Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

• Christianity is no theory of the study or the
  cloister. It has long since passed beyond the
  letter of documents and the reasonings of
  individual minds, and has become public property.
  Its "sound has gone out into all lands," and its
  "words unto the ends of the world." It has from
  the first had an objective existence, 4 and has
  thrown itself upon the great concourse of men.
  Its home is in the world and to know what it is,
  we must seek it in the world, and hear the
  world's witness of it.
• Introduction 1

52

• I do not say that there are no eternal truths,
  such as the poet proclaims, which all acknowledge
  in private, but there are none sufficiently
  commanding to be the basis of public union and
  action.
• 90

53
Till positive reasons grounded on facts are
adduced to the contrary, the most natural
hypotheses, the most agreeable to our mode of
proceeding in parallel cases, and that which
takes precedence of all others, is to consider
that the society of Christians, which the
Apostles left on earth, were of that religion to
which the Apostles had converted them that the
external continuity of name, profession, and
communion, argues a real continuity of doctrine
that, as Christianity began by manifesting itself
as of a certain shape and bearing to all mankind,
therefore it went on so to manifest itself. . .
that the Christianity of the second, fourth,
seventh, twelfth, sixteenth, and intermediate
centuries is in its substance the very religion
which Christ and His Apostles taught in the
first, whatever may be the modifications for good
or for evil which lapse of years, or the
vicissitudes of human affairs, have impressed
upon it. 6 Intro. 3
54

• It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is
  clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly
  be made of this image, it does not apply to the
  history of a philosophy or belief, which on the
  contrary is more equable, and purer, and
  stronger, when its bed has become deep, and
  broad, and full. It necessarily rises out of an
  existing state of things, and for a time savours
  of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging
  from what is foreign and temporary, and is
  employed in efforts after freedom which become
  wore vigorous and hopeful as its years increase.
  Its beginnings are no measure of its
  capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one
  knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains
  perhaps for a time quiescent it tries, as it
  were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it,
  and feels its way. From time to time it makes
  essays which fail, and are in consequence
  abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go
  it wavers, and at length strikes out in one
  definite direction. In time it enters upon
  strange territory points of controversy alter
  their bearing parties rise and around it
  dangers and hopes appear in new relations and
  old principles reappear under new forms. It
  changes with them in order to remain the same. In
  a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to
  live is to change, and to be perfect is to have
  changed often. Ch. 1, Sec. 1, 7

55
The Age of Materialism 1850-1914

• Karl Marx 1818-83, Das Kapital (1859)
• Dialectical Materialism

• Charles Darwin 1809-82
• Origin of the Species (1859)
• Natural Selection

56
19th Century Depiction of Dinosaurs, Natural
History Museum London
57
Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809-1892 In Memoriam 1850

• LV
•         55.1The wish, that of the living whole
•         55.2  No life may fail beyond the grave,
•         55.3  Derives it not from what we have
•         55.4The likest God within the soul?
•         55.5Are God and Nature then at strife,
•         55.6  That Nature lends such evil dreams?
•         55.7  So careful of the type she seems,
•         55.8So careless of the single life
•         55.9That I, considering everywhere
•       55.10  Her secret meaning in her deeds,
•       55.11  And finding that of fifty seeds
•       55.12She often brings but one to bear,
•       55.13I falter where I firmly trod,
•       55.14  And falling with my weight of cares
•       55.15  Upon the great world's altar-stairs

• LVI
•         56.1"So careful of the type?" but no.
•         56.2  From scarped cliff and quarried
  stone
•         56.3  She cries, "A thousand types are
  gone
•         56.4I care for nothing, all shall go.
•         56.5"Thou makest thine appeal to me
•         56.6  I bring to life, I bring to death
•         56.7  The spirit does but mean the
  breath
•         56.8I know no more." And he, shall he,
•         56.9Man, her last work, who seem'd so
  fair,
•       56.10  Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
•       56.11  Who roll'd the psalm to wintry
  skies,
•       56.12Who built him fanes of fruitless
  prayer,
•       56.13Who trusted God was love indeed
•       56.14  And love Creation's final law --
•       56.15  Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw

58
Matthew Arnold 1822-1888Dover Beach 1867

• The sea is calm to-night.The tide is full, the
  moon lies fairUpon the straits -on the French
  coast the lightGleams and is gone the cliffs of
  England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the
  tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the
  night air!Only, from the long line of
  sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanch'd
  land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf
  pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At
  their return, up the high strand,Begin, and
  cease, and then again begin,With tremulous
  cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of
  sadness in. Sophocles long agoHeard it on the
  Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid
  ebb and flowOf human misery weFind also in the
  sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant
  northern sea.

• The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and
  round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a
  bright girdle furl'd.But now I only hearIts
  melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating,
  to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast
  edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world.
• Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the
  world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land
  of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath
  really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
• Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for painAnd
  we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with
  confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where
  ignorant armies clash by night.

59
Ludwig Feuerbach 1804-1872

• In these works I have sketched, with a few sharp
  touches, the historical solution of Christianity,
  and have shown that Christianity has in fact long
  vanished, not only from the reason but from the
  life of mankind, that it is nothing more than a
  fixed idea, in flagrant contradiction with our
  fire and life assurance companies, our railroads
  and steam-carriages, our picture and sculpture
  galleries, our military and industrial schools,
  our theatres and scientific museums.
• The Essence of Christianity 1841, Preface to
  2nd ed. 1843

60
Historicism

• German scholars were, "consciously guided in
  their practice by a conception of history."i
  This conception has come to be called
  historicism, which may be defined as the
  assertion that human life displays in history an
  infinite variety of manifestations that must be
  investigated by any observer with complete and
  open empathy. It is in history that the totality
  of human life in all of its reality and meaning
  is to be found. "The world of man is in a state
  of incessant flux. . .There is no constant human
  nature rather the character of each man reveals
  itself only in his development."ii . . .
  Historicism means the acceptance of the
  relativity of human life. It is the insight that
  humanity lives not at the behest of static being
  and absolute truth, but rather forges itself in a
  constant process of becoming in which individuals
  and institutions struggle over competing truths,
  each vying for its place in the sun.
• i... George G. Iggers, The German Conception
  of History, rev. ed. (Hanover Wesleyan
  University Press, 1983) 3.
• ii... Ibid. 5.

61
Albrecht Ritschl 1822-1889

• Gospel the experience of freedom through
  forgivness, justification, reconciliation in
  Christ that ushers in the Kingdom.
• Religion is the experience which has to do with
  the sublime power of God to realize human
  blessedness. The special power that religion
  imparts as an historical phenomenon is the power
  to deliver human beings in their spiritual
  capacity both from the determinism of the
  physical environment and the enslaving passions
  of human nature.

62

• "Religion springs up as faith in superhuman
  spiritual powers, by whose help the power which
  man possesses of himself is in some way
  supplemented, and elevated into a unity of its
  own kind which is a match for the pressure of the
  natural world."i i... Albrecht Ritschl, The
  Christian Doctrine of Justification and
  Reconciliation, tr. H. R. Mackintosh and A. B.
  Macaulay (Edinburgh T T Clark, 1900) III
  199.

63
Adolf von Harnack 1851-1930

• We study history in order to intervene in the
  course of history and we have a right and duty to
  do so. . .To intervene in historythis means that
  we must reject the past when it reaches into the
  present only in order to block us. This means
  also that we must do the right thing in the
  present, i.e., to anticipate the future. . .
• quoted in Wilhelm Pauck, The Heritage of the
  Reformation, 1961, 340

64
Ernst Troeltsch 1865-1923Über historische und
dogmatische Methode" Concerning Historical and
Dogmatic Method"

• The principle of criticism the historical
  disciplines yield only judgments of probability,
  and of vastly different grades. For this reason
  each tradition has to be investigated for the
  degree of probability attaching to it
• The principle of analogy prescribes the means
  for facilitating such criticism "The analogy of
  what is occurring before our eyes or taking place
  within us is the key to criticism." This
  "omnipotence" of analogy spells the principal
  similarity Gleichartigkeit of all historical
  occurrence which, while acknowledging the
  uniqueness of historical events, asserts that
  they are also analogous to events drawn from life
  today.
• The principle of correlation the construal of
  analogy on the basis of the similarity of the
  human spirit and its historical activities
  assumes the alternation of all the phenomena of
  human existence. No change can occur without
  precursor or follower all occurrence consists of
  a continual flux in which everything relates to
  everything else.

65
Albert Schweitzer 1875-1965
66
Franz Overbeck 1837-1905
67
Friedrich Nietzsche1844-1900

• "We have burned our bridges behind us -- indeed,
  we have gone farther and destroyed the land
  behind us."i i. Friedrich Nietsche, The
  Gay Science, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York
  Vintage Books, 1974) 180.

68
Jacob Burckhardt 1818-1897

• . "Wars clear the air like thunderstorms. . .war
  alone grants to mankind the magnificent spectacle
  of a general submission to a general aim."i
• i. Jacob Burckhardt, Reflections on History,
  tr. M.D. Hottinger (Indianapolis Liberty Press,
  1979) 217-218.

69
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937)

• "We have to be on our guard," says Otto, "against
  an error which would lead to a wrong and
  one-sided interpretation of religion. This is
  the view that the essence of deity can be
  expressed completely and exhaustively in such
  rational' attributes." The "idea of deity," in
  fact, implies a "non-rational or supra-rational
  Subject" who stands behind and beyond all human
  analogy. To encounter this "Subject" and bow
  before it in adoration is the original motivation
  and driving force of the human religious quest.
  It fills the pages of sacred books with their
  strange narratives. It inspires the building of
  hallowed places and furnishes them with works of
  art that form a precious heritage of
  civilization. Before anything else, the idea of
  deity that undergirds religion is "the idea of
  the Holy."i
• i. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, tr.
  John W. Harvey, second ed. (London Oxford,
  1950) 1-2.

70
Wilfred Owen

• The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
• So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,And
  took the fire with him, and a knife.And as they
  sojourned both of them together,Isaac the
  first-born spake and said, My Father,Behold the
  preparations, fire and iron,But where the lamb,
  for this burnt-offering?Then Abram bound the
  youth with belts and straps,And builded parapets
  and trenches there,And stretchèd forth the knife
  to slay his son.When lo! an Angel called him out
  of heaven,Saying, Lay not they hand upon the
  lad,Neither do anything to him, thy son.Behold!
  Caught in a thicket by its horns,A Ram. Offer
  the Ram of Pride instead.
• But the old man would not so, but slew his
  son,And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

71
The conception of the abundance of national
spirits was transformed into a feeling of
contempt for the idea of Universal Humanity. The
pantheistic idolization of the state turned into
blind respect, devoid of all ideas, for success
and power. The Romantic Revolution sank into a
complacent contentment with things as they are.
From the idea of a particular law and right for a
given time and place, men proceeded to a purely
positivistic acceptance of the state. The
conception of a morality of a higher spiritual
order which transcends bourgeois conventions
passed into moral scepticism. From the urge of
the German spirit to find embodiment in a state
there arose the same kind of imperialism as
anywhere else in the world.i i... Deutscher
Geist und Westeuropa. 17-18 quoted and tr. in
Iggers, The German Conception of History, 188.
72
Karl Barth 1886-1968

• World War I
• Thoroughgoing Eschatology Johannes Weiss
  1863-1914, Albert Schweitzer 1875-1965
• History of Religions School
• Form Criticism
• Soren Kierkegaard 1813-1855
• Luther Renaissance Karl Holl 1866-1926

73
We all know the curiosity that comes over us when
from a window we see the people in the street
suddenly stop and look upshade their eyes with
their hands and look straight up into the sky
toward something which is hidden from us by the
roof. Our curiosity is superfluous, for what they
see is doubtless an aeroplane. But as to the
sudden stopping, looking up, and tense attention
characteristic of the people of the Bible, our
wonder will not be so lightly dismissed. To me
personally it came first with Paul this man
evidently sees and hears something which is above
everything, which is absolutely beyond the range
of my observation and the measure of my thought.
Let me place my self as I will to this coming
somethingor rather this present somethingno,
rather this coming somethingthat he insists in
enigmatical words that he sees and hears, I am
still taken by the fact that he, Paul, or whoever
it was who wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians,
for example, is eye and ear in a state such as
inspiration, alarm, or stirring or overwhelming
emotion, do not satisfactorily describe. I seem
to see within so transparent a piece of
literature a personality who is actually thrown
out of his course and out of every ordinary
course by seeing and hearing what I for my part
do not hearwho is, so to speak, captured, in
order to be dragged as a prisoner from land to
land for strange, intense, uncertain, and yet
mysteriously well-planned service.
74
And if I ever come to fear lest mine is a case of
self-hallucination, one glance at the secular
events of those times, one glance at the widening
circle of ripples in the pool of history, tells
me of a certainty that a stone of unusual weight
must have been dropped into deep water there
somewheretells me that, among all the hundreds
of peripatetic preachers and miracle-workers from
the Near East who in that day must have gone
along the same Appian Way into imperial Rome, it
was this one Paul, seeing and hearing what he
did, who was the cause, if not of all, yet of the
most important developments in the citys future.
And this is only one of the Biblical company,
Paul by name. Karl Barth, The Word of God
and the Word of Man, 62f. (1920)
75
Theological Method

• Lessing God/Humanity RevelationEducation
• Schleiermacher God/Humanity RevelationFeeling
• Hegel God/Humanity RevelationDevelopment
• Ritschl God/Humanity Revelation spiritual power
  to rise above the natural world
• Troeltsch God/Humanity RevelationNormative
  Value for West

76
Here are people, only two or three, perhaps, as
sometimes happens in this country, or perhaps
even a few hundred, who, impelled by a strange
instinct or will, stream toward this building,
where they seewhat? Satisfaction of an old
habit? But whence came this old habit?
Entertainment and instruction? Very strange
entertainment and instruction it is! Edification?
So they say, but what is edification? Do they
know? Do they really know at all why they are
here? In any case here they areeven though they
be shrunk to one little old womanand there being
here points to the even that is expected or
appears to be expected, or at least, if the place
be dead and deserted, was once expected
there. Word of God, 105 (1922)
77
People naturally do not shout it out, and least
of all into the ears of us ministers. But let us
not be deceived by their silence. Blood and
tears, deepest despair and highest hope, a
passionate longing to lay hold of that which, or
rather of him who, overcomes the world because he
is its Creator and Redeemer, its beginning and
ending and Lord, a passionate longing to have the
word spoken, the word which promises grace in
judgment, life in death, and the beyond in the
here and now, Gods wordthis it is which
animates our church-goers, however lazy,
bourgeois, or commonplace may be the manner in
which they express their want in so-called real
life. Word of God, 108f. (1922)
78
. . .in the most literal sense. . .the end of
history. . .the ultimate event. Word, 110 . .
.the ridge between time and eternity that is
narrower than a knife-edge. . .the boundary of
mortality Word 188 (1922)
79
When they come to us for help they really do not
want to learn more about living they want to
learn more about what is on the farther edge of
livingGod. We cut a ridiculous figure as village
sagesor city sages. As such we are socially
superfluous. We do not understand the profession
of ministry unless we understand it as an index,
a symptom, say rather an omen, of a perplexity
which extends over the whole range of human
endeavor, present and future. Word of God, 189
80
To meet their question with an answer commending
or condemning civilization, culture, or piety,
however well it may be meant, is simply to refer
them, is it not, to the world they already live
in? Are we going to keep this up forever? Are we
never to learn for what reason, for what amazing
reason, they endure us and think they need us. If
we believe it in secret, why not admit to them
openly that we cannot speak of God? Or if we have
serious compunctions against saying so, or saying
so in just this way, may we not at least make
their question about God our own? Why not make it
the central theme of our preaching.? Word of
God, 191
81
There is above this warped and weakened will of
yours and mine, above this absurd and senseless
will of the world, another which is straight and
pure, and which, when it once prevails, must have
other, wholly other, issues than these we see
today. Word of God, 13 (1916)
82
As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are
human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We
ought therefore to recognize both our obligation
and our inability and by that very recognition
give God the glory. This is our
perplexity. Word of God, 186
83
But my premises in this address have been the Old
Testament and the tradition of the Reformed
Churches. As a Reformed Churchmanand not only, I
think as suchI must keep my sure distance from
the Lutheran est and the Lutheran type of
assurance of salvation. Can theology, should
theology, pass beyond prolegomena to Christology?
It may be that everything is said in the
prolegomena. Word of God, 217
84

• Anselm's rule "If a proposition accords with
  the actual wording of the Bible or with the
  direct inferences from it, then naturally it is
  valid with absolute certainty, but just because
  of this agreement it is not strictly a
  theological proposition. If, on the other hand,
  it is a strictly theological proposition, that is
  to say a proposition formed independently of the
  actual wording of Scripture, then the fact that
  it does not contradict the biblical text,
  determines its validity. But if it did
  contradict the Bible, however attractive it might
  be on other grounds, it would be rendered
  invalid." (Barth, Anselm Fides Quaerens
  Intellectum (1931) p. 33.

85
Augustinian Creed/Enlightenment Creed

• Human nature corrupted by the Fall
• Salvation requires the direct intervention of God
  (Gods will is the necessity of all things)
• Humanity stands under the divine predestinating
  will of justice and mercy
• Spirituality grounded in distrust of the world

• Humanity is not natively depraved
• Salvation redefined the end of life is life
  itself, the good life on earth
• Humanity is capable by reason to perfect the good
  life on earth
• The essential condition for the good life is
  freedom from ignorance and oppression