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REVELATION AND REASON
 "Revelation
AND

Reason
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE

By EMIL BRUNNER
Translated by Olive Wyon

Philadelphia
THE WESTMINSTER PRESS
 COPYRIGHT, MCMXLVI, BY W. L. JenkjnS

All rights reserved — no part of this book may be re¬

produced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes
to quote brief passages in connection with a review
written for magazine or newspaper.

Printed in the United States of America

 To

MAX HUBER and J. H. OLDHAM

62038
 TRANSLATOR S NOTE

The present work is an unabridged translation of Dr. Brunner’s

book Offenbarung und Vernunft: Die Lehre von der christlichen
Glaubenserkenntnis, published in Zurich in 1941 by the Zwingli
Verlag.
The translator desires to express her gratitude to the following
friends for their interest and help in this work: the Rev. W. D. Davies,
B.A., B.D.; the Rev. C. H. Dodd, M.A., D.D.; the Rev. K. Emmerich;
the Rev. H. H. Farmer, M.A., D.D.; and Mrs. M. Steiner.
A final word of thanks is due especially to the Rev. L. J. Trinterud
and The Westminster Press for their patience and courtesy.

Olive Wyon.
Cambridge, 1946.
 AUTHOR S PREFACE
The theme of this book deals not only with the fundamental prob¬
lem of all theology, but also with the question of the basis of our West¬
ern civilization. A world like that of our own day, which is shaken to
its foundations, needs to reflect upon the ultimate presuppositions of
the meaning of existence. Above all, the Church ought to do this.
Throughout her history she has always appealed to the divine reve¬
lation as the ground and content of her message; but is she right in
doing so? Can that event to which she refers as her final authority re¬
ally be equated with that which she means by revelation? It is no ac¬
cident that there are plenty of books with the title Reason and Reve¬
lation, but that there is none with the title Revelation and Reason.
The usual order, “ Reason and Revelation,” is derived from the medi-
eval-Catholic doctrinal tradition; in point of fact, it also corresponds
to the system of thought represented by that tradition. The reversal
of this order, suggested by the title of this book, is the necessary con¬
sequence of a theological outlook which understands even the man
who has not been gripped by the Christian message — and his reason
— from the standpoint of the Word of God, as in my book Man in
Revolt. We do not begin our inquiry with reason and then work up to
revelation, but, as a believing Church, we begin our inquiry with
revelation and then work outwards to reason.
In post-Reformation theology this Reformation point of view was
very largely lost. The understanding of revelation and of faith was
still influenced by the Roman Catholic misunderstanding; the return
from the Middle Ages to the New Testament got “ stuck ” halfway.
We now have to learn afresh to read the Bible “ Biblically,” and not
in the old “ orthodox ” way. In this sense, I hope that this book will
render a service similar to that made by Biblical Criticism, whose
most impressive monument is the Theologisches Worterbuch zum
Neuen Testament. The aim of this present work is to help to free the
genuinely Biblical understanding of revelation from additions and
accretions hallowed by ancient tradition.
Secondly, this book is an attempt to remove the misunderstandings
which — for so many of our contemporaries — block the way to the
Christian faith, by trying to give an answer to their questions. In
many conversations with people outside the Church I have constantly
found that they confuse the faith which the Church proclaims with
X Authors Preface

all kinds of irrational ideas, for which they, quite rightly, as consci¬
entious members of a civilized community, do not care to be held re¬
sponsible. It is of course true that the Church has a message to pro¬
claim which, so long as man remains in his self-chosen isolation, will
be “ folly ” and an “ offense.” All the more urgent therefore is the ob¬
ligation of the Church to see to it that this “ offense ” is not confused
with accidental elements with a repelling effect, derived from mis¬
understandings and “ short circuits.” In a genuinely theological ac¬
tivity, alongside of the one thing which cannot be proved — or,
rather, which such a “ proof ” would destroy — there is much that
can and should be proved, namely, that the Christian faith is not, and
does not intend to be, saddled with errors and weaknesses that exist
only in the mind of the ignorant outsider.
For all these reasons this book is not addressed to theologians only;
for one of the prejudices which it seeks to remove is the view that
theology is a matter only for theologians. Theology is not only meant
to serve those who proclaim the Gospel, but it should also be of use
to all thinking men and women who want to gain a clear view of the
relation between Christianity and civilization. Since it invites theo¬
logians and thoughtful Christians to a renewed reflection upon the
fundamentals of their faith and their doctrine, it aims at the same
time at opening the way to the understanding of the Christian faith,
which is blocked for so many people by prejudices caused in no small
measure by the teaching of the Christian Church itself. I would urge
the nontheological reader not to be intimidated by the masses of
learned notes. The aim of this documentation is twofold: first, it is
meant to give the reader an insight into the intellectual sphere in
which a book of this kind comes into being; and, secondly, in brief
compass explanatory comments are made which would occupy too
much room in the actual text.
This book is dedicated to two men, to whom I am bound by ties of
friendship and personal gratitude, whose noble passion to establish
justice and love in a world of injustice and hatred of God has become
an example to follow as well as to admire. Finally, I would here ex¬
press once more a heartfelt word of thanks to all those loyal friends
without whose unselfish co-operation this work would never have
been completed.

Zurich. St. Martin’s Day, 1941. Emil Brunner.

 CONTENTS
Translator’s Note.vy
Author’s Preface.ix

INTRODUCTION
1. Revelation as the Subject of a Christian Theory of Knowledge 3

PART ONE: THE NATURE OF REVELATION

Section I: The Concept of Revelation
2. The Riblical Understanding of Revelation.20
3. The Reception of Revelation: Faith.32
4. The God of Revelation.42
5. Man and Revelation.48
Section II: The Fact of Revelation
A. Revelation as Origin
6. The Revelation in the Creation.58
R. The Historical Revelation
7. Revelation as Promise: The Old Covenant.81
8. Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ.95
C. The Revelation in the Witness to the Revelation
9. The Witness of Holy Scripture.118
10. The Witness of the Church.136
11. The Witness of the Spirit.164
D. Revelation as Fulfillment
12. Revelation in Glory.185
13. The Unity of the Revelation.193

PART TWO: THE TRUTH OF THE REVELATION

14. The Faith in Revelation and the Problem of Doubt .... 204
15. The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation . . . 218
16. Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion .... 237
Xll Contents

17. Revelation and Religion. 258

18. Biblical Faith and Criticism. 273
The Fundamental Problem. 273
The Biblical Picture of the World . 276
Historical Biblical Criticism. 281
19. Science and the Miracle of Revelation . . . . 294
20. The Logos of Revelation and the Logos of Reason . 309
21. Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 321
22. The Proof of the Existence of God. 338
23. Rational Theology. 348
1. Atheism. 348
2. Pantheism. 350
3. Speculative Idealism. 352
4. Deism, Agnosticism, Positivism. 355
5. Theism. 357
24. The Two Conceptions of Truth. 362
25. The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy . 374
26. Myth, Plistory, and Revelation. 396
27. Revelation and Reason in Faith. 412
Faith and Understanding. 413
Repentance and Faith. 499

INDEXES . 431
REVELATION AND REASON
INTRODUCTION
 INTRODUCTION
1. REVELATION AS THE SUBJECT OF A
CHRISTIAN THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
In the midst of a world whose sole axiom is the relativity of all
knowledge of truth stands the Church, the community of all who are
united to one another through faith in Jesus Christ, with her message
of the first and last things, of the revelation of the mystery of God and
man. The Church knows that she is founded upon the “ foundation
of the apostles and prophets,”1 who point beyond themselves to a
revelation which has taken place, and is still taking place, whose wit¬
nesses and heralds they are. The true humility and the pride of real
Christianity are based upon this fact. All that the Christian com¬
munity is, and all that she has, is never her own exclusive possession:
all that she is and has she has received. “For . . . what hast thou
that thou didst not receive? But if thou didst receive it, why dost
thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? ”2 This is “ absolute de¬
pendence,” and to live in this spirit is humility. A genuine Christian,
however, is not only humble; he is proud — proud of the fact that he
has received as a gift that which the whole world, for centuries, has
been vainly seeking. The Church knows that she lives on the divine
revelation, which is the Truth.
All that the Church proclaims and teaches is an attempt to express
in human language the truth which she has received. Hence the di¬
vine revelation alone is both the ground and the norm, as well as the
content of her message. If theology is reflection upon this message,
which has been given and entrusted to the Church, then her first and
most urgent task is obvious: that is, to reflect upon revelation.3 It is
1 Eph. 2:20.
2 I Cor. 4:7.
3 Elert, Der christliche Glaube, p. 163, thinks that in Luther’s name he ought
to discredit revelation as the “ central problem of theology,” since it is not faith
3
4 Revelation and Reason

the duty of the Church, both to herself and to the world, to make a
clear theological statement about the fundamental truth on which
her life depends. “ Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord: being ready
always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason con¬
cerning the hope that is in you.’ * * * 4
Today this task is doubly urgent, for as a rule the modern man
does not understand the claim of Christianity to be a religion of reve¬
lation, and he therefore rejects it. The most characteristic element of
the present age, and that which distinguishes it from earlier periods
in history, is the almost complete disappearance of the sense of tran¬
scendence and the consciousness of revelation.5 6 7 In the ancient world,
in which the Christian Church first arose, the idea of revelation, and
the belief that there was such a thing as revelation, was something
that belonged to life as such; it was taken for granted. Revelation,
it is true, stood for a variety of conceptions: b for primitive mantic
practices of divination in order to discover the will of the gods; for
oracles, seers, theophanies, and divine signs and wonders; or again
for the teaching of thinkers who claimed to have received supernat¬
ural “ illumination ” in a state of ecstasy. But in whatever way reve¬
lation took place, and whatever its content may have been, the fact
that revelation, as the proclamation of divine mysteries to man, did
take place was generally believed.' In the last resort all religion is
based upon supposed or genuine revelation; moreover, in the ancient
world the phenomenon of irreligion, and skepticism concerning the
reality, or even the possibility, of revelation, was at first completely
unknown, and even in late antiquity it was still exceptional. In the
Middle Ages Christianity became dominant in the Western world.

in revelation, but faith in forgiveness through Jesus Christ, which constitutes the
distinction between Christianity and Judaism. Hence Elert starts from a com¬
pletely neutral conception of revelation, and does not perceive the connection
between revelation and reconciliation as a divine self-communication. In the
New Testament revelation is simply Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:15) and reconciliation
(Rom. 3:21).
4 I Peter 3:15.
5 Cf. Heim, Glaube und Denken (3), pp. 38 ff., “The Problem of Tran¬
scendence.”
6 Cf. Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament, Kittel, III, pp.
367 ff., and also Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte
(4) on “ Offenbarung.”
7 Mauthner, Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendlande, Einlei-
tung.
 Revelation and a Christian Theory of Knowledge 5

The revealed faith was the Christian faith, and this faith had practi¬
cally axiomatic validity. Even a person who had not the slightest in¬
tention of being really religious, and of bringing his life into accord¬
ance with his faith, did not doubt that, as a whole, that which the
Church proclaimed about the divine revelation in the Holy Scrip¬
tures was the truth.
Since the Renaissance, however, at first in the minds of the more
daring spirits and then increasingly in wider and wider circles, a new
mentality has gradually emerged: that of complete preoccupation
with the things of this world, and an immanental philosophy.8 For
the first time in world history there is mass atheism, and a completely
secular culture; hand in hand with this there goes a kind of religion
of this world only,” in which the very conception of revelation has
no place. People come to believe that this universe which is evident
to the senses and to the understanding is the sole reality; if there be
a mysterious divine element, it can be concerned only with this
world. Some, perhaps, would admit that to those who think and feel
more deeply, now and then there may come a momentary lifting of
the veil which shrouds the mystery of this world; but no one has any
desire for a “ revelation,” either in the sense in which it was under¬
stood in the ancient world, or, still less, in the Christian sense.
How this modern point of view arose cannot here be examined;
doubtless many different factors have contributed to the process that
has led to this result. For instance, it is difficult to say whether mod¬
ern science is its cause or its effect. It is, however, certain that sci¬
ence, as a fact, plays a far greater part in human thought than it has
ever done before. It is true indeed that even today it is still a minor¬
ity that is interested in science, or even active in it; but even one
who has been only to a secondary school forms his ideas about what
is true and untrue, certain and uncertain, in some way or another in
accordance with an ideal of scientific knowledge — and this means
in terms of natural science. Whatever cannot be proved scientifically
is either not quite true or not quite certain. All that lies beyond the
perception of the senses and the conclusions of logic, all that cannot
be proved and verified experimentally, is “ subjective,” “ hypotheti¬
cal,” or improbable and incredible. The Christian claim to revelation

8 Cf. Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit der Renais¬
sance, Ges. Schr., Bd. II, and Troeltsch, Aufsatze zur Geistesgeschichte und Re-
ligionssoziologie, Ges. Schr., Bd. IV, pp. 261-428.
6 Revelation and Reason

stands in the sharpest possible opposition to this conception of truth.

For here the Church proclaims as absolute truth that which can be
neither proved by the intellect nor verified by experience. Hence the
Christian doctrine of revelation is regarded with the greatest mistrust.
In addition to this fundamental attitude, which is the result of the
modern conception of truth, there are other negative elements. First
of all, the Church’s dogma of revelation is saddled with the recollec¬
tion that the Church used to proclaim certain truths as “ revealed ”
truths which the processes of scientific research have shown to be er¬
roneous; and also that, on the other hand, scientific knowledge had
to fight a long, weary battle, until at last the Church, on her side,
acknowledged the situation. The fate of Galileo, the struggle of the
Church against modem historical science, the prolonged effort to re¬
ject the scientific doctrine of evolution as “ heresy,” are facts, which,
consciously or unconsciously, have had far more influence upon the
attitude of modem men and women toward the message of the
Church than theologians as a rule are willing to recognize.9
Secondly, the Church should never forget that for fifteen hundred
years her claim to possess absolute truth was connected with the
State, which forbade all other teaching as “ heresy,” and supported
its authority by severe penalties. The Church will not find it easy,
now that at last she has seen that this protection of her doctrine by
force is not a good thing, to free her message from the memory of this
clerical intolerance.10 But even if one is ready to let bygones be by¬
gones in this matter, the fear of the irruption of the irrational element
which cannot be controlled remains, and its devastating power is ev¬
ident to everyone at the present time. What a torrent of nonsense,
superstition, delusions, and emotional phantasies have at all times
poured into the life of humanity under the cover of the claim to “ rev¬
elation ”! Who can assure us that the Christian claim to be a “ reve¬
lation ” is not something of the same sort? What means are there to
ensure that once the rational criteria have been removed there is a
distinction between sense and nonsense, delusion and truth?
To these questions the Christian Church has an answer, but she
has not yet given it with sufficient force and conviction. Today, I sup¬
pose, we may assume that humanity is more ready to listen to this

9 Cf. A. D. White, A History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science.

10 For the period since the Reformation, see Kuhn, Toleranz und Offen-
harung.
 Revelation and a Christian Theory of Knowledge 7
answer than it would have been twenty or thirty years ago. The pro¬
found upheavals of the last few years, the perception of the nature of
a radically nihilistic intellectual outlook, have today made many peo¬
ple more inclined to listen to a clear witness to a revelation which is
willing to recognize the legitimate claims of reason and of culture.
The relative attitude toward the whole question of truth is not al¬
ways merely the desire to doubt, but very often, and particularly
today, it is the admission of the insufficiency of human knowledge,
and — in so far as this is the case — it is the sign of a secret longing
for a truth which lies beyond the human plane. With the breakdown
of all our hitherto familiar norms and standards there is also a judg¬
ment on that false self-sufficiency of human reason which was char¬
acteristic of an earlier day. Thus the task of theology to make plain
what faith means by revelation has become urgent.
Just as important as this external stimulus is that which is the re¬
sult of history and of the inner situation within the Church. The
question of the nature of revelation arose late within the Church, and
within her theology. In older theological works we search in vain for
any comprehensive reflection upon the nature of the revelation upon
which the Christian faith is based. The only works of this kind which
do exist in the theology of die Early Church, of die Middle Ages, and
of the Reformation and post-Reformation periods, are the inquiries
into the relation between “ natural ” and “ revealed ” theology which
as a rule form the introduction to the system of dogmatic theology;
here, however, almost without exception, “ revelation ” means the
inspiration of Holy Scripture. The statement of the orthodox Lm
theran, Calovius, forma revelationis divinae est theopneustia per
quam revelatio divina est quod est,11 is not only characteristic of Lu¬
theran orthodoxy, but of the whole of the older theology. Theologi¬
cal reflection, once it had got entangled, in the early centuries of its
history, with this fatal equation of revelation with the inspiration of
the Scriptures, was never able to shake itself free. The result was that
reflection on revelation simply meant a theory of verbal inspiration
as the basis of the divine authority of the Bible; in principle this
meant that it did not matter much how much or how little emphasis
was laid on a “ general ” or “ natural ” revelation. The ecclesiastical
doctrine of revelation was and remained identical with her doctrine
of the Scriptures.
11 Calovius, Systema locorum theologicorum, I, p. 280.
8 Revelation and Reason

Behind this fact, which at first only seems to express a certain the¬
ological limitation, there lies a grave misunderstanding of revelation,
and faith in revealed religion as a whole, which hangs like a dark
shadow over the whole history of the Christian Church. Of all the
mistakes made by the Christian Church this misunderstanding of
revelation and of faith may be said to have had the most disastrous
results. In the time of the Apostles, as in that of the Old Testament
Prophets, “ divine revelation ” always meant the whole of the divine
activity for the salvation of the world, the whole story of God s sav¬
ing acts, of the “ acts of God ” which reveal God’s nature and His will,
above all, Him in whom the preceding revelation gains its meaning,
and who therefore is its fulfillment: Jesus Christ. He Himself is the
Revelation. Divine revelation is not a book or a doctrine; the Revela¬
tion is God Himself in His self-manifestation within history. Revela¬
tion is something that happens, the living history of God in His deal¬
ings with the human race: the history of revelation is the history of
salvation, and the history of salvation is the history of revelation.12
Both are the same, seen from two angles. This is the understanding of
revelation which the Bible itself gives us.
When, however, in the second century, the Church was involved
in a life-and-death struggle with the errors of Gnosticism, and when
— as is quite comprehensible — the question of the criterion for
distinguishing between the true and false teaching of the Church be¬
came a burning one, then the Church did something, which, through¬
out her history, has always been disastrous: she sought for certain¬
ties. She created for herself an instrument of differentiation, which
she could use in a legalistic way; this instrument was the concept of
the divinely inspired, and therefore “ infallible,” doctrine. The di¬
vinely revealed doctrine, however, was at the disposal of the Church
in two forms: in the Holy Scriptures, and in the dogma created by the
Church. The dominant position ascribed to dogma in the Early
Church intensified the conviction that revelation and a supematu-
rally revealed doctrine were the same. This established two concep¬
tions which were to have great influence in the following centuries,
12 Cf. William Temple in the composite volume on Revelation, ed. by John
Baillie and Hugh Martin, p. 105: “ Revelation is given in events, and supremely
in the historical Person of Christ.” The fundamental error which equates the
revelation with revealed doctrine begins with the Apologists, but has its begin¬
nings even in the Pastoral Epistles and with the Apostolic Fathers (cf. Titus
2:10, and the emphasis on “ sound doctrine ”).
 Revelation and a Christian Theory of Knowledge 9
namely, the understanding of the Bible and the understanding of
revelation. Henceforward the Bible ranked as the source of the re¬
vealed doctrine, the God-given textbook of true theology; it is “ Holy ”
Scripture because it contains the divinely revealed doctrine. And the
revelation itself is simply the infallible doctrine, divinely “ given ” in
the Bible, and clearly stated and formulated in the system of Chris¬
tian dogma.13
The extent of this change in the conception of revelation comes
out, perhaps, most clearly when it is regarded from the standpoint of
the corresponding understanding of faith. In the New Testament
faith is the relation between person and person, the obedient trust of
man in the God who graciously stoops to meet him. Here revelation
is “ truth as encounter,” 14 and faith is knowledge as encounter. But
now, in the secret process of transformation which the medieval
Church experienced as it developed out of the primitive Church, rev¬
elation becomes doctrine, and faith becomes doctrinal belief. A “ be¬
liever ” is now no longer, as in the New Testament, a person who has
been claimed and transformed by Jesus Christ, but a person who ac¬
cepts what the Church offers him as divinely revealed doctrine,
since he is aware that either the Bible or the doctrinal authority of
the Church constitutes an authority to which he must submit with¬
out question.
However, once the Bible was regarded as the source of divinely
revealed doctrinal truth — and thus everything depends upon the
process of revelation as the transference of the infallible divine truth
to the human system of doctrine — then of necessity this character of
infallibility had to be transferred to the Holy Scriptures. Thus there
arose the standard doctrine of the Bible, the doctrine of the verbal
inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. On the other hand, once this view
of the Scriptures was accepted, of necessity the idea of revelation was
narrowed down to the idea of the inspiration of the Scriptures. Here
then we have the answer to the question, Why has the theology of
the Church been developed only within the narrow limits of the doc¬
trine of the authority of the Bible? Finally, here also is the source of
13 The expression in II Tim. 3:16, “Every scripture inspired of God is also
profitable for teaching” [“ Lehre” in German. Tr.], which, wrongly translated,
became the locus classicus for the doctrine of verbal inspiration, betrays the be¬
ginning of this unfortunate identification.
14 Cf. my book, Wahrheit als Begegnung. [English trans., The Divine-
Human Encounter. Tr.]
10 Revelation and Reason

that antithesis between “ truths of reason and truths of revelation

which was so characteristic of medieval-Catholic theology, in par-
ticular of the distinctions between natural and supernatural
theology. The false intellectualism in the concepts of revelation and
of faith inevitably brought with it a false supranaturalism, which re¬
duced rational knowledge of faith to the same denominatoi. knowl¬
edge this, however, expresses only the different origins and degrees
of knowledge, and not the fundamental difference of nature.1"
At the Reformation this Catholic conception of faith was perceived
to be a misunderstanding of that which the New Testament calls
“ faith,” and the Biblical understanding of faith was restored. Indeed,
this return to the Biblical understanding of faith constitutes the es¬
sence of the Reformation. Its sole concern was this: that faith is a
personal encounter with the God who meets us personally in Jesus
Christ.
Once again, faith was understood as obedient trust, and thus reve¬
lation was again understood as God’s action in Jesus Christ. But for
the second time in her history the Church, in her anxiety to establish
security, took a wrong turning. The leaders of the Reformation, in
their desire to guard against Catholic errors about the nature of faith,
and also against those of the fanatical sects, wanted to have a man¬
ageable instrument, ready for use, by which the distinction between
truth and error could be made with certainty. So they returned to the
Catholic idea of revelation, according to which the revelation guaran¬
teed the infallible doctrine contained in Scripture, and the Scripture
guaranteed the divine revelation, which is therefore the infallible

15 It would be unjust to saddle Augustine with the responsibility for this

transformation of the idea of “ faith the change had already been effected
when he took over the idea. On the other hand, however, we owe it to the im¬
mense influence of Augustine that the Church, which had not hitherto possessed
a doctrine of faith, adopted it in this altered form.
Just as Augustine’s idea of caritas starts from the usual idea of amor-eros, and
his caritas is only distinguished from other forms of “ love (= desire) by its ob¬
ject (cf. Nygren, Agape u. Eros, II, pp. 291 ff.), so also his idea of “ faith ” starts
from the usual idea of “believing” (= taking something on authority), and is
differentiated, not by its character as act, but only by its object, by the particular
kind of authority which is believed. He applies also to the Christian idea of
faith the statement that “ creduntur ilia quae absunt a sensibus nostris si videtur
idoneum quod eis testimonium perhibetur ” (Epist. ad Paid, II, 7). It is only
love which makes something different out of this faith, the “ fides caritate for-
mata.” On Augustine, see below, p. 38. Also Battifol, he catholicisme de St.
Augustin, Ch. I.
 Revelation and a Christian Theory of Knowledge 11

source of this doctrine; they did not notice that in so doing they had
destroyed the real gains of the new discovery of the Reformation.
Now the way led, not to the freedom of the Church, but to the “ pa-
per-Pope.” Once the concept of revelation had thus been falsified, the
concept of faith, even though to some extent preserved by the teach¬
ing of the Reformers, followed suit. A “ believer ” is now a person who
accepts the doctrine revealed in the Bible. The absolute authority of
the Church had been replaced by the absolute authority of the
Book.16
The breakdown of the doctrine of verbal inspiration as the result of
modern scientific knowledge — both of natural science and of his¬
torical science — caused the collapse of the whole edifice of orthodox
doctrine. In place of the Biblical revelation was the truth of reason.
In the earlier period of the Enlightenment the attempt was made to
represent the Biblical revelation as that which is essentially rational;
in the real period of rationalism, on the contrary, revelation no longer
had any meaning; reason was all. Romantic Idealism made a great
effort to deepen the concept of reason to such an extent that it might
include within it the historical revelation. But the realistic-natural¬
istic reaction against Idealism caused this supposed synthesis of
Christianity and rational philosophy, great as it was as an intellec¬
tual achievement, to break down; theology confronted — nothing!
Fortunately, beneath the surface of the prevailing intellectual
tendencies, the Christian faith had already given birth to a new
movement of thought, which meant nothing less than the return to
the Biblical understanding of revelation. For the first time in the his¬
tory of theology, revelation, in its whole historical reality, became the
object of theological reflection. This severance from the inherited
orthodox-confessional theory, or from the orthodox traditional view
of Scripture, only took place gradually, after much hesitation and
misgiving.17 Thus there arose a new school of thought, characterized
16 Cf. Gerhard, Loci theologici, I, 9: “Homines qui intra ecclesiae pomeria
sunt, de scripturae auctoritate non quaerunt; est enim principium.” This author¬
ity of the Scriptures, which precedes all faith, and is above all questions, is the
orthodox theory of the Scriptures, of the Reformed as well as of the Lutheran
Churches.
17 Schelling’s Philosophic der Offenbarung and Jakobi’s Von den gottlichen
Dingen und Hirer Offenbarung had a good deal of influence upon this change in
the outlook of theology. Certainly they are both very far from developing a gen¬
uinely Christian idea of revelation; but they forced theology at last to place the
problem of revelation on a higher plane than the problem of the Scriptures.
12 Revelation and Reason

by historical realism, which no longer identified revelation with in¬

fallible verbal expressions, but which went back behind the words of
the Bible, to the facts themselves. A renewed intensive study of the
Reformers leads in the same direction; there arises, fed from many
sources, a new theology of revelation, which deliberately makes the
theme of revelation the primal and fundamental subject of theology.
This present work springs out of, and is incorporated into, the his¬
torical process at this point.
The aim of this book is: the formulation of a Christian and theo¬
logical doctrine of revelation as a doctrine of believing knowledge.
We may even describe it as “ formal theology,” in so far as it is not
concerned with the content of faith as such, but with the foundation
and the norm of all the knowledge of faith, and with faith itself only
as the special way and manner of knowledge. Here we are concerned
with the doctrine of believing knowledge, not with that which is
known by faith, whose presentation is the subject of material theol¬
ogy. This too was the outlook of the older theologians, when they
prefaced their works on dogmatics, as in duty bound, with a prelim¬
inary chapter, entitled “ Prolegomena,” as the doctrine of the basis
and the norm of the knowledge of faith. Their error consisted in the
fact that they believed that they had dealt adequately with their
task when they had developed a doctrine of the divine authority of
the Holy Scriptures. They did not understand that the inspiration of
the Holy Scriptures is not the revelation, but one of the forms of rev¬
elation, namely, the incarnation in written form of the living per¬
sonal revelation of the Living God in the history of revelation and
salvation. The Bible itself, when it speaks of revelation, points be¬
yond itself to an event, to which indeed it bears witness, but which
is not the Bible itself. The reflection of formal theology is directed
toward the whole of the divine revelation, including this revelation
to which the Bible witnesses; the written record is part of this reve¬
lation, but it is not the whole.
The subject of formal theology, therefore, is the same as that of
Auberlen’s Die gottliche Offenbarung, although it remained a torso, also pointed
in this direction, while Rothe’s tractate upon revelation, in his book on Dogmat¬
ics, in essentials was still confined to the problem of “how the Bible arose.”
Kahler’s small book, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche
biblische Christus, with its strong emphasis upon the principle Christus dominus
et rex scripturae, was of decisive importance. It also opened the way for the un¬
derstanding of Luther’s view of the Bible.
 Revelation and a Christian Theory of Knowledge 13
material theology, or “ dogmatics,” namely, God in His revelation;
but it regards Him solely from one aspect, namely, that of knowledge.
Formal theology, too, is concerned with the eternal nature and will
of God, with the Creation, with the Law and the Gospel, with Jesus
Christ and with the Church, but all from the one standpoint of reve¬
lation as the basis and the norm of faith. Hence it does not formulate
a doctrine of the Trinity, nor of the Incarnation, nor of the Church,
although it has in view the whole of that which is developed in dog¬
matics as the doctrine of God, of Christ, and of the Church. It deals
with all this only in so far as the completeness and clarity of the con¬
cept of revelation make it necessary. Its task is simply this: to say
what the Church means by revelation, and how it is that the Church
comes to regard this, and this only, as revelation, and thus as the
basis and norm of her message, and as the source of all the knowledge
of faith.
But when this has been achieved, the task of a Christian doctrine
of revelation has not yet been completed. The claim of the Church
to revelation is confronted by the unbelieving or doubting world
with its own concept of knowledge, and its own norms of knowledge,
from the standpoint of which the Christian claim to be a revealed re¬
ligion is rejected as unfounded, untrue, or fantastic. Christian the¬
ology owes it to the world to show that we do not believe in revela¬
tion because we ignore the protests of the world, but that we believe
in spite of the fact that we know these objections, and have indeed
wrestled with them seriously. From time immemorial this task has
been described as “ apologetics.” In recent times — especially from
the time of Overbeck — the opinion has arisen that “ this other task
of theology ” is unworthy and even dangerous for a theology that is
sure of itself. It always means an attempt to accommodate the truth
of revelation [that is, of the Christian faith] to the truth of reason,
to try to find for both a common denominator, and in so doing to
weaken or to betray the “ foolishness ” and the “ offense ” of the
Gospel. The example of that first generation of theologians known as
the “ Apologists ” has the effect of vestigium terrens. On the other
hand, another favorite argument is based upon the fact that the Re¬
formers did not devote themselves to apologetics, but that they left
the antithesis between reason and revelation as it is, in all its acute¬
ness, without any effort to reconcile the two. This argument, how¬
ever, overlooks two historical facts: first, that all the good teachers
14 Revelation and Reason

of the Early Church — not only those “ Apologists ” of the second

century who certainly had a rationalistic tinge, but also Augustine
and Athanasius, as well as many others — regarded and carried on the
theological conflict with the unbelieving and heathen world as a nec¬
essary service to the Church.18 Secondly, that even the Reformers,
where, and in so far as, they were confronted not only by erroneous
teaching within the Church, but also by unbelief as an external
power, did not in any way evade their responsibility for taking up
the cudgels on behalf of their faith.19 At that time, however, this was
not the real battle front; for the rationalism which denied the Chris¬
tian revelation as a whole was not yet an influence that left its mark
on the thought of the day; it was rather the concern of some Human¬
ists, who, it may be assumed, as a rule kept their unbelief to them¬
selves. Had atheism, or a pagan Humanism, been predominant at
that time, the Reformers would have fought as sternly and ruthlessly
against this as they fought against the semipagan Humanism of a
man like Erasmus, against the errors of fanatics, and against the
Papacy.
Theological argument with opponents is always dangerous,
whether we are dealing with opponents inside or outside the Church.
Even those who, like the present-day opponents of apologetics, in
their appeal to the Reformers confine themselves to erroneous teach¬
ing within the Church, and refuse to be drawn into argument with
the world outside, have to do what they rightly regard as dangerous
for the purity of the faith, namely, they have to seek a common plane
for discussion. They must try to find reasons in order to show their
opponent how wrong he is to persist in this attitude of rejection. On
the other hand, in principle the apologist who deals with the argu¬
ments of the opponents of the Christian faith as a whole does no
more than the preacher or evangelist who preaches repentance to
the unbelieving. Neither in the one case nor in the other does suc¬
cess lie in the hands of man; but this does not absolve him from the
duty of doing what he can. To show that faith does not ignore or

18 Cf. Zockler, Geschichte der Apologie des Christentums.

19 Calvin and Zwingli both waged apologetic warfare: Calvin, in the first
book of the Institutes, and Zwingli, in his Commentarius de vera et falsa reli-
gione. The first Reformed theologian who — driven to it by the increasing neo¬
paganism of his day — took this matter seriously and came to grips with unbelief
was Duplessy Mornay, in his De veritate religionis christianae liber adversus
atheos, Epicuraeos, Judaeos, Mahumedistas et caeteros infideles.
 Revelation and a Christian Theory of Knowledge 15
suppress any legitimate concern of the reason — that I need not ig¬
nore any scientific or other knowledge in order to be a believer, but
that, on the contrary, the true interest of reason is only rightly pre¬
served and maintained in faith — is not, it is true, the primary task
of the Church, but it is a necessary task; a Church that thinks it can
neglect this task with impunity will find that this neglect will wreak
a bitter revenge.20 Contempt for this task does not arise, as is gener¬
ally thought, from a particular zeal for religion, from a special inten¬
sity of faith, but from a certain theological arrogance, to which the
questions which stir the minds of thoughtful lay people mean noth¬
ing at all, because a theologian of this kind is moved to serious
thought only by his own affairs. Unbelief is the “ natural ” state of
mind of man, as he is. It is the task of the teaching Church to fight
against the sin of unbelief with the truth of revelation. It is not for
her to choose her own field of battle. Wherever the truth of God is
defied, whether inside or outside the Church, there she must fight.
This has been the way in which the Church has acted at all times,
and she will have to act like this in the future, unless she is led astray
by false catchwords and then becomes untrue to her own office.
This self-critical examination of the Church’s claim to revelation
in the light of her opponents includes, however, within itself a third
task: the continual relation to each other of the divine revelation and
the human reason. Revelation is always a mystery but it is never
magic. In revelation the unconditioned and the conditioned subjects,
the Absolute, the Infinite, and the creaturely spirit, meet. Therefore
revelation always passes through a process of understanding by man.
Even if revelation creates a new understanding, it does not create
this without laying claim upon the natural understanding. Indeed,
does not this revelation use human speech, human words, grammar,
the images of man’s life and of man’s world? It comes as a divine
illumination of the mind only through the human mental acts of un¬
derstanding and will. That is the reason why genuine theology must
be dialectical. It is always a conversation between God and man, in
which the human partner in the conversation is not ignored, but,
20 It is significant that even those German theologians who were most bit¬
terly opposed to any argument with skeptics have been driven by the distress
of the times to undertake the struggle against neopaganism. What, then, is this
other than the despised “ apologetics ” or — to indicate the offensive rather than
defensive character of this discussion — “ eristics ”? Cf, my “ Die andere Aufgabe
der Theologie,” Zwischen den Zeiten, 1929.
16 Revelation and Reason

even though he is entirely receptive, he is apprehended with his

whole nature. It is indeed the characteristic element in the Biblical
revelation that although all salvation is ascribed to “ grace alone,
man, as the recipient of this saving knowledge, does not become a
mere object, but is always treated as a responsible subject; thus reve¬
lation does not extinguish the human reason, but claims it wholly for
this process of reception.
Those whose business is theology, and who write theological
books, should not allow themselves in theory to ignore the reason
which in practice they use to so great an extent. For that which dif¬
ferentiates the theologian from the simple old woman who believes
in Christ is not his greater faith, but his greater power of thought in
the service of faith. Thus he who is of the opinion that theology is a
necessary function of the believing community cannot deny — with¬
out falling into the most absurd self-contradiction — that there are
not merely negative, but also positive, relations between revelation
and reason. Whoever studies theology — even if on the most con¬
servative lines — always and inevitably stands on that border line
where there is intercourse between the knowledge of faith and the
knowledge of reason. There is no need to agree with the skeptic
Overbeck and describe this process as “ underhand ” * and therefore
not allowable. This, indeed, it cannot be if it takes place in the full
light of day.
Revealed knowledge is poles apart from rational knowledge. These
two forms of knowledge are as far from each other as heaven is from
earth. And yet, in the very act of expressing this sentence, writing it
down, and printing it, we have already put in use the whole appara¬
tus of the human reason and of human culture. Whoever forms sen¬
tences, even if they are sentences full of heavenly wisdom, does so,
not only and not primarily, but still in the strength which comes from
the fact that he possesses reason; for apart from reason there is only
“ speaking with tongues ” — and perhaps not even this.21 Jesus Christ
is not the enemy of reason, but only of the irrational arrogance of

* [Lit., “smuggling.” Tr.]

21 Here the words of the Apostle, when confronted by the phenomenon of
“ tongues,” are very apt: “ Be not children in mind, howbeit in malice be ye
babes, but in mind be men. ... I had rather speak five words with my under¬
standing . . . than ten thousand words in a tongue” (I Cor. 14:18 ff.). The
Reformers were not hostile to reason as such, but only to the self-sufficient au¬
tonomous reason.
 Revelation and a Christian Theory of Knowledge 17
those who pride themselves on their intellect, and of the irrational
self-sufficiency of reason. In any case, it is of paramount importance
for the theologian, above all others, to be clear in his own mind on
this question of the relation between revelation and reason, and to
be able to make it clear to the Church; for every statement, if it is a
genuinely theological statement, interlocks with every other such
statement, and thus forms a unity in the sense intended by the theo¬
logical statement. The fundamental contradiction between the be¬
lieving knowledge of revelation and the knowledge of reason con¬
fronts us far more sharply than in the time of the Scholastics, so that
we can never adopt their credo ut intelligam as our watchword. We
even think that in some respects we see this contradiction still more
clearly than the Reformers. In spite of this, however, it remains our
duty to inquire into the positive relation between the two, precisely
because we must make this contradiction intelligible.
 Part I

THE NATURE OF REVELATION

 Section I
THE CONCEPT OF REVELATION
2. THE BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING
OF REVELATION
¥> ———— ■ "

Like many other words in religious parlance, the word revela¬

tion ” has been profaned. Beethoven s well-known statement, it is
true, that music is a “ higher revelation ” than all wisdom and all phi¬
losophy, was still intended in a religious sense; but it already indi¬
cates the way which language has since then followed. Even in the
Romantic period people used to speak of the revelation of the soul
of the people,” and similar expressions; today we even meet the word
in papers devoted to sport. And yet it still carries with it something
of a remembrance of its religious origin; it is one of the fundamental
words of religion. Wherever there is religion, there is the claim to
revelation.1 The gods who are otherwise hidden from the eyes of
men show themselves to men in specially wonderful phenomena;
through particular avenues of approach they make their will known,
or they foretell future happenings which they alone know. Countless
are the shrines of revelations and the ways in which these revela¬
tions take place, through which in mysterious ways secret knowledge
is given to men: oracles, lots, divination from animals and birds.
There are exceptional persons: seers, ecstatics, prophets, to whom
the gods entrust secrets, to whom they commit messages of joy or
disaster for their people. There are mystics who, prepared by ascetic
practices or by meditation, suddenly have visions of supernatural
things. The concept of revelation — in some form or other — is as
widespread as the idea of God; indeed, as in early Buddhism, it even
occurs as a religious idea where the idea of God has disappeared.2
1 Cf. G. Van der Leeuw, Phanomenologie der Religion, on “ Offenbarung.”
2 Original Buddhism does not speak of “ revelation,” it is true, but of “ en¬
lightenment,” which Oldenberg, in his Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine
20
 The Biblical Understanding of Revelation 21
When we inquire into the Biblical idea of revelation,* * 3 we must first
of all make it clear to ourselves that there is no single word — in ei¬
ther the Old Testament or the New — that corresponds to our the¬
ological idea of revelation.4 The Holy Scriptures as a whole are con¬
cerned with the divine revelation, even where there is no explicit
mention of revelation. There is a great variety of words that point to
the process of revelation; above all, there is a great variety of facts
and processes that have the significance of revelation. God reveals
Himself through theophanies, through angels, through dreams,
through oracles (such as Urim and Thummim), through visions and
locutions, through natural phenomena and through historical events,
through wonderful guidance given to human beings, and through the
words and deeds of the Prophets. Above all the New Testament un¬
derstands the person, the life, the sufferings, death, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as the final self-manifestation of God,
but again, not only Himself in His historical form, but also the wit¬
ness given to Him by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers, the
proclamation of Christ by His chosen Apostles, and through the be¬
lieving community, and finally the fixing of this witness in written
form in the Bible of the Old and New Testaments. Holy Scripture
therefore does not only speak of the revelation; it is itself the revela¬
tion.
Because of this multiplicity it might seem impossible to speak

Gemeinde, p. 128, probably correctly, interprets in the sense of the original tra¬
dition, as the “ feeling of omniscient enlightenment ” and “ all-penetrating in¬
tuition.”
3 Cf. Kohler, Theologie des Alten Testamentes, pars. 34-40, “ Die Offen-
barung Gottes Eichrodt, Theologie des Alten Testamentes, Index, under “ Of-
fenbarang”; Bultmann, Der Be griff der Offenbarung im Neuen Testament;
Scott, The New Testament Idea of Revelation.
4 Neither in the O.T. nor in the N.T. is there a word that corresponds to our
theological idea of “ revelation.” The O.T. has a number of words for this: God
allows Himself to be seen, to be known, to be discovered; above all, God speaks;
revelation is also meant where tire event is described purely from its subjective
human aspect: a seeing, a hearing, a beholding, a knowing, a perceiving (cf.
Kohler, ibid., pp. 82 ff.). The same is true of the N.T.; not only airoKdKv'KTHv
and 4>avepovv but a number of other words describe that which we gather up
under the one heading of “revelation”: Sr/Xovi', yvup'^eLv, \aAeiv, <£am('eu',
and also nouns like \6yos, <£&, a\pdna. But even the preaching which “ mak-
eth manifest the savour of His knowledge,” the Spirit of God who unveils to us
the face of Christ and glorifies us, the message of salvation which “ has shined
in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God,” et cetera.
A comprehensive treatment of the whole subject has not yet been made.
22 Revelation and Reason

of “ the ” view of revelation in the Bible. And yet this can, and must,
be possible. For these varied forms of revelation are not so many dis¬
connected phenomena, but they form a connected whole. It is when
we look at them all together, from the right point of view, that we
begin to perceive what the Bible means by revelation. It is indeed
characteristic of the Biblical idea of revelation that it is not expressed
in a unified formula, that it cannot be expressed as an abstract idea.
The Biblical idea of revelation cannot be separated from the histori¬
cal facts; it can only be grasped in them and with them. The revela¬
tion in the Old Testament differs from that in the New; but only in
the connection between the two can we understand the Biblical rev¬
elation, and only as we look at them both together can we recognize
the Biblical understanding of revelation. It is true, of course, that
not all the ways in which events and ideas are presented in the Bible,
to which “ revealed ” significance is ascribed, are of the same organic
importance within the whole; but they are all related to the whole;
none is without significance for the understanding of the whole. Our
first task, in a preliminary survey, is to try to discover the one constant
element which persists under these different forms.
Just as the God who reveals Himself in the Holy Scriptures is
wholly different from the gods and divinities of the non-Biblical re¬
ligions, so also the Biblical understanding of revelation is completely
different. This, however, does not exclude the fact that certain char¬
acteristics which, within the various religions, differentiate the proc¬
ess of revelation from other processes and are thus described, are also
present in the Biblical idea of revelation — otherwise how could the
same word “ revelation ” be used? But in the Biblical understanding
of revelation these characteristics are not only different in degree;
they are changed in principle; and it is precisely this fundamentally
different element which is the decisively Biblical element. In all reli¬
gions “ revelation ” means a process through which something that
had previously been hidden from man is disclosed, a mystery is mys¬
teriously manifested, a knowledge that comes from outside the nor¬
mal sphere of knowledge, which cannot be achieved by man, but
must be given to him, enters suddenly and unexpectedly into his life,
and not only increases his knowledge, but has significance for his
life, for good or ill. These characteristics are also represented in the
Biblical idea of revelation, but they are provided with a double sig¬
nature, which gives them a completely new meaning. This double
 The Biblical Understanding of Revelation 23

signature is absoluteness, and personal character. For this very rea¬

son, however, as we shall see, an abstract definition of revelation is
impossible; its meaning can be grasped only through the historically
given. Let us look into this a little more closely, in the light of the
elements that have already been mentioned.

1. Revelation always means that something hidden is made known,

that a mystery is unveiled. But the Biblical revelation is the absolute
manifestation of something that had been absolutely concealed.
Hence it is a way of acquiring knowledge that is absolutely and es¬
sentially — and not only relatively — opposite to tire usual human
method of acquiring knowledge, by means of observation, research,
and thought. Revelation means a supernatural kind of knowledge —
given in a marvelous way — of something that man, of himself,
could never know. Thus revelation issues from a region which, as
such, is not accessible to man. The absolutely Mysterious is not only
partially hidden from the natural knowledge of man; it is wholly
inaccessible to man’s natural faculties for research and discovery.
The sum total of all that in principle is accessible to man is called
the “ world.” Man, it is true, never knows the world as a whole; much
in it remains enigmatic or unknown. But these riddles can be solved
in principle, in so far as they are world enigmas. The unconditioned
mystery does not belong to this world; it is supramundane. To say
that it is supramundane, and that it can only be known through rev¬
elation, really means the same thing. Because it is supramundane it
can be known only through revelation; the very fact that we cannot
perceive it of ourselves, but that we can receive tidings of it only
through revelation,5 shows that it is something altogether above and
beyond this world.
In the Bible, however, we are not confronted by an impersonal su¬
pernatural Absolute, but by One who transcends this earthly life;
God, the Creator and Lord, is the absolute Mystery. In the Bible God
and revelation are so intimately connected that there is no other rev¬
elation than that which comes to us from God, and there is no other
knowledge of God than that which is given to us through revelation.
The absolute, mysterious “ It,” the Absolute, is a cosmic abstraction.

5 “ Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of
man ” — thus that which is not the object of sense perception or of intellectual
reflection, that “ God hath revealed unto us by His Spirit (I Cor. 2:9).
24 Revelation and Reason

We arrive at this idea from our own cosmology.6 This neutral, imper¬
sonal Absolute is an object of our own thought. Hence it does not
need to be revealed; we are able to conceive it by our own processes
of thought. But God is not the “ Object ” of our thought; this is be¬
cause He, as the Lord, is precisely the absolute Subject, uncondi¬
tioned Person. He is absolute Mystery until He reveals Himself; in
so doing, He makes Himself known as the absolute Mystery, as the
Lord. We have an analogy to this in our relation to persons. We can
ourselves find the clue to things; they are objects, which confront us
not in their own self-activity — making themselves known — but as
entities which, by processes of research and thought, we can learn to
understand. But persons are not enigmas of this kind; a person is a
mystery which can be disclosed only through self-manifestation. In
this self-disclosure alone do we meet this person as person; previ¬
ously he or she is an “ object,” a “ something.” But God is not a Per¬
son, but Person, absolutely; not a Subject but absolute Subject, “ I
Yahweh, and none else.” He can be known as absolute Subject only
through the fact that He Himself makes Himself known through His
own action: He is not at our disposal as an object of knowledge. He
proves Himself as Lord in the fact that He, He alone, gives the knowl¬
edge of Himself, and that man has no power at his own disposal to
enable him to acquire this knowledge. Both these statements are cor¬
related: (a) that God is absolute Person and the absolute Mystery;
and (b) that He can be known through revelation alone. In His very
Being He is the absolute One who transcends the world. He is — so
the Bible expresses it — Lord and Creator.7 The Creator alone stands
supreme above this world; the merely logical Absolute, by its very
nature, belongs to this world; the Absolute does not stand above the
world but is its immanent presupposition. The Absolute of thought
is not truly mysterious, because it can be thought. But God cannot
be found by thought; He can only be known through His own mani¬
festation of Plimself, and in this He shows Himself to be the absolute
Mystery,8 who can be understood only through His own self-reve¬
lation.
6 W. Herrmann has brought this out very clearly in his work Die Religion im
Verhaltnis zum Welterkennen und zur Sittlichkeit.
7 Isa., chs. 40 ff., especially Isa. 46:8 the unity of God’s sovereignty and
His self-manifestation.
8 This is the meaning of the prophetic expression, “ The Holy One of Israel.”
“ To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One ” (Isa.
 The Biblical Understanding of Revelation 25
Finally, all that has been said leads up to this point: The real con¬
tent of revelation in the Bible is not “ something,” but God Himself.
Revelation is the self-manifestation of God. The real revelation, that
is, the revelation with which the whole Bible is concerned, is God’s
self-manifestation. The “ unreal ” revelation is that which attempts
to manifest “ something ” in mysterious “ occult ” ways; for instance,9
where lost asses have to be found; and thus something which, in the
nature of the case, could also be experienced in purely natural ways.
The Bible is only remotely concerned with “ unreal ” revelations of
this kind; its central message is always concerned with the revelation
of God Himself, His nature and His will.10

2. Revelation everywhere includes within itself a negative presup¬

position; without it man is always in some way or other in a kind of
darkness or bondage. In the Bible this darkness or bondage is always
absolute, and it is always personal in character. This means that apart
from revelation man does not merely feel that he lacks some knowl¬
edge which it would be useful or pleasant for him to possess. It is an
absolute, a desperately serious darkness. Hence it does not affect the
outside of his life, but himself, in the very core of his being. He him¬
self is dark and fettered; he “ walks in darkness ”;* 11 he is “ lost.” This
bondage is a negative personal quality, a negative relation to God; it
is sin. The Biblical revelation is always and everywhere related to sin.
Through the idea of sin man is characterized as not only, so to say,
empty of God, but as one who is separated from God, as one who has
closed the door between himself and God. Already the contrast be¬
tween Creator and creature sets an infinite distance between God
and man, the distance between Him whose Being is unconditioned
and independent, and him whose being is conditioned and depend¬
ent. Through the concept “ sinner ” that which is merely negative
becomes a negation.
From this conception, however, there springs a remarkable dia-

40:25); the “incomparable” element is His Uniqueness, Sublimity, and Holi¬

ness. Cf. Ps. 99:2 ff.; Isa. 5:16; I Sam. 2:2. Cf. Kittel, lib. Ill, p. 574: “He is
the God of mystery, who only discloses Himself when He wills to do so.”
9 I Sam. 9:20.
10 In the Bible this means the concern with the revelation of the “ name ” of
God or of His decree.
11 John 8:12; the contrast between darkness and light is the same as that be¬
tween being “ in ” Christ and “ outside of ” Christ, I John 1:7.
26 Revelation and Reason

lectic, very characteristic of the Bible. This negation, sin, presupposes

a positive element, of which it is the negation. Sin is never the be¬
ginning; it always comes second. Sin always has a history behind it.
It means turning away; it is a break with the originally positive ele¬
ment. Turning away from God presupposes an original positive rela¬
tion with God, and thus an original revelation. The sinner is not
merely blind; he has become blind; he has been blinded. He is not
merely one who is shut up in himself; he has shut himself up and is
therefore shut out. Thus the revelation that is given to the sinner
is not the first one; it presupposes a previous revelation, apart from
which man could not be a sinner. Sin is not a state of absence of
relation, but it is a negative relation, the negative of an original
positive relation to God. Sin therefore presupposes an original reve¬
lation.12 As the darkness or bondage of man, the negative presupposi¬
tion, is raised to its highest power by the concept of sin, so the revela¬
tion to the sinner is raised to its highest power because it points back
to an original revelation. The “ second ” revelation is revelation in a
quite different sense from the first; in an intensified sense it is per¬
sonal and unconditioned.

3. Revelation means everywhere the communication of unusual

knowledge, of something particular. In the Biblical revelation the
particular character of this knowledge is not only one of degree, but
it is fundamental and unconditioned, to such an extent that one hesi¬
tates to call it “ knowledge ” at all. This radical “ otherness ” of the
Biblical revealed knowledge comes out clearly in three character¬
istics.
(a) Natural acquisition of secular knowledge makes us masters of
that which we know. The knowing subject is superior to each object,
because a subject is much more than an object. The “ I ” can have
something in knowledge; but the “ something ” cannot have the “ I.”
So long as tire “ I ” asserts itself in knowing, so long as it is not in¬
sane or possessed, the “ I ” remains master of the object of that which
is known. It stands above that which it knows in the act of knowing.
But in revelation the opposite is the case. God, through His revela¬
tion, becomes Lord over me; He makes me His property;13 but this

12 See Chapter 6.
13 Because “ knowledge puffeth up,” the right knowledge of God means be¬
ing known by Him (I Cor. 8:1 ff.).
 The Biblical Understanding of Revelation 27
does not mean that I become insane or “possessed by this very fact
I become free, and indeed only then do I develop my true “ I.” Rev¬
elation is therefore fundamentally different from all other forms of
knowledge, because it is not the knowledge of “ something,” but the
meeting of the Unconditioned with the conditioned subject, the self¬
manifestation of the Absolute to the relative person. In revelation
God makes Himself my Lord, and in so doing He makes me “ truly
free.” 14
(b) Ordinary knowledge has the effect of enlarging me, or, more
exactly, my “ sphere,” but it does not transform me, myself. It en¬
riches me, but it does not change me. It is like the enlargement of a
house which the master of the house undertakes, but which leaves
him unchanged. In revelation the exact opposite is the case. The
knowledge of revelation does not add to my knowledge; it does not
make me “ educated it does not enlarge my “ sphere,” but it trans¬
forms me myself; it changes the one who receives it. For this process
of transformation the Bible uses the strongest expression possible:
rebirth, the death of the old, and the resurrection of the new man.15
(c) Ordinary knowledge, which is always knowledge of an object,
for this very reason always means that I remain alone with my
knowledge. The process of learning is an isolated one. It is so even
when human beings, whether one or a thousand, are the objects of
this knowledge. There could indeed be another kind of knowledge
between human beings, namely, that in which the other confronts
me not as object but as subject, where he is no longer an “ It ” but a
“ Thou.” But this kind of knowledge is not at our disposal. “ Natural ”
knowledge which we can acquire for ourselves does not create any
form of community.
In revelation, however, the exact opposite takes place: since God
makes Himself known to me, I am no longer solitary; the knowledge
of God creates community, and indeed community is precisely the
aim of the divine revelation. Hence frequently, in the Bible, when
the knowledge given through revelation is mentioned, the one who
knows and that which is known change places; the one who receives
the revelation is one “ who is known by God,” and to be “ known by
God ” means to have communion with Him. This process of being

14 John 8:36.
15 This connection between knowledge of revelation and transformation
comes out most clearly in II Cor. 3:18.
28 Revelation and Reason

made known takes place in “ love — the revealing, generous, self¬

giving love of God. But because it is this love — the generous love of
God and the receptive love in return of the man to whom the gift
has been given — it is also connected with that relation between hu¬
man beings, of which we said just now that it is not at our own dis¬
posal, namely, that “ knowledge ” of the other, where the other con¬
fronts me not as an “ object ” but as “ Thou.” This transformation
from the objective kind of knowledge of the other to the Thou-rela-
tionship is simply the “ love of my neighbor,” which becomes possi¬
ble and actual in the fact that I receive the love of God. This love of
my neighbor therefore is the natural effect of the reception of reve¬
lation. Hence “ if any man loveth God, the same is known of Him,
and “ every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. 10

4. Hence in the Biblical revelation the concern is not only — as in

other religions — with the communication of some knowledge which
is important for life, but with life itself. The darkness of which the
revelation makes an end is death, disaster, min, destruction; the light
which it brings is salvation and life. Revelation is the communica¬
tion of life, not merely an intensification of the life that already
exists; nor is it merely an enrichment of knowledge, but it is the trans¬
formation of that which is evil and destructive into saving, eternal
life. That is why, as we have already said, the history of revelation is
the history of salvation, and the history of salvation is the history of
revelation. Since God gives Himself to be known, He gives com¬
munion with Himself; and since He gives communion with Himself
He gives us a share in His own eternal Life. Revelation is not con¬
cerned with “ something,” but with me myself, and with God Him¬
self, namely, with my salvation and with His dominion over me and
His communion with me. God Himself in His love gives Himself to
me, and in so doing He does away with the darkness, the godless¬
ness and lovelessness, the bondage and misery, which constitute the
“ lost state ” of mankind without God.
Here we must note the change which has taken place, which the
idea of revelation experiences through its relation to the negation.
The darkness which fades before the Light is here — in contrast to
physical darkness — not merely the absence of light, not a vacuum
which is ultimately filled, the merely negative which now becomes
10 I Cor. 8:3; I John 4:7.
 The Biblical Understanding of Revelation 29

positive; rather, the darkness which is called sin is a positive nega¬

tive, an active negation; not an empty place, but a false attitude.
Thus the communication of this knowledge is a struggle, in which
the usurper is thrown out and the rightful owner comes in. The
usurping “ I,” which has made itself master of its own existence, is
dethroned, and in its place there stands the rightful Lord. The “ I ”
renounces its dominant position in the center, and God becomes the
Center, but the “ I ” takes its rightful, second place; it becomes the
self which has been created in the image of God, which may “ reign ”
with God and under His rule, in the fact that it serves God. In so
doing man finds his original, divinely intended position, and in this
regains his true freedom, and yet in this he finds more than he has
lost. He finds the God who not only loves His creature, but loves His
rebellious creature, and that with a depth of love which he would
not otherwise have known.
Here we have already approached the decisive point, the heart of
the Bible — the justification of the sinner, the forgiveness of guilt.

5. Revelation means always and everywhere a knowledge that is

unexpected, something that has not gained by our own efforts but,
in one way or another, is always a gift, a “disclosure,” which we
could not have expected. The Biblical revelation, however, means
the unexpected in unconditional form — indeed, that which could
never have been expected. It does not mean that which could not
have been expected, but that which one would not even dare to
expect, because it is the veiy opposite of that which could be ex¬
pected along any rational line whatever: that God should love, and
give His love to one who has broken faith with Him and has been
disobedient to Him. That which is absolutely unexpected, and never
could have been expected, is God’s forgiving grace.
The unexpected is that which we cannot fathom. All genuine love
is unfathomable; God does not owe love to His creatures.17 His love is
always and everywhere a free gift. He loves one from whose love
He gains nothing; His love is agape, not eras,18 a “ giving,” and not a
“ grasping ” love, a Love which does not seek a reason for loving the
17 “ I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious
to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy ”
(Ex. 33:19).
18 In Nygren’s book Agape und Eros this contrast between agape and eros
has been well worked out as the contrast between Christianity and antiquity.
30 Revelation and Reason

other, but which loves him simply because He wills to do so. He does
not love the lovable, but He makes the unlovable lovable. He gives
to him, He does not desire anything from him. But agape has this
character in a highly intensified sense where the love of enemies is
concerned. That God loved us “while we were yet sinnexs, that
the Father loves His prodigal son — that is the grace which we could
not expect, but not only so, we would not have dared to expect it. It
is not only unexpected; it is contrary to all expectation. The most in¬
solent words that have ever been spoken are those of the mocking
cynic who said, “ Dieu pardonnera, c’est son metier.”
In the twofold concept of guilt and forgiveness, however, the per¬
sonal character of man and of God is taken more seriously than in
any other human expression. In the judgment guilty the respon¬
sible pei*son is summoned, and his “ lost estate ’ consists in the loss
of man’s original communion with God; the guilty one is the one who
is separated from God, the one who is banished from His presence;
between him and the original presence of God there stands the angel
with the flaming sword. Over him there broods the wrath and not the
love of God. But forgiveness is the restoration of the original rela-
tionship purely from God’s side, from the love which is all-giving, the
Trpoaayojyri, the fact of being allowed once more to draw near, the
fact of being once more united with God. Hence on God s side too
forgiveness is unconditionally personal, the absolute freedom of God,
which reaches out beyond all that is rightful, all that is morally and
legally required, and creates “ purely by grace ” a new righteousness
of a paradoxical nature, the “ justification of the sinner.” This is more
than anything we could ever imagine, irapa So^av, and this paradox
is the center of the Biblical message of revelation.20 But there is still
one final point which, though it is not different, emphasizes what has
just been said.

6. Revelation has always and everywhere the character of a sud¬

den event. It stands out from all ordinary happenings, from the “ nor¬
mal ” course of development, and is a kind of “ incursion from an¬
other dimension.” But in the Bible alone is this sudden happening
understood in an absolute sense, as the unique, as that which can

19 Rom. 5:8.
20 Paul describes this as the heart of the message of revelation: Rom. 3:21;
ch. 1:17. Cf. also I Peter 1:13.
 The Biblical Understanding of Revelation 31
never be repeated. The world of natural development, as well as that
of abstract truth, is more or less timeless. We can always see the
world; it is always at our disposal. We can always think; the truths
which the intellect can perceive are in principle always at our dis-
posal. Through a methodical process of acquiring knowledge we can
master the world and intellectual knowledge. This is true both of the
sphere of the individual and of humanity as a whole. The history of
knowledge is the story of a gradual, more or less continuous process
of mastery. With “ this ” here, “ that ” there is always connected
through the continuum of cause and effect, and through similarity or
analogy. This continuum is broken through by revelation. Not all
Biblical revelation has this unique and unconditional character. Ev¬
ery prophet is indeed unique in his way, it is true, and his message is,
at least in part, unique. And yet none of the Prophets is the Unique
One, but the later Prophets repeat and carry farther the teaching of
the earlier ones. The unique and unrepeatable revelation is that event
to which prophecy points as its real meaning, in which He Himself is
here, “ God with us,” the Christ. Here there takes place that which,
in its very nature, happens once for all, and is therefore uncondi¬
tioned.
Atonement, redemption, can, if it really takes place, happen only
once for all. If Jesus Christ be really the Redeemer, then it is evident
that “ in no other is there salvation,”21 that “ in His name every knee
shall bow.” 22 Only this unconditionally personal event, the fact that
God the Creator comes to man, can be the absolute and unique event;
all other happenings are by their very nature repeatable, capable of
intensification and variation; but this is not.
It is, however, no accident that in the passages in the New Testa¬
ment where this uniqueness is expressed in logical terms, in actual
words, we are directed to an actual event, at an actual spot on the
earth, and at an actual time in history, to the Cross, to the sacrificial
death of the Son of God, as the decisive event of redemption.23 Here,
on the very border line between death and life, between this world
and the other, in death, but in this one death, the death of the Son of
21 Acts 4:12.
22 Phil. 2:10.
23 Rom. 6:10; I Peter 3:18; Heb. 7:4; 9:12, 26, 28; 10:2, 10. The fact that
the Epistle to the Hebrews brings out this uniqueness so plainly is all the more
striking, since the author lays great stress on the variety of the revelation at the
beginning of the Epistle.
32 Revelation and Reason

God, everything is concentrated with which this One, all His life, was
concerned. Toward this point the whole life of Jesus Christ is di¬
rected, to this turning point in the absolute, utterly incomparable
meaning of this word. On this unconditioned unique event hangs
forgiveness, which is the central point in all the happenings of reve¬
lation. Here, in the close of the earthly story of Jesus, in the decline
of His human powers, in the death of the God-man, there takes place
something which could never take place anywhere else, not even ap¬
proximately. Here, in the history which is in the strictest sense of the
word on the very border line of historical happenings, there takes
place that which all other histoiy seeks in vain: salvation, the rescue
from the powers of destruction. Here therefore the real revelation
takes place, the revelation of the holiness and the mercy of God, of
His nature and His will, of His plan for humanity and for the world.24
Here takes place that which is the fulfillment of all histoiy, and which
at the same time bursts the framework of all history: the absolute
Event.

3. THE RECEPTION OF REVELATION: FAITH

1. Revelation is a divine action; it is a movement which does not
proceed from man, but one which comes to him. Thus it seems to be
an objective phenomenon, independent of the subjective act of re¬
ceiving, just as the things of the external world exist apart from our
perception of them. It seems therefore as though we might set the
objective nature of revelation over against the subjective character of
the reception of revelation. The “ Word ” of the Prophets, the Person
of Jesus Christ, the teaching of the Apostles in the Holy Scriptures
are “ the revelation ”; they are what they are, quite apart from what
we men think about them, whether we believe them to be the revela¬
tion or not.
It is, however, evident that the Bible itself does not make this dis¬
tinction; indeed, it is the Bible that draws a definite subjective proc¬
ess into the sphere of revelation, and then describes it simply as “ rev¬
elation.” “ When it was the good pleasure of God ... to reveal His
KH

Son in me.”1 “ He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and

will love him, and will manifest [reveal] Myself to him.” 2 If we re-
24 Col. 1:20. i Gal. 1:15, 16. 2 John 14:21.
 The Reception of Revelation: Faith 33
fleet upon the original meaning of the words “ revelation ” and “ re¬
veal, this fact will cause us no surprise. Revelation is indeed that
which becomes manifest to us through a definite action of God; it
means that we, whose eyes were formerly closed, have now opened
them to a certain light; that upon us, who were in darkness, the light
has shone. Thus revelation only reaches its goal in the subject, man.
Revelation is not a fact in itself, but it is this fact, plus an illumina¬
tion, a disclosure, which makes the “ fact ” known. The fact of the
illumination is therefore an integral part of the process of revelation;
without this an event is no more a revelation than light is light with¬
out the seeing, illuminated, eye. Revelation is a transitive event
which proceeds from God and ends in man, a light ray with these two
poles. There is therefore no point in setting the objective fact of reve¬
lation over against the subjective act of receiving the revelation, be¬
cause the revelation actually consists in the meeting of two subjects,
the divine and the human, the self-communication of God to man.
Jesus Christ is not “ revelation ” when He is not recognized by any¬
one as the Christ, just as He is not the Redeemer if He does not re¬
deem anyone. The Biblical doctrine of revelation means this transi¬
tion from the divine to the human subject.

2. We understand the full significance of this fact only when we

combine revelation with the two ideas that the Bible represents as
the aim of the divine action as a whole: the sovereignty of God and
communion with God. God shows Himself as the Lord of creation
not only in the fact that of His own free choice He sets a creature over
against Himself, but also in the fact that He “ glorifies ” Himself in
the creature, that He stamps upon the creature the impress of His
8o£a, of the divine power and glory. “ Let the whole earth be filled
with His glory.” 3 But in the full sense He is only Lord where He is
recognized and acknowledged as Lord. His will as Lord is not obeyed
by the dumb creatures, but only by those who consciously revere
Him as Lord. Hence the main theme of the Bible is the divine rule
over mankind; it is this which, in short, is described as the fiacnXeia
GeoO, the Kingdom of God.4 But this rule of God is only perfect when

8 Ps. 72:19.
4 It cannot be denied that the New Testament message of the Kingdom of
God also has its cosmic aspect; but at the present day this point of view is greatly
exaggerated (for instance, M. Werner, Die Entstehung des christlichen Dogmas
34 Revelation and Reason

the acknowledgment of the Lord takes place in complete freedom;

and the complete freedom of obedience is love.
Thus love is the final aim of God in His creation, because it is the
deepest origin of His creation and of His revelation. When the crea¬
ture loves the Creator, the will of God is perfectly fulfilled. God
wishes not only to be honored and reverenced as Lord, but to be
loved as Father. But we can love God only because He loves us; it is
His royal privilege to love us utterly, not for any “ reason ’ at all, but
simply because He wills to do so, just as it is His free will to create
us. The fact that God creates us, and that He enters into communion
with us, is His love. But His will of love is fulfilled only when men
love Him too. Man can love God only as one who is loved by God;
that is, only in the love that he receives from God. But the act in
which man receives this love is faith. Faith is the act in which the
revelation or self-communication of God is received and in which
this is realized in the subject, man. In a certain — initial — sense we
may say that faith is the aim of revelation.

3. Faith is therefore first of all an act of knowledge; it is the “ light

of the knowledge of the glory of God,”* * * * 5 it is awareness of the G
who reveals Himself. In the story of Peter’s confession at Caesarea
Philippi we can see this mysterious process at work. Peter answers
the question, “ Whom say ye that I am? ” with the words, “ Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” 6 Peter recognized Christ
as the One in whom God was dealing with him, and with all mankind.
The Lord, however, confirms not only the truth of this knowledge,
but also its divine origin in revelation: “Flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.” To become
aware of the revelation is itself revelation, and this awareness is the
act of faith.
This act of perception is both an act of recognition and an act of
obedience. With this confession man submits himself absolutely to

makes it the center of everything), and, besides that, it is seen out of proportion.
The cosmic element in the whole Bible is never anything more than the “ scen¬
ery ” in which the history of mankind takes place. The destiny of the world is
decided by the fact that God became man, and by His Cross as an event in his¬
tory. The theocentric character of the Bible, because it is Christocentric, is also
geocentric and anthropocentric.
6 II Cor. 4:6.
6 Matt. 16:17 ff.
 The Reception of Revelation: Faith 35
Him whom he has acknowledged as Lord. Faith is obedience, vtclkoti
TiaTeojs- Faith arises in and with the abdication of the self which
claims absolute sovereignty; it is the renunciation of independence,
of one’s own sovereignty, and the recognition of the sovereignty of
the God who reveals Himself. Faith is self-surrender, willing submis¬
sion. Unbelief is the disobedience of the man who will not renounce
his independence. “ Had they known it, they would not have cruci¬
fied the Lord of glory.” 7 To be ignorant, and to be unwilling to be
enlightened, is the same thing. Neither precedes the other, just as in
faith knowledge does not precede obedience nor does obedience pre¬
cede knowledge. The rational analysis of the process of faith which
places the actus intellectuals before the actus volitivus fails to do
justice to the unique character of this act of perception. He who does
not believe shuts his eyes in order that he may not see, because see¬
ing would immediately mean the surrender of his independence.8

4. Man, however, is unable to make this act of surrender unless he

is convinced that it will be for his good. This perception — that it is
good for man not to be his own master, but to have God as his Lord
and Master, is the core of the act of faith; that is why, in the language
of the Bible, it is described as ttLvtls, trust, or confidence. Confidence
(or trust) is the heart of faith. This trust means the act by which we
abandon ourselves without reserve into the hands of God. In this act
of trust the deepest instinct of the human heart — and, where God is
concerned, the worst sin of man — is overcome: the instinct of self-
preservation, the desire to “ paddle one’s own canoe.” All unbelief —
as the story of the Fall shows us — springs from mistrust. Adam —
man — lends a willing ear to the whispered suggestion that God is
withholding from him the fullness of life and happiness, and thus
that he, man, must help himself to fullness of life by ignoring the will
of God. Faith, therefore, is not only the submission of the self-confi¬
dent “ I ”; it is also the venture of trust in Another. Hence we can
really believe only when the almighty Love meets us, which wills for
us the absolute Good, and is able to fulfill for us what He wills, abso¬
lutely. Only God’s unconditional, generous love can conquer our dis-
7 I Cor. 2:8. Cf. also II Cor. 3:16: “But whensoever it [the Jewish people]
shall turn to the Lord, the veil [of the understanding of the Scriptures] is taken
away.”
8 Hence, according to the testimony of the Bible, faith always begins with
repentance: “ Repent and believe ” (Mark 1:15).
36 Revelation and Reason

trustful, anxious, self-centered hearts; only the love of God which

awakens our trustful love in return can master our self-love.9 As Lu¬
ther says, in his “ Sermon on Good Works, when we look at the
matter rightly, love comes first, or arises at the same moment as faith.
For I could not trust God if I did not think that He would be gracious
and merciful unto me, which in its turn means that I am trustful and
confident toward Him, having a hearty trust in His goodness and a
firm faith that in Him I shall be provided with all that is good.

5. Thus faith is not a relation to “ something,’ to an idea, a truth,

or a doctrine — not even a “ divinely revealed doctrine — but it is
wholly a personal relationship: my trustful obedience to Him who
meets me as the gracious Lord. This does not mean that this personal
act of trustful obedience must be preceded by an act of perception,
which is related to “ something,” as for instance some particular truth
about God; rather God reveals Himself, and gives Himself to faith in
such a way that every “ something ” points to Himself, and in so
doing is subordinated to Him; the self-disclosure of the gracious
Lord to the self is one aspect, the obedient, trustful surrender of the
previously independent and anxious self is the other aspect, of the
same process. All acts of objective, positive knowledge are therefore
merely a preparation for this, and take a secondary position; they
are not the perception of faith itself. The latter is sui generis; it is not
fulfilled in the “ I-It ” dimension, in the realm of abstract truth, but
rather in the “ I-Tliou ” dimension, as a perception of the way in
which love is recognized in love, and not in any other way.
The sole object of faith is Jesus Christ, God in His personal reve¬
lation. The “ object of faith is not a general truth, not a timeless and
nonhistorical metaphysic, but the Person of Christ; indeed, it is the
fact that Christ acts, that He enters into communion with men, and
also the way in which Pie acts, which gives faith its concrete charac¬
ter.” 11 Faith, therefore, “ has one sole aim, not a variety of doctrines,
but one only, which faith, in its universal application, apprehends

9 Calvin, Institutes, III, 2, 7: “Turn enim ad Deum quaerendum allicimur,

postquam didicimus salutem nobis ad eum repositam . . . gratiae promissione
opus est, qua nobis testificetur se propitium esse patrern . . . , nec aliter ad
eum appropinquare possumus et in earn solum reclinare cor hominis potest
10 W.A., 6, 210. Calvin, Institutes, III, 2, 7, “ Justa fidei definitio: esse di-
vinae erga nos benevolentiae firmam certamque cognitionem.”
11 Schlatter, Der Glaube im Neuen Testament, p. 181.
 The Reception of Revelation: Faith 37
with increasing clarity.”12 Faith is “solely our relation to Jesus.”13
For Jesus is the divine “ Thou,” given to us by God; faith is aware¬
ness of this Thou, the knowledge and the recognition of the God
who seeks us and lays His claim upon us in Him. Every “ word ” from
God means Himself, who is the unique Word, the God who dis¬
closes Himself. Faith is the humble acceptance of that self-giving
love of Him who gives Himself to us in this “ Word ” — of One who
is our absolute Lord; faith is personal communion with God, and thus
the establishment of the Rule of God.

6. \ ery early in the history of the Church this genuinely Biblical

conception of faith was lost; indeed, even in the New Testament it¬
self it does not stand out in every part with the same clearness.14 It
was replaced by what we may describe as the “ Catholic ” conception
of faith. Here faith is first of all related to the divinely revealed doc¬
trine as its real content; it is doctrinal belief; secondly, it is an a priori
recognition of the authority of the Holy Scriptures, in every part.
Whatever the Bible says, because it stands in Scripture, is to be “ be¬
lieved.” This relation of authority is then transferred later on to the
doctrines of the Church as a whole. “We believe those who know
these facts (such as the miracles of the Gospel story) because they
are eyewitnesses.” For “revelation in general, and the revelation of
God in Christ, is a visible process which can be perceived by the
senses, known by witnesses, and proclaimed by them.” By this
“ faith ” Christianity stands or falls.15 “ We must believe what the
Church teaches; and because the Church teaches it, we must believe
it.” 16 This “ faith ” is the product of a transference from one dimen-
12 Ibid., p. 187.
13 Ibid., p. 203. Cf. also Kiimmel, “ Der Glaube im N.T.,” Theol. Blatter,
1937, pp. 209 ff.
14 See, for instance, the idea of faith in the Epistle of James; it is only be¬
cause James reads this meaning into faith — a sense entirely foreign to the
thought of the Apostle Paul — that he comes to reject justification through faith.
On this point see Kiimmel, ibid.
15 Hettinger, Apologie des Christentums, I, 2, p. 133.
16 Naturally the Catholic doctrine of faith is more complicated than it ap¬
pears in the summary comparison made here. The Vatican (Enchiridion sym~
bolorum, ed. Denzinger and Bannwart, quotes Denzinger, No. 1789) teaches
that faith is salutis initium and that it consists in the fact that we believe Deo as-
pirante et adjuvante ab eo revelata vera esse. Continually we meet as the correl¬
ative of faith expressions such as: neutra, revelata, vera, dicta, testata, etc. (cf.
Denzinger, No. 2145). If we ask for the reason why we should regard these
dicta, as such, those behind which there is the auctoritas Dei, then we are re-
38 Revelation and Reason

sion to another. The personal subject-subject relation has become an

object-subject relation. The content of the Scriptures, whatever it
may be, must “ be believed.” It is easy to see why Catholic theology
does not ascribe any justifying or renewing power to this faith, or
any power to create 4 persons hence Catholic theologians teach
that faith of this kind must be completed by love. The fides infonnis
— that faith which “ even the devils possess 17 — must become cavi¬
tate formata; in the process of change this caritas, for its part, has ac¬
quired a strongly mystical flavor: to use the language of Nygren, it is
an “ Eros-structure.” Thus out of two elements which are foreign to
the thought of the Bible — an authoritarian doctrinal belief, and mys¬
tical love — there is to be reconstituted that which the Bible calls
7tLcttls,or “ faith.” 18
In principle this synthesis, and with it this idea of faith, was de¬
stroyed at the Reformation; but the heteronomous authoritarian be¬
lief, as an a priori faith in the Bible, plays a decisive part in post-
Reformation theology, alongside of the genuinely Biblical conception
of justifying faith. Orthodox theologians never seem to have no¬
ticed that they were using the same word to describe two completely
different ideas of “faith”; namely, the personal act: the obedience
of the trusting soul; the impersonal attitude to something abstract:
a priori doctrinal conviction. But it is precisely the non-Biblical idea
of faith which predominates in the popular mind. The average Prot¬
estant’s idea of faith is thoroughly “ Catholic ”; it is the one which is
represented in the Epistle of James. In these few bare words we have

ferred to the process of inspiration and to the credibility of the inspired Apostles
and Prophets as the authors of Holy Scripture. It is true that a distinction is
drawn in theory between the objectum formate, the authority of the God who
reveals Himself, and the motiva credibilitatis, upon the fact that we know that
the inspired Prophets and Apostles are the authors of the various books in the
Bible. (Cf., for instance, Pesch, Fraelectiones dogmaticae, VIII, 3, pp. 144 ff.,
or Sawicki, Die Wahrheit des Christentums [8], pp. 268 ff.) Above all, the
faithful are urged to believe everything on the authority of the Church (see be¬
low, pp. 155 f.). In this they are following the rules laid down by certain defini¬
tions of Augustine. He too taught that the way of salvation begins with authori¬
tative faith, which is then followed on the one hand by the intellectus and on the
other by the caritas, that is, on the one hand by rational speculation, and on the
other by mysticism. (Cf. his exposition of the Gospel of John, XXI, 16: Intelle-
gere vis? Crede! Then follows his famous credo ut intellegam.)
17 James 2:19.
18 Cf. the analysis of the idea of caritas in Augustine, in Nygren, Agape und
Eros, II, pp. 284 ff.
 The Reception of Revelation: Faith 39

indicated the greatest tragedy in Church history. This alteration in

the understanding of faith, which turned the relation of trust in, and
obedience to, the Lord of the Church into the authoritarian doctrinal
belief in the Bible, is the ultimate reason for the perversion and weak¬
ness in Christianity and the Church, from the second century down
to the present day.

7. To use an illustration from ordinary human life, “ faith ” in the

genuine, Biblical, sense is not the acceptance of the statement of a re¬
liable authority, but it is the relation of trust in another person; it is
personal relation between two human beings. It is true, of course,
that the personal act of trust, obedience, and love is preceded by cer¬
tain elements of objective knowledge — as also they precede the act
of faith — but they are not the personal act itself. The personal act,
sui generis, stands over against all knowledge of objects. The way in
which a man “ gains ” confidence in me, and in which I at once
“ give ” him my trust, differs completely from any act of objective
knowledge. And yet here we are only dealing with an analogy to
faith.19 The truly personal act is simply faith; apart from faith, and
the love which it expresses (ayarrij), our relation to persons is al¬
ways imperfect: a mixture of personal and impersonal elements. We
“ deal ” with human beings; we fit them into our own orbit. We give
up this kind of behavior only when we begin to know what real love
(agape) means; and real love is present where there is faith. Here we
leave the realm of mere analogy; here the relation between man and
man and man’s relation with God become one. When I give myself
to God in the obedience of faith, I become free from the anxious in¬
tensity of self-absorption, and I love my neighbor as myself. For when
I give myself to God, I will what He wills, I love with His love. That
is the wonder of agape, of that “ love of God which is shed abroad in
our hearts,”20 when we have found “ peace with God.” 21 Hence this
faith, in its very nature, is personal transformation; it not only cre¬
ates rebirth, it is rebirth.
Faith in “ something,” on the other hand — that is, faith in revealed

19 This analogy between human trust and faith was stressed by Wilhelm
Herrmann — cf., above all, his “ Ethics ” — but he turned the analogy into the
matter itself. He did not see that only through faith in Christ do genuine trust
and love arise.
20 Rom. 5:5.
21 Rom. 5:1.
40 Revelation and Reason

doctrines - is not a personal transformation at all. So long as we are

dealing with “ something ” we remain masters. We are “ masters
even in the theological act of knowledge; hence theological knowl¬
edge, as such, can easily exist alongside of the most stubborn self-
will. “ Knowledge pulfeth up.” 22
A “ new creation ” is not due to intellectual theological knowledge
as such; this “ new creation ” is only the fruit of that faith which is
the subject of theological reflection. Genuine theology means this
personal relationship, which is the genuine faith. Theological knowl¬
edge is not achieved in the “ Thou ’’-form, that is, in prayer, but in
the “ It ’’-form of reflection. It is the personal relation in the form of
impersonal, abstract reflection; it is “knowing about something. In
the realm of theology this is quite right and proper; but error creeps
in where the two forms of knowledge become confused with one
another.

8. Faith is truly “ supernatural,” because it alone is possible

through the presence of God, living and acting, and in it God s sav¬
ing and revealing will is realized. It is the work of grace which
changes the sinful, independent self into a self that depends utterly
upon God. All the miracles of the Bible aim at this miracle, that God
may gain the mastery over His creation. At the same time, faith is
truly “ natural,” since it alone enables man to become that for which
he has been created.23 It is by “ faith which works through love ” 24
that man first becomes truly human. Sin is not natural; it is unnatural.
To sin is not human: it is inhuman. To live without God, to wish to
be one’s own master, is the rebellion of man against his divinely cre¬
ated nature, the cor incurvation in se. That is why the man who is
living in the state of sin never feels quite at ease; he has no real peace.
He is divided against himself; he is split into two parts: a self which
feels the pull of obligation, and the self which asserts its own will.
Such a man is never really “ at home ” in the world; he is living in
“ the far country,” from which he is ever striving to escape. Faith
means “ coming home ”; the relaxation of self-centered tension; the
cessation of rebellion within one’s own nature; peace.

22 I Cor. 8:1.
23 On this passage see my theological anthropology, Der Mensch im Wider-
spruch. [English trans., Man in Revolt, O. Wyon. Tr.]
24 Gal. 5:6.
 The Reception of Revelation: Faith 41
We understand this better when we think of the love that springs
from a genuine faith. Every human being has a glimmering aware¬
ness of the truth that love should be and really is the spirit of a true
humanity. No one, however brutalized, can fail to perceive true love
when he meets it in an unmistakable form. Every human being has
a secret longing to love and to be loved in this way. Even the most
shy and solitary individualist has a desire for true fellowship with
others. Usually it is the disappointment of this longing that drives
him in upon himself and into isolation. Selfless love makes men as hu¬
man as egoism makes them inhuman. Only those can love in an un¬
selfish way who are already “ in love,” who have been apprehended
by love. We can only love unselfishly when we have first been loved.
To be laid hold of by the love of God, and to accept this love — this
is faith. It is to have our being in Him through whom God gives Him¬
self to us in His revelation.

9. The absolute and personal characteristics of the Biblical view

of revelation are also characteristic of the Biblical understanding of
faith. Surrender is found in all religions, though it is always mingled
with the desire to secure something for oneself. Sacrifice is the heart
of all religious worship. This sacrifice is surrender, but it is always at
the same time an attempt to find a compromise. The religious man
does not want to give himself away completely, for he is afraid that
he might lose something vital, either of happiness or of freedom.
Hence even his sacrifice is a compromise; he is willing to give some¬
thing — if necessary, a great deal — but he will not give hhnself. This
is true not only of the religion that lays most stress upon sacrificial
worship, but also of that which stresses ethical perfection or mystical
“ inwardness.” Religious moralism is the self-assertion of the “ good
man ” who believes that by his own efforts he can be pleasing to God;
mysticism is the withdrawal to the deepest self which is identical
with the divine Being. In neither process is there the unconditional
surrender of faith. The absolute surrender of the Almighty God was
needed, in order to wean man from his false self-confidence, and his
anxiety about himself; only so could man learn to surrender himself
to God in faith and humble trust. It is only because God has given
Himself absolutely to man in Jesus Christ that man is able to surren¬
der himself without reserve to God; it is this alone which makes
“ faith ” — in the New Testament sense of the word — possible.
42 Revelation and Reason

Not only is this surrender unconditional; it is also personal. In

some way or other the religious man is always conscious that this is a
matter between himself and God. Outside the Biblical revelation,
however, he does not know that nothing matters but God: His sov¬
ereignty, communion with Him, God in the totality of His Person,
Man’s relation with God outside the Biblical revelation is always a
means to an end; it is a “ part ” of life, not the whole. The totalitarian
character of the Christian revelation is lacking. In the Biblical sense
alone is faith a venture; it is the realization of the will of God and of
communion with God as the meaning of all that happens, as life itself,
in the true sense of the word. In this faith alone everything depends
upon the relation between God Himself and me myself. Here alone
does the truth dawn on the soul that to be truly ‘ oneself is to be ab¬
solutely dependent upon God, Here alone, in this perception of truth,
is this dependence accomplished. To “ believe ” means to accept one¬
self from the hands of God: not “ something, but oneself; not from
“ something,” but from God Himself. God Himself gives Himself to
me myself, and after that I can give myself to Him, in that I accept
His self-giving.

4. THE GOD OF REVELATION

1. The connection between God and revelation cannot be taken
for granted. The “ gods ” of Epicurus, who may be supposed to be
happy, do not trouble themselves about human beings at all;* 1 Spi¬
noza’s “ divinity,” Deus sive natura, the irpurov klvovv of Aristotle,
the “divinity” of which Plato speaks: all these divinities are too
“ sublime ” to be able or willing to reveal themselves to the sons of
men.2 As they cannot be known through revelation, but only through
1 The Epicurean argument, “ Si est in Deo laetitiae affectus ad gratiam et
odii ad iram, necesse est habeat et timorem et libidinem . . . qui sunt imbecil-
litatis humanae ” (cf. Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen, III, 1, p. 434), recurs,
somewhat altered, in the Christian theology influenced by Neoplatonism, in the
idea of the impassibility of God.
2 Since the Greek thinker knows no other idea of love than that of eros, the
desire for that which one lacks, even the god of Plato cannot love. (Cf. Nygren,
Agape und Eros, I, pp. 154 ff.) There is indeed love to Him, as the Perfect,
which we lack, but not from Him to us. For “ whoever would desire that which
he already has? ” Symposium, 200. The highest that is possible is that the just
 The God of Revelation 43
thought, it is evident that by their very nature they cannot reveal
themselves. Modem Idealistic philosophy differs from ancient philoso¬
phy in the fact that it is concerned with the question of revelation. For
here an element has entered into thought that was unknown to Greek
philosophy: that of history. To the extent in which history in its
givenness ” (a quality inhering in no intellectual system) is taken
seriously, the philosopher is forced to take the problem of revelation
into account. Lessing tries to understand human history as the history
of the divine education through revelation;* * 3 Hegel’s system of the
philosophy of history aims at being the intellectual presentation of
the historical process, in which the absolute Spirit is manifested in
the finite; while Schelling, above all, in contrast to his predecessors,
in a “ philosophy of revelation ” tries to distinguish between the God
of positive revelation and the speculative idea of God. Again and
again, however, it becomes evident that the content and the meth¬
ods of knowledge are correlated. Whatever we come to know through
philosophical speculation is, for that very reason, something quite
different from that which we come to know through faith. Thus what
the philosophers call “ revelation ” is different from that which faith
calls “ revelation.” The God who is discovered through thought is
always different from the God who reveals Himself through revela¬
tion. The God who is “ proved,” just because He has been “ proved,”
is not the God in whom man “ believes.”4

2. The God of the Bible is absolutely the God of revelation, be¬

cause He is absolute and sovereign Lord, the unconditioned Subject.
A “ subject,” in contradistinction to every kind of “ object,” is that
which can be known absolutely only through self-communication.
That which is thought is always an object, not a subject. A subject
that has been thought is, as such, as something which has been
thought, not a true subject; a person whom I imagine to myself is not
a real “ Thou.” The tme personal being of the “ Thou ” is the secret
of his personality which he, and he alone, can unveil. That which I
can discover, by my own efforts, through the acquisition of facts and
of knowledge or thought — to the extent in which this is possible —
man through virtue might gain the favor of God and through that become a
0eo0tXi7s, one who is “ beloved of the gods,” Republic, 10, 612.
3 Cf. Thielicke, Vernunft und Offenbarung, a study of Lessing’s philosophy
of religion.
4 See below, Chapter 22.
44 Revelation and Reason

is not person. Personality, and “ the fact that one can only be known
through self-communication,” are identical concepts. Precisely that
which only discloses itself through self-communication is person, and
of the personal alone is it true to say that it can be known only
through self-communication, that is, not as the result of any efforts
of our own.
In the unconditional sense this is true only of divine personal Be¬
ing, of unconditioned, absolute Person. It is true of the human, con¬
ditioned person only in a very limited sense. The Lord God alone is
unconditioned Person, so that His Being can only be made known
through revelation. The God of the philosophers is a God who has
been “ thought He is not the Lord God. The God of philosophy is
an abstraction; He is not “ the Living God.” The Living God is not
known through thought, nor through conclusions drawn from the
structure of the universe, nor through profound meditation on the na¬
ture of Spirit; He is known through revelation alone. This Lord God
is the God of the Biblical revelation. The fact that we speak thus
about the nature of personal being is the result of the Biblical reve¬
lation. This idea of “ person,” and of the connection between person
and revelation, has been given to us by the Bible; it is not an idea that
man has discovered. This idea of personality is simply the Biblical
idea of God, which, for its part, can be understood only in the light
of the Biblical revelation, and which we possess only because we
have the Biblical revelation. No philosophical Theism contains this
idea of God; even the personal Being of God which the Theistic phi¬
losopher thinks out for himself is an abstraction; it is not the per¬
sonal Being of the Lord God.

3. The fact that God is the Lord and the revelation of God are
necessarily united. Hence in the Bible God is not the Lord because
He is the Creator, but He is the Creator because He is Lord. Israel
knew Him as Lord before it knew Him as Creator.5 Where the Cre¬
ator is spoken of apart from His revelation, He is merely the shadowy
First Cause, the demiurge, the Tvpwrov klvovv or the like. Only where
God reveals Himself as Lord is the Creation understood as that which
it is in the Bible: creatio ex nihilo. “ Creation out of nothing ” is the

5 Kohler, Theologie des Alten Testamentes, p. 68. “ The idea that God cre¬
ated the world is rather a late conception. It is not a basic idea of the Old Testa¬
ment revelation, but a conclusion drawn from it”
 The God of Revelation 45
expression of the unconditioned, sovereign lordship of God, of His
absolute transcendence, and of His absolute mystery.
In the Bible even the knowledge of the Creator derived from His
work in creation is far from being a metaphysical deduction from
phenomena. It is the wondering, reverent, worship of the Majesty
who thus reveals Himself. No “ proof of the existence of God ” leads
to the Lord God; by this I do not mean that such “ proofs ” have no
value, but that they do not lead to the knowledge of the Living God.6

4. The sovereignty of God, absolute transcendence, is very closely

connected with what the Bible calls the holiness of God. As the Holy
One, God is the Wholly Other, the Incomparable, the Sole Reality,
who in this His incomparable uniqueness wills to be known and rec¬
ognized. To bring this into tire experience of His creature is God’s
“ glory.” He says: “My glory will I not give to another,” 7 because,
were He to do so, in that very act He would cease to be God. All the
earth is to be filled with His glory. He can be glorified aright only
when He is known as the Holy One, when He, the Mysterious One,
proclaims His mystery. Thus the revelation of God is both a veiling
and a disclosure, both an unveiling and an affirmation of His mystery.
As the Wholly Other, He can never be fully understood by any crea¬
ture. Finitum non est capax infiniti; but it is precisely His will that He
should be known as the Wholly Other; that is His glory. This blend¬
ing of mystery and revelation is rooted in the nature and the will of
God. When God in His revelation steps out of His mystery, at the
same time He removes the absolute barrier between Himself and all
creatures. He shows Himself as the Unfathomable, the Incomparable,
that is, as One who cannot be known; and it is thus that He makes
Himself known.8 Both the fact that He reveals Himself, and that
even in His revelation He remains the Unfathomable Mystery, the
Lord, are rooted in the nature of the Holy God.

5. The second fundamental Biblical definition of the divine na¬

ture is Love. This stands in a completely dialectical relation to holi-
6 See below, Chapter 22.
7 Isa. 42:8.
8 The statements of the Fathers concerning the incomprehensibility of God
should be carefully examined in order to see into which category they fall: (a)
the speculative category, with emphasis upon the “ simplicity ” of the divine
Being —hence colored by Neoplatonism; (b) the Biblical category, which
stresses His absolute Sovereignty. Scholasticism inclines chiefly to (a).
46 Revelation and Reason

ness, without any analogy. Love, the absolute will to self-surrender,

is first of all in contradiction to holiness, to the will of absolute self-
affirmation. The agape of God, His will to give Himself wholly and
entirely to His creature, to the final limit of the death on the Cross
— this absolute self-emptying of the Lord God — is the central mys¬
tery of the Biblical revelation. “ God so loved the world that He gave
His only Son.” “ He who spared not His own Son, will He not also
with Him give us all things? ” No philosophy has such a conception
of love, nor does it appear in any religious teaching outside the Bible.
This self-surrender and self-communication is direct revelation.
Above all it is due to the will of God, which is love, that God
comes forth from His mystery, from His Being, as He is in Himself,
and shows Himself to man, entering into communion with him. He
wills to be wholly ours. Hence He “ lays hold of us, in order that He
may give Himself to us.” Thus this Love is both the origin and the
content of the revelation. He wills to reveal Himself because He
loves; and He wills to reveal that He loves. He wills to give His own
life to the creature. This is, primarily, the pure antithesis to pure self-
assertion.
But at the same time it is its fulfillment. Only because God gives
Himself so unconditionally can the creature love Him uncondition¬
ally; only because He thus places the creature in communion with
Himself can His will in the creature be fully realized. Thus there is
not only antithesis between the holiness and the love of God; there
is also identity.9 This is the primal paradox of the Biblical idea of
God and of the Biblical revelation. It is only in connection with
this God, and His revelation, that there is this paradoxical unity of
contradictory antithesis and identity. The Lord God is the One who
loves; His sovereign will is His will for communion; His will to be
the Wholly Other is at the same time His will to give Himself wholly
unto His creature; the sense of absolute distance, reverence, merges
into the sense of the completest communion, into a relation of heart¬
felt trust and love. Hence God can never be found along any way of
thought; for indeed this idea of God bursts through and destroys all
9 This unity of divine holiness and love is the content of the theologia crucis.
The holiness of God which confronts the sinner is the wrath of God; the love of
God is His reconciling, free, generous mercy. No one has laid more stress on this
dialectic of God’s holiness and love, wrath and mercy, than Luther, and no
modern Luther scholar has seen this so clearly as Theodosius Harnack, Luthers
Theologie, Bd. I.
 The God of Revelation 47

the fundamental categories of thought: the absolutely antithetical

character of the basic logical principles of contradiction and identity.
To want to think this God for oneself would mean insanity.

6. The God of the Bible, as the Holy and the Loving One, is the
God who seeks man. The Biblical revelation does not permit us to
speculate about God as He is in Himself; indeed, it forbids us to
think of God apart from the thought of His Rule or Kingdom. The
gods of philosophy and mythology are divinities which can be
thought of in abstraction, as they are “ in themselves ”; they may or
they may not be thought of in relation to man. But the God of the
Bible is always, and from the very outset, the God who rules, who
wills to reveal Himself, to impart Himself, and to rule over men’s
hearts and wills. From all eternity God is the One whose aim is the
God-man. This “ God-man ” is the eternal revelation and loving pur¬
pose of God, which lies at the basis of the Creation of the world as
well as of its redemption.10 God does not only reveal Himself; He is
the God of revelation, whose very nature it is to will to reveal
Himself.
This is indeed the deepest content of the doctrine of the Trinity,
the identity of the God who is to be revealed, who reveals, and who is
being revealed: Father, Son, and Spirit. God in His revelation is none
other than the mysterious God who is from everlasting to everlasting.
The God who is “ for us ” is none other than the God who is what He
is “ in Himself,” although this mysterious Being of God, the funda¬
mental mystery, includes revelation, but not vice versa. Pater fons
totius trinitatis. Even in His revelation God does not cease to be
clothed in mystery; His revelation never exhausts the mysterious full¬
ness of His nature. The love of God which is revealed to us in His
incarnate Son is the nature of God, but this very love is unfathom¬
able. In His very being God is the One who loves. He loves before
the world exists. He loves His Son from all eternity. In Him He loves
the creature before He creates him. He creates him because He loves
him and He reveals His love to him, which He has from all eternity, as
He Himself from all eternity is Love.
10 The idea that the plan of the Incarnation was already in the divine purpose
at the creation of man is suggested, though with equal reserve, by both Irenaeus
(V, 1,3) and Luther (W.A., 42, 66), “ quia est conditus ad imaginem invisibilis
Dei, occulte per hoc significatur. . . . Deum se revelaturum mundo in homine
Christo.”
48 Revelation and Reason

5. MAN AND REVELATION_

1. If revelation is really encounter, then we cannot understand it

without knowing something of him to whom it is made. If revelation
is God’s self-communication to man, then it is of decisive importance
to know the man to whom God communicates Himself. Were man
only an object to whom God “ does ” something, a receptacle into
which He pours something, then it would be possible to speak of His
revelation without knowing the man who is exposed to this divine
action. Since, however, this revelation is a personal encounter, it is
necessary to learn to know both the person whom God meets in His
revelation and the way in which this person experiences this divine
encounter. This confronts us with the problem of reason and revela¬
tion. To anticipate only one of the particularly important aspects of
revelation: The fact that God reveals Himself through His Word pre¬
supposes that man is a being who has been created for this kind of
communication, for communication through speech.
This obvious point must be stressed, because a false interpretation
of the sola gratia, and the fear of Pelagian doctrine or of “ synergism,”
has led some theologians to confuse the absolute receptivity of man
in the revelation with an objective passivity from which all human
activity, as such, could be entirely eliminated. After all that has been
already said in the earlier chapters of this book, it is evident that in
this encounter there can be no question of ignoring man, as the hu¬
man partner in the process of revelation. Rather, the question, What,
then, is man, to whom this revelation is made? merits particular at¬
tention, as anyone who has worked in the mission field knows very
well. But those who work in nominal Christian surroundings, where
everyone has been at least baptized, may veiy well fail to see things
as they really are, because they rarely see the “ natural ” man, the
man who has never been touched by the divine revelation at all.
Further, we have no right to dismiss the question of the recipient
of the divine revelation with a wave of the hand, as a matter of no
importance and wholly outside the sphere of theological interest. For
it may well be that the forms of revelation which are given to us in
the Bible are actually determined by the one who receives the reve¬
lation, and thus that only as we study him (the recipient) can we un¬
derstand them. If it be true that, according to the words of Irenaeus,
 Man and Revelation 49
° God laid hold of us in order that He might impart Himself to us,”
then it is not asking too much of theologians to give as much recog¬
nition as possible to the “ us,” whom God did not despise. This does
not mean that we are thrown back upon our own wisdom. The Holy
Scriptures are not reticent about the state of the “ natural man,” that
is, man as he is outside the sphere of divine revelation, and before
the saving revelation had been made. In studying this question we
are not leaving the sphere of Christian and Biblical theology, in or¬
der to devote ourselves to “natural theology,” that is, to speculate
with the unaided human reason. Rather, the point is that we need to
learn to see the state of the “ natural man ” from the point of view
of the divine revelation. Is it not, indeed, the Bible that teaches us,
and shows us, that there is a sharp distinction between humanity in
its “ natural ” state and the justified sinner, the man who has been
born again? 1 Here we have to set loyalty to the Scriptures before
loyalty to any kind of theological or ecclesiastical tradition, since it
is at this very point that the best tradition — that is, that of the Refor¬
mation — to some extent leaves us in the lurch.2

2. The first thing that needs to be said from the point of view of
the Bible — in a period in which individual psychology and the rela¬
tive view of history play so large a part — is this: that in the Bible ab¬
solutely, and in all decisive matters, it is “ man ” who counts. Units
pro omnibus, the Bible is concerned with Adam, that is, with “ man ”
as a whole. It is true, of course, that every human being is different
from every other, both inwardly and outwardly, on the horizontal
plane of contemporary history and also on the vertical plane of his¬
torical epochs. This individuality of the single individual, of peoples

1 Cf., for this whole chapter, my book, Der Mensch im Widerspruch [Eng¬
lish trans., Man in Revolt, O. Wyon. Tr.] See further, W. Bachmann, Gottes
Ebenbild. There is no room here to enter into a discussion with Bachmann about
his understanding and significant criticism of some of my ideas. I would only say
in answer to the chief objection, that “ in the end ” I “ ignore the communion
with the Creator which has already been given to the sinner, and that ” I “ only
understand him as a sinner and not equally as one who has been created by
God ” (p. 112). But how can man be seen as sinner if he is not created by God!
Communion with the Creator has been forfeited by sin. It has become life “ un¬
der the wrath of God.”
2 On this, cf. what Schlatter said forty years ago in criticism of this one-sided¬
ness of the Reformation in his work “ Der Dienst des Christen in der alteren
Dogmatik,” pp. 22-34, “ Die passive Bekehrung.”
50 Revelation and Reason

and races, has its own significance in its rightful place, but it has no
meaning whatever when we come to the question of revelation.
There is only one difference here: the difference between those who
are, and who remain, “ outside,” and those who are “ in Christ.

3. The decisive statement of the Bible about the “ natural man,

that is, the man who has not yet been touched by the Word of God,
and been born again, is this: He is a sinner, he stands under the wrath
of God. That humanity of ours which Christ assumed in order that
He might give us of Himself is the <rap£ apaprias, the likeness of sin¬
ful flesh.3 Man does not, however, of himself, know that he is a sin¬
ner: “ natural ” self-knowledge is of the same character as “ natural ”
knowledge of God; it means “ knowing about something,” which is
not real knowledge. There is, it is true, a certain unrest in his heart,
which, in addition to a bad conscience, might show such a man that
he is in a perverted relation to God. But it is precisely this perversion
which makes it impossible for him to arrive at this true knowledge.
It is true, of course, that every human being, without any Christian
instruction, is to some extent aware of evil; and all the higher reli¬
gions have some conception of “ sin ”; but the true nature of sin has
to be revealed to man just as much as the true nature of God Himself,
and, indeed, both these take place together. Man gains a true under¬
standing of sin only from the revelation of God; he only then becomes
aware of the fact: quanti ponderis sit peccatum. Faith in the God who
reveals Himself and knowledge of sin are inseparably connected.
But when we have seen this the statement that man is a sinner
“ before ” and “ outside ” the gracious revelation is not nullified. We
must make a distinction between the object and the act of percep¬
tion. It is not true to say, as has been urged with some exaggeration,
that man only becomes a sinner through Christ; rather it is through
Christ that he comes to perceive that he always was a sinner, that the
revelation of God assumes its special form precisely because of this,
his sinful state. It is not the Word of revelation which makes us sin¬
ners, but it is the revelation which shows us our sinful state in order
to redeem us from sin. For as the meaning, the intentio, of sin is “ en¬
mity toward God,”4 so, on the other hand, the meaning of revelation
is “ enmity ” toward sin. God’s revelation means, to be sure, His sov¬
ereignty and communion with Him. But sin is rebellion against God
8 Rom. 8:3. * Rom. 8:7.
 Man and Revelation 51
and separation from Him. Sin, fundamentally, is the revolt of the
creature against the Creator, the attempt of the creature to escape
from dependence on God, in order not to be under God, and related
to God, but to be without God, that is, not only to be conditionally,
but unconditionally, free.5 Not worldly pleasure, but the striving for
unconditional freedom; the striving to be autonomous; the will of the
tenant to be the lord,6 is the root of sin. It is only because man is freed
from the Creator that he falls into a false relation with his fellow
creatures, into love of the world and love of self, the false love of
pleasure and the destruction of community by the setting up of the
self as an idol.

4. When we say that the natural man is a sinner we also say at the
same time that he is “ before God,” that is, that he stands in a relation
to God, even though it be a negative one. It is characteristic of the
Biblical anthropology that it always regards even the “ natural man,
even the pagan and the atheist, as one who is in the sight of God.7
This view of man has no room for any understanding of man which
excludes him from a relation to God — nor can it conceive any neu¬
tral ” view of man’s nature. Man is always before God, negatively
or positively; he always has a certain relation to God. So far as God
is concerned the relation to God implied by sin is the wrath of God;
so far as man is concerned, it is the state of “ being lost, and lack of
peace. Indeed, sin itself is a relation to God: that of rebellion against
the Creator, unbelief, ingratitude, apostasy. In the Bible sin is never
merely static; it is always, and pre-eminently, understood in a dy¬
namic sense. It is first of all an act in which man turns away from
God; only in the second place is it a state of “ distance,” or of having
“ turned away.” The personalism of the Biblical message comes out
in the fact that it describes man, in sin as in faith, not primarily in
the category of being, but of act. The sinful act does not spring from
the sinful “ nature,” but the sinful nature is to be understood in the
light of the sinful act. Sin is essentially “ falling away,” an act of dis¬
obedience; it is, as a result of this, a captivity in this disobedience, a

5 Gen. 3:5.
« Matt. 21:33 ff. . , ,
7 Cf. Gutbrod, Die paulinische Anthropologie, p. 22. Precisely because man
is always ‘ before ’ God, does the question of ‘ just-unjust ’ arise at all; if man is
unjust, he is so ‘ before ’ God.
52 Revelation and Reason

sinful state. “ He who commits sin is the servant of sin. 8 Sin is pri¬
marily a personal attitude; only in a secondary sense is it a natuial
definition. For sin is always understood as the negative determina¬
tion of responsible being. Even the impotence which is one feature
of the sinful state is conceived as a guilty impotence, and at the same
time as a lack of will.

5. If, however, sin is a turning away from God, a fall, a negative

relation to God, a state of being “ before God ’ in this negative sense,
sin also presupposes an original positive relation to God, namely, that
which is denied and rejected when man turns away from God. Even
as sinner man is related to a revelation, and sin consists in the fact
that it is the denial of this original revelation. Indeed, we cannot
speak of sin at all save in the light of this relation to an original reve¬
lation. Thus to understand man as sinner means to understand him
in the light of that original revelation. To deny such an original reve¬
lation, which precedes the fact of sin, would necessarily imply either
the denial of sin or a complete transformation of the idea of sin.
Thus even in the Holy Scriptures the natural man is never under¬
stood save as one who comes from an original revelation, which was
instituted by the Creator, but has been perverted by man into a self-
imposed world view or mythology. The status corruptus is only to be
understood as the human perversion of an original status integritatis,
and in the Bible it is never otherwise understood. This, indeed, is the
decisive element in the Biblical understanding of man and of sin: sin
is not primary, but secondary; it is the negation of an original positive
element. Only thus do we avoid a naturalistic, or Manichaean and
pessimistic conception of evil.
Since sin is never regarded merely as a state, but always also pri¬
marily in an active sense, so also that original revelation is never re¬
garded as something past, but always as something which is present,
but is denied. Sin was not, at a certain time in the past, apostasy; it is
always apostasy; therefore the original primal revelation, that from
which man is always falling away, is something present, even though
it is a “ present ” which is denied. That is why the sinner stands “ be¬
fore ” God; that is why he is guilty, and “ without excuse.” This is so
because he could, and might, know God, and indeed still more, be¬
cause he really does know something of God, but he continually de-
8 John 8:34.
 Man and Revelation 53

nies this knowledge. This constitutes the essence of sin. It is peculiar

to the Biblical doctrine that it never conceives sin as “ something
negative,” as non-Christian philosophers do, but it regards sin as a
negation, an act of rejecting what God has said, as disobedience to a
present divine command, as rebellion against the Creator-God, who
reveals Himself. Those who speak of sin and deny the reality of an
original revelation do not know what they are doing.

6. Thus even as a sinner, as the “ natural man,” man is never with¬

out revelation; rather he always comes from, and can only be under¬
stood in the light of, this revelation which precedes the fact of his
being a sinner. It is not that the revelation explains sin — that would
be nonsense — but sin can be understood only as an active and actual
negation of this revelation. Thus the being of man, even where his
natural existence is concerned, is always to be understood in the light
of God, and of His divine revelation. This comes out most clearly in
the twofold sense in which the truth that man has been made in the
image of God is expressed in the Bible. That man has been made in
God’s image expresses both the essential and the original element in
man’s being. Thus this parabolic language describes man as that be¬
ing who can be understood only in the light of his relation to God. It
is in the nature of the case that the Bible uses this conception in two
senses. On the one hand, by the “ nature of man ” we may mean that
which always distinguishes man from the rest of creation, whether he
be a sinner or a believer. That is the sense in which the Old Testa¬
ment uses the phrase, but the New Testament rarely uses the word
in this sense. In this sense sin is not, for instance, the removal of the
imago Dei, but, on the contrary, apart from it sin cannot be under¬
stood at all. For only men and women can sin, not animals or plants;
and indeed this power to sin comes from that which makes them, as
human beings, always and forever distinctive. This characteristic
element, which can never be lost, is described, in the language of the
Old Testament, as the fact that man has been “ created in the image
of God.”
As a rule, the point of view of the New Testament is different. It
is not concerned with this “ neutral ” or “ formal ” conception of
man’s “ nature ” — a concept which ignores the difference between
sin and grace, between a wrong and a right relation to God — but it
is concerned with man’s actual relation with God, and it asks, Is this
54 Revelation and Reason

relation negative and sinful? or positive and believing? Hence in the

decisive passages where this subject is mentioned, the New Testa¬
ment deals with the “ image of God ” as something which can be re¬
stored only through the revelation of grace in Jesus Christ. While ac¬
cording to the language of the Old Testament the fact that man has
been made in the image of God consists in the fact that he is sub¬
ject, according to the usage of the New Testament this consists in
the fact that man allows himself to be determined by the Word of
God, and thus loves Him who has loved him first. The Bible gives us
no direct information upon the relation between these two concep¬
tions, which are so very different from each other, although the same
word is used for both. Here, however, we cannot go into this ques¬
tion in greater detail.8 Here it must suffice to say that in both respects,
both in that which distinguishes him always and permanently from
the rest of the created universe and in that which concerns his central
life-decision, man is understood in the light of his relation to God. Not
only his being as sinner, but also his being as man — not only his per¬
version, but also his humanity itself, the humanum, which manifests
itself in, and in spite of, the perversion — is understood in the light of
his relation with God, and thus in the light of the revelation which
precedes the perversion. To speak of man is to speak of God. Not that
man is “ divine but man is man because he always stands in relation
to God, either negatively or positively, and this relation to God, in the
negative or the positive sense, is the key to the understanding of man
and the kernel of his being. Revelation is not something that is added
to man’s being; it is there even when it is denied, rejected, and
ignored.

7. Man is always, even as sinner, and particularly as sinner, dif¬

ferent from the rest of creation. This is so because, through the origi¬
nal revelation, he is a responsible being.10 Responsibility is the core
9 The search for the unity of these two Biblical conceptions of the imago is a
leading idea in my book Der Mensch im Widerspruch. For the particular prob¬
lem which is here presented, cf. the sympathetic estimate and criticism of my
statements by A. Hoffmann, O.P., in Zur Lehre von der Gottesebenbildlichkeit
des Menschen in der neueren protestantischen Theologie und bei Thomas von
Aquin, in Divns Thomas, pp. 3-35. Further, the dissertation of Hermann Volk,
E. B.’s Lehre von der urspriinglichen Gottesebenbildlichkeit des Menschen,
Munster, 1939.
10 Within Christian theology there is agreement on this point: That even as
sinner man is a humanus, a person, a responsible being. Opinions diverge on the
 Man and Revelation 55

of human existence, of personality. But even for the “ natural ” man,

the pagan, the unbeliever, the atheist, responsibility is always toward
God. The authority that makes men responsible is always God; this
alone, this sacred bond, is the source of our responsibility to our fel¬
low creatures and to ourselves. The explanation of responsibility from
the fact of human nature or of human fellowship confuses the basis
of responsibility with its object. Responsibility is always holy, both
that which is directed toward ourselves and that which we feel for
our fellow men. A “ holy ’ life is one that is rooted in God, ordered
by God, directed toward God. When we speak of responsibility we
speak of God; apart from God, responsibility is an empty phrase.
The fact that so many human beings acknowledge responsibility
but do not acknowledge God merely confirms the fact that they are
derived from the revelation, but that they deny it. The denial of the
divine authority as the basis of responsibility is one of the effects or
expressions of sin. The explanation of responsibility from human na¬
ture or from human society is the sinful misunderstanding of man
about himself; it is a form of unbelief.

8. If man wishes to understand himself aright, he must start with

responsibility, not with the rational nature of man: he must under¬
stand man as person. The individualistic definition of human nature
which has dominated all philosophical thought from the time of Aris¬
totle, and also, to a large extent, the Christian thinking of the West,
namely, the definition of man as an animal rationale, should not in¬
deed be described as false, but it is certainly inadequate.* 11 Even at

question whether this “ humanity ” has anything to do with the fact that man
has been made in the image of God. This question should be answered in the
affirmative, because human existence includes responsibility, and thus presup¬
poses that man is “ before ” God.
11 Against this reproach which is leveled at the Catholic anthropology, Hoff¬
mann (ibid., p. 25) replies with the remark that the rational nature of man is
thus defined by Saint Thomas: “ Deum imitari potest.” It is “ capax Dei, scilicet
ipsum attingendo propria operatione cognitionis et amoris” (Saint Thomas,
Summa Theol., I, 93, 4 and III, 4, 1). These words only support my contention,
that in the Thomist theology the imago is merely regarded as based on man’s
similarity to God, in his capacities, and that he is capable of reaching God, but
not that this rational nature is based upon a relation which, from the very outset,
begins with God, and is directed toward man, thus placing man “ before God.”
Reason is never neutral; it is always related to God. In all that reason does it is
making a response, — whether in sin or in faith. Even in the act of sinning man
derives from the Word of God, namely, from a preceding, but denied, “ Word.”
56 Revelation and Reason

the present day Christian theology has not overcome the individu¬
alistic idea of reason derived from Aristotle, although in the idea of
the imago Dei it possesses the means of overcoming it. From the
Christian point of view reason is not a “ thing in itself, but a relation.
Reason comes from perception. The core of reason is, in philosophical
terms, transcendental; in Biblical terms, the relation with God. The
Christian understanding of reason is the perception of the Word of
God. Because originally and essentially man’s life, and the ground of
his unique being as man, is based upon his original relation with
God, and because he is always derived from this original revelation,
therefore, and only because this is so, in all his acts of reason, that
“ transcending,” that “ relation with the Absolute,” is characteristic.
Every multiplication table already implies man’s relation with God,
for we cannot count at all without the implicit presupposition of in¬
finite number. We cannot say, “ That is true,” without appealing to
absolute Truth. This unconditioned infinite and absolute element
which forms part of every act of the reason is not, it is true, God as He
is known to faith; but it is God as He is known to reason. The reason
is not God; but what it is and does can be understood only in the
light of the original divine revelation. Man’s reason therefore is also
the cause of his eternal unrest, due to the fact that it is derived from
God and has been made for God. It is precisely the activity of the
reason which is the unmistakable sign that man comes from God, and
from a divine revelation, even when the activity of the reason takes
the form of denying God. Even as one who denies God, the rational
man is a proof of the existence of God; he could not deny God had
he not an original knowledge of Him. With each act of the reason,
however, man proves the origin of his human existence in the origi¬
nal revealed Word of God. It is not the reason but the arrogance of
reason, that “misunderstanding of reason with itself” (Hamann),
which denies the relation of man with God, which stands in opposi¬
tion to God; it is not the fact that we are endowed with reason, but
the use to which we put it, which sets us in hostility to God. Hence
even in the act of faith the reason is not ignored or set aside, but it is
claimed for God, or, as Saint Paul puts it, “ brought . . . into cap¬
tivity to the obedience of Christ.”12
Man, simply as man, is the being which is related to God, a “ the-
onomous ” being. Hence the understanding of human nature, the
12 II Cor. 10:5.
 Man and Revelation 57
humanum, as something “ in itself ” apart from its relation to God, is
the Tpcorov \{/ev8os of anthropology. It stands in the sharpest opposi¬
tion to the Biblical understanding of man, which knows no other
view of man save that which sees him “ before ” God, responsible to
God.
 Section II
THE FACT OF REVELATION
A. Revelation as Origin
6. THE REVELATION IN THE CREATION
Up to this point we have tried to define the content of the idea of
revelation, as it is given to us through the revelation itself in faith,
together with its theological and anthropological presuppositions. In
so doing it has been evident that we cannot start from any general
idea of revelation, but that from the very outset we are obliged to
concentrate all our attention on the event of the revelation, as the
sole source of our understanding. So far, however, this event itself,
that is, in its great variety, has not been the subject of our reflections.
This, precisely, is the subject of our second section. We now have to
deal with the revelation as origin, with revelation in history, with
revelation as the witness to the historical revelation, and with revela¬
tion as the goal of history as a whole. The Bible defines all this ex¬
plicitly as God’s revelation. We have therefore to bear in mind both
the variety of ways in which the revelation is given, and the unity of
its content. Does not the Bible itself say that God “ of old time ” spoke
“ unto the fathers by divers portions and in divers manners ”? 1 These
“ divers manners ” must not be denied in the interests of unity; nor
should they be depreciated and regarded as mere “ signs ” of the rev¬
elation.13 It has pleased God to reveal Himself in a different way in
each of the following forms: in His work in the Creation; in the
Prophets and Seers; in the One in whom all is fulfilled; again. His
revelation in the earlier stages differs from that in which He has
promised to reveal Himself at the end of all things. But when we
admit this we do not question either the unity of the Revealer or the
1 Heb. 1:1.
la As Karl Barth does in Revelation, ed. Baillie and Martin, pp. 62 S.
58
 The Revelation in the Creation 59
unity of that which has been revealed. It is only in the characteristic
variety of the divine methods of revelation that the genuine charac¬
teristically Biblical unity of that which has been revealed, and the
true nature of the Revealer Himself, can be understood. For the Bib¬
lical revelation it is essential to begin with the central revelation and
from that standpoint to look back to the primal revelation and for¬
ward to the revelation of the last days. If this variety of revelation
is either ignored or explained away in the interest of a theological
monism, the main point has been missed. None of these different
forms of revelation resembles the others; none can be mistaken for
another; none makes the rest superfluous; each has its own place, and
its own special significance; and only in their combination in the
knowledge of faith which both looks back to the beginning and for¬
ward to the end can we understand what the Bible means by revela¬
tion and faith.

1. We therefore teach a general revelation, or a revelation in the

Creation, because the Holy Scriptures teach it unmistakably, and we
intend to teach it in accordance with Scripture. In so doing we re¬
main within the general ecclesiastical and theological tradition. The
witness of the Fathers of the Early Church, both to the fact itself and
to what it contained, and to the great significance of this revelation,
are very numerous, and — apart from minor differences — uniform in
character.2 All the Reformers also, and each of them in a hundred
ways, and all in agreement with one another, both among themselves
2 On the Fathers of the Church, cf. J. Stahl, Die natiirliche Gotteserkenntnis
aus der Lehre der Vtiter. (It is characteristic of Catholic doctrine to treat the
“ natural knowledge of God ” and “ revelation in the Creation ” as one.) On
Calvin, G. Gloede, Theologia naturalis bei Calvin. Here too the title is mislead¬
ing, for, in point of fact, Gloede is essentially concerned with the question of
revelation, not with the subjective appropriation of the same. A very clear dis¬
tinction between the two is made by Schlier, Evg. Theol., 1935, pp. 9 if. For
rigidly Reformed and Fundamentalist theology before Barth, possibly the most
useful book is Bohl’s Dogmatik, as pp. 8-16, on “ Die natiirliche Gotteserkennt-
nis.” From the Catholic point of view the subject has been comprehensively dis¬
cussed by J. Fehr, in particular in his book Das Offenbarungsproblem in dia-
lektischer und thomistischer Theologie. His observations upon my own attitude
are based in part upon misunderstandings, which, as I hope, will be removed
by the present work. The ideas expressed here are closely connected with those
of Soehngen, who, as a pupil of Bonaventura, defined the sphere of the natural
knowledge of God far more narrowly than Thomism, and still more narrowly
than the Vatican. Barth, meanwhile, has silently withdrawn his criticism of my
presentation of the Catholic doctrine (cf. Kirchliche Dogm., II, 1, pp. 89 ff.).
60 Revelation and Reason

and with the early Fathers of the Church, have expressed themselves
in the same terms. Calvin, for instance, considered it necessaiy, in
the Geneva Catechism of 1545 — that is, where his concern was only
to summarize the most fundamental elements in the Christian faith
— to develop carefully the doctrine of the revelation in the Creation.
Within the explanation of the article on the Creator the question
runs, “ Wherefore dost thou add, Creator of heaven and eaith? An¬
swer: “ Because He hath made Himself known through [His] works:
in them also we are to seek Him. For our mind cannot grasp His na¬
ture. Hence the world itself is a kind of mirror (speculum quoddam)
in which we can behold Him, so far as we are able to know Him.
Luther takes the same line. His first detailed reference to this sub¬
ject occurs in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans of
1515;3 he frequently returned to this point in his commentaries and
sermons, but always from different angles. The revelation of God in
the Creation — and in the Law — does not guarantee that man, for
his part, will make right use of this knowledge. As a rule, indeed, man
usually does the opposite, owing to his sinful blindness, and the per¬
version of his will. It is therefore evident that the revelation in Crea¬
tion, and natural theology, are two different questions. So far as the
latter is concerned, in the teaching of Luther and Calvin it is reduced
to a doctrine of paganism, that is, a doctrine of the permanent per¬
version of the truth given to man in the revelation in Creation. But
both Luther and Calvin regard this idolatry as a proof of the fact of
the revelation in the Creation. “ Idolatris praecipue manifesto (fuit)
notitia Dei.” It is the veiy fact of idolatry which shows that the
heathen received a knowledge of God. “ Nam quo pacto possent si¬
mulacrum vel aliam creaturam Deum appellare vel similem credere, si
nihil quid esset Deus et quid ad eum pertineret facere nossent? ”3a
The Reformers’ theologia naturalis consists in the view that apart
from Christ man inevitably conceives the pagan idea of God; this
view, again, is based upon the Scriptural doctrine of the revelation
in the Creation.

2. The fact that the Holy Scriptures teach the revelation of God in
His works of creation needs no proof. The theme of the so-called “ na¬
ture psalms ” is summed up particularly clearly in Ps. 19: “ The heav*
3 Luther, Vorlesung iiber den Romerbrief, ed. Ficker, II, pp. 18 ff.
Sa Ibid.
 The Revelation in the Creation 61
ens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handy-
work. . . . Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their
words to the end of the world.” The Apostle who declared that he
was determined “ not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ,
and Him crucified,” speaks of this earlier revelation in far greater
detail, and in more intellectual terms. The main passages in which he
speaks of this truth are Rom. 1:18 ff. and Rom. 2:14ff. Other pas¬
sages support this view: Rom. 1:28-32; John 1:4-9; Acts 14:17; 17:
26, 27. At all periods of Church history theologians have used these
passages as source material, as norms, and as proofs of the doctrine
of general revelation, or of revelation in the Creation; the Reformers
are no exception to this rule.
How, then, has it been possible, in face of the clear teaching of
Scripture, and the consensus of opinion in the Church among theo¬
logians all down the ages, that recently this doctrine has been so
violently opposed in the name of the Bible and of the Reformers? Pri¬
marily it was the influence of the Kantian philosophy and of Ritsch-
lian Positivism which brought this doctrine into disrepute. Above
all, however, it was the fear of “ natural theology,” that is, of the
knowledge of God based on purely rational grounds, independent of
the Christian revelation of salvation and therefore in competition
with it, which brought the theme of the revelation in the Creation
under the same suspicion as that of the subject theologia naturalis.
We agree at the outset with the enemies of “ natural theology ” of
this kind when they maintain that there is no connection between
natural theology and the Biblical knowledge of God; this we say
without reserve. Further, we agree with them that the recognition
of a “ side line,” alongside of the sola gratia and the tenet that “ in
Christ alone is there salvation,” the opening of another entrance to
the true saving knowledge of God, cannot be combined with the pas¬
sionate, life-and-death seriousness of emphasis on the sola fide, sola
gratia, solus Christus. In short, Biblical and natural theology will
never agree; they are bitterly and fundamentally opposed.
It is, however, difficult to understand why certain theologians do
not allow that the Reformers were well aware of this truth;4 further,

4 In his “ Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner,” p. 38, Barth himself confirms the
fact that in this question he goes beyond the Reformers; he justifies this pro¬
cedure by saying that they did not sufficiently clearly recognize “ the possibility
of an intellectual ‘ righteousness of works.’ ”
62 Revelation and Reason

how is it that these theologians do not perceive that in the teaching

of the Reformers, and in the clear teaching of the Bible, the revela¬
tion in the Creation is an integral part of Christian doctrine, and that
the question of revelation in Creation and that of natural theology
are two different questions? In the teaching of the Bible and of the
Reformers the revelation through the Creation is certainly not a
“ side line it is not something that has to be placed alongside of the
revelation of God in Christ, but its relation is quite different; that is,
it is dialectical in character. The general revelation does not com¬
pete with the particular, historical revelation, but is its presupposi¬
tion; just as the revelation in the Old Testament does not compete
with that in the New Testament, but is its presupposition. And as the
Old Testament revelation in relation to the New has not only its par¬
ticular necessity, but also its particular limitation, so also the general
revelation over against the particular and historical one has its own
necessity and its own limitation. The revelation in the Creation is
different from that of the Old Testament, and both differ from the
revelation in the New Testament. But each has its necessary place,
and its own significance in the Biblical witness to revelation as a
whole.
Finally, the object and the ground of this knowledge, the materia
and the principium cognitionis, must not be confused. We speak of
the revelation in the Creation on the basis of the Biblical witness to
it; it is part of its dialectic that only the Christian faith is in a position
to see it, and to present it aright. As those whose eyes have been
opened by Jesus Christ, on the basis of the Biblical testimony we are
able to speak of the general revelation in the Creation given to all.
Therefore in it we recognize, in spite of the limitations which the
form of this revelation involves, the same Triune God, the same Son
of God as the Revealer, who speaks to us, both in the Old Testament
and, in quite a different manner, in the New Testament. It is the form
of the revelation which varies, not the Revealer.5 All this might have

5 He who believes that every revelation of God must say the same thing is
preventing himself from understanding the Bible. It is the Triune God, it is
true, who reveals Himself in His works in the Creation and in the Law; but He
does not yet reveal Himself there as the Triune God. All Church theologians,
from the earliest days down to the present time, are agreed on this point. “ For
there are two different ways of working of the Son of God; the one, which be¬
comes visible in the architecture of the world and in the natural order; the other,
by means of which ruined nature is renewed and restored ” (Calvin, Works, 47,
 The Revelation in the Creation 63
been perceived from the main testimony of the Apostle, were it not
for the fact that this has been regarded as an embarrassment, as a
kind of “foreign body” which has somehow or other slipped into
his teaching, whereas it is actually an integral part of the Apostolic
message as a whole.

3. First of all we must observe the point at which Paul states this
doctrine: it is at the beginning of his presentation of the nature of
man, as he observes it from the standpoint of an apostle to the
heathen; thus it occurs within the framework of his view of the “ nat¬
ural man,” to whom the message of salvation is addressed. The doc¬
trinal section of the Epistle to the Romans (ch. 1:18 ff.) begins with
the statement: Man stands under the wrath of God, in the state of
guilt. The accusation with which he is charged is this: that he “ holds
down the truth in unrighteousness.” But we cannot “hold down”
something that does not exist. Thus we cannot say that for the natural
man truth does not exist — for if this were so, how could he suppress
it? — but that he “ holds down in unrighteousness ” the truth that is
there, and it is this which makes him guilty. The Apostle then pro¬
ceeds to show the basis upon which this accusation is made; that is,
he tries to show how truth confronts the “ natural man,” how he tries
to suppress it. “ That which may be known of God is manifest in them;
for God manifested it unto them.” That is, there is a divine revela¬
tion; God has revealed this to all men. There is a truth that is uni¬
versal, a truth that confronts every human being who is willing to
receive it, but man — and this is his sin — “ holds it down in unright¬
eousness.” It has been given by God Himself; God is both the subject
and the content of this universal revelation.
He then works this out in further detail: “ For the invisible things
of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being per¬
ceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power
and divinity.” Thus here the universal revelation is described in a
twofold sense as revelation in the Creation: first, in so far as it has
been there since the creation of the world; secondly, in so far as it
takes place through the works of creation. It is, however, at the same
time a revelation given to man as a rational being, because that which
God shows in His works of creation can be perceived in a rational act,

7). Christ, “in the form of a servant,” is indeed the same as Christ in glory, but
His way of revealing Himself is different.
64 Revelation and Reason

in an act of vo-qais. Then, he says further, although “ knowing God,

they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks, but . . . Here,
then, he is not speaking of a possibility of knowing God which once
existed but has now been lost; nor even only of a present possibility
of knowing God; he is speaking of a factual knowledge, indeed of a
knowledge which, as a consequence of human sin, is immediately
transformed into illusion, thus of a “ knowledge which does not
work itself out as knowledge, but which through the ferment of sin
is transformed into the illusion of idolatry.
The point of this whole passage, and the reason why Paul begins
with this, is the proof that man is guilty, that men are responsible
for their state, “ that they may be without excuse.’ He now says ex¬
actly what he means by the statement that men “ hold down the truth
in unrighteousness the men to whom the message of Jesus Christ is
proclaimed are not merely ignorant, but they are guilty in their igno¬
rance; their lack of knowledge is due to the fact that they do not want
to know. Here we have from the Apostle Paul the explicit confirma¬
tion of the fact that the Christian conception of sin presupposes that
of revelation, not only in the sense that it is only the revelation of
salvation which makes sin evident, but also in the sense that without
a general revelation, the historical revelation in Jesus, and indeed
even the prophetic revelation which preceded it, men could not be
sinners at all. They are all sinners, simply and solely because they
“ hold down in unrighteousness ” the revelation in the Creation
which has been presented to them as the truth of God. Every human
being is a sinner, because everyone could know God, and indeed
even knows Him, but as a result of his defiance of God he “ holds
down this truth ”; he does not allow it to penetrate his consciousness,
but transforms it into an illusion or a lie.
Other passages, similar to Rom. 1:18 —such as Rom. 1:28-32;
John 1:4, 9; Acts 14:17; 17:27 ff. — also teach the doctrine of general
revelation. Christ comes “ to His own,” because He is the Light
“ which lighteth every man coming into the world ”; the heathen
are to repent, because God “ did not leave them without a witness
they ought to accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because they have
been created “ that they should seek God, if haply they might feel
after Plim, and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. ” 5a
Thus the doctrine of general revelation is the basis of the assertion
ba Acts 17:27.
 The Revelation in the Creation 65
of the responsibility of man before God; it is at the same time the
point of contact for the evangelistic call to repentance.

4. Thus we see clearly that while the Bible teaches a general rev¬
elation, or a revelation in the Creation, it does not teach “natural
theology.’ It does not teach that the revelation in the Creation, which
is given to all, implies an actual, experimental knowledge of God,
and thus that man, in spite of and in his sin, may know God. Rather,
it is an integral part of the sin of man that the knowledge of God
which begins to dawn upon him through revelation is suppressed by
him, so that the revelation which God gives him for knowledge of
Himself becomes the source of the vanity of idolatry. The sinful hu¬
man being is a vessel in which the lees of sin transform the wine of
the knowledge given by God into the vinegar of idolatry. God gives
the revelation in order that man may know Him, but man turns this
into an illusion.
This is the point at which the doctrine of the Reformers diverges
from that of the Catholic Church, in accordance with their differing
views of the sinful corruption of man. The Reformation doctrine re¬
mains strictly in harmony with the teaching of the Bible; it maintains
the general revelation, but it denies that there is a natural “ knowl¬
edge of God,” which is no other than the dialectic of sin itself:
namely, that man could not be a sinner if he knew nothing of God,
but that on the other hand, precisely because he is a sinner, and in
so far as he is a sinner he remains isolated, he cannot know God
aright. It emphasizes the cognitive significance of sin, that is, the
fact that it prevents the knowledge of God. As one who knows, man
stands just as much in opposition to the truth of God as he does in
the sphere of action; his knowledge is no better than his practical
relation to God; his knowledge of God is as corrupt as his heart. At
this point the Reformers held firmly to the truth of the Bible, its per¬
ception of the totality of sin, and of the sola gratia. But in spite of
this, the Reformers did not allow themselves to be led into a denial
of the truth of the general revelation. They knew why; the Reform¬
ers did not do so because they saw that such a denial would destroy
the actual basis of man’s responsibility for his sin. The only reason
why man can be a sinner is because God reveals Himself to him; it
is because he is a sinner that the revelation cannot issue in the knowl¬
edge of God.
66 Revelation and Reason

Thus the revelation in the Creation differs from the particular, his¬
torical, revelation in the fact that while it makes man guilty it cannot
free him from his sin. Owing to its distinctive character, it cannot
deal with sin. The sinful man who is left alone with the general reve¬
lation does not escape from religious and metaphysical illusions, ei¬
ther in self-knowledge or in the knowledge of God. This severe limi¬
tation of the possibilities which lie within the general revelation does
not mean, however, that this revelation has no significance. Its sig¬
nificance is absolutely fundamental. Only through it can man be ad¬
dressed as sinner, only through it can he be responsible for his sin,
only on this account can follow the Gospel call to repentance which
summons man to return to his Origin. It is therefore the indispensa¬
ble presupposition of the Christian message; it cannot be ignored or
left out; and, as such, it is an integral element in the message of sav¬
ing grace.
Hence there can be no question that alongside of the Church s
message of God’s special historical revelation there is another ele¬
ment in the proclamation of the Gospel, namely, the doctrine of the
revelation in the Creation. Rather, the doctrine of general revelation
is implicit in the doctrine of salvation in Jesus Christ as its presuppo¬
sition, precisely as the doctrine that man is God’s creation is con¬
tained as presupposition in the message of God’s renewing grace in
Jesus Christ. Just as the Bible teaches that every human being is
God’s creation, so also it teaches that every man has received the
divine revelation, and is continually receiving it. It teaches, how¬
ever, at the same time, that just as every man by his sin spoils the
creative work of God in him, so also by his sin he spoils the knowl¬
edge which God gives. Finally, it teaches that of himself, without the
addition of special divine and saving grace, he can no more free him¬
self from this corruption of his knowledge than he can free himself
from the corruption of his heart and will. Hence, just as the Bible
denies the possibility of good works that could endure the con¬
suming fire of the divine Judgment, so also it denies the possibility
of a theologia naturalis as a basis for a complementary theologia
revelata.6

6 This is precisely what Calvin says (Works, 49, 24) : “The revelation of
God, by means of which He makes His glory manifest in creatures, is, so far as
their own light is concerned, sufficiently evident; but, so far as our blindness is
concerned, it is not sufficient.”
 The Revelation in the Creation 67

5. Even if the revelation in the Creation were not explicitly at¬

tested in the Bible, we should have to teach it, because it is implicit
in the Biblical understanding of creation. God manifests Himself in
that which He creates. His work points to Him, the Master Worker.
It is true, of course, that all that is creaturely, as such, not only reveals
God but also conceals Him. The analogy of the artist and the work of
art cannot be applied without reserve to the relation between the
Creator and the Creation. Between the artist and his work there ex¬
ists merely the incongruence of the inner and the outer, the idea and
the appearance; but between the Creator and the creature there ex¬
ists the contradiction between the Unconditioned and the condi¬
tioned, between that which He is in Himself, and the being who is
derived and dependent.
In spite of this, however, the Scriptures teach explicitly that it is
precisely the divinity of God, His invisible Being, His Transcendence,
which is manifested in His works of creation. “ His everlasting power
and divinity ... is manifest in them (to men); for God manifested
it unto them.” Why does Paul say this? Because this is the case. And
why is this the case? Because God thus wills it. God’s will and nature
are such that He creates in order to reveal Himself. That which is
created bears the stamp of its Maker through His will as Creator and
through His act of creation. Therefore the doctrine of the analogia
entis, which has been such a controversial topic of late, is not peculiar
to the Catholic Church, but it has been part of the common Christian
inheritance of belief from the earliest days of the Church; for it sim¬
ply expresses the fact that it has pleased God so to create the world
that in and through it His “ everlasting power and divinity ” may be
made known. The doctrine of the analogia entis 7 neither competes
with nor is in opposition to the doctrine of the analogia jidei, which
7 On Karl Barth’s doctrine of the analogia entis, see the additional note to
this chapter, pp. 77-80. The Reformers have their doctrine of the analogia entis,
just as much as the theologians of the Catholic Church, although they do not
use the word. “ There has been nothing since the beginning of all things in which
God has not given us a specimen of His wisdom ” (Calvin, Institutes, I, 14, 3).
“ The creatures the Apostle calls a mirror, in which the invisible majesty of God
is shown forth” (Works, 49, 415). Of the works of creation: God permits
us to count them one by one “ ut impervestigabilis gloria Dei in imagine sua re-
luceat ” (Institutes, I, 13, 7). “ God, in Himself invisible, has, so to speak, clothed
Himself in the form of the world, in order to offer Himself to our gaze.” He “ has
adorned Himself magnificently with the incomparable figura of heaven and
earth ” in order that we may “ behold ” Him (Calvin, Preface to the Commen¬
tary on Genesis, 23, 7).
68 Revelation and Reason

is concerned, not with the objective process of divine revelation, but

with the subjective reception of revelation on the part of man. What
must take place within, or upon, sinful man, in order that the works
of creation may regain the purpose for which they have been cre¬
ated by God, namely, the manifestation of His power and wisdom,
is a second question, with which we shall be later concerned. As the
Bible, just as it is, is an objective means of God s revelation — whether
men understand it as God’s Word or not — so also the Creation is a
means of divine revelation, whether men see it as such or not.
Now, however, where the Apostle deals with the objective revela¬
tion in the Creation, he does not fail also to speak of the subjective
capacity of man to receive this knowledge. “ For the invisible things
of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being per¬
ceived through the things that are made.” There is no revelation for
the creatures without reason; it is not part of their destiny to know
God. But man has been so created by God that, by means of his
reason, he can perceive God in His works. It is only through this fact
that that which we previously called the revelation in the Creation
becomes “ general revelation.” The works of God in the Creation are
placed before the eyes of all, and reason is the endowment common
to all men, and that which places them on a higher plane than that
occupied by all the other creatures. The objective process of revela¬
tion, or the objective means of revelation, and the subjective capacity
to receive revelation are made for each other. This too is not a spe¬
cifically Catholic, but a general Christian, doctrine; it is good Bef-
ormation doctrine, plainly Biblical, and common to the Christian
Church as a whole.8

6. But when the relation between man and revelation, as it is

taught by the Bible, has thus been stated, it has not yet been fully
defined. This relation is expressed in two further conceptions, which
bind man and revelation still more closely together: namely, that man
has been made in the image of God, and that the law is written in
man’s heart, especially in conscience which is based upon the knowl¬
edge of this law.
8 “For to everyone who approaches the heavenly building with a pure
mind, the effect cannot but be that he is plunged into amazed adoration at the
sight of the Wisdom, the Goodness, and the Power of God.” (Calvin, Works,
38, 59.) The fact that unbelievers have not this “ pure mind ” constitutes their
sin.
 The Revelation in the Creation 69
In the previous chapter we discussed the former conception. Lu¬
ther already recognized that in the Scriptures this concept of the
imago is used in a twofold sense. “ Duplex est similitudo, publica et
privata. Paulus loquitur de similitudine privata, sed textus (Gen.
1:26) videtur sonare de publica.” 9 The fact that in this passage Lu¬
ther means exactly what we have said about the difference between
the Old Testament and the New Testament conception of the imago
comes out clearly in the continuation of the passage. The “ likeness to
God ” of which the text speaks is related to the position of man in the
world. “Haec similitudo manet sub peccato adhuc, non abstulit (sc.
Deus) earn similitudinem ab Adam.” But Paul “ goes higher.” Yet Lu¬
ther adds that even Paul occasionally (I Cor. 11:7) speaks of the
imago in the first sense of the word. There too, Luther claims, Paul is
speaking of the dominium of man in the world, not of the justitia
originalis. The imago, in the first sense of the word, cannot be lost, for
it distinguishes man, as man, in his nature; it is true of it, manet sub
peccato adhuc. It is lost in the second sense of the word, as fustitia
originalis, as man’s rightful quality, in the sense of his right relation to
God and to his neighbor.10
In the interest of the formation of clear ideas it may seem a pity
that the Bible uses the same term for the two ideas, but there is a pro¬
found reason for this. Man’s inalienable nature, the humanum, and
man’s attitude toward God and man, are not two things, which
merely have to be distinguished from one another; even though they
are not the same, then- inner relation to one another is highly signifi¬
cant. Man, both from the formal point of view of his human nature
and from the material point of view of his historical position, which
is determined by the quality of decision, must be understood as “ de¬
rived from God,” and, indeed, from the original, creative, revealing
Word of God; the fact that these two aspects of man’s nature fall
apart is due to sin. Not only faith and love — the justitia originalis —
but also the rational nature of man must be understood in the light of
the Word of God. As a result of man’s apostasy, the use of reason is in
opposition to his divine destiny, which is timeless and unchangeable.

0 Luther, W.A., 42, 51.

10 On the O.T. idea of the imago, see Kittel’s Worterbuch, II, pp. 387 ff.
“ The O.T. knows nothing of the idea that henceforth man has lost his ‘ likeness ’
to God.” Also, cf. Eichrodt, loc. cit., II, pp. 60 ff. and Kohler, loc. cit., pp. 133 f.
On the whole question in Scripture and history of dogma, see Appendix I in
Man in Revolt [O. Wyon. Tr.].
70 Revelation and Reason

All that is left of the divinely created nature of man is the rational
nature, but not the right attitude of the reason, in conformity with
the will of God. Thus, in point of fact, the imago, understood in the
Old Testament sense, is merely a “ relic ” of the original, total imago.
Yet this quantitative conception of the “ relic ” is not adequate to
throw light upon the deeper relation between these two entities. But
a more detailed exposition of this whole problem, which is not an
easy one, must be left to Christian anthropology.

7. The second concept, in which the Holy Scriptures assert the

general revelation, or the revelation in the Creation, in man himself,
is that of the law, which God has written in the hearts of all men.
“ For when Gentiles which have no [Mosaic] Law do by nature the
things of the Law, these, having no Law, are a law unto themselves;
in that they shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their
conscience bearing witness therewith and their thoughts one with
another accusing or else excusing them/’11 Therefore the heathen,
and all men everywhere, are such as “ know the ordinance [law] of
God.”12 Here also the distinction is necessary between that which
God gives to man to know, which it is possible for him to know, and
what men make of it. This distinction is more imperative than ever
at the present time; for it seems that today, under the influence of
certain ideologies, the discrepancy between the law which God has
set within the heart of every human being and that which individual
human beings recognize as binding is especially great.
Once more this is a point at which the theology of the Reforma¬
tion diverges from that of the Catholic Church. The Reformers also
recognize this law written by God in the hearts of men, which they,
following tradition, describe as the lex naturae.13 They too recognize
11 Rom. 2:14 ff.
12 Rom. 1:32.
13 In this respect Luther goes somewhat farther than Calvin. The knowledge
of the law is given to the heathen, that is, to every human being; Calvin too says
this, but he emphasizes the fact, more deliberately than Luther, that this knowl¬
edge is clouded. Luther: “ Decalogus non est Mosi lex, neque primus ipse earn
dedit, sed decalogus est totius mundi inscriptus mentibus omnium a condito
mundo” (Disputation, ed. Drews, 408).
Calvin: “ Insculpta est boni et mali notitia hominibus quo reddantur inex-
cusabiles, nee ulla unquam barbaries lucem hanc adeo exstinxit quin ubique
viguerit aliqua legum forma” (Works, 24, 720). On this see Bohatec, Calvin
und das Recht. Neither in Calvin nor in Luther is this “ a relic of natural theol¬
ogy,” but it is their Biblical view of the natural man, who even as a sinner is still
responsible. Hence such remarks do not occur simply now and then, like “ for-
 The Revelation in the Creation 71
its high significance — especially where the relations between men
who are not Christian have to be ordered, as for instance in interna¬
tional law. But, in accordance with all that has been said about the
divine revelation in the Creation, they emphasize far more strongly
than the Catholic theologians that this law written in the heart has
been darkened ’ by the influence of sin, that this “ writing fades,”
and thus that the knowledge of the divine commandment is always
very indistinct. In so doing they make a very important distinction:
the more we are concerned with the concrete content of the law, the
less plainly does this “ darkening ” appear, but the more we are con¬
cerned with the will which gives the law, that is, with the will of
God, the more it is stressed. They usually express this by saying that
the Second Table of the Decalogue ” is known to all men, but not
the First. All men know what is commanded and forbidden; but the
reason why this is so, and therefore the deepest and most peculiar
meaning of the divine command, they do not know.14
This is in entire accordance with the historical situation. The indi¬
vidual commandments of the Bible, regarded purely from the point
of view of their actual content, are affirmed by the “ religious voices
of all peoples.” 15 On the other hand, they do not know that the Com¬
mandments are derived from the holy, loving will of God, because
they do not know this God. Individual human beings and whole
races, however, know far more of the law of God than one would im¬
agine from looking at their behavior, or than appears in the theory
which they construct in order to justify their behavior. Indeed, the
conscience can even be dulled and suppressed by theories. This be¬
comes very evident when people who profess amoral theories com¬
plain about the behavior of their neighbors. In the practical judg¬
ment passed on an “ enemy ” most mockers who consider themselves
freed from all moral scruples, or the most “ Nihilist ” fanatics, reveal

eign bodies ” in the theology of the Reformers, but they occur hundreds of times,
and have their definite, unassailable place within their Christocentric theology.
Cf. Braseke, Zwingli und das Natarrecht.
14 Schlink, Der Mensch in der Verkiindigung der Kirche, is quite right when
he says that the natural man has, it is true, some knowledge of law, but he is
not aware that it is the law of God; but he is in error if he thinks that in saying
this he is opposed to me. In so far as man knows something of the law, he does
know something of the law of God, without, on that account, knowing God. For
in the law — understood merely as law — we do not know God. (See Chapter 21,
below.) The Decalogue, understood as God’s token of grace, is not “ law ” but
“ gospel.”
15 Cf. Cathrein, Die Einheit des sittlichen Bewusstseins, 3 vols.
72 Revelation and Reason

all at once an amazingly sensitive feeling; they know very well what
the “ other person ” ought to do, and at what point his behavior to¬
ward themselves is unjust. Thus the charge that the Reformation doc¬
trine is contradicted by historical facts falls to the ground. The two¬
fold judgment of the Apostle stands: “They know the law of God,
and they “ refused to have God in their knowledge.
For this very reason the law is the critico-dialectical point in Chris¬
tian doctrine. All human beings know the law as law, as that which
prescribes what man is to do; but they do not know the law as a sign
of grace, as the law of the Covenant. They all know the law which is
required for the usus politicos; but the law which leads to repentance
must be given to them by special revelation. Where this takes place,
however, man knows that it is not a different law, but the same one;
but that only now is its full meaning perceived.
Hence this knowledge of the law also belongs to that which (ac¬
cording to the teaching of the Apostle and of the Bible as a whole)
makes man responsible. Man is responsible for his sin because God
gave him the knowledge of His will — “ they know the law of God ”
— but sin does not allow this knowledge to have its effect, since they
“ have refused to have God in their knowledge.” Hence, since this is
man’s situation regarding his knowledge of the will of God, the natu¬
ral man must be held responsible for what he knows through the gen¬
eral revelation; but, on the other hand, he is not able to develop a
right ethica rationalis. The fundamental tendency of this kind of
knowledge is always in the direction of moralism and a legalistic self-
righteousness, and thus leads to tire denial of the good, in the genu¬
ine sense of the word.

8. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that the revelation in

the Creation has been destroyed by sin, either in man or in other
spheres of life. The very phrase, the “ fallen creation,” is foreign to
the language and thought of the Bible.16 It is not the Creation which
is “ fallen,” but man; the revelation in the Creation has not been de¬
stroyed, but by sin man perverts into idolatry that which God has
16 The only passage in the whole Bible which appears to speak of a “ fallen
creation ” is Rom. 8:19 ff. Gen. 3:17 speaks of a “ curse ” on the “ ground,” but
not of an event which affects the whole cosmos. Rom. 8:19 ff. does not refer to
the cosmos, but to man — his unbelief; when Paul uses kt'ujis, in an absolute
sense, he always means man. Cf. Schlatter, Gottes Gerechtigkeit, p. 273. The
fall of the angels in the O.T. is obviously not a result of the Fall of man.
 The Revelation in the Creation 73
given him. The men to whom the Apostle ascribes a knowledge of
God through the revelation in the Creation are not “ Adam and Eve
before the Fall,” but all to whom the Apostles proclaim the message
of the saving grace of Christ. It is not that once upon a time, in the
primitive state, men were responsible, and therefore inexcusable, but
that they are inexcusable, because they “ have refused to have God
in their knowledge.” Similarly, Paul does not teach that once upon a
time, in the primitive state, men were distinguished from other crea¬
tures by the fact that they had been created in the image of God:
they are always in this state, even when they deface the image of God
in themselves by turning away from Him. It is only beings whose es¬
sential nature and destiny consist in the fact that they have been
made in the likeness of God who can be sinners; this possibility is due
to the fact that man has been made in the “ image of God,” just as the
fact that man sins is the denial of this truth. Sin, like human existence
as a whole, can be understood only in the light of the divine revela¬
tion. Man alone can be a sinner, because only to him does God give
Himself to be known through His works; God has created man alone
in His image; only in the heart of man does God write His law. Thus
the theme of general revelation or revelation in the Creation has not
been made unreal by sin; on the contrary, only in the light of the gen¬
eral revelation can sin be understood.
Thus so far as the Creation is concerned there is a correspondence
between the self-manifestation of God in the works of creation, which
surround man “ like a theater ” 17 — to use a frequent expression of
Calvin’s — and the self-manifestation of God on and in man, which
enables him to recognize that outward revelation as such. Did sin not
exist, man would always live in continual contemplation of God in
the majesty of His revelation;18 did sin not exist, the law written in
the heart of man would not only be the norm and the judge, it would
be the motive power for the doing of God’s will. Were sin not present,
man would be not only formaliter, as finite person or subject, similar
to the infinite Subject, but his being as person materialiter, as justitia
originalis, would be determined by agape toward the loving God. In
this love man would be “ perfect as his Heavenly Father is perfect.”
Man would not only be “ human ” in the familiar empirical sense, but

Calvin, Works, 23, 18; 55, 146; 33, 539.

18 Luther: “Ipsa natura adeo fuit pur a et plena cognitione Dei, ut verbum
Dei ver se intelligeret et videret (Adam,).” Works, 42, 50.
74 Revelation and Reason

he would be truly human, as one whose life is stamped with the im¬
press of love to God and his neighbor, which in faith he receives from
the gracious Word of the Creator. That which man, who has become
and is ever becoming a sinner, retains of this divine origin in crea¬
tion is not nothing, but it is the source of his perversion. This means,
however, that even man in his perverted state, as sinner, can be un¬
derstood only in the light of his divine origin; it means that even in
this perverted condition his divine origin still determines his whole
nature, even though this influence is distorted by man s apostasy.
Hence man’s real state is summed up in Saint Augustine’s well-known
phrase: Cor nostrum inquietum donee requiescat in Te, Domine; in
these words we have the only key to the right understanding of man.
Man is now living in opposition to himself, and this self-contradic¬
tion — which is the result of contradicting the revelation in the Cre¬
ation — is the fundamental tendency of his empirical nature. This is
what man is, before he has been re-created by the message of Jesus
Christ.

9. Thus sin does not mean the annihilation of the original element
in man but its perversion. Hence all quantitative definitions of all
that remains of this original element — “ a little, a relic of the origi¬
nal ” — are inadequate. The relation between man’s origin and his
perversion is not quantitative but dialectical, because the point at
issue is a spiritual relation, not a natural one; it is not a question of
an “ almost complete elimination ” but of “ contradiction.” *
Hence there are two things to be said about man’s “ natural knowl¬
edge of God It would not be what it is were it not for the revelation
in the Creation; it would not be what it is apart from sin. There is no
idolatry apart from a knowledge of God; there is no religion outside
the Bible that does not distort man’s knowledge of God. But this
means that man is related to God; indeed, it constitutes a relation to
the true God, namely, a perverted relation to the true God; therefore
man is a being who is under the wrath of God.19 To be “ under the
wrath of God ” is not to be unrelated to God, but it is a perverted,
and therefore a disastrous, relation. But this general formula for all
man’s “ natural knowledge of God ” must not be confused with a for-

* [I.e., man against himself; man in revolt. Tr.]

19 This does not mean that the natural man knows the wrath of God. He
lives under wrath without knowing it.
 The Revelation in the Creation 75

mula implying union with God. Just as it is true that all men without
distinction are sinners, but not all are criminals or blasphemers, so it
is true that all “ natural theology ” is in principle idolatrous; but this
does not mean that it is all equally remote from the truth. There is a
great difference between the religion of a Plato, of a Zoroaster, or of
an Epicurus, and the denial of God by a Nihilist.* * Even in Christian
dogmatics it is not fitting to place the holy awe of an Antigone on the
same plane as an orgiastic rite of Siva. There is only one truth that
includes them all: they do not know the Living God, holy and merci¬
ful, the Father of Jesus Christ. They all need redemption through the
true knowledge of God, which the Word of God alone can give.
Thus once man has become a sinner, the general revelation is not
sufficient to enable him to know the true God. The older theology,
therefore, is correct in saying that the general revelation exists, but
that it has no saving significance. For sinful men it is not the revela¬
tion in the Creation which is the way to God, but only the particular,
historical revelation of the Old and the New Covenant.

10. But this contrast is not the final word. The Creator God is none
other than the Redeemer. Hence the eternal Word, or the eternal
Son, who in Jesus Christ has become man, is also the principle of the
general revelation. He is the “light which lighteth every man
coming into the world.”20 He is the principle of all knowledge, even
of all the rational knowledge of truth, which the reason acquires
without knowing the message of Jesus Christ.21 Thus the trinitarian
idea of God shows us a final bracket which unites the general revela¬
tion, or the revelation in the Creation, with the particular, historical
revelation. As it is God’s almighty Word which supports the All, so
also it is His almighty Word which speaks to man in His revelation in
the Creation. If it be true that God “ is not far from any one of
us,” then it is also true that through the general revelation we have
to do with the eternal Word and the Son in whom all has been cre¬
ated. The Revealer does not vary, but the form in which He reveals

[“Nihilist” = one who has lost all idea of any God beyond this world.
Cf. K. Heim, God Transcendent, pp. 35 ff. Tr.]
20 See Calvin on John 1:4, 9.
21 “ Since, however, all truth is from God, there is no doubt that the Lord
has also placed in the mouth of godless men that which contains true and saving
doctrine ” (Calvin, Works, 49, 35. Cf. also Calvin’s recognition of the elements
of truth in pagan antiquity (Works, 2, 198).
76 Revelation and Reason

Himself certainly varies. The reason why this general revelation can¬
not have any saving significance for the sinner is that in it God, as
Person, does not meet man personally, but impersonally.
Thus the fundamental significance of the revelation in Creation is
this: that through it man as man is person, a responsible being, a be¬
ing related to God, “ standing before ” Him; and also that by this
revelation man is responsible for his sin, and is therefore inexcusa¬
ble.” This is why it is the presupposition of the saving revelation in
Jesus Christ, although in itself it has no saving significance. Finally,
this revelation is significant, not only as a presupposition, but also in
its relation to the revelation of God in Christ. The man whose eyes
have been opened by the particular historical Word of God is now
once more able to see what God shows us in His revelation in the
Creation. As we know, men might have seen it all along: the fact that
they did not do so was due to their incomprehensible, sinful blind¬
ness. It was due to man’s sin that the meaning was concealed from
him; the result is that man either does not perceive this evident, di¬
vine revelation, or, if he thinks he perceives it, he falls into gross er¬
rors and misunderstandings.22
Through faith in Jesus Christ, however, not only this blindness but
this guilt is removed — or at least the process of removal has begun.
The eyes which had been blind begin to see again. That is why the
psalms and hymns of the Church are so full of the praise of the Cre¬
ator in the works of His Creation. For this reason only can the Apos¬
tle Paul teach what he does about the revelation in the Creation. It is
not the “ natural man,” but he in whom God, through His saving rev¬
elation, has broken down the barriers of sin, and has anew revealed
Himself as Creator, who is able to hold firmly that knowledge which
God gives in His revelation in the Creation, without “ holding it down
in unrighteousness.” In him then it can work itself out according to
its original significance. Just as, when we believe in Jesus Christ, we
understand aright the meaning of that law which God has written in
the hearts of all men (and no longer in a moralistic perversion), so

22 Thus Calvin on John 1:4, 9. Further, Institutes, I, 13, 7: The Word of the
Creator is the Logos (sermo); hence the glory of the Creator which shines out
in His works in creation is the light of the Son of God, who from all eternity
works with the Father as the Word which sustains the world. “ Those who do
not deign to glance at the incomparable beauty of heaven and earth, have to do
penance for their explicit neglect with their own phantasmagoria” (Calvin,
Works, 23, 7).
 The Revelation in the Creation 77
also, after the “ vain illusion ” has been destroyed, and the irrational,
darkened heart has been illuminated by Christ, and transformed by
the “ renewing ” of the mind, and thus once more restored to reason,23
we understand once again the meaning of the primal revelation, of
the fact that we have been created in the image of God, and that the
created world is the manifestation of the divine omnipotence and
wisdom, without falling into the error of the pagan and pantheistic
deification of the creature.24
Here we return to the point at which this inquiry started. We do
not teach the revelation in the Creation by any process of rational
argument; this truth is based upon the divine revelation of salvation.
We do not teach “ natural theology,” but, in the context of Christian
theology, we teach revelation in this particular form, which is com¬
municated to all men, but is not rightly received by all, because all
men are sinners. Because it is Jesus Christ alone who reopens the en¬
trance to this source of the knowledge of God which had been
blocked up, there can be no question of diminishing the glory of
Christ, or of weakening the emphasis upon the sola gratia, which
some have feared would result from this doctrine. It is the same eter¬
nal Word of God in whom and through whom the world has been
created, and who manifests Himself to us in the works of the Crea¬
tion, who speaks to us in the incarnation of the Son: in the one case
impersonally, and therefore imperfectly, and in the other person¬
ally, and perfectly.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: KARL BARTH ON THE REVELATION

IN CREATION

In the third volume of his Dogmatics (II, 1, pp. 107-141) Karl

Barth has renewed, in great detail, his discussion of the question of the
revelation in the Creation. In spite of the fact that he is evidently at
great pains to hold fast the difference between that which is us¬
ually called “ natural theology,” and a “ Christian natural theology,”
that is, a doctrine of the revelation in the Creation taught in the

23 Rom. 12:2.
24 Not only may we, but we ought and must also seek God and learn to see
Him in His works in creation. “ Thus we learn how to direct our fervor into bet¬
ter channels, when we contemplate the works of God ... in order that we
may be led to Him in the contemplation of heaven and earth and all things
which are therein contained.” Calvin, Works, 33, 572.
78 Revelation and Reason

Scriptures, in his treatment of the subject he continually slips from

the one into the other. In the following sentences I will give what
seems to be his interpretation of the latter:
The Biblical doctrine of the revelation through Creation is a “ side
line ” in the Bible; for the main line is that of the historical revela¬
tion, whereas here the theme is man in the cosmos. To recognize
a “ side line ” of this kind, of which one dares to speak only in a
low voice and without authority,” means that a place is made for an
independent bond with God and man in the cosmos alongside of
“ the sovereign grace of God in His revelation ; this implies that
“ man is related to God in the cosmos. Barth argues that here, apart
from a “ testimony catechized out of the heathen, we are confronted
by a “ timeless abstract truth of a natural relation with God. The
fact that Barth can only reject such a doctrine, supposed to be Bibli¬
cal, is self-evident, and is entirely in order; only we must point out
tliat this opponent of Barth is purely a specter of his own imagina¬
tion, and that these views have nothing at all to do with the doctrine
of the revelation in the Creation which we present. For here we are
not concerned with a “ side line,” and still less with the theme of
“ man in the cosmos,” nor with “ man’s natural relation with God ;
we are concerned with the revelation of God in His works in creation,
and also with the fact, based upon this truth, that man as sinner is
responsible and inexcusable, and, therefore, that the “ natural man
stands under the wrath of God.
Barth, on his part, is now forced to acknowledge that the Scrip¬
tures bear witness to the revelation in the Creation. He says, rightly,
that this witness is not separated from that of the historical revela¬
tion — we would add, How should it be since it is only the historical
revelation which makes it possible for man rightly to appraise the
revelation in the Creation? Barth further says, rightly, that this reve¬
lation in Creation to which the Scriptures bear witness reveals to
man an “ original truth ” about himself, and that this is an “ integral
element” of the message of Christ, and therefore should be pro¬
claimed, not “ in a low voice,” but openly and definitely. Indeed, in
his exposition of Rom. 1:19, Barth makes statements which agree
closely with the point of view we present: “From everlasting God
was manifest to them (the heathen). The world which always sur¬
rounded them was always His creation; it spoke of His working, and
therefore of Himself. Objectively judged, although they refused to
 The Revelation in the Creation 79

honor God, they always knew God. From an objective standpoint,

even while they denied and betrayed the truth, they were always in
positive relation to it. Thus they too are without excuse. . . . They
must acknowledge it as the divine verdict that those who do such
things are worthy of death” (Rom. 1:32). One breathes a sigh of
relief! At last! If these statements are maintained, then we can bury
the hatchet, for this, and this alone, was what I not only tried to say,
but did say, in my pamphlet Natur und Gnade; here I made the dis¬
tinction between the “ objective ” natural theology of the Bible, and
the rationalistic, or Catholic, “ subjective ” view; the doctrine, that is,
of the revelation in the Creation, but not the doctrine of a “ natural ”
knowledge of God!
But this statement was followed by disappointment. Suddenly,
all that he has been saying — and that had to be said — on Rom. 1:19
disappears. Without warning, as it were, that which Barth had stated,
“ objectively considered,” to be true no longer has any significance.
The “ original ” truth becomes the “ future ” truth, from which, by
means of the historical revelation, the revelation in the Creation,
which was on the verge of being recognized, is again wiped off the
slate, and nothing remains but the historical revelation. Why? Be¬
cause Barth does not make a clear distinction between the principium
cognoscendi and the principium essendi; because he keeps on think¬
ing that the recognition of a revelation in the Creation must imply
the recognition of a natural knowledge of God, and because he can¬
not abandon the axiom that there is one revelation, and one only.
Barth turns the true statement, “ Only through the historical revela¬
tion of the Old and the New Covenant is sinful man able to recognize
the original revelation of Creation, which is concealed from him by
his sin,” into the erroneous statement, “ There is only one revelation:
the historical one in Christ.” Similarly, he turns the correct state
ment, “ Only through the historical revelation in Christ can man per¬
ceive his sin,” into the false statement, “ Only in the light of the reve¬
lation in Christ — namely, in the rejection of the same — does man
become a sinner.” But the Bible says: Man is a culpable sinner be¬
cause he rejects the revelation in the Creation which God gives him;
because he “ holds down the primal truth in unrighteousness ”; and’
because, in his madness, he transforms that which the Creator reveals
into the form of idols. Of himself he can no more perceive this sin
than, as a result of sin, he can truly know the revelation in the Crea-
80 Revelation and Reason

tion. It is only through the historical revelation that man comes to

perceive both the revelation in the Creation and his sin, which, for
this reason, is without excuse. Hence in actual fact the original truth
cannot be £ catechized out of him; but in spite of this, it is the
“ original ” and not only the “ future ” truth. The basis of human
responsibility lies in the reality of historical revelation.
The same confusion between the ratio cognoscendi and essendi
lies at the root of the Barthian hostility to the analogia entis. Here too
Barth is defending an important element in Beformed theology
against Thomism: the analogia entis does not, in point of fact, give
sufficient ground for the construction of a theologia naturalis upon
it. For when man is left alone with these analogies he cannot help
misunderstanding them in a pantheistic sense. These analogies of
the Creation do not legitimately lead sinful man to true theological
knowledge, but — for him as sinner — they are a way of error. God
has impressed the stamp of His Spirit upon the world. Created things
do bear this stamp within themselves; they do not first have to ac¬
quire it through the historical revelation in Christ. It is, of course,
true that in order to see the truth of these analogies we need the his¬
torical revelation and the faith which it creates, in order that we
may see that these analogies do point to the true God. The analogies
therefore do not exist because of fides, but they only become visible
to fides. Hence the analogia entis cannot be replaced by the analogia
fidei but the analogia entis comes to knowledge only through fides.
On the other hand, the idea of the analogia fidei ought not to have
been used, since in classical theology this means something com¬
pletely different; namely, the demand that obscure passages of Scrip¬
ture are to be expounded according to the ecclesiastical rule of inter¬
pretation. It is therefore an ecclesiastical principle of interpretation.
At the same time, there is always a close connection between the
two problems: just as it is not true that the Holy Scriptures can gain
their meaning only through faith — rather, it is faith that discovers
the meaning that they contain — so also it is not true that the Crea¬
tion receives the image of God through faith; rather, it is faith which
discovers the quality granted to it by God from the very beginning,
by its actual existence in a particular way to bear witness to the
Creator. Barth’s argument by which he summons not only me, but
the whole theology of the Church, to remain within rigid limits, is
based, in both instances, upon his failure to make a clear distinction
between knowing and being.
 Revelation as Promise: The Old Covenant 81

B. The Historical Revelation

7. REVELATION AS PROMISE:
THE OLD COVENANT
1. The Early Church soon came to the decision that the Old Testa¬
ment and the divine revelation to which it bears testimony, together
with the revelation through Christ, form an indispensable unity, a
historical unity as well as a unity in “ knowledge a unity which in¬
cludes the mighty acts of God, as well as the word of God. Connected
with this unity, however, there is also the truth of the fundamental
difference between the historical setting and the content of the two
Testaments. The two Covenants are related to each other as prepara¬
tion is related to that for which it is intended, as prophecy is related
to “ fulfillment.” 1 This truth was not accepted by the Church with¬
out inward conflict; the intellectual arguments by which both the
unity and the difference were emphasized did not arise as a matter
of course; the meaning given to the ideas of unity and difference —
prophecy and fulfillment — both in the New Testament itself and later
on, were not quite clear. But even though the more exact understand¬
ing of the unity and the difference remains a continuous theological
task, yet the truth of this fundamental dual relationship stands high
above all theological controversy; it is one of the foundations of the
Christian Church.
The first question we must ask is this: How is the divine revelation
understood in the Old Testament itself? Secondly, what is the rela¬
tion between the historical revelation and the understanding of reve¬
lation of the Old Testament and that of the New Testament, the reve¬
lation in the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ? Primarily, this is a prob¬
lem of exegesis. This is not the place to deal with the controversy
raised by scholars in the realm of exegesis and interpretation in de¬
tail — which has certainly been very lively of late 2 — but as a work¬
ing hypothesis, I will make the statement that is to be examined in
1 Hofmann’s “ Weissagung und Erfullung ” (Prophecy and Fulfillment) — in
opposition to the orthodox Lutheran tradition, as manifested, for instance, in
Hengstenberg’s “ Christologie des Alten Testaments ” — was a theological pro¬
gram, of far-reaching consequences. Prophecy is now no longer “ foretelling
but the history of revelation. Cf. Eichrodt, loc. cit., pp. 277 ff.
2 The strongest impulse was undoubtedly given by Vischer’s Christuszeugnis
des Alten Testaments. Since then the discussion has gone forward steadily. Cf.
LLellbarth, in Theol. Bl, 1937, pp. 129 ff.; further, “ Das AT und d. Evg.,”
82 Revelation and Reason

the course of this chapter: No interpretation of the Old Testament

has theological relevance which ignores either this unity or this dif¬
ference. The Old Testament bears witness to a historical revelation
which is certainly, at first sight, quite different from the historical
revelation in Jesus Christ. The form of the Old Testament revelation
(we are not here dealing with the Old Testament as a book; that is
the subject of Chapter 9) is different from that of the New Testa¬
ment; it is the Old Covenant and not the New Covenant; it is the pre¬
paratory, transient revelation, not the final one. This fact constitutes
both its peculiar importance, and its special limitations. The peculiar
character of the Old Testament revelation, as the oeconomia revela-
tionis,3 must be taken into account first of all, for here it differs

Eichrodt, Theol. Bl., 1938, pp. 73 ff. G. von Rad, ibid., 1935, pp. 249 ff.; ibid.,
Zimmerli, 1940, pp. 145 ff. Further, Bultmann, in Glaube und Verstehen, p. 315.
Hirsch: Das AT und die Predigt des Evg. ua. An excellent survey of the subject
and a critical discussion by Baumgartner in Schweiz, theol. Umschau, 1941, pp.
18 ff.
The advance made by Vischer was urgently required, but he has overshot the
mark, because he takes into account only the unity, and not the variety of the
revelation in the O.T. and the N.T.: owing to this he obscures the historical
character of the revelation by the orthodox view of a revealed doctrine (Christol-
ogy). Out of the correct theological statement that the Revealer in the O.T. is
the same in the N.T., he derives an erroneous principle of exposition: that the
O.T. in all its parts bears witness to this Revealer: Christ. The logical develop¬
ment of this principle now takes the place of a genuinely Scriptural exposition,
and leads, especially in the case of Hellbarth, to an extensive use of the allegori¬
cal method in exegesis. No longer can we hear what the text itself says; we can
only hear what it ought to say, in accordance with that false theological axiom.
The writers know beforehand what the text ought to say. They do not ex¬
pound ” the text, but they “ read into ” it what they choose; when those who
wish to hear what the text itself says make a protest, they are reminded, again
and again, on any pretext, of this theological axiom. But this axiom itself is non-
Scriptural, since it contradicts the fundamental statement of the New Testa¬
ment: with the incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ God has given us some¬
thing completely new. They have forgotten the word concerning John the
Baptist, “ He who is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he.” The
Pauline “ But now . . .” has been forgotten, the fact that the promise is different
from the fulfillment, that even in His revelation God is the God of history, the
One who comes nearer and nearer. It is questionable whether this reaction
against “ evolutionism ” is not as dangerous as the latter theory itself. In any case,
it is equally remote from the New Testament witness to the Old Testament.
3 Here also Irenaeus shows himself as the purest Biblical theologian of the
Early Church in the fact that he was able to emphasize, as of equal validity, both
the unity and the variety of the two Testaments through his doctrine of the
oeconomia revelationis. The early theology of the Reformers went back directly
to him.
 Revelation as Promise: The Old Covenant 83

completely from that of the New Covenant. The Old Testament

message is not the same as that of the New Testament, in spite of the
fact that the same God reveals Himself in both. It has pleased Him
to reveal Himself at first in a transient, and therefore imperfect,
manner; it is therefore our duty to respect His will in this matter, and
not to tiy, in a theologically doctrinaire way, to eliminate differences
and to create similarity where God Himself has willed difference.
To try to do this means that we have fallen once more into the old
orthodox, intellectualistic, nonhistorical error, namely, that revela¬
tion is equated with doctrine, and that the doctrine can only be one,
a mistake which has continually led to this oversimplification, and
has blurred the distinctio temporum.

2. At first sight the witness to revelation in the Old Testament is

bewildering in its variety. Nowhere is there one “ word ” which is
the clue to the whole, a “ word ” which unites all these varied ideas
and experiences;4 what we call “ revelation ” is expressed by a great
variety of ideas. This variety of ideas is interwoven with a great
variety of experiences, or with happenings which are regarded as the
bearers of the “ revealing ” event. God reveals Himself through
theophanies, angels, dreams, oracles, through visions and “ voices,”
through natural events, through the normal processes of nature, or,
again, through extraordinary happenings in nature, or, again, through
historical events, through special guidance given to particular indi¬
viduals, through the achievements of exceptional persons, and the
mighty deeds of special people endowed with “ spiritual ” gifts; above
all, through the mysterious inspired “ word ” of the Prophets. It is
true, of course, that these methods of revelation are not all of equal
importance; in the history of the Old Covenant itself many of them
are either eliminated or given a very subordinate position.

3. First of all, we must relate all this to what has already been
said about the general revelation, or the revelation in the Creation.
In the Old Testament the revelation of God through His works in
creation is particularly strongly emphasized.5 “ The heavens declare
the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handywork.” God
makes Himself known to the men of the Old Covenant in the stable
4 Cf. the note above on p. 75.
5 Ps. 19; 104; 8; 136; Prov. 8:22 ff.; Job, chs. 26; 38 to 40; Amos 5:8; Isa.
40:12 ff.; Jer. 31:35 ff.
84 Revelation and Reason

processes of nature, as well as in the extraordinary events in nature;

in the greatness and order of the starry heavens, as well as in the
endowments peculiar to man. But now, it should be noted — and in
entire agreement with all that we have already perceived from the
point of view of the New Testament — it is always presupposed that
this revelation of God in nature can be rightly perceived, and there¬
fore become fruitful, only by the members of the Chosen People.6
The general revelation, which by its very nature would be meant for
all, gains its positive significance only in relation to the special his¬
torical revelation. Although the Old Testament does not say so ex¬
plicitly, we may take what Saint Paul says about this matter as the
view of the believers of the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant:
the heathen could and should, it is suggested, perceive the revelation
of God in His works, but in sinful blindness they turn what God
shows them into idolatrous illusions; the revelation of God in the
Creation becomes to them the occasion of their idolatrous nature
religion.7 They are not even able to perceive the leadings of God in
the life of the individual and of the nations as God’s judgments and
God’s blessings. It is reserved for those who come under the special
covenant with God to perceive the divine meaning of the revelation
which is intended for all men.

4. But when we ask about the decisive category into which alone
this particular revelation which is granted to Israel falls, upon which
its particular Covenant-relation with God rests, then we are obliged
to make use of a twofold conception. This revelation takes place
through the “ words ” of God and through the “ acts ” of God.8 Both
together, equally, constitute the fact of the historical revelation. This
“ speaking ” and this “ acting ” of God took place within Israel, and
nowhere else. It took place in a chain of historical events in which
word and act were fused into an indissoluble unity. The Covenant-

6 K. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, II, 1, pp. 119 ff., rightly lays stress on the
fact that the Old Testament witness to the revelation in the Creation is never
severed from the witness to the historical revelation. There is indeed no ques¬
tion here of natural theology, but of the revelation in the Creation which be¬
comes manifest only to the believer.
7 This is indeed the core of the Prophets’ complaint against the people which
has become idolatrous: they “ do not know that it is I who have given them the
corn and the wine and the oil ” (Hos. 2:8). The Baal against whom the Prophets
declaim is the god of nature who has taken the place of the Creator.
8 Deut. 3:24; Judg. 6:13; Isa. 41:4 ff.; Ps. 77:14 ff.; 103:7; 105.
 Revelation as Promise: The Old Covenant 85
revelation at Mount Sinai is interwoven with the whole history of the
people of Israel, with the guidance to leave Egypt and the deliver¬
ance at the Red Sea. The “ Tent of Revelation ” is part of the special
leading which God grants to His Chosen People. This also remains
true in the later history of Israel; not only in the Mosaic period, but
also during the theocracy of the time of the Judges, in the time of
David — when his rule was both prophetic and political — in the
interweaving of prophetic speech and intervention in history, this
fundamental feature of the history of the Old Covenant was con¬
stant. Is it possible, in the story of Elijah for instance, to distinguish
between the revealing act and the revealing word?
That is why there is just as much narrative as teaching in the Old
Testament, and both are recorded with equal emphasis and serious¬
ness. For God reveals Himself through His acts in history as much
as through the words which He places in the mouth of the Prophets.
We ought not to emphasize the historical fact at the expense of the
word, any more than we ought to emphasize the word at the ex¬
pense of the historical fact.9 It is true, certainly, that historical facts,
like the passage through the Red Sea, or the storms of judgment of the
Assyrian and Babylonian periods, when the Chosen People were in
such distress, only became significant as the manifestation of divine
mercy or of divine wrath through the word of the Prophet to the
people; but the Prophets do not claim that these historical events
only acquire their meaning as revelation through their prophetic
word. It is not that they give meaning to history by means of their
word, but that God gives them insight into the meaning of the
event, which it already contains because God is within it. God gives
to His Prophets the authentic interpretation of His revelation in
history, which, without this interpretation, would remain more or
less an insoluble enigma. But through this interpretative prophetic
word history itself now speaks with a force that does not inhere in
the prophetic word as such. God’s hand now becomes visible, His
intentions, His judgments, and His demands are now manifested in
history itself. God speaks in the language of acts, which needs, it is
true, the actual word of an interpreter, but which for its part first
9 In the Second Isaiah the “ Word of God ” “ gains a wide, universal mean¬
ing, and signifies the divine work of revelation in history ” (Grether, Name and
Wort Gottes im Alten Testament, pp. 127 and 133): In Deuteronomy we find a
“ systematic mutual relation between the ‘ Word ’ and history in the whole ex¬
tent of its happenings.”
86 Revelation and Reason

gives to the word its full weight, its mysterious and ennobling au¬
thority. The prophetic word is based upon the revelation in act, and
the revelation in act issues in the “ Word.”

5. On the other hand, however, the converse is also true: the pro¬
phetic word creates history, and works itself out in an event. What
God speaks to Moses becomes a historical factor; the word of Elijah
creates new situations; the messages of Isaiah and Jeremiah them¬
selves determine, at least in part, the course of events. The prophetic
word is not only teaching or doctrine, but it is creative power. In
the earliest times, it is true, there may have been an element of magic
in the Hebrew conception of the mysterious “ word ”; it would, how¬
ever, be truer to say that in the Old Testament history of revelation
the element of truth in the magical conception of the “ word ” is
disentangled from its background of illusion. The word of God is
perceived to be effective, creative power.10 God spoke — and it was
done. “ The word becomes the expression of the divine will and plan
for the world which is above the sphere of history.”
The “ word ” is itself event. It is not an idea, always at our disposal,
like the conception of a timeless immanence accessible to human rea¬
son — although, incidentally, we ought not to forget that even the
discovery of an idea may result in a revolution! The word of God in
the Old Testament is a miracle; it proceeds from the mystery of
Transcendence; it is not something which has been thought out, but
it is a gift; it is not something which has been found, but something
which is communicated; it is usually characterized by distinctive
accompanying phenomena, as a “ breaking in ” from the divine world
into the world of man: through thunder and lightning and earth¬
quake at Mount Sinai, through miraculous signs in the earlier stories
of the Prophets, through visions and mighty acts in the days of the
great “ writing Prophets.” It is true, of course, that the important
element in all this is not the visions themselves; certainly the deci¬
sive element is the wonderful “ coming ” of the “ word ” (which is not
at man’s disposal), which distinguishes it from a rational speculative
idea. On the other hand, it is only because it is a clear “ word,” one
which can be grasped and understood, that the Prophet is able to
perceive that his vision contains a manifestation of God.11 Even in

10 Cf. Hos. 6:5; Isa. 9:7 ff.; 49:2; and above all Jer. 1:9 ff.; 5:14; 23:29.
11 Amos 7:7 ff.; Jer. 1:11 ff.
 Revelation as Promise: The Old Covenant 87

His acts God wills “ to say something ”; only after this has been gath¬
ered up in an intelligible spoken “ word ” does it come with the full
force of a valid divine revelation.

6. Again, the word of God in the Old Covenant is itself very varied
in character. It is teaching about God,12 the world, and man; it is the
divine pronouncement in definite unique situations;13 it is the inter¬
pretation of the event as divine action;14 it is the story of God’s
“ mighty acts ”;15 it is, however, above all, the divine demand for
repentance and obedience, and the announcement of divine salva¬
tion and judgment. The fact that this “ word ” is not connected with
any system of doctrine is due to the historical and personal character
of the revelation. God does not “ instruct ” or “ lecture ” His people;
He makes Himself known to them as the One who gives and de¬
mands, as the Lord who leads and requires obedience. The timeless,
abstract, and impersonal method of systematic theological teaching
is practically never found in the Old Covenant. The nearest approach
to this point of view, of timeless, abstract impersonal teaching, is
certainly in the Law. In early Israel, it is true, even the Torah is
entirely interwoven with the divine working in history. The giving
of the Law on Mount Sinai is only one moment in the history of the
Covenant; therefore the Law is never that abstract vo/xos which the
polemic of Saint Paul envisages; for even the Law is a gracious rev¬
elation. God always requires from His people, as the people of the
Covenant, fidelity to Himself, the God of the Covenant, the generous
God who “ elects ” and “ leads ” His people; He does not present
them with a “ catechism ” full of “ rules ” which they must obey.
Even the tables of stone of Sinai have something of the character of
sacramental signs of grace; they point toward God who has gra¬
ciously led Israel out of the house of bondage.16 And yet there clings
to the Law, especially to the Deuteronomic and priestly law, some¬
thing of a timeless, static element. It is not an accident that the Law
is carved on tables of stone, and thus fixed for all time. It establishes

12 Cf. Deut. 6:4; Isa. 44:6 ff.

13 For instance, Jer. 19:1; 28:1 if.
14 For instance, Isa. 45:1 If.; Ezek., chs. 17; 20.
15 As one example among many, see Ex., chs. 7; 8 to 10; 14 if.
16 Hence the later interpretation of the Ark as the receptacle for the Tables
of the Law and the expression “Ark of the Covenant.” Cf. Jer. 3:16 and Ex.
40:20.
88 Revelation and Reason

the divine will firmly, as something which is unchangeable, universal,

and valid for all time. The more the Law is severed from the histori¬
cal process of the revelation through which the Law was given, the
more man’s gaze is fastened upon the content of the Law, rather
than on the Lawgiver Himself, the more does the Law approach that
nomos which the Apostle Paul contrasts with the genuine revelation,
that which the Prophets proclaimed. The Law becomes an inde¬
pendent entity; it becomes an established system, which no longer
points away from itself to God; this being the case, the fulfillment
of the Law’s demands becomes something of independent value.
The prophetic “ word ” is quite different. It is the expression, it is
true, of the divine demand; it is the summons to repentance, the
threat of judgment, the consolation and the proclamation of salva¬
tion, all in one. Just as the Law of Sinai is not only and simply “ law,”
nomos, so also the prophetic word is not simply promise, “ gospel.”
But even where it makes demands, it is related to a situation; it is to
a high degree historical; it is an element in the divine revealing
action. It is always “ event-full ”; hence it is also always personal.
“ Thou art the man ” — here, now, at this moment, just as you are!
This word is itself “ saving ” history — even when it proclaims dis¬
aster; it is always the self-manifestation of the God who acts, who
moves forward, who “ comes,” who “ guides,” who moves steadily
on to His goal.17 In this sense it is always Messianic, even when it
does not contain the proclamation of the final Kingdom, or even of
the Messiah Himself. For it is always a self-presentation, a “ coming,”
a revealing movement of God. The explicitly Messianic prophecy,
therefore, grows naturally out of this “word.” It is actually that
which was always intended. It is concerned with the goal of the Rule
of God, and of complete communion with God.

7. The hidden center of the revelation of the Old Testament is the

“ name ” of God. Although the Old Testament may contain some
magical elements derived from the general sphere of religious
thought in the Near East of that day, yet at the heart of this mystery
of the divine “ name ” there is something specifically Hebrew; in¬
deed, this is actually the peculiar element of the divine revelation of
the Old Covenant. Here the decisive point is not the “ names ” given
17 Cf. Buber, Konigtum Gottes, 2d ed., p. 85: “ He who goes His way and
wills that man should follow Him there, He is the Living God.”
 Revelation as Promise: The Old Covenant 89

to God in the Old Testament; it is not even the significance of the

distinctive name of Yahweh — important as this is in its Yahwist mean¬
ing.18 The essential element is rather the role which the concept
“ name of the Lord ” plays within the Old Testament revelation.
The name is simply the revelation of God as Person. In His word
God says what He is, in His name He says who He is. The word re¬
veals the fullness of the content; the name reveals the unity and the
uniqueness of the divine Being. The “name” means: God Himself
is the One who makes Himself known. In the “ name ” God dis¬
closes His secret, but through the “ name ” He first makes Himself
truly Lord of His people. Thus in the “ name ” there is a wonderful
union of holiness, as the self-affirmation of God, and mercy, as the
self-giving of God. He condescends to proclaim His name in order
that all might know Him as the sublime One; He makes His secret
known, in order that He may be truly known and revered as tire One
who is full of mystery. The name is the personal Being of God, in the
freedom and personal character of His revelation.
This brings us to a third point: God reveals His name in order that
men should call upon Him; through the revelation of His name He
makes Himself accessible; He sets up communication; He establishes
community. Through the name it now becomes possible for man to
enter into communion with God. Hence the name is most closely re¬
lated to the Covenant. Since God unveils the mystery of His Person,
He establishes the Covenant; He binds Himself to His people, and
His people to Himself.19 Hence the revelation of “ the name ” is actu¬
ally the fundamental fact in the whole history of revelation. This is
why it is surrounded by signs and wonders. It is as though the heav¬
ens were opened and God Himself, in person, were coming forth from
the mystery of the world beyond. But in the act of unveiling His
mystery He becomes in very deed the mysterious One, whose wis¬
dom and love are unfathomable. His name is not (as it is so often
in the religious myths of other peoples) one which gives man power

18 On this, cf. Eichrodt, loc. cit., I, pp. 91 ff.; Grether, loc. cit., pp. 3-17. A
fact of immense significance in the history of thought is the Neoplatonist expo¬
sition of Ex. 3:14 since Origen. Here the Neoplatonist ontology finds its Biblical
point of contact, and this false ontology of the idea of God, especially its pseudo-
Biblical basis, dominates the whole of the Scholasticism and mysticism of the
Middle Ages.
19 The revelation of the name of God, Ex. 3:14 ff., is the beginning of the his¬
tory of revelation and of the Covenant.
90 Revelation and Reason

over God, but it is the name of the Lord, through which He asserts
and confirms His free and sovereign rule. The “ name ” of God, there¬
fore, is not merely a term which sums up all that God reveals. It is
true, of course, that to make His name known is the content and the
meaning of the whole revelation — just as the Johannine Christ sums
up the whole of His revelation in the words: “ I have made known
to them Thy name.” Yet the name of God is not merely a summary
of the divine attributes; rather, it expresses the truth that all revela¬
tion simply means: Himself. The Old Testament concept of the
“ name of God ” means that the point in all revelation is not merely
“ something,” or certain truths, but Himself.

8. In the Old Testament as in other sacred books, there are records

of theophanies. Here it is evident that the revelation of the Old
Testament is in contact with the religious world outside the Biblical
revelation. It should, however, be noted veiy seriously that even in
the most naive and childlike stories of the Old Testament the repre¬
sentation of the physical visibility of God’s presence is suggested
with great reserve. In these stories there is no trace of a delight in
inventing new myths, nor is there any desire for actual sense impres¬
sions. The spirit of the Second Commandment, which forbids man to
make an image of God, is here exercising a restraining influence. All
that the narrators of these theophanies want to express is the personal
presence of God, in His revealing activity. Later on even this relic of
popular mythology 20 disappears; the theophany becomes an indirect
manifestation of God through the “ angel of the Lord,” or some
other representative figure. In spite of the childlike form of the nar¬
rative in Ex., ch. 33, there is something magnificent about the dialec¬
tic of revelation and mystery which it contains; God reveals Himself
personally to Moses, it is true, but, He says, “ Thou shalt see My back:
but My face shall not be seen,” and at the same time He reveals to
Moses His mysterious name. In the great vision of Isaiah in the
Temple, which expresses the same duality — the presence of revela¬
tion, with a hidden mystery behind it — every vestige of myth has
been purged away. “ In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the
Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His tram filled
the Temple.” What the prophet actually sees and describes is not
the form of Yahweh, but of the seraphim, who cover their faces, the
20 Cf. Eichrodt, loc. cit., II, pp. 4 If.
 Revelation as Promise: The Old Covenant 91

hem of the garment which fills the Temple, the moving “ thresholds,”
the smoke. The vision culminates in the conversation between the
God who calls, and the Prophet who places himself at God’s disposal.
He has seen tire Lord, and he fears that for this cause he will have to
die. And yet he has not actually seen Him; he has only been aware of
His presence in what he has seen. The “ vision ” is rather the token of
tire reality of that which he “ hears,” the mysterious self-manifesta¬
tion of the God who is “ present ” in His mighty personal word.
This brings us to one final conception in which the revealing pres¬
ence of God was made known under tire Old Covenant: that of the
face of God.21 Here too at first there is an admixture of mythical
and magical ideas, but they gradually disappear, to such an extent,
indeed, that this expression has often been regarded merely as a
phrase which could easily be replaced by abstract conceptions. Cer¬
tainly the phrase, “ The Lord make His face to shine upon thee,” is
an expression of His grace, just as the converse, “ God hides His
face,” is an expression of His anger.22 But tire anthropomorphic way
of speaking is more than a mere form. The fact that God unveils or
hides His face is more than a general disposition; it is an act. God’s
“ countenance ” means the God who graciously unveils Himself to
men, who gives to them a share in His divine light and glory. Along¬
side of the main concepts of name, act, and word He says something
new; namely, that tire way to God is either open or closed, that His
gracious and glorious presence is either revealed or withdrawn from
man. But if we ask how this takes place, in what event the revealing
or the hiding is accomplished, we find ourselves in some embarrass¬
ment. It is as though the Old Testament were pointing forward to
something which had not yet actually taken place. This may be the
reason why, in the Prophets and in The Psalms, where there is
scarcely a trace of magical or mythical elements, the expression the
“ face ” (of God) oscillates between reality and a mere manner of
speech.23 It is not until we come to the New Testament that the full,
concrete reality of what is meant by the “ face ” of God is disclosed.

9. In His word God discloses to man — first of all to His Chosen

People, the people of the Covenant — the mystery of His name; His
21 Cf. Eichrodt, loc. cit., II, pp. 12 ff.; Kohler, loc. cit., pp. 108 ff. “ The face
of God is the revelation of the grace of God ” (Kohler).
22 Num. 6:25; Ps. 69:18; 104:29; Ezek. 39:23; Isa. 54:8; II Chron. 30:9.
23 Eichrodt, op. cit., p. 13.
92 Revelation and Reason

absolute mystery as Person; that which no human being could pos¬

sibly know of God by himself, that too which no revelation in Creation
can reveal, namely, the “ mystery of His will,” 24 His forgiving love,
which freely gives and freely chooses. That is the inmost core of the
mystery of His name. The name of God is not one name among
other names; it is the name, just as His word is not one word among
others, but the word. For tire name means the One who unveils the
mystery of His Person and imparts Himself; but God alone is the
absolute Mystery, the One who absolutely imparts Himself. That is
His name: the Lord God who comes to men. The whole of revelation
means this name; the whole of the word of God is this uttering of
the name of God by Plimself. It is concerned with God Himself, and
with the God who names Himself because He wills that man should
have communion with Him.
Only in the act of divine Self-communication, only in His word
(which is not at our disposal) can this mystery of His name be given
to us. It is only this word of God which is, in an unconditional sense,
the word of communication, and therefore absolutely — the Word;
it is only toward this word that man is absolutely receptive. And yet
what we call “ word ” is not sufficient to name this name, to reveal
this mysteiy. The feeble vessel cannot hold this content; speech is
not sufficient to grasp God’s word. Hence when God names His
name it is more than speech; it is a creative act, a miraculous event.
When God speaks, He does not only speak: “ For He spake, and it was
done; He commanded, and it stood fast.”26 When God issues forth
from His mystery, and the name of God enters into the sphere of hu¬
man life, tremendous and unimaginable tilings happen, in comparison
with which everything else that could happen scarcely deserves to
be called an “ event.” The word of God which reveals His name is
like a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces;26 it is like a devour¬
ing fire.27 What we call “ word,” “ speech,” is only an imperfect simile
or parable for this. God’s word never ends in words.
When God names Flis name, when He unveils His mystery, the
light of the divine Life breaks forth, die glory of God streams into
the life of this earth; this light is die outshining of His gracious per¬
sonal presence, the glory which surrounds Himself, His name, His
Person. His revelation in a “ word ” which is an act, through which

24 Eph. 1:9. 26 Jer. 23:29.

25 Ps. 33:9. 27 Deut. 4:24.
 Revelation as Promise: The Old Covenant 93

He makes known to us His name, enables us to share in the “ light

of His countenance.” So the one points to the other, the word to the
act, the act to the word, and both point to the name as their real
hidden meaning. But the name is the living, glorious, gracious pres¬
ence of the divine “ Thou,” which establishes fellowship with the
human “ I,” and sets up His rule in man through His gracious pres¬
ence. It is only in the union of these elements that we understand
what is meant by revelation in the Old Testament.
And yet — a final unity is missing. Word and event are still sepa¬
rate; the name still points to a Person who makes Himself known,
it is true, but He is not personally present in this Self-communica¬
tion. Hence it is the idea of the “ face ” of God, above all, which
describes this personal gracious presence as the open mystery of
grace, which seems like an unfulfilled promise. Then where is God’s
face to be seen? Where is He of whom it can be said: “We beheld
His glory? ” 27a The Old Testament can tell us of Him only in shadowy
pictures of the future. He in whom we behold the face of God is
not yet present, in whom the personal mysteiy of God is disclosed
to man, tire divine “ Thou,” who as a concrete person addresses us,
tire incarnate divine Word; He is still only promised.

10. Revelation took place in Israel. God has spoken. He has made
known His name. But the distinctive element in this revelation is
that it is also the promise of revelation. It is a revelation which points
forward to a future revelation, which will itself finally satisfy the
longing for revelation and for salvation, the complete revelation, in
comparison with which all tire revelation which has so far been
granted is imperfect and transitoiy. The Old Testament revelation —
in the old sense of tire word — is prophetic, foretelling, looking to
the future.
This forward look, this interest in the future, was a fundamental
feature of the earliest history of Yahwism, of the Mosaic establishment
of the Covenant, and of the history of revelation. Even in very primi¬
tive times the gaze of men was directed forward to something which
was yet to come, even if this which “ was to come ” is concealed
within images conceived in purely earthly terms. First of all it is
only the earthly “ Promised Land,” the land “ flowing with nrilk and
honey,” and an earthly, and even warlike, Kingdom, by means of
27a John 1:14.
94 Revelation and Reason

which Israel will be victorious over other nations. And yet from the
veiy beginning it is surrounded by a light which is not simply due
to high-flown language. “ It is the religious understanding of the
final historical goal, not an imitative deification of Kingship. _8 The
“ Star out of Jacob,” 29 is not merely a more powerful King; the gaze
into the future until the Ruler comes “ unto whom shall the obedi¬
ence of the peoples be ” 30 is not the product of merely human wish¬
ful thinking. Ever more plainly does this coming “ Shoot ’ out of the
House of David assume supernatural features. He is a “ great light,”
which “ the people that walked in darkness ” shall behold.31 His
name “ shall be called wonderful Counsellor, mighty God, everlast¬
ing Father, Prince of Peace.”32
He is the Good Shepherd who seeks for the sheep which “ were
scattered upon all the face of the earth who will gather together
those who were scattered, who will deliver them, and “ will bind up
that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick.” 33
This Shepherd is God Himself, and yet — in the same chapter in
Ezekiel — He is also “ My servant David ” who “ shall feed them,
and be their shepherd.”34 He is called Immanuel, “ God with us.” 35
His name is: “ the Lord is our Salvation.” 36 He will betroth Himself
unto His people, so that they can call Him “ my Husband ”;37 He
is the Mediator of the Covenant for mankind;38 He is called the
“ Light of the Nations.” 39 He is the One in whom the promise will be
fulfilled that God will dwell among His people, in His own gracious
presence.40
The early Christians were right in regarding the promise of the
Suffering Servant of the Lord in a Messianic sense. After wandering
for long in error, scientific exegesis has at last found its way back to
this initial truth.41 This final form of the Messianic hope differs
widely from these visions of the future which dwelt on the warlike
qualities of the King-Messiah, and on thoughts of a paradise on
earth; here we have the “ man of sorrows,”42 who “ hath no form

28 Eichrodt, loc. cit,, I, p. 259. 36 Jer. 23:6.

29 Num. 24:17. 37 Hos. 2:16.
30 Gen. 49:10. 38 Isa. 42:6.
31 Isa. 9:Iff. 39 Isa. 42:6.
32 Isa. 9:1 ff. 40 Ezek. 43:9; 37:27.
33 Ezek. 34:11 ff. 41 Cf. Eichrodt, loc. cit., I, p. 276.
34 Ezek. 34:23. 42 Isa. 53:1 ff.
35 Isa. 7:14.
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 95
nor comeliness,” upon whom was laid “ the chastisement of our
peace,” and by whose “ stripes we are healed ”; “ He was oppressed,
yet He humbled Himself and opened not His mouth; as a lamb that
is led to the slaughter,” who “ made His soul an offering for sin ” and
“ was numbered with the transgressors, yet He bare the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.” The zenith of the divine
revelation in the Old Covenant is this nadir of sorrow. It is thus that
God will be present among His people, in order that He may really
be with them. It is thus that He will search after them as the Good
Shepherd. In this form of revelation He will make Himself known
to us in the inmost secret of His Person, in this “ sacred Head now
wounded, with grief and shame bowed down this is where He
makes known to us His real name; this act of representative suffering
is to be His decisive word of revelation. Here we stand on the very
threshold of the New Covenant.

8. REVELATION AS FULFILLMENT:
JESUS CHRIST
The New Testament and the Primitive Church united in the
declaration that God has finally and completely revealed the secret
of His being and His will in the Person of Jesus, in His life, death,
and resurrection. “ The mystery of Christ, which in other generations
was not made known unto the sons of man, as it hath now been re¬
vealed.” 1 “ I have manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou
gavest Me ”;2 it is thus that in the Gospel of John, in His last words
to His disciples, Jesus gathers up His lifework. “ Grace and truth
came by Jesus Christ.” 3 The word “ revelation,” it is true, does not
express all that the Apostolic Church has to say in its testimony to
Him as the Son of God. The Primitive Church does not lay most
emphasis upon this aspect of His work; the Apostolic testimony is
rather on Christ’s work of reconciliation and atonement; on the
restoration of man to communion with God, and the establishment of
the Rule of God. The one cannot be separated from the other; the
one presupposes the other. In our present study, however, we are only
concerned with this one point: Does Jesus bring the final revelation?
To what extent, and in what sense, is this true of Him? What is the
1 Eph. 3:5. 2 John 17:6. 3 John 1:17.
96 Revelation and Reason

relation between the revelation in Him, and the revelation which

preceded His coming?

1. What is the relation between this revelation in Christ and gen¬

eral revelation? or the revelation in the Creation? This question has
already been answered.0 Here our aim is to place what was said there
in this new context. The prologue to Saint John’s Gospel, which to
some extent deals with the same problem, may be taken as our guide
in this inquiry. In Jesus Christ there comes to us, in person, the
Word which was “ in the beginning,” the Word by whom “ all things
were made,” 4 the Word which “ was the Light of men,” the Light
which “ shineth in the darkness,” but which the darkness “ appre¬
hended not the true Light which “ lighteth every man ” who was
“ in the world,” as indeed “ the world was made by Him,” 5 but “ the
world knew Him not.” It is explicitly stressed that this Word did not
come to strangers, to those to whom it was absolutely new. No, “ He
came unto His own.” Thus the prologue emphasizes the fact that
there is a unity between Him who speaks to us in the original revela¬
tion, and in the new revelation in Jesus Christ. The Word of the
“ beginning ” is indeed not only the Word of creation, but also the
mighty Word who “ upholds all things by the word of His power 6
He is the eternal Son “ in whom all things cohere;7 in whom we “ all
live and move and have our being 8 through whom “ God is not far
from any one of us ”; through whom it is possible for us not only “ to
seek ” God, but “ to find ” Him.9 This Word is the principle of that
truth ’ which can be found from God, since “ God manifested it
unto them (all) since the creation of the world,”10 “ that they may
be without excuse ” if, in spite of this, they live and behave as those
who do not know God. This Word of the “ beginning ” has come to
us in Jesus.
Hence the Revealer is the same, it is true, but the form of the
revelation, or the manner of revelation, is entirely different. It is as
9 See Chapter 6.
4 Cf. Bultmann, Das J ohannesevangelium, p. 20, “ The world is God’s crea¬
tion, and as such, God’s revelation.”
5 Cf. Bultmann, loc. cit., p. 25, specially n. 3. Calvin, Works, 47, 9, under¬
stands this “ Light ” as lux rationis, because, indeed, “ it enlightens all men.”
6 Heb. 1:3.
7 Col. 1:17.
8 Acts 17:27.
9 Acts 17:27.
10 Rom. 1:19.
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 97
different as the works of creation, and nature miracles, are different
from the figure of the God-man, the historical Person of the Re¬
deemer. The two forms of the revelation are so different that we may
well ask whether we ought to describe them both by the same word,
revelation.” The Apostle Paul, however — the Apostle who was
determined to preach nothing but “ Christ Crucified ” — is not afraid
of doing this; indeed, it is he in particular who calls our attention to
the great difference between the two forms of revelation. The revela¬
tion in the Creation gives us knowledge of “ the everlasting power and
divinity ” of the Creator;11 the law that is written in men’s hearts 12
enables us to know the “ ordinance of God.” 13 But the general revela¬
tion is not able to disclose to us His plan for the world, His will of
redemption, His holy love, His mercy. As the method of revelation
is itself an impersonal, nonhistorical, static one — the works of crea¬
tion, the Law, the fact that man has been made in the image of God
— so also the truth that it conveys throws no light upon God’s inten¬
tions toward us in our actual situation in history. This earlier form of
revelation provides no answer to the question. What does God in¬
tend to do with us — with us, sinful human beings? Hence this
revelation still leaves man with the “ mystery of His will,”14 until, in
the “ fuhiess of the time,” 15 in the “ economy ” of revelation which
is called Jesus Christ, it is made known unto us “ according to His
good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the dis¬
pensation of the fulness of times, He might gather together in one
all things in Christ.” 16 As the form of the revelation itself is also pre-
historical and nonhistorical, so also tire content of the former revela¬
tion is comparatively impersonal. The form of the revelation cor¬
responds to its content. The general revelation is not a personal
encounter; nor is its content the “ attitude of God toward us ” (Cal¬
vin). In comparison with the revelation given to us in Jesus Christ,
this constitutes the decisive limitation of the earlier revelation; this,
too, is why this earlier revelation is able to make each human being
realize his responsibility in the sight of God, but there it stops: it
has no saving power.

2. In the New Testament the doctrine of the relation between

the revelation in Jesus Christ and that of the Old Covenant is far
more complex and far more explicit.

11 Rom. 1:19. 18 Rom. 1:32. 15 Gal. 4:4.

12 Rom. 2:14 ff. 14 Eph. 1:9. 16 Eph. 1:9.
98 Revelation and Reason

At first sight, the teaching of the New Testament on the relation

between the Old and the New Covenant, on the preparatory revela¬
tion and that in the historical Person of Jesus, the Christ, is not uni¬
fied; indeed, it sometimes seems to be contradictory. In addition to
statements which suggest a complete identity of content in the two
revelations in the Old and New Testaments, which therefore seem
to assert the same knowledge and salvation for the “ Church ” of the
Old Testament as for that of the New, there are others which make a
sharp distinction between the Old and the New, and indeed are
as opposed to one another as death and life, wrath and grace. “ The
law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” 17
“For if the ministration of condemnation is glory ” — that is, the
Mosaic form of revelation, in which the “ glory ” shone from the face
of Moses — “ much rather doth the ministration of righteousness ex¬
ceed in glory.” In this passage, indeed, even that which had glory
is without glory, on account of the surpassing glory of the New Cove¬
nant.18 But when we examine these two views more closely, although
at first sight they may seem to be contradictory, it becomes plain
that, since the same Apostle holds them both, they are only his way
of stressing first one aspect and then another of the same truth; thus,
finally, we see that Paul does not identify the Old Covenant with the
New; nor does he consider that they contradict each other. In the
view of the Church of the New Testament the relation between it
and the Church of the Old Covenant, between the revelation in the
Old Testament and the revelation in Jesus Christ, is expressed in the
category of promise and fulfillment, in that of the preparatory revela¬
tion and the perfect revelation. That which has been fulfilled is the
same as that which had been foretold, it is true, because it was the
goal of prophecy; but at the same time it is something entirely dif¬
ferent, because it is a present reality, and no longer merely a vision of
the future.
Thus where, as in the orthodox view, revelation is identified with
supernaturally communicated doctrinal truth,19 the difference be¬
tween that which was foretold and its fulfillment can well be ig¬
nored. It is timeless; that is, it is a doctrine perfectly communicated

17 John 1:17.
18 II Cor. 3:9.
19 “ Doctrina prophetica cum apostolorum exacte congruitJ. Gerhard, Loci
theol., I, p. 73.
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 99

in one form of revelation and imperfectly in another. This point of

view leaves out of account the decisive element in the Biblical rev¬
elation, namely, its historical character. The same may be said of a
more modern view, which represents the relation between the Old
and the New Covenant through the parable of the Prophet who looks
forward and the Apostle who looks backward;20 both see the same
Christ: the Prophet sees Him in the future, the Apostle sees Him as
he looks backward. There is a certain danger in this way of looking
at the subject; time is replaced by space. Here again we see that the
timeless idea outweighs the historical character of our understand¬
ing of the Biblical revelation. We have no right to destroy the dis-
crimen temporum by the spatial image. The ideas of “ before ” and
“ behind,” of “ forward ” and “ backward ” in space, are fundamentally
different from the ideas of “ before ” and “ afterward ” in time. Be¬
tween the prophetic prevision of the Christ and the actual experience
of the Church of the New Testament there lies an immense gulf: be¬
tween that which has been merely foretold, and that which has actu¬
ally happened. It is true that Jesus says in the Gospel of John: “ Abra¬
ham rejoiced to see My day 21 and certainly Paul says at one point
that Christ wandered with the ancient people of the Old Covenant in
the wilderness, and that spiritually He fed them and gave them water
to drink,22 but he says also, and far more frequently, and with more
emphasis: “ But now . . .” God has made a new beginning in Jesus
Christ ”;23 for that which had only been promised has now actually
taken place. Why is this so? How are we to distinguish the form of
revelation of the New Covenant from that of the Old?

3. First of all, we must deal quite briefly with two inadequate at¬
tempts to explain what the New Testament means by the revelation
in Christ. Those who hold the rationalist view contend that the
revelation in Jesus consists in the fact that He perceived and taught
eternal religious truths,24 and, further, that He did so before anyone
else, and more clearly, powerfully, and definitely than anyone else
had ever done. Today it is obvious, without further discussion, that
20 Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, I, 2, par. 14.
21 John 8:56.
22 I Cor. 10:4.
23 Rom. 3:21; II Cor. 3:10; Gal. 4:4; 3:25; Eph. 1:5; Col. 1:26.
24 Harnack, Wesen des Christentums, p. 81, “ Jesus is convinced that He
knows God in a way no one has ever known Him before, and He knows that He
is called to communicate to others this knowledge of God by word and deed.
100 Revelation and Reason

this was never the view of the New Testament itself. As a teacher
of divine truth Jesus is simply one among many others, even if He is
primus inter pares; and as a teacher of this kind He Himself — as is
true of every teacher — has no essential significance for the matter
in hand. The good teacher makes himself superfluous; it is his object
to bring everyone else to the point which he himself has reached.
It is quite evident that this is not the position accorded to Jesus in the
New Testament.
Rationalist thinkers have tried to compensate for the obvious in¬
adequacy of this interpretation by means of a second conception,
namely, that Jesus is not only the greatest Teacher of mankind: He
is also the perfect Example of that which He teaches. It is true,
of course, that even in tire New Testament Jesus is held up to the
Church as an example and a model; but this is not the basis for man’s
faith in Him; this is not why He is Redeemer and Saviour. The
difference between the Example and other men is only a relative dif¬
ference; as our Example Jesus stands upon the side of man, and
not on the side of God. Even the most perfect human example cannot
reveal anything. Even where the Example is conceived as the “ Origi¬
nal Image” [Urbild] of piety (Schleiermacher), or as the perfect
realization of the moral idea (Ritschl), this does not take us any
farther; for neither of these ideas goes, in principle, beyond the
sphere of the human and the immanent.25 This idea of the perfect
Example does not reveal a divine mystery to man; rather, here man
merely sees the perfection of his own religious or moral faculty or
possibility. The same is true of the idea — used so frequently from
the time of the Romantic Movement — of the religious genius. Quite
apart from the fact that the transference of this aesthetic category to
the religious sphere is of questionable validity, we are still moving
within the sphere of immanence. Even the genius is simply the
intensification of the potentiality which, in principle, is latent in
every human being. What the genius discovers first of all can after
this be grasped by every ordinary man, more or less clearly, by him¬
self. Geniuses are pioneers in human life, but they are not the heralds
of that which to man as man is in principle a transcendent mystery;
but it is precisely this which is meant by revelation.26

25 Cf. my book Der Mittler, pp. 49-77. [English trans., The Mediator, Chap¬
ter III, O. Wyon. Tr.]
26 Cf. my book The Word and the World, p. 13.
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 101

The Biblical idea of the Prophet is something quite different. Here

we have the disclosure of a mystery from the world beyond; the
sphere of immanence has been transcended. The Prophet — under¬
standing the word in its strictly Biblical sense — actually makes
known a divine mystery. But even this interpretation, if applied to
Jesus, breaks down when it is applied to the actual situation in the
New Testament. There are many Prophets, major and minor —but
Jesus claims to stand above them all, as One who is “ more than a
Prophet by the revelation in Christ the New Testament does not
mean an intensification of that which was there already — Jesus is
not the greatest and highest of all Prophets! He is not the primus
inter pares. To the writers of the New Testament Jesus is the “ Only
Begotten,” who, by His very nature, can only be One; who, therefore,
by His very nature, is different from the greatest of the Prophets.27
What does the New Testament mean by the expression, “ More than
a Prophet ”?

4. In the attempt to give an answer to this question on the basis

of the witness of the New Testament, we are not trying to solve the
mystery of the Person of Jesus; rather, the explanation will serve
precisely to protect the depths of this mystery against misunder¬
standing and superficiality, and to point clearly and unambiguously
towards the true mystery, namely, the dual mystery which is indeed
only one: the mystery of revelation and the mystery of God. In order
to understand what the New Testament means by the revelation in
and through Christ we will start first of all from the prophetic word
of the Old Testament. In this “ word ” God makes known His holy
and gracious will, which otherwise was hidden; in His word of reve-

27 The Primitive Church described this categorical uniqueness of Jesus, a

uniqueness which excluded all other comparisons, by the title of Christ-Messiah,
Son of God and Lord. The question to what extent Jesus Himself used these
titles of Himself is entirely secondary, compared with the fact - which is ad¬
mitted even by extremely liberal scholars — that “ Jesus felt Himself to be the
Son of God in a very special way ” (Weinel, Biblische Theologie des NT, p.
207), that all His speaking and all His deeds were “ acts of the Messianic self-
consciousness of Jesus” (Albert Schweitzer). There can be no difference of
opinion about the fact of this consciousness of being “ more than a prophet ”
(Matt. 12:41 ff.). Its interpretation, however, is not an academic matter; it be¬
longs to the realm of faith. No liberal theologian has yet been able to tell us
what liberal theology means by a being who is “ more than a prophet, and yet
is not He whom the Apostles mean by their titles of honor.
102 Revelation and Reason

lation God discloses the mystery of His personal Being. The pro¬
phetic word is a word from the sphere of the Transcendent; it is not
a word of reason; it does not reveal anything that man can already
discover by the use of his reason; it is something entirely different
from an eternal truth, or an idea which suddenly dawns upon the
mind of man. It is a real communication of something, which, apart
from this communication, cannot be known; hence the one who
receives that which is imparted is always conscious that it has been
“ given.” It is God’s word: the expression of His decree, of His saving
and redeeming will. And yet it is incomplete. It is merely a “ word ”
from God; it is not God Himself, present, speaking, acting. This
“ word ” comes from God Himself, certainly, but God Himself does
not meet us in person in this Word. The Prophet himself is merely
the one who brings this message; he is not the content of the message.
Hence he points away from himself to the God who has given him his
commission: “ Thus saith the Lord ”! The lips through which the
message comes and the “ word ” which they communicate are not
the same; the Prophet who meets us as a person and the word which
is spoken through him are two separate entities, and the person of
the Prophet, and the person of the God of whom he speaks are also
two. The personality of God remains in the sphere of transcendence,
far above us. There is still no unity between him who speaks and the
word that is spoken, between the content of the message and the
person who delivers it.
In the New Testament, however, all the writers testify that in
Christ this “ unity ”28 has been accomplished. Therefore Jesus is
not a Prophet, but “more than a Prophet.” To be “more than a
Prophet,” however, can only mean that the Person who speaks and
the content of His divine message are one. Hence Jesus never says,
“ Thus saith the Lord,” but, “ I say unto you ”; He does not say, “ God
forgives thee thy sins,” but, “ Thy sins are forgiven thee.” He does not
point away from Himself to the One who has commissioned Him, but

28 Kiimmel, in “Jesus und Paulus” (Theol. Bl., 1940, p. 220), shows this
very plainly: “ Beyond that, Jesus was not only aware of being One with a divine
commission, One who proclaims the divine word in the manner of the Prophets,
but He claimed that in His person, His teachings, His acts, the final salvation,
the final decision was already breaking into human life. . . . When confronted
by Jesus we have to decide whether we will accept His authority, or whether
we will reject it, and only from this standpoint can we decide whether His teach¬
ing is valid or not.”
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 103
He actually lays great stress on the unity between His person and
His commission. “ I am come ...” The transcendent Source from
which the mysterious “ word ” issues is no longer “ yonder,” in the
other world, but “ here.” The Rule of God is no longer a promise for
the future; in Him it is present — apa ecfrOacrep «/>’ vpas 17 /3acnXeia rod
0eoD 29 — it is “ among you.” While the Prophet disappears behind
his message — he is not its content; he is die messenger who has to
bring it to man — in Jesus, message and person are one. He Himself
comes forth from die mystery of transcendence, just as previously
the prophetic word had issued dience. This is the relation between
the Old and the New Covenant: “The Word became flesh, and we
beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of the Father,
full of grace and truth.” 30

5. A discussion of die idea of authority will help to make this point

clearer. Within the sphere of immanence, that is, within the sphere
which, in principle, is at the disposal of man, there is no real author¬
ity. We speak, it is true, of scientific authorities, but by this we mean
merely the relative truth that there are individuals who at present
know more — or even a great deal more — than other people; but by
tomorrow they may be outstripped by others. The same is true of the
state and of education: here too there are “authorities”; but they
too are only relative and not of absolute significance. It is, indeed,
part of the dignity of man that he feels he cannot recognize any kind
of absolute authority. So long as we are within the purely human
sphere, absolute authority is impossible, because in principle all of
us, as human beings, have equal rights — even though the actual dif¬
ferences between us may be great.
The prophetic word, on the other hand, has absolute authority and
power. This authority does not reside in the Prophet as a person; he
himself is “ no one ”; he is anonymous. We do not even know the
name of the greatest of the Prophets of the Old Testament, and we
know nothing at all about his life. The Prophet has no authority, but
his “ word ” has power precisely because it is not his word, but the
word of God, which invests it with divine authority. It is binding for
everyone who becomes aware of it; it binds with the force of the
ultimate and unfathomable divine authority. Hence it can never
reach a higher degree of authority — except when the authority of
29 Matt. 12:28. 30 Iohnl:14.
104 Revelation and Reason

the word is transferred to the person who utters it. The authority or
the force of the prophetic word as the authority of a person, who is
here and now present — that is the category of the Messiah, the
Christ, the personal presence of the God who is sovereign Lord and
the God who creates community.81 The mystery of divine personal
authority is the mystery of Jesus and the mystery of the New Testa¬
ment revelation. That is why the Kingdom of God is here no longer
future, and therefore remote, but present. That is why here there is no
longer the promise of divine deliverance, but the presence of God,
mighty to save. That is why, for the first time, we here find complete
revelation. For the personal God can reveal Himself only in a per¬
sonal revelation. In the person of Jesus of Nazareth the person of
God Himself, the holy and the merciful Lord, encounters us.

6. As the Fulfiller of the promises of the Old Testament revelation,

Christ is made known to us in His threefold office.32 He is first of all
the Lord, the Messianic King. His Kingdom, it is true, “ is not of this
world,”33 and His way of ruling is strange to mortal eyes, for He
Himself says that He has come “ not to be ministered unto but to
minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” 34 He is a remark¬
able King, who girds Himself with the servant’s apron and washes the
feet of His disciples before He leaves them;35 He is the King who is

31 When Bultmann (“Jesus und Paulus,” Beiheft 2, Evangelische Theologie,

p. 82), says, “ Jesus did not demand faith in His person, but faith in His word,”
and then further (p. 85) tries to eliminate from the witness of Paul all “ theo¬
logical mythology,” it remains a question whether his understanding of Christ
is not, at the decisive point, that of merely prophetic authority, that is, that of
the word in contrast to the unity of the person and the word.
32 If the doctrine of Jesus Christ is to remain true to the witness of the New
Testament, it must start from His work. In the New Testament what God does
through Jesus Christ is the key to what Jesus Christ is. Above all, the New Testa¬
ment title of Christ, Messiah, shows that the statements about the Lord are to
be taken as showing the works of God. It is no accident that Reformed theology
has again taken up the doctrine of Christ’s threefold office. The Christology of
the Early Church, under the influence of Greek speculation, reversed this rela¬
tion, and ignored the doctrine of the work of Christ in favor of the metaphysical
mystery of His person. The theologians of the Reformation returned to the Bib¬
lical line, with their insistence on the truth that “ hoc est Christum cognoscere,
beneficia ejus cognoscere ”• but they did not carry the breach with the tradi¬
tional Christology far enough.
33 John 18:36.
34 Matt. 20:28.
35 John 13:4 ff.
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 105
“ despised and rejected,” and who allows Himself to be crucified.36 But
it was thus that the greatest of the writing Prophets had seen Him;
this prophecy Jesus must fulfill,37 in order to set up God’s Kingdom
on earth. For it is precisely in this self-giving, generous love that He
rules;38 it is this love which He commands His disciples to have for
others: “ Whosoever would become great among you shall be your
servant.” 39 In Him the sovereign will of God confronts us with Him
who lays His absolute claim upon us; here He stands forth personally
present before our eyes. In Him God’s holy claim to rule has become
person. For the community of the faithful He is absolutely Marana,
Kyrios, our Lord.40 This, too, is why, in Him, at last there is a clear
separation between Church and State — which in the Old Testament
was still somewhat ambiguous — between the fellowship of faith and
the organization of power. Jesus Christ, the true King-Messiah, is
the end of all the theocratic kingship and of the hierocracy peculiar
to the Old Covenant; for this very reason He is the Bringer of the
New Covenant.41
He is also the Fulfiller and the End of the Israelite priesthood and
the sacrificial system. The cultus of the Old Covenant was designed
to point toward the communion of God with men. The aim of sacri¬
fice was to abolish the separation between God and man, and to
introduce the Presence, the dwelling of God among men. Neither
was possible; the cultus merely suggested something which ought to
happen. It was, so to speak, an unfulfilled postulate, and one which
could not be fulfilled. But in spite of all the protests of the Prophets
it remained, and it had to remain, until it could be truly abrogated by
means of the true Sacrifice, the true Priest, the true Atonement,
and the true presence of God. This sense that “ something ought to

36 Isa. 53:3.
37 Luke 24:46.
38 John 15:9 ff.
39 Matt. 20:26.
40 I Cor. 16:22.
41 Today in particular it is not necessary to call attention to the mistaken
view that the Old and New Testaments are the same, and to lay stress on the
fact of these fundamental differences between the “ church ” of the Old Testa¬
ment and the Church of the New Testament. Just as dangerous as a false dis¬
tinction between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world is a false
theocracy, which blurs the frontier between the two, and ascribes State predi¬
cates to the regnum Christi. If the one error is that of Lutheranism, the other is
the temptation of the Reformed Church.
106 Revelation and Reason

happen ” was the main justification for its existence; but the moment
that this “ something ” took place, it came to an end. Nothing in the
Old Covenant has been abrogated more completely by Christ than
the Temple, the priesthood, and the sacrificial system. Nowhere,
therefore, is the difference between the two Testaments so plain as
it is here; nowhere has the significance of the difference between that
which was merely foretold — that which had been merely suggested
in a shadowy manner —and that which has actually happened be¬
come so visible and actual as in that which has taken place in Christ
once for all, in the redemption through His blood.42
The sacrifice of Christ, as well as His Kingship, is revelation, and,
indeed, it is the center of all revelation. The Cross of Christ is not
only the highest point in the whole history of our redemption, but
also of the whole history of revelation. “ But now apart from the law
a righteousness of God hath been manifested.” 43 The decisive word
of the revelation of the divine name was uttered on the night before
Good Friday, in the very presence of the Cross.44 The Lord’s Cross
reveals both the sternness of the divine righteousness, in its penal
aspect, and in the demand for expiation, and the unfathomable,
generous love of God, and thus the union of the holiness and the
mercy of God. Here “ word ” and “ revelation ” are one; the vicarious
suffering of Jesus effects the reconciliation, but it also reveals the
depths of sin and of the love of God. But this effect is not something
abstract, which exists “ in itself; ” it is for “ all those who believe.”45
Only when we add, in our thinking, that which takes place in the
heart of the believer to what happened on the Cross does the unity
of atonement and revelation become intelligible. Hence the deliberate
emphasis upon the phrase, “ For all who believe,” 46 in all the cru¬
cial passages that deal with the fact of the Atonement. Only where I
know that this “ happened for me ” do I also understand that here I
encounter the holy and the merciful Lord. Only through the identifi-
42 The document which itself makes a clear distinction between the
“ church ” of the Old Testament and the Church of the New, from this point of
view, is the Epistle to the Hebrews. Therefore we are on firm ground if we
start from this Epistle, if we are to understand the unity and the nonunity of
the two Testaments, promise and fulfillment, in their relation within the plan
of salvation.
43 Rom. 3:21.
44 John 17:6.
45 Rom. 3:22.
46 For instance: John 1:12; 3:16; Rom. 1:16; Gal. 1:22 ff.
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 107

cation which faith effects between me and Christ do I grasp the

identification which Christ effects between us and our guilt, as the
revelation of the inmost heart of the mystery of God. The pro nobis be¬
comes revelation through the in nobis; the vicarious act becomes
truth in the change of subject which takes place in faith: I live,
and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I
now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of
God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.”47 The Atonement
becomes truth where my untruth is unveiled, and the love of God is
disclosed as the primal Truth. The priestly service of Christ is the
same as His service to, and through, the truth.48 He atones by de¬
stroying the lie of sin, and by affirming the truth of God. But the
converse is also true: here we are not only concerned with the re¬
moval of a religious misunderstanding — namely, that God is angry
with man and desires to punish him 49 — but this truth can remove
the lie of sin only through the fact of vicarious penal suffering. This
truth can be revealed only in this conflict between light and dark¬
ness. Thus the royal Kingship and the atoning act are one, and both
are one with the revelation.
The central point, however, in the Old Testament revelation is
neither the Kingship nor the priesthood, but the fact of prophecy.
The Prophet is the herald of the will of God par excellence; he,
therefore, is the real bearer of the revelation. The contemporaries of
Jesus regarded Him at first as “ one of the Prophets.” 50 His lifework,
it is true, was “ Prophetic ” in character; indeed, we might even say
that, until He entered upon the Way of the Cross, Jesus was a
Prophet. His teaching, however, differs from that of the Prophets
in the fact that He proclaims the Rule of God as one which begins
in Him and through Him, and that He does not, like the Prophets,
appeal to a “ word ” from God which has come to Him; He speaks
and acts on His own authority, and, therefore (secretly, if not often
explicitly) He always points toward Himself as the decisive element
or the center of His teaching. But it was not until the events of Good

*7 Gal. 2:20 ff.

« John 17:17. .
49 That is the misunderstanding of the Abelardian, subjective view which
recurs in the teaching of Ritschl. It is opposed by the equally non-Biblical ob¬
jective doctrine of satisfaction of Anselm, which was also taken over by Prot¬
estant orthodoxy, according to which God Himself had to be reconciled.
50 Matt. 16:14; 21:11.
108 Revelation and Reason

Friday and Easter Day that He finally left the sphere of the Proph¬
ets behind Him. Only then did it become clear that the real Word
of God was not His teaching but Himself, Plis coming and His Self¬
offering. He could not proclaim the death and the resurrection of the
Lord because He Himself had to suffer this death and experience this
resurrection.51 In this sense we might indeed say that to some extent
His teaching still belonged to the sphere of the Old Covenant, and
that in the full sense of the word the teaching of the Apostles is the
distinctive teaching of the New Testament, were it not for the fact
that in thinking of His teaching we must always add to it, as its real
inner meaning, Himself, who utters it with the authority of God. In
itself the Sermon on the Mount, that is, when we look at the literal
sense of the actual words, is only the final intensification of the
“ Law ” of the Old Testament;62 it is only something completely and
fundamentally different when, in it, we hear Himself speaking, the
One who alone fulfilled the Law, and as the Lord of the Church makes
clear to us the claim of God upon us. The decisive turning point
between the Old and the New Covenant is not the “ Gospel of Jesus,”
but the Gospel of which Jesus is the Center. That is why He speaks
of the New Covenant only on the last night of His life on earth; at
the very point, that is, where His teaching is ended, and He is about
to do that which takes place once for all. This is the end, quite defi¬
nitely, not only of the theocracy and the priestly cultus of the Old
Testament, but also of prophecy.

61 This is the reason liberal theology believed, for so long, that it could ap¬
peal to the “ Synoptic Picture of Jesus ” over against the “ Pauline ” picture, and
Harnack, at least with a semblance of justification, maintained that it is not the
Son, but the Father alone, who belongs to the Gospel which Jesus proclaimed.
The necessary incognito of Christ due to the exigencies of His historical voca¬
tion was not understood. On the other hand, this is the reason why the theme
of the “ glorification ” of Jesus in the Gospel of John appears only at the end of
the story of Jesus. It is not until the event of Easter that the incognito of Jesus
is lifted, and this, too, only for “ those who believe.” Cf. Kunneth, Theologie der
Auferstehung, pp. 85 ff.
62 This is the element of truth in the Christological exposition of the Sermon
on the Mount by Thurneysen (“Die Bergpredigt,” Theol. Existenz heute. No.
46). Otherwise, however, here too it is true to say, as we said in connection with
Vischer’s exposition of texts of the Old Testament, that the knowledge of this
final point of reference does not give us the right to say that the text “ speaks of
Christ.” What is said is only said about us; but He who speaks is He who has
fulfilled the Commandments for us, and who, with faith in Him, gives us the
power to fulfill them.
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 109
7. The decisively new element in the revelation of the New Testa¬
ment becomes clear to us when we reflect that in it those four ele¬
ments in the Old Testament revelation: the word, the act, the name,
and the face, which, in the Old Testament, seem to point beyond
themselves toward a hidden and as yet unrealized unity, have be¬
come a unity in Jesus Christ, and in so doing for the first time have
received their full meaning. The “ word of God ” is first of all “ what
God says to us,” tire content of His communication. But God wills
to do more than “ say something ” to us, or even than to “ com¬
municate ” something to us; the content of His communication is
Himself. Hence the word is not sufficient. Where God imparts Him¬
self there is more than speech: “The Word became flesh, and we
beheld His glory . . 53 The verbal form, the means of communi¬
cation through speech, proves too weak for this communication; only
what we call the Incarnation, the coming of God to us in person, is
sufficient for this communication; here we see that He who speaks
is Himself present, and that His speaking is not merely speech but
life, the life of a person. “ That which we have seen with our eyes,
that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word
of Life.
In the Old Testament as a whole the idea of the “ name of God ”
pointed toward “ Himself.” It was the main concern of all prophecy
to proclaim His name. But it was precisely this “ name ” that the
Prophets could not grasp. The One who, as the content of the
“word,” names Himself remained beyond and above their word.
Their words circled round Him; He was the secret center of all they
had to proclaim; He was the source of their speech, and their goal.
But He Himself was not “ there,” in His actual presence, Himself
speaking. They could only speak about Him — even though they
were commissioned by Him to do so. Thus again the name was the
sum total of their speech. But now, in Jesus Christ, He Himself, the
Lord is here. Now, for the first time His name is fully personal; He
is One who speaks with us, and with whom we speak, One who meets
us as we meet persons; One who, however, at the same time claims
us for Himself in a way which only God lias any right to do, who
binds us to Himself in a way which is not permissible for any human
being. Here alone it becomes plain that the “ name,” in the prophetic
sense of the word, means the Person of God as unveiled, proclaimed
54
53
John 1:14. I John 1:1 ff.
HO Revelation and Reason

mystery. Now alone is there given the name wherein we must be

saved ”;55 the name in which we can call upon God with the cer¬
tainty that we shall be heard; n the name which is above every
name.” 57 “ Great is the mystery of godliness: He who was manifested
in the flesh.” 58 Only now has God received a real personal name:
“ He is called Jesus Christ, the Lord of Sabaoth, and there is no other
God.”
We have seen that in the Old Covenant the acts of God, as means
of divine revelation, were as important as the words of the men of
God and the Prophets. Historical facts and the prophetic speech
belong to one another; their relation is vital and mutual. But they are
not the same. No event in the history of Israel is the act of God, no
prophetic word is the word of God. No fact becomes the decisive
revelation of God, and no word, as such, is the fact of salvation. But
in Jesus Christ this dualism has disappeared: now Gods word and
God’s act are one. For He Himself, in His life and action, in His suf¬
fering, dying, and rising again, is the act of God, the fact of sal¬
vation, which transforms everything and makes all things new.
And it is precisely this fact of salvation which is Himself, which is
also the Word, the content of the message of salvation, that which
God has to say to us, and in which He imparts Himself to us. Simi¬
larly, in the absolute sense, He is “ the Event,” as He is also, in the
absolute sense, “the Word.” For He breaks through all futility; He
gathers up all human longing for the unattainable; He is the meaning
which all history vainly sought; in Flim the Eternal enters time; He is
the fulfillment of all human desires; in Him the destiny of man is
achieved, the goal is attained. Here, therefore, the dualism of word
and deed, and also the variety of words and acts, have disappeared.
Henceforward there is only one word, one act, just as there is only
one name. This is the witness of the New Testament to Jesus Christ:
“ Grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.” 59
In the revelation of the Old Covenant we encountered the enig¬
matic phrase, the “ face of the Lord,” as the expression of the divine
grace and glory. The phrase oscillates between magical reality and a
poetic form of speech. It is as though we were being pointed toward
a special reality of revelation which cannot be grasped in historical

55 Acts 4:12. 58 I Tim. 3:16 (R.V.).

66 John 14:13 ff.; 15:7. 69Johnl:17.
67 Phil. 2:10.
 Revelation as Fulfilhnent: Jesus Christ Ill
terms. We might well ask, “ Where, then, does the face of the Lord
shine forth? ” The light shines from the face of Moses when he comes
forth from the Tent of Meeting, and yet his face is not the face of
the Lord; the light which shines in his face is only the reflection
of the revealed glory which he has seen — and yet again he had not
seen the face of God. In the speech of the Prophets this light be¬
comes an eschatological entity: “ Then shall thy light break forth
as the morning 60 it has not yet happened. In the New Testament,
however, the enigma is solved: God has “ shined in our hearts, to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ.” 61 Is it an accident that the word Tpoaunrov, which is
here translated “ face,” also means “ person ”? Actually, the face of
God is the Person of Jesus, of the Incarnate Word of God, whose
“ glory we beheld,” “ full of grace and truth.” 62 In Him God looks
upon us graciously. Christ is able to say, “ He that hath seen Me hath
seen the Father.”63 In Him is disclosed to us the mystery of the per¬
sonality of God. He who is able to perceive in Him the Christ, in faith,
on him the “ Light of the world ”64 has dawned, so that he no longer
walks in darkness but has the “ Light of life.”65 He, indeed, who is
the eternal Word, is also the Light and eternal Life. God looks at us
out of eternity with a human face; in this Tpoaonrov the holy and
merciful God Himself meets sinful man, no longer in the “ sign ” of
the word, in a suggestion of something in the world beyond, but as
a reality which has become man, something which can be “ handled.”
He who meets Him in the vision of faith sees into the eternity of God;
to him the eternal decree of love is disclosed,66 to him He imparts
eternal life.67 “ The eternal Light enters in . . . and makes us the
children of light.” Thus the “ face of the Lord ” simply means the
“ Word which became flesh ” the one decisive event, the name of
God, revealed as the Ultimate. Thus the promise of the Old Testa¬
ment has been fulfilled in Jesus the Christ.

8. The fact of the revelation is the mystery of His Person. “ God

was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.”68 Primitive
Christianity understood this mystery of His Person from the point
eo Isa. 58:8; cf. also Isa. 60:1 ff. 65 John 8:12.
61 II Cor. 4:6. 66 Col. 1:19 ff.
62 John 1:14. 67 j0hn 6:40.
63 John 14:9. 68 II Cor. 5:19.
64 John 8:12.
112 Revelation and Reason

of view of His Messianic work; therefore they called Him the

“ Christ,” and, as such, the “ Son of the Living God.” 69 But they did
not reflect more deeply upon the meaning of this phrase, “ God was
in Christ ”; yet the matter could not be left there. If He is Lord and
Redeemer, then He cannot have become Lord and Redeemer, He
must have been Lord and Redeemer from all eternity. If God re¬
veals Himself in Him, and not merely through Him, then in Him we
encounter God Himself in person, and He Himself is God. Thus the
witness to Him as Messianic Son of God widens out, and deepens into
the witness to His Godhead. For only thus can the decisively new
element in the revelation of the New Testament be grasped. If Jesus
is not true God as well as tree man, then His revelation is only the
prophetic revelation carried to a higher stage; He is a man to whom
the Spirit of God has been granted in a measure hitherto unknown.
But that would mean, precisely, that He is not the One who means
everything: the Lord upon whom we call in prayer.70
The Gospel of John, with the preaching of Saint Paul behind it,
is the chief book in the New Testament which makes explicit this
implicit meaning of the confession of Christ; this book gives full value
to the assertion: He Himself is the revelation. In His love we encoun¬
ter, not merely the love of a human being, but the love of God. His ho¬
liness is not only that of a holy man, even of a “ man of God,” but it is
the holiness of God Plimself. It is this, in particular, which distin¬
guishes the Old Testament from the New: the authority of Jesus is the
authority of God: thus He is God Himself. When He speaks, God
Himself speaks; when He acts, God Himself acts; in His personal
presence the personal presence of God has become real. Hence His
“ Self ” differs from that of every other human being in the fact that
it is not only human but divine. The Johannine eyeb eifu 71 is the New
Testament; it is this which distinguishes the New Covenant from the
Old. The self-affirmations of the Johannine Christ state explicitly
what the historical Jesus is, even though, literally, they are not the
actual words of the historical Jesus. The concept of revelation of the
New Testament becomes explicit in its Christology, in its doctrine of
the Person of Jesus as God-man. The Pauline statement: “ God was
in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself,” is only preserved from

69 Matt. 16:16.
70 I Cor. 1:1, 2; Acts 9:14.
71 Cf. the Basle dissertation of Ed. Schweizer, Ego eimi.
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 113
being misinterpreted in an intensified “ prophetic ” sense by in¬
terpreting it in the light of the assertion of the Godhead of Christ.
Thus the Johannine statements about the divine Being of Christ
which are described as “ Trinitarian ” or “ pre-existential ” are not
designed to give us information about the metaphysical and pre¬
temporal existence of the Logos. All they want to say is this: whom
we encounter when we meet Christ; who deals with us, and who lays
His claim upon us, where Christ acts and lays His claim upon us.
Under the influence of Greek speculative thought, the doctrine of the
Church has often lost this point of view, and has thus constructed a
Christology which had to be “ believed,” as an independent “ mys¬
tery,” without any connection with that which Christ, or God in
Christ, does for us and in us.72 The Reformers felt this, and that is
why they opposed this abstract Christ-metaphysic with the only
Scriptural statement: Hoc est Christum cognoscere, beneficia ejus
cognoscere.73 Certainly they have not left us in any doubt that these
beneficia Christi can only be those that are meant in the New Testa¬
ment when it is taken absolutely seriously, namely, that God was in
Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, and thus that the dig¬
nity of Christ is simply the dignity of God Himself. Thus to them,
as to the author of the Gospel of John, the “ article of the Godhead
of Christ was also the center of the whole Christian faith, identical
with the beneficium Christi.74 For this is His benefit, this is the
blessing of salvation which He offers to us in Him: the self-communi¬
cation of God, the fact that in His Son God Himself is present. But
that word of warning against all Christological speculations means
that the statements about the Person of Christ must not go further
than the connection with the work of Christ requires. Christology
must not become a metaphysic of Christ, but in every one of its state¬
ments, it must be soteriology, the doctrine of salvation. Its one aim
should be to define how God, in Jesus Christ, establishes communion

72 In the Ritschlian controversy against the Greek metaphysic there is an

element of truth in the fact that it noticed this feature in the development of
dogma and of the theology of the Church, and asserted the authority of the Re¬
formers against it. But its far greater error was that it misinterpreted the “ di¬
vinity of Christ ” - of which Ritschl speaks - in a rationalistic sense. On this
see my book Der Mittler, pp. 34 ff. [English trans., The Mediator, pp. 56 ff.,
O. Wyon. Tr.]
73 Melanchthon, Loci theologici, Introduction.
74 Cf. Theodosius Hamack, Luthers Theologie, II, pars. 39-43.
114 Revelation and Reason

with us, and sets up His Kingship in us, how He Himself meets us
in Jesus Christ. All these Christological statements serve to explain
more precisely what it means that “ He Himself ’ is present — in
Jesus. The discourses of the Johannine Christ are not given to us in
order that we may turn our eyes away from Him, the Christ on earth,
to a pre-existent Logos, but they are given to us simply and solely in
order that we may know whom we meet in Jesus Christ. We have no
right to make the mystery of the Trinity into an intellectual puzzle,7 ’
but the “ Trinitarian ” statements about Jesus are meant to assure
us that in Him we encounter the Self of the merciful and holy Lord.
It is not our concern here to say whether the ecclesiastical doctrine
of the Trinity and of the two natures is the final word in the further
explication of the witness to Christ of the New Testament.70 Yet we
must at least say this for the best theologians of the Early Church:
they were aware that in their fight for the full Godhead of the Logos,
and the full truth of the God-man in Christ, they were concerned for
the whole witness of the New Testament revelation, and for nothing
less than that.

9. Revelation, in the Biblical sense, also involves the subject of

faith. We can understand the revelation of God in Jesus Christ aright
only when we know what faith is. It is not until we reach the New
Testament that this subjective side of revelation, the reception of
revelation — man’s openness to revelation, and his readiness to open
up to it — is clearly recognized, and gathered up in a comprehensive
idea. Indeed, it must have been Paul who first gave this depth and
breadth of meaning to the word faith, 7rtcms, and in so doing set it in
the center of the Christian message.* Only where religious interest
was focused upon the unique fact of revelation, Jesus Christ, was

76 The well-known saying of Melanchthon, “ Mysteria trinitatis rectis adora-

verimus quam vestigaverimus ” (Introd. to Loci theol.), recurs toward the end
of the first century of the Reformation in various forms (cf. Chemnitz, Loci
theol., I, or Calvin, Institutes, I, 13, 4). Characteristically this idea vanishes with
the growth of orthodoxy.
76 That is the task of material dogmatics. The excellent survey of the course
of development of the earlier Christology by Gilg, “Weg und Bedeutung der
altkirchlichen Christologie ” (Beiheft 2, Evangelische Theologie) gives, in my
opinion, too favorable an account of the development of dogma, and leaves out
of account the critical observations which a man like Schlatter always used to
vnake from the standpoint of the New Testament.
* [Cf. E. Brunner, The Divine-Human Encounter, pp. 151 ff. Tr.]
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 115

this comprehensive description of the subjective element of revela¬

tion possible. It was, however, as the development of theology shows,
not without danger. The history of the concept of faith in the Church
is, as we have already said, a tragedy.78 Until the period of the
Reformation the Church suffered badly from the devastating error
derived from the Gnostics of the Early Church, who, under the in¬
fluence of Platonism, regarded faith as a lower stage in the realm
of knowledge. In order, therefore, to give the concept of faith its
full content, from the witness of tire New Testament as a whole,
we will again consider those four forms of Old Testament revelation
which have become a unity in tire Christian revelation, and we will
examine their subjective aspects.
The Word. The word implies the act of hearing — hearing which
means eager, attentive listening; such “ hearing ” is equally the at¬
titude of obedience. “ Hear, O Israel! ” 79 In His word the Lord lays
an absolute claim upon His people; through His word He establishes
His Rule. In Jesus Christ this claim becomes the personal claim for
obedience, and listening to Him becomes following Him,80 disciple-
ship,81 personal surrender to the personal Lord,82 loyalty to the Good
Shepherd,83 the “ following ” of One who is utterly committed to His
Master. The Apostle is not afraid to describe himself as a “ slave of
Jesus Christ,” 84 or as a “ captive ” of Jesus,85 in order to express the
complete abandonment of all claims to his own way and will, and
the unconditional surrender of his personality to the Redeemer. But
there is nothing “ servile ” about this unconditional obedience of the
slave,86 because it is not determined by fear, or the hope of reward,
but by thankful trust in Him, who through His own self-giving has
made him captive. We can only obey like this, keeping nothing back,
because God has come so near to us personally, because His un¬
fathomable love swallows up our distrust. The “ obedience of faith,”
inrasori Triarecos,87 is how Paul describes this kind of “ hearing.”
The Act of God. The new facts created by God demand from the
people of God the recognition of the new situation. The acts of God
are to call Israel to repentance. The act of God in Jesus Christ is of

78 See above, p. 37. 83 John 10:4.

79 Deut. 6:4. 84 Rom. 1:1.
80 Mark 8:34; I Peter 2:21. 85 Philemon 1; Eph. 3:1.
84 Matt. 10:38; John 13:35. 86 Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:7.
82 Rom. 14:7 ff. 87 Rom. 1:5; 16:26.
116 Revelation and Reason

such a kind that it can be perceived only by one whose whole life
has been changed by it, who has been uprooted from his previous
condition and has been transplanted into a new soil.88 The act of God
in Jesus Christ is the Cross. The Cross, as the act of reconciliation,
can only be understood by him who understands it at the same time
as the annihilation of his own claim on existence, as God’s destruc¬
tion of all self-complacency and self-righteousness.89 Only he who
allows himself thus to be shattered, and thus to be “ crucified with
Christ,” 90 is able to receive what God wills to give him at the Cross.
Hence faith is now confronted with the possibility of the “ offense
only one who is ready to let everything else go which had hitherto
served him as security can receive God’s gift. Only by utter despair
of one’s own righteousness can the “ righteousness of God ”91 who
gives all, and only gives,92 and indeed who gives Himself, be won.
This decisive fact which is “ to the Greeks foolishness, and to the
Jews a stumblingblock,” 93 the Cross, demands a “ faith ” which is a
twofold transformation of existence: to die with Christ, and to rise
again with Christ.94 Only where faith thus destroys the previous
bases of existence, and builds life up again on a new foundation,
is it true to say: “ If any man be in Christ he is a new creation; old
things are passed away, ... all things are become new.” 95 The Old
Testament knows nothing of this kind of faith.
The Name of God. One of the “ mighty acts ” of God in the Old
Covenant is the fact that God made known to His people the secret
of His name; He addresses His people thus: “ I have called thee by
thy name; thou art Mine.” 96 In the New Testament, however, we see
the incomprehensible fact that in Jesus Christ God no longer calls us
by our own name, but by His name. He gives us, sinners, the name of
His own Son;97 He “ adopts ” us 98 and transfers to us 99 the rights
of the eternal “ Son of His love.” 100 That is the meaning of “ justifica¬
tion through faith alone.” 101 Faith now means being one who no
longer lives by his own efforts, but by what he receives from God.
To believe means to bear the name of Christ, through His name to

88 Rom. 6:6. 95 II Cor. 5:17.

80 Rom. 3:20, 23. 96 Isa. 43:1.
90 Gal. 2:20; Rom. 6:6. 87 I Cor. 1:30; II Cor. 5:21.
91 Rom. 3:21,24. 98 Rom. 8:25; Gal. 4:5.
82 Rom. 3:28; 8:32. 99 Gal. 4:7.
98 I Cor. 1:23. 100 Col. 1:13.
94 Rom. 6:4. 101 Rom. 3:28.
 Revelation as Fulfillment: Jesus Christ 117
be holy, to have a share in the purity and blamelessness of the Son
of God,102 without any self-created achievement, “ apart from the
works of the law,” 103 through the will and the choice of God alone.
Faith now means, from the very outset, before any act of one’s own,
to live on the act of God, and to be sure of the absolute love of God.104
Faith means that the value of human personality is restamped with
the infinite personal value of the Son of God.
The Face of God. The Israelites saw a reflection of the glory of God
upon the face of Moses, when he came forth from the Tent of Meet¬
ing.105 But they saw this glory as something which to them was
strange, and it even made them afraid. But through Jesus Christ all
who belong to Him through faith are immersed in this glory. “ But we
all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as
from the Lord the Spirit.”106 Faith now means sharing the light
which shines from the grace of God, which lies upon the face of the
God-man Jesus. To the Christian believer, God shines on him out of
His eternity, right into his heart, through the face of Jesus Christ;
he has a new appearance, a new dignity,107 namely, the dignity which
is given by the love of God. Faith means being grasped by the living
reality of the Holy Spirit; life and behavior “ in the Spirit.” 108 That
which was only promised in the Old Covenant: “ I will set My law in
their heart and write it in their mind,”109 now begins to be fulfilled,
even though this fulfillment is constantly retarded, and the “ light of
the face of Christ ” is continually obscured by the “ flesh,” which is
still ever present: one’s own self-will, and the self-willed obstinacy
of the sinful nature which is severed from God. Faith itself is the
new life which is derived from Christ, which has His law within it¬
self, working itself out in love.110
As the God who had revealed Himself to the fathers only through
words and acts entered personally in His very nature in Jesus Christ
into humanity, so also now faith is no longer merely “ obedience at
a distance,” but a sacramental unity with the Redeemer.111 Faith
does not need to be “ shaped by love ” before this can happen; for
faith is simply the reception of the love of God. Where this is not the
102 Col. 1:22. 107 I Cor. 2:7.
103 Rom. 3:28; Phil. 3:9. 108 Rom. 8:9.
104 Rom. 8:33 ff. 109 Jer. 31:33.
105 Ex. 34:30. 110 John 3:15.
106 II Cor. 3:18. 111 John 6:51 ff.
118 Revelation and Reason

case, it is not what the New Testament means by 7rtcms. Faith is not
the acceptance of Apostolic doctrines about the Son of God, but it is
personal communion with Jesus Christ Himself. The religious men of
the Old Covenant did not know this faith as a present experience, but
only as a future promise. “ For the Holy Spirit was not yet given.” 112

C. The Revelation in the Witness

to the Revelation

9. THE WITNESS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

1. From time immemorial the Church has always called the Scrip¬
tures of the Old and the New Testament the “ Word of God.” In so
doing, the Church expresses the fundamental truth of the Christian
faith, namely, that in these books the historical self-manifestation
of God is offered to faith in an incomparable, decisive, and unique
manner; this means that no Christian faith can either arise or be
preserved which ignores “ Holy Scripture.” Nevertheless there is a
certain danger in this assumption that the “Word of God” can be
equated with Holy Scripture. This view arose from a twofold mis¬
understanding: first, from an academic view of the nature of reve¬
lation; secondly, from a Judaistic understanding of the Bible. The
Bible itself does not give any occasion for this misunderstanding; by
“ revelation ” it does not mean a supematurally revealed doctrine;
nor does it equate “ revelation ” either with a collection of books or
with one particular Book; in the Bible “ revelation ” means God’s
mighty acts for man’s salvation.
In the view of faith which prevailed in late Judaism, one of its
distinctive elements was the assumption that the “Word of God”
could be equated with the word of the Bible.1 In opposition to this
Jewish “ fundamentalism,” Saint John is expressing the view of the
112 John 7:39.
1 Cf. Schiirer, Geschichte des jiid. Volkes, II, p. 365. “ The theory of in¬
spiration here represented is thoroughly mechanical. . . . God has dictated
the writings; under inspiration Moses even wrote about his own death. . . .”
Thus in the Talmud it is said: “ Even were one to say the whole Torah is from
heaven, and were to assert only of one verse, that the Holy One did not say it,
 The Witness of Holy Scripture 119
Christian Church when he calls Jesus Christ “ the Word,” “ the Word
of Life.” * 2 In so doing he is going back, behind Judaism, to the Old
Testament, prophetic view of revelation, according to which the
Word of God is a living event. For the Church of the New Testament
the final, historical, saving act, and the final word of divine revela¬
tion, is simply and solely Jesus Christ Himself, as the absolute per¬
sonal self-manifestation of God. The question, therefore, confronts
us. What is the relation between the written word of the Bible and
the personal, historical Word of God? In our effort to answer this
question we must also remember that the Word of God, according
to the Biblical view, is not only historical, but also eternal: the
eternal Word who became flesh in Jesus Christ, through whom the
world was created, and by whom its life is maintained.3
Thus from the very outset it is plain that the spoken or written
word, which for us human beings is of such decisive importance, is
still only an imago verbi, just as our personal being is only an imago
Dei. Our “ word,” expressed in ideas and in human language, is the
way in which we communicate with one another, just as the “ Word ”
of God is the way in which God communicates Himself. Our self¬
communication takes place through words; Gods self-communica¬
tion takes place, ultimately and finally, in the Person and the history
of His Son. While our words are always only signs, which suggest
what we mean, God’s Word is the actual meaning itself: it is “com¬
munication ” as well as “ that which is communicated ” — or, rather,
not “ that which is communicated ” but the “ One who communi¬
cates Himself.” It is therefore significant that, from the very begin-

but Moses, as seemed good to him, of him it must be said that he has despised
the Word'of the Eternal” (quoted by Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums,
p. 149).
2 Bultmann may be justified in saying that “ the Logos of the first chapter of
John cannot be understood in the light of the Old Testament ” (Das Johannes-
evangelium, p. 7). The form of this Logos idea may have the origin which Bult¬
mann tries to prove. But when Bultmann himself says (see p. 359) that “ in
all the individual words that He speaks, He meets Himself as the Word,” he
admits, tacitly, the relation with the Old Testament conception of the
Word.
3 John 1:1 ff.; Heb. 1:1 ff. The fact that “ the Word ” is used interchange¬
ably to describe'the pre-existent Son of God is not a merely accidental, his¬
torical fact, but it belongs to the very nature of the case. The “ revealed Being ”
of God, His will to communicate Himself, and the fellowship which He accom¬
plishes within Himself make the mutual relation, and indeed jhe identification
of the eternal personality of the Revealer and of the “ Word,” a necessity.
120 Revelation and Reason

ning, alongside of the Holy Scriptures and their exposition in the

word of preaching, the Church also placed the Sacrament as the
second “ means of grace for the Sacrament expresses the fact that
God’s Word is the personal presence of Jesus Christ, in His loving,
self-imparting activity. The habit of regarding the written word, the
Bible, as the “ Word of God ” exclusively — as is the case in the tradi¬
tional equation of the “ word ” of the Bible with the “ Word of God ”
— an error which is constantly on the verge of being repeated — is
actually a breach of the Second Commandment: it is the deification
of a creature, bibliolatry.

2. The first human word which is the human response to the Word
of God, Jesus Christ, is the interior word of faith, in which the revela¬
tion of Christ broke through into the human consciousness of the
Apostles: “ Truly, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God! ” 4
“ My Lord and my God! ”5 the believing confession of the Apostle
in the “ Thou ” form, in the answer expressed in prayer to the call of
Christ: “ It is Thou! ” 6 Here the Word of God, which is Jesus Christ,
becomes the word in human speech, which is both a divine word of
revelation and a human word of faith. Divine and human elements
are here united, as in the believer’s cry of “ Abba! ”, which the
Apostle ascribes at one moment to the Holy Spirit, and at another to
human faith.7 Here the Word of God has assumed human form.
The transition from the word of personal encounter in its “ Thou ”
form to the word of teaching, to “ speaking about something,” neces¬
sarily follows when Christ is proclaimed to others. The Apostle, who
previously turned toward God alone, addresses Christ in adoring
wonder as the divine Lord who meets him; he speaks to Him with
thanksgiving from a full heart, because He has revealed Himself to
him as this “ Thou ”; but he turns to others and proclaims openly
what God has said to him in the stillness. He now speaks about God,
about his Lord, Christ; God is now the Object of his proclamation.

4 Matt. 16:16.
6 John 20:28.
6 So long as Paul, on the way to Damascus, still asked the One who had
appeared to him from heaven, “Who art Thou?” (Acts 9:5), that had not
taken place of which he writes in Galatians: “When it pleased God to reveal
His Son in me ” (ch. 1:16). The moment at which he can say, “ It is Thou,” is
the moment at which the experience of revelation becomes a real revelation
7 Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15.
 The Witness of Holy Scripture 121
The Apostle now says to others, “He, Jesus, is the Son of God.”
Through this proclamation he desires others to share in that personal
encounter in which God has spoken His Word to him, the Apostle.
But this effort of his can succeed only if God permits it to succeed;
that is, if God uses the spoken word to reveal Himself in the heart
of the hearer, addressing him, and evoking from him the answer of
faith.8 Thus the word of the Apostle through preaching stands, as
a mediator, between the “ Thou-word ” through which he became an
Apostle, and the “ Thou-word ” through which the “ other ” becomes
a believer, through which the Christian community, the Church,
comes into being.

3. The question may be asked, Does not the spoken word come too
late in this description? Is not the primary spoken form of the word
of God the word of Jesus Himself, through which the Apostle was
able to become a believer? Is not the word of Jesus the primary,
actual word of God? Hence, if we wish to perceive the word of God
must we not first of all cleave to the words of Jesus Himself? Strange
to say, the answer to this question is “ No.” It is true that the teaching
and preaching of Jesus are inseparable from His person and His
work; they are an integral, essential element in this whole final form
of revelation. The word of Jesus, in point of fact, has a share in the
absolute authority of the Son of God. But this implies that it is not
itself the Word of God as a whole. He Himself, His person and His
work, is not an object, but, as it were, the silent presupposition for a
right understanding of His teaching; this underlying truth only be¬
comes explicit in the words of His Apostles. He could not anticipate
in speech the meaning of His person and of His work until it had
actually happened, and had been accomplished; that is, if He were
to live His life in the truly historical sense. He could not say who
Jesus is; that was possible only after His death, and it could be said
only by the witnesses of His death and His resurrection.8a The Gospel

8 The next chapter deals with this subject.

8aThat is why the Reformers, with their preference for the Epistles and
the Gospel of John as compared with the Synoptic Gospels, which indeed have
preserved for us “ Jesus’ own words ” far more faithfully, are right. If, however,
it is argued that Paul himself asserted that the words of Jesus, and not his own,
are the word of God, and as such are binding, we must not overlook the fact
that Paul means some quite definite commands; he is not alluding to the witness
to Christ as a whole 11 Cor. 7:10, 12, 25; 9:14; 14:37).
122 Revelation and Reason

of John alone gathers up into one the word which Jesus teaches, and
the Word which Jesus is. Since this Gospel gives us the best answer
to the question, Who is Jesus? it is at the same time the least like a
stenographer’s record of “ what Jesus Himself ” said.9

4. This leads us to re-emphasize the truth which has already been

stated concerning the word of God in human language: the word of
the Apostles itself forms part of the revelation of God through Jesus
Christ.10 The act of the historical divine revelation is completed only
where, in the spoken word of the Apostle, it becomes the knowledge
of faith, the confession of faith, and the witness which creates faith.
Only after Jesus Christ has revealed Himself to an Apostle has the
divine revelation reached its goal; the circuit is now complete. Had
there been no Apostle on whom this perception dawned, then the
story of Jesus would not have become a revelation to humanity; it
would not have become the Word of God. It would have echoed and
re-echoed, like a sound which passes unheard in a primeval forest.
It would have been like a bridge which had been begun from one
side of a river, but which never reached the other side. In the
Apostolic word, in this word in human speech, the historical revela¬
tion of Christ is completed; here alone, in the narrower sense, does
it become the Word of God. Again, the Church, which came into
being through the Apostles and their message, is something differ¬
ent; the Apostle stands on the border line where the history of revela¬
tion becomes the history of the Church; he has a share in both; he is
the final point of the history of revelation as something unique; and
he is the starting point of the history of the Church, as a new, con¬
tinuous entity, based upon revelation.

9 The words of God which the Prophets proclaim as those which they have
received directly from God, and have been commissioned to repeat, as they
have received them, constitute a special problem. Even if we do not accept
the view of Philo: “A prophet says nothing of his own ... he is only an
interpreter. Another gives him all that he has to say. . . . The Spirit of God
plays upon the organism of the voice and brings forth the sounds as a clear
sign of what he produces ” (in Bousset, op. cit., p. 149), but here also must take
into account the way in which the divine activity and the human receptivity
are interwoven, yet here perhaps we find the closest analogy to the meaning
of the theory of verbal inspiration. But here we are on the Old Testament level
of revelation, where the Word of God is not yet a personal reality and the testi¬
mony to a personal reality.
10 Cf., for instance, I Cor. 2:10; Gal. 1:16; Rom. 11:25; Eph. 3:3.
 The Witness of Holy Scripture 123

5. The Church comes into being only because the Apostle comes
forth from his secret intercourse with God and turns to others, giv¬
ing to them in the third person what God Himself gave him in his
heart in the second person. The existence of the Church is based on
this Apostolic act of turning toward man. Thus the Apostolic word
precedes the Church as its foundation.11 In principle the border line
between the basic revelation which culminates in the Apostolic
word, and the Church as an institution, which arises through the ex¬
tension and acceptance of the Apostle’s word, is absolutely clear.
Only the Apostle, or rather his word, in which the revelation in its
historical exclusiveness and uniqueness is handed on, stands between
Christ and the community of believers, but he is absolutely es¬
sential. Without the Apostles’ word there is no Church, no Christen¬
dom. The eKK\r]aia is “ built upon the foundation of the Apostles and
Prophets.” The Apostolic word, therefore, itself shares in the unique¬
ness and historical exclusiveness of the historical revelation of
Christ.
In principle, therefore, an Apostle is one to whom the primary
knowledge of Christ is entrusted, not mediated by the intrusion of
any other human being, apart from which Jesus Christ would not
have been the revelation to humanity. As the Apostle belongs to the
unique event of revelation, so all knowledge mediated through the
Apostolic word stands on this side of the unique historical events.
This “ frontier ” is the basis of the idea of the canon, the basis of the
fact of the Bible.

6. The idea of the “ Apostle” and of his original testimony, how¬

ever, is only a general principle; historically it is not always clear.
The irrational actuality of the historical cannot be imprisoned within
any concept; it forms part of the historical revelation as such. The
Incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ is not only the incompre¬
hensible miracle, but it also confronts us as a concrete fact, which
happened in a particular place, at a particular time, in a particular
way. We may ask: Why did Jesus live in Galilee? Why did He live
during the years 1 to 30? Why was there this particular chain of
events and not another? To this we can only answer: Because this
was how it happened, and not otherwise. We may say the same about
the earliest testimony to the event of revelation, as such; it confronts
« Eph. 2:20.
124 Revelation and Reason

the Church as the testimony of those few men whom the Church
recognized as Apostles. The Apostles were henceforth recognized
by the Church as the bearers of the primitive testimony, because
they, in particular, were the earliest witnesses.
The idea of the “ Apostle ” as the original witness has two strands:
first, the fact that he is an eyewitness; and, second, that he possesses
a fund of detailed, original knowledge of Christ, knowledge which is
of unique importance.12 The Apostles are first of all eyewitnesses —
not merely eyewitnesses in the simple historical sense, but eyewit-
nesses of the Risen Christ. This fact of their position as eyewitnesses
gives them, in contrast to all who followed them, a share in the
uniqueness of the event of revelation.13 They are the witnesses of
His resurrection, and thus they are also witnesses of the glory of
Christ. It is true that the New Testament, or more correctly the
Church, which defined the canon of the New Testament, did not un¬
derstand this idea of the status of eyewitness in the narrowest and
most literal sense. The Church reckons among the Apostles not only
the Twelve: it includes also James the brother of the Lord, and the
Apostle Paul, and, further, “ pupils of the Apostles,” like Luke
and Mark, who, so far as we know, were not witnesses of the Risen
Lord in the same sense as were the Twelve and the Apostle
Paul.
On the other hand, all the eyewitnesses of the resurrection were
not Apostles. The five hundred to whom, according to the word
of the Apostle Paul, the Risen Lord showed Himself “ at once ” are
simply called “ brethren,” not Apostles.14 This brings us to the second
element in what constitutes the status of an Apostle. In addition to
the fact that he was an eyewitness, the Apostle possessed a special
degree of spiritual authority, which - as the Early Church, rightly,
understood it — manifested itself in a special quality of Apostolic
witness; was dynamically expressed in the particular “ signs of an

12( The third sign, which stands in the foreground of the Biblical record,
the “ sending forth,” from which the Apostle gains his name, is not relevant
in this connection, for the understanding of the canon.
13 Kierkegaard does not see this difference, because his main concern is to
assert the autopsy of faith (Philosophical Fragments). Hence he maintains
that “there is no disciple at second hand” (ibid., p. 88, Eng. trans.). In an¬
other place he makes a clear distinction between an ordinary believer and an
Apostle. Cf. his work Uber den Unterschied ztoischen einem Apostel und
einem Genie, and his book about Adler. (In German, both in Haecker’s col¬
lection, Der Begriff des Auserwahlten.)
14 I Cor. 15:6.
 The Witness of Holy Scripture 125
Apostle 15 and was possibly based upon a special measure of knowl¬
edge of Christ. The Apostle is a witness to the resurrection, endowed
with special spiritual authority; a man in whom the revelation of
Christ was impressively expressed in human life and speech. The
Apostle cannot, so to say, pride himself on his Apostolate as legally
guaranteed once for all, but he must continually prove himself to be
an Apostle by his Apostolic spiritual gifts.16
None of these elements should be entirely lacking in an Apostle;
but none of them can be clearly distinguished in intellectual terms.
The Early Church used all these criteria in its judgment of the
“ Apostolic ” character of the New Testament writings; but in spite
of this it was not able to base its judgment on strictly logical argu¬
ments. The Early Church found it impossible to lay down rules to
decide either what constituted an Apostle, or an “ Apostolic ” writing.

7. Only now are we in a position to understand the relation be¬

tween the Word of God and the New Testament writings. In theory
there is no particular need to bring the Word of God and the written
word into a specially close connection; quite the contrary. Primarily
there is a far closer connection between the Word of God and the
oral word, the viva vox. Luther rightly pointed out the secret con¬
nection between the 7pdju/m and the Law on the one hand, and that
between the Holy Spirit and the viva vox on the other.1' Anything
that is fixed in writing has an element of the rigidity of the Mosaic
“ tables of stone,” of objective immobility, while the oral word is
personal and mobile in character, controlled by the freedom of the
Spirit. The fact that the Lord Himself did not leave behind Him
any written or dictated lines is very significant; it is equally signifi¬
cant that the writings of the Apostles are casual writings which,
apart from some extreme instances of New Testament documents,18
are not particularly different from the oral message of the Apostles.

15 II Cor. 12:12; Rom. 15:19.

16 I Cor. 2:4; II Cor. 12:12.
17 Luther: “ For the New Testament should really be only a living Word
and not a written word; that is why Christ wrote nothing (W.A., 10, I, 2, p.
34). “ Therefore it is not at all in the spirit of the New Testament, to write books
about Christs teaching.”. . . The New Testament office of the Apostles was
that with “ their bodily voices they taught the people and converted them.
(W.A., 10, I, 1, p. 626.) , . , ,
18 It is the peculiarity of the apocalyptic writings that they claim tor them¬
selves the authority of divine dictation. See, for instance, Dan. 12:4; II Peter
1:20; Rev. 1:2 f., 11.
126 Revelation and Reason

So far as the original Twelve Apostles are concerned, it may be that

we have no authentic writing of theirs. The Church of Christ was
not based upon a written word, but upon an oral word. And even the
written word, which was handed down to us as “ Apostolic,” was not
intended to be regarded as fixed, once for all, in this written form,
and therefore of particular importance, but it was meant as a substi¬
tute for the oral word of the Apostles, just as a letter is a substi¬
tute for a personal meeting. The written word — and in this Luther
was right — belongs to the Old Testament rather than to the New.
But although this is true, we cannot say that the fact that we
possess a written “ New Testament ” is an ecclesiastical error; it is
a necessity, due to the nature of the historical revelation as such.
Only by fixing the story in writing could the Apostolic word, as the
fundamental basis of the Christian Church, be maintained as the
basis for the living, oral message of the Church down the centuries.
A merely oral tradition contains an uncritical admixture of “ early ”
elements and “ later ” accretions; it is unable to preserve the original
tradition in its purity. If the primitive testimony, as such, was to be
retained for the Church, and not become lost and merged in the oral
message of the later Church, then it had to be set down in writing,
and thus defined in this fixed written form. It was only this written
form which preserved the “ word ” from distortion due to continual
changes in the living stream of historical tradition, and to changes
derived from the subjective “ life of faith.” It is only through the
written word that the testimony to Christ of the first witnesses has
been maintained in its original and distinctive form. In so far as the
Church has to be continually rebuilt upon the foundation of the
Apostles and Prophets, and its life has to be renewed by returning
to this source, it is inevitably directed toward the written word, the
writings of the New Testament. This form, the written Scriptures,
is the medium in which the word of God comes to us, since it alone
still contains the Apostolic word of revelation. Only where the truth
of the uniqueness of the event of revelation has been undermined
is it possible to place the Scriptures and the tradition on the same
level; only the Church which believes that in the sacrifice of the
Mass the sacrificial death of Jesus is repeated can respect the Scrip¬
ture and the tradition pari pietatis ajfectu as bearers of the authority
of the divine revelation.19
19 Enchiridion symbolorum, ed. Denzinger and Bannwart, No. 783.
 The Witness of Holy Scripture 127
8. Thus the priority of the written testimony over against the oral
tradition is due to the historical character of the Christian revela¬
tion. Where it is a question of preserving the historical character of
the revelation — the fact that this happened “ once for all ” — the
written testimony certainly has the advantage. The story of the swift
growth of legends around the life of Jesus, in the early days of
Christianity, as well as the rapid perversion of Biblical doctrine,
shows us what would have happened if there had been no canon of
the New Testament to witness to the fact of Christ. The Christian
Church stands and falls with the written New Testament, and the
written Apostolic testimony to Christ is not only the foundation of all
the later witness of the Church to Christ; it is also its norm.
It is, of course, quite possible that a witness to Christ of the sub-
Apostolic period may have a degree of knowledge of Christ which
may compare favorably with that of an author of the New Testa¬
ment, and at particular points might even surpass it. We cannot deny
a priori or a posteriori that certain writings of later teachers and
preachers may even excel in the depth and richness of their knowl¬
edge of Christ.20 But such writers would be the first to admit that
they owe all their knowledge of Christ to the Holy Scriptures. No
one can become a master in the knowledge of Christ who has not
been first of all a learner from the Apostles; he must also always re¬
main a most obedient and reverent disciple of the Apostles, even
when, in a particular instance, he may have to exercise some criticism
of an Apostle. At this point we must pause to consider the question
of the authority of the Bible, its nature, and its extent.

9. From all that has already been said, it is clear that the doctrine
of the verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture, which claims to be a
standard doctrine, cannot be regarded as an adequate formulation of
the authority of the Bible.21 It is a product of the views of late Juda-
20 The best example for this might be Luther, who, while he took the liberty
of saying that if we had had as much Holy Spirit as the Apostles we might
“ have made as good a New Testament as the Apostles wrote,” although “ be¬
cause we have not the Spirit in so rich and powerful a manner we must learn
from them and humbly drink from their fountains,” was, on the other hand, one
of the humblest and most obedient of Biblical theologians.
21 Among the “ teachers ” of the Reformation the difference in the view of
the Scriptures was not so much one of confessional position as of generations.
The Reformers of the first generation, Luther and Zwingli, are not favorable to
the doctrine of verbal inspiration, whereas Melanchthon, Calvin, and Bullinger
128 Revelation and Reason

ism, not of Christianity. The Apostolic writings never claim for them¬
selves a verbal inspiration of this kind, with the infallibility which it
implies. The Apostle Paul shows us very clearly how the New Testa¬
ment writings arose. He in particular, the great theologian of the
Church, never claims that his letters are written at God’s dictation;
on the contrary, he permits us to see quite plainly the natural, hu¬
man way in which these letters were written. He wrestles with prob¬
lems of expression in language, he breaks off sentences, he corrects
himself while he is writing; the divine revelation seems to be some¬
thing which is freely appropriated in a natural human activity.
But to admit this does not mean that we in any way deny the
divine inspiration of the Apostolic writings. How could that which
hands on the divine revelation that has been received be lacking in
divine inspiration? Not only the writings of the Apostle Paul, but
also his speech and his action, flow from this Source, that is, from his
life ‘ ‘ in Christ,” and the Holy Spirit given by Him. Not only the
Epistle to the Romans, but the whole message of the Apostle — and
not only his message, but also all the missionary activity and the
missionary strategy of the Apostle, as indeed we see it in the Epistle
to the Romans — is guided by the Holy Spirit.22 But just as we cannot
say that this divine guidance rules out human search, human weak¬
ness, and the possibility of mistakes in action and in behavior, so it
cannot be intended that the Scriptures are so completely under the
control of the Spirit that this rules out all human activity of reflection
and enquiry. Human research, such as Luke mentions as the author
of the Gospel narrative, does not exclude inspiration, but it does ex¬
clude automatic dictation and verbal inspiration, with its claim to an
oracular divine infallibility.
First of all comes the tradition of historical facts, as they appear in
the Gospels, in the book of Acts, and, to some extent, also in the
Epistles.23 This early tradition was guided and inspired by the Holy
Spirit, but was also a product of human research and selection, and,
therefore, it is not verbally inspired. Even this simple tradition of

are. Calvin is very fond of talking about the Oracula Dei and of the “ divine dic¬
tation.” We cannot imagine him making critical statements about the documents
of the Old and the New Testament such as Luther used to make, although as a
student of the text of the Bible he did not in any way ignore the human aspect
of the Scriptures.
22 Think, for instance, of Acts 16:6, 7; Rom. 15:18.
23 Acts 15:4; 21:19 ff.; Mark 1:1.
 The Witness of Holy Scripture 129
facts is intended to be a witness of faith, a testimony to Christ; it is
the tradition of the kerygma. No one today who keeps his eyes open
to facts fails to be aware that this tradition has certain errors and
inconsistencies. At the present time only an ignorant or insincere
person can produce a complete “ Harmony of the Gospels,” or an
account which reconciles all contradictions in the reports of the Lucan
and the Pauline explanations and discussions. The Apostles who, in
the “ Comrcil of the Apostles,” first of all strove with one another
before they could come to a common decision, are also in their ac¬
counts of events not free from inconsistency and error.
The same is time of the doctrinal element in the Apostolic message.
“ When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me ”24 does not mean
that God gave the Apostle Paul a ready-made system of Pauline
theology. Rather, the Apostle needed a long and intensive spiritual
and mental work of appropriation — a work of which we gain
glimpses in his letters — before he was able to say what he did in
his latest letters.25 And even then he was aware that this knowledge
was not complete, but that it was partial and fragmentary.26 It is due
to this fragmentary character of his knowledge that the knowledge
of Christ of the other Apostles is characteristically different. There is
a Synoptic, a Pauline, and a Johannine type of doctrine; each differs
considerably from the other, and no theological art reduces them to
the same common denominator. What they all have in common is
this: He Himself, Jesus Christ, is the Word of God; He is the center
of their testimony; but their witness to Him, their particular doc¬
trines, whether according to Matthew, or Paul, or John, are like radii
which point toward this center from different angles, while none
of them actually reaches the goal. They are human testimonies given
by God, under the Spirit’s guidance, of the Word of God; they have
a share in the absolute authority of the Word, yet they are not the
Word, but means through which the Word is given.
Again, we cannot maintain that everything that is Biblical — not
even everything in the New Testament — is in the same way, or to
the same extent, the “ bearer ” of the word of God. Every incident
in the Gospel narrative is not so essential for our knowledge of Christ
as the Passion narrative; from the point of view of revelation all the
24 Gal. 1:16.
25 Cf. the doctrine of the Law in Galatians with Romans, or that of I Thessa
lonians with II Corinthians.
26 I Cor. 13:12; Phil. 3:12.
130 Revelation and Reason

processes of Apostolic thought are not so important as certain main

passages in the Epistle to the Romans or in the Gospel of John. The
Apostles do not proclaim equally clearly in their teaching what
God has done and revealed for His glory, and for the salvation of
men in Jesus Christ.27 There are, as it were, points which are very
near the central point, and there is a circumference at which the
limits of the canon already become visible. Luther’s remarks, in his
introductions to the Biblical writings 28 may, in individual cases, here
and there be too subjective, and possibly too arbitrary — yet in
essentials they do call attention to questions which continually arise
in the mind of the thoughtful believer, raising issues which theologi¬
cal criticism, with its own methods of examination, must bring to
light. And yet our final judgment, as a whole, must be this: It is only
in the manifold variety of these witnesses and testimonies, and in¬
deed precisely in this great variety, with all its contradictions — a
variety which transcends all theological systems — that the witness
to Christ, in all its fullness and completeness, is attested.

10. The canon — first of all that of the New Testament — confronts
the Church as the Apostolic primitive witness to the revelation which
has taken place in Jesus Christ; by this very fact, as the bearer of
the revelation, it is itself inseparably connected with it. But what
belongs to the canon? And who decides what should belong to it?
And what are the criteria by which the judgment is made? Is the
present canon finally closed for the Church? Is it finally determined
or defined? The formation of the canon is the work of the Church.29

27 This helps us to understand the attitude of Luther to the Epistle of James.

With the orthodox tradition, he agreed that the doctrine of the Bible is a unity.
On the other hand, in the view of faith represented in the Epistle of James he
saw a view which (at least in the way it was expressed) contradicted that of
Saint Paul. Hence, he concluded that the Epistle of James no longer belongs to
the canon.
28 The Preface to Luther’s “ September Bible ” of 1522 is followed by a
short introduction to the New Testament, with the truly revolutionary head¬
ing: “ Which are the best and noblest of the New Testament books this also
contains the famous saying about the Epistle of James as an “ epistle of straw.”
But his other introductions to the books of the Bible are similarly outspoken.
29 It is, of course, true that “ reflection upon the conditions under which
books were admitted to the canon arose later, and were only added when the
object ... in all essentials was already there; only after the New Testament
had come into being did men begin to reflect about how it had come into exist¬
ence and why it was so.” (Julicher-Fascher, Einleitung in das N.T., p. 497.)
 The Witness of Holy Scripture 131
It is the Church, the community of believers, which decides what is
“ canonical ” or “ Apostolic,” and hence what is the character of the
primitive witness in itself. The formation of the canon is a judgment
of faith, a decision of knowledge, a “ dogma ” of the Church. There¬
fore the question of the canon has never, in principle, been definitely
answered, but it is continually being reopened. Just as the Church
of the second, third, and fourth centuries had the right to decide,
and felt obliged to decide, what was “ Apostolic ” and what was not,
on their own responsibility as believers,30 so in the same way every
Church, at every period in the history of the Church, possesses the
same right and the same duty. The dogma of the canon, like every
other ecclesiastical decision of faith, is not final and infallible, but it is
possible and right continually to re-examine it, test it, and revise it.
The fact that it was the Church of the fourth century that defined
the present canon, and created the sacrifice of the Mass and the
Papacy, must remind us of this truth. We know, too, how long the
Church has hesitated about the canonical character of several docu¬
ments — both about those which are now contained in the canon, and
those which no longer form part of it. If people of an earlier day were
uncertain, why should not we be also? When a man like Luther, who
was steeped in the Bible, doubted the Apostolic character of the book
of Revelation as well as of the Epistle of James, for theological rea¬
sons, not for historical ones, why should we not be allowed to do the
same, basing our hesitations upon a more exact work of criticism?
It is due to the contingency of all that is historical that it cannot be
worked out in clear-cut concepts. It is due to the historical and

30 From the beginning the conscious formation of the canon was wholly de¬
termined by the question of authorship. It remained so until the time of Luther,
and after Luther it again came to the fore. Luther was the only scholar who
replaced this purely historical and authoritarian conception of the canon by
one which was concrete and theological: “ This is the true touchstone, to blame
all books that do not honor Christ. . . . What Christ does not teach, that is
not ‘ Apostolic/ even if it were taught by Saint Peter or by Saint Paul.” (Preface
to the Epistle of James.) Protestant orthodoxy —to which in this sense even
Calvin and Bullinger belong — returns to the historical authoritarian idea. For
everything is unquestionably canonical which the Early Church decreed to be
regarded as canonical, and the proof of this is the established Apostolic author¬
ship of the New Testament books, and the Prophetic authorship of the Old
Testament books. This is the accepted principle, which may not be discussed.
At the same time, until the end of the sixteenth century, doubts about the
canonical character of some books of the New Testament were still permitted.
(Cf. Heppe, Dogmatik des Protestantismus im 16. Jahrhundert, I, p. 254.)
132 Revelation and Reason

irrational element of revelation and of the Apostolate, that the canon

is an entity with undefined frontiers.
In spite of this, however, we cannot lightly ignore the canonical
decisions of the Early Church, first of all because the canon itself is
the presupposition of all the ecclesiastical development of doctrine,
even of Biblical doctrine. From the standpoint of the Reformation
in particular, we have great interest in the stability of the canon. But
apart from these secondary considerations, and independent of them,
is the fact that even a free examination of the decision on the canon
of the Early Church, conducted independently of all tradition, would
in essentials come to the same conclusions. If we compare the writ¬
ings of the New Testament with those of the sub-Apostolic period,
even those which are nearest in point of time, we cannot avoid the
conclusion that there is a very great difference between the two
groups; which was also the opinion of the Fathers of the Church.
We cannot deny the great difference in quality, quite apart from the
purely historical element of distance in time from the event of revela¬
tion itself. It would be easier, indeed, to envisage a reduction of the
New Testament canon, such as Luther suggested. But however
plainly we are forced to recognize the actual existence of a peripheral
area to the canon, which would include, for instance, II Peter, Jude,
James, and the Apocalypse, yet it is undeniable that there is a very
great gulf between any such area and those writings which the Fa¬
thers considered for inclusion in the canon, such as the First Epistle of
Clement, or the Shepherd of Hermas. One who, in principle, admits
the necessity for a canon — that is, one who distinguishes the primi¬
tive witness, which is the basis of everything, from the witness of the
Church, which is based upon it — will continually return to the pres¬
ent canon.

11. To what extent, however, does the Old Testament belong to

the canon of the Christian Church? To what extent can we apply
that which we said about the Apostolic witness to Christ to the pro¬
phetic witness to God in the Old Covenant? What is the relation be¬
tween the historical revelation of the Old Covenant and the writings
of the Old Testament, and how is the Old Testament itself related
to the New Testament? First of all, here too, the principle applies:
that the revelation and the book are not to be equated as identical.
The written word is not the primary revelation, but the secondary
 The Witness of Holy Scripture 133
form of revelation, even in the Old Covenant. Here too the revelation
is essentially history, and the oral word of the Prophets, and only in
a secondary way is it “ Scripture.” The Law alone constitutes a certain
exception, in accordance with what was said about this in Chapter 6,
and in agreement with Luther’s parallels of vopos and ypappa.31 The
Law, understood as ypappa, is, however, not revelation in the same
sense as the Prophetic word.82
On the other hand, this emphasis on the historical character of the
revelation teaches us that the purely historical books of the Old
Testament constitute a better testimony to the fact of revelation than
a doctrinal view of revelation. The historical books in particular, and
as a whole, form part of the testimony to revelation under the Old
Covenant, because they hand down the record of this revelation in
history; they alone narrate the acts of God, in which He reveals
Himself to the world. The Old Testament, in every part, is a witness
to the history of the Covenant, and the revelation of the Covenant
of Yahweh with His Chosen People. Even in the Wisdom literature
there is an element which distinguishes it from the similar literature
of other nations: “ He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts
unto the children of Israel.” Although the Wisdom literature of the
Bible at many points bears a strong resemblance to the non-Biblical
Wisdom literature, as a whole it is set within the context of the his¬
tory of the Old Covenant, and is molded by it.
The impressive and far-reaching differences between the various
writings of the Old Testament, both in the historical books and in
matters of “ doctrine ” (which are devastating to the claims of the
theory of verbal inspiration), are all comprehended in the idea of the
witness of revelation which already characterizes the New Testa¬
ment; in principle, therefore, these differences do not raise any real
difficulty, although there may still be questions about points of detail.
Just as the history of revelation itself is disclosed as a divine economy,
or a kind of education, so is it with the record of the revelation. God

31 In agreement with Paul (II Cor. 3:3 If.) Luther says: The Law —not
merely the ritual law, but even the moral law, even the sacratissimus decalogus
of the eternal Commandments of God is the ‘letter’ (literalis) and a tradition
of the letter makes man neither living nor righteous” (translated after W.A.,
2,468). . t£
32 Thus Paul, Gal. 3:19. Hence Luther continually emphasizes: “ Moses and
the Prophets have preached; but there we do not hear God Himself (W.A.,
33, 149). “ Moses has a strange mouth ” (W.A., 3, 550).
134 Revelation and Reason

Himself moved with His people Israel from the primitive stage to the
higher forms of belief and worship, and finally to the highest of all,
and this “ divine economy ” is visible in the Old Testament.
The relation between the Old and the New Testament, however,
is determined by what we have already said about the relation be¬
tween the preparatory and the final revelation. The real problem is
not the Old Testament, but the revelation of the Old Covenant. The
Old Testament is related to the New as the revelation of the Old
Covenant is related to the revelation in the Incarnation of the Word,
Jesus Christ. This relation is twofold: that of actual preparation, and
that of a future hope. God’s revelation in Jesus Christ is indeed the
great miracle, but it is not magic, nor is it a sensational marvel. The
idea that the Son of God might just as well have been born anywhere
else rather than among the Jews, as, for instance, in Nanking under
the Han dynasty, or in the Athens of Pericles, or at some time or
other in Madagascar, shows us at once the nonhistorical character
of the fantasy of the Figure of Christ severed from the history of
Israel and confined within its own limits. God “ could out of these
stones raise up children to Abraham,” but He did not do it; God
could also have sent His Son into the world without any preparatory
revelation, but He did not will to do so, nor, in actual fact, has He
done so. God’s mighty acts do not overshadow or constrict the his¬
torical process; the story of the way in which God educated His
people, transforming these wild and nomad tribes into a “ people,”
with a strict piety, controlled by His word,33 shows us that the his¬
toric fact of revelation and the sphere of education are not so far
apart as an orthodox, intellectualistic theology would have us be¬
lieve. It was only in a people which had thus been prepared that the
Christ could be bom and understood. The Old Testament revelation
is the preparation for the revelation in the New Testament.
At the same time, however, it is the record of a great hope. In this
revelation God reveals Himself not only as One who has been con¬
tinually coming to His people, and dealing with them, but He is
also One who points beyond events that have already happened to¬
ward a future event in which He will fully manifest and realize His
will. In itself the Old Testament revelation is preparatory, and its
greatest witnesses are most conscious of this fact. It is Messianic
through and through, but the Messianic element in the Old Testa-
33
Cf. the drastic description in Ezek. 16:4 ff.; Hos. 11:1 ff.
 The Witness of Holy Scripture 135
ment becomes explicit only after a long process of development.
Hence the Old Testament, in addition to its testimony to a divine
revelation in particular historical events, also points forward to a
revelation which still has to take place, the content of which, even
in the highest form of the Prophetic consciousness, is only suggested
in mysterious terms. Thus the Old Testament witnesses to Jesus
Christ, it is true, but mainly in a hidden, indirect, shadowy manner,34
and in so doing it is very different from the New Testament. But it
is precisely this difference from the New Testament, as the Prophetic
revelation, which constitutes its value as a testimony to the New
Testament as the revelation of fulfillment. Fulfillment would not be
fulfillment without prophecy; Christ would not be the Messiah with¬
out the Prophets who give Him this name, and who interpret the
whole history of the Covenant as a preparation for this final act
of revelation. Hence the Early Church was right to take over the
canon of the Old Testament from the Jewish community, and to
incorporate it in one work with her own canon. But in her insistence
on the unity between the two Testaments the Church has been mis¬
taken, and has caused a great deal of confusion by undervaluing the
difference between them. She has gone astray when she has made
artificial attempts to harmonize the two, trying to prove, by an ex¬
cessive use of allegorical interpretation, a unity of doctrine which is
in direct opposition to God’s wise and loving method of educating
mankind.

12. The Bible is the word of God because in it, so far as He

chooses, God makes known the mystery of His will, of His saving
purpose in Jesus Christ. The Bible is a special form of the divine
revelation; it is not merely a document which records a historical
revelation, because in it God Himself reveals to us the meaning of
that which He wills to say to us, and to give us in the historical
revelation, especially in the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of
God. The Mission of the Son is one thing; the illumination of the
Apostles to perceive the meaning of the mystery of the Son is another
thing. God has finally revealed Himself in the Son; but this revelation
would not reach us apart from the sending and illumination of the
Apostles who bear witness to Him. Without the witness of the Apos¬
tles we should not know Jesus as the Christ. For instance, had a
34 Heb. 8:5; 10:1; Col. 2:17.
136 Revelation and Reason

Jewish or a pagan chronicler transmitted to us the deeds and words

of Jesus, we should not be able, through their “ historically faithful ”
account, as eyewitnesses, to know Jesus as the Son of God and Re¬
deemer. In order to become Christian believers we needed not only
eyewitnesses of Jesus, but also believing witnesses of the resurrection
of Christ.
The same is true of the record of events under the Old Covenant.
Had they been handed down by an unbelieving chronicler, they
would not have been, for us, “ saving history,” but a fragment of
quite ordinary Oriental national history. The testimony of the Proph¬
ets, and the faith and vision evoked by their message, was needed in
order to show us that this history is the history of God’s dealings with
man. Thus the Bible is not only a document of historical revelation,
but is itself the product of divine revelation, and this makes it also a
revelation to us. God speaks to us His Word in Christ through the
Prophets and Apostles; through their word He speaks to us His Word
of judgment and of mercy. We do not believe because it is their
word, but because, and to the extent in which, He Himself speaks to
us through their word.

10. THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH

Once for all God has revealed Himself as the holy and the merci¬
ful God in the Incarnation of His Son, in the life, death, and resurrec¬
tion of Jesus Christ. Once for all the meaning of the person and the
work of Jesus Christ has been clearly expressed, and firmly established
in the testimony of the first witnesses to Jesus Christ. Just as no
one can come to the Father save through the Son, so also it is true that
no one can come to the Son save through the Holy Scriptures. But it is
a fact of experience that only a small minority come to a living faith
directly through the reading of the Holy Scriptures. Most of those to
whom faith is granted will confess that this took place through the
witness of living persons, through the viva vox ecclesiae. God has
willed that even here the law of His creation applies: omne vivum ex
vivo. Even the few who have become Christians “ directly ” through
the Holy Scriptures have received these Scriptures from the hands of
other persons, through the mediation of the Church. Jesus Christ is
 The Witness of the Church 137
not imprisoned within the pages of the Bible; He is the living, pres¬
ent Lord of the Church,1 hence His revelation also is a living and
present event, which takes place in and through the Church. This
form of revelation is the subject of this chapter.

1. The Church, or to put it more plainly, and in terms which are

more clearly in accordance with the New Testament, the Body of
Christ, may be regarded from two main points of view. First of all, it
is the fellowship of those who, having been convinced and con¬
quered by the Word of God, have become believers. But the Church
is not, so to speak, merely the sum total of individual believers;
rather, it is truer to say that “ individual believers ” do not exist at all.
“ Individual ” existence in this sense is the existence of those who do
not believe in Christ. But when the Word of God kindles a flame of
faith in the heart of a human being, he ceases to be an “ individual.”
He becomes a “member ” of the Body.2 He is torn out of his self-
centered isolation, out of the tension of the solitary, self-imprisoned
soul, by the love that he receives in the Word of God. Since God
gives Himself to us in Jesus Christ, He takes us out of ourselves, He
takes away our self-will, and gives us to “ the Other.” Faith, as the
reception of the divine love, is the birth of “ being-in-community.”
Faith means being open to the “ Thou,” just as unbelief is being shut
up within one’s self. Hence everyone who wakes up to faith finds
himself a member of a community, united with those to whom
the same miracle of enlightenment has been granted. “ Brethren of
the Common Life ”8 would not be a bad name for the Church of
Christ. This was God’s intention for the Church from the beginning,4
and where this spirit is not present, the real Church does not exist,
even though it may bear this name. As faith is fellowship with Christ,
and through Christ with God, so also it is fellowship with those who
are “ in Christ ” — and a readiness for fellowship towards all who
are not yet “ in Christ.” This is the Church as the Body of Christ, as
the community of believers.

1 Cf. Burger, Der lebendige Christus, especially pp. 251 ff.

2 Rom. 12:4; I Cor. 12:12 ff.; Eph. 4:16, 25; 5:30.
3 To Luther the Church is “ the divine, the heavenly brotherhood ... in
which we are all brothers and sisters together, so near, that we cannot think
of any greater nearness.” (Von den Bruderschaften, II, 754 ff.) Cf. Althaus,
Communio Sanctorum.
4 Acts 2:42; I John 1:3, 7.
138 Revelation and Reason

But it is possible to look at this same Church from the front instead
of from behind, not as the community of those who have been reborn
through faith, but as the body which has produced faith, and which
receives into its ranks those who believe. It is not only communio,
but also mater fidelium. The Word of God is not only given to the
community of believers as a gift; it is also a commission. Chiistians
are not only called to be disciples, but to make disciples.0 They have
not only to preserve the Word of God among themselves, but they
have also to hand on the Word of God to others; they have to share
a gift with others, and to offer it to the whole world. Thus the Church
is not only a community of the “ saved,” but it is at the same time a
divine means, a divine institution, by means of which the same salva¬
tion is given to others. Thus God reveals Himself not only in and to
the Church, but through the Church. The Christian community to
which the Word of God has been entrusted becomes itself the bearer
of the Word, for “ God is in the midst of her ”;6 Christ the Head of
the Church is indeed the Living Lord. How could He be within her
and not at the same time also manifest Himself as the Living Lord?
How could He, the Living Word, cease to reveal Himself? He re¬
veals Himself through the witness, the preaching, and the teaching
of the Church.
There are not two kinds of Churches, the one a community of
believers and the other a priestly, hierarchical body. This dualism,
which is only slightly concealed in the Catholic idea of the Church,7
has no support in the Biblical and Evangelical view of the Church.
Even as the bearer of the revelation the Church is not an “ It ”; it is
not an institution; it is not a sacred, ecclesiastical body; it is not a
legal corporation like the State. The Church is never, whether visible
or invisible, anything other than the community of believers; it is
always composed of persons, namely, human beings who are knit
together through the God-man in person. This fellowship must have
all kinds of concrete arrangements, ordinances, forms of organiza-
5 Matt. 28:19; Acts 14:21.
6 Ps. 46:6.
7 Bellarmin (eccl. mil. c. 2): “Nostra sententia est, ecclesiam unam tantum
esse, non duas, et illam unam et veram esse coetum hominum ejusdem christianae
fidei professione et eorundem sacramentorum communione colligatum sub re-
gimine legitimorum pastorum ac praecipue unius Christi in terris vicarii, Romani
pontificis.” The German bishops, on the contrary, define it thus: “ We acknowl¬
edge in our Holy Church the Christ who continues to live and teach upon the
earth, his alter ego” (Bartmann, Lehrbuch d. Dogmatik, II, 142).
 The Witness of the Church 139
tion, offices, laws; but because it has all these does not mean that
its essence consists in them. The Church is not an institution;,s but
the community of believers has the commission and the authority to
proclaim the message because, and in so far as, it possesses the Woid
of God. And it possesses the Word of God because, and in so far as, it
has faith. If it loses this faith, then it also loses the Word, the author¬
ity, and the commission. The treasure which it possesses is indeed
not an “ it,” it is not merely a “ thing,” nor is it mere doctrine; but
it is Himself, Jesus Christ. Hence the Church exists only where He is,
and wherever He is. He, in His presence with men that is the
Church; it is never anything else. He alone gives the Church the au¬
thority and the commission to preach His Word. Now what is
the relation between this Word of the Church and the word of
Scripture?

2. As we have seen, the Church is founded upon the witness of the

Apostles and Prophets, as a house is built upon its foundation. With¬
out the Apostles’ “ word ” there would be no Church. That is the fiist
thing we have to say about the mutual relation between the Chuich
and the Word. But we must immediately add a second point: there
is no Apostolic word, and no Holy Scripture, without the Church.
Even the first disciples were not individuals; the moment at which
they recognized Jesus as tire Christ was also the moment at which
the ecclesia was founded.10 The Apostle, it is true, is distinguished
from all other later believers by the fact that he has received his
“ word ” and his Commission “ immediately,” “ directly,” from Jesus
Christ, and not through the mediation of other human beings.1 Yet
the word of the Apostles is also a word of the Church, nevei the woid
of an individual. The Apostles proclaim the deeds and words of the
Lord 12 as the common ttapadocns; in the name of the Christian com¬
munity, and as those to whom the Commission has been entrusted,
the Apostle undertakes his missionary journeys;13 in the mutual in¬
tercourse with his “ Churches ” his Epistles come into being; they

s Cf. the article on k/cX^la, by K. L. Schmidt, in Kittehs Worterbuch, III,

pp. 502 if. See, above all, Sohm, Kirchenrecht, I, pp. 19 ff.
s Eph. 2:20.
10 Matt. 16:18. See also Schmidt, loc. cit., pp. 522 tt.
11 Gal. 1:1, 12.
12 I Cor. 15:3; 11:23; II Thess. 3:6.

is Acts 13:2.
140 Revelation and Reason

are not only addressed to the Church, but they spring from the life
of the Church; they are always explicitly signed by others as well
as by Paul, and they are full of lists of names to whom greetings are
to be sent, in order that they may be understood as the word from the
Church. Even the Apostle is not himself the only one who gives; he
also stands in a relation of giving and receiving, and therefore what he
gives is always also something which is received from the Church.14
His word is the word of the Church.
Since the Church already has a share in the genesis of the Apostolic
witness, still more is it the work of the Church to collect these writ¬
ings, to preserve them and to distribute them, to demarcate them
from other religious writings; to put it briefly, it is essentially
the work of the Church to form the canon of Holy Scripture.
Without the Church there would be no Bible. What other body
save the Church would have taken the trouble to continue copy¬
ing these writings of obscure people — writings which educated
people regarded with contempt — thus preserving them for poster¬
ity? We know, however, what would have become of the Bible if
this intensive work of copying manuscripts in their hundreds had
not been carried on from the first century onward. We owe the Bible
wholly to the Church. Again, it is the Church which has translated
the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures into the languages of all nations,
and thus made them accessible to all. What other body save the
Church would have had the interest and immense devotion which
lies behind the work of so many hundreds of translations of the
Bible? 15 It is also the Church which has made the Bible intelligible,
through an unbroken chain of expository writings, all down the
centuries. Indeed, we cannot very well imagine how remote the
Bible would seem to a man of the present day apart from the exposi¬
tory work of the Church, which has been carried on for eighteen
hundred years. Indeed, it would not be absurd to issue a history of
Europe written from the point of view of the history of the exposition
of the Bible. The center of the history of the West is Church history,
and as such it is the history of the way in which, down the centuries,
the Bible has been supported by the spiritual and intellectual work
of the Church.

14 Rom. 1:12.
15 In 1925 the Bible had been translated into 835 languages; since then
many more have been added to this number.
 The Witness of the Church 141
We read the Bible with the aid of the “ Biblical dictionary ” which
the theological work of the centuries has created. Indeed, the main
part of the theological work of the Church is this “ Biblical diction¬
ary.” It was thus that Melanchthon understood his Loci,16 and it was
thus that Calvin understood his Institutes. Theology is, essentially,
the exposition of the Bible, the “ translation ” of the Bible. As we
cannot understand the Bible unless it is translated out of the original
tongues, so also we do not understand it without this agelong theo¬
logical work of translation. Without the Church there would be no
Bible.
The Church is the bridge which carries the message of the Bible
over the stream of the centuries into the present. The word, the
preaching of the Church, consists essentially in making the word
of the Bible present and available. Since we do not expect the ma¬
jority of mankind to arrive at belief in Christ through the reading
of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures, so also we cannot expect that
the majority of mankind will become believers through the “ word
of the Bible itself,” through the bare word of the Bible, which has
not been translated or made living and present. It is only the living,
present word of the Bible which has creative power. But faith is a
creation; the believer is one who has been reborn. He has been “ be¬
gotten again unto a living hope ” by a living word — perhaps that of
a believing mother, a friend, a preacher, or a writer of his own day.
Unless an individual is addressed where he is, in the present, despite
the fact of the Bible he cannot become a believer.

3. The authoritative word of the Church, that which continually

creates new life, and the word which supports the Church, is that
of public preaching. Through the preaching of missionaries the
Christian community is founded; through the preaching at public
worship the Church is maintained, strengthened, and nourished. The
message of Jesus Christ is not only to be proclaimed by one person
to another, but publicly, to the whole nation — indeed, to the whole
world. The forms of this proclamation 17 may change in the course of

16 “ Ut, si quos queam, ad scripturas invitem . . . ut eorum, qui in scrip-

turis versari volent, studia juvernus.” Thus Melanchthon describes in his Fore¬
word the aim of his Loci theol.
n It may well be asked whether the idea of the “proclamation” (of the
Gospel) should not be reserved for the definitely “ missionary ” or evangelistic
proclamation. In the New Testament, in any case, nrjpwaeiv always means the
142 Revelation and Reason

the centuries — and possibly in the immediate future they may

change a great deal more than in the last few centuries — yet the
commission which was given to tire Church once for all, and the
fundamental task of the public proclamation of the message by
the Church will endure. Where there is true preaching, where, in the
obedience of faith to the command of the Lord and in the authority
of His Spirit the Word is proclaimed, there, in spite of all appearances
to the contrary, the most important thing that ever happens upon this
earth takes place. And yet when we speak of the word of the Church,
we must conceive the idea of this proclamation more broadly than
is usually the case. As the Church exists wherever two or three are
gathered together in the name of Christ,18 so also the word of the
Church is present wherever a convinced Christian, in his own spoken
testimony, hands on the message which he has received. Whether
this takes place in the form of a sermon given by a minister or clergy¬
man, or in a private conversation between mother and son; whether
it takes place in the Church building in the setting of a Sunday
service of worship, or at night in a barn where a farmer and his man
are waiting for the birth of a calf, and as they attend to the cow and
wait through the night the master “ talks ” to his man,19 makes no
difference in essentials. In this context, in which we are inquiring
into the revelation of God in the Church, we are not concerned with
preaching as part of the human organization of the Church. The
Church has good reasons for refusing to permit everyone, without
any distinction, to get up in Church and proclaim the “ Word ” in
public; but this restriction does not alter the fact that God stands
by His Word where it is proclaimed outside all ecclesiastical ordi¬
nances and passed on from one human being to another, always pre¬
supposing that this takes place “ from faith to faith.”
The Word is preached not only where the discourse is explicitly
expository in character, but it is preached wherever Jesus Christ is

“ missionary ” preaching; for only to it can an idea be applied which, like that
of KripixjaeLV, contains the element of being preached for the first time, of a com¬
munication of something new. Cf. my paper “Von Sinn und Zweck der Ver-
kiindigung,” Ev. Verl., Zollikon.
18 Matthew, at any rate, intended the word of the Lord to be understood in
connection with the Church (Matt. 18:20).
19 Jeremias Gotthelf has described, not only in Uli, but in all his works, this
“ preaching of the Gospel ” which goes on outside the Church and — he has
practiced it.
 The Witness of the Church 143
proclaimed in harmony with the witness of the Bible.20 God is not a
“ Book God what matters is not the Book, but the Person. The
statement, “ We have no Christ apart from the Bible,” is true for the
Church as a whole; it is only indirectly true for the individual who
passes on his faith to another, or who receives faith from another.
Living Christian witness is possible only within a community, in the
membership of a community, and there is no community of this sort
apart from the Bible. But this does not mean that, in the narrow
sense, the individual witness must take the form of the exposition of
the Bible. The decisive element, the process of creation, may happen
without the opening of a Bible at all, without the quotation of a text
from the Bible. But it cannot take place apart from the fact that the
one who gives his testimony lives in the Bible, and in a Christian
community, which is spiritually nourished by the whole expository
tradition of the Church.
Real witness, a witness which creates faith, can exist only where
the Word is proclaimed in accordance with the original commission.
This commission need not be received through men; it may also be
received directly from God. When the master Johannes “ talks ” with
his servant Uli, he does it because God has told him to do so. And
where there is the command, there is also the authority. No ecclesi¬
astical ordination can impart this authority; even the ordained
preacher must pray and strive for it each time he needs it. A great
deal will depend upon whether the preacher is aware of this secret
of authority; much ecclesiastical futility is due to ignorance of this
secret.
We must never forget that the anti-Donatist decision of the
Church, namely, that the effect of the Word was declared to be in¬
dependent of the person who proclaimed it, was created in connec¬
tion with the opus operatum of the Sacrament. It was ill-advised of
Melanchthon to introduce this principle, without further notice, into
the Augsburg Confession. The legal commission of the Church can
never impart the authority which the Holy Spirit alone can give. God
does not delegate His Spirit to any law of the Church. The authority
of the preaching is, it is true, not bound to the person of the preacher,

20 Over against the doctrinaire views of the present day, we may point out
that even Luther often preached without expounding a definite Bible text; cf.,
for instance, his powerful fast-day sermons of 1522, or his travel sermons (W.A.,
10, III, Abt.).
144 Revelation and Reason

but it is connected with the fact that he really acts under the com¬
mission of God Himself, and not only in the power of the commission
entrusted to him by a Church. Here, in the ecclesiastical view of
Church law, the thought of the Catholic Church, and of the Church
of the Reformation, based on the Bible, diverges.21 He alone pro¬
claims the Word of God to whom God gives His Word, here and now,
and not he whom a Church has ordained as a preacher. The Holy
Spirit is not bound to an ecclesiastical legal arrangement; He
breathes where He will. Authority is something different from of¬
ficial power; authority is a predicate of the freedom of God.
Thus the formula of the Helvetic Confession: praedicatio verbi
divini est verbum divinum, may be described as at least misleading.
It proceeds from an unwarranted identification of the doctrinally
established word of the Bible with the Word of God, and it means
the doctrinally correct proclamation of this word of the Bible. At
least this is the most obvious interpretation,22 and it is thus that the
statement is, as a rule, understood. If this is not what is meant, then
the formula is tautology: the Word of God is preached when — the
Word of God is preached. The right element in this dubious formula
is this: Authoritative preaching has as much right to be called the
Word of God as the word of the Bible and such authoritative procla¬
mation of the Word cannot be severed from the basis of the word of
the Bible, and can take place only by means of it.
On the other hand, there is “ preaching ” which, dogmatically
speaking, may be in complete accordance with that which an Apos¬
tle, a Paul or a John, may say, yet it may not be, on that account, in
the very least the “ preaching of the Word of God.” Authoritative
preaching is guaranteed neither by the legal ordination of a Church
nor by a period of training in an orthodox theological college. We
shall be examining immediately the connection between correct
doctrine and the Word of God in more detail; from the very outset,
however, in accordance with all that has already been said, it is plain
21 In the New Testament an “ office ” is given to a man who has the Holy
Spirit; since the time of Cyprian the principle has been held that the “ office ”
imparts the Holy Spirit. (Cf. Seeberg, Lehrbuch d. Dogmengeschichte, I, p.
614.) Even Irenaeus says, “Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God”
(111,24,1).
22 This exposition of the Confessio Helvetica is possible when one thinks of
the decidedly orthodox character of this Confessional document, as indeed
comes out plainly in the two passages of proofs which precede it, the Edict of
Justinian and the Symbolum of the Pope Damasus, and even in the title itself.
 The Witness of the Church 145
that the divinely present Word cannot be tied to a correct doctrine,
any more than to an official position in the Church. Again and again
we see that authoritative preaching, even in view of correct doctrine,
is the free gift of God. We can leam orthodox theology, and anyone
who has learned it can use it, but we can never “ possess ” the Word
of God; we can only pray that it may be granted us when we have to
preach.23

4. The true relation between the word of the Bible, the word
preached by the Church, and the Word of God, will perhaps become
most clear if we look at it negatively, that is, if we contrast it with
three typical deviations from the right path: with a nonhistorical
emphasis on tire Bible (or Fundamentalism); with an unspiritual tra¬
ditionalism; and with a mystical “ spirituality.” The nonhistorical,
abstract emphasis on the Bible does not allow for the necessary medi¬
ation between the word of the Bible and the modern man through
the viva vox ecclesiae. It confronts the individual man directly with
the Holy Scriptures, and regards the word of the Bible alone as the
Word of God. Hence it deifies the “ letter ” of the Bible, as if the
Spirit of God were imprisoned within the covers of the written word;
those who take this view do not understand that there is only an
indirect identity between the word of the Bible and the Word of
God: that even tire word of the Bible is only the means of the real
Word of God, Jesus Christ, and that therefore, in spite of its priority
as the original witness, fundamentally it stands upon the same level
as the testimony of the Church. The nonhistorical, abstract character
of this view also means that it lacks a sense of community;24 the
individual reader of the Bible thinks that he can be “ saved ” by
himself, so long as he has his Bible, and he ignores the fellowship of
the Church. Thus he falls into the error of thinking that he has be¬
come a Christian “ through the Bible alone,” whereas he has already
received the very Bible by which he swears from the Church, quite
23 The difference between Luther and the first generation of Reformers as
a whole, and the orthodoxy which began even with Melanchthon, cannot be
exaggerated. For Luther the “ Word of God ” is the event of the divine self¬
communication through the Scriptures and through the preaching; for the
orthodox Reformers the “ Word of God ” is the Bible as a Book which has been
given, and correct doctrine. Cf. H. E. Weber, Reformation, Orthodoxie und
Rationalismus.
24 This nonhistorical Fundamentalism is practiced especially in certain sec¬
tarian groups, and always leads to the formation of fresh sects.
146 Revelation and Reason

apart from everything else that has led him to the Bible and made
its meaning clear to him; he feels he needs no fellowship save the
invisible bond which unites all who believe in Christ. He does not
know the revelation of God through the viva vox ecclesiae.
The classical type of ecclesiastical traditionalism is embodied in
the Roman Catholic Church. It does not admit the uniqueness of the
revelation in Scripture as the norm, but makes the Church and its
tradition, as it is incorporated in the Papacy, the authoritative bearer
of the authority of the revelation, although formally it co-ordinates
it with the authority of the Holy Scriptures. But the fact that the
Pope alone is recognized as the authoritative expositor of the Scrip¬
tures shows that the Church and the tradition are, in fact, ranked
above the Scriptures, although in words this is denied. This, too,
explains the role of dogma within the ecclesiastical system. It is not
the Scriptures that constitute the norm of the dogma — although for¬
mally this is asserted — but the dogma is the norm for the exposition of
the Scriptures, since it is infallible.25 The demand for the continual re¬
examination of dogma in the light of Scripture, the fundamental
principle of the Churches of the Reformation, is here unknown
because it would be impossible to combine it with the fixed infalli¬
bility of dogma. Finally, we must note the attitude of the ecclesiasti¬
cal body toward the individual believer. Whereas the Fundamental¬
ist view eliminates the Church as the supreme court of appeal, where
revelation is concerned, since it binds the individual directly and
solely to the Scriptures, here, on the contrary, the individual is directly
bound to the Church alone, but the bond is absolute. Faith is related
to the Church 26 and to her teaching, and to Jesus Christ only in so far
as the Church points to Him as the Source of her own authority. Here,
25 By the canons of the Council of Trent, which declared that the Latin
Vulgate alone could be regarded as “ sacred and canonical,” and by its decrees
on the interpretation of the Scriptures (Denzinger, loc. cit., No. 786), the actual
subordination of the Scriptures to dogma (eum sensum quern tenet sancta mater
ecclesia) was established; while the Vatican decree on Papal infallibility in
the office of teaching (Denzinger, No. 1832 ff.) establishes the supremacy of the
Pope above the teaching Church, and the Church which expounds the Scrip¬
tures. (Romani Pontificis definitiones esse ex sese non autem e consensu ec¬
clesiae irreformabiles.)
26 According to the Roman Catechism, the content of faith is “ quod a Deo
traditum esse sanctissimae matris Ecclesia auctoritas comprobavit.” The fatal
fides implicita is the necessary consequence of the adaptation of faith to the
articles of faith. The same problem emerges later on in Protestant orthodoxy.
Cf. Ritschl, Fides implicita, 1890.
 The Witness of the Church 147
instead of the individualism of those who make the Bible alone their
norm, we have the collectivism and institutionalism of the Church.
The third deviation from the right path is the sentimentality of
those who claim to be “ purely spiritual in their desire to claim a
direct faith-relation to the living Christ, they ignore the mediacy of
the historical revelation.27 The “ spiritual ” man of this type recog¬
nizes neither the authority of Scripture nor the bond binding men to
the Word and the fellowship of the Church. Compared with the
“ inner light,” and mystical communion with Christ, all that is his¬
torical is regarded as merely accidental, simply as an occasion for the
essential element: the “ experience ” of Christ. The spiritual man of
this kind says with Fichte: it is not the historical but the metaphysi¬
cal alone which saves; to him the historical is merely a garment, at
its best only a symbol of that which is eternally present. The histori¬
cal Christ is not essential to him; only the Christ who is born in his
heart. Hence “ spiritual religion ” of this kind is individualistic in
a very different way from that of the Fundamentalist, because in any
case the latter is always directed toward the tradition through the
historical revelation of the Scriptures. The religious fanatic stands
outside the realm of history; he is independent of all men; he stands
with God alone; his watchword is: God and the soul, the soul and
God. At all these points this kind of “ spiritual religion ” forms the
transition to rationalism, as indeed even historically the line of con¬
nection between the principle of the “ inner light and the principle
of reason in the speculative theology of the early period of the En¬
lightenment is plain enough for all to see.28 The only difference is that
“ spiritual religion ” severs its connection with the historical revela¬
tion gradually, whereas rationalism, with its assertion that the meta¬
physical is independent of the historical, begins with this as its funda¬
mental thesis.

5. It is the mystery of the divine revelation, which is both histori¬

cal and present, that the individual human being cannot be united
with God apart from an organic connection with the fellowship of
the Church and its tradition.29 He has to receive that which unites
27 Cf. Holl, Luther und die Schwarmer, Ges. Aufs., I, pp. 425 ff.
28 Cf. Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen, pp. 749 ff. [Eng¬
lish trans., The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., pp. 746 ff.,
O. Wyon. Tr.]
29 Cf. my book God and Man.
148 Revelation and Reason

him with God through Jesus Christ from men and women of his own
day. The main point is that man comes into an immediate relation
with God; but this personal fellowship with God is only possible
through the historical Mediator, and only within the fellowship of
the Church. Man is to be united with God alone; but God binds
him to Himself through Christ the Mediator, and through the medi¬
ating witness of the Church to Christ. The living Christ lays hold of
the individual through the living witness of his fellow man, which,
in turn, is based upon the primitive witness of the Apostles to the
historical Mediator. Thus the believer becomes a member of the
Kingdom of God, while at the same time he becomes a member of
the historical human fellowship. But what is the relation between
the witness and the doctrine of the Church — between the personal
and the doctrinal character of the revelation?
When the Christ of the Gospel according to John says, “ I am the
truth,” this is not a metaphor, but a reversal of the usual rational idea
of truth.* God speaks, God imparts Himself; but behold, when God
speaks it is no mere speech, it is not the use of language, but His
“ Word ” is a Person, the Incarnate Word, God Himself present in a
human person. He Himself — not something that can be grasped in
words, something that can be thought, an idea in the mind — is the
Truth. Christ did not come to teach us eternal truths, which other¬
wise would remain hidden from us; but He Himself, in His holy and
merciful presence, through which He sets up the Rule of God and
establishes fellowship, is the Truth. And yet this Truth, which He
Himself is, becomes the Word which men speak. We dealt with this
in the previous chapter. The revelation of Christ fulfills itself in be¬
coming “Word ” in the Apostolic witness to Christ. Only when God
revealed the mystery of His Son in the heart of Peter in such a way
that he was able to say, “ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living
God,” did revelation become historical reality.
This spoken word, as we have seen, was first of all a “ Thou-word,”
the knowledge of Christ conceived in human language in the form
of a worshiping answer: “ It is Thou! ” As the Apostle turns away
from speaking to God, in order to speak to man, this “ Thou-word ”
becomes a proclamation: “ He is the Christ.” The primary form of the
witness of the Church, of the human word which awakens faith, is
the witness to Christ. This proclamation, in spite of the fact that it is
* [See below, Chapter 24. Tr.]
 The Witness of the Church 149
a “ word about something,” is not yet that which may be described,
in the narrower sense, as “ doctrine.” The Holy Scriptures do not
teach theological doctrine. It is a fact of the highest significance that
the Bible contains nothing which, even in the most remote way,
resembles either a “ catechism of Christian doctrine ” or a textbook
of dogmatics. Even that part of the New Testament which comes
closest to a connected account of doctrine, the Epistle to the Romans,
is very far from being a catechism or a textbook. It is a genuine letter;
it is, like all “ doctrine ” in the Bible, a call or summons, a word
addressed to someone, a call which claims obedience and trust; this
word, too, is “ word ” in the “ Thou-form,” conversation, and pastoral
concern for the reader, who is thought of as the hearer of the mes¬
sage; it is speech from person to person, not doctrine in an abstract
and impersonal way. Thus the primary form of the “ word ” of the
Church is not that of theological doctrine, but of witness to Jesus
Christ, handing the message on from one person to another.

6. Unfortunately, the Greek intellectualism which so early domi¬

nated the ecclesiastical view of revelation obscured this truth almost
from the very outset. The Church regarded preaching from the point
of view of doctrine, instead of vice versa.30 Hence the proclamation
of the Gospel — as was the case also with the revelation — was re¬
garded as the communication of doctrine, and thus as “ applied
doctrine,” in which the personal address and the “ Thou-form ” were
merely a matter of form. Thus the Church did not understand the
personal character of the revelation; hence it did not understand
that the transition from the “ Thou-form ” to the “ It-form,” from
personal address to doctrine, was the transition from one dimen¬
sion to another, namely, the transition from the “ truth as encounter ”
to that of the “ truth as idea.” The Church turned the revelation of
the Son into the revelation of an eternal truth “ about the Son.” The
Church did not really believe that He Himself is the Truth. But if
He is the Truth, then the personal witness, the address which claims
obedience, is the original form of the Church’s message, and the
theological doctrine, “ talking about ” something, is a secondary
30 In the re-emphasis upon this forgotten order, preaching — doctrine, it
seems to me that we owe a great deal to the Dogmatics of Karl Barth. Yet this
truth is emphasized more clearly in the first than in the second edition (Die
christliche Dogmatik, I, “ Die Lehre vom Worte Gottes,” par. 1; Kirchliche
Dogmatik, par. 3).
150 Revelation and Reason

form, necessary, but none the less a derived form. If this is so, then
preaching must not be understood from the point of view of doctrine,
but the doctrine from the preaching.
Thus the preaching, and together with that every personal, chal¬
lenging proclamation of the Christian message, stands in the center,
between the witness of the Apostles to Christ and the doctrine of
the Church, its dogma, catechism, and theology. It expresses the
personal character of revealed truth; the fact that the truth of God is
one which demands obedience, and creates fellowship. Its form and
attitude are that of address, and, indeed, when it takes place with
authority, it is an address on behalf of Christ. “ We are ambassadors,
therefore, on behalf of Christ, as though God were intreating by us:
we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God.” 31 Here
the human word does two things: it points away from itself to Christ,
and it moves toward man. It claims “ thyself ” for “ Himself ”; it
gives “ Himself ” to “ thyself it has no desire to be “ anything ” in
itself; it simply desires to create this relation of person to person,
which is both sovereignty and fellowship. It does not confront a
person with a set of doctrines, with an idea to contemplate, a truth
which is complete in itself, but it points man toward the God who
is already turning toward him. The word does not give itself to the
intellect, but it places itself as a human organ at the disposal of the
God who seeks to capture man for Himself. Here we are concerned
with something fundamentally different from the “knowledge of
eternal truths.”
As the power of the witness depends on the power of the object
to which the witness points, so the power of preaching depends on its
ability to point away from itself to the meaning of the whole, and to
turn the listening heart toward it. The thought-content is not in
itself the Word of God: the Word of God consists in the meaning
of its thought-content, and the direction in which it points. God’s
Word is not a doctrine, but it is the self-manifestation of Christ which
is accomplished through the instrument of the doctrinal message.
This is one side of the matter.32
31 II Cor. 5:20.
32 There is, a passage in Luther, the significance of which, so far as I know,
has not been hitherto perceived, which throws a brilliant light upon the con¬
trast between his Biblical view of faith and the orthodox Catholic view: “ The
other articles are rather far from us and do not enter into our experience; nor
do they touch us. . . . But the article on the forgiveness of sins comes into
 The Witness of the Church 151
7. Immediately, however, we must add a second point: This direc¬
tion of the listening soul certainly takes place through definite teach¬
ing. We must say quite clearly: Christ is the Truth. He is the content;
He is the “ point ” of all the preaching of the Church; but He is also
really its content. The human word must point definitely to Him, and
to Him alone. The doctrine is not concerned with itself; nor is the
divine revelation concerned with itself; but it is the indispensable
means through which the hmnan heart must be turned toward Him
Himself. Jesus Christ, the Truth, is not a doctrine; but it is only
through teaching that we can witness to Him, and it is only as we
are taught that we can believe in Him. Just as it is true that He Him¬
self is the Word, and thus more than “ word,” more than something
which is the content of a doctrine in ideas and language, so also it is
true that He is the Word, that we only come to the knowledge of
Him where definite words and statements about Him are made, and
expressed, and understood. Even that first simple confession of Peter,
in which the revelation of Christ became visible, has a theological
content; even the simplest prayer which a mother offers at the bed¬
side of her child contains definite theological ideas. It says some¬
thing definite about God: He is tire Father in heaven, the holy and
the merciful God. Jesus Christ is more than all words about Him, and
His presence is more than any kind of theological doctrine; but He
is not present otherwise than through definite ideas, through the
Apostolic witness to Him, to God. God s Word is moie than can ever
be confined within human language, but it does not come to us apart
from human words. Even when the form of the preaching is a per-
sonal address - and the decisive element lies in this “ Thou-form
— yet all true preaching has also a definite doctrinal content. Indeed,
the power of the witness to point to Christ depends precisely upon
the correctness of this doctrinal content, upon purity of doctiine

continual experience with us, and in daily exercise, and it touches you and me
without ceasing. Of the other articles we speak as of something strange to us
(as examples: Creation, Jesus as the Son of God, ‘ and as followeth more in the
Creed or in the faith of a child’). What is it to me that God has created
heaven and earth if I do not believe in the forgiveness of sins? But should they
enter into our experience and touch us, so must they in this article come into
experience with us and touch us, in order that we all, I for jhee, thou for me,
and each for himself, shall believe in the forgiveness of sin It is because of
this article that the other articles touch us” (W.A., 28 271 f.). Why is this.
Because here alone does the meeting between Christ and ourselves take place.
Cf. the closing chapter of this book.
152 Revelation and Reason

— even though it does not depend exclusively upon it. That which
can be definitely and theologically formulated of the message of the
Apostles and the other Biblical witnesses forms the basis on which
their word can become the Word of God. Only when a person is
taught rightly about God is his heart rightly turned toward Him;
incorrect doctrine points man in the wrong direction, where we
cannot find Him and He cannot find us. The correctness of “ Chris¬
tian doctrine ” has both its norm and the basis of its possibility in
the fact that the incarnation of Christ is fulfilled by being “ incar¬
nate ’ in the Apostolic testimony. The definite doctrinal word of the
Bible — which, indeed, is never set forth as an abstract doctrinal
statement, but always includes an element of witness in its doctrinal
content — is the norm and the foundation for the whole develop¬
ment of ecclesiastical doctrine. We must learn from the Bible to
speak and teach the truth about God. We are able to do this, even if
only imperfectly, because God reveals Himself, not only in Jesus
Christ, but also in the doctrinal teaching of the Bible, because this
doctrinal content of the Bible is also a form of His revelation. As the
Man Jesus both reveals and conceals the eternal Son of God, so also
the Bible message in its doctrinal aspect is both the Word of God
and the word of man. It is a pointer toward the supreme Truth, and
it is the Truth itself.
This dual aspect of the matter comes out in the fact that, on the
one hand, all the doctrinal statements of the Bible point to one
central fact, and converge on this one central point; and yet, on the
other hand, that no Biblical doctrine, in itself, completely “ ex¬
presses ” its meaning. All the Apostles point to Christ, they all teach
similar things about Him, and yet their views differ from one an¬
other; there is not merely a theology of the New Testament as a
whole; there is Pauline, Johannine, Matthaean teaching. Indeed,
each one of them uses varying ideas in order to express what he really
wants to say. No doctrine exhausts His meaning, and yet each of
these views tries to describe Him fully. The Apostle must begin to
say it ever anew, and yet he never comes to the end of trying to
say it. ’ He can say it all in a single word or phrase, and yet in all
that he says he never succeeds in saying the one thing he wants to
say.
Hence Christian doctrine is both very short and very long. The
 The Witness of the Church 153
whole Gospel can “ be written on a postcard,” and this is obvious,
for were this impossible, how could it be the Gospel for the simple
and the unlearned as well as for the wise and understanding? On the
other hand, the Gospel cannot be fully expounded in ten great folio
volumes; again, how could it be otherwise, since in Him “ are all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden ”? 33 In order to achieve
as correct a doctrine as possible, we must take pains to express it
ever more truly and clearly, and yet we must not imagine that we
have really said “ it ” when we have dissected and refined our defini¬
tions a hundred times over. Were Christ not the Word made flesh,
the content of the definite doctrinal statements of Apostles or Proph¬
ets, all this effort would be in vain; but because Pie Himself is the
Word, and therefore can never be fully expressed in human words,
no doctrinal formulation, however excellent, can claim to be the
Word of God itself, or even the infallibly “ correct doctrine, which
has been formulated and laid down once for all.

8. The Church has done rightly in exercising great care from the
very beginning about the correctness of her doctrine; for only the
correct doctrine can point clearly to Him who is the revelation of
God, and only in this clarity of statement can it itself become revela¬
tion, the Word of God. But the Church has not acted rightly in
watching over this theological * correctness in such a onesided,
rigid way; for doctrinal “ soundness ” alone is not necessary in order
that human preaching may become divine revelation. This onesided
emphasis upon doctrine was due, as we have already seen, to the
mistake of confusing the Truth which He is Himself with the doc¬
trinal truth which can be understood and expressed in intellectual and
theological terms;34 this was due to the fact that the Church failed
to realize that God’s Word must always first of all be personally ad¬
dressed to man; the more impersonal, objective form of the Word,
in sound doctrine, must always come second. The personal character
of the message, and the challenge of the personal address, was ig-

33 Col. 2:3. . , ..
34 In Catholic theology - as again later on in Protestant orthodoxy - this
misunderstanding comes out most plainly in the fact that as the object of faith
it is always the articuli jidei which are named as the revealed substantia of
faith. Cf. Saint Thomas, Summa Theol., II, 2, Quaestio I: De Fide, in decern ar-
ticulos divisa, especially Art. VI.
154 Revelation and Reason

nored. An overemphasis on the “ dogmatic ” interest of Christianity

at the expense of its “ ethical ” aspect is the most well-known form
of this confusion of ideas. The Church was far more careful about
what it called “ orthodoxy ” than about the true discipleship of its
members. This was the inevitable result of the fatal confusion of
revelation with the communication of theological truths in doctrinal
form. Orthodoxy became everything, and genuine discipleship was
either ignored or — which is just as bad — it was misunderstood as
moralism and legalism. The mistaken emphasis on the intellectual
aspect of religion produced the equally mistaken emphasis on
“ works,” in the legalistic sense.
When doctrine is regarded from the point of view of preaching,
and not the other way round, this confusion of ideas is scarcely possi¬
ble; for we then know what it means to proclaim the Word of God;
that is, to summon man to submit to the rule of God, and to invite
him into fellowship with Him. When we know this, we see that
orthodoxy cannot achieve this, but that, above all else, the preacher
needs the authority of the Spirit. It also becomes clear that to listen
to preaching in the right way does not mean the acceptance of cor¬
rect theological ideas, but personal surrender to the will of God and
entrance.into communion with Him. Where this truth is perceived, it
is impossible for right thinking and right living to fall asunder; then
good works ” no longer need to be added to “ orthodoxy.” The faith
which humbly submits to the Word of God, and accepts God’s claim
on the heart, is also the faith which conforms to “ the obedience of
Christ.”
The preaching of the Word which demands obedience can never
take place without correct theological doctrine, nor without correct
doctrinal ideas; but this is not sufficient. Indeed, there is a certain
tension between preaching as a form of personal witness that aims
at reaching the hearts and wills of the listeners, and the expansion
and reformulation of doctrinal ideas. The more doctrine is empha¬
sized, the less can it become a personal challenge. The overdevelop¬
ment of theology, in the shape of scholasticism, is always ,a sign that
the personal character of the revelation is no longer rightly under¬
stood, but that, at bottom, the Word of God ’ is being misunder¬
stood in an overemphasis on the intellectual aspect of religion. The
error of confusing orthodoxy, revelation, and doctrine, and also that
scholasticism which carries theological analysis to an almost infinite
 The Witness of the Church 155
extreme, are mistakes for which the Church has to pay.35 The “ Sum-
mas of dogmatic theology, with their series of great folio volumes,
are a symptom of that intellectualist ” error of orthodoxy; they are
a sign that the truth of the Bible has been “ Hellenized.” A living
faith will always regard such theological speculation with suspicion,
because it knows that in the knowledge of faith all that matters is
not academic knowledge, but trust and obedience.
On the other hand, to despise theology and doctrine is the sign
of a mystical ’ misunderstanding of the Christian revelation. We
must teach about Jesus Christ if He is to be accepted by faith. The
Word of God can come to us only in a true human word about Him,
and therefore the trouble taken over the correctness of this human
word, the theological reflection upon the doctrinal content of the
Holy Scriptures, is an ecclesiastical necessity. Theology and the
teaching of tire catechism are not the proper means for awakening
faith; the proper means for that is the preaching of the Word. But
in all true preaching there is a content of correct doctrine, and theo¬
logical doctrine is the connected presentation of this doctrinal con¬
tent. Preaching does not spring from theology, but theology springs
from preaching; but theology is necessaiy as an ever-renewed exami¬
nation of the doctrinal content of the preaching. Preaching does not
grow out of theology, but out of the preaching that has already taken
place, and out of believing contact with the Scriptures. But the
theological work is necessary, in order to give the correct; clarity
to the doctrinal content of the preaching, and to preserve it from
straying in a wrong direction. Thus theology is not the basis or the
root of the Church, but it is an organ of examination and clarification.

9. The “ dogma ” of the Church grows out of the theological work

of the Church. In the Evangelical Churches, however, we would be
better advised to avoid the idea of “ dogma ”; the Church which has
been reformed according to the Word of God has no dogma; it has
a Confession. Between these two ideas there lies the whole dif¬
ference between the understanding of faith and revelation in the
35 It is only from the personalistic understanding of revelation — from the
view of the idea of faith contained in the passage from Luther quoted in n. 32
— that the distinction between the knowledge of faith and theology is possible.
Without this the definition of the relation almost always leads in the direction
of the idea of fides implicita, that is, theologians alone have the full knowledge
of the truth.
156 Revelation and Reason

Catholic and Reformed Churches respectively. Catholic dogma is

that which “ one must believe,” the object of faith which is placed
before the individual to be accepted.36 The Catholic faith is essen¬
tially faith in dogma. That is so, and can only be so, because accord¬
ing to the Catholic conception dogma is infallible. And it is infallible
because it is the revealed word of God itself. God reveals doctrine.
Dogma is the revealed doctrine. Christ is the content of this doctrine.
One believes in Christ as an integral part or content of this doc¬
trine. The doctrine is that which is to be believed, the credendum.
On the other hand, in the Reformation view of revelation, as in the
Bible itself, it is not a doctrine which is the object of faith, but Jesus
Christ Himself. The doctrine is only a means which serves to lead
us to Him, and therefore it is never infallible. Hence faith is never
concerned with doctrine, but with that which it indicates, or rather
with the Person to which it points. Doctrine is only a pointer, even
though it may be a clear and useful pointer. Therefore faith is not
directed to it, but it skims past it, as it were, like a ball from the barrel
of a gun, toward the goal. Or again, to use another metaphor, doc¬
trine is the telescope through which we are to see Him. Doctrine,
therefore, is never an object of faith, but it is the expression, or the
confession, of faith. In the Confession the Church expresses its faith,
but the Church does not confront the individual with its “ Confes¬
sion ” as something which must be believed. This “ dogma ” is not the
credendum but the creditum; thus it is not “ dogma ” but “ confes¬
sion.” 37 That is why the Evangelical Churches do not speak of
“ dogma ” but of “ confession,” and that is why the doctrinal stand-

36 The Syllabus of Pius IX firmly establishes the faith based on dogma above
modern errors: “Quae ab infallibili Ecclesiae judicio veluti fidei dogmata ab
omnibus credenda sunt” (Denzinger, loc. cit.. No. 1722). The Vatican defines
the idea, “ Fide divina et catholica ea omnia credenda sunt, quae in verbo Dei
scripto vel tradito continentur et ab ecclesia sive solemni judicio sive ordinario
et universali magisterio tamquam divinitus revelata credenda proponuntur ”
(Denzinger, loc. cit., No. 1792).
87 This decisive difference between confession of faith (creditum) and
dogma (credendum) has still more escaped notice because it was lost at the
close of the first generation of the Reformation. The earliest confessions, both
Reformed and Lutheran, are called confessions, not dogma. Augsburg: “ It
is among us taught and held”; Schlussreden: ... “I confess that I have
preached. . . .” Tetrapolitan, “ They have rendered an account of what they
believe and purpose concerning religion”; et cetera. But the Helvetic wa¬
vers: “ Confessio et expositio simplex orthodoxae fidei et dogmatum Catholi-
corum. . . .”
 The Witness of the Church 157

ards have been expressed in the form of “ Confessions,” not in the

form of enactments which must be accepted.

10. The,converse, however, is also true: the Evangelical Churches

have set up their Confessions of Faith as doctrinal standards; thus
they formulate definite doctrine as the correct doctrine. What does
this mean? First of all, it means the doctrine of the Bible, which is
in accordance with the teaching of the Apostles. But when this has
been said the problem of correct doctrine has not been solved: it has
only been shelved. For even within the Bible the problem of cor¬
rect doctrine emerges. Indeed, we have already seen that in the
Bible itself we cannot find an absolute unity of doctrine, but only
a convergence of certain ways of thinking, in doctrinal terms, which
point to a common Center. “ Right,” or sound, doctrine will thus be
understood literally as “ rightly directed,” rightly orientated doc¬
trine; this, will never mean that the actual truth under discussion will
be equated with its doctrinal expression; it only means that “ right ”
doctrine points, definitely and clearly, in the right direction. “ Right,”
or sound, doctrine is not a system of fixed doctrines, standing in a
row, side by side; but it is doctrine in a “ radial ” sense, pointing
towards a Center; this conception alone is in harmony with the Word
of God, which He Himself, the Son of God, is, and in which He Him¬
self personally imparts Himself in His .personal “ Word ” to the soul.
The soundness of theological doctrine and ideas depends upon then-
direction, upon the single-mindedness with which they point to
Him. There is no closed theological system; the ideal of the Scho¬
lastic Summa Theologiae is an illusion.
Thus it is clear that soundness of doctrine is only one point of
view from which the preaching of the Church may be judged; the
other is that of sincerity, “power,” and authority. For what matters
is not that we should say “something,” but that all that we say
should serve one end, namely, that He Himself may impart Him¬
self. Hence the most complete and dogmatically correct presenta¬
tion of doctrine may be “ nothing,” and a brief word of witness, with
scarcely any dogmatic element, may be “ everything.” The power
which accompanies the Word is as important as its “ soundness.” For
indeed it is not important that the hearer should know “ something,”
but that through this “ knowledge ” he should come to see, know,
trust, and obey Jesus Christ. The aim of preaching is to draw the
158 Revelation and Reason

hearer to God, and to unite him to Him; it needs both “ soundness of

doctrine ” and also the power to attract souls to God. The doctrinal
content of “ sound ” Biblical theology is not something independent,
in itself; it is “sound ” or “ correct ” because, and in so far as, it makes
room for Him, and for Him alone, in the heart of man. In theological
terms: the norm of all doctrine is the glory of God and the sola gratia.
Soundness of doctrine depends upon the capacity of the doctrines to
assert God’s glory and,the sola gratia. In the last resort there are not
many doctrines; there is only one: that God is the holy and merciful
Lord.

11. In the Confession of Faith — in that which is wrongly called

“ dogma ” — the Church expresses her faith; that is what she means
by the word of God. This public proclamation is a necessity; at the
same time, however, it is a venture, and can never be more than
provisional. It is a necessity. As a regiment has a flag, so the Church
has a Confession of Faith. Upon this banner stands His .name, His
image. And all that the Confession proclaims serves to make clear
who He is, and what it means to follow Him. The Confession de¬
scribes His name and His followers. This banner, however, can only
be understood by those who follow Him. Dogma is not a “ sign ” for
the world, but for the Church which rallies to the flag. She has a
Confession because she believes, not in order to believe. But because
she believes she makes the unity of the followers of Christ explicit
and conscious in the Confession.
But this is not the only function of the Confession; it is not only a
banner, it is also a password, the sign by which those who belong to
Him are recognized; through Him they recognize one another. As
a banner is a sign which gathers people together, so a password is
the sign of separation.38 That is the original meaning of the sym-
bolum; it is the secret mark of recognition by all who have taken
the same oath of fidelity, which excludes all who have not joined this
group. A person who does not give this sign does not belong “ to us,”
because he does not belong to Him. Thus to give this sign, to repeat
this Confession, has no direct connection with faith; but it is directly
connected with the discipline and the organization of the Church,
and he who gives this password must be admitted, even if the Church
38 Loots, Symbolik, p. 5, The baptismal confession, symbolum, was the
distinguishing mark of the Christians.”
 The Witness of the Church 159
perceives, on other grounds, that he is giving the password without
being really entitled to do so, because, so to speak, he has stolen the
password. The Confession is not the object of faith, but it is a means
by which the Church tries to distinguish her members.
Thirdly, it is a signpost which shows us the way. It is the norm by
which every individual member of the Church ought to examine
himself to find out whether he “ belongs to it,” and it is the norm for
all who preach. The Church has a definite faith; there is nothing
indefinite about it. She has heard the Word of God in a definite way,
and therefore knows why she is definite. This, too, is why she regards
the Confession as the norm of preaching. To preach something dif¬
ferent will not create the faith which the Church possesses. The
Confession does not produce faith, but it measures it. It is not the
truth which must be believed, but it is the norm for what is to be
preached. It includes the kernel of “ sound doctrine,’ as one tangible
aspect which can be grasped, as the doctrinal aspect of the message.
The Confession is, of course, always a meager abstraction compared
with the proclamation of the Gospel, because it formulates only the
doctrinal aspect of the faith, as understood by the intellect; but
anyone whose faith is identical with “ belief in a creed would be in
a bad way! He would simply be holding a dead form without power
or life. But the Church understands this abstraction as an abstrac¬
tion;, she knows that the signpost is not the road, and that a mere
belief in what the signpost says will not help anyone to walk along
the right way. But she also knows how valuable it is to have a sign¬
post, when there are so many roads leading in all directions. Hence
we should neither overvalue nor undervalue the Confession. To
make it the “ be-all ” and “ end-all ” of the Church means that we
overvalue it; we are confusing it with the Word of God. He who de¬
nies its practical necessity, however, undervalues it, since he does not
know that the Church needs a banner, a password, and a signpost.

12. The Confession of the Church has authority, but this authority
is relative, not absolute. For the individual it has authority because
it expresses the faith of the Church as a whole. The Church precedes
each individual, because it was there first; when a person believes,
he comes “ into the Church ”; he is “ received.” The Church as a
whole is indeed entrusted with the Word of God; she is the Mother
of the individual believers, in spite of the fact that, on the other hand,
160 Revelation and Reason

she is simply the community of believers. As Mother, she has the first
word to say to her children. The individual is growing, and he always
tends to develop in a onesided way; in her Confession the Church
presents him with matured beliefs, which have issued from the cor¬
porate experience of many believers. Only an arrogant individual¬
ism can lightly ignore the Confession of the Church. It is true, of
course, that an individual will scarcely become a believer through
hearing the Confession of Faith; to awaken faith is the concern of
the preacher; faith is not derived from doctrine. But the individual
ought to measure his growing faith by the faith of the Church, which
is mature and tested, and this will show him how much he still has
to grow. But woe to him if he believes that by the acceptance of the
Confession he can do away with the necessity for this growth in
faith, if he thinks that the acceptance of the Confession means that
he already has a full-grown faith! The Confession of the Church is
necessary, but it also brings with it that danger of the overvaluation
of the intellectual aspect of the faith which hangs like a dark shadow
over the whole history of the Church.
This danger is particularly great when we fail to note the limits of
the authority of the Confession. Even the Church as a whole is not
infallible; even she is always growing. Even her understanding of
the Word is never finished and closed, final for evermore. If the
knowledge of the Apostle is “ in part,” will not the knowledge of the
Church also be “ in part ”? Hence the Confession of the Church is
not an infallible dogma, but a provisional attempt to express the
doctrinal content of the Word of God in definite formulas. Every
“ dogma ” may have to be revised in the light of better knowledge
and teaching from the Holy Scriptures.89 The knowledge, the under¬
standing, of the Holy Scriptures, is an infinite, never-ending process,
in which every step forward also alters the way which we have al¬
ready trodden. There are, it is true, “ parts,” but there is only a whole
which is appropriated by us in parts, in which each part in some way
contains the whole; in which, therefore, the alteration of any one
part also alters the whole.
Hence at any time the Confession of the Church may be revised.

39 Nowhere more powerfully expressed than in Zwingli’s Schlussreden, “ And

if perchance I have not rightly understood the aforesaid Scriptures [I am will¬
ing] to be instructed, and brought to a better understanding, but [only] from
the aforesaid Scriptures.” (Works, I, 458.1
 The Witness of the Church 161
As a rule, this revision will start from individuals who have been
dissatisfied with the intrinsic inadequacy of the previous formula¬
tions of belief; their dissatisfaction springs out of their own wrestling
with the message of Christ in the Holy Scriptures. Only one who has
trodden the way of the ancient confessions, who has listened with
reverence to the word of the Mother, one who is continually adher¬
ing to that truth as something better than his own individual per¬
ception of truth, will be able to accomplish this revision. Even then,
he, ought to bring the new light he has seen to the Church, and try to
persuade the leaders of thought to agree to improve and modify the
Confession in accordance with it. For the Confession is not an indi¬
vidual concern; it is the concern of the whole Church.
For this very reason, however, because there is this living tension
between the truth which leads us farther and that which has already
been perceived and known, the Church should not be too rigorous
in the use of her Confession as a standard. For the sake of this very
necessary tension she must give to the Confession a certain elasticity,
without making it so elastic that.it will become unfit to exercise its
function as a norm. Stability is the first requirement; elasticity the
second. Confessions of whole Churches are not made every decade;
they are intended to last for centuries. Hence they must be both firm
and elastic — stable in their form, elastic in their interpretation.

13. God reveals Himself, and gives His salvation in Jesus Christ,
through the preaching of the Church, through the spoken word of
men. But God does not only give Himself through the human word:
He also gives Himself through the verbwn visibile of the Sacrament.
The Sacrament is so important because in it the Church becomes
aware of the reality of the Word of God in the sphere beyond speech,
where Christ is present and acting in His Church. Here Christ
“ speaks ” in a significant action of the Church; in this symbolic ac¬
tion He suggests that even the words of preaching and doctrine are
only pointers toward Himself.40 The fact that He wills to reveal Him¬
self, and to be present in the symbolic action, in the “ signs ” of
His presence, shows us that He is more than can be expressed in
words.

40 Cf. the excellent work of Loewenich, Vom Abendmahl Christi, which

gathers up the results of all the new considerations from the critical-historical
and the dogmatic points of view.
162 Revelation and Reason

In His communication with us Jesus Christ stoops lower than the

form of communication through the Word, through speech, with its
ideas; He condescends to come to us through the channels of sense,
in eating and drinking and cleansing by water. The suprasensible
reality of His presence is expressly testified to us in this “ coming.”
But it is not a “ mystical ” presence; this is shown by the fact that
even in these signs of sense there is still a close relation with His his¬
torical revelation; indeed, that is the real meaning of this sign. It
is not the sacramental action in itself which is salvation — that is the
error of the Catholic Mass, the “ repetition ” of the sacrifice of Christ
— but the sacramental action makes present that which has taken
place once for all. In the remembrance of that which has happened
— “ Do this in remembrance of Me ” — He makes Himself present,
He acts here and now. Hence the question can never be, Remem¬
brance or presence? but in and with the remembrance is the presence.
As He makes Himself present through the Word, which proclaims
His death and His resurrection, so also He makes Himself present
through the symbolic action which “ shews forth His death until He
come.”

14. This suggests that there is yet another way of the revelation
of Christ in the Church which is neither the proclamation of the
Word nor Sacrament, but the spontaneous expression of His mighty
presence. From the very beginning Christ manifested Himself
through “ signs,” special proofs of power, which support the word of
preaching, which make hearts open for the message, and testify to
His effectual present power. To her own great hurt, in her overem¬
phasis on doctrinal teaching, the Church has often taken far too
little notice of, or has even entirely ignored, these evident “ signs.”
In so doing she has doubtless made it easier to slip into an overintellec-
tualist conception of faith. Just as the Holy Spirit is not only a Teacher
but also a Doer, the Power of God, who expresses Himself in “ mighty
works ” and deeds, so also divine revelation takes place in the Church
where the living Christ, through His Spirit, so fills and moves men
and women that then “ being ” and their “ doing ” become “ signs ”
to others. These “ signs ” need not be wonderful healings; there is
also a simple way of living in daily life, which, when it is controlled
by the holiness and the love of God, may itself become a revelation
of His holiness and His love. A simple service of love, a sacrifice
 The Witness of the Church 163
humbly offered, the manifestations of helpful brotherliness, may bear
the stamp of actual revelation.
It is true, of course, that a “ silent ” revelation of this kind, to the
extent in which it is wordless, is also incomplete and inadequate. It
needs the sacrament of the Word in order that the signs given in
“ sensible ” ways may become a real revelation. Just as sound doc¬
trine and the authoritative power of preaching are inseparable, and
the one cannot become a revelation which creates faith without the
other, so also silent deeds and gestures need the Word. But the con¬
verse is true: where such signs, where the “ proof of the Spirit and
power ” are lacking, there also the Word lacks authority, the con¬
vincing power of divine reality. The Dynamis and the Logos belong
together, where the Word of God is concerned; for the “ Kingdom of
God is not in word, but in power.” 41 That is certainly not said by the
Apostle of the Word in order to depreciate the significance of the
Word, but in order to make plain the difference between the word
which is powerless, and the Word which is filled with power. The
power-filled Word alone reveals God; but since it is full of power it
has effects in the visible sphere; it has creative results in character
and action. In her struggles for “ purity of doctrine ” the Church has
often forgotten that the utmost purity of doctrine is of no use unless
it is accompanied by the power of deeds and purity of will.42 How
terribly this confusion of the Word of God with doctrine has worked
out in the neglect of the “ proof of the Spirit and power,” of the
dynamic character of the revelation, to the harm of the Church and
of the world!
The God who has revealed Himself in acts does not cease to reveal
Himself in acts. It is not that the revealing acts of God belong to the
past, and the revealing Word alone to the present. True preaching,
true witness, show their reality — in distinction from their merely
intellectual doctrinal substitutes — precisely in the unity of act and
word. A witness of Christ is one who not only speaks of Christ, but
one who lives and acts as a follower, a disciple, of the Lord. Without
the act the witness is not credible, even though the act may always
remain far behind that to which the witness testifies. His word too

41 I Cor. 4:20.
42 “ For faith without love is not sufficient, indeed it is not faith but a mere
semblance of faith, just as a face seen in a mirror is not a true face but only
a reflection of a face.” Luther, W.A., 10, III, 4.
164 Revelation and Reason

falls far short of that to which he tries to witness, and to which he

ought to witness. We ought not to blame the Church for using that
symbol of her doctrine, the Confession of Faith, as her password; her
mistake is, rather, that she makes it the sole sign of membership.
The Early Church still knew the unity of word and deed; hence it
exercised Church discipline. In modem days the Church has lost
the courage to do this, and thus has incurred the world’s contempt.
Still more serious is the fact that she has abandoned that unity which
is the sign of the Biblical revelation: the union of the word of God
and the act of God. Her recovery of health will depend upon
whether, and how soon, she can rediscover this unity, not only in
theory but also in reality.
From the time when the Church became “established” under
Constantine and Theodosius, that is, since everyone was baptized
and every baptized person was a Christian — that is, since all men
were “ Christians ” — the possibility of rediscovering the unity of
word and deed in the Church has ceased, and in modern times,
apart from certain honorable exceptions, the Church has not had the
courage for it. Possibly this may be the deepest reason why the
Church no longer wins trust and interest. A Church that consists only
of hearers, and not of disciples, makes no impression on the world.
She can do justice to her commission only when she recovers the
unity of the Logos and the Dynamis, of the word and the act of God,
which is the distinctive element in the Biblical revelation.

11. THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT

But why should we have this third element — in addition to the
word of Scripture and of the Church? Is it not enough that in these
two I hear the word of God? What kind of third element can take its
place alongside of them? In point of fact, there is no room for a third
element: it is enough to hear the word of the Scriptures and the
word of the Church as the word of God. But this is precisely
the wonder of revelation through the Holy Spirit; for indeed, “ no
man can call Jesus Lord save through the Holy Spirit.”1 “ Verily,
verily, flesh and blood have ,not revealed it unto thee, but My Father
1 I Cor. 12:3.
 The Witness of the Spirit 165
in heaven.” 2 This, indeed, is the mysteiy that is meant: revelation
through the Holy Spirit.

1. The fact of the Bible, as a book, is our starting point — for the
moment we will not consider the word of the Church. The Book, and
the historical facts which it records, are objective facts, which con¬
front us first of all in an external and distant way. Like everything
objective, they are, in principle, accessible to everybody; everyone
can buy the Book; everyone can read it, and in a certain sense can
understand it, just as he understands other books, whether well or
ill. These two objective facts — this book here on my table, and the
historical fact which it records, have something in common: they are
both outside of me. We are accustomed to bridge over this gulf by
what we call “ appropriation.” When I read a book, for instance, a
historical work, as I make the past present through the use of my
historical imagination, that which was “ outside of me ” becomes
something “ inside of me ”; that which was far away comes near; the
past becomes the present. It becomes “ my own.” How does this
come about — in reading any kind of book, any kind of historical
account? As an account of something of human interest, it already
possesses a certain affinity with me. It strikes a chord in my mind,
which was already prepared to hear it. It awakens in me something
which was latent: it realizes within me a possibility that I already
possessed; I can relive this experience in thought and feeling. The
truer and the more profoundly human the book and its ideas are, the
more does the sense of remoteness disappear, the more do I feel that
something which at first seemed remote is my own, something which
might just as well have happened to me, or in me, something which
I might just as well have thought and expressed for myself. This is
that process of anamnesis, of mental “ recollection,” which, once for
all, Plato has shown us to be the essence of mental appropriation.3
The objective, spatial, or temporal historical distance disappears, be¬
cause the book is dealing with what concerns “ Everyman.”
But, so far as the distinctive element in the Bible is concerned, the
situation is quite different. For its essential content is not that which
“ is common to everyone ”; it is not that which in the depths of
our being is familiar, and with which we are at home ; but it is some-

2 Matt. 16:17.
3 Cf. Plato, Meno; also Augustine, De magistro.
166 Revelation and Reason

thing which becomes stranger the closer we come to it, “ to the

Greeks folly, and to the Jews a scandal.” Here the historical imagina¬
tion is no help at all; for the better it functions, the more clearly
do we perceive the “ scandal and folly.” Sympathetic “ feeling ” and
deep human understanding do not help us here, for I cannot under¬
stand the message of the Cross, as the Bible means it, from my
human point of view. Even the one bare statement that on that
particular day, more than nineteen hundred years ago, on Golgotha,
that decisive event took place which affects me here and now is for
me as a rational being, unintelligible, absurd. Here all the methods
of appropriation and verification which are usually so useful — the
methods by which we are able to prove the actuality of something
which is said to have happened, as well as all our methods of clari¬
fication through analogy, argument, and proof —break down com¬
pletely. For the Cross and its meaning — as is explicitly stated — is
unique, never to be repeated, and therefore far above all human
analogies; it can never be understood along the lines of intellectual
argument.

2. The Church has tried to solve this problem by two useless

solutions, both of which are wrong; one is based on a mistaken au¬
tonomy, and the other on a mistaken heteronomy. The first attempt
was the solution offered by rationalism; this has always taken the
form of turning the “ supernatural ” into the “ natural ”; * the God-
man into a man; a fact that transcended human analogies into some¬
thing for which plenty of human analogies could be found; the truth
of God into a human truth, hidden in the depths of the spirit of man,
and so the “ scandal and the folly ” of the Christian revelation were
eliminated. This perversion of the truth is well meant and “ sympa¬
thetic ”; there is no desire to reject the Christian message, so the
effort is made to turn that which comes from beyond this world into
something which belongs wholly to this world, in opposition to that
which is plainly given to us in the Bible.
The other solution is the Catholic belief in authority. The Church
stands in a mediating position between the individual and the “ of¬
fense ” of the revelation, and guarantees its truth. So far as the indi¬
vidual believer is concerned she guarantees the truth of the dogma
of the God-man and of the Atonement. The simple believer only has
* [Lit., “ other-worldly ” and “ this-worldly.” Tr.]
 The Witness of the Spirit 167
to believe what the Church says, on the authority of her own word.
Evidently, even for great men, this is a possible line to follow, as
Augustine confesses when he says, “ Ego vero evangelio non cre-
derem, nisi me catholicae ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas.”4 Here,
then, the word of the Church supports the word of Scripture, and the
word of the Church, the dogma, is for its part supported by the whole
weight of the Church, present and past, by the strength of the revela¬
tion concealed within her.
We have no desire to deny the element of truth which this method
of acquiring certainty contains. In point of fact, in actual experience,
in most cases in which individuals arrive at a personal faith, they
usually learn it in this way, just as Augustine describes it in his auto¬
biographical account. Confidence in a human witness and guarantor
almost always precedes confidence in the witness of the Scriptures.
And the Church as a whole, with the weight of her two-thousand-
year-old tradition, is a powerful witness. In spite of this, however,
Protestantism is right in ultimately rejecting this method of acquiring
certainty. No Church can guarantee the divine truth for me; if I want
to have certainty, then I must get it from a more than human source. I
can never believe something is true simply because a single person,
or a particular group of people or an ecclesiastical hierarchy, assures
me that he can “ guarantee ” that this is true.5
But then Protestantism itself, after the Reformers had rediscovered
the genuine way of assurance, fell back into the Catholic solution,
although in a disguised form. The orthodox principle of Scripture
reads thus: We must believe the Holy Scriptures simply because they
are the Holy Scriptures. They have been selected by God to be the
bearer of the divine truth of revelation. Holy Scripture was written
by men — Apostles, Prophets, inspired persons — who, by the special
circumstances in which they wrote, have proved their authority.
The peculiar quality of the writers — the fact that they are Proph¬
ets, Apostles, and other inspired men guarantees the divine truth of
4 Augustine, Contra Ep. Manich., 5, 6.
5 Catholic theology makes a distinction between revealed truths and Cath¬
olic truths. Of the former it is said: “ The believer bases his acceptance of them
directly on the authority of God. The Church assures him that they are con¬
tained in the revelation, and the Church prescribes these truths for all the
faithful, so that they all have a common faith. . . . Catholic truths are ac¬
cepted on the authority of the Catholic Church alone, which in proclaiming
them bases them upon supernatural and natural reasons.” Bartmann, Lehrbuch
d. Dogmatik, I, 44.
168 Revelation and Reason

their writings. Thus the first step is to admit their “ supernatural ”

endowments, which makes them trustworthy; this gives one confi¬
dence in what they write, and then, trusting in their guarantee,
one accepts what the Bible says as true. Here faith in the Bible is a
purely heteronomous faith based on authority.6 Faith in Jesus Christ
is based upon faith in the Apostles, and the other Biblical writers,
who guarantee the truth. The Bible is believed before it is read, be¬
cause its authors are believed to be trustworthy. Once this attitude
has been adopted, the believer accepts everything in the Bible in the
same way, for everything is supported and guaranteed by the same
authority of the authors. This faith, which starts on the assumption
that even before the Bible is read we have to believe all that the
writers of the Bible state, and that the same confidence is to be given
to all, can therefore only be an “ all-or-nothing ” kind of faith, in
which all the statements of the Biblical writers, religious, cosmologi¬
cal and historical, are on the same level of credibility, and are to be re¬
ceived with the same kind of faith. I believe in the divinity of Jesus
Christ for the same reasons, and in the same way, in which I believe
in the historicity of any event recorded in the Bible. I believe in it
because this truth, like the others, is guaranteed to me by trustworthy
witnesses whose integrity has been established from the very outset.
All Christian faith is based, according to this theory, upon faith in
the trustworthiness of the Biblical writers. The whole edifice of faith
is built upon them, upon their absolute and complete inspiration.
What a fearful caricature of what the Bible itself means by faith!
And on what a quaking ground has the Church of the Reformation,
in its “ orthodox ” perversion, placed both itself and its message! We
owe a profound debt of gratitude to the historical criticism that has
made it quite impossible to maintain this position. This mistaken
faith in the Bible has turned everything topsy-turvy! It bases our
faith-relation to Jesus Christ upon our faith in the Apostles. It is
6 Protestant orthodoxy has two conceptions of faith, which are completely
different. The first is that of the original period of the Reformation: Christ,
who attests Himself to me in faith through the witness of the Spirit as the
Word of God. The other is the axiomatic faith on authority, which believes
that all that is written in the Bible is divine truth, simply because it is in the
Bible. Now, however, the assertion that the Holy Spirit certifies the Word of
God to us is transferred to the second conception, as if the Holy Spirit could also
assure us that this or that took place at a certain time in history. This means
that the Catholic conception of faith has been united with the Reformed con¬
ception in a quite impossible way.
 The Witness of the Spirit 169
impossible to describe the amount of harm and confusion that has
been caused by this fatal perversion of the foundations of faith, both
in the Church as a whole and in the hearts of individuals.

3. Christian faith is not faith in a closed Bible, but in an open

Bible. It is not faith on an assumption, based on an authoritarian pre¬
conception, but it is faith founded upon our relation to the content
of that which is proclaimed in the Scriptures, or rather to the Person
Himself, God manifest in the flesh, who speaks to me, personally, in
the Scriptures. Faith in the Scriptures does not precede the message
which they proclaim, but is produced by the latter. I do not believe
in Jesus Christ because an Apostle tells me He is the Son of God,
which would mean that my belief in Jesus Christ was based on my
belief in an Apostle; but I believe in Jesus Christ because God Him¬
self has convinced me that He is the Christ, just as He has convinced
the Apostle.
I believe, however, hi contrast to the Apostle, in Jesus Christ by
means of that which He proclaims to me by the Apostle, who bears
witness to Christ. The witness of the Apostle is an instrument of the
divine revelation to me. But I do not give credence to the witness of
the Apostle because the Apostle is represented to me as a trustworthy
witness, and because I have already been assured that he is in¬
spired but I believe his witness at the same moment that I believe
in the Christ to whom he testifies, since his witness becomes to me
the word of God through the fact that God, through His Spirit, per¬
mits it to dawn on me as the word of His truth.7
The word, which was previously merely the strange assertion of
a man, Paul or Peter or Matthew — an assertion which does not be¬
come more credible to me because it is presented to me as the word
of an inspired Apostle — this to me unintelligible assertion, made by
a man who does not, at first, interest me particularly, suddenly breaks
upon me with a new light. It is as if a door, which had been closed,
is opened, and in the doorway there appears the expected One. God
Himself appears in Jesus Christ; He steps out of the self-revealing
Scriptures, and suddenly I become aware of two things: that Christ
7 This certainty that the Bible is the Word of God is, however, only possible
so long as we understand by the Word of God nothing other than Christ Him¬
self, the rex et dominus scripturae, and the Scriptures as the crib wherein
Christ lieth.” Personal faith is only possible as the response to a personal
revelation.
170 Revelation and Reason

is truly what the Apostle claimed Him to be, and that the Apostle is
a true witness. In one act of revelation there is created within me
faith in Christ, and faith in the Scriptures which testify of Him. Not
because I believe in the Scriptures do I believe in Christ, but because
I believe in Christ I believe in the Scriptures.8 The Scriptures are
indeed the first of the means which God uses,9 but they are not the
first object of faith, nor are they the ground of my faith. The ground,
the authority, which moves me to faith is no other than Jesus Christ
Himself, as He speaks to me from the pages of the Scriptures through
the Holy Spirit, as my Lord and my Redeemer. This is what men of old
used to call the testimonium spiritus sancti internum.
Thus the historical act of revelation in Jesus Christ, the fact that
the Word of God, in the man Jesus of Nazareth, became flesh, is fol¬
lowed by a second element, an inward one; my inner eyes are
opened, so that I — like Saint Peter — am able to recognize this man
as the God-man. The revelation in Jesus Christ produces the illumi¬
nation in my heart and mind, so that I can now see what I could not
see before, and what so many are unable to see: that this man is the
Christ. Suddenly, all the barriers of time and space have faded away;
I have become “ contemporary ” with Christ,10 as much His “ con¬
temporary ” as Peter was, though Caiaphas, who cross-examined
Him, was never His contemporary (in this sense). He is no more ex¬
ternal than my faith is external. Tire sense of spatial and temporal
remoteness, all external objectivity has disappeared: He who previ¬
ously spoke to me only from the outside now speaks within me,
through the Holy Spirit. As Saint Paul says, “ No man can call Jesus
Lord save by the Holy Spirit ” — that is, call Him his Lord in such
a way that he himself knows this for certain, and recognizes Christ
8 M. Kahler has rendered a great service, as the first scholar to point out
quite clearly this reversal of ideas. “ We do not believe in Christ on account of
the Bible, but we believe in the Bible on account of Christ ” (Der sog. histo-
rische Jems, p. 75); by “ Christ ” he here means not the “ historical Jesus,” but
the Jesus Christ proclaimed by the Apostles and foretold by the Prophets, the
“ whole ” Christ, in His fullness, the Jesus Christ of the Biblical message. In
so doing Kahler returned quite consciously and deliberately to the witness of
the Reformation. It was from this standpoint that he gained his opposition to
a certain brand of “ orthodoxy.” (All this is far more impressive and clearly
stated in the First Edition than in the Second.)
9 “ Verbum externum organum . . . nihil aliud quam instrumentum,” says
Zwingli. Works, VI, 1, 494.
10 Cf. Kierkegaard’s idea of “ contemporaneousness.” Philosophical Frag¬
ments, ch. 4, and Training in Christianity, ch. 4.
 The Witness of the Spirit 171
Himself as Lord. No human being can tell me this most important
thing of all; no human being can disclose to me this divine mystery,
not even an Apostle or a Prophet; He alone can do this, who possesses
the secret. He Himself assures me that this is the truth. It is not the
Apostle who assures me that Jesus is the Christ, but God Himself,
who does this by opening my heart to receive the witness of the
Apostle.11 No longer must I first of all ask the Apostle whether Jesus
is really Lord. I know it as well as the Apostle himself, and indeed I
know it exactly as the Apostle knew it: namely, from the Lord Him¬
self, who reveals it to me. The “ scandal and the folly ” cease to be
scandal and folly; it becomes to me as true and as clear as any truth
of mathematics, and yet it is true in a very different way from those
truths, because it is the truth which takes me captive, and possesses
me wholly. Here God Himself reveals His presence; it is the experi¬
ence of the presence of God in His Word. Here faith and experience
are one. The fact that I can believe is the same as the fact that I ex¬
perience the presence of God in His Word, that I experience Christ’s
Lordship over me. It is the experience that the witness of the Scrip¬
tures is the Word of God to me. The knowledge of the Scriptures as
the Word of God is the same as the experience of the Holy Spirit.
This truth is neither subjective nor objective, but it is both at once:
it is the truth which may be described, in other words, as the en¬
counter of the human “ I ” with God s “ Thou in Jesus Christ.

4. It was thus that Luther, breaking through the agelong tradition

of the heteronomous Catholic conception of authority and of faith,
experienced this, and once more brought it to light. His faith in the
Scriptures is not an a priori faith in the trustworthiness of its writers,
but it is the experience of the truth of their witness through the Holy
Spirit. “ And it is not enough that thou sayest: Luther, Peter, or Paul
has said this, but thou must in thyself feel Christ Himself and firmly
perceive that it is the Word of God, even though all the world should

11 Zwingli also emphasizes this exclusively personal character of faith (cf.

Nagel, Zwinglis Stellung zur Schrift, p. 89); but in contrast to Luther he had
little understanding of the truth that this word must come from without, and.
that it must be an outward and not an inward word if it is to draw me out of
my imprisonment within myself. Thus in a Platonist manner he makes a dis¬
tinction between the outward and the inward word: Haec mentis persuasto
et certitudo a nullo re externa venit, sect a solo trahente et illustrante spiritu
Dei. Works, VI, 1, 261; 5, 583.
172 Revelation and Reason

strive against thee.”12 “ So long as thou dost not feel it, so long hast
thou certainly not yet tasted the Word of God, and thou art still
hanging with thine ears on the mouth or the pen of men, and not
with the bottom of thy heart to the Word.” 13 “ Each therefore must
believe for himself that it is the Word of God, and that he findeth
inwardly that it is the truth, even though an angel from heaven and
all the world should preach against thee.” 14 “ Now cometh this third
part, that God poureth the Holy Spirit into our hearts, who telleth
us in our hearts that we know that it is thus in the truth and not
otherwise . . . that the Holy Spirit giveth us a witness in our spirit,
and that man cometh so far that he feeleth that it is thus, and that he
hath no doubt at all but that it is certainly thus.”15 “ Listen to God,
God must teach thee, He must do both for thee, preach to thee, and
give to thee ... to this there must also be added: that thou must
become God’s pupil; otherwise thou dost not believe, if He doth not
give Word and faith.” 16 “ So now God must arise and preach through
His Son, of the Son, and He must din it into thine ears, and after that
He giveth it into our hearts, so that we believe.”17
All the Reformers read the Scriptures thus; it was thus that they
experienced the Scriptures as the Word of God, and through this
experience they believed the Scriptures. It is the experience of the
evidence for faith, which is no whit inferior to rational knowledge,
though it is different. It is the evidence of the God who, here and
now, reveals His presence, the presence of the Holy Spirit, in and
beyond His Word.

5. The revealing activity of the Holy Spirit in the heart and mind
of man is a mystery, just as the incarnation of the Word in the his¬
torical person of Jesus Christ is a mystery. We cannot fathom it; we
experience it in faith. But the fact that we cannot fathom it does not
mean that we can understand nothing at all about it, that for our
intellect it must always remain a “scandal” and a “folly.” The
intellect which has been illuminated is able not only to assert wis¬
dom, but to perceive it. We understand one miracle of revelation in
connection with the other; we understand the connection of this
form of revelation, which opens up our hearts, with the fact that
our human heart has been created in the image of God. We look
12 W.A., 10, II, 23. Ibid., p. 90. 18 33, p. 165.
13 Ibid• 15 45, p. 22. p. 165.
 The Witness of the Spirit 173
back to the two fundamental statements of Biblical anthropology:
that man has been created in and for the image of God, and that man
has defaced, and continues to deface, this being of his, which was
created in the image of God.
The original being of man is based in the word of the love of God.
“ In the beginning ” the divine Love created us, for Himself, as our
end. Our original end, that for which we were created, is that as those
who are loved by God we should love Him in return — and with Him
those whom He loves. All that remains of this, as a consequence of
sin, is an undefined sense of responsibility. Sinful man can no longer
understand anything about his origin save this, that he is responsible
to a divine law, and thus that he must fulfill this law. With this con¬
sciousness of legal responsibility, which is the central point of our
“ natural ” consciousness of personality, there is combined that of
autonomy. The “ natural man ” cannot help thinking that what he
ought to do he can do, and what he can do he thinks, “ Well, at bot¬
tom that is what I am like.”18 This is why he reacts so violently
against the doctrine of original sin — sin which is interwoven with his
very being — and against the message of the reconciliation and re¬
demption which is the generous gift of God. The message of Jesus
Christ is to him, necessarily, a folly and a scandal.
But where the power of sin has been broken, and faith has taken
its place, man abandons his egocentric view of himself and becomes
theocentric; his autonomous existence becomes theonomous; once
more man is living by the Word of God, in which he finds the basis
of his true being. At the moment when man’s sense of autonomous
independence vanishes there dawns upon him the meaning of God’s
self-revelation and self-giving in Jesus Christ; at the moment when
the pride of the self breaks down, the message of Christ ceases to be
“ folly ” and “ scandal.”10 At this moment the self, which has at last
given up the feverish effort to seek for truth within itself, under¬
stands the self-humiliation of God on the Cross as the reflection and
the result of its own sinfulness, and as the act of divine self-giving
love. Here “repentance” and “faith ” are one: here I perceive that
18 “We ought to be in accordance with it (the moral idea) and therefore
also we can be” (Kant, Religion innerhalh, p. 42). In harmony with this is
the statement that in us “ there has remained a seed of the Good in its purity
ibid., p. 47 (Ausgabe Re clam).
19 I Cor. 1:18: “The word of the Cross . . . foolishness; but unto us which
are being saved, it is the power of God.”
174 Revelation and Reason

for my sake Christ had to be crucified, and that He allowed Himself

to suffer crucifixion purely out of divine, self-giving mercy. It is only
the historical event of revelation of the Cross which brings us to this
self-knowledge, and shatters the illusion of the autonomous self. It
is only this historical act of the love of God which redeems us from
our dream of sinful independence. Conversely, when we awaken
from this dream, and see ourselves as sinners, we perceive the low¬
liness of the Crucified — which we used to regard as folly and
“ scandal ” — as His divine Glory, and this perception eliminates his¬
torical distance and objective remoteness: we are those who have
been crucified, and He is the One who gives us His divine Life, here
and now. So we understand that sentence in the Epistle to the Gala¬
tians as the exact formulation of that which actually takes place in
the process of genuine faith: “ I am crucified with Christ; I live, yet
no longer I, but Christ liveth in me. But the life that I now live in
the flesh, I live in faith in the Son of God who has loved me and
given Himself up for me.” 20 To be able to see oneself and Jesus
Christ in this light, to see through the mists of sinful error and per¬
ceive the original divine truth freshly granted to us — this is the gift
of the Holy Spirit, the testimonium spiritus sancti. Here there is a
blending of several truths: the Cross of Christ both as a judgment
on me, and the proof of the love of God; the historical revelation, the
fact that in faith I am “ contemporary ” with it; repentance and faith
as actual union with the Lord.

6. It is only in this description of faith that we perceive the unity

of the so-called “ material principle,” that is, of the decisive content
of the Biblical message: atonement through Jesus Christ, and justi¬
fication through faith — and of the so-called “ formal principle,” that
is, of faith in the Holy Scriptures as the source and standard of faith.
Faith in the Bible based on authority commands me to believe in the
Scriptures as the Word of God; thus it confronts me with the assump¬
tion that everything in this Book, because it is equated with the
authority of this Book, must be “ believed.” I must believe that the
sun stood still in the Vale of Ajalon, because it says so in the Book,
just as much as I must believe that God in Christ forgives me my sin
and gives me His love. Here two completely different conceptions of
faith are intermingled; the principle that the Holy Spirit guarantees
20 Gal. 2:20.
 The Witness of the Spirit 175

the truth of the Scriptural statement through His inner witness is ap¬
plied equally to both these Scriptural assertions.
In point of fact, however, the Holy Spirit does not guarantee the
truth of world facts, whether historical or cosmological. The testi¬
monium spiritus sancti is strictly limited to its own sphere of refer¬
ence. The Spirit testifies to the Father and the Son, but not to all
kinds of other matters. This being so, then we too are not called upon
to believe — in the Biblical sense of the word — all kinds of other
matters, in the same way in which we “ believe ” in Jesus Christ.
Luther is right: Christus rex et dominus scripturae.21 In the strictly
Biblical sense of the word we can only “ believe ” in God’s self-reve¬
lation, in God as He reveals Himself to us in His Word. But it is
precisely this “ faith ” which is impossible to us as “ rational,” sinful,
human beings; it is precisely the Cross of Christ which is to us a
“ folly ” and a “ scandal.” But it is folly and scandal only because we
are enmeshed in the net woven by our sinful struggles for independ¬
ence. Hence the moment that we believe in the revelation of God in
Jesus Christ, our sinful, self-willed independence breaks down.
When Christ takes my heart captive, He breaks down my arrogance,
and opens my spirit to receive the generous love of God. When my
eyes are opened to see my sin, they are also opened to see Christ.
Both are one, and take place simultaneously. The new knowledge,
faith, is at the same time a new relationship with God and a new
self-knowledge. It is just as Paul describes it: “ It is God that said,
Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ.”22
This is the moment at which the witness of Scripture, the message
of the Bible, becomes truth to us. For Christ takes me captive
through this witness of Scripture, through this which “ stands writ¬
ten,” and not otherwise. Because, and in so far as, the Scripture
testifies to Christ, the Mystery of God, I can believe in it. Faith in the
message carries with it faith in the Book; I believe the word of the
Apostle, because his witness to Christ is witnessed to me by the
Holy Spirit as the truth. I believe in the Bible, because I believe in
Christ, whom the Bible — and it alone — gives to me. My previous
unbelief is overcome by the fact that in the light of Christ I perceive
my sins, through which the message of the Cross became “ folly ”
21 Luther, W.A., 40, 1, 420. 22 II Cor. 4:6.
176 Revelation and Reason

and “ scandal.” It is not the Book which carries Christ, but Christ
who carries the Book, and He carries it only so far as it bears witness
to Him, the self-revelation of God. In this sense — in the Biblical
sense — only he who allows himself to be brought to humility and
repentance is able to believe. The true Biblical faith is repentant
acknowledgment of the Rule and the mercy of God. It is therefore
wholly different from that ethically neutral “ faith that everything
which is written in this Book is true. This “ faith ” has nothing what¬
ever to do with my relation with God, and with repentance, and
humble thankfulness. It believes, indeed, all kinds of things
— on the word of authority. But “ faith,” in the Biblical sense, means
that our sinful hearts are vanquished by the holiness and mercy of
God in Jesus Christ. The authoritarian faith in the Bible, when tested
by the Biblical idea of faith, is both religiously and ethically sterile;
it is an unspiritual attitude. Whether the Biblical writers, and the
various facts which they record, are credible, has nothing whatever
to do with “ faith ” in the Biblical sense. Such “ faith ” makes us
neither penitent nor thankful nor converted nor sanctified. Such faith
leaves the personality of the believer unaltered. Only where we come
into contact with the self-revelation of God, with Jesus Christ, thus
where faith is a personal relation to God, is the personality of the
believer changed. “ Faith ” of this kind alone is the concern of the
Bible.

7. Secondly, in this view of faith the contradiction between au¬

tonomy and heteronomy is overcome, that contradiction which con¬
trols the Augustinian-Scholastic discussion of the relation between
faith and knowledge. It is true, of course, that in daily life, as Augus¬
tine proves, the acceptance of that which is communicated in an
authoritative manner plays a great, and indeed an indispensable,
part.25 A great part of our knowledge is based upon confidence in
the person who communicates certain knowledge to us; we have
neither time nor opportunity to examine everything afresh for our¬
selves. We must further concede to Augustine that within the
Christian Church, as a rule, faith is first of all the acceptance of
that which is handed down by authority; those who represent this

23 Cf. Gilson, Der heilige Augustin, p. 64. Also Saint Thomas, Summa Theol.,
II, 2, Ch. II, Art. 9: “ Ille qui credit, habet sufficiens inductivum ad credendum,
sed non ... ad sciendum.”
 The Witness of the Spirit 177
authority may be first of all the parents, then the teachers of the
Church, and finally the Biblical writers. From the educational point
of view this beginning with a faith based on authority is wholly good.
Danger of error, however, arises at two points: First, there is the
danger that this faith on authority may be confused with that which
the Bible calls “ faith ”; and, secondly, that as a result of this veiy
misunderstanding it may remain on this level of heteronomy and
never reach the level of real faith.24
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong in the insistence on
autonomy in the sphere of knowledge; indeed, this should be recog¬
nized as the proper goal of knowledge. In everything which concerns
this world, it is part of our destiny and our duty to seek, as far as
possible, to reach our “ own ” knowledge by the use of our reason.
This is all implied in the injunctions, “ Make the earth subject unto
you,” 25 and, “ Of all the trees shall ye eat,”26 as part of man’s original
destiny. It is our duty to strive, as far as possible, to arrive at the
evidence gained by rational knowledge, to see all we can for our¬
selves. But just as we are intended to eat of “ the fruit of all the trees
in the garden,” so also we are not allowed to eat of “ the fruit of the
tree which is in the midst of the garden.”27 The autonomy of the
knowledge of this world is enveloped in the theonomy of the knowl¬
edge of God. We cannot, and ought not, to try to know God in the
same way that we know the world. We are intended to know Him,
and can know Him only through His own Word, from His own self¬
revelation.
Faith in the Word of God revealed in Christ stands on a plane
above this contrast — between the heteronomy of authority and the
autonomy of reason. Faith, in the Biblical sense, is “ authoritarian ”
in a quite different sense from that of belief on authority, because
it is homage to God Himself; it is “ autonomous ” in a quite different

24 Augustine, it is true, is able to distinguish between a mere faith on au¬

thority and genuine faith; but for him genuine faith is no longer faith — but
love. Augustine did not understand that love follows genuine faith, but it
does not make the faith based on authority a genuine faith; this was due
to the fact that he did not understand the personal character of the re¬
lation between faith in Christ, God’s address to man, and man’s answer, but
at the decisive point he went off into mysticism, and this gave rise to that mix¬
ture of eros and agape which is called caritas.
25 Gen. 1:28.
26 Gen. 2:16.
27 Gen. 2:9,17.
178 Revelation and Reason

sense from that of rational knowledge, because it is a process of self-

knowledge through the Holy Spirit. True Biblical faith, therefore, is
both the overcoming of the false faith based on authority — the ac¬
ceptance of a doctrine on the basis of the human authorities which
guarantee its truth — and also of the rationalistic illusion of auton¬
omy, which believes that God can be understood by means of reason,
in the same way as one learns to know the world by means of the
human reason.
When the Holy Spirit testifies within me that the Word Christ is
the Truth, I know, myself, that it is true. I do not need any further hu¬
man guarantee. And since it is the Word of God which I know thus as
the Truth, I know and recognize that I possess the truth, not by my
own efforts, or in virtue of my own reason, but because I receive it
from God. True Christian faith means being set free from the slavery
of human guardians, freedom from a false heteronomy. It is also
the abandonment of all false autonomy, of the desire to be as
gods,” of that <£ knowledge ” of God which we think we can attain
by the efforts of our human reason. In faith man returns to his
original destiny: to be in the image of God; this means that we
possess the truth of God as something which we have received, as
a gift.
Hence genuine Biblical faith is not an imperfect, preliminary stage
of knowledge, something which may become real knowledge later
on, after a long process of rational argument and proof — which has
been the view of Scholastic theology ever since the days of Augustine
and Anselm;28 faith does not become knowledge, after a process of
rational activity; it is, itself, knowledge. I myself know, in my faith,
that Jesus Christ is my Lord. I do not believe this on the word of an
28 “ Doubtless reason is in itself a higher way of knowledge than faith; for it
penetrates the nature of the object, whereas faith merely lays hold of it without
understanding it ” (Gilson, loc. cit., p. 64) - this is the fundamental misunder¬
standing which runs through the whole of the Scholastic and Catholic con¬
ception of faith. Because it starts from the point that revelation is the commu¬
nication of truths, and thus from something that “ can be known,” and is not
aware that revelation is a personal self-communication, encounter as self-dis¬
closure, and thus truth of a quite different kind from all that is “ objective,”
it measures the evidence of the knowledge of faith by the standard of rational
knowledge, and finds it, as is obvious, of an inferior kind. But the whole point
here is that there is in this respect no question of “ more ” or “ less the point
is the absolute difference between the “ Thou ” and the “ It in subjective terms
this means: the contrast between a knowledge that I can “ have,” and one that
“ has me.”
 The Witness of the Spirit 179
external authority — because Paul says so, or because the Holy Scrip¬
tures say so — but I know it myself, just as certainly as I know that
two and two make four. The evidence for the knowledge of faith is
no whit inferior to that of rational knowledge, but it is evidence of
a different kind. It is a knowledge which takes place in the fact that
the Spirit of God Himself unveils to me the truth of the witness of
the Bible to Christ, and so illuminates the eyes of my heart that I now
can see for myself. It is not knowledge that I have gained by my own
efforts, but it is that which I now have, which is neither capable of
proof nor, indeed, requires proof. It is knowledge in the dimension
of personal encounter: God Himself discloses Himself to me. It is
revelation.
Where personal truth is concerned, proof is neither possible nor
fitting. For this truth is both trust and decision: we must decide
either for proof or for trust, either for rational evidence or for the
evidence of personal encounter, which is accomplished in God’s
gracious condescension and in the trustful obedience of man. The
fact that this inner movement arises in the heart of man, a movement
which is the very opposite of the sinful striving for autonomy or
independence: this is the work of the Holy Spirit.
This knowledge makes us bondslaves of God, and sets us free from
man. When I become God’s bondslave through faith I recognize that
my previous “ freedom ” was sin;29 and when I become free from
men, I see that my former faith on authority meant that I still
“ thought as a child.” “ If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye
shall be free indeed.”30 “ But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there
is liberty.”31 These statements should be understood not only from
the ethical point of view, but also from that of the theory of knowl¬
edge. The Holy Spirit, as He who testifies to me the truth of the
witness of the Scriptures, creates a “ knowledge of a new kind; this
is the knowledge which Paul can compare only with the knowledge
which man has of himself through his own spirit.32 The word of God,
which in its decisive content, as the word of the Cross, is folly and
scandal to my natural reason, is the divine hammer which knocks
on the closed door of the autonomous, self-imprisoned reason. But
it does not destroy reason; rather, it liberates it, by setting it free from
the curse of sin, namely, from that illusion of autonomy, the desire

29 Rom. 6:16 ff. si II Cor. 3:17.

30 John 8:36. 32 I Cor. 2:11.
180 Revelation and Reason

of being like God, and it reverses the Fall, which consisted in the
fact that man wanted to eat of the fruit of the tree in the center of
the garden, as well as of the fruit of the other trees, in order that he
might be equal with God.

8. Luther has thus described the act of faith: “ They (the Sophis-
tae) believe in Christ with a (merely) historical faith, like a Turk.
But the (true) faith makes thee and Christ almost one person
(quasi unam 'personam), so that thou art not separated from Christ,
rather that thou art vitally bound up with Him (inherescas), and,
so to speak, art so united with Christ through faith, as to be one flesh
with Him. Faith is a firm assent (firmus assensus), by which thou
dost lay hold on Christ, so that Christ is the Object of faith, or rather
not the Object, but — if I may put it so — in faith itself Christ is
present.” 33 Is that not mysticism? Is not that often-quoted passage in
the Epistle to the Galatians, “ Christ liveth in me,” a typical expres¬
sion of Christ-mysticism? Let us call it what we will; there is no
sense in quarreling about words; but everything depends upon know¬
ing the meaning of the words we use. It is a “ mystery,” because it
is revelation; it is a “ mystery ” which takes place in the heart of man,
the testimonium spiritus sancti internum. Further, we may also con¬
cede that in this kind of knowledge that which mysticism is always
seeking and yet never finding actually happens: man’s direct relation
with God. At the same time we must never forget that here too we
have what mysticism avoids, at all costs: the radical mediacy, the
absolute union with the historic Mediator and the historical Word
concerning Him, and with the act of atonement which has taken
place once for all on the Cross. The distinctive mark of this kind of
knowledge, as contrasted with all other kinds of knowledge, is that
it combines historical objectivity with a knowledge which is subjec¬
tive and present.
In other words, the same faith which states that “ Christ is in me ”
is also the simple faith of the Bible, faith in objective facts, in this
actual Book, which I have here before me, and in that historical fact
which once happened, at a particular time and place. And, indeed,
these objective facts are not, as they are in mysticism, merely “ occa¬
sions,” or starting points, which we can leave behind as soon as we
33 Luther, W.A., 40, I, 285.
 The Witness of the Spirit 181
reach “ reality,” the mystical experience of Christ;84 but faith in Christ
is permanently and absolutely bound up with those objective facts,
with this Book, and with this historical fact. The living and present
Christ is no other than He who is shown to me in the Book as the One
who was once, at a particular point in history, crucified. The word of
the present Christ is no other than the word of Holy Scripture, and the
presence of tire Holy Spirit discloses itself above all in the fact that He
illuminates the word of Scripture for me as the word of God, and
binds me to this word of Scripture. This certainly is “ mysticism ” of a
rare kind, which on account of its dissimilarity to the rest of mysticism
had better not be described as “ mysticism.” This union of spiritual
immediacy with historical mediacy, of relation to Scripture with free¬
dom through the Spirit, is the paradoxical principle of knowledge of
the Biblical Reformed Faith; hence we ought not to describe this
principle merely as “ Scriptural,” but as a principle of “ Scripture and
the Spirit.”
For just as “ Christ-mysticism ” differs from all other kinds of mys¬
ticism, so also this Biblical faith differs from that “ orthodoxy ” of
Fundamentalism which makes the Bible an idol, and me its slave.
This false “ Bible faith ” binds me to that ypappa, the “ letter which
killeth,”35 since it makes the letter of the Bible into a law of faith.
Thou shalt believe what stands written in this Book! But the true
“ Bible faith ” does not begin with a “ Thou shalt,” but with a “ Thou
mayest and thou canst.” When the Spirit opens up to me the Word
of God, He does not make faith a commandment; but He gives it to
me, as sight is given to a blind man. The true “ Bible faith ” is the
miracle of healing, which the living Christ performs on him who
through sin is blind. He makes us free from the letter of the Bible as a
law of faith. He binds us to the Scripture, in so far as it witnesses to
Christ, in so far as it discloses the will of God and His nature, but not
in so far as it teaches us ordinary facts about the world. The letter of
the Bible is not the object of faith, but the means of the divine self¬
revelation. The Christian is not told, like a Jewish child, that he must
“ believe in the Bible,” but that, as a child of God, through the Bible
he may believe in the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. Just as the win-

34 Cf. Otto, Westostliche Mystik, that supposedly Christian mysticism which

“hovers over the sphere of Palestinian-Biblical religiosity” (p. 289).
35 II Cor. 3:6.
182 Revelation and Reason

dowpanes are not there to be looked at, but to enable us to look

through them at the view beyond, so we are not commanded to be¬
lieve in the Bible, but, through the window of the Bible, to see God’s
Light, and to receive it. We are not told to “ believe in the Scriptures,”
but in faith in Christ to know and to experience the word of Scrip¬
ture as the word of God.

9. Thus a genuine “ Bible faith ” transcends both the mystic’s

freedom from the Bible, and also the Fundamentalist’s bondage to
the Biblical text. This “ freedom, in being bound ” and this “ bondage
in freedom ” is the work of the Holy Spirit. What He does in rela¬
tion to the word of the Bible, He also does in relation to the word
of the Church. The word of the Church — in preaching, pastoral
work, or in teaching — is also at first remote and an “ offense ” to the
hearer. The “ making present ” of the Bible message by the preacher
will not at first remove this offense; on the contrary, it may, and
should, make the folly and offense of the Cross still more evident.36
The confession and the theology of the Church ought not to elimi¬
nate this “ offense,” or even to weaken it, but, on the contrary, they
ought to place this, as the most costly jewel, within the “ setting ” of
the human word, in order that it may be preserved. For it is based
upon this “ offense,” the power of redemption — the offense is indeed
only the counterpart of sin, and the offer of the offense is only that
incognito of the salvation which sets us free.
But this salvation, which is contained in the Biblical message as
the jewel is contained in the goldsmith’s setting, can only become
salvation through the fact that the folly is transformed into divine
wisdom, and the offense into the Highest Good, as the Holy Spirit
once more enables the heart of the blinded human being to see,
as the arrogant man becomes humble, the self-sufficient man be¬
comes “ broken in heart,” and the self-complacent becomes repent¬
ant. In this destruction of all false self-confidence the scales fall from
his eyes, and in a new way he can see that his true freedom is not
based upon his own “ standing,” as a self, but upon his “ standing ”
in God.
It is through the preaching of the Church - even if perhaps the
Church speaks through a simple mother, and her “ sermon ” is a sim-
Kieikegaard, Training in Christianity, the section on the “ essential of¬
fense.” [English trans., pp. 105 ff. Tr.]
 The Witness of the Spirit 183
pie exhortation — that man is pierced to the heart; the lie of his exist¬
ence, and the truth of the divine message, is unveiled, so that he
knows his own foolishness, and in so doing tire message of the Church
becomes wisdom to him, and a precious treasure. This does not take
place apart from the viva vox ecclesiae, but through it as an instru¬
ment, and therefore in connection with it. But the fact that the
Church is the necessary organ of tire Spirit of God does not mean
that the Church is herself the supreme authority.37 Like the Scrip¬
tures, and upon the foundation of the Scriptures, she is the bearer
of that which alone has authority: this Word of God itself, which is
nothing other than Jesus Christ Hinrself, the Lord of the Church, and
of all believers. The Spirit of God, through whom, in the Word of
the Church, Christ, as the living Lord, meets tire individual, thus
binds the individual to the Church, as it binds him to the Scriptures,
and makes him free from the authority of the Church in the same
way as it sets him free from the letter of Scripture. He binds him to
the Church as the bearer of the Word; He makes him free from her,
in that He teaches us to distinguish between the bearer and that
which she bears, between the human “ setting ” and the “ jewel ”
itself.

10. We are now in a position, at least intellectually, to make the

distinction between the true and false faith, the fides viva and the
fides mortua; but the actual difference between the two cannot be
expressed in words; it is a matter of the experience of faith and the
conflict of faith itself. False faith proves itself to be false and dead in
that it is not the conquest of legalism, but that it is itself a “ work of
the law.” It is the result of the command of the Church which re¬
quires submission either to dogma or to the Bible as a book. It ful¬
fills itself as an act of legalistic obedience, as a sacrificium intellec-
tus, whether it be to dogma or to the Bible as an infallible book. It
is a human achievement, and for that very reason it is not what the
Scripture itself says of true faith: the gift of God. Hence it is im¬
potent. It has, indeed, as submission to an order of the Church, and
37 Zwingli saw particularly clearly that the outward word — whether that
of the Bible or of the doctrine of the Church - is only imago verbi vel rei
(5,582,494); that the real Word of God is only one, namely, Christ Himself.
But this one spiritual Word, this genuina spiritus essentia, easily slips with him
into a rational, speculative kind of truth, the “ natural true meaning.” Cf. above,
p. 170, n. 9.
184 Revelation and Reason

as a faith which is required “ ahead,” as it were, no primary relation

to the holy, merciful will of God, and has therefore no moral power
to transform personality. It is primarily, ethically, completely neutral,
because it is applied equally to all parts of Scripture alike — the cos¬
mological and the historical parts as well as the theological. The per¬
son therefore who declares himself ready to believe all that the
Church teaches or all that the Bible contains is not himself thereby
in the veiy least altered. This faith is, as the Reformers say, a mere
fides historica. Further, it signifies a childish attitude of the human
spirit, heteronomy, bondage to other human beings. To confuse this
so-called “ faith ” with the true Biblical faith is the greatest mis¬
fortune which can happen to the individual and to the Church.
True faith, on the other hand, the fides viva, is no human achieve¬
ment on the basis of a human command; it is not a belief on author¬
ity, a sacrificium intellectus; it is not an act of servile obedience to a
law; but it is the divinely effectual miracle that man, through the
illumination of the Holy Spirit, becomes able to see the truth of God
in Jesus Christ. Hence this faith means the effectual working of the
Holy Spirit in the spirit of man, life-renewing energy, the principle
of new birth and of sanctification. From faith of this kind spring
spontaneously the good movements of the will. Is it not indeed
simply the reception of the “ love of God which is poured out in our
hearts by the Holy Spirit,” 88 and therefore that “ faith which work-
eth through love ”? 39 This faith is not merely related to the “ being ”
of the person; it is rather the coming to birth of a new person; it is
rebirth, the restoration of the defaced image of God; for it is the
break with man’s sinful autonomy, and his return to the original
theonomy of the man who has been created in the image of God.
It is the same as existence in the truth, because it is existence “ in
Christ,” who Himself is the Truth. Faith, in the true Biblical sense,
means that man is captivated by the truth of God in Jesus Christ,
through which man himself — even if very imperfectly and strug-
glingly — becomes true and free.
38 Rom. 5:5. 39 Gal. 5:6.
 Revelation in Glory 185

D. Revelation as Fulfillment

12. REVELATION IN GLORY

The Christian faith is what it is through a revelation which has

been received; on this revelation it lives; upon it is it founded; as
obedient perception it contemplates it as “ given ” truth. But the
Christian faith does not only live on the revelation which it has
received; it also looks forward, expectantly, to the future revelation,
the final revelation, the End. Thus just as we had to deal first of all
with the revelation through the Creation at the beginning of all
things, so we must deal with the End of all things, in so far as the
ultimate revelation is accomplished therein. The words a.TroK.a'Kv\f/Lsi
aTOKa\v7TTeiP, occur in the New Testament particularly in connec¬
tion with the Parousia of the Lord at the end of the ages. “ The reve¬
lation * of the Lord Jesus Christ ” is the standing formula for that
which the later Church used to call the Second Coming of the Lord.1
In addition, from the “ formal ” point of view, that is, from the stand¬
point of inquiry into truth, we must consider the revelation at the
End: the revelation which will finally disclose the whole truth about
God, and, in so doing, will mean man’s realization of his full destiny.

1. First of all, we must emphasize the imperfection of all revela¬

tion and knowledge, even that which has been given to us in
Jesus Christ. It is true that we have contrasted the revelation in the
Old Testament, as imperfect, with that of the revelation of Christ,
as perfect, because the meaning of the revelation is fully revealed
only in Jesus Christ. It is only from the standpoint of the Incarna¬
tion of the Son that we understand man’s fellowship with the Father
through the Son as the meaning of human existence, and the mean¬
ing of history. And yet this perfect revelation, the personal revela¬
tion of God, is given to us at first in an imperfect form, imperfect
both in the objective and in the subjective sense of the word. The
historical, objective revelation is the Son of God “ in the form of
a servant.” 2 The divine revelation is also the most profound conceal¬
ment: the Cross of the God-man. Truly, Kierkegaard was not wrong
* [The “coming,” or the “appearing,” in our English version (A. V.). Tr.]
1 I Cor. 1:7; II Cor. 12:1; I Peter 1:7, et cetera.
2 Phil. 2:7; Rom. 8:3.
186 Revelation and Reason

when he called this form of revelation an “ incognito.” As, for

instance, sometimes in legends a king will wander through his coun¬
try in the incognito of a beggar, so the Son of God moved among us
in the Kenosis of the Son of Man, in the concealment of one who was
“ rejected ” of men as an enemy of God. It is true that the Evangelist
writes, “ We beheld His glory 3 but this glory was concealed be¬
neath its exact opposite. The glory of God is royal Majesty, Omnipo¬
tence, victorious Power. The figure of the historic Christ is of a man
put to shame, of powerlessness and defeat. The royal glory is, of
course, there, and it breaks through now and again in the fonn of
a royal glance, or a royal gesture, made by the figure disguised in the
beggar’s garments; His “ own ” know Him for what He is. But their
knowledge is against all appearances. Celsus told the Christians quite
plainly that they were worshiping someone quite unworthy of their
homage,4 and Nietzsche seconded him still more vigorously. Even
to a man like Goethe the Cross was repellent. For the modern man
the Crucified, in the strictly Biblical sense of the word, is an “ of¬
fense,” and the message of the Cross is “ foolishness.” Faith possesses
the revelation, as Luther says, sub contraria specie.5
We ask, Why was this? The final answer must be, Because God
chose this method of revelation. But God gives us a glimpse of the
reason why He chose this method: only thus is there room for deci¬
sion. Christ in glory will leave no more room for decision, the revela¬
tion in glory will silence all opposition, as a fact which is impressively
brought to our notice silences all opposition; but it is His will that
we should make a decision; He wills that we should range ourselves
on His side of our own free will. The King in the garments of a beggar
gives room for the venture of faith to decide for Him. It is only the
“ indirect communication ” which makes faith possible, as Kierke¬
gaard has said/' Only in the incognito of the Son of Man can God place
Himself so much on a level with us that we can answer Him with the
freedom of childlike trust, and can venture to accept the fellowship
3 John 1:14.
4 “ And you Christians do not see that you give us more occasion for laughter
(than certain writers of comedies) when you assure us that the Son of God was
sent down to the Jews” (in Origen, Contra Celsum, 6, 78). Cf. Nietzsche,
Der Antichrist.
5 Luther, Rdmerhrief, ed. Ficker, II, 204.
6 Cf. the very significant observations of Kierkegaard, which have never
yet been properly valued by anyone, in his Unscientific Postscript on “ revela¬
tion ” and “ indirect communication.”
 Revelation in Glory 187
with Him that He offers us. Thus the incognito is, for our sakes, nec¬
essary. Nevertheless, it cannot possibly be the final, ultimate form of
revelation. One day the hour must strike when the King will lay aside
His beggar’s robes, in order to show His royal glory. One day the
period of decision must be over, and that which has been fully de¬
cided must take its place. The meaning of revelation requires as its
goal the complete unveiling.
It may, however, be urged that we believe not only in the cruci¬
fied Lord, but also in the risen and ascended Lord, that the revealed
form of the Crucified is followed by the glory of the risen Lord, and
thus that faith has already been partly merged in “ sight.” But this
is not the teaching of Scripture. The risen Lord, whom the disciples
were allowed to see, was not the Lord in His royal, sublime, glory,
but He was the Lord who still bore upon His form the marks of the
wounds. His appearance was not a manifestation in glory which
simply destroyed every doubt. It was only to believers that He re¬
vealed Himself as the risen Lord, and only to faith did He lay aside
the “ incognito,” 7 which, as the risen Lord, He had assumed. The
resurrection is, it is true, the transition to His glory, but it is not yet
the glory itself. And we who have not seen the risen Lord can only
believe on Him as the heavenly Lord; only through faith and in faith
do we experience Him as the living Lord, who through His Spirit
is present with us. This brings us to the second, subjective element.

2. The incompleteness of the revelation which has so far been

given to us shows itself in the fact that it is given to faith and not to
sight.8 Our situation, as a state of faith, is “ having ” and yet “ not
having ” — a “ having ” which is at the same time an expectation.9
Certainly faith is knowledge, not merely the heteronomous convic¬
tion about something that had been previously unknown, on the basis
of the knowledge of others. The knowledge of faith differs com¬
pletely from all mere thinking, or supposing, or “ believing what
other people say.” But this certainty of faith is one which has to be
continually regained, after a conflict, because it is a continual deci¬
sion. Faith, from the point of view of unbelief, is always a venture,
although it is itself conscious that it is not a venture but a gift, and
something about which one says, “ I can do no other. Even when
7 Cf. Kiirmeth, Theologie der Auferstehung, pp. 83 ff.
8 II Cor. 5:7.
9 Rom. 8:23 ff.
188 Revelation and Reason

faith itself rests “ like a weaned child ” on its mother’s breast,10 in the
certainty of the Word of God, yet it is incomplete in comparison
with the certainty which will no longer have to fight against uncer¬
tainty, but will be an “abiding” certainty. Faith is the process of
continually becoming sure; as in faith we may continually renew our
assurance, so also it is true that we must continually renew our cer¬
tainty. Faith therefore knows that it is not final, but that it is pro¬
visional, an interim state, a stage before the final goal is reached.
“ We live by faith and not (yet) by sight.”

3. Thus the revelation that we now possess points beyond itself,

as the part points towards the whole. At present we only see the
truth of God “ in a mirror, darkly.” 11 The fragment requires the
whole; the mere “ suggestion ” needs to be realized. The “ incom¬
plete ” is like the refraction of the divine light in the medium of the
sinful world. As white light becames red in smoke, so the picture of
the divine glory is transformed, in the dark atmosphere of sin, into
the form of the Crucified. The redemption has taken place — and
yet we wait in hope for “ the glory which shall be revealed.” 12 We
are redeemed, it is true, but we still live in the unredeemed world,
and in an unredeemed body. The meaning of the world, and of his¬
tory, has indeed been proclaimed to us, but it has not yet been
realized.
The world still obscures both the truth of God and the love of God.
The revelation of Christ is like a “ foreign body ” in this world of
hatred, meaninglessness, and alienation from God. What does the
fact of Jesus mean for the world? How easy it is to pass it by, care¬
lessly; how easy it is to reject it as something meaningless, or to rail
against it as the denial of the true meaning of life, and to rebel
against it! How unreasonable does the Word of God still seem to so
many reasonable people! God is still so little known, and faith is still
quite remote from the nature of the world. Indeed, faith is marked by
this “ remoteness ” like the mark of Cain. Our knowledge of the
world cannot be co-ordinated with the knowledge of faith into a uni¬
fied outlook, as Catholic Scholasticism tried to do. We have no sys¬
tem of truth, but only the light of Christ, which falls like a flash of
lightning upon our knowledge of the world. All that we know of
Christ contradicts all that the world shows us. Faith says, God is Al-
10 Ps. 131:3. 11 I Cor. 13:12. 12 Rom. 8:25 and v. 18.
 Revelation in Glory 189
mighty Love; but the world testifies to the powerlessness of love,
and the cruelty of the powers that be. Faith says, God is just; but the
world is full of the cries of those who suffer from injustice, and the
indignation of those who have been deprived of their rights. Faith
says, God is life, a God of the living and not of the dead; but in this
world death reigns. We must always hold fast the truth of Christ
against the contradiction of the experience of the world. The state
of faith is therefore something provisional. Faith itself believes in
the end of this provisional period; it believes with certainty in the
coming End, which lies on the farther side of faith, in the sphere of
sight. Either faith is an illusion or it is the certainty, based upon
Gods revelation, of the coming of Another. Faith always looks be¬
yond itself, toward the goal, which is not “ faith,” but “ sight.”

4. In Jesus Christ we believe in the coming, perfect Kingdom of

God, and the fulfillment of all things. Here we are not dealing with
“ postulates.” 13 Nor is this faith something which is added to faith
in Jesus Christ, but it is contained within it. We cannot believe in
Jesus Christ at all without believing in the coming Kingdom; Jesus
Christ in His Person, is promissio vitae futurae. He, as the Word of
God, is the revealed plan of God and the divine decree; in Him God
reveals the goal of humanity and of the world.14 To believe in Jesus
means to believe in this goal. We do not need to say any more about
this; but we have to ask, What kind of knowledge or revelation is
implied in this final goal? How does God reveal Himself at the End,
and what will this final knowledge be like?
It is of the essence of the Christian future that our knowledge of it
can only be shadowy and dim. If we knew more, it would not be
future, but present. Faith is certainly a hope for the future, but
this certainty is not so clear that it leaves no room for questions.
This kind of unquestioned certainty is indeed the nature of that
which is present, in contradistinction to that which is promised. It is
precisely the future, eternal things, which, in their difference from
the present earthly and transitory things, are concealed, as under a
veil, and are only known under this veil. This is also true of the fu-

13 Althaus, Die letzten Dinge, p. 36. In the work of Althaus what he says
about the “ postulates ” of eschatology is a relic of his “ axiological,” that is,
speculative, method, which is scarcely noticeable in the last edition of his work.
I* Eph. 1:10; I Cor., ch. 15; Rom. 11:32 ff.
190 Revelation and Reason

ture manner of revelation and of knowledge. The promise gives us

only the idea of it, and the analogy, but not an adequate representa¬
tion of it. Objectively, the future of the Lord is a revelation “ in
power and glory ”;15 subjectively, it is a “ vision ”; and both are
summed up in the expression, We shall see Him “ face to face.”16
(a) Christ, according to His promise, will not reveal Himself again
in “ the form of a servant ” but in “ power ” and “ in glory.” That is
primarily a negative conception: the removal of the “ form of a
servant ” and of its incognito; the concealment which was essential
to it will disappear. But, further, the Word says something positive,
by the use of analogy: the glorious and powerful Christ will mani¬
fest Himself, in an intensification of all that is glorious and powerful,
beyond the range of our imagination to conceive. The Revealer will
then be clothed with His divine majesty. Without the refraction
caused by human sinfulness the glorious Light (<5o£a) will then show
itself as it is; at the same time humanity will be perfected into a
completely “ deified ” humanity. “ We shall be like Him.”17 This al¬
ready posits the subjective factor.
(b) “ Glory ” is the objective term for that which is known as
“ vision ” in subjective terms, in contrast to faith. This too, however,
is only an analogy, and a negation of a negation. As a negation it
means the elimination of all those barriers which surround faith as
indirect knowledge; it means a knowledge which is no longer indi¬
rect but direct. But the effort to fill out this idea of “ directness ”
gives us only that analogy of the experience which we call “ seeing ”
or “ vision.” In this life to “ see ” someone is the most perfect rela¬
tion to one who confronts us. It is a presence which is both sensible
and spiritual. Only spiritual beings can “see” in this sense; they
alone have “ vision ”; an animal can look at me, but he cannot “ be¬
hold ” me. “ Seeing,” in this sense, means to grasp the whole without
abstraction: confronting one another in perfect repose, free from all
conflict and all decision, knowing the other as present in complete,
and not merely “suggested,” clarity. Vision is not abstract, like
thought, and it is not merely sensible, like perception. “ Seeing,” or
“ vision,” is the presence of the Spiritual without the abstractness of
thought, and the “ visibility ” of the Spiritual without the sense-limita¬
tions of all that is merely natural.
15 Matt. 24:30; 25:31. 17 I lohn 3:2.
16 I Cor. 13:12; Matt. 18:10; Rev. 22:4.
 Revelation in Glory 191
(c) To see “face to face ’’ gathers up the objective and the sub¬
jective elements in the unity of a personal encounter. What is here
involved is the personal presence of God, and our being present with
God. Once more, and in a very striking manner, we are confronted by
that enigmatic form of revelation which we could not fully grasp in
the Old Testament: the “ face.” “ There ” we shall be concerned no
longer with the name, nor with the word, nor with the act of God,
but with His face, and this in a twofold, mutual sense: seeing “face
to face.” To see the face of God — that was both the longing and the
terror of the saints of the Old Testament. The unredeemed creature
could not endure the glance of the unveiled divine majesty; and yet,
could there be any greater blessedness?
In Jesus Christ the divine face shines upon us, and “ transforms ”
us “ from glory to glory.”18 And yet this is only a parable of fulfill¬
ment, because it is not yet present in a visible glory, but only in one
which is believed; because this glory is only present “ in part,” in an
enigmatic word, “ in a mirror,” but not yet in the real presence of visi¬
ble reality. Both the personalism and the realism of the Biblical hope
cannot be more strongly expressed than in the phrase: “ face to face.”
The final and the highest fulfillment is not a mystical, mutual inflow¬
ing (which blurs distinctions), but even the perfect state will be one
of personal encounter; here, however, all barriers of separation will
have disappeared, and persons will “ converse ” with one another in
a perfectly mutual relation, in a complete fellowship of giving and
receiving.

5. But this parabolic expression, for its part, needs to be both

expanded and delimited. On the one hand, it is too anthropomorphic
to do adequate justice to the spiritual and personal character of this
mutual, personal relation. Hence the New Testament combines this
idea of “ vision ” with a second conception, which expresses the same
idea in other terms; and it says this with a precision which inheres in
a statement of ideas rather than of “ things seen ” — we shall “ know ”
as we “ have been known.” 19 Only then will our partial knowledge
cease. Then it will be true of the knowledge of revelation that God
will be all and in all. For when we know as we have been known,
God alone is the active part in this knowledge. Thus knowing is only
a “ sharing,” and, moreover, it is a repetition of the divine knowledge.
18 II Cor. 3:18. 19 I Cor. 13:12.
192 Revelation and Reason

Knowledge and revelation are then one; moreover, we are drawn

into the inner being of God, and it is He alone who moves us inwardly
to know Him. Here, however, the extreme limit has been reached;
to go farther than this would be to claim mystical identification with
God. More cannot be said without, in the end, eliminating the dis¬
tinction between the Creator and the creature, and thus destroying
the fundamental structure of Biblical thought. But even in this most
daring expression this distinction has not been eliminated; here there
is still a relation of fellowship which is not that of “ identity,”
“ union,” “ deification.” Here too there is still Someone who confronts
me: I shall know, even as I am known. I am still the one who knows,
although the content of this knowledge is given wholly by God, out
of the wealth of His knowledge. This means that our human “ knowl¬
edge ” is not an independent entity, but it is a self-activity. The way
I think depends upon what God thinks of me, and indeed the fact
that I think at all is due to the fact that He “ thinks ” me. But we
ought to use the word “ know ” rather than “ think ” in this connec¬
tion, for here we are not concerned with abstract thought. What
is meant is that I am so drawn toward God that I have “ utterly
passed over into God,” I am “ poured over into the will of God,” * *
so that I have a share in His innermost creative movement; but, we
must note, it is I who share in this movement. I do not disappear; my
living movement, even though it is derived from God alone, is still
my movement. I have nothing of my own to say, yet through God’s
perfect revelation I have a share in what He is saying, and what He
says is Reality. Thus I am what God says, what God thinks, and
what He wills. The contrast between subject and object will com¬
pletely disappear, but the fact of personal encounter, and thus of
the nonidentity of God and myself, will remain. For I am in the truth
and the truth is in me, as truth which is given to me and received by
me, and this truth will be my very being, and my life.
This truth will be no other than the God-man, Jesus Christ. “ But
when that which is perfect hath come, then we shall be like
Him.” * # * Then that which now can only be held in faith as a promise
will be the only reality, without the contrary play of another reality,
with which it would have to be in conflict. Then we shall all — Jews or
Greeks, freemen or slaves, men or women — be “ one in Christ Jesus ”;
** [St. Bernard, De diligendo Deo, X, 27, 28. Tr.]
*** [Cf. I Cor. 13:10; I John 3:2. Tr.]
 The Unity of the Revelation 193

for we shall all have our “ self ” in Christ. But each one of us will still
be a self, an “ I,” and this unity of the self in Christ will be our fellow¬
ship with one another. Revelation is then the same as the perfected
glorification, knowledge is then — and only then — identical with be¬
ing, truth with reality. Revelation will then be the same as complete
redemption and perfect fulfillment; the solution of the problem of
being is that of the problem of knowledge, and both are one with the
solution of the problem of community being in the eternal Kingdom
of God, where truth and love are one.

13. THE UNITY OF THE REVELATION

In accordance with the testimony of Holy Scripture, we have
spoken of revelation in its different forms. God achieves His revela¬
tion in a series of acts, not all at once. The revelation it is true, is al¬
ways and only a self-revelation of God; but He does not reveal Him¬
self in the same way, and He cannot be known in the same way in
the different forms of His revelation. The original revelation of the
beginning is one form of revelation; the revelation at the End is
another form; and the revelation in the midst of time is yet another.
The divine works in the Creation reveal to us God’s sovereignty, His
omnipotence and His wisdom, “ His everlasting power and glory,”
but they do not reveal His mercy, which keeps faith even with the
unfaithful. So also that which will be revealed to us at the End, the
infinite glory and nearness of God, when we shall see Him “ face to
face,” is different from that in which we know Him now, in the “ form
of a servant,” in the crucified Son of God. Again, all that was revealed
in the Old Covenant was only a “ shadow of things to come,” mani¬
fested to us in the Incarnation, but the Prophets only saw it from afar.
Because the beginning, the middle, and the end are not the same,
revelation is history. It is the essence of myth that the end and the
beginning are the same, that the movement in time is merely an illu¬
sion, where the end returns to the beginning, and therefore every¬
thing continually begins again: eternal recurrence. The revelation
to which the Holy Scriptures bear witness is a “ history ” of the
dealings of God with His creatures. Revelation is not the central
194 Revelation and Reason

point in a circle, but it is a way along which God walks with man,
and by which He approaches him. The religion of the Bible differs
from the teaching of all other religions in the fact that it is a teaching
based on a history. It is therefore not essentially doctrine but record.
It is not as though this historicity of revelation were a nonessential,
accidental element,1 something merely of interest to the historical
spectator. “ Saving history ” is not a history of “ development.” The
story which the Bible tells is our essential concern: that is the revela¬
tion. Faith, indeed, is concerned with the fact that we have to do
with the God of history, with the God who not merely “ is ” and
“ exists,” but who acts, who marches along a road with the human
race. This God is a very different God from one postulated by a
theory of timelessness; we know the difference in our own experience.
The revelation of God is not like a row of pictures of eternal truths,
hanging on a wall, to be contemplated and worshiped in a mystical
sense. It shows us God as the One who has come to us, who is now
coming to us, and who will yet come to us. This fact of God “ coming
to us” is the theme of the Bible: God on the march toward His goal,
to our goal. To believe in Him means to join in this movement of His;
hence a “ believer ” is one who marches along this road, and who
even “ runs ” in the way of His commandments. The faith of the
Christian is not a “ state,” but a march, a pressing towards the goal.2
When we see this, we can estimate the vast transformation which has
taken place in Christianity owing to the incursion of Greek philoso¬
phy, which turned the history of God’s dealings with mankind into a
concept of eternal truths, or at least it is always trying to do so. It
makes all the difference in the world whether we have to do with a
God who “ comes,” who stimulates us to “ run in the way of His com¬
mandments,” or with a God who is conceived within a doctrinal sys¬
tem, as the sum total of existence and truth; in other words, there is
a fundamental difference between knowing and accepting certain
doctrines, and playing our part in the history of the Kingdom of God.
It is particularly fitting that Reformation theology should lay great
stress upon this fundamental Biblical idea, or, rather, on the funda-
1 Cf. the excellent observations of W. Zimmerli in opposition to Hellbarth’s
weakening of the meaning of history, “ Vom Auslegen des AT in der Kirche,”
Verkiindigung und Forschung, theol. Jahresbericht, 1941, I, pp. 11 ff. Like¬
wise Eichrodt, “ Zur Frage der theol. Exegese des AT,” Theol. Bl., 1938, espe¬
cially pp. 79 ff.
2 I Cor. 9:24; Phil. 3:14; Heb. 12:1.
 The Unity of the Revelation 195
mental character of this Biblical history of revelation; for it was our
Reformed forefathers who, starting from the theology of Irenaeus,3
the great Biblical scholar of the Early Church, emphasized the idea
of the history of salvation and revelation over against the “ timeless¬
ness of the orthodox doctrinal system. It was not only Cocceius, but
Zwingli, Leo Jud, Bullinger, Ursinus, and also Calvin, who placed in
the forefront of their teaching the idea of the Covenant of God, and
the economy of revelation.4 Even they were not yet quite able to
see through the substantial alteration which had taken place in the
Biblical message through its Hellenization, by the transformation of
history into doctrine. Hence far too early the Reformation settled
down into the fixed mold of a sterile orthodoxy, which identified the
word of God with revealed doctrine, and regarded the acts of God
alongside of His Word, as subordinate to it. We must therefore make
a fresh beginning, at the point where the first generation of Reform¬
ers came to a standstill. Here historical Biblical criticism has opened
up the way, which had been blocked by the theory of verbal inspira¬
tion. It has taught us afresh that God actually “ of old time spoke
unto the fathers in the Prophets by divers portions and in divers
manners,” and “ at the end of these days ... in His Son.”
Nevertheless, the Biblical revelation is a unity —not a unity of
doctrine, but a unity of divine revealing action. The different forms of
revelation are not the same, but the one presupposes the other, and
without this presupposition neither is possible nor intelligible. The
Word of God in Jesus Christ is only understood when it is understood
as “ the Word which was in the beginning.” Repentance, the element
that preceeds faith, cannot be accomplished until sinful man recog¬
nizes that he is without excuse, and this is based upon the fact of the
revelation in the Creation. Jesus Christ cannot be recognized as Lord
save as we see Him as the One who came to “ His own,” who came to
“ His own property,” as the One to whom we belong from the very
outset owing to the Creation. The process by which a man becomes
3 It is urgent that the theological line of thought (described by Loofs,
Dogmengeschichte, pp. 98 ff.) from Irenaeus down to Marcellus of Ancyra,
which was brought to light eighty years ago by Zahn (Marcell von Ancyra,
1862), should be studied afresh with the new data which now exist. From this
point of view — Biblical and soteriological — the dogmas of the Trinity and of
Christology would no longer be presented in so axiomatic a way.
4 Cf. the presentation — all too short — in Schrenk, Gottesreich und Bund
im alteren Protestantismus, pp. 36-49 and pp. 152-162. See also Weth, Die
Heilsgeschichte.
196 Revelation and Reason

“ a new creation ” through faith in Christ differs from a process of

“ development ” by the very fact that it is at the same time the res¬
toration of the original image of God. The “ new creation does not
only mean this restoration of the imago Dei, but it also includes and
implies it, as an integral and original element. It is characteristic of
Biblical faith, and the Biblical message of salvation, that we have to
“ return to something this is true not only in the sense of the “ rec¬
ollection ” of something which, historically, was there first, the Old
Covenant; for even the heathen, who know nothing of the Covenant
of God with Israel, must repent;5 they must recognize that their
previous behavior has been sin, disobedience, because it was the
transgression of the law which had originally been given to them.6
The revelation of Christ points back to the original revelation, and
this retrospective relation to something in the past makes it what it is.
Above all, however, it points back to the Old Covenant. The name
of Christ witnesses to this. Only as the promised One and as He who
has now come in accordance with this promise is Jesus the Christ.
As the Prophets emphasized the fact that God does not do any¬
thing unless He has first of all announced it,7 and that it is pre¬
cisely in this correspondence between promise and fulfillment that
we know the nature of the Living God, so the New Testament lays
great emphasis upon the fact that the Saviour is the Messiah. But
why is there all this emphasis upon the Old Testament? The reason
is that we must recognize the God who is active in history, who
makes Himself known, not in a doctrine, but in historical action;
the God who “ makes ” history with His People, the God who strides
forward, the One who “ comes.” As the whole message of the New
Testament has an eschatological reference, since it looks forward
to the final goal of all history, so also it is a “ recapitulation 8 it
represents the whole of saving history as a unity, not of doctrine, but
of the mighty acts of God.
Hence the witnesses of the New Testament are not in the least
embarrassed by the fact that in the Old Testament God reveals Him-

6 Cf. the oracles of judgment pronounced by the Prophets against heathen

nations.
e Eph. 2:1 ff., 12, “ alienated similarly Rom. 1:21 ff.
7 Amos 3:7.
8 Eph. 1:10. On avaKecpaXcuovcrdaL, see Kittel, Wurterbuch, III, p. 691. Even
in the peculiar valuation of this idea Irenaeus shows once more his special
fidelity to the thought of the Bible.
 The Unitij of the Revelation 197
self differently from the way in which He reveals Himself in the
New, that the Old Covenant is a “ shadow of things to come”; hence
they do not exhibit the tendency, which emerged in the Hellenized
Church, to conceal this difference by allegorical expositions.9 Where
the main concern is with unity of doctrine, historical differences con¬
tinually cause painful embarrassment; but where the main concern
is the unity of the divine purpose in saving history, historical differ¬
ences are not only not embarrassing; they are necessary. For history
would not be history, if the beginning were like the end, if the end
were only the return of the beginning. History, indeed, is constituted
by the fact that earlier and later events are not the same; that the
distant has become near, and the dim, clear.
The unity and the difference between the Old Testament and the
New is like that between the first and the second coming of the
Son of God. His coming in the form of a servant is truly not the same
as His coming in glory; faith is not the same as sight. But that which
is believed is the same as that which is seen; that which is promised
is the same as that which has come. The Revealer is the same; but
our knowledge of Him and the manner of His revelation are not the
same. Those who expound the Old Testament should know that the
Old Testament does not say the same thing as the New; yet it speaks
of the same God, of the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. It does not
yet know Him as the Trinity, but it does know the Trinity, the true
God, who does not unveil the mystery of His threefold being in the
Old Testament, but only in the New Testament. When, however,
men try to read the same truths into the Old Testament as are in the
New, they are not using Scriptural exegesis, but allegory. On the
other hand, expositors who fail to see that the Old Testament reveals
and bears witness to the same God who speaks to us in the New
Testament are not expounding the Scriptures in harmony with then
central message. If the “ believers ” of the Old Testament already
possessed “ the same ” knowledge of God as those of the New, the
Incarnation and the Cross would become mere “ ideas,” and their
historical significance would be lost. No Apostle ever said this; in¬
deed, they all maintained the opposite, in no uncertain terms.10 The

9 Where Paul consciously indulges in allegory, Gal. 4:24, he does this pre¬
cisely in the opposite sense: in order to show the difference between the two
Testaments.
10 I Peter 1:11 ff.; Heb. 7:18-22.
198 Revelation and Reason

Apostles teach, however, that the divine revelation granted to the

men of old time was transitory, and that it was known to be transi¬
tory; this was why the saints of the Old Testament looked forward to
a future revelation, just as we who look back to the first coming of the
Son of God in the form of a servant also possess, in Him, the promise
of His Second Coming, His coming in glory, and thus we look for¬
ward to this consummation.
The center of the Bible and of the history of revelation is the reve¬
lation in the Incarnation of the Word, Jesus Christ. From Him as the
Center we see the primal revelation in the Creation as the revela¬
tion of the eternal Word; from Him as the Center, we know the Old
Covenant as the provisional revelation of the Christ; from Him as
the Center, although only as in a mirror darkly, we know a final,
fulfilling revelation, where we shall not “ believe,” but we shall see
Him “ face to face.” Therefore He is the unity of all the revelations.
It is His name we read in the revelation in the Creation;11 the history
of the Old Covenant is the beginning of His revelation: we expect
the last things as His coming in glory. He is the unity of the whole
revelation, both in its existence and in its manifestation. He is the
Principle of rational knowledge. For there is no other light of truth
than the Logos, which became flesh in Jesus Christ.12 This does not
mean that rational knowledge is Biblical knowledge — in the Bible
we do not learn mathematics or physics — but it means that even
rational knowledge, and thus the very knowledge that we do not
gain from the Bible, has its final origin and its ultimate meaning in
that Logos, and therefore that only in faith can such knowledge find
its proper place and setting. This does not in the least suggest that it
is knowledge according to faith; but it does mean that from this point
of view it can be co-ordinated, as rational knowledge, into the view
of life held by the Christian believer.
Rational knowledge is not knowledge of Christ, but it is knowl¬
edge which has its basis in the Logos, who in Jesus Christ became
man, and whom therefore we can only know in Jesus Christ. In the
revelation in the Creation the God makes Himself known to us who
Duae enim sunt distinctae filii Dei virtutes, prior quae in mundi archi-
tectura et naturae or dine apparet, altera . . . , redemption. Calvin on John 1:5.
x- Thus Calvin, Works, 47, 9, derives all rational activity from that original
Light, with which, so he claims, John 1:5 deals. Nemo enim est, ad quern non
perveniat aliquis aeternae lucis sensus. For all the knowledge of truth — even
that of all pagan scholars - comes from that source. Ibid., 23, 100.
 The Unity of the Revelation 199
in the face of Jesus Christ reveals to us His countenance. But He does
not reveal His face to us in the revelation in the Creation; He only
gives us a first glimpse of the nature of His almighty power and
wisdom. In Jesus Christ we know that it is the same Logos, the same
Son of God, whose Word and Spirit illuminated the Prophets. But
this does not mean that these Prophets knew this Son of God as the
Lord Jesus, but that they had a provisional and preparatory knowl¬
edge of Him, as we see in their Messianic witness. The Messianic
witness of the Prophets means the Christ, but it does not yet disclose
Him. “ Abraham rejoiced to see My day,” but he saw that “ day ”
from afar off, and indistinctly.13 It is possible to ascribe to the Proph¬
ets a knowledge of Christ only by means of an artificial, non-Biblical
method of allegory, which equates the Old Testament with the New.
Indeed the Biblical understanding of the history of revelation con¬
sists in the very fact that they saw Him from afar, and in a different
way from that in which we are able to know Him from the witness
of the New Testament.
This co-ordination of the various forms of revelation of the one
God is completely sui generis; there is no analogy for this. Therefore
we cannot define this “ unity-in-variety,” because to define means to
express a truth in terms of something else. We can only express it by
the use of contradictory schemata of thought, the schema of identity
and the schema of becoming, and of movement within time. Identity:
It is the one and the same God, the one and the same Son, the one and
the same Spirit of God, who reveals Himself. But His ways of reveal¬
ing Himself are different, as that which comes from a distance is
different from that which has come near, or as the germ differs from
the fully developed plant. These schemata cancel each other out;
their only use is that they direct our attention to the actual reality
which we grasp in faith.
Irenaeus and, following him, the theologians of the Reformation
have linked this unity and diversity with the divine plan of educating
mankind, a unity which can be comprehended only in and through
the historical development of revelation. In this they followed the
Apostle Paul, who sets before us the revelation of the Law from the
point of view of the “ guardian ”14 and the “ schoolmaster to bring
us to Christ.” 13 God is not one who “ becomes,” His revelation is not
an evolution, but it is an action of God which takes into account the
13 John 8:56. 14 Gal. 4:2. 15 Gal. 3:24.
200 Revelation and Reason

laws of human growth. In the words of Calvin, “ When the father of

a family uses different treatment with his children, in childhood, in
youth, and as they approach maturity, we do not call him superficial,
and we do not reproach him for changing his opinions and he adds,
“ Neither ought we to complain of the divine method of education.” 16
Thus it is on account of human immaturity (puerilitas) that God
gives us first the Old Testament and then the New.17 Through the
Law and the Prophets He gave only a foretaste of His wisdom, which
then later “ ad liquidum manifestanda erat.”18 The difference
is related to the modus administrationis, the unity to the substantia.
The different modus administrationis — that which we called the
forms of revelation — is related to the verbi dispensatio, which for
its part is an accommodutio to the diversitas temporum.16 The thought
of the divine method of education once more emphasizes the personal
character of the revelation. God takes into account the person who
stands before Him, the human being. He gives him His truth accord¬
ing to the measure in which he is able to receive it. God pursues a
certain plan with humanity, because it is in freedom that He wills to
be Lord. His education through history is simply His “ condescen¬
sion,” His stooping to the level of man, which culminates in the In¬
carnation and the Cross. To such an extent does He enter into the
life and feeling of man that He Himself becomes man, that He “ as¬
sumes what we are, in order that He may give us what is His ”
(Luther). Hence the “educational” character, and the historical
character, of the revelation is not “ something different ” from the
revelation, but it is the revelation itself, namely. His coming to us.
God shows Himself as the merciful One, in the very fact that He
is so considerate for man, and as the holy One, in that He deals with
man just where he is. God’s revelation is not something abstract and
independent, but it is the meeting of God with real, historical, man.
It is because we are concerned with this “ encounter,” 20 and not
with the content of a doctrine, that the historical variety of the vari¬
ous forms of revelation constitutes their genuine unity, namely, the

16 Institutes, II, 11, 13.

17 Ibid., II, 11,2.
18 Ibid., II, 11,6.
19 Ibid., II, 11, 13. Cf. the statements in Irenaeus which sound almost ex¬
actly the same (Irenaeus, 4, 14, 2).
20 Cf. my book Wahrheit als Begegnung [English trans., The Divine-Human
Encounter. Tr.].
 The Unity of the Revelation 201
unity of the divine attitude, of the benevolentia Dei erga nos, for
whose sake God chooses these different forms of revelation. Because
He does not will to give us “ something,” but Himself, and indeed
in such a manner that He claims us wholly for Himself, there is no
uniform, timeless revelation. Tuneless truths do not concern us; they
do not “ come they do not “ grip ” us; but we grasp them. But God
comes to us, and lays hold of us, in order that He may become wholly
ours, and that we may become wholly His. Because He is Love —
eternally and unchangeably — He changes His way of approaching
us according to our actual state. What the Apostle says of himself —
that to the Jew he became a Jew, and to those apart from the Law as
one apart from the Law,21 simply means that he has entered into the
secret of the divine method of dealing with humanity. Paul does
what God does, the God who for us became man, in order that we
might become partakers of the divine nature.
This is why the unity of the revelation does not lead to a unity of
doctrine. Where the effort is made to conceive the unity of revelation
as a unity of doctrine — as all orthodoxy tries to do — there, without
noticing it, history is changed into idea, and the Living God of the Bi¬
ble becomes the absolute Being of speculative philosophy. “ The God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers ” — so
cries Pascal in his decisive hour to his merciful Lord. The unity of the
revelation is the unity of His way to mankind, to the creature, the
unity of His will of love, which makes Him, the Eternal, tread this
way in time, and leads us who belong to time toward His eternal
goal. Therefore every theological doctrinal system, inevitably, is in
direct contradiction to its Object. Once more, let us remember the
fact that the Bible, that the community based upon the Old and the
New Testament, never attempts the obvious; it never tries to sum
up the Word of God in a catechism of Biblical doctrine. The Church
has had to pay dearly for the fact that it substituted the Christian
catechism for the Biblical history, and that it permitted the Greek
concept of knowledge and of truth to take such a dominant place in
its theology. The revelation of God must be told, not taught; the
doctrine only has validity as a means of serving the “ telling ” of the
Good News. Where narrative is replaced by doctrine, Greek thought
triumphs over the thought of the Bible.
From this standpoint the various testimonies to Christ which the
21 I Cor. 9: 20 ff.
202 Revelation and Reason

New Testament contains — a state of affairs which is so trying for the

theologian — gain a new meaning. It is of God’s special grace that not
only Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans but also the Gospels have to
bear their witness to Jesus Christ. The fact that at the Reformation
the Gospels were ranked below the teaching of the Apostles is a relic
of the patristic Catholic tradition, which no longer rightly under¬
stood the historical meaning of the revelation.22 The rigid identifica¬
tion of the Word of God with doctrine is the decisive reason for the
early check to the renewal of faith. Even at that time the unity of the
revelation was sought in the unity of doctrine; men did not yet
rightly understand that it was precisely the variety of doctrine in
the New Testament, and still more in the Old Testament, which
was the indication that He Himself is the Unity, He who cannot be
confined within any doctrine, who has revealed Himself, and will
reveal Himself, not through a doctrine but through His coming. He
Himself wills to be with us, and we are to be with Him; that is why
He came, and that is why He will come again, and that is why we are
to know about His coming, and His coming in the future, not in order
to know, but in order to come. The unity of revelation is the will to
this goal, and faith is the act by which we share in this will and this
goal.

22 This unjustifiable subordination of history to doctrine is of course some¬

thing quite different from that insistence (above, p. 121) on the supreme value
of the Apostolic witness to Christ over against the witness of the Lord to Himself.
 Part II

THE TRUTH OF THE REVELATION

 14. THE FAITH IN REVELATION AND
THE PROBLEM OF DOUBT
1. Not all that comes in the name of revelation is revelation; not
all that claims the obedience of faith, on the basis of what is asserted
to be revelation, is justified in making this claim. Too often those
who proclaim the revealed message forget this. But the Christian
Church in particular has no right to forget this; for, in all conscience,
she cannot deny that in the course of the centuries in the name of
revelation she has fought against much — and indeed has punished
it with fire and with the hangman’s rope — that, later on, proved to
be correct scientific statement, and has proclaimed as revelation
much that has since proved to be erroneous. As a good teacher is
able to distinguish genuine questions from those that are not genu¬
ine, so also the Church should be able to distinguish between gen¬
uine questions that are seriously put in the interests of truth, and
those that are not genuine, and are merely the fruit of human inquisi¬
tiveness. From the outset we can take for granted that all questions
that arise out of the quest for truth in the sphere of human knowl¬
edge and experience are genuine. The statement that even if all
scientists could come to a common agreement their opinions would
still not be infallible does not dispose of the problem.
This problem is due to the simple fact that God has granted to
man the gift of knowledge. There are some things — in spite of all
that can be said from the theological point of view about the abso¬
lute darkening of the faculty of reason — that we know. It is perfectly
legitimate to ask whether the claim of the Church to revelation is not
contradicted by this knowledge. From the outset, and most de¬
cidedly, we would reject the very notion of a double truth 1 as dis-
1 Cf. Heim, “ Zur Geschichte des Satzes von der doppelten Walirheit,”
Studien zur systematischen Theologie, Festschrift fur Th. Haring, pp. 1-16.
 The Faith in Revelation and the Probletn of Doubt 205

honest. What is recognized as valid in science cannot be untrue for

faith. That which seems to be a double truth, that is, the equal truth
of contradictory statements, always proves to be either the result
of drawing an inadequate distinction between various aspects of a
question or of exceeding on one side or the other the rightful limits of
the subject in question. In the following chapters we shall be deal¬
ing with these legitimate questions — we might, indeed, call them
all questions of “ relation,” since they are all concerned with the
relation between the claim of faith to possess the revelation, and
some other sphere of knowledge. First of all, however, we must deal
with the fundamental question. Should a claim to revelation at all
be granted? Can it be right to put such a question at all? Or must we,
from the outset, regard it as beneath the dignity of a rational human
being to believe anything that arrogates to itself the name of a “ reve¬
lation ”? This question is the problem of doubt.

2. This question may first of all be formulated thus: How can you
Christians prove that your assertion is true, that the truth that you
hold is revealed? Thus the questioner challenges us to prove that
revelation and faith have a rational foundation.* 2 Certainly the as¬
sertion of faith is not without foundation; indeed it rests upon a real
foundation, and upon one that is very cogent. No one indeed should
maintain — in the Christian sense of the word “ faith ” — that he
“ believes,” if he does not feel that he must believe, if there is no
evidence for that which he believes. But this evidence, this co¬
gent argument, does not belong to the sphere of rational knowl¬
edge, but to the knowledge of faith. It is the evidence of the
fact of revelation itself. Were faith to try to deal with the un¬
reasonable demands implied in that question, by which it is con¬
fronted, it would no longer be faith at all. Revelation, as the Christian
faith understands it, is indeed, by its very nature, something that lies

Heim shows the origin of the statement in the speculative philosophy of the
Arabs, and its penetration into Ockham’s theology. Luther takes it over from
him, but uses it in a completely fresh sense: the same idea has an utterly dif¬
ferent meaning if used by philosophers or theologians respectively; hence the
same statement can be both philosophically true and theologically false. (For
Luther, see Disputation von 1539, ed. Drews, pp. 485 ff.)
2 Cf., for instance, Oskar Pfister, Das Wesen der Offenbarung (Beer, Zurich),
with his insistence on the “ verification ” of the claim to revelation by the
standards of reason.
206 Revelation and Reason

beyond all rational arguments; the argument which it certainly

claims in its support does not lie in the sphere of rational knowledge,
but in the sphere of that divine truth which can be attained only
through divine self-communication, and not through human re¬
search of any kind. That question or assumption therefore proceeds
from an a priori rejection of revelation, from the denial of the possi¬
bility of a knowledge that transcends rational knowledge. Hence it is
the question of doubt or of unbelief.
But this does not mean that it is a question that comes to believers
absolutely from the outside; rather, the question of doubt is our own
question, to the extent, at least, in which we who “ believe ” carry
within our hearts the skeptic, the “ old Adam.” How do we meet the
doubt that stirs within us? The usual answer is, By forbidding doubt,
by suppressing it. “ You ought not to doubt; you must not doubt! ”
From the standpoint of faith this statement is correct; as an exhorta¬
tion it is false; it springs from that legalistic misunderstanding of
faith, which we have already met several times. A genuine evangeli¬
cal faith does not suppress doubt, but it overcomes it. But it can over¬
come it only if it allows it to be expressed. The question of doubt
ought to be ruthlessly stated, and faced — even though from the view
of faith it is untrue — until it has been met, and overcome. The Chris¬
tian faith overcomes the rebellion of sin, not by forbidding it, but by
bringing it out into the light. Doubt is a form of sin; rightly under¬
stood it is the root of all sin, sin in its original form: “Hath God
said . . . ? ” 3 It is overcome in the fact that its real nature is “ dis¬
covered.”* As we do this it will become plain that tire intellect is
not in the least ignored in faith, but that it is released from an un-
happy dislocation or hypertension.

3. The question, How do you know that what you call the Word
of God is really God’s Word, is not the question of doubt. Faith wel¬
comes this question; God Himself wills that it should be asked. The
Church is eager to answer it; her answer is in these terms: I know
this from God Himself. This is what we mean by revelation: that
God reveals Himself to me as One who speaks to me, who communi¬
cates Himself to me as living and present, whom I meet as the One
3 Gen. 3:1.
* [Lit., “ent-deckt”: a play on words, suggesting “un-covering” to show
what is underneath. Tr.]
 The Faith in Revelation and the Problem of Doubt 207

who meets me. Faith is the certainty of the experience of this “ con¬
versation or intercourse” between ourselves and God; to try to
add to this is unnecessary. To believe without this experience of
conversation is not faith in the Biblical sense, but in that erro¬
neous, heteronomous, legalistic sense, where faith is supposed to arise
because it has been commanded. Genuine faith does not issue from
a command but from a gift, from the event of revelation. To the un¬
reasonable suggestions of the skeptical reason, therefore, faith can
only reply, To wish to argue for revelation in rational terms means
that we have not begun to understand what revelation is. That which
can be based on rational grounds is, by its very nature, not revela¬
tion but rational truth. The truth of reason is that which we as ra¬
tional beings can tell ourselves; the truth of revelation is that which,
by its very nature, we could not tell ourselves, which by its very
nature is truth that has been communicated, and indeed is tran¬
scendent, communicated truth. Anything a human being can verify
or deduce for himself by any process of argument, investigation, or
proof, cannot possibly be revelation, and, vice versa, that which is
revelation cannot be verified by any such process.4 The first part of
this book has dealt with this point.

4. But when this has been said we cannot leave the matter there.
With this refusal to meet the claim implied in the question, we have
not yet fulfilled our duty toward the person who has asked the
question; it is then our duty to ask him why he refuses to acknowl¬
edge the claim of the Word of God. It is our duty to show that his
doubt is really a refusal to face the light. The word of revelation is
always a call to repentance; but repentance is not only a matter of
ethics, of the will; it is also a cognitive, intellectual process. Faith
that has been summoned by doubt to give an account of itself now
for its part takes the offensive by calling the doubter to give an ac-
4 The old dogmatic theologians make a distinction between articuli puri
and articuli mixti: the former are exclusively the subject of the knowledge of
faith; the latter are at the same time also subjects of rational knowledge. This
distinction has been taken from Scholastic theology, and it is in accordance with
the two-story structure of Catholic doctrine. It is in opposition to the strictly
Biblical conception of faith; it is derived from an understanding of revelation
which does not observe the border line between faith and knowledge, but which,
on the basis of a verbal principle of interpreting the Scriptures, makes a num¬
ber of statements into statements of faith, which are actually part of the ordinary
and scientific knowledge of the world around us.
208 Revelation and Reason

count of himself. This “ attack ” consists in unveiling the nature of

doubt. Doubt is unveiled, and shown to be the intellectual form of
sin.
At first sight doubt concerning the claim of revelation looks like
intellectual honesty; it is thus that the skeptic regards himself; he
is wholly unable to see that this doubt is a form of sin; therefore he
rejects this interpretation as a totally unjustified suspicion, and a very
arrogant assumption. He throws the blame for the fact that he can¬
not reach faith entirely upon the claim of revelation; an intellectually
honest man cannot and ought not to believe “ a completely unveri-
fiable assertion.” Were he to believe this he would be untrue to his
noblest intellectual duty, the duty of argument, and of knowledge
based on argument, the function of the intellect to act as a check
or a guardian. This is how the skeptic sees it. But it is here, where
the doubter prides himself upon his honesty, that his dishonesty lies.
For the claim of faith does not summon the rational man to sus¬
pend his intellectual habit of control and examination of facts; all
that faith claims is that he must not try to exercise it in a sphere
where it has no function.
Doubt is not a function of the reason as such, but it is the fruit of the
falsely autonomous human reason, which sets itself up as an absolute
authority. It does not spring from intellectual honesty, but from
intellectual arrogance. It springs from the erroneous and sinful funda¬
mental axiom that human reason is the measure of all things, that
everything that lays any claim to truth must prove itself before the
court of rational argument. This declaration of sovereignty and au¬
tonomy by the human reason is simply the desire to be like God, or
self-deification. Man has been created by God in order to receive the
meaning of his existence and his freedom through the perception of
the Word of God; thus, so far as the world which is under him is con¬
cerned, he is a master and a creator, but, so far as God is concerned,
he is intended to be a wholly dependent and receptive being; when he
doubts, he wrenches what he has received away from its source, and
makes it his own possession; he declares that that which he has
merely received as a loan is his own property. He turns the reason
which is destined for perception, for reception, into the autonomous
reason which has its basis in itself. Instead of remaining open to re¬
ceive the gift of the truly autonomous, that is, the divine reason, in¬
stead of knowing himself as one who has been addressed by the
 The Faith in Revelation and the Problem of Doubt 209

divine reason, he makes himself the subject of reason, and in so

doing breaks away from his dependence upon the divine One who
confronts him. He makes himself the center, instead of allowing
himself to be upheld and supported by the Center.
The clearest, and at the same time the most important, example of
this usurping rebellious declaration of autonomy is the rationalist in¬
terpretation of the moral imperative, “ Thou shalt! ” Instead of ac¬
knowledging the command as the command of the Creator and
Lord, who stands over against man, giving and commanding, he
makes himself, his “ intelligible self,” his “ divine spirit,” his “ tran¬
scendental subject,” his legislator, and rejects every kind of legisla¬
tion that comes from outside himself as “ heteronomy.” 5 In his desire
for autonomy he confuses the genuine legislation from outside, or
theonomy, with the nongenuine kind, heteronomy; he recognizes
only the alternative: either autonomy or heteronomy, and then
ranges himself as a matter of course on the side of autonomy against
theonomy, which he stigmatizes as “ heteronomy.” The genuine Tran¬
scendent, the Lord God, is reinterpreted in abstract “ transcen¬
dental ” terms as “ pure reason,” whose subject is not “ Thou ”but “ I
the Lord God becomes the God within; God’s legislation from without
becomes the self-legislation of the “ practical reason,” of the “ divine
reason within us,” of the “ intelligible self,” of the “ divine rods,”
from whose sea of fire our rods is a spark. The relation between God
and man in which God stands “ over against ” man is transformed
into a relation of immanence; reverence for that which is above us is
changed into the proud consciousness of the divine within us. Free¬
dom, which used to be a secondary element, based upon dependence
on God, has become primary, and no longer recognizes dependence
in any form.
Thus the development that takes place in philosophy in terms of
thought and of a philosophical system occurs in ordinary human life,

6 The autonomy of the moral law, according to Kant, can be derived from
a “ supreme lawgiver ” only in this way: that this “ only means the idea of a
moral being, whose will for all is law, without at the same time thinking of him
as the Original Founder of the same” (Metaph. Anfangsgriinde der Rechts-
lehre, Einl.). Where Kant speaks of an “ overlord ” of the kingdom of morals
(for instance, Prakt. Vernunft, p. 100, Grundlegung 'zur Metaphysik der Sitten,
p. 70, Ausgabe Reclam) this idea has to be expounded according to the pas¬
sage cited, as indeed this is done in the opus postumum. (Cf. the quotations in
my book Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 566.)
210 Revelation and Reason

apart from thought, in the realm of practical behavior; it assumes

therefore a more concrete character. The tenants of the vineyard,
for instance, simply say, one fine day, that they are the masters,
and then violently rebel against the divine Master’s claim to rule
over them.6 Man leaves his Father’s house, after he has been given
his share of the inheritance, in order that he may henceforth live as
his own master.7 He makes himself the master of his own life, the
“ captain of his soul,” and refuses to be responsible to Him who
created him.8 This alone is the basis of skepticism about the revela¬
tion that summons men back to their original relation of dependence.
The phrase “ postulatory atheism,” 9 like an enfant terrible, brings out
the real meaning of this “ atheism either freedom, and then no
God, or God, and no freedom; thus because we want freedom we
cannot admit there is a God. In the language of Nietzsche, “ Were
there gods, how could I endure it not to be a god; thus there are no
gods! ” Whether the Lord God is “ killed,” as the husbandmen killed
the son of their master, like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, who announces
the death of God, or whether God is turned into a divine rational
principle — it all comes to the same thing, from the standpoint of the
truth of revelation. Thus in this parable doubt is the refusal to pay
the rent to the owner of the vineyard: unwillingness to give up
usurped rights over property; the assertion of the autonomy and
sovereignty of reason in opposition to the summons to return to
dependence on the God who gives and who demands. Doubt is the
intellectual justification of original sin, which takes place in the fact
that the conditional and derived control function of reason is posited
as unconditional, and then that on this basis the claim of revelation
is rejected as “ not proved,” and is equated with all that is illegiti¬
mate and irrational.

5. This illusion is fostered by one particular circumstance, or,

rather, by two, which are similar in effect, although in their origin
6 Matt. 21:33 ff.
7 Luke 15:11 ff.
8 Matt. 25:24 ff.
9 Nik. Hartmann’s “ postulatory atheism,” which for the sake of the freedom
of man sets up as a postulate the nonexistence of God, and John Dewey, who
maintains that faith in God must necessarily destroy our own strivings to realize
ideals in history, point in the same direction. Dewey, A Common Faith, cited by
Bennett in Christian Realism, p. 23.
 The Faith in Revelation and the Problem of Doubt 211

they are two quite different facts. First, this rationalistic rejection of
the claim to revelation acquires a great deal of impressive support
from the fact that there is such a bewildering variety of claims to
possess “ revelation. 10 It is indeed not only the Christian claim to
revelation but so many others, which seem similar, that compete for
man’s attention, each of which — so it is said — comes forward with
the same unconditional and exclusive claim; hence they all cancel
each other out. In the next chapter we shall be dealing with this fact
in more detail. At the moment all we have to say is this: The fact
that there are several false kinds of coins does not prove that none
are genuine. The fact of a contradictory variety of claims to revela¬
tion still does not prove that none of them is the true one. We must
try to estimate the truth of their claims in the light of our under¬
standing of the Biblical revelation itself. The second fact is one that
I have already frequently mentioned: that the Christian claim to
revelation has often been obscured, historically, by many kinds of
error, which used to be regarded as revealed truth but which later
on was seen to be simply historical or cosmological error.
Finally, there is a third point (which is really only a variation of
our second point): that even the Christian claim to revelation comes
to the individual human being in a great variety of more or less con¬
tradictory formulations, that the latter is approached by rival Chris¬
tian Churches and doctrines, and that each body tries to win him
for its own special brand. Thus man’s sinful striving after autonomy
entrenches itself behind all these difficulties in order that he may
justify the rightness of his rationalistic outlook, and the absurdity
of the claims of faith, in his own eyes and in those of others. Hence
the disclosure of the nature of doubt can be achieved, or become
effective, only when the legitimate questions of the reason have had
justice done to them; this is the task of all the following chapters. At
this point this is enough on this subject; let us now turn once more to
our present question.
10 Dilthey, op. cit., pp. 93 ff., points out the part played by the “ breaking
up of the Churches,” the “ inner division of systems of faith,” and the religious
wars in the development of the “ natural system ” of rationalism. “ Every Church
cries at the gate of the Temple: I am the true Church ” (Coornhert, quoted by
Dilthey). “If none of the sects could prove their claim then it seemed wise
to go back to that which they held in common.” “ Thus there arises . . . the
view that there is one common truth for all religious men.” Ibid.
212 Revelation and Reason

6. Doubt, as we have already said, is the result of that original

act of sin, of the emancipation of man, of his severance from the
status of dependence on his Creator and Lord. As we have just seen,
doubt shelters behind certain situations that are obviously calculated
to discredit the claim of revelation. But the real point at which resist¬
ance becomes acute is that rational consciousness which is itself the
result of man’s act of emancipation from God, to put it more pre¬
cisely, rational totalitarianism, or imperialism. The reason considers
itself entitled to dominate everything: to set up, and to dispose of,
the criteria of all truth. Whether these criteria are, in the narrower
sense of the word, “ rational ” or “ empirical ” is, in principle, the
same. Doubt may be based on “ rational ” or on “ empirical ” grounds.
In its “ rational ” form it presents itself as the demand for proof; this
means that the doubter points to the lack of convincing logic in sup¬
port of the statements of faith. There is no “ proof ” for revelation.
Now the Church has very often made the mistake of offering
“ proofs ” for revelation, which frequently provided easy targets for
the attacks of rational criticism. A theology that allows itself to be
drawn into producing proofs for its claim to revelation 11 has already
thrown up the sponge. It is the just punishment for the fact that it
does not take its own subject and its own basis seriously. Either faith
or proof; you cannot have both. Equally widespread — and, indeed,
among the majority of unbelievers still more widespread — is, I sup¬
pose, the empirical form of doubt, the “positivist” argument: all
that lies outside the sphere of natural experience is, as such, incred¬
ible.
The faith that understands its own nature aright is not defenseless
against either of these attacks; but it cannot give full weight to the ele¬
ment of truth in either the rationalistic or the empirical demand until
light has broken through at the central point, namely, man’s sense of
autonomy. Where man’s belief in the autonomy of reason has been
shattered, where his mind is “ open ” to truth that is different in kind
from rational or empirical truth, it can certainly be shown that the
truth of revelation possesses its own logic, and that the fact of reve-

11 The main traditional proofs are, first of all, “ miracles as the proof of the
revealed character of Christianity,” and, secondly, “prophecy as proof . . .”
— it is still so in Catholic apologetics. See Sawicki, Die Wahrheit des Christen-
tums, 8, pp. 351 ff. and 365 ff. In this matter Protestant orthodoxy was more
reserved, since for it the proof from the Scriptures was sufficient.
 The Faith in Revelation and the Problem of Doubt 213

lation also possesses its own facts. It is indeed a Logos that reveals
itself, and speaks to us in revelation; revelation is given to us in a his¬
torical event, as well as in an inward experience. The problem of
doubt — as we said at the beginning of this chapter — does not con¬
sist in demanding a basis for faith; faith knows that it is based upon
a Logos and upon facts. Error begins when the sphere of truth on
which revelation is said to be based is improperly narrowed down,
namely, when it is claimed that rational reasons alone, whether of a
logical or empirical variety, can be recognized. Faith is aware of the
higher rationality and the higher actuality of the truth of revelation,
and is ready to maintain this; but it is also aware of the impossibility
of asserting its validity within the sphere which the autonomous
human reason has delimited for itself. This impossibility is recog-
nized on both sides, but it is interpreted in opposing senses. The
autonomous reason believes that this impossibility shows the un¬
truth of the claim of revelation; faith, however, sees in every such
demand for proof the consequence of an original perversion in the
actual process of knowing, of the claim of our human reason to a false
autonomy.
While the autonomous reason maintains that it must be possible
to incorporate all that is true into the sphere of the criteria which it
has itself set up — reason that is transcendent is said to be untrue —
faith reverses the whole problem, and shows that it is precisely this
demand that falsifies knowledge and the concept of truth. It is not
that God and His truth must have room within the sphere of reason,
but reason and its truth must find its place in God. For it is not man
who is the measure of all things, but God. Within the truth of revela¬
tion all that reason knows and recognizes falls into place. The truth of
revelation is not in opposition to any truth of reason, nor to any fact
that has been discovered by the use of reason. Genuine truths of faith
are never in conflict with logic or with the sciences; they conflict
only with the rationalistic or positivistic metaphysics, that is, with a
reason that arrogates to itself the right to define the whole range of
truth from the standpoint of man. Hence the protest of “ intellectual
honesty,” which the autonomous reason always makes, is — even if
unconsciously — always a lie. The question is not one of “ intellectual
honesty ” at all, but of rationalistic, that is, positivistic, arrogance and
self-will. Faith does not come into conflict with reason itself, but with
the imperialism of the human reason; we must, however, add that
214 Revelation and Reason

this “ imperialism ” or this “ illusion of autonomy ” is not a matter

that affects certain people only, but it is common to all the sons of
men.

7. How can this illusion be overcome? First of all, we must point

out that man, even when he has fallen into this original sin, has not,
in so doing, simply become severed from the original truth. Doubt is
not an isolated phenomenon; it is akin to “ despair,” to the “ divided
mind,” which is peculiar to human consciousness as a whole.12
Through sin man lives in revolt, not only against God but also against
himself, that is, against his nature which has been created in the
image of God. This contradiction makes its presence known in cer¬
tain definite phenomena such as anxiety, a bad conscience, longing,
some of which are closely related to the fundamental phenomenon
of doubt, the intellectual, fundamental sin.13 Christian anthropology
deals with this subject; here we can give only one example, namely,
the already-mentioned “ immanental ” interpretation of the moral
imperative, Thou shalt! ” which needs to be explained in somewhat
greater detail.
The moral phenomenon, with which the ethic of autonomy cannot
deal adequately, is the sense of evil or of guilt, the “ bad conscience.”
In the bad conscience there appears, negatively, the original truth,
that man is not his own lawgiver. In the bad conscience, namely, the
whole self, not merely a supposedly lower, empirical self, is accused
by an authority which confronts him; in the phenomenon of the
bad conscience repentance is continually demanded from man - an
act which, just because he regards himself as autonomous, man will
not, and perhaps cannot, achieve. Here, however, is the “ spot ” at
which the change of direction ought to begin. The sense of guilt, as
a negative relation with God, is the point of contact for faith.
But it is equally true that nothing positive is gained from the
actual sense of guilt. Repentance, which would lead man to forgive
himself, would not be real repentance at all, but its very opposite —
arrogance, levity, godlessness. Rather, the position is this: once man
has fallen prey to this illusion of his complete autonomy — and this
man is Adam, man as a whole — he is unable, of himself, either to

12 Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death.

Cf. my Mensch im Widerspruch, pp. 164—204. [English trans., Man in
Revolt, O. Wyon. Tr.]
 The Faith in Revelation and the Problem of Doubt 215

see through this illusion or to get rid of it. That “ revolution in man’s
mind ”14 which Kant constructed is partly an empty and artificial
idea, and partly a moralistic plastering over of the contradiction that
comes out in evil and in the bad conscience. Man cannot see to the
bottom of the lie in which he finds himself because he is too dishonest
to be able to do this. He may possibly utter the sophism, Omnis homo
mendax,15 and delight in the logical dilemma which he thus creates;
but by his own efforts he cannot say what Paul can and must say, in
the same words but in a quite different sense, because it has been
revealed to him in Christ: that all men are liars.16 Inherent in the fal¬
sity of the autonomous reason is the fact that it can never recognize
itself, but that, on the contrary, it holds firmly to autonomy as an
axiomatic truth. Man is too deeply entangled in the net of despair to
be able to despair of himself aright; he is desperately dishonest. He
clings feverishly to this artificial “ truth,” which causes division and
ruin within his personality: namely, the sense of autonomy, man’s
right to be his own master. Something outside of man must intervene,
and take a hand in this situation, if he is to be set free, and released
from this tension. He needs to be placed once more — by some ex¬
ternal power — at the starting point, in order that he may be shown
the greatness of his apostasy, and that he may see through the illu¬
sion of his so-called “ autonomy.” When this takes place his doubts
will vanish, since he will once again be returning to his original situ¬
ation as a dependent being who has to “ receive ” everything at the
hands of God. This event is the revelation of Christ in faith.

8. The point of contact, as we said, is the sense of guilt. Victory

over doubt begins with the repentance of one who surrenders the
right to be his own master, and his claim to manage his own life,
by acknowledging that this is the original sin; it is apostasy. It is
the reversal of the attitude of the husbandman, who does not now
kill his lord’s son when he is sent to him, but, on the contrary, ac¬
knowledges his usurpation of the rights of property as his own sin.
Here the ethical and the cognitive elements are one. With the shat¬
tering of the sense of mastery, with the dissolution of the illusion of
14 Kant, Religion innerhalb, I, V (p. 49, Ausgabe Re clam).
15 The saying, Omnis homo mendax, certainly comes from the Bible (Ps.
116:11), not from skeptical philosophy; but it was often used as a skeptical
aporia.
16 Rom. 3:13.
216 Revelation and Reason

“being a god,” the whole system of autonomous criteria falls to

pieces. Man becomes “ open ” to the truth which is above him. He
recognizes the mystery of God and His authority. The positive as¬
pect of repentance is faith; the negative side of faith is repentance.
Repentance is the declaration of the bankruptcy of the autonomous
self; but this is possible only in the fact that the man who had lost
his previous footing has already found a new foothold. The lying
character of this autonomy becomes fully clear only when man once
more perceives and receives the original truth of the gracious divine
Creation. The bad conscience is vindicated; at last its language is
heard, and admitted to be true; but it was not man who achieved
this. How could he admit that his accuser was right? and in so doing
admit the right that takes from him all his “ rights ”? The accusation
of the bad conscience is worded thus: “ Thou art a sinner,” and this
accusation is heard at the moment when, in the incomprehensible
verdict of acquittal, it is removed. The first act of faith is “ coming
to oneself ;17 but the very fact of coming to oneself is the working
of grace. In coming to oneself the tension of the cor incurvatum in se
is slackened; when this happens the self begins to open up to the
revelation. Man admits the truth of the accusation that he is a liar;
the husbandman acknowledges that he owes rent, that he has un¬
justly played the role of master; the rebel owns the king as his right¬
ful lord. With the breakdown of all false pride, doubt also has been
dispelled.

9. Thus the truth of revelation cannot be received by the autono¬

mous self as such; it is useless and dangerous to try to enforce faith
by a mere word of command. The truth of revelation must first of
all shake the self-confidence of the soul enclosed in its pride by
means of repentance before it can be accepted or believed. But when
the pride-enciusted self has been opened, then the message of reve¬
lation comes to it as truth. This happens to the self from the outside,
through the message, through which it is again called back to its
origin. In this process the self is not productive but receptive; but its
receptivity is seconded by the efforts of the self; it is not passive like
an object that receives a blow. This means, moreover, that even faith
is finally accomplished in a process of thought, in an act of noesis
even though it does not spring from thought. Faith begins with ixerC
17 Luke 15:17.
 The Faith in Revelation and the Problem of Doubt 217

voia, with rethinking, and with a change of outlook. The thinking

subject is not eliminated by faith, it is not overwhelmed and pushed
aside, but it is claimed by God. The self is not denuded of dignity,
but it is forced to vacate its position of sovereignty, j^hich it had
usurped, and dishonestly appropriated, and it is set in its proper
place.
In faith the self regains its true function: that of perception. It now
may, and can, once more receive God’s Word; “ it can think God’s
thoughts after Him it can will, in a spirit of obedience, to be
conformed to God’s will. The act of reason is not rendered impotent,
but it is co-ordinated. “ God’s nearness applies also to our intellect
and His goodness has given us the gift of truth.” “ His gift is the ‘ re¬
newing of our mind’ (Rom. 12:2), with the result that it sees the
will of God ” (Schlatter).18 Within the thoughts of God the human
reason can make subject to itself that which is beneath it, and it
names the dumb creatures.19 The Word of God leaves man his free¬
dom and ability to carry on research, to classify, to make profound
studies. Within the theonomy of faith the conditional autonomy of
science and art, and the whole of culture, has its place and its mean¬
ing. Indeed, only now can the mind, set free from the illusion of
the centrality of self, rightly become creative; now the self no
longer thinks that he must strive to become a “ god ”; now it is suf¬
ficient for him in everything to make effective the fact that he has
been made in the image of God. “ Never shall we think anything
greater than that which has already been announced to us by the
messengers of God ” (Schlatter).20 Reason has nothing to fear from
genuine faith, nor has faith anything to fear from the right use of
reason. All conflicts between “ faith and reason ” are sham conflicts,
which are caused by the fact that they have exceeded the limits of
their respective spheres; either they spring from claims to revelation
which are only in part due to real revelation, and in part to the con¬
fusion of revelation with human conceptions of revelation, or they
are due to rational assertions which do not arise from reason, but
from the misuse of the autonomous reason. There is no conflict be¬
tween science and faith, but only between pseudo science and faith,
pseudo faith and science. At the same time we must admit that in

18 Schlatter, Die Furcht vor dem Denken, pp. 17, 41.

19 Gen. 1:28; 2:19.
20 Schlatter, op. cit., p. 28.
 218 Revelation and Reason

principle this solution of the problem is never fully achieved in

practice, but that it must continually be won all over again, since
reason is continually becoming perverted into pseudo science, and
faith into pseudo faith, both being due to the arrogant, masterful
tendency of man, who wants to be sole arbiter both in the realm of
faith and in that of science. But that this is the position, so far as faith
and knowledge are concerned, is to be shown and proved more fully
in the following chapters.

15. THE WORLD RELIGIONS AND THEIR

CLAIM TO REVELATION
The claim of the Christian faith to be a revealed religion is not the
only claim that confronts modern man. The extension of communica¬
tions and the world-wide exchange of ideas have created a situation
which is somewhat similar to that in the Roman Empire when the
inhabitants of the Mediterranean countries were thrown together,
resulting in a general intermingling of various religions. The ques¬
tion, What is the relation between the exclusive claim of Christianity
to revelation and that of the “ other religions ”? * 1 is not only a vital
question for the missionary, and for the younger Churches, but it is
also vital for the so-called Christian countries themselves. It may be
divided into two further questions: first. How does the Christian
faith itself understand the relation of the revelation of Christ to other
revelations, supposed or real, to which the other religions appeal?
and, secondly. How can this — as we know beforehand it will be —
“ intolerant ” Christian verdict justify itself in the light of the facts
of the history of religions?

1. First of all, it is extremely important to show, very clearly, that

the Christian conception of this relation arises out of the very nature

1 Since Troeltsch’s famous work, Die Absolutheit des Christentums und die
Religionsgeschichte, a whole series of discussions of this subject have appeared,
which show the great change that has taken place in theology since then: Alt-
haus, “ Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religionen und das Evangelium” Theol.
Aufsdtze, II, pp. 65-82; Witte, Die Christusbotschaft und die Religionen; above
all, Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. See also my
work. Die Christusbotschaft im Kampf mit den Religionen.
 The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation 219

of the Christian revelation itself, since some modern theories of

religion, which have had a quite different origin, have made the
Christian Church and Christian theology uncertain on this point.
Since Herbert of Cherbury 2 made “ natural religion ” a subject for
European discussions, we might even say, since the days of Frederick
II and the Court of the Hohenstaufen, when the fable of the three
rings * was first whispered, and then continually repeated in louder
tones, the relativistic idea, often called “ religious tolerance,” has
gained an ascendancy over many Christian minds. In its general
tendency to be “ friendly ” toward all religions it may be thus formu¬
lated: All religions contain an element of revelation, and no religion
has any right to arrogate to itself a monopoly of revelation. We must
not, however, confuse the problem of toleration with this solution of
the question of truth.3 Tolerance is a humane attitude, which re¬
spects the personality of the other, but it has nothing to do with the
truth or falsity of the “ other’s ” opinions and ideas. In this sense the
genuine Christian missionary in particular will be “ tolerant,” yet
at the same time he may not believe that there is any truth in the
religion of those among whom he lives; he desires that the “ heathen ”
whom he is trying to convert shall be treated with all respect, even
in their unconverted state, and he will not try to force the true reli¬
gion upon them. This tolerance is often sadly lacking in the very
persons who profess a relative attitude toward the question of truth
and revelation; on the other hand, genuine “ tolerance is often
practiced by those who are opposed to all “ relative ” views of Chris¬
tianity.
The relativistic conception of religion has been represented within
Continental theology and the science of comparative religion, partic¬
ularly in connection with Schleiermacher’s theory of religion.4 Ac¬
cording to him there is an “ essence of religion ” — the “ religion in
the religions ” — which lies at the basis of all particular religions; this
“ essence,” however, only manifests itself in a concrete and living
way in definite historical and individual forms. According to Schleier-
macher, a “ natural religion ” does not exist, in addition to the various
religions (as men used to think at the time of the Enlightenment);
2 Herbert of Cherbury, in his most important work, De veritate prout dis-
tinguitur a revelatione, a verisimile, a possible et a falso.
° [See Lessing’s Nathan der Weise. Tr.]
3 cf. Althaus, Toleranz und Intoleranz des Glaubens, loc. cit., pp. 104-120.
4 Cf. my book on Schleiermacher, Die Mystik und das Wort.
220 Revelation and Reason

but “ natural religion ” — the “ religion within the religions ” — lies

beneath all religions as their foundation, and as their “ essence.”
Schleiermacher’s view has been recently re-expressed in an impres¬
sive manner by Rudolf Otto,5 who contrives to add to Schleiermach¬
er’s description of the nature of religion a new formula: “ religion
is the sense of the Numinous, and the response which this evokes.”
Whatever form these definitions of the general “ nature of religion ”
may take, they are all irreconcilably opposed to the Christian faith,
as it understands itself. It is impossible to be a Christian — in the
New Testament sense — and at the same time to accept the view that
there is a universal “ essence of religion ” of which Christianity has a
predominant share. The Christian revelation and these “ relative ”
theories of religion are mutually exclusive.
For whereas the “relative” theory of religion regards the basic
element in all religions as “ the essence of religion,” and all that dis¬
tinguishes them from one another as nonessential, so far as Biblical
faith is concerned the exact opposite is true: it is the distinctive ele¬
ment that is essential, and all that the Christian faith may have in
common with “ other religions ” is nonessential. The Christian un¬
derstanding of revelation, as we have clearly stated in the whole of
the first part of this book, is absolute, not relative. God’s revelation
in Jesus Christ is related to that which “ the other religions ” claim
as their revelation, not as an individual formulation of something
common to all — such as the sense of the “ Numinous,” or the mysti¬
cal element, or reverence for the Holy — but as the special revelation
of salvation, given only to the people of Israel and the Christian
Church, is related to that general revelation, which, it is true, was
given to all men, but, owing to sin, was received by them only in
an idolatrous and distorted form. The Christian understanding of
revelation in its relation to the world religions has been expressed in
its classic form in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. If
Jesus Christ is He whom the Christian faith, in accordance with the
witness of the Bible, declares that He is, then the relation of the
Christian faith to other “ religions ” can only be of this kind. The
Christian does not believe that this is the case because Paul says so:
it is because this is so that Paul has said what every Christian be¬
liever, from his own understanding of Christ, would have to say. The
uncompromising, absolute attitude toward the world religions is the
6 Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige; Aufsatze das Numinose Betreffend.
 The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation 221

natural and inevitable consequence of the Christian faith itself.6 7 8

There is only one Jesus Christ, who was crucified for us, and has
risen again for us; there is only one Mediator and one Saviour; hence
“ there is none other name given under heaven whereby we must be
saved.” 6a
But might it not be possible for a non-Biblical religion to point
toward Christ in the same way as the Old Testament points to Him?
It is quite clear that the New Testament stands in a different rela¬
tion to the other non-Biblical religions; for they do not know Jesus,
the crucified and risen Messiah. But if we already regard the Old
Testament as the provisional revelation, coupled with the New Testa¬
ment as the final revelation, as a unity, could we not transfer this view
of the two as a unity to other religions, which do not know the name
of Jesus just as the Old Testament does not know the name of Jesus? 7
This idea cannot be dismissed a priori without further consideration.
The final judgment can be made only a posteriori, after the witness
of the other religion has been really heard. It must be based upon
the answer to the question whether Jesus Christ is foretold in this
other religion in the same way in which He was foretold in the Old
Testament; in other words: Is there, in this religion, a similar be¬
ginning, with the history of a covenant and a revelation which points
toward Jesus Christ as its goal and its fulfillment, as there was under
the Old Covenant? All through the centuries, down to the present day,
the Christian Church has clearly answered this question in the nega¬
tive by undertaking the work of missions. The Christian Church
does not regard any of the existing religions as an Old Testament
prophecy of Christ; hence she feels herself under an obligation to do
missionary work in all these lands where these religions are estab¬
lished. There are, it is true, groups and circles within the Church
which do not accept this point of view, and demand a “ more toler¬
ant ” attitude;8 but those who take this position do so on the basis
of a theology, or rather, from the standpoint of a view of Christ,

6 Cf. my work Die Christusbotschaft im Kampf mit den Religionen.

6a Acts 4:12.
7 Where, however, like E. Hirsch, Das Alte Testament and die Predigt des
Evangeliums, the Old Testament as Law is set over against the New Testa¬
ment as Gospel, and it is thus excluded from the sphere of particular, saving
revelation, this question cannot arise.
8 Cf. above all the Laymen’s Report on the Jerusalem Conference, Rethink¬
ing Missions.
222 Revelation and Reason

which tends more toward that of modern Idealism, than that of the
Biblical revelation.0 It is the demand of men who want to feel that
they still belong to the Christian Church, while their understanding
of the Christian faith has become confused, or even altered out of all
recognition, by these modern “ relative ” theories of religion. Those,
for instance, in the mission field, or among the younger Churches,
who request that their own national religion should be regarded as
the “ Old Testament ” of their people, and thus as a valid prophecy
of Christ for their nation, when they are asked about their view of
the Old Testament will always present a view which cannot be com¬
bined with that of the New Testament. This will become clearer
when we turn to the second question, Is this Christian exclusiveness
tenable, in view of the facts of the history of religions?

2. Every religion, however primitive, has some traces of the idea

of revelation. Even the most primitive religions have intercourse
with divine powers, and thus presuppose that these powers, in some
way or another, manifest themselves and can be encountered. Man
can come into contact with the divine powers only as they manifest
themselves, as they at least have announced where and how a mani¬
festation may be expected from them, or where it may be evoked.10
Certainly, anyone who is aware of the reality of God will feel it
both necessary and right to try to distinguish between the incidental
effects of the primitive element, and the essential element, in these
phenomena; further, in the essential element ” we must recognize a
trace of a divine self-manifestation, as, for instance, Calvin tried to do
in his suggestion that the sensus numinis is derived from the primal
revelation, or the revelation in the Creation.11 But no one seriously
believes that the primitive religions have any claim to be an au¬
thentic revelation which could possibly be compared with the claim
of the Christian revelation. For here there is no awareness of any¬
thing possessing universal validity; nor can the multiplicity of divine
powers be combined with the strict sense of truth. These religions
contain no tiaces of a truth or a bond which is holy and binding for
all men, at all times, of an eternal divine Being, and of an eternal will

9 Cf. Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, pp. 328 ff.
10 Cf. van der Leeuw, “ Offenbarung, religionsgeschichtlich,” in RGG, IV,
655.
11 This problem is treated in fuller detail in Chapter 17.
 The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation 223

of God. Paul’s interpretation of the pagan religions, which explains

them as derived, on the one hand, from the original revelation, and,
on the other, as a product of the confused and sinful human mind,
may be most fitly applied to this phenomenon.
The position is not essentially different on the higher levels of
polytheistic religion, in the religions of those peoples who have not
yet reached a conception of the unity of divine Being. Here too
there can be no serious question of any revelation that could be a
rival to the claims of Christian revelation. The element that dis¬
tinguishes these religions from the primitive forms of religion is not
anything essentially religious, but rather something rational or cul¬
tural. Religious feeling and religious imagination are here restrained
and purified by the political, legal, social, moral, and scientific reason.
But the very fact of polytheism indicates that the demand for truth
has not yet been taken seriously, just as the discrepancy between the
“ moral ” and the “ religious ” indicates that here the question con¬
cerning die “ good ” has not yet been seriously asked. Essentially,
we are here on a primitive level of religion — although it may be in
the midst of a highly developed civilization, such as the Greece of
Hesiod and Homer or the Hindu India of the present day. There is
no trace here of a revelation that claims uniform and universal
validity.

3. The situation is different where the revealing word becomes

decisive.12 Through the word the divine self-manifestation is de¬
livered from the accidental limitations of time and space. The word,
by its veiy nature, claims universal validity. To be sure, even the
word of revelation is to a great extent still destitute of this claim to
validity: the word of the oracle has a limited application in time
and space; the ritual and institutional admonitions given by the gods
are not the revelation of a divine nature or of a divine will, which
make an absolute claim for themselves. Only where a corpus of re¬
vealed doctrine emerges, which claims for itself every man, in every
manifestation of his life, and, further, relates the totality of all things
in the world to the revealed divine mystery, can there be any ques¬
tion of a serious claim to revelation which could be in any way com¬
pared with the Christian claim.
On the border line of these religions lie phenomena like the higher
12 Cf. van der Leeuw, pars. 61 and 85 ff.
 224 Revelation and Reason

forms of mysticism and Buddhism. The higher type of mysticism

does not depend upon temporary emotional excitements; in esoteric
instruction its adherents are initiated into the right approach to the
divine mystery; mysticism of this kind claims universal validity
for its revelation, at least to this extent: that that which is revealed
in the mystical experience is the self-manifestation of the eternal
divine mystery, and that this, essentially, is meant for all. What the
mystic teaches, and that for which he tries to gain a hearing and
recognition from all men, is either the way to the experience of the
divine revelation, or the result of this experience itself, in so far as
it can be put into words. In this sense, certainly, mysticism makes a
universal and absolute claim to validity, which appears to be for¬
mally comparable with that of Christianity.
And yet here, even in the mere claim itself, there is a great differ¬
ence. The way to the mystical experience 13 is, it is true, exactly
described, but the revelation itself, in its essentials, is inexpressible.
Thus the mystic cannot, like the Prophet or the Apostle, proclaim
as valid a revelation which has taken place; here the word merely
shows the way, or suggests the truth, but it does not “ express ” any¬
thing. The mystic’s message does not claim the heart and life of the
person in question; he cannot claim the person for the revelation it¬
self; all he can do is to point to the way, open to all, of the experience
of the revelation. He cannot say, “ This is the revelation,” but only,
“ Go along this path and you will receive revelation.” Thus in this
sense the claim to revelation is revoked. It can, therefore, be com¬
pared with the Christian claim only in the sense in which a gold
coin can be compared with a check. Mysticism must therefore re¬
nounce the idea of itself making the claim to valid revelation; it can
only point toward a revelation which itself makes the claim in and
through the experience of it. Whenever it develops a doctrine, this
always ends in either cosmic or acosmic * * pantheism.14
13 Cf. my book Die Mystik und das Wort, 2d edition, “ Das System and die
Mystik,” pp. 324-399.
0# [German: “pantheistisch” or “ theopanistisch ” In German “pantheism”
is used in two senses: (a) Pan-theism: All is God; (b) pan-Theism: God is
All. Tr.]
14 Cf. E. Underhill, Mysticism: “ Attempts, however, to limit mystical truth
— the direct apprehension of the divine substance — to the formulae of any one
religion, are as futile as the attempt to identify a precious metal with the die
which converts it into current coin. . . . The gold from which this diverse coin¬
age is struck is always the same precious metal: always the same beatific vision
 The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation 225

The same may be said about Buddhism, at least in its original form.
Buddha never claimed that he had received a divine revelation. His
“ illumination,” 15 however, is understood as an event of a supernat¬
ural character, as a mystical experience, through which he received
the ultimate truth about the nature of the world, the reason for suf¬
fering, and the possibility of escaping from the latter. We might,
perhaps, describe this experience as a supernatural intuition, but
not as a revelation, because here no communicating, self-disclosing
subject, no revealing God, is either believed or experienced. Bud¬
dhism presents us with the enigma of a religion without a god. The
teaching of the Buddha consists in instructions on the “ right path
which man has to tread in order to enter into the passionless state
of nirvana. If by revelation is meant the disclosure of a divine will
of the Lord who, through His self-disclosure, claims man for Him¬
self, and works out His will in him, then Buddhism is the exact op¬
posite of this; both in origin and in aim it is purely anthropocentric;
it is the doctrine of the way to happiness.
The whole position, however, seems essentially different in the
later northern Buddhism, especially in Zen Buddhism.16 Frequently,
indeed, it has been asserted that there is a parallel between the
teaching of Luther and the religion of Amita Buddha; for one who
trustfully calls on the name of Amita Buddha, whoever he may be,
and whatever may be the character of his life, comes through this
savior (or deliverer) whom he trusts, to the goal, to nirvana, sola
gratia, sola fide. But on closer examination the resemblance seems
merely superficial. Amita Buddha is not God, the Creator and Lord,
nor is he a historical revealer of God s will; he is a mythical figure,
borrowing the name from the historical Buddha, but otherwise hav¬
ing nothing in common with him. He is not the Lord who mercifully
deals with us on our own level, who reveals to us the mystery of
His will; he is a religious hero, who, after he had already entered
into nirvana, out of pity for men sacrificed his bliss in order to be-

of a Goodness, Truth, and Beauty which is one (p. 115). The ideas of emana¬
tion and of immanence (quite rightly nothing else is under consideration) are
of equal value: “A good map, then, a good mystical, philosophy, will leave
room for both these ways of interpreting experience” (p. 124). Cf. also R.
Otto, Westostliche Mystik.
15 On the illumination of Buddha, see above, p. 20.
16 Cf. Heim, “ Der Zendbuddhismus in Japan,” in Glaube und Leben, pp.
144-159. Haas, Amida Buddha.
 226 Revelation and Reason

come a helper to man. But his help does not consist in the fact that
through him man shares in the hidden divine truth. Neither during
man’s earthly life nor afterward does the knowledge of God, His
nature, and His will, play any part; the goal is not, as in the Christian
faith, the perfect revelation, the vision of God face to face; rather,
even as it was with Buddha, the goal is nirvana, the absorption of the
finite personality in the all of nothingness. Correspondingly, the
path ” is not belief in the divine truth which is disclosed, but trust
in the helper Amita Buddha and in his “ name,” that is, trust in the
fact tliat through him one will arrive at the goal of happiness. Be¬
hind all this lies the same impersonal outlook as in ancient Indian
Buddhism, only here everything has been transformed from the
pessimistic world-denying view into a more pantheistic world-affirm¬
ing understanding of life. But what is given to the believer is not the
truth of the holy and merciful God, but a means through which man
attains the blissful goal of nirvana, the fusion of the self with the
all. Here, therefore, there can be no question of a claim to revelation.

4. The serious problem of comparison is limited, therefore, to a

relatively small group of phenomena, to the religions which are “ pro¬
phetic,” which claim to be based on real revelation. Apart from
certain border-line phenomena of the later bhakti mysticism — as, for
instance, in the sect of Bamanuja 11 — in essentials we are concerned

17 Ramanuja, the prophet of the bhakti religion, in the whole world of

Hinduism seems to come closest to the Hebrew Prophets. Here God is the
Lord, the Cieator, the Ploly, and the Merciful; thus this religion really seems
to have the characteristics of a religion of revelation. But the likeness is only
superficial; when we examine the subject more closely we find that the re¬
ligious thought in this religion is based on an entirely different foundation,
which excludes revelation in the strict sense of the word entirely Ramanuja
does not really claim to be a prophet of the All-highest, but he is the interpreter
of the ancient sacred scriptures, especially the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upani-
shads. Thus he is also a teacher of the doctrine of Advaita, that is, of “ pan¬
theistic Monism — even though in a modified sense, strongly influenced by
Theism. See O. Schrader, in the Religionsgeschichtliches Lesebuch 14 p 28
This can be seen even from such a statement as the following: “ The truth
is that Brahman is the self of the whole world ... the whole world is his
body . . . that consequently, the individualized self of man (the ‘ Thou ’) is to
be understood as merely Brahman taking an individualized (or ‘Thou’) form
and directing it from within.” This is a variation of Tad twam asi. Schrader
explains the point thus: “ The ‘ Thou ’ signifies Brahman in so far as the latter
manifests itself as the inward teacher through that specialized mode of its
bodily existence which is called ‘ souk’ ” Here, of course, there is no claim to
revelation in the Biblical sense. Cf. also Kraemer, op. cit.3 po. 170 ff
 The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation 227

with three impressive forms of religion: the prophetic religions of

Zoroaster, Judaism, and Islam. They are related not only from the
phenomenological point of view, but also from that of a historical
“ blood relationship. Not only are Judaism and Islam directly con¬
nected with the Biblical revelation; even Zoroaster is not only a
contemporary and geographical neighbor of the Prophets of Israel,
but there are many historical connections between his teaching and
that of the New Testament. The religion of Zoroaster is the only re¬
ligion which by its content has influenced the formation of the
message of the New Testament.18 This suggests that we are here
confronted by a very singular phenomenon in the history of religion.
Here, if anywhere, we may well ask whether this religion does not
constitute a real parallel to the Prophetic movement in Israel. Is not
Zoroaster himself a prophet,1® who proclaims the name and the will
of the one God, Creator of heaven and earth? And this “ God,” like the
God of Israel, is a holy God, to serve whom in obedience and in
reverence is the meaning of human existence. This prophet too has
received a “ Torah ” from his God, an instruction, which he com¬
municates to his people, at the command of God, as the way of
salvation, and the way to the knowledge of God. Further, this
prophet knows himself to be the forerunner of the coming Redeemer,
who at “ the end of the times ” will bring to an end the struggle be¬
tween good and evil by the complete victory of the good; that is, with
all good men he will carry the conflict through to its end, and all evil
men will be destroyed forever by a final judgment.
Thus the similarity between this religion and the Old Testament
claim to revelation seems very close; the difference seems to lie, not
in the formal claim to truth, but solely in the content of that which,
in each, is asserted to be revealed truth. But on a closer examination
this conception seems untenable; for both the points at which a
material difference of content becomes visible are those which bring
out the fundamental difference between the Persian and the Plebrew
religion. The message of Zoroaster contains, it is true, the idea of
the ethically good, but it knows nothing of forgiving, generous
18 Cf. Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums, pp. 502 ff.
19 On his “ call ” see Geldner, in RGG (i), IV, p. 1365, also Religionsgesch.
Lesebuch, I, pp. 4 ff., texts from the Gathas, which illustrate his contact with
God. Cf. The Gathas, translated by Bartholomae. Cf. too Lommel, Die Religion
Zarathustras. Even the name Avesta, “ Knowing,” suggests that here one is con¬
cerned with truth and indeed with revealed truth, “ the Law.” (Cf. Lehmann,
on the religion of the Persians, in Chantepie’s Lehrbuch, II, pp. 199-279.)
228 Revelation and Reason

grace.20 Even the great helper of the last days, the Saoshyant, is
not the gracious and merciful One, and the last days are not the days
of a new covenant, when God forgives sins and in a new creation
writes the law on the hearts of the faithful, or gives them a new heart.
The hero of the last days is only a mighty warrior who fights with
the righteous and the pious, whose participation in the final struggle
brings victory to their side. This means that this faith does not go
farther than the moral law. The religion of Zoroaster is moralism
projected into the sphere of metaphysics.21 It lacks precisely that
which transcends the moral reason, the mystery of generous love,
the paradoxical blend of holiness and mercy, which is the core of the
message of the Old Testament. Thus the form and the experience of
prophetic revelation clothes a content which man, in virtue of his
moral consciousness, fundamentally has in himself; it is the self-
affirmation and the self-confirmation of the natural moral conscious¬
ness. In the strict sense of the word, here there can be no question
of revelation.
The same result is obtained when we examine the second point of
difference. The religion of Zoroaster presupposes a metaphysical
dualism of the good and the evil principles. It asserts, it is true, the
priority or superiority of the positive over the negative principle,
but is able to do this only by positing a primal choice or primal deci¬
sion through which the good spirit has made the law of the good his
own.22 The good god is not himself the principle which separates
good from evil; he does not stand as a free master above all law, and
therefore he has not the freedom to forgive sin. Even he, like the
good among the sons of men, is bound by the good. He is the moral
law heightened and personified into the Absolute, whose will, there¬
fore, is no mystery, but is established and known, like the law itself.
Zoroaster has therefore no decree of election and mercy to disclose,
and no secret of the divine will — such as otherwise must necessarily
remain unknown — to declare. He who knows the moral law knows

20 Cf. Geldner, loc. cit., p. 1372, and Lehmann, loc. cit., p. 221.
21 “ Even the name of the Supreme God betrays the reflective character of
the teaching of Zoroaster. . . . This wisdom (mazda) consists in the perfect
knowledge, that is, in the right distinction between good and evil . . . truth
and deception” (Lehmann, loc. cit., p. 220). The content of the revelation is
law, certainly, with the optimistic conviction of the final victory of the good
(and of good people) over evil (and evil people).
22 Lommel, loc. cit., p. 22.
 The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation 229

the will of the good god, because the latter is himself not free, as the
lord of the moral law, but is himself subject to it. The prophet has no
wonderful, incomprehensible, free, redeeming will to communicate;
all he does is to assert the sternness and the power of the moral law.
Here too, therefore, the very nature of this religion excludes “ revela¬
tion,” in the proper sense of the word. The verdict of a scholar like
Geldner is significant: “There is unity and system in the doctrine;
it has sprung from the brain of a logical and imaginative thinker —
not from that of a religious fanatic, but from the mind of a practical
world reformer, who with the new religion wished to bring to his
people the blessings of a higher culture.”23

5. In Judaism and Islam, as precursors of the Christian revelation,

there is no parallel with the revelation of the Old Testament. They
cannot be regarded as preliminary stages of religion, because, as
later movements, they have explicitly said no to the message of
Christ. Islam and also Judaism — especially in some modem move¬
ments — recognize, it is true, Jesus Christ as One who has been sent
by their “ God ” Allah or Yahweh, but they do not regard Him as the
Christ, as the final revelation. What, then, can we make of their
claims to revelation?

(a) Islam
“Recite (or ‘read’) in the name of the Lord, who created thee
. . . who taught through the reed of the writer, who taught man,
that which he knew not! ” 24 This statement, which, according to tra¬
dition, is the first revelation made to Mohammed, leaves no doubt
about the fact that here there is a claim to revelation of the highest
kind. The Koran claims to be a book of divine revelations. Moham¬
med teaches explicitly, it is true, that before him there were other
prophets, among whom, above all, Abraham and Jesus must be
reckoned; but he himself is the “ seal of the prophets,” 26 by whom,
as the creed (scliahada) says, the earlier prophets are superseded.
For the faithful the Koran is the “ eternal, uncreated word of God ” 26
and faith in this revelation, and in Mohammed in particular, the

23 Geldner, loc. cit., p. 1374.

24 Koran, Sura 96, 1-5.
25 Ibid., 33, 40.
26 Snouck-Hurgronje in Chantepie, Lehrbuch, I, p. 727.
230 Revelation and Reason

revealer, is the first article in the creed of Islam: “ There is no God

save Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet.” The source of this reve¬
lation is the Almighty — the Koran knows nothing about a holy God
— and merciful God, the Creator. It is precisely this connection be¬
tween revelation and grace that is emphasized: the giving of the
Koran, the revelation of the true religion, is a special manifestation of
the grace of Allah.27 The final validity of the prophetic revelation
has never been asserted in such strong terms in India, nor in Persia,
nor even in the Old Testament, as it is here asserted of the revelation
to and through Mohammed.
It is idle to reopen the old controversy whether Mohammed was a
real prophet or an impostor, or whether during his first Mecca period
he was a genuine prophet, and afterward a political schemer. It is not
possible to deal with the problem in biographical and psychological
terms. But there is some sense in asking whether the content of his
revelations, when compared with the Biblical revelation, appears to
justify this claim. When we compare the Koran more closely with
the Old and the New Testament we cannot help seeing that its
creative originality is nil. Actually we understand the Koran best if
we regard it as a blend of Old Testament Judaism plus some second¬
ary Christian elements, with, in addition, a fair amount of ancient
Arabian paganism, plus, further, the elements of personal religious
and poetic imagination. Whether experiences of a kind which resem¬
ble those of the Prophets lie at the basis of this synthesis or not, in
what way, and to what extent, Mohammed has incorporated ele¬
ments from the tradition of the Old Testament and from Christianity
is a secondary question. An objective comparison leads to the judg¬
ment that the prophetic claim does not seem to be in any way justi¬
fied by the actual content of the revelations. “ Islam in its constituent
elements and apprehensions must be called a superficial religion
. . . a religion that has almost no questions and no answers.”28
Had Mohammed been a pre-Christian prophet of Arabia, it would
not be so easy to exclude him from the ranks of the messengers who
prepared the way for the revelation. But he was no forerunner; he
was a man who lived six hundred years after Jesus Christ, and he
said no to Him; Mohammed came out into the open as a rival of the
Christian faith; he himself raised the question, Mohammed or
27 Koran, Sura 2, 231; 29, 50.
28 Kraemer, op. cit., p. 217.
 The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation 231

Christ? 29 If we seriously regard Mohammed as a prophet, we must

reject the Christian claim to be a divine revelation; but if we take the
Christian claim seriously, there is no room for Mohammed. For he has
usurped the place that belongs to Another.
In spite of the fact that Mohammed makes a vast claim to revela¬
tion, he never dared to assert that he himself, in his own person, was
a revelation of God. It is precisely this assertion of the Bible, faith
in Christ, faith in the Son of God who has become man, that he re¬
jects as a lie, and as a relapse into polytheism. Islam knows nothing of
the revelation of a Person; it is first and foremost the religion of a
book. The descent of the book and its reading by Mohammed is the
revelation. Faith in the book is the true faith; the prophet addresses
the faithful as “ people of the book.” At the point in the Christian
faith where the Person of the Redeemer is central, there stands in
Islam the book, the written doctrine. But full revelation of the per¬
sonal God means the revelation of a Person. Here alone the grace
and truth which are revealed as a gift are one. The nonrecognition
of the personal self-communication of God corresponds to the non¬
recognition of divine grace. “ Islam is, in the full sense of the word,
a religion of law; its explicitly political character makes this inevita¬
ble.” 30 The judgment of one of the best Islamic scholars of our own
day coincides with that of Luther, who studied Islam closely. Islam
is a religion of “ righteousness of works,” of moralism. “ The Turk is
papistical, for he believes that through works he can be saved and
become holy.” 31 When we look at the core of the doctrine of Islam
we see that, exactly like Zoroastrianism, it is a rationalistic, moralistic
Theism. It teaches what, according to Luther, reason teaches every¬
one: that there is a God, that this God demands good and that He
punishes evil. Here there is no revelation of the gracious mystery:
that the holy God loves the sinner. In spite of all other elements —
gathered from the most varied sources — Islam is not essentially
different from the “ religion of the Enlightenment.”

(b) Judaism
Like Islam, Judaism, as distinguished from the Old Testament
itself, is the religion of a Book; its revelation is the Sacred Book.
29 Mohammed, indeed, recognizes Jesus as a prophetic forerunner among
others, but not as the Redeemer and the final Revealer.
30 Snouck-Hurgronje, loc. cit., p. 696.
31 Vossberg, Luthers Kritik alter Religion, p. 99.
232 Revelation and Reason

This was so even before the coming of Christ; but the point which
at that time was still uncertain became, through the rejection of
Jesus, an ultimate, an obligation, and a shibboleth. The last of the
prophets, in the Old Testament sense, John the Baptist (thus the
last to remind his people of the fact that the revelation in the Old
Covenant was not a book, but living divine history), confronted the
Jewish people once more with a challenge to decision. On account of
his decision for Jesus he was himself rejected by the Jewish people.
With him the Old Testament was finally closed; for “ the least in the
Kingdom of God is greater than he.” 32 It is therefore incorrect to re¬
gard Judaism simply as the continuation of the revealed religion of
the Old Testament. Through the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah the
Jewish religion has taken its stand upon a particular interpretation of
the Old Testament, namely, that Jesus cannot have been the Messiah.
Pious Jews are still waiting for the Christ who is to come; this means,
however, that they are still waiting for the revelation which we Chris¬
tians believe and confess to be one that has already come. They
confess, therefore, the temporary character of the revelation that has
come to them; but they refuse to admit that the final revelation has
taken place. This is the wholly unique and incomparable element in
the relation between the Jewish and Christian claims to revelation.
The Jewish claim, in contrast to the Christian claim, is characterized
by a negation. The difference does not lie in the fact that the Jews
put the Old Testament in the place which Jesus Christ occupies in
the Christian faith: both Jews and Christians maintain the provi¬
sional character of the revelation in the Old Testament, as a revela¬
tion which was intended only to be provisional. The difference lies
in the rejection or acceptance of the fulfillment. Hence from the
standpoint of the Christian faith, Judaism itself, as a whole, cannot
possibly remain “ provisional,” and it is therefore the great enigma
of history: the bearer of the great truth of revelation of the Old
Covenant, and at the same time excluding itself from its promise.
“ For until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same
veil remaineth unlifted; which veil is done away in Christ. . . . But
whensoever a man shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” 33

6. So far as I know, no one has written the history of the part

Judaism has played in the development of religio-philosophical ra-
32 Matt. 11:11. 33 II Cor. 3:14 f.
 The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation 233

tionalism and of the Enlightenment as a whole; it would be very

instructive.01 For, like Islam and the religion of the Parsees, Judaism
also, by its legalism and its rigid monotheism, contains the tendency
to rationalism. In any case the Judaism which has served as a
model for Lessing’s Nathan is, like the Islam of his Saladin, a very
enlightened ” religion. In point of fact, therefore, we are not look¬
ing at three religions, confronting one another, but at one religion;
a rather superficial form of Christianity confronting two variants of
the religion of the Enlightenment, or, to put it more precisely, of a
rational-moralistic Theism. This Theism, both in its ancient and in its
modern form, is the ultimate product of a movement of emancipation,
of severance from the positive religions of the ancient world, and from
Christianity. In both instances its development is assisted by the pres¬
ence of contradictory religious doctrines — in antiquity the ancient
religions of the Mediterranean world, and in modern times confes¬
sional divisions. Its slogan is: Religion without (historical) revela¬
tion. Whether we think of Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus,
or of Herbert of Cherbury, Kant, or of the Theists of more recent
times,35 still the picture of this “ religion of the Enlightenment,”
however varied it may be, may be described by this one — negative
— characteristic: the rejection of “positive” revelation. Hence a
comparison of the “ claim of revelation ” with that of the Chris¬
tian faith cannot here come into the picture at all. It is true that,
especially since the rise of German Idealism, many representatives
of a rational doctrine of religion, for their part, also appeal to “ reve¬
lation ”—since they also use the statement, “All religion is based
upon revelation.” But such revelation would be, by its very nature,
nonhistorical; indeed, in so far as it is really rational religion, nothing
happens by way of disclosure; rather, it is a process by which man

34 In this century a very important development has taken place within in¬
tellectual Judaism, which, starting from Jewish mysticism, and open to many
modern and especially idealistic influences, represents a distinct approach to
the Christian understanding of revelation. The most outstanding representative,
and indeed the founder of this whole movement, is Martin Buber, who through
his teaching on the Ich und Du has given valuable stimulus to Protestant
theology. Others who should be named in this connection are Franz Rosen-
zweig, Der Stern der Erldsung; H. Joachim Schoeps, Jiidischer Glaube in dieser
Zeit; Schalom Ben Chorin, Jenseits von Orthodoxie und Liberalismus, who are
all making a successful effort to gain a new understanding of the Old Testa¬
ment, though with varying originality.
35 Cf. the first chapter of this book, p. 11.
234 Revelation and Reason

becomes conscious of latent truth through the activity of the human

mind itself, that is, of a truth which is immanent in the human mind
as such, and therefore can be attained by its own mental processes.36
Or, on the other hand, it is that universal revelation in the created
World, which, grasped by the thinking mind, makes it possible to
understand the idea of a divine creation of the world and of a per¬
sonal God.37 In particular, however, it is the moral law, which is
here valued as the real “ fact of revelation.” Since even the Christian
faith regards these facts from the standpoint of revelation — even if
in a quite different sense — there is here not so much a conflict of
rival claims to revelation as the denial of the particular historical
revelation in Jesus Christ, on the ground that only general revelation,
which must be rationally interpreted, can be recognized.
This religion has both significance and dignity — the names which
have just been cited are sufficient guarantee for this — but it has
no redeeming power. It is the religion of self-redemption, the religion
of the self-complacent bourgeoisie, and of the self-sufficient human
reason. It is a question whether it can even remain alive at all save
as a shadow which accompanies the religion of revelation. In an¬
tiquity it was the aftermath of living popular religions, with a strong,
although primitive, consciousness of revelation; in later times it was
the “ enlightened ” double of the Christian faith as revelation, and
drew its vitality chiefly from the divisions and disunity of the mem¬
bers of the Christian Church. It is very doubtful whether it could
exist at all if severed from this maternal setting; whether, that is, the
rational ideas of human reason as such would be adequate for the
development of independent religious ideas. But we cannot deal
with this problem here. The point of our present discussion is the
fact that here there is no claim to revelation, but the claim to the
validity of a rational idea, or at least of one which regards itself as
rational. It is “ religion within the limits of pure reason.”

7. For a humanity which has emancipated itself, not only from

all primitive ideas of revelation, but also from all Christian ideas of
36 It is a form of religion which Kierkegaard as a “ religion of immanence ”
(Religion “A”) sets over against that of paradox or the religion of revelation
(Religion “ B ”). See below, p. 256.
37 “ Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and
awe, the oftener and die more steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens
above and the moral law within.” (Kant, at the close of the Critique of Practical
Reason.)
 The World Religions and Their Claim to Revelation 235

the same, there is one other possibility to be considered, which we

have already mentioned: mysticism. Mysticism is not legalistic and
rational like ethical Theism; its exponents are fond of speaking of
“ grace,” and they emphasize the “ incomprehensible ” in the mystical
experience. They do not entirely reject the idea that in this experi¬
ence there may be divine revelation, although for the reasons which
have already been mentioned this idea tends to be avoided. Of “ rev¬
elation ’ in the strict sense of the word there can here be no ques¬
tion, on account of the pantheistic background of all radical mysti¬
cism. For the experience of all radical mysticism is indeed the
discovery of the divine ground of the soul, the perception of the pro¬
found identity of God and the self. Where the mystery of God
already belongs to the soul, in virtue of always being latent within it,
there is no essential mystery, no real revelation, but only the dis¬
closure or unveiling of something that is already present. The mysti¬
cal experience, therefore, is not a real self-communication of God to
man, but it is the supposed knowledge or experience of the unity of
the divine and the human self.
Radical mysticism has never developed freely within the historical
setting of European Christendom; here, rather, mysticism has always
lived in the shadow of the Biblical revelation, and shows therefore
an essentially altered structure. In place of the identity between
the Godhead and the soul comes the union of both in the mystical
act; the personal confrontation, the relation of the created soul to
the eternal Creator, is always more or less definitely presupposed. In
this mystical experience something like revelation is, we may assume,
also meant; but the claim to revelation, as we have already seen, can¬
not be verified by the mystic himself. Clearly this kind of mysticism
is not an independent phenomenon, but it is possible only upon the
basis of the Christian faith in revelation, even though the individual
mystic may possibly forget this historical foundation. In any case
he does not derive the consciousness of revelation from mysticism,
but from the Christian tradition.

8. The closer consideration of the facts of the history of religion

therefore show us that the common assumption that the Christian
claim to revelation is opposed by a variety of similar claims of equal
value is wholly untenable. The amazing thing is the exact opposite,
namely, that the claim of a revelation possessing universal validity
in the history of religion is rare. The claim of revelation made by
236 Revelation and Reason

the Christian faith, however, in its radicalism, is as solitary as its

content: the message of atonement. It is this: Only at one place, only
in one event, has God revealed Himself truly and completely —
there, namely, where He became man. The Incarnation is revelation
radically understood. The history of religion, it is true, reports other
“ incarnations ”; but it is obvious to anyone that they all differ from
the Christian Incarnation in the fact that they are not unique and
unrepeatable, for they repeat themselves over and over again.
Further, in these “ incarnations ” no stress is, or can be, laid upon
the historicity of the Incarnatus; thus from two points of view these
“ religions ” are mythical in character. They do not take seriously
either the vere Deus or the vere homo; so when they say, “ Here God
revealed Himself,” ultimately we cannot take this statement seriously.
The Christian faith alone dares to maintain revelation in the
strict, unconditional sense of the word, because it alone dares to
assert, “ The Word became flesh.” Hence the radicalism of the claim
to revelation is as unique as the content of the Christian message,
the Atonement; indeed, in the last resort it is the same. For the self¬
communication of God is both complete revelation and complete
reconciliation, the basis of faith sola gratia. Only the God who is the
absolutely Holy and die absolutely Merciful and Loving is capable
of such revelation; the radicalism of the Christian claim to revelation
is bound up with the Christian idea of God, just as, conversely, this
idea of God is only the conceptual formulation of that which can be
known only in the event of revelation. No “other religion” can
assert revelation in the radical, unconditional sense in which the
Christian faith does this, because no “ other religion ” knows the
God who is Himself the Revealer. The radical claim to revelation
is bound up with the knowledge of God who is Himself Revealer,
that which is revealed, and the revealing activity, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. Hence the history of religions knows as little of the radi¬
cal claim to revelation as it knows of this Trinity in unity, God Him¬
self.
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 237

16. REVELATION AND THE NATURALISTIC

_ THEORY OF RELIGION
The Christian faith is based upon the fact of revelation; but this
fact of revelation is given to us only in faith. The unbeliever will
admit, it is true, that Isaiah, Paul, and Jesus of Nazareth actually
existed, but for him there is no “ Word of God,” and no “ Christ.”
To him, therefore, in spite of the fact that the Christian faith is
based upon the objective fact of revelation, faith is something purely
subjective. He cannot deny the historicity of the story of Jesus, but
he does deny that these undeniable facts constitute a divine revela¬
tion. To him this claim to revelation is not a truth which must be
recognized, but it is an erroneous “ conception ” which has to be
explained. Whether this explanation ” takes a psychological, so¬
ciological, or philosophical form, the result is the same: in each
instance revelation, from the Christian point of view, is challenged
by a naturalistic “ explanation,” which either explains “ revelation ”
away altogether or else alters its meaning.
Those who hold such views always assume that “ religion,” in es¬
sentials, is always the same. Whether we are dealing with the religion
of primitive peoples, with Indian mysticism, or with the Christian
revealed faith, all is reduced to one common denominator, “reli¬
gion,” to which the different religions are related like the different
species to one genus. The “ essence ” is believed to be independent
of the special fact of revelation; in all religions, it is claimed, “ at
bottom this essence is the same.” From the standpoint of the natural¬
istic explanation of religion all that distinguishes one type of reli¬
gion from another, and that which distinguishes them all from
the Christian faith, is more or less insignificant. The “ real ” phe¬
nomenon of religion is the same “ in all religions,” and this one and
the same religious phenomenon is explained either in terms of
psychology or of sociology, or of philosophy. Consequently, from
the point of view of this “ explanation ” the “ Christian religion ”
itself is one variety of “religion” in general. The subject of this
chapter is this naturalistic explanation of the “ Christian religion ”
as a particular brand of “ religion in general.”

1. Both the psychological and the sociological explanations of re^

ligion are very ancient. Thus the Sophist Prodicus explained the
238 Revelation and Reason

belief in the gods by saying that what man finds useful to himself
he reveres as a divinity, while Euhemerus (a member of the Cyrenaic
school) saw in the gods of Greek mythology the distinguished rulers
of a previous age who had deliberately fostered a veneration which
developed into a religious cult.1 Modern thinkers who sought to
“ explain ” religion found that all that was left for them to do was
to develop these two lines of thought in greater detail; the essential
had already been said, with classical simplicity.
First of all, let us take the psychological explanation of religion.
The Lucretian saying, Primus in orbe timor fecit deos, was developed
by Hume, and the hypostasizing of value by Prodicus was developed
further by Feuerbach and Freud. The connection of the religious
element with the affective is so plain that it forms the obvious start¬
ing point for the naturalistic explanation. The distinguishing char¬
acteristic of the modern explanation — as compared with the ancient
one — is a more subtle psychology. The psychological process by
which fear and desire, a defensive attitude and a longing for signifi¬
cance, are transformed into religious ideas, feelings, and processes
has been analyzed in great detail, illustrated and suppoited
by a wealth of factual material. The part played by the imagination
in the formation of myths, which changes affects into phantasy
realities in such a way that to the strength of the affect there corre¬
sponds the intensified greatness of the phantasy reality, was studied
with great precision; the psychical mechanism by means of which the
wishes of the unconscious and unconscious conflicts are projected
into imaginary entities, or into real entities imaginatively enlarged,
was drawn upon for the interpretation of religious ideas.
Thus there arose a whole series of “ psychological ” explanations
of the religious phenomenon in general, and of the Christian religion
in particular; these “ explanations ” were based on theories such as.
Religion is “ nothing but ” wishful thinking; the man whose desires
are only to a very small extent fulfilled in reality creates a phantasy,
of course without being conscious that he is doing so; persuaded of
the reality of the product of his imagination, he creates a superworld,
a heaven peopled with “ gods ” or with a heavenly God, whose func¬
tion it is to fulfill the wishes of man; he does this in two ways: first,
by providing “ divine ” help where natural means are inadequate,
1 Cf. Uberweg, Geschichte der Philosophie, I, pp. 124, 170. [English trans.,
p. 95. Tr.]
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 239

and, secondly, by holding out the promise that all human desires will
be completely satisfied in the world to come.
Another explanation is this: Faith in the gods, or in a God, is due
to fear: gods are the products of the imagination which is a prey to
fear; they are hypostasized terrors of the mind which cannot come
to terms with a world so full of baffling perplexity and suffering.
Just as the child, when it is afraid in the dark, “ sees ” all kinds of
terrifying forms, so man in his fear of life “ sees ” himself surrounded
by divine powers, which are partly friendly and helpful and partly
menacing.° “It is the anxious concern for happiness, the dread of
future misery, the terror of death, the thirst of revenge, the appetite
for food and other necessaries. Agitated by hopes and fears of this
nature, especially the latter, men scrutinize, with a trembling curi¬
osity, the course of future causes, and examine the various and
contrary events of human life. And in this disordered scene, with
eyes still more disordered and astonished, they see the first obscure
traces of ‘ divinity.’ ” This is how Hume describes the rise of religion,
in his Natural History of Religion.2
It is true of course that primarily only polytheism is explained
in this way; monotheism requires a different explanation. But it too
is said to be derived from “ irrational and superstitious principles,”
which only accidentally, in their final effect, happen to coincide with
the results of the rational, philosophical interpretation of the world.
Thus Hume himself, as we see in his Dialogues Concerning Religion,
does not wish to be regarded as an unbeliever or an atheist, but
simply as one who unmasks emotional religion in contrast with the
rational, metaphysical idea of God, that is, with “ natural religion.”
While this derivation of religion from the motives of desire and of
fear starts from a naturalistic understanding of the nature of man,
Feuerbach, as the heir of German Idealism, has brought to the ex¬
planation of “ natural religion ” essentially new motives; in the rise
of religion he sees involved, not only the purely natural sense ele¬
ments, but the whole wealth of the human mind and, above all, of
the human heart. It is precisely this widening of the basis of explana¬
tion which gave his theory of religion the appearance of being far
* [This passage is preceded by these words, “ No passions, therefore, can
be supposed to work upon such barbarians, but the ordinary affections of human
life.” Tr.]
2 Hume, The Natural History of Religion, original edition, 1757, p. 14. [Or,
Essays — Moral, Political and Literary, by D. Hume, Vol. II, p. 316. Tr.f
240 Revelation and Reason

superior to all the others. His main thesis is, Theology is anthro¬
pology.” 3 “ The gods are the wishes of men realized or represented
as real beings; God is nothing other than the desire for happiness
satisfied in fantasy.” 4 “ Religion is man’s effort to free himself from
the evils which he has, or fears, and to gain the good which he de¬
sires, which his imagination presents to him.” 5 “ The essence of reli¬
gion, the nature of divinity, reveals only the nature of the desire, and
indissolubly interwoven with that the nature of the imagination. 6
These definitions do not take us beyond the sphere of the old natural¬
istic theory. This next step is taken with the closer definition of the
“ nature of desire,” which is hypostasized as God. “ Religion repre¬
sents the ideal, although it is only a creation of thought or an
ethical entity, at the same time as a physical entity.” 7
“ That which is the highest for man, from which he can no longer
abstract anything, that which is the positive frontier of his reason, of
his mind, of his disposition, that to him is God.” 8 “ That which I
make into a quality of God, I have already recognized as something
divine.” 9 “ In religion man makes present and vivid to himself his
own secret nature,” 10 that which makes the “ true ” and not the
“ common ”11 man, “ the supernatural . . . character of his own
self ”;12 here, above all, it is decisive that “ the ‘ Thou ’ belongs to
the perfection of the ‘ I.’ ”13 Thus the supposed divine revelation is
nothing but “ a revelation of the nature of man in the light of man as
he now exists.” 14
“ God is love — this statement, the highest in Christianity, is only
the expression of the certainty of the human mind ... of itself as
that which alone exists, that is, the absolute divine power.” 15 Thus
3 Feuerbach, Vorlesungen iiber das Wesen der Religion, Works, ed. Jodi,
p. 21. [English trans.. The Essence of Christianity, by Ludwig Feuerbach, trans¬
lated from tire 2d German edition by Marian Evans (G. Eliot), 1854. Tr.]
4 Ibid., p. 288.
5 Ibid., p. 249.
0 Ibid., p. 310.
7 Ibid., p. 324.
8 Wesen des Christentums, 1st ed., p. 269.
9 Ibid., p. 34.
10 Ibid., p. 37.
11 Ibid., p. 63.
12 Ibid., p. 136.
13 Ibid., p. 205.
14 Ibid., p. 283.
15 Ibid., p. 156.
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 241

even “ the God who has become man is only the manifestation of the
man who has become God; the coming down of God to man is
naturally preceded by the elevation of man to God.”16 “ First man
creates God according to his own image, and then only does this
God again create man in His image.”17 “ The more personal a man is,
therefore, the more strongly does he feel the need for a personal
God.”18 “ Love is God Himself, and apart from it there is no God.”ie
Essentially it is this theory that lies at the root of the view of Freud,
as he has developed it in his book The Future of an Illusion. All that
is distinctive in the thought of Freud (in this connection) is the
application of the psychology of the unconscious to the explanation
of the process of projection, the repression of instincts, and the
process of sublimation. In all other particulars Freud’s views coin¬
cide very closely with those of Feuerbach.

2. Feuerbach’s theory constitutes a bridge by means of which we

arrive at a second group of naturalistic explanations of religion, that
of the sociologists. For according to Feuerbach it is at least as much
the feeling for “ community ” as the individual’s longing for the
satisfaction of his desires that leads to the formation of religious
ideas. Now this social element stands in the foreground of the Posi¬
tivist theory of religion. While the older interpretation of religion,
derived from the Sophists or from the philosophy of the Enlighten¬
ment, conceives the religious man, essentially, as an individual,20 the
sociological school sees him and his religion in the sociological con¬
text. Religion arises out of the experience of community, and as a
protection for the community and its institutions.21 That which
seems necessary to the clan, or the nation, for its own preservation,
becomes the object of religious homage. The primary objects of the
religious sense of reverence are the social orders, the “ sacred ” orders
16 Ibid., p. 49.
17 Ibid., p. 151.
18 Ibid., p. 124.
19 Ibid., p. 47.
20 Cl. La Mettrie, Histoire naturelle de I’dme. Hollbach, Systeme de la
nature. Hume, op. cit.
21 The most important sociological interpretations of religion, or of particular
religious phenomena: Spencer, Prmciples of Sociology (ceremonial institutions
and especially ecclesiastical institutions). Further, Durlcheim, Les formes ele-
mentaires de la religion; Levy-Bruhl, La mentalite primitive; et cetera. See
also Coe, Psychology of Religion.
242 Revelation and Reason

of marriage, of law, of the authority of the State, of social organiza¬

tion and caste, all of which are valuable means for incorporating the
individual into his rightful position within tire hierarchy of the State
and of social life.
Hence the rise of religious ideas is not due to the laws of individual
psychology, but of social or racial psychology;22 in part, also, to those
of mass psychology.23 The collective, not the individual, conscious¬
ness; collective, not individual, values and needs; the laws that gov¬
ern collective thinking and willing; above all, the social institutions
of the family, clan, or State are the relevant factors for the explana¬
tion of the phenomenon of religion. Where religion is vigorous and
vital it is not the affair of the individual, but of the group, of the tribe,
of the nation, and often also of the State. Individual religion is the
exception. It is a late product and even a sign of decadence; religion
in its living forms is a product of group forces. Certainly this view
goes hand in hand with the other theory, namely, that this social
causation of religion is particularly a phenomenon of primitive so¬
ciety; thus the sociological theory is usually combined with the idea
that religion is essentially a concern of the primitive mind, wherein
the collective element is predominant.
Thus the sociological explanation of religion combines with the
Positivist fundamental idea that the period of religion and of meta¬
physics is finally superseded by that of the “ positive sciences.” 24 A

22 Wundt, Volkerpsychologie. Wundt, indeed, does not belong to this group

of those who “ explain ” religion in this manner, but he belongs wholly to the
second transcendental group of thinkers. For him religion is the symbolic realiza¬
tion and making conscious of ultimate theological rational principles. What he
means comes out clearly in the one sentence (Ethik, I, p. 85), “In the four
greatest world religions, in the teaching of Confucius, in Buddhism, in Chris¬
tianity, and in Islam, the idea of a moral personality, in which the religious view
finds its unifying center . . . attains its highest development.” For his socio¬
logical interpretation of the positive religions, which is in distinct opposition to
his own philosophy of religion, two quotations may serve as illustrations (Ele-
mente der Volkerpsychologie, p. 370): “ In the supremacy of a sole God the idea
of sovereignty, which establishes the State, wanders into the world of the gods.”
“ The establishment of towns, the separ ation into classes and callings, produces
for each of these spheres of life special cults. . . . Thus a change of meaning
. . . affects even the qualities of the gods ” (p. 421).
23 Le Bon, La psychologie des foules. An application of this in Davenport,
Primitive Traits in Revivals.
24 Thus especially in and since Comte, although he himself, as the founder
of a religion de Vhumanite in which the Grand Etre is to be worshiped, is not true
to his own theory.
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 243

particular variety of this sociological theory of religion is that of

Marxism, in which religion, along with all the mental and cultural
life of man, is only “ an ideological superstructure ” of the social,
that is to say, of the economic, process. In this sociological explana¬
tion of religion the ideas of Euhemerus appear in a more subtle and
highly developed form, namely, that religion is decreed by astute
rulers for the stabilization of their power — a theory which plays a
part even in the explanation of religion given by Hobbes and other
philosophers of the Enlightenment.

3. What are we to think of this naturalistic explanation of religion?

A just estimate both of the psychological explanation and of its soci¬
ological variant must start from the fact that they attempt to bring
within their scope nothing less than the whole world of religious
phenomena. On both sides, among protagonists as well as among op¬
ponents, the supposition that “ religion ” as a whole has been sud¬
denly discovered has led to the formation of erroneous opinions,
whereas it would be a great deal easier to form a dispassionate judg¬
ment if we could keep firmly in mind that we are merely giving the
collective name of “ religion ” to the whole complex of religious ideas
and customs throughout the world. In point of fact, why should not
a great deal both in the cults and in the religious mythologies of var¬
ious races be based upon fear and hope, upon unfulfilled and re¬
pressed desires, upon the projection of phantasy and the personifi¬
cation of states of mind or of feeling? In any case the Christian
theologian has no occasion to adopt a negative attitude toward this
whole attempt at an explanation, all the more since in essentials it
agrees with that of the Apostle Paul.25
Who, seeing that one mythology, one form of worship, excludes
all the rest, would even want to defend the position that all the tales
of gods and demigods, of “ divine ” acts, and “ divine-human ” acts
and sufferings, are true? But if it is argued that this “ natural ” ex¬
planation does not explain the “ essential element in religion,” “ the
religion within the religions,” in any case the Christian theologian
can only agree with such an attempt to save the situation with many
reservations, if he does not feel impelled to reject it entirely. The
“ religion within the religions ” is a phantom. Why should the Chris¬
tian theologian constitute himself the advocate of this “ phantom,”
25 See Chapter 17, pp. 261 ff.
244 Revelation and Reason

of this favorite idea of the Enlightenment? This does not mean that
now, for his part, without reservations, he agrees with this natural¬
istic explanation of religion. On the contrary, even if there is no
“ religion in the religions,” nothing which can be described as re¬
ligion” pure and simple, yet at the basis of all religions there is
something which is overlooked by the naturalistic explanation of reli¬
gion. Our next chapter will deal with this point. Here, however, we
are concerned with the question whether the Christian revealed faith
should be also included in this “ natural explanation. In point of
fact, as we have already seen, most modern thinkers — though not
Hume or Hobbes — explicitly accept this view, for as a rule they have
never even asked themselves whether the Christian revealed faith
can be subsumed under a general conception of religion as they define
it. For their part, they too start from this idea of the Enlightenment
as from an axiom which does not need to be examined any further;
therefore they think that the natural explanation of “ religion ” also
explains the Christian revealed religion, and thus that its claims to
truth are manifestly false. The only thinker 26 who has attempted to
deal with the Christian faith, and indeed with the undiluted, Biblical
revealed faith, is Feuerbach. Veiy few of the others have taken any
trouble to examine seriously what constitutes the Christian faith.
Feuerbach, on the contrary, did not make his effort lightly; rather,
he has tried to develop the naturalistic, that is, the anthropological
and psychological explanation of the Christian religion from the very
foundation upward, so that it covers every detail of the articles of
the Christian creed. Thus he offers a complete anthropological re¬
construction of the Christian doctrine, which seems complete in it¬
self, and by its logic is on a far higher plane than all the others, even
the later ones, not least of all because he does not present a distorted
picture, but because, at first sight, he seems to give a very fair pre¬
sentation of his subject.

26 Here, above all, it would seem fitting to name Nietzsche. Although his
influence as the prophet of a new religion, the religion of the superman and
of vitality, was powerful, we cannot claim that he had any right to see his
interpretation of religion and of Christianity regarded as an “ explanation ” of
religion as a whole. His interpretation from the point of view of the sense of
grievance cherished by the weak against the strong, and the weak man’s need
for security over against the strong man, has never been fully developed in any
of his writings as a theory. The nearest approach is in Der Wille zur Macht
(the will to power).
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 245

Everyone who has some knowledge of the Christian faith is aware,

without further argument, that no purely naturalistic theory which
derives it from fear, or desire, or need, is adequate.27 A naturalistic
psychology cannot come to terms with that faith in which the glory
and the sovereignty of God form the predominant center, in which
self-denial and the surrender of all human claims to God is required,
in which man’s unconditional surrender to God is the essentially re¬
ligious act.28 Here we are really concerned with something different
from the satisfaction of men’s desires in this primitive sense of the
word. These psychologists, not excluding Feuerbach, need to have it
brought home to them — by some kind of exercitium anthropologicum
— that, actually, quite apart from religion, there are things that are
more important to a man than the satisfaction of his merely natural
necessities.
Sensationalism, which explains the whole of human life from sense
perceptions and from the instinct of self-preservation, breaks down
when confronted by the facts of the mind and of culture in their
ultimate and distinctive character. The ideas of truth, righteousness,
beauty, and of the holy, simply cannot be derived from the sensory
and animal existence of the “ human creature,” for the simple reason
that the “ derivation ” itself, springing as it does from the search for
truth and the recognition of a norm of truth, cannot be understood
either from natural instinct or from experience of nature. After the
work which has been done in the last fifty years in the spheres of
philosophy, phenomenology. Gestalt psychology,** et cetera,29 this
“ sensation ” theory of religion may be passed over in silence as some¬
thing that has already been proved to be an impossibility.
27 Freud’s theory in The Future of an Illusion is an achievement which is un¬
worthy of this truly great psychologist. It is indeed an artificial and dilettante
piece of work. Even disciples of Freud will admit this.
28 Westermarck, in his book Christianity and Morals, gives a whole series of
examples ad minorem gloriam christianismi, which are meant to show the harm¬
ful or the narrowing influence of Christianity upon ethics. In so far as they
affect empirical Christianity — to our shame be it said — they are nearly always
apt observations; but so far as they affect the Gospel itself they are based upon
an evidently defective understanding of its meaning.
** [Associated with the names of Koffka, Kohler, Wertheimer, and Lewin.
Cf. Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology. Tr.]
29 Here we are thinking of the work of men like Windelband, Rickert,
Troeltsch, and especially also of Husserl and his school, and of the newer re¬
searches in the realm of psychology which are gathered up under the rather
wider conception of Gestalt psychology.
246 Revelation and Reason

The sociological theory is in a stronger position. It knows at least

that the community, the weal or woe of the whole, of the family, the
people, and the State, and not only individual satisfaction, are de¬
cisive factors in religion. There it touches a motive which stands out
very clearly in the Christian revealed religion in particular: the con¬
nection between faith in God and the love of one’s neighbor, the
Rule of God and human community, as it is expressed in the central
idea of the message of the Bible, in the doctrine of the Kingdom of
God. Faith and love, as the Bible puts it, are of the same nature and
are indissolubly united.30 The only question is this: Is the “social
element ” of which this sociological theory speaks this kind of love?
Is it agape? And is this love already present in man himself as a
permanent part of his nature? Or, on the contrary, is it real, and can
it be understood, only as the fruit of faith? This question must be
addressed to Feuerbach in particular.
The first crucial point in Feuerbach’s theory lies in his distinction
between the realm of mind and spirit and the realm of the natural
life, that is, the very point which gives his theory its superiority over
tire purely naturalistic explanations. As a pure anthropologist he has
no use for Idealism or Transcendentalism of any kind, hence he
includes the mind among the actual possessions of human nature
which cannot, and need not, be explained any further. He takes
into account the fact that man strives after something perfect,
that he has a “ nature ” which is in conflict with his actual condition,
that there is something “ truly human ” in contrast to that which is
“ common to humanity,” a law of the good, a conscience, an idea of
perfection, et cetera. All these ideas are relics of an Idealistic philoso¬
phy, which he has renounced, it is true, but not without having sal¬
vaged some of its most valuable elements and taken them with him
into his naturalism. He conceals this difficulty from himself, however,
by the fact that where the Idealist says “ idea ” he generally uses
another, very treacherous, concept, namely, that of a “ species.” The
ideal, he claims, is the species, in contrast to the empirical individual.
With this he seeks to justify the element he has inherited from Ideal¬
ism; but every honest thinker will see the artificiality of this attempt.
Man’s nature as a species is — unfortunately — veiy different from his
ideal nature. The law of morality is something quite different from
the expression of the experience of the whole over against the experi-
30 The classic document in this connection is I John 4:7 ff.
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 247

ence of the individual. A mere abstract activity is not sufficient to

explain tire formation of concepts, of ideals, of norms. Thus the view
that Feuerbach has unmasked Idealism is unfounded; rather the
position is this: that he has unfortunately inherited it, i.e., that he has
taken concepts which were legitimate in Idealism and has trans¬
planted them into a scheme of thought where they are not legitimate,
because they are not to be explained from the presuppositions of the
latter. What is the origin of the norms? What origin has the idea of
the true man as contrasted with the generic idea of the actual species
Homo sapiens? Anyone who has been taught by Plato, Aristotle, or
Kant will feel obliged to put these questions to Feuerbach and
he will receive no answer from him. Only a very empty-headed
person could think that in the midst of the nineteenth century a
man called Feuerbach succeeded in completely nullifying the
achievements of thought of the greatest thinkers of all time.
But although Feuerbach did not see some truths as clearly as the
Idealists, he did — and it is this which makes him so interesting and
so instructive — see something which most Idealists did not see,
or, if they did, they did not see it so clearly as he did: he knew some¬
thing of the meaning of love, and he was not very far from really
understanding it in the Christian sense. “ The true dialectic is not a
monologue of the solitary thinker with himself; it is a dialogue be¬
tween I and Thou.” 81 “ Only through communication, only out of
the conversation of human beings with other human beings do ideas
arise.” 32 “ The nature of man is only contained in community.” 33
“ Where there is no love, there is also no truth.” 34 We can only agree
wholeheartedly with these statements; in fact they express the in¬
most nature of the Christian faith; since Feuerbach begins at this
point, it is not surprising that he reveals an understanding of the
articles of the Christian creed which no Idealist has ever attained.
Here, then, we must ask, Whence did Feuerbach gain this knowl¬
edge? In what connection can we say such things? If Feuerbach
conceives this love, this community, as something which is already
present, in fact, in the “ nature ” of man, then experience itself con¬
tradicts him. If only it were so! Then the Son of God would not
31 Feuerbach, in Grundsatze der Philosopliie der Zukunft, Ges. Werke, ed.
Jodi, p. 319.
32 Ibid., p. 304.
33 Ibid., p. 318.
34 Ibid., p. 299.
248 Revelation and Reason

have had to become man; then we should all have been at the goal
to which He wills to lead us. Thus, since it is quite clear that Feuer¬
bach was not the first to discover this truth, but has transferred it
from what he learned in his Confirmation classes into his philosophy,
he now tries to incorporate it into his naturalistic system, and in so
doing renders all that he has gained futile. For when he tries to ex¬
plain the origin of this love or of this community in more detail,
he brings out nothing new, but only a poor kind of sensationalism.35
Love, community, suddenly becomes desire — quite ordinary appe¬
tite. And out of the communion with the “ Thou ” there comes sim¬
ply the “ Thou ” as the object of sense perception. But as a bridge
between his Christian idea of agape and his sense idea of eros there
stands — as a further relic of his Idealistic past — the idea of the
“ universal,” again naturalistically interpreted as “ species.” Thus this
supposed “ debunking ” of Christianity, as a mere projection of the
human element into an imaginary superworld, is based upon this
quid pro quo, upon this deplorable mixture of the Christian idea of
agape, the Idealistic concept of the idea, and sense-desire.
It is absolutely true: he who has the right idea of man also has
the right idea of God. Luther said this in his Commentary on Genesis,
referring to Adam’s knowledge in Paradise.36 But it is precisely this
right idea of man that man cannot discover for himself. Indeed,
the “ misery of man ” consists in the fact that he has lost not only
his original “ greatness,” but also the possibility of knowing himself
aright. It is true that the whole of Christian theology can be “ recon¬
structed ” from the idea of love; only in order to understand what
this love really is, nothing less is needed than the whole revelation
of redemption of the gracious God, together with the Incarnation
and death of His Son on the Cross. “ God is Love, and he that abideth
in love abideth in God ”;87 but this love is anything but the generic
character of man as he is known to us. We know love through Jesus
Christ; in Him it is seen to be the true nature of man and the nature
of the true God; but apart from Him it is as unknown as is the merci¬
ful and holy God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The experiment of
Feuerbach is like that of certain alchemists, who first of all secretly
35 Cf. the excellent criticism in the most instructive book by J. Cullberg,
Das Du und die Wirklichkeit, pp. 30 ff., to which I owe a great deal for the
understanding of Feuerbach’s Du philosophy.
36 Cf. Luther, W.A., 42.
37 I John 4:16.
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 249

insert a little bit of gold into their retorts, in order that then they may
bring it forth — to the amazement of the naive spectators — as gold
which they have brought into being.
Therefore everyone who knows the Christian faith from experi¬
ence knows that things do not happen as Feuerbach maintains they
do. It is not I who project my love toward an imaginary God; rather,
the God of love meets me — a man who does not know love either in
my own nature or in that of my fellow man — in Jesus Christ, and
through this very love of His He wins my loveless nature, opens my
heart, which is turned in upon itself, the cor incurvatum in se, to
Him who is Love, and in so doing He also opens my heart to the
brother who is at my side. Love is not already there; it comes, when
the loving God comes. But when He draws me into His love certainly
I perceive that this love is my original nature, and that of every
man in the world, the true being of man, for which indeed I have
longed, which the Law held up to my conscience as the “ categorical
imperative,” and as an idea; so long, however, as it was only com¬
manded, its real nature could not be revealed to me. But this point
will be elaborated farther on.38

4. We have to deal, however, not only with the naturalistic and

anthropological theory of religion, but also with that of transcen¬
dental philosophy. Profound thinkers have always known that reli¬
gion cannot be explained in terms of man’s natural necessities. Since
philosophical reflection itself, quite apart from the problem of reli¬
gion, is confronted by something that is more than mere nature, it
has been inclined, in spite of all its criticism of religious ideas, to
admit a certain core of religious truth, and to isolate this from the
mass of irrational elements as the “ religion according to reason,”
or as the “ rational content of religion.” The way in which this “ core ”
of religion has been released from its setting, however, is extremely
varied. Every more important philosophy also has its own philosophy
of religion. Hence there are as many philosophical interpretations of
religion as there are philosophies. Here, from the outset, we shall
confine our attention to those interpretations which are not con¬
cerned with “ religion ” in general, but with Christianity as a revealed
religion.
We can dismiss, as out of date, the explanation that simply con-
38 See below, Chapter 21.
250 Revelation arid Reason

ceives religion as a prescientific explanation of nature. If this theory is

not wholly sine fundamento in re, so far as the nature religions, and
especially their mythologies, are concerned, yet today the view
everywhere prevails that this intellectualistic interpretation does not
do justice to the affective and voluntaristic character of the forma¬
tion of religious ideas, even where a nature religion is concerned.
But it breaks down too obviously in face of the Christian faith to
make it necessary for us to deal with it any further here.
There is also a second type of reinterpretation of religion and of
Christianity, which, for similar reasons, scarcely needs to be taken
seriously, namely, the conception of religion as popular metaphysics.
Since the philosophical metaphysician discovers parallels between
the results of his thinking and certain religious ideas, he is inclined to
think that religious truth is a naive, childish, primitive form of his
own metaphysical knowledge. God, the Creator, is the childlike, an¬
thropomorphic, preliminary stage of the philosophical idea of the
absolute world ground (or reason), or of the unknowable unity of
nature and spirit, of a creative world spirit, or of the all-penetrating
world reason, and so on. All these reinterpretations are vitiated by
the same intellectualistic fundamental error which ascribes to reli¬
gion a function similar to that of metaphysical thought: 39 the satis¬
faction of a need of the mind, the striving for the metaphysical
rounding off of the knowledge of the world. They are therefore all
supported by that arrogance of the thinker, who assumes that the
philosophical element is the mature and virile element, and is there¬
fore superior to the religious element which is naive and immature.
It is of course obvious that from this point of view the “ myth ” of the
Christian revelation fares very badly.
There are, however, other more recent attempts at reinterpretation
which must be taken far more seriously. I refer to the views of those
who — under the influence of Plato, Neoplatonism, and of medieval
Scholasticism — see in religion, and especially in Christianity, a nec¬
essary expression of the human spirit, something which is essentially
part of man, like science, law, morality, and art. We may describe
this as the transcendental explanation of religion. It has this in com¬
mon with the views of Feuerbach, that it starts from the nature of

39 Thus, as a whole, the critics of Christianity in the times of the Enlighten¬

ment, who use their “ religion of reason,” that is, their rationalist metaphysic,
as a critical standard and as the idea of true religion.
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 251

the human mind and through a deeper inquiry into the “ Spirit in the
human spirit ” it comes upon the religious element. It is, however,
essentially different from the view of Feuerbach, in that in the
“ ground ” of the human spirit it always finds, already present every¬
where, that which is not merely human, the unconditioned, the
normative and the valid, the necessary, the eternal. The nature of
Transcendentalism, however, consists in the fact that in its analysis
of the human mind it comes upon ultimate ideas — final, funda¬
mental presuppositions — which make it possible to distinguish be¬
tween true and false, right and wrong, good and bad, beautiful and
ugly. In the finite human spirit it finds as its ground the eternal
divine Spirit.
Here, again, great differences of interpretation are possible. One
trend of thought — of which Kant may be regarded as representative
— finds the Divine in the analysis of the moral will. It understands
religion as the “ conception of the moral law as a divine command,”40
and sees in the Sermon on the Mount, interpreted in this sense, the
true religion and rational core of Christianity. Another view — which
we may describe as the Hegelian — investigates the self-knowledge
of the spirit and finds as the Ultimate the understanding of the
self, of the finite spirit, in the absolute Spirit. This Ultimate, however,
takes shape in a twofold form: in that of religious ideas and in that
of philosophical concepts. “ Religion is the relation of the spirit to the
absolute Spirit.” 41 Once more Christianity is the absolute realization
of this religious element. Finally, the third current of thought, that
represented by Schleiennacher, sees the religious element par ex¬
cellence not in the will, nor in the act of knowing, but in feeling,
since in feeling alone the world contradictions of nature and spirit,
object and subject, theory and practice, are overcome.42 It is pre¬
cisely this overcoming of opposites in the Absolute which is reli¬
gion ” as a whole. Christianity, however, is that religion in which the
nature of the religious element, the feeling of unity with the universe,
or the feeling of absolute dependence, is expressed most clearly,
since its Founder Himself realizes this religious element in its
primitive purity.43
40 Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, II, par. 91.
41 Hegel, Religionsphilosophie, ed. Drews, p. 121.
42 Schleiermacher, Dialektik, pp. 21611.
43 On Schleiermacher’s concept of religion, see my book Die Mystik und
das Wort, pp. 35-77.
252 Revelation and Reason

5. Quite recently, two other interpretations have been added to

these philosophical interpretations of religion. These two stand
midway between philosophy and psychology; but by their empirical
objectivity in the observation of the religious phenomenon they
differ considerably both from the interpretations of naturalistic psy¬
chology and from that of transcendental philosophy. They are: the
theory of William James, who interprets religion as the experience of
the divine Presence,44 and the doctrine of Rudolf Otto, of religion as
the experience of the Numinous.45 The fact that both theories, and
especially Otto’s view, are connected with a definite philosophy does
not actually do their essentially phenomenological character any
harm. Both, indubitably, describe living religion: “ religion at first
hand,” as James expresses iff, the religious “ primal experience, as
Otto puts it. Hence they have the great merit of practically routing
for good and all the naturalistic psychological explanations of reli¬
gion, in so far as this had not been done already by the transcen¬
dental interpretation. We may say quite definitely that the view that
contends that the whole mass of religious ideas, including those of
Christianity, can be explained from fear or wish fulfillment, is found
nowadays only among the half-educated, just as materialism — to
which it is akin —is the philosophy of the half-educated. Anyone
who studies religion in a thorough manner cannot ignore Kant,
Hegel, Schleiermacher, James, or Otto, and when he has come to
grips with them in earnest, he will find it impossible henceforth to
be satisfied with the “ fear-hope-wish ” theory.

6. The question whether any one of these explanations of religion

does justice to the Christian revealed religion is something very dif¬
ferent. We must answer this question with a decided, “ No.” What,
for instance, James and Otto describe is a nonhistorical, mystical
experience, which may be characteristic of much that goes by the
name of “ religion,” but is not that which the New Testament and
the classical Christian doctrine mean by Christian faith: faith in the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The same is true of that which
Kant, Hegel, and Schleiermacher mean by “ religion,” even by the
“ Christian religion.” Even from the purely phenomenological point
of view, everyone who knows both trends of thought — that of
44 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
45 Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige.
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 253

James, Otto, Kant, Hegel, or Schleiermacher as regards “ religion,”

on the one hand, and the Christian faith, on the other — and sets
them side by side, will recognize such a difference that it cannot
be denied that it is impossible to reduce them to one common de¬
nominator.
In all the explanations which have just been mentioned, including
those of James and Otto, the historical revelation plays a quite sec¬
ondary part. The transcendental philosophical interpretations,
however they may differ among themselves, all have this in common,
that they assert a possibility immanent in man himself — whether it
be ethical, speculative, or aesthetic — for an experience of the Divine.
None have any essential relation with a historical event of revelation.
They are therefore interpretations of “ religion,” but not of the Chris¬
tian faith. Their point of reference is not the Word of God in Jesus
Christ, but something that lies within the human spirit, an immanent
presupposition of the moral will, of speculative thought, of mystical
feeling. They all interpret “ religion ” in the schema of transcen¬
dental finmanence as something which is, in principle, independent
of the historical fact of revelation. God is the Divine, which we dis¬
cover through profound reflection within ourselves — whether as the
law in our conscience, as final absolute truth in our thinking, or as
the “ ground ” in which the world contradictions are removed, in the
depths of feeling, in the sense of absolute dependence. Even though
this fundamental experience may afterward be related with the his¬
torical element, for example, with the story of Christ in the Gospels,
or even though in Jesus the nature of the religious element may be
found to be most perfectly and purely realized, yet still in all this He
is only the highest Example of religion, not He who is Himself the
Christian faith: the Object of faith, through whom faith arises, and
in relation to whom faith consists.
Even that which William James and Rudolf Otto define as “ reli¬
gion ” is quite evidently nonhistorical mysticism, which can take
shape — as indeed Otto shows us — just as well in pre-Christian India
as in Christian Europe, an experience in which the historical revela¬
tion in Jesus Christ, or in the people of Israel, plays no part, but at
the most can be introduced afterward as the support of such mystical
religion. “ Religion at first hand,” when it is examined more closely,
always proves to be individualistic mysticism, severed from the his¬
torical faith based on revelation, which is depreciated as “ religion
254 Revelation and Reason

at second hand.” Thus the Christian can never recognize either his
religion or his faith in this interpretation of religion. Just as mysticism
and faith differ very widely, so also does this which is here called
“ religion ” differ from the Christian religion.

7. Or is it, perhaps, true to say that the Christian revealed faith is

related to mystical religion as “ religion at second hand ” is related to
“ firsthand religion,” as that which is derived is related to its origin?
This idea is extraordinarily widespread today among educated peo¬
ple.40 Religion? Yes! Revealed religion, connected with history? No!
Experience of the divine Presence, the experience of the Numinous, or
even the moral as the divine, knowledge of the absolute Spirit in the
finite spirit, the sense of absolute dependence, union with the In¬
finite in feeling — all this the modern man will accept with pleasure.
But faith in the unique historical event that took place once for all,
Jesus Christ as the revelation of God, that is the offense. Christianity
is acceptable so long as it appears in the reinterpretations of Kant,
Hegel, or Schleiermacher, or even in those of James and Ojto, but
when it confronts man in its original Biblical form it is opposed. Man
defends himself against it by distinguishing it, on the one hand,
as primitive and “ mythical,” and on the other hand as “ secondhand
religion,” 47 from the nonhistorical, nonrevealed, “ immediate ” reli¬
gion. So far as the description of Christianity as “ mythical ” is con¬
cerned, this subject will be treated in a later chapter.48 The descrip¬
tion of it as “ secondhand religion ” is due to an evident confusion of
thought.
This idea of “ secondhand religion ” presupposes that the “ Founder
personalities ” (from whose original experience the secondary ex¬
perience, that of the ordinary Churchgoing people, is derived) have
themselves experienced and proclaimed the religious element in the
“mystical” or “transcendental” in an original way; on the other
hand, it assumes that “ mere believers ” possess no real, original re¬
ligion of their own, but that since they are disciples of those great
masters, their experience is merely a copy or a shadow of the original
46 Typical of this turning away from the Christian faith to a nonhistorical
mysticism is Albert Schweitzer in his book Die Weltanschauung der indischen
Denker.
47 The expression “ firsthand religion ” was first used by American writers on
the psychology of religion, but it speedily passed into general use.
48 See below, Chapter 26.
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 255

experience.49 Neither of these claims can be taken seriously. The

Prophets of Israel — and Jesus still less — are not mystics; the Pro¬
phetic experience of receiving the Word of God, or the conscious¬
ness of Jesus of His Messianic mission and Person, is something
wholly, incomparably, different from all that those transcendental
philosophers, or the students of the “ psychology of religion,” such as
William James, or Rudolf Otto, describes. The first part of this book
has already dealt with this subject. So far as the faith of the Apostles
and of other Christians is concerned, their experience of meeting
God Himself in Jesus Christ, through the illumination of the Holy
Spirit, is something which cannot be in any way compared with the
Being and the experience of the Saviour. Christian believers do not
want to be “ approximately as religious ” as He was, or “ approxi¬
mately,” by means of His example, to have experiences similar to
His, but they experience in Him the immediate, real meeting with
the self-revealing God.
Luther’s faith is certainly not “ secondhand religion,” but it does
not in the very least resemble that kind of mysticism; it is indeed
experience of faith of the personal self-communication of God
through the Word of Christ and the Spirit of God. Genuine Christian
revealed religion is an immediate encounter with God, but it is an
encounter with God which takes place through the revelation of God
in the historical revelation of Jesus Christ.
To make a distinction between religion which is “ firsthand,” and
that which is “ secondhand,” is, however, not in every sense an error.
It is justified in contrast to that kind of faith which merely “ believes
that ” Jesus Christ is the Son of God on the authoritative assurance
of the Church. This merely doctrinal belief, which is so often con¬
fused with real Christian faith, and is so often precisely encouraged
by the Christian Church, is certainly “ secondhand religion ”; it is
questionable whether it can be described as religion at all. Religious
motives of the kind that James and Otto, Kant or Schleiermacher,
develop, may play some part in this kind of religion; but in any case
as doctrinal belief it is neither genuine Christian faith nor is it even
genuine “ firsthand religion ” in the sense in which mysticism uses
the word. Actually it is characteristic of periods of waning religious
vitality; it is a pious — or an impious — traditionalism. Usually, how-
49 Cf. W. James, op. cit., especially in the distinction between “institu¬
tional ” and “ personal ” religion, pp. 28 if.
256 Revelation and Reason

ever, it contains a faint spark or germ of something which is more

than mere doctrinal belief, namely, a genuine encounter with the
Living God in Christ.
In the process of development in the modern interpretation of
religion, from Kant to Otto, something has happened, namely, two
fundamentally different religions have become confused, which
Kierkegaard distinguishes as “ immanental religion ” (or Religion
“ A ”) and the “ paradoxically transcendental ” religion (Religion
“ B ”);50 he has proved once for all that these two are irreconcilable.
Religion “ A ” is a reality just as much as Religion “ B,” it is true;
it is the only religion that the average educated person of the present
day knows. It appears in very different forms: as ethical rationalism
of the kind represented by the Deism of the Enlightenment, as specu¬
lative or emotional mysticism, as “ natural religion ” of various kinds,
as the mysticism of blood and soil, and as a deliberately anti-Chris¬
tian “ Gottglaubigkeit.” * * *
But all have one common feature, and indeed this is the only de¬
cisive one: they are timeless and nonhistorical; they are not related
to the historical revelation. They pride themselves, indeed, upon
their independence of the historical event; in this they feel superior
to the Christian faith. The Christian faith, therefore, confronts them
all as something strange, unintelligible, as the offense and the folly
of the message of the Cross. Call the Christian faith folly, reject it as
an offense, but do not say that it is that other kind of religion, not
connected with history, not related to the event of revelation. In
matters of faith, indeed, truth cannot be proved; but this one thing
certainly can be proved: that this “Religion 'A’” is not the Chris¬
tian faith, and that the Christian faith cannot be understood as a
variety of that form of religion.

8. The naturalistic explanation of religion — whether it be that

of psychology or of philosophy — does not explain the Christian faith,
because it explains something that is quite different from the genuine
Christian faith. An interpretation that has any claim to truth must
not be a reinterpretation in a different sense. All these theories, how¬
ever, reinterpret the Christian revealed religion in terms of some-
50 Kierkegaard, Unscientific Postscript [and Lowrie, Kierkegaard, p. 323. Tr.]
[‘Gottglaubigkeit,” lit., “belief in God”— a vague Deistic belief in a
“ God ” manifesting Himself in blood and soil; tbe name given to a movement
under the Hitler regime in Germany, led by Nazi extremists, or “German
Christians.” Tr.]
 Revelation and the Naturalistic Theory of Religion 257

thing else, which only has a very superficial, remote relation with it.
It is useless to talk about religion or faith with someone who sees
no difference between fear and reverence, just as it is useless to talk
with a completely unmusical person about the beauty of the “ Mass
in B Minor.” An explanation is successful only when it really returns
that which has to be explained, reconstructed, so that that which is
explained equals that which has to be explained. The Christian faith,
by its very nature, differs from all timeless religion. Who could seri¬
ously maintain that “ the conception of the moral law as a divine
command ” is that which the Christian expresses in his hymns of
faith? Or that to be “ in tune with the Infinite ” is what the Christian
means when he says, “ Jesus Christ is my Righteousness and my
Life ”? Who would think it credible that the Christian faith should re¬
discover its “ essence ” in the statement, “ Religion is the ‘ self-con¬
sciousness ’ of the absolute Spirit ”? When we read of the “ presence of
God ” as an “ experience ” in the writings of William James, do we
recognize the faith which says, “ If God be for us, who can be
against us ”? or in the numinous awe of Rudolf Otto, the faith that in
Jesus Christ God says to me, “ Son, thy sins are forgiven thee ”?
Between these two groups of phenomena, that which is explained
and that which has to be explained, there is no difference of degree,
no difference of “ more ” or “ less,” of pure or impure, childish or
adult, but a difference as profound as that which exists between the
utilitarian and the morally good, between that which is horrible in
nature and the Holy.
This difference gives rise to a fundamentally different understand¬
ing of life as a whole, a different feeling about the self and the world,
a different valuation of all things in the world and in life, a different
way of living, a different understanding of life and death, guilt and
sin, happiness and disaster. A man is either a believing Christian or a
religious man in the sense of Schleiermacher or Kant; but he cannot
be both. Whether these immanental explanations of religion may
perhaps explain non-Christian religious phenomena is another ques¬
tion; so far as the Christian religion is concerned they break down
completely. They do not know the faith in the living, merciful, and
holy God, because they do not know this God Himself. The religion
which they interpret is different, because their understanding of God
and of man is different. Which of the two is the correct one, in any
case, cannot be decided in academic or philosophical terms. That is
a matter for the experience and the decision of faith itself.
258 Revelation and Reason

17. REVELATION AND RELIGION

The Christian faith, faith in the God revealed by Jesus Christ, is
not “ one of the religions of the world.” A religious and geographical
survey of the world would of course include “ Christianity ” under
the general concept of religion. It is impossible for a non-Christian
to take that which distinguishes the Christian faith from “ the other
religions ” so seriously that on that account he would give up his
general concept of “ religion.” But the Christian faith itself cannot
recognize this general conception, without losing its own identity.
It cannot admit that its faith is one species of the genus “ religion,”
or if it does so, only in the sense in which it regards itself as the true
religion in contrast to the other false religions.1 To the outsider this
looks like narrow-minded or fanatical intolerance; actually, it is a
necessary expression of sober truth. The Christian faith alone lives
by the Word of God, by the revelation in which God imparts Him¬
self. We have already shown 2 how erroneous is the idea that these
other religions ” make the same claim to revelation. This can be
proved to be incorrect; not one of them dares to assert, “ The Word
became flesh, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only be¬
gotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Therefore, because
the Christian faith stands on this foundation, it is something wholly
different from “ the other religions.”
But this judgment becomes complete only when we go a step
farther, and from the standpoint of faith state clearly what the “ other
religions ” are, and what the phenomenon “ religion ” really means.
Thus in the following pages we shall contrast the naturalistic explana¬
tions of religion which we were discussing in the last chapter with
the Christian understanding of the “ other religions.”

1. This contrast is not merely an antithesis. The naturalistic, psy¬

chological explanation of religion has its own right to exist. A whole
mass of religious facts can, in actual fact, be explained as due to fear,
desire, the longing for happiness, die “ myth-forming imagination,”
1 This is the Reformation idea of religion. Thus Zvvingli entitles his main
work De vera religione; thus Luther speaks of the Christian faith as the vera
et unica religio (W.A., 25, 287); this is the meaning of Calvin in his Institutio
Christianae religionis.
2 Chapter 15, pp. 222 ff.
 Revelation and Religion
o 259
and to projections of the unconscious. Indeed we are particularly
grateful for the illuminating light which modern psychoanalysis has
thrown upon certain religious phenomena. The sociological explana¬
tion of religion has also produced an impressive amount of material
in support of its argument, which, for anyone who has even a slight
knowledge of the subject, possesses convincing power. The fact that
religion is influenced by social conditions, which, on their part, are
due to various accidents of geography, climate, race, or history, can¬
not be contested. Further, we must note that in making this admis¬
sion we do not think that the psychological or the sociological ex¬
planations need be confined only to the non-Christian religions, but
that even in the history of Christianity there is a mass of phenomena
which may, and should, be explained in the same way.
In spite of this, however, it is wrong to conclude that this admis¬
sion means that the phenomenon of religion as a whole, or some
particular religious system, has now been completely explained. On
the contrary, in all religious phenomena one constant factor is in¬
volved which cannot be included in any naturalistic explanation.
In all forms of religion, in addition to fear there is reverence; as well
as the human desire for happiness, there is also a real longing for
divine perfection; in addition to social usefulness there is also a genu¬
ine striving after communion with the deity, and a genuine sub¬
mission to a higher, holy command; and behind all the rank fantasy
growths of affective thought there is an element which cannot be
derived from fantasy at all: the knowledge of something which is
unconditioned, ultimate, normative, supramundane, supratemporal.
Behind the bare formula, “ The wish is simply made into a god,”
there lies the problem. How can we in any way “ make ” anything
* into a god ”? Animals also have wishes, but they have no gods.
To “ make a god ” something is required which is not self-evident.3
To do this we need more than the mere power of abstraction, more
than the capacity to enlarge sense images, to intensify dimensions
into the infinite by means of fantasy. A wish that has been made into
a god is a problem that far surpasses all the psychology of Hume,
Feuerbach, or Freud, because something lies behind it which tran¬
scends psychology: an awareness of an Absolute, of a Holy, of some¬
thing which is more than the world, more than human. This is the
3 Luther, Nisi enim divinitatis notitiam habnissent, non potuissent earn
tribuere idolis nec nomen Dei usurpare (W.A., 14, 588).
260 Revelation and Reason

point at which the transcendental explanation of religion comes into

it own.
Whether in the form in which it has been expressed by Kant,
Hegel, Schleiermacher, Fries, or Otto, it always emphasizes the same
point, namely, that religion is as much part of the essential, spiritual
nature of man as logic, ethics, or art.4 This is stated, it is true, not
merely as a fact of anthropology (as in Feuerbachs view), as some¬
thing which man cannot ignore, but it is related to all that is valid,
true, normative, and absolutely essential.

2. It will not do to regard Feuerbach, from the Christian angle, as

the necessary final point of the transcendental philosophy.5 There is
truth in the theory of Transcendentalism, as a whole, as well as in its
theory of religion in particular, namely, to put it quite simply, the
truth which lies in the distinction between what is psychologically
real and what is spiritually valid. Hence the transcendental interpre¬
tation of the theory of religion also contains an important element of
truth, namely, that in religion the Unconditioned, the Valid, the
Eternal, the Absolute — that which lies at the bottom of everything
spiritual as spiritual — pierces directly into human consciousness.
This will be denied only by one who fails to understand it. Therefore,
to a great extent, Kant is right: in all religion there is something of
the “ conception of tire moral as a divine command Hegel is right:
in the religious element there is something of a “ relation of the spirit
to the absolute Spirit,” just as Schleiermacher’s doctrine of “ the feel¬
ing of absolute dependence ” emphasizes an important aspect of
religion. Who can seriously deny that Otto’s interpretation of religion
as the experience of the Numinous does emphasize an important ele¬
ment in all religion, and that in point of fact, as Otto says, profound
reverence, the trembling awe produced by the Numinous, is a feeling

4 Hence Schlatter, Das christliche Dogma, pp. 25 ff., rightly speaks of the
“ impossibility of avoiding the consciousness of God,” and in so doing is simply
following Reformation doctrine: “That within the human spirit there is a
sensus divinitatis, a feeling for the Divine, and, moreover, through natural
instinct, stands beyond question” (Institutes, I, 3, i). See also Kahler, Die
Wissenschaft der chr. Lehre, p. 113. The naturalistic explanation of religion
can evade this difficulty only by its (philosophically impossible) derivation of
all that is “ ideal ” from sense data, that is, through a defective theory of
knowledge.
5 Karl Barth in his essay on “Feuerbach” in Zwischen den Zeiten, 1927,
pp. 11-33.
 Revelation and Religion 261
that cannot be derived from any natural experience. In religion man
is feeling after that which is above him, and yet, so long as he is a
human being, makes itself known to him as near him and in him. The
transcendental theory of religion brings out the fact which the Chris¬
tian faith, even if in a different sense, likewise acknowledges: that
human existence always, and necessarily, consists in a relation with
God.
But the theory of transcendental philosophy is too abstract and
rational to do justice to real religion. For in real religion — and here I
refer to the content of all non-Christian religions — man always has
to do with powers which meet him in an irrational way outside him¬
self. The immanental religious interpretation of the transcendental
philosophy can find no real explanation of this aspect of religion —
for the sense of revelation, for the powerful character of the gods.
Quite improperly, it rationalizes and depersonalizes religion. For the
fact that in these religions man is dealing with a “ god ” or with
“ gods ’ and not with “ the Divine,” that these deities intervene in
human life, and make themselves known, and are discovered, not
merely on a basis of reflection, but on the basis of inner or outer re¬
ality, philosophy has no other explanation than this: that this hap¬
pens to be the primitive way of thinking, a product of the myth-form¬
ing imagination. It is at this point that the Christian explanation of
religion 6 begins.

3. The Christian interpretation is the most complex of all. It in¬

cludes the naturalistic, psychological theory, the sociological theory,
and that of transcendental philosophy, but it also brings with it a new
element, by means of which the other elements of explanation are in

6 Unfortunately no one has yet worked out a complete Christian doctrine of

the non-Christian religions, based on the concrete material provided by these
religions, and their religious testimony, which is conceived and carried out
from the standpoint of the Biblical faith. Most people who deal with the prob¬
lem of religion in general are either quite remote from the Christian faith or
they hold a rather relative point of view of Christianity. The others, who really
know what the Christian faith is, in contrast to all other forms of religion, do
not see the problem, and content themselves with making some quite general
statements. The nearest to that which is assumed here is Kahler, op. cit., pp.
109—177; von Oettingen, Lutherische Dogmatik, I, pp. 158-228, and, especially
instructive, even although with a Hegelian streak of evolutionistic optimism,
Dorner, Christl. Glaubenslehre, I, pp. 672-696. Apart from Dorner, however,
they remain in the sphere of abstractions.
262 Revelation and Reason

part transformed, and in part differently integrated. This new ele¬

ment is a twofold thesis: the religions, the religious life of the natural
man, are the product of the original divine revelation and of human
sin. Apart from real revelation the phenomenon of religion cannot
be understood. Even the most primitive polytheistic or prepolytheis-
tic idolatrous religion is unintelligible without the presupposition
of the universal revelation of God which has been given to all men
through the Creation. Therefore the Apostle, when he explains the
nature of the pagan religion, speaks, first of all, of this universal
self-manifestation of God to all men without exception through the
works of creation and through the writing of the law upon their
hearts. Likewise he admits that the Athenians “ ignorantly wor¬
ship ” “ an unknown God,” and that this is possible because they
were created in order that they should seek after the Lord, and
because, as he says in another passage, “ He has not left Himself
without a witness among them.” 7 The Holy Scriptures teach us to
understand all pagan religion from the standpoint of the revelation
through the Creation.
The original revelation 8 is not a historical entity. Like the Crea¬
tion, it is the presupposition of every individual and collective exist¬
ence. Men know something of God — yvovres tov Qeov because
—

“ God has revealed it unto them.” This revelation is not something

that took place long, long ago, and has now been relegated to the
far-distant past, but, as Paul says, it is a present reality — even when
men turn its truth into illusion. Behind all religion, therefore, there
lies, on the side of God, truth, communication, the testimony of
the Creator-God to himself.9 The heathen, says Calvin, are never
7 Acts 14:17; 17:27.
8 For the whole of Christian theology the doctrine of the original revelation,
which forms part of the Biblical history (Gen., chs. 1 ff.) is taken for granted.
Luther, for instance, in his exposition of Gen., ch. 2, expounds in detail tire
religion which was possible and real upon the basis of this original revelation.
Now, it is very remarkable that a school of theology which lays so much store
by the Bible and the Reformers should skate so lightly over the question of this
original revelation. Sin no more destroys the “ primitive state ” and the origi¬
nal revelation than it makes man no longer a creature created by God. It is obvi¬
ous that our changed view of history must involve a reformulation of the doc¬
trine of the primitive state, and also of the original revelation; but to ignore it
altogether can only lead to the greatest confusion. Cf. Der Mensch im Wider-
spruch, pp. 101 ff. [English trans., Man in Revolt, by O. Wyon. Tr.]
9 Kiihler and other modem theologians who take their stand on the Bible
have replaced the concept of the original revelation by that of the “religious
 Revelation and Religion 263

wholly left without any knowledge of God, “ since God reveals Him¬
self to them — admittedly only in a dim and veiled manner — or at
least He has given them a little taste of His truth. . . “ Even at
the time when He confined the grace of His covenant to Israel, still
He did not withhold the knowledge of Himself so completely from the
heathen that not a little spark of it reached them.” 10 Luther says,
For God has implanted such light and intelligence in human na¬
ture, that it may give a token, and moreover a picture of His divine
Governance, that He is the sole Lord and Creator of all creatures.”* 11
“ We must either deny heathenism the right to bear the name of
religion at all or we must admit that in it we see God’s acts, and His
revelation, even though this is said in a broad sense.” 12 There are
phenomena in the religions of non-Christian peoples which “we
must refer back to stirrings of the divine Spirit in their hearts.”13
The most important of these “ effects ” of the original revelation is
the sense of God, in general. Men have always had a certain knowl¬
edge (notitia) of God, and this knowledge of God “ will not allow
itself to be stifled. There may indeed have been people like the
Epicureans, Pliny, and the like, who deny it with their mouth . . .
but this does not help them; their conscience tells them otherwise ”
(Luther) ,14 Calvin teaches that this sense of God is so deeply inter¬
woven with the nature of man that “the knowledge (notitia) of
God and of ourself is connected by a mutual bond.”15 Hence the
transcendental theory of religion is both right and wrong: right, in
so far as it sees the sense of God as an integral element in the nature
of man; and wrong, in so far as the original revelation is different
from anything that man can come to know by his own efforts. For
the Biblical Christian doctrine of the original revelation is only one
half of the truth; the other half is the doctrine of original sin.

disposition.” But this does not solve the problem; it only pushes it farther back,
and diverts it into a subjective and anthropological direction. The question
should be put like this: What are the influences coming from the outside of
man which urge him to the formation of religious ideas and of religious phe¬
nomena? Kahler, for instance, recognizes this question (op. cit., pp. 117, 185),
but he does not answer it in a satisfactory manner.
10 Calvin, 49, 208.
11 Luther, E.A., 9, 4.
12 Dorner, op. cit., p. 679.
13 Ibid., p. 677.
“ Luther, W.A., 19, 206.
15 Calvin, Institutes, I, i, 3.
264 Revelation and Reason

This first, positive, point having been made, we must make the
second, negative, point equally clear: “ Religion ” is the product of
man’s sinful blindness. In the same passage, and indeed in the same
sentence, in which Paul speaks of the original revelation, he also
speaks of the original sin of all men: “ Because that, knowing God,
they glorified Him not as God . . . but became vain in their rea¬
sonings . . . and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for
the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-
footed beasts, and creeping things.” 16 The God of the “ other reli¬
gions ” is always an idol. The religious forms of the imagination
always follow the law of secularization, either in the form of making
finite — idolatry in the ordinary, polytheistic sense — or in the form
of depersonalization, in which the idea of God is dissolved into an
abstraction. The paradoxical truth of the Living God — that He is
absolute Person — is tom asunder into nonparadoxical parts. Reli¬
gions of one kind “ personalize ” God, and make Him finite, in the
form of myths; the other kind dissolves Him into abstract specula¬
tion. The reason for this transformation of the divine revelation into
human illusion, however, is not an undeveloped consciousness, a
condition of childish immaturity, but it is due to the fact that “ they
glorified Him not as God, neither gave Him thanks.” If the secu¬
larization, the blending of God with nature and man, is the first
phenomenon, then the cor incurvatum in se, egocentricity, or an¬
thropocentrism, or eudaemonism, that is, the failure to give glory
to God, or self-seeking, is the deepest motive of all the “ other re¬
ligions,” and indeed of man as a whole. The original sin of man
breaks out first of all, and mainly, in his religion: the essence of
original sin is man’s apostasy and his inveterate tendency to be ab¬
sorbed in himself. Neither this original revelation nor original sin
can be placed within the historical category. This fact of original
sin is always at work beneath the surface of human life; it is the
fundamental principle within human history as a whole, and within
the life of each individual.
All empirical religion, to use mathematical terms, is the “prod¬
uct ” of these two “ factors ”17 combined with others, which

16 P. 257(a); Rom. 1:21 ff.

17 The Reformation doctrine of the “ other religions ” consists essentially
in this dual thesis. When one element in this dialectic is removed, then there
arises a perversion of this doctrine — either in a Naturalistic or in an Idealistic
 Revelation and Religion 265
through this are brought into play. These two original elements,
however, are so closely interwoven that in our efforts to explain we
cannot always distinguish the one from the other. For this very
reason the Naturalistic and the Idealistic theories of religion are
equally right and equally wrong: the Naturalistic theory, which
sees religion only from “ below,” and the Idealistic theory, which
sees it only from “ above.” Naturalism does not know how very
much “ from below ” the all-too-human element in religion is — it
only knows the concept of nature, but not that of sin, which here
receives a new name, the daemonic. And Idealism does not know
how very much “ from above ” the divine element is, for indeed it
does not know the concept of creation, but only of immanence;
hence in unconscious arrogance it makes a divine gift into an attri¬
bute of human nature.
Only from the standpoint of the Word of God can we understand
the phenomenon of human religion, with all that it contains of won¬
derful and terrible, sublime and gruesome elements. From that
standpoint alone can we do justice to its impressive, as well as to
its repellent, elements, to those which are divinely true and to those
which are demoniacally false. In all religion there is a recollection
of the divine truth which has been lost; in all there is a longing after
the divine Light and the divine Love; but in all religion also there
yawns an abyss of daemonic distortion of the truth, and of man’s
effort to escape from God. In all religion,18 even in the most primi¬
tive form of idolatry, there is something of reverence and gratitude
toward a Power on which man knows himself to be dependent,
which is different from his dependence on natural facts; but in all
religion too, even in the “ higher religions,” this reverence is min¬
gled with fear of the absolutely Terrible, which only leads to a slav¬
ish submission to overwhelming Power, while gratitude is mingled
with a selfish longing for happiness, for which the Deity is “ used.”
All religion is aware of God, that is, of something that is neither
the world nor man — or it would not be religion; but it is always at
the same time a blend of God and the world, or of God and the self.
sense. Hence what we need is a Christian “philosophy of mythology,” like
that of Schelling, from which indeed we can learn a great deal, but which
breaks down at the decisive point, the understanding of sin.
18 On the following cf. especially Kraemer, op. cit., a work which combines
in a unique way erudition and an independent view of the religions with solid
Reformation and Biblical theology.
266 Revelation and Reason

Thus it is the deification of the world, or the deification of the self,

and often both at once. The equally false separation between God
and the world in Deism is no longer religion, but a rationalistic
negation of religion, which leads directly to agnosticism or to athe¬
ism; yet even self-deification, as in original Buddhism, leading to
the “ negative mysticism ” of nirvana, becomes “ religious atheism.”
Strict monotheism alone makes a distinction between the creatures
and God, without separating the two in a Deistic manner; but a
monotheism of this kind flourishes only on the soil of Biblical revela¬
tion. All “ approximations ” to it are colored by the tendency to
blur the distinction. This destruction of the idea of God is closely
related to the destruction of the direction of the will: all non-Bibli-
cal religion is essentially eudaemonistic and anthropocentric in
tendency, if not actually self-centered. Even in his worship of God
man seeks himself, his own salvation; even in his surrender to the
Deity he wants to find his own security. All these elements are con¬
tained in the brief Pauline formula, and in so doing the nature of
religion is adequately characterized. But his final judgment is: il¬
lusion, unreality. The distinctive mark of non-Biblical religion is its
lack of realism. Man cannot, dare not, see himself as he is; therefore
he cannot and will not see God as He is. The moment that the sin¬
ner sees himself as a sinner his sin falls away from him; but he can¬
not do this of himself: he can do this only when God reveals him to
himself, and reveals Himself in such a way that the sinner dares to
open himself to the truth. This is the secret of that truth of revela¬
tion which is also called the forgiveness of sins. “ Therefore the true
and only religion, the only true divine worship, is to believe in the
free forgiveness of our sins, without works, out of pure grace alone.
... To trust in this God, who is gracious to us out of pure love
and who does us good ‘ for nothing,’ that is the true religion and the
true righteousness ’’(Luther).19 All human religion, because, and in
so far as, it does not know this God, is falsa religio; it means leaving
God out of account. We will now proceed to deal with this question
in more detail.

4. The first fact that we have to consider is the universal extent

of religion on the one hand, and the possibility and reality of irre-
ligion and atheism on the other hand. All attempts to find a people
19 Luther, W.A., 25, 287.
 Revelation and Religion 267

without a religion have proved unsuccessful. Discoveries made dur-

ing the excavation of ancient sites give clear evidence of the exist¬
ence of religious views and customs.20 Among the peoples of the
ancient world in particular, and among primitive peoples, religion
is taken for granted; indeed, it naturally takes a prominent place in
their individual and social life. The same is true of the individual
human being of the present day. The consciousness of something
sacred, the sense of reverence, and the idea of God, are never wholly
absent from any human being. It is true that education and tradi¬
tion play a great part in all this, but tradition itself cannot be
ultimately deiived from tradition, and education cannot create any¬
thing; it can only develop what was already there in germ.
But whereas among the primitive peoples of antiquity, and al¬
most down to modern times, irreligion was an exception, an anom¬
aly within the society which took religion for granted as part of
its life, tlie course of modem development reveals more and more
the phenomenon of mass atheism and collective irreligion. This fact
is a great embarrassment21 for the Idealistic theory of religion,
while from the standpoint of the Christian faith this possibility was
always, from the outset, taken into account. It is true that atheism
or irreligion does not extend, even in a society bereft of religion, to
the loss of the idea of God, or to complete callousness toward the
idea of the Holy,22 but on occasions it does come very near to this
extreme.
At the same time the following facts should be borne in mind.
First, atheism is often more truly “religious ” than the religiosity it
attacks.^3 Those who know religion only in its worst and most dis¬
torted forms, as hypocrisy or as a cover for the “ all-too-human ”
element, cannot express their consciousness of the Holy in any other
form save that of protest. Atheistic objectors, accusers of the divine

20 Cf. P. Wilhelm Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee.

21 Since for Idealism and for every kind of transcendental philosophical
view of religion the sense of God and religion are identical, and thus both nec¬
essarily belong to the nature of man, the fact of godlessness has to be reinter¬
preted in the sense of being merely a feebly developed religious sense. Godless¬
ness differs from religion only in quantity and in a dynamic understanding of it.
It is then a result of defective intellectual development; actually it appears of-
tener among highly educated people than among the less educated.
22 See above what Luther says (p. 263) about the Epicureans.
23 We can see this root of atheism very plainly, especially in classical phil¬
osophy, but it is also visible in Nietzsche and Marx.
268 Revelation and Reason

Governance of the world, are as a rule not “ godless ” at all; very

often the bitter invectives which they hurl at what they call the
“ injustice ” of “ heaven ” actually contain a passionate love of
justice. In the name of the divine justice they protest against the
world’s injustice, which, however, they identify with their own idea
of God. Similarly, the godlessness of the modem labor movement,
which found such a terrible expression in the Bolshevist Revolution,
can be understood only when we realize its passionate hatred of a
bourgeois society which justifies its unjust and inhuman enjoyment
of privilege by religious theories, and defends its privileges by
means of ecclesiastical politics. Finally, we must say that it is pre¬
cisely the consciously “ godless ” man who always lives on the idea
of God, in the very fact of his negation. The most difficult thing to
explain is not this aggressive atheism, but complete religious in¬
difference.
But when we start from the Christian conception of sin, then god¬
lessness of all kinds — both the polemically aggressive kind (the pas¬
sionate hatred of God and of religion) and complete religious indif¬
ference — lies, from the outset, within the realm of possibility. “ The
mind of the flesh is enmity against God.” 24 The sinful man, in spite
of the fact that God makes Himself known to him in the Creation and
in conscience, can not only flee from Him, but he can do the opposite
and intensify his striving for independence to the point of denying
God. The titanic revolt against the very existence of God is one form
of sin; another form is the effort to escape from God, which extends
to complete forgetfulness of Him.23 The sinful human being is able
to turn his back upon God, and to immerse himself so completely in
the affairs of this life that in the end he forgets God entirely. Spiritual
sterility, indeed, may reach such a pitch that human beings may no
longer have any interest in anything beyond the immediate and
purely natural fulfillment of human needs; this loss of interest pro¬
duces a state of almost total insensibility to the claims of any higher
sphere.
Above all, we must not overlook the fact that the religious con¬
sciousness may clothe itself in apparently purely secular forms.
When God is got rid of, something else has to take His place - blood
and soil, state and nation, eros, art, science, technics, sport.26 The
24 Rom. 8:7.
25 Cf. the degrees of unspirituality in Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death.
26 See Luther’s Larger Catechism on the First Commandment.
 Revelation and Religion 269

religious element is always present where people become fanatical,

where absolute values are concerned, even though the things them¬
selves may be small and insignificant enough. People who have got
rid of God are usually their own god, and all the passion which
should serve the glory of God is devoted to the interests of the self.
A parallel phenomenon, which has been brought to light by the dis¬
coveries of modern psychoanalysis, is this: the religious element
which has been repressed asserts its presence all the more strongly
in the unconscious. It comes out in dreams, in neuroses, in depravity,
in criminal tendencies, and in illness of all kinds.27 Unfortunately the
psychology and phenomenology of the repression of the religious
instinct has not yet been written; it would be an amazing science,
which would throw a great deal of light upon perplexing phe¬
nomena in human life.
Man may indeed try to escape from God, but God never lets him
go completely. Man may be godless — that is indeed the proper telos
of sin — but he cannot prevent himself making an idol to take the
place of God. “ The heart of man must have a god, that is, something
in which he puts his confidence, something which is a comfort to
him. . . . Now he must have either the true God or a false god ”
(Luther). The story of modern humanity is full of temples erected
to substitute deities. Theophil Spoerri has shown this very plainly in
his book Gotter des Abendlandes (Gods of the West). It is still prob¬
ably true that, as Luther says, “ man must always have either a god
or an idol.” *

5. The dialectical Christian conception of religion makes it clear

that all religious forms of life, whether primitive or highly cultivated,
ancient or modern, individual or collective, ideas or actions, reveal a
dichotomy.28 Polytheism divides the nature of the one God into two
groups of gods, good and evil, loving and cruel. The more personal
27 See the very interesting detailed example of a neurosis with an uncon¬
scious religious basis in Jung’s Psychology and Religion.
9 [“ Gott oder Abgott.” Tr.]
28 In recent days attempts have been made also from the theological side
to construct a typology of religions (cf. S0derblom, Naturliche Theologie und
Religionsgeschichte). Since, however, they usually start from the axiom that
“ religion, in spite of the differences and contrasts, forms a connected whole
. . . to which also Christianity must be reckoned” (S0derblom, p. 77), be¬
hind these attempts almost without exception there is a more or less Idealistic
concept of religion, which does not allow the Christian truth of the nature of
the religions to appear.
270 Revelation and Reason

the conception of the gods, the more impotent do they become, the
more are they dominated by an impersonal destiny of fate; the more
intellectual the religion, the more abstract and impersonal it be¬
comes; it then develops into a rational “ religion without revelation,”
either in the form of speculative mysticism or of religious moralism.
The more the moral element predominates, the weaker does the reli¬
gious element become, and the converse is also true. Primitive reli¬
gion still contains all these elements, undifferentiated, but here too
the connection of the religious element with the instinctive and the
chaotic irrational elements reaches its zenith. The history of religion
cannot show any religious system that is fully spiritual and yet con¬
tains within itself both personal and revealed elements; nor can it
point to an ethical movement that does not drift away from true
religion, nor does it know a religious life that becomes more human
as it becomes more religious, a religion in which the truly divine and
the truly human are combined, and indeed are one. This oneness
can be found only in that which is more than religion, in the divine
revelation in Jesus Christ.

6. Jesus Christ is both the Fulfillment of all religion and the Judg¬
ment on all religion. As the Fulfiller, He is the Truth which these reli¬
gions seek in vain. There is no phenomenon in the history of religion
that does not point toward Him: the bloody sacrifice of expiation,
the sacred meal, the ecstatic element, the seeking of the Holy
Spirit, the magical element, the indication of the dynamis of God
in the reality of His revelation, prayer, the divine Father, and the
divine Judge. All this the world of religions knows in a fragmentary
and distorted form, as almost unrecognizable “ relics ” of an
“ original ” revelation. From the standpoint of Jesus Christ, the
non-Christian religions seem like stammering words from some half-
forgotten saying. None of them is without a breath of the Ploly, and
yet none of them is the Holy. None is without its impressive truth,
and yet none of them is the Truth; for their Truth is Jesus Christ.
But the atheistic protest against religion is also fulfilled in Jesus
Christ. All religion creates a gulf between the sacred and the secular;
it is religion in contrast to the secular. In Jesus this contrast is ex¬
plicitly denied; nothing is secular, all is sacred, for all belongs to
God. Jesus rejects holy seasons, holy persons, holy places, specially
holy acts, and indeed, too, the holy gods; for what the religions know
 Revelation and Religion 271

as gods are not truly holy, not truly divine. In Jesus the protest of
the atheist has as much right as religion.
For Jesus Christ is not only the Fulfillment; He is also the Judg¬
ment on all religion. Viewed in His light, all religious systems ap¬
pear untrue, unbelieving, and indeed godless. In sacrifice man seeks
to placate God; in prayer he seeks to make use of Him; the very fact
of the multiplicity of the gods is an insult to the idea of God; their
supposed sacredness is mixed with that which is cruel and horrible,
their kindness with moral laxity and favoritism. Their supramundane
nature is too earthly, too human, too close to nature. And the higher
religions — what is mysticism other than the self-deification of man?
What is religious moralism other than the self-confidence of man who
believes he can redeem himself? The higher the intellectual develop¬
ment of a religion, the more intense is its opposition to the truth re¬
vealed in Christ. The Jews, not the pagans; the high priests and the
scribes, not the pagan representative of the emperor, willed the cruci¬
fixion of Jesus. There is only one religion that rivals Judaism in its
hatred of Christ, and that is Islam.
None of the religions knows the self-communication of the holy
and merciful God. Hence in the last resort they are all religions of
self-redemption. There is, it is true, the “ grace ” religion of India,
with its gentle practice of bhakti, of the love of God, and its doc¬
trine that the divine grace is not appropriated by man, but that it
appropriates him, as a mother cat picks up and carries off her kitten
in her mouth, in contrast to the mother monkey to whom the baby
monkey clings by his own efforts.29 But the “ grace ” which is here
meant is not the forgiveness of sin; thus it is not the grace of the holy
God, in whose presence sin is guilt and who takes guilt seriously. It
is not the grace that comes to us in the self-acting intervention of
God in the history of mankind, but a grace that is discovered upon a
mystical “way” of meditative recollection by man. Nor is this
“ grace ” communion with God, and through Him with all creatures,
but it is union with God, and forgetfulness of all that is creaturely,
which is a mere illusion.
In the history of religion, in Eastern Buddhism there is the doctrine
of grace of the Amita Buddha. But this Amita Buddha, to call on
whom brings salvation, is not the Creator, the Lord of heaven and
29 Cf. Otto, Die Gnadenreligion Indiens und das Christentum, and Konow
in Chantepie’s Lehrbuch, II, p. 159.
272 Revelation and Reason

earth, not the Holy God, who will not allow Himself to be mocked;
and this salvation is not the vision of God face to face, not the ful¬
fillment of the creaturely in fellowship with the divine Person, but
nirvana, dissolution into nothingness. The Eastern religions of grace
come no less under the judgment of Christ than the two Semitic
monotheistic religions which lay so much stress on the will, and on
righteousness through “ works.” 30
The only power that in principle unconditionally excludes self¬
redemption is the message of the mediation of Jesus Christ, who has
given Himself for us, and who gives to those who believe in Him
eternal life. Here is the “ religion ” in which the truly divine is at the
same time the truly human; the Absolute at the same time the per¬
sonal; the religious at the same time the or dinary-hum an; the his¬
torical revelation which is at the same time the original revelation;
the “ religion ” in which alone there is shown to us the glory and the
love of God, His power, and the responsibility of man, the mercy
which gives all, and the holiness which demands all.
But this revelation ought not to be called “ religion,” nor should
faith in it bear this name. For in Jesus Christ “ the Christian religion ”
is judged as much as the other religions. This precisely is the center
of the “ doctrine of justification,” of the sola gratia and sola fide: that
even the Christian and religious man is not “ justified ” by his piety,
that even his piety needs the forgiving grace of Christ. Indeed, the
touchstone of true faith is the fact that the Christian thus believes
beyond his own faith, that he is aware of his own sinfulness, even
though he is Christian and genuinely “ devout.” “ True religion ” can
therefore consist only in the fact that our trust is not in “ religion ” at
all, but wholly and solely in that divine mercy which meets us in
God’s revelation, and that all our rightful practices of piety are shot
through and through with this conviction. It lies in the nature of sin
that it even captures the highest in man. It is possible for man to
understand the Christian faith in such a way that in it he seeks him¬
self instead of God; that he seeks to assert himself and to “ realize ”
himself, instead of seeking the glory of God. The history of Christian-

30 Luther included all non-Christocentric religion under the one heading,

“righteousness of works, self-redemption.” In so far as even the “religions of
grace ” are ultimately based upon a eudaemonistic striving and therefore are
anthropocentric and not tlieocentric in tendency, he is right; but this difference
should be borne in mind. Cf. Vossberg, Luthers Kritik aller Religion.
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 273

ity, of the Christian religion,” is only too full of proofs of this state-
ment. Only when we accept this judgment on our Christianity, and in
spite of this are in good heart, do we show that we have understood
what is true and what is false in religion. The judgment cannot be
other than this: “ I am the Truth ” - and He is also “ the Way and the
Life.”

18. BIBLICAL FAITH AND CRITICISM

The Christian faith as revelation is a Biblical faith. We possess the

historical revelation of God in the Old Covenant, and in Jesus Christ,
in the Holy Scriptures alone.
The destruction of this foundation would mean the destruction
of the Christian faith and of the Church. The fate of the Bible is the
fate of Christendom. It is therefore quite clear (and not in tire least
due to a misunderstanding) why the Church reacted so violently
against the historical criticism which undermined “ the position of
the Bible as revelation,” 1 and why it was that the Church adopted
an extremely defensive attitude. It is, however, equally clear, and
just as little due to a misunderstanding, that the work of criticism
went on unhindered by the defensive attitude of the Church, and
that, in spite of all the charges of “ heresy ” brought against it, it was
not in the least perturbed. After some stormy decades the tumult
raised by this question has gradually died down in the Church, and
things are quieter in the theological camp. We must not, however,
allow this apparent calmness to deceive us into thinking that the
problem of Biblical faith and Biblical criticism has ever been “ set¬
tled ” once for all. Today, at a time when Biblical orthodoxy is again
in the ascendant, and when there is also a very radical tendency in
the sphere of criticism, we are confronted once more with a particu¬
lar instance of the general problem of revelation and reason.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM

1. So long as the ecclesiastical principle which governed the view

of the Scriptures was understood in terms of the orthodox doctrine
1 Cf. the article by Kahler with this title in Dogmatische Zeitfragen, I,
pp. 176-218. Forty years of critical research have not made any practical dif¬
ference in this point of view first put forth by Kahler.
274 Revelation and Reason

of verbal inspiration, even the smallest concession to “ Biblical criti¬

cism ” — whether from the side of natural science or from that of
historical science — was a catastrophe for the whole fabric of the
doctrine of the Church. If the Bible is an infallible book, written
down under the dictation of the Holy Spirit, then no Biblical criti¬
cism could exist — no admission of any inconsistencies, errors, or
mistakes in the Bible. Here the slogan was, “ Everything must be be¬
lieved, or nothing will be believed.” 2 At one point, to be sure, the
anticritical campaign began too late: in the question of the form of
the text. Which of the few hundreds or thousands of Biblical texts
was the one that had been divinely dictated? Even the most orthodox
theology was brought to a standstill by this so-called “ lower criti¬
cism,” save when it cut the Gordian knot by the decision that
the Bible translation of Martin Luther,3 or the Vulgate of Saint
Jerome,4 was the divinely inspired standard text for the Church. But
once textual criticism had been accepted it was soon discovered that
the text might need to face a far more searching criticism; the critics
who pointed out all kinds of inconsistencies or contradictions in the
Bible were confronted with a hypothetical faultless and consistent
text. The Bible “ at present ” was not free from errors, it was true, but
the “ original ” text was perfect.5 6 Since, however, the divergence of
this original text from the present text must be considerable, if the
critical observations on the present text were to be satisfied, there
came into being an infallible Bible-X, of which two things only
were known: first, that it was the infallible word of God; and,
secondly, that although it was very different from the present one,

2 Quenstedt, Theol. didact. polem., I, p. 71: “If anything had been written
in the canonical books in a human manner or by human industry, and not by
divine inspiration, then the reliability (firmitas) and certainty of the Scriptures
would be endangered, the authority of the Scriptures, which is un if ormiter
divina, would be lost, and our faith would be shaken.” It is well known that
this point of view was held not only by isolated theologians, but that even in
the Formula consensus Helvetica it was carried through with such devastating
logic that it led to the assertion that even the Hebrew points were inspired.
s Echternach, in Es steht geschrieben, claims this honor for Luther’s trans¬
lation (Berlin, 1937).
4 The Tridentinum teaches ex cathedral on the Vulgate ut haec ipsa vetus
et vulgata editio ... in publicis lectionibus, disputationibus, praedicationibus
et expositionibus pro authentic^ habeatur et quod nemo illam reicere quovis
praetextu audeat vel praesumat (Denzinger, 785).
6 This is the view of the orthodox Presbyterian School of Theology (Hodge-
Warfield) in Princeton.
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 275

yet it was still the same Bible. Thus an otherwise absolutely honora¬
ble orthodox view of the authority of the Bible was forced to descend
to apologetic artifices of this kind. As a result the theology of the
Church became, and rightly, the butt of scientific criticism. In the
long run this solution was untenable. At present it only continues to
drag out an unhappy existence in certain Fundamentalist circles.

2. This orthodox doctrine of Scripture, like orthodoxy as a whole,

was possible only because the real Reformation doctrine of faith
and of the Scriptures had been forgotten. To excuse such forgetful¬
ness, however, there is the fact that the Reformers themselves were
not able to think out to a logical conclusion their new, living under¬
standing of the Word of God in the Holy Scriptures, but that again
and again they returned to the traditional orthodox doctrine of the
infallible letter ’ of the Bible, which could not be attacked at any
point. Indeed, they themselves were not fully aware of the sig¬
nificance of their new knowledge, and of its incompatibility with the
traditional view. Luther, for instance, on the one hand expressed
himself with amazing freedom about certain books in the Old Testa¬
ment and in the New Testament; then suddenly, when engaged
in controversy, he would appeal to the letter of Scripture as in¬
fallible because it was wholly and literally inspired by God. On
the whole we may say that Zwingli kept most strictly to the Re¬
formation line of development in all his Biblical work, whereas
Calvin,6 in spite of the fact that in his exegesis the principles of
the Reformation predominated, in the dogmatic formulation of the
authority of the Bible he was already entirely under the sway
of the orthodox view of literal divine inspiration. Thus we can
understand that when Protestant theologians tried to defend their
position at a time when the original impetus of the Reformation
was exhausted, and their opponents — whether of the Left or of the
Right — were becoming more and more active, they naturally seized
on the reactionary elements in the Reformers’ writings, and used
them to support their own views. Thus they not only concealed the
6 Cf. Cramer, De heilige Schrift bij Calvin, Calvins kritische bonding
tegenover de Schrift, pp. 116 ff. But his dogmatic formulation is in contradic¬
tion to it: We must sine exceptione quidquid in sacris scripturis traditum est
mansueta docilitate amplecti (Institutes, I, 18, 4). The authors of the books of
the Bible are sancti spiritus amanuenses and therefore their writings are pro
oraculis Dei habenda (Ibid., IV, 8, 9).
276 Revelation and Reason

new knowledge, but in their handling of the orthodox principle and

its dogmatic formulation, they went much farther than anyone had
gone so far; thus in actual practice they became “ more Papist than
the Pope.”
But if we hold firmly to the Reformation principle of the Scriptures
— Christus dominus et rex scripturae — then, in principle, the prob¬
lem of Bible faith and Bible criticism is solved. The Bible is the
human, and therefore not the infallible, witness to the divine revela¬
tion in the Old Covenant and in the history of the incarnate Son of
God. Luther’s saying that the Scriptures are “ the manger in which
Christ lies ” 7 provided the right point of contact for the dogma con¬
cerning the Bible: the Church must develop its doctrine of the
Scriptures on the same lines as the doctrine of the two natures. The
Bible shares in the glory of the divinity of Christ and in the lowliness
of His humanity. Likewise Calvin’s thoughtful reflections on the dif¬
ference between the Old and the New Testaments,8 with his guiding
principle of the divine economy, that is, of God’s adaptation to the
historical situation, were moving toward a truly historical conception
of Scripture and of revelation.
Just as Luther understood how to combine his vigorous belief in
the Bible with critical insight into the human character of the his¬
torical narrative of the Old Testament, or with his severe criticism of
the Epistle of James, and his depreciation of the book of Revela¬
tion, and as Calvin, in his believing view of the unity of the two
Testaments, was not disturbed by the critical observation of the great
difference between them, so the Church must leam to perceive, and
to appropriate, the divine content of revelation in the human and
imperfect form of these writings. The Church must learn to combine
Biblical faith with Biblical criticism, just as she has had to learn that
in perceiving the Godhead of Christ she must not forget His true
humanity, and in the Jesus who could be tired, hungry, troubled, and
sad, to perceive and to grasp die eternal Son of God.

THE BIBLICAL PICTURE OF THE WORLD

3. It is a pity that most of the theologians of the present day seem

to have forgotten that modem natural science has had to fight very
hard against theologians as a whole, and against the ecclesiastical
7 Luther, Vorrede zwn Alten Testament.
8 See above, p. 200.
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 271

authorities, as the defenders of revealed Biblical doctrine. Lay peo¬

ple, however, who as a rule are much more closely connected with
the spheres involved in these controversies, usually have a longer
memory. They do not forget how the Church fought against Coper¬
nicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Kepler, and Newton, in the name of
the infallible authority of the Bible; nor do they forget the ecclesi¬
astical hostility to Darwin and Lyell.® In this conflict there has been
more than one martyr, this time not on the side of the Church and of
the faith, but on the side of the world and of reason.10 Hence after
centuries of extremely bitter hostility against science in the name of
the Bible, theology has no right to behave now as though the whole
matter were a trifle. Theology has no right to act thus for the simple
reason that these questions still embarrass serious Christians who
are natural scientists, and serious natural scientists who would like
to believe in Christ.
At three points one and the same fight had to be fought, and at all
three points it was decided against the champions of the authority
of the Bible - but not against the Bible itself. The first conflict con¬
cerned the Biblical view of space; the second, the Biblical view of
time; the third, the Biblical view of the earliest history of mankind.
The conflict about space is connected with the names of Coper¬
nicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. This struggle, in contrast with
the third one, has been fought to a finish. No one will dare any longer
to call the modem scientific view a “ mere hypothesis.” Rather, for
some time past ecclesiastical Apologists have tried to cover her re¬
treat from this position by a different maneuver, namely, by the
assertion that there is no conflict of any kind between that which
the Bible teaches and that which science teaches. The men of the
period of the Reformation who called Copernicus a fool thought
differently. “ These fools want to turn the whole science of astronomy

9 See the work, which has already been mentioned, by White on the feud
between science and theology. Also Fueter, Geschichte der exakten Wissen-
schaften in der schweizerischen Aufklarung.
10 “ Even scholars must have their martyrology,” says Scheuchzer, who had
himself suffered in this way (quoted by Fueter, op. cit., p. 34). Even as late
as 1721, Scheuchzer was severely reprimanded by the censors of the city of
Zurich and told that he must alter his views on the Copernican teaching on
the movement of the earth and the fact that the sun stands still, “which are
against our recepta sijstemata, against the knowledge of the higher authorities,
and disturb the general quietness of mind in Church and school” (op. cit.,
p. 40, Fueter).
278 Revelation and Reason

topsy-turvy, but the Holy Scriptures tell us that Joshua told the sun
to stand still and not the earth.”11 It is both ridiculous and disgrace¬
ful, when the theological apologetic which for two hundred years
fought against Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, in the name
of the Bible, now that the matter has been decided against it, main¬
tains that there is no conflict at all. There is no doubt that there is
one: the Biblical view of the world, like that of the ancient world as
a whole, is geocentric. The modem science of astrophysics proves
that the geocentric view of the world in the Bible is untenable. These
two statements are established, and anyone who tries to shake them
is guilty of just such dishonest artifices as were brought against
science three hundred years ago. The theory of Copernicus was only
the first stage of that immense enlargement of space which still
takes place with every fresh achievement of the largest telescope.
For all lovers of truth the second problem, the expansion of the
view of time, has been likewise decided. Here too the literal words
of the Bible leave us in no doubt; in this neither Luther nor Calvin
nor the other defenders of the theory were deceived, namely, that
according to the view of the Bible the world is six thousand years old.
The vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Lightfoot, even
thought that he could prove definitely that the world was created
on October 23, 4004 b.c., at nine o’clock in the morning.12 All ex¬
positors of the Scriptures were agreed that the date could be stated
with almost complete accuracy on the basis of the internal evidence
of the Scriptures themselves.13 The destruction of this view of time
had to wait longer than that of space; but once Lyell had made the
beginning in the sphere of geology it was no less radical. Today we
measure distances between the stars of one hundred and fifty millions

11 This is according to Aurifhaber’s edition of Luther’s Tischreden. The

more reliable account by Lauterbach, Ti. IV, 4638, sounds much calmer, but
essentially it says the same thing. Calvin scolds Plato because he who is other¬
wise the most pious and reasonable of philosophers, ipse quoque in rotundo
suo evanescit, with a sidelong glance at others, qui multo absurdius ineptiunt.
Works, 2, 49. Actually nos certe non ignoramus finitum esse coeli circuitum et
terram instar globuli in medio locatam esse, Works, 23, 9. For the rest, to the
honor of Lutheranism it must be said that in its sphere, and even under the
influence of theologians, the views of Copernicus found an earlier entrance than
elsewhere. Cf. Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums, I, 364.
12 Cf. White, op. cit., pp. 19 ff. Certainly White’s statements require to be
drastically re-examined.
13 Thus also Luther and Calvin in their commentaries on Genesis.
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 279
of light years. The unimaginable expansion of space has also become
directly and equally an unimaginable expansion of time.
These two revolutions in thought signified, it is true, vast up-
heavals in men’s outlook on life as a whole, and in their feeling about
life, but they did not directly affect vital points in Christian dogma.
Why should God not have created a far larger space than used to be
thought? Why should not the temporal beginning of the world be
moved back much farther than men used to think it should? Both
points only aroused so much passion because they seemed to en¬
danger the authority of the Scriptures.
But the third attack seemed to be directed toward a fundamental
doctrine of the Christian faith, namely, against the doctrine of a
historical paradise and the Fall, of a historical descent of the whole
human race from our original parents, who were created more or
less perfect beings, even though they fell from this high destiny.
This attack is connected especially with the name of Darwin; hence
for fifty years his name was hated as that of a heretic, like the names
of Copernicus and Galileo before him.14 Here too the apologetic of
the Church resorted to the usual artifices: “Mere hypothesis!”
“ Contradictory views among scholars,” et cetera. In point of fact,
we must here make a distinction between the theory of Darwin in
the narrower and in the broader sense. Darwinism in the narrower
sense — the theory of natural selection as the only, or the chief,
factor in the development of the species — is actually, in the view
of many scholars, only a hypothesis; but the theory of evolution in
the broader sense — that is, the view that the species which we see in
the world at the present day have been preceded by countless others,
from which they are directly and causally descended, and the view
that even man must be regarded as forming part of this series of evolu¬
tion — has for a long while past left the stage of plausible hypothesis
behind, and, like the teaching of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton,
has become scientific truth, with which all honest theology has to
come to terms, just as it has had to do with both the other disturbing
revelations of truth. But how is this to be done?
14 The bitterness of the struggle was due not only to the narrow-mindedness
of the theologians, but also very often to the cynical naturalism of the natural
scientists, who deduced from the new theory precisely those materialistic re¬
sults which the theologians feared. The situation was quite different in the
Copernican conflict. Behind this view there were men of strong Christian faith
and impressively reverent minds, like Kepler.
280 Revelation and Reason

The answer is: Simply by taking her own truth seriously. Before
the great discoveries of natural science were made, the Reformers
had gained — or regained — a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures,
which, taken seriously, wholly excluded a conflict with natural
science. This truth is that the Holy Scriptures contain no divine ora¬
cles about all kinds of possible cosmological facts, but they are the
human witness to God’s saving revelation in the Old Testament, and
above all in Jesus Christ.15 Christ is the Word of God. The Scriptures
are the Word of God, because, and in so far as, they give us Christ.
What concerns us is this Word of God, and not any other forms of
knowledge which, in principle, belong to the sphere of human re¬
search. What lies in the sphere of research is the world; the object of
faith, as such, does not lie within the sphere of human research. For
the object of faith is nothing other than God Himself, in His reveal¬
ing and redeeming action.
The theology of the Church came into conflict with science because
its representatives forgot this principle; because they did not under¬
stand the Bible as it ought to be understood according to its own
witness to itself; because they understood the Bible in a Judaistic,
rabbinical way, instead of regarding it in a Prophetic and Apostolic
way. In principle the Reformers had eliminated this leaven of Juda¬
ism and legalism, but they did not complete the process. For them
the Bible still remained a book with authoritative teaching on cos¬
mology and history. That is why even they thought they ought to
scold Copernicus for being either a fool or a rebel against the Word
of God. Hence the structure of orthodoxy had to be rudely shaken,
in order to compel Protestant theology to rethink her own classic
doctrine of Scripture. When she did so, then it became evident that
none of these “ revolutionary ” discoveries in the sphere of knowl¬
edge, not even that of Darwin, affected any one of the parts of the
real Biblical faith; that it was never the truth itself that was touched,
but only the external view of the world. The statement, “ In the be¬
ginning God created the heaven and the earth,” is just as valid today,
in the days of the telescope on Mount Wilson, as ever, and Darwin-
15 Galileo, “The aim of the Holy Spirit in the Holy Scriptures is much
higher than that of teaching us the wisdom of this world ” (in De sacrae
scripturae testimoniis, quoted by Fueter, op. cit., p. 36). Similarly in a letter to
the Grand Duchess Christine, May 16, 1615, “ The purpose of the Holy Spirit
is to teach us how we are to reach Heaven, and not how the heavens are
moved” (quoted in Zockler, Gottes Zeugen im Reich der Natur, p. 187).
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 281
ism has not made the slightest difference to the statement that “ God
created man in His image,” in so far as evolution has become part
of the world outlook of every educated person. But theology should
now serve the Church by completing the process of disentangling
the truth itself, honestly and plainly, from the ancient, cosmological
view.16

HISTORICAL BIBLICAL CRITICISM

4. The Christian faith does not presuppose any definite view of

the world as preferable to another; it can be combined with the
modern scientific view just as well as with the ancient prescientific
view. But it does contain certain historical statements, and, there¬
fore, in the sphere of historical science a conflict with faith is always
a possibility, at least in theory. Biblical theology is not only a theol¬
ogy of the Word, but also of facts, and it is true of such facts which
are at the same time the object of historical research. The article of
the Creed, ‘ Crucified under Pontius Pilate,” reminds us of this. It
forms part of the “ offense ” of the Christian faith that, in contrast
to mysticism or to rational moralistic theism, it is connected with
historic facts, which are the object of historical research.
An effort has been made to avoid this possibility of conflict by
sublimating Christianity into a Christianity of timeless ideas. But this
attempt at saving the situation was fatal for the Christian faith. An¬
other effort to evade this difficulty has been to depreciate the fact,
in comparison with the “ given Word.” 17 The Word has been given
to us; the facts that lie behind it do not concern us; all we have to
inquire into is the meaning of the Word, not whether the facts
actually took place. This position, however, contains a docetic tend¬
ency which is just as dangerous, and indeed at bottom still more
dangerous, than docetism in the usual Christological sense. Only if
Jesus Christ actually, in the sense of a historical fact which took place
within time and space, was crucified upon the hill of Calvary, can
He be our Redeemer. The question, What is told us? cannot be sepa-

16 This attempt has been made in my book Der Mensch im Widerspruch,

pp. 101, 135 ff., and Chapter 17. [English trans., Man in Revolt, O. Wyon. Tr.]
17 This docetic danger does not threaten only Bultmann, but also Barth, who,
for instance, when he was in Holland, being asked for his views on the Fall,
said that it did not matter whether the serpent spoke, but what he said. (Credo,
p. 163.) Behind this bon mot there lies the important truth that even legends
and sayings may be used by God as means for proclaiming His Word.
282 Revelation and Reason

rated from that other question, What has happened? for what we are
told is precisely that this event has actually happened. The possi¬
bility of coming into conflict with history [as a science] is a sign of
the genuineness of the Christian faith; for in this it is distinguished
from all other ways of faith or religions as the nonmystical, or non-
mythical, but historical faith. With the incarnation of the Word the
conflict of faith between historical science and faith is posited as a
possibility. Hence this problem cannot be solved, like the previous
one, in the abstract, but only in the concrete.18 The question must
be put this way: Are there any results or truths of historical science
that contradict the statements of the Christian faith? Thus, does the
faith assert “ facts ” whose actual historicity can be denied or con¬
tested by historical research?
There are a large number of points at which it is claimed that such
a conflict exists. The task with which we are confronted, therefore,
is the renewed examination of the facts, in order to find out whether
perhaps at this point faith asserts something that does not belong to
it, or whether critical research denies something which, were it truly
critical, it would not dare to deny. Our thesis is as follows: All con¬
flicts between historical criticism and faith, when more closely ex¬
amined, turn out to be nonexistent; such “ difficulties ” are caused
either by an unjustifiable dogmatic statement of traditional historical
views on the part of the Church, or by a skeptical distortion by criti¬
cal science on the other. Thus the Church and her theology were
wrong when they thought that an attack upon the Pauline or Johan-
nine authorship of certain books of the New Testament was an at¬
tack upon an essential point of the faith, and when they immediately
set up their “ either . . . or.” It was shortsighted of the faith of the
Church, with reference to theology, to think that the denial of the
historicity of the primal history of the Old Testament, or of the stories
of the Patriarchs, must mean the ruin of the Christian faith. Con¬
versely, historical criticism has often desired to eliminate many things
from the Christian faith — a desire which later research has shown
to be scientifically unfounded. Not only Noah and all the Patriarchs,19
18 Naturally the question can be carried farther into the realm of hypothesis:
What would become of faith if it could be proved that . . . , for instance,
Jesus never lived at all, et cetera? To this we would answer: Such an eventuality
will never arise; we can be as sure of this as we are that no one will ever dis¬
cover a proof that God does not exist.
18 On this problem itself, see below, p. 283.
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 283

but Moses, and even Jesus Himself, have been said to be “ unhistori-
cal, although we must note that a more sober school of historians im¬
mediately protested against such excesses of a skeptical historical
science. The history of the problem of “ Biblical faith and Biblical
criticism in the last century is full of examples of such reactions,
on one side and on the other, from which, once more, those who
were either overanxious or impatient jumped to conclusions, which
were not justified, in favor either of the old orthodox attitude or ot
a radically skeptical attitude. So much, however, can be said, as we
look back on a hundred years of these controversies: In the long run
historical criticism has never been able to maintain a “ denial ” which
affected any vital point in the faith; and the theology of the
Church, on the other hand, has had to renounce many “ histori¬
cal facts hallowed by tradition but not forming part of the sub¬
stance of the faith, and has had to recognize the claims of historical
research.
These general considerations, however, do not relieve us from the
obligation of giving some kind of detailed concrete answer to this
question which has been raised. We will do this by distinguishing
three groups of problems: the life of Jesus, the history of Israel, and
Biblical theology.

5. Not only the historical existence of a man called Jesus, but the
credibility of the story of Jesus in its main features, and of the Gospel
picture of the person of Jesus, of His teaching, working, suffering,
and dying, belong to the essence of the Christian faith. Christian
faith cannot arise, nor can it exist, without a historical picture of
Jesus, or without a knowledge of the fact that this picture corres¬
ponds with reality, that He was “ this kind of person,” and that He
lived in such and such a way, and behaved in a particular manner.
To reduce that which is necessary for faith to the witness of the Apos¬
tles, “ we have believed that in such and such a year God showed
Himself in the form of a servant, that He lived and taught and then
died,” as Kierkegaard proposes in his Philosophical Fragments,20
is not, as he thinks, “ more than enough,” and indeed Kierkegaard
himself did not remain satisfied with this minimum. It is true “ the
contemporary generation did what was necessary ”; but the Apostles
knew better than the great Danish thinker ivhat was necessary to
20 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, pp. 94 if.
284 Revelation and Reason

faith.21 That is why they have given us the Gospels, in order that they
may kindle in our hearts faith in Christ. If we had not the picture
of the Christ in the Gospels, but only the Apostolic witness to Christ,
then if the worst came to the worst that heteronomous pseudo faith,
on the basis of the recognized Apostolic authority might arise, but
not a real living faith as an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ.
The credibility of the Gospel narrative in its main features is the
necessary foundation of real Christian faith. The picture of Jesus in
the Gospels, unaltered in essentials, is, together with the witness to
Christ of the Apostles, the means through which God quickens faith
within us, without which, so far as our experience goes, faith never
has arisen, nor can arise.
When we admit this, however, faith seems to expose a very broad
surface to historical criticism, and in so doing to be continuously ex¬
posed to attack. We know, indeed, how deep are the furrows plowed
by the critics in the soil of the Gospel tradition. But the result of this
whole historical process, which has been carried out with such vast
resources and methods, is very remarkable. Even the most intensive
historical criticism leaves “ more than enough ” of the Gospel story
and its picture of the central Person to enkindle and to support faith.
Indeed, we may put it still more strongly, and say that the total re¬
sult of historical criticism of the tradition concerning Jesus, so far
as its central truth is concerned, is nil. Even should we feel obliged
to take our picture of the life and actions of the Saviour solely from
the Synoptic Gospels,22 and even were we forced to eliminate as
much as the most radical historical critics would consider necessary
from the Synoptic narratives,23 yet the picture of the life and the

21 I must accept the criticisms of my book Der Mittler by Althaus (Theol.

Aufsatze, II, pp. 169-182), on the point that the picture of the story of Jesus
is of fundamental importance for our faith. The line of absolute withdrawal
which Kierkegaard tries to set up as one that cannot be touched lies too far
behind the lines of the actual encounter with Christ to do justice to faith. The
missionary experience of a man like Stanley Jones in India is an example of
the necessity of the stories of Jesus for leading people to the Christian faith,
especially in that religious and intellectual circle in which the historical aspect
of religion is something new, whereas the theological is not.
22 In saying this I do not pronounce any opinion on this question, which
is still being hotly discussed by experts. The way in which twenty years ago
the Gospel of John used to be set aside as a historical source has certainly made
way for a more restrained attitude.
23 Think, for instance, of Bultmann’s Synoptische Tradition, or of Well-
hausens Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien.
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 285

person of the Lord remains in essentials the same as it was in the

days of our fathers, who lived before historical criticism had
arisen, and drew their spiritual nourishment from these same
Gospels.
The only point at which a vital question has again been raised is
the relation between the “ Synoptic ” teaching of Jesus about Him¬
self and its significance for faith in the Apostolic witness to Christ.
This question will be treated under our third heading. Apart from
this one difference, which is due to the elimination of the Gospel
of John as a record, the significance of which still calls for further
careful consideration,24 and apart from many points of detail, which
axe not of any moment for faith, all that accoi'ding to the view of the
historical critics Jesus said, did, and suffered is the same that He is
said to have taught, done, and sxiffered, according to the precritical
view. The interpretations that individual critics give of this picture,
the conclusions for faith that they draw, belong to another category.
For these interpretations are not part of their science but of their
faith — whether they are Christians or non-Christians.25 The position
is exactly the same when we turn to look at the story of the Apostles
and of the first Christians. Here too historical criticism has made
several corrections in the traditional picture. It has pointed out vari¬
ous contradictions in the book of Acts, and has discovered va¬
rious inconsistencies in the assignment of certain definite writings to
well-known Apostles as their authors. The net result of all this has
been that the picture of early Christianity which emerges from cer¬
tain efforts to “ harmonize ” various theories is far more realistic than
usual; but nothing of vital consequence to faith has been in any
way affected by historical criticism. Here again, the only difficult and
fundamental problem that remains is that of the difference between
the theological views of die various authors of the books of the New
Testament.
24 The exclusion of the Gospel of John as a record does not in any way
detract from its great value as an Apostolic testimony and a standard for New
Testament Christology. (See Bultmann’s Commentary on St. John.)
25 A conservative and radical critical treatment of the Synoptic tradition
and a Biblical or rationalistic understanding of Christ are curiously intermingled
in the works of men like Bultmann and A. Schweitzer. Schweitzer is extremely
conservative in his estimate of the historical narrative of the Synoptists, but he
stands far from the faith of the Apostles; on the other hand, Bultmann con¬
tains both. We might take these two names as a symbol of the modem situation
in New Testament theological research!
286 Revelation and Reason

6. In the sphere of the historical narrative of the Old Testament

the effect of historical criticism has been, essentially, far more revolu¬
tionary. The most important alterations, it is true, do not affect the
history of Israel itself, but only its preliminary period in the first
chapters of the Bible. This whole primal history in the historical
sense, that is, in the sense of a credible record of events, has been
completely lost.26 All that the Old Testament, in retrospect, records
of the story of the Patriarchs has ceased to be part of our scientific
picture of history.27
With this a large part of Christian traditional doctrine has been
annihilated by historical criticism, and it is not surprising that the
first reaction of the Church was a violent protest against this attack,
which seemed so dangerous.28 But when we consider this more
deeply, from the point of view of faith, we see that here too, as at
many other points, all that historical criticism has “ destroyed ” does
not belong to the central object of faith, but only to the cosmological
way in which it is conceived; thus we ought not to speak of the
“ destruction,” of faith, or even of an “ injury ” to it, but merely of a
necessity to express its content in other terms. The idea of a historical
primitive state in paradise, and of a visibly continuous covenant
narrative from paradise to Moses, can no longer be an essential part
of Christian doctrine, as it was for some fifteen hundred years; but
these changes of view have not affected the vital truths contained in
the concepts of the Creation, original revelation, the Fall, the Cove¬
nant. On the contrary, with the elimination of the historical element
from the story of the “ primitive state ” a certain deterministic bur¬
den of dogmatic conceptions has been removed, which since the
26 This does not exclude the fact that these first chapters of Genesis in
particular belong to the most impressive testimonies to the revelation of the
Old Covenant.
27 It was a very significant act of theological perception when a group of
highly respected Anglo-Catholic theologians in the composite volume Lux
Mundi (Oxford, 1889) for the first time combined the recognition of the new
scientific anthropology and historical criticism with an evidently Apostolic
Christology, and thus showed that scientific criticism and an undiluted Christian
faith could be combined.
28 The latest efforts of Apologists who think they must by to save the faith
in the witness to Christ in the Old Testament by clinging to the Mosaic historical
picture of the beginnings of mankind will have no other effect than this, that
the orthodox dilemma reappears: either a Biblical faith or scientific criticism.
See above note 27 and Bonhoeffer, Schopfung und Fall, 1933; Bachmann.
Gottes Ebenbild.
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 287
Augustinian formulation of the doctrine of original sin has made the
understanding of the Biblical message increasingly difficult. Here too
the “ reduction has proved to be simply a purification.
The historical interest of the Christian faith centers in the history
of Israel, of the Old Covenant. For it is here that the particular
revelation takes place, which, in the form of prophecy, points toward
the coming Christ. It is true that historical criticism has greatly al¬
tered our view of the history of Israel — in this connection I need
only mention the name of Wellhausen 29 — but it has altered far less
in the Biblical view itself than in tire traditional view of history, with
its rigid scheme and its attempt to fit all events into a particular
framework; for all that we know about Israel historically is still
gained for the most part from tire Biblical sources. It is not so much
the Biblical record as such as the traditional view of the unity of the
Biblical record that we have begun to question; this, of course, affects
our belief in the trustworthiness of that harmony of history which
represents the traditional view of “ Biblical history.” The most im¬
portant change in the Biblical picture of history, however, is that a
great part of the Old Testament which used to be almost inaccessible
has now become magnificently alive. The labors of scientific histori¬
cal critics — and this should be openly acknowledged — have given
us the Prophets of Israel anew.30 Similarly, the psalms, which were
to a large extent unintelligible while it was supposed that they were
all written by David, have revealed new depths of meaning since
they have been severed from this pseudonymous authorship.
Here too our final verdict must be: In spite of all dislocations in
the text, of all the gaps that have appeared, and of others that have
been filled, the picture of the history of the people of Israel, the sub¬
stratum of the divine history of revelation and of the Covenant, has
not become essentially different. Just as our faith in Jesus is not de¬
pendent on particular miracles, so also our belief that God has re¬
vealed Himself in an “ act ” which is a “ word,” and in a “ word ”
29 Today it is rather the fashion to behave as though Wellhausen’s view —
first the Prophets and then the Law — had been superseded. In truth, however,
in spite of some necessary corrections in points of detail, Wellhausen’s view as
a whole has remained victorious. His evolutionary view, on the contrary, has
nothing to do with his achievements in the sphere of criticism; it is the ration¬
alistic theology of the nineteenth century.
30 It will be the great task of Old Testament theology to intregrate the truth
perceived by Duhm with that of Calvin and Luther; here in the sphere of
exegesis only the very first beginnings have been made.
288 Revelation and Reason

which is an “ act ” within Israel as He has done nowhere else, does

not depend upon particular points which we regard today in a dif¬
ferent light from that of the precritical readers of the Old Testament.

7. The only question that still requires a great deal of considera¬

tion is that which arises out of the variety of doctrine in particular
parts of the Bible; this applies both to the different types of doctrine
within the individual books of the Old and the New Testaments, and
to the difference between the doctrine of the Old Testament and that
of the New Testament as a whole. The most important of these prob¬
lems — and one that throws into clear relief the divergences between
faith and unbelief — is the difference between the doctrine of Jesus
and of the Apostles. We have no right to try to evade this question
by asserting that it is impossible to make a distinction between the
teaching of Jesus and that of the Apostles, since both are given to us
as a part of the Apostolic tradition. It is true that we cannot establish
with certainty, or with meticulous exactitude, in each particular in¬
stance, what Jesus actually taught and what has been transformed,
or added to, by the tradition of the Church. In spite of this, however,
the character of the teaching of Jesus, in contrast with that of the
Apostles, is clearly recognizable the moment that the Gospel of John
is eliminated as a “ source ” in the sense of a literal record of His
words and acts. As the result of critical research we must, and may,
formulate the following statement: Jesus Himself gave His teaching
as Matthew, Mark, and Luke record it, and not as it is recorded by
John. Between the Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth Gospel, as well
as between the teaching of Jesus and that of the Apostles, there is
a great, and indeed, a radical difference. In my opinion this is the
most important result of the whole work of Biblical criticism. The
question is, however, What is the result of all this for faith? Has our
faith in Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word of God been affected by
the perception of this situation? After careful consideration we
would reply: “ Not in the least! This Jesus, whose teaching and
whose manner of teaching is so different from that of the Apostles,
is the One in whom we believe, as the Apostles believed in Him and
taught of Him.”
The teaching of Jesus Himself is quite different from that of the
Apostles, because He is not an Apostle, but because He is the Christ,
and therefore He had to live the real, historical, divine-human life
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 289

of the hidden and suffering Messiah. There is no article of faith that

requiies that Jesus, in order to be the Messiah, was obliged to teach
about Himself as the Messiah in the same terms as the Apostles who
bore witness to Him. On the contrary, had Jesus done so, His human¬
ity would have been imperfect: He would have anticipated the re¬
sults of history, and in so doing He would have taken from them their
historicity. Precisely because Jesus is the One to whom the Apostles
bear witness, and not an unhistorical phantom, He could not teach,
and ought not to teach, in the same way as the Apostles. For He is
the Subject of their teaching, in all that He is, and does, and suffers,
whereas His own teaching is only one part of His Messianic life and
suffering. He had to live the Messianic secret, not to proclaim it.
Hence He does not will that it should become the subject of the
preaching until the time for that has come.31 He knows when His
hour has come. 3~ Perhaps it was part of His true humanity that He
did not even know all that the Apostles were to proclaim about Him
later on. Indeed, He did not know about His death beforehand in the
way in which His Apostles knew about it afterward. The task of
Jesus was not to teach the Christ, but to be the Christ. Part of His
life as ‘ Christ ” was His teaching, but it was a teaching which both
formally and materially was different from that of the Apostles, and
this was inevitable. There can seem to be a contradiction between
the teaching of Jesus and of the Apostles only so long as we have not
the right point of view for the great factual difference, that is, so
long as we do not know in faith who Jesus is.
We have already mentioned the doctrinal differences between
Paul, John, and the other Apostles who speak to us in the New Testa¬
ment.33 Were the Christian faith, as the orthodoxy of all periods

81 Cf. the important works of Wrede and A. Schweitzer on the Messianic

secret, and A. Schweitzer’s observations on this in his Geschichte der Leben-
Jesu-Forschung, pp. 376ff.; especially on Matt. 11:25 ff. “In this hymn of the
knowledge and power and perfection which God has granted Him, Jesus goes
so far that He also unveils the secret of His Messiahship ” (p. 411). “Actually
there shines forth like flashes of lightning from all that Jesus says and does the
Messianic self-consciousness. We may indeed speak of the acts of His Messianic
self-consciousness” (p. 415). “The personal Passion-prophecy of Jesus at
Caesarea Philippi is just as incomprehensible, just as dogmatic, and therefore
just as historical as the speech made to the disciples when He sent them
forth ” (p. 432).
32 John 2:4.
“G See above, p. 129.
290 Revelation and Reason

thought it was, a faith in revealed truth, then such a difference could

not even be admitted, for such an admission would be fatal for faith.
For us, who do not believe in a doctrine but in Jesus Christ Himself,
who perceive the word of God through the narrative and teaching of
the Apostles, the variety in the Apostolic doctrine is an obvious con¬
sequence of their humanity. Each of the Apostles has seen and ex¬
pressed the reality and the truth of Christ in a onesided manner; such
limitation is indeed inherent in the nature of individual, limited
creatures. The teaching of all the Apostles, in its actual variety,
taken together constitutes the indivisible whole of the primitive wit¬
ness to Jesus Christ. This is not a “ rational ” statement. For we can
understand how that which is different can also be One only if these
truths are complementary. Here, however, this is only partially the
case. For at some points the variety of the Apostolic doctrine, re¬
garded purely from the theological and intellectual point of view, is
an irreconcilable contradiction. In spite of this, even the Epistle of
James contributes something to our knowledge of Christ that we
should not gain from Paul alone, and which, so far as Paul is con¬
cerned, is not only complementary, but also acts as a corrective.
Every Apostle needs to be complemented and corrected by the
others, even as they all show us the whole Christ only in connection
with the story of Jesus, with the naive picture of the Synoptists, and
with the theologically considered view of Christ in the Fourth Gos¬
pel. No one rightly knows who Jesus Christ really was who has not
read the Epistle to the Romans and the Gospel according to John.
No one rightly knows what justification through faith alone in the
Son of God means without the Sermon on the Mount of the Gospel
of Matthew. Paul alone, without James, does not instruct me aright,
the Gospel of Mark cannot be rightly understood apart from the
Epistle to the Colossians, nor the Gospel of John apart from the book
of Revelation, and so on. It is precisely the most contradictory ele¬
ments that belong to one another, because only thus can the truth
of the Christ, which lies beyond all these doctrines, be plainly per¬
ceived.
The same is true, mutatis mutandis, of the Old Testament. There
is no “ theology of the Old Testament.” Even when we ignore the
difficulty of grasping the theological doctrinal content of certain
parts of the Old Testament at all, there remain differences and con¬
tradictions enough to embarrass anyone who wishes to present a
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 291

unified picture of the doctrine of the Old Testament. The most sub¬
lime and the most primitive elements exist side by side; there are
irreconcilable differences due to rival underlying tendencies; there
are elements that are vital, and others that are more or less stiff with
petrifaction. Who can reduce to one common denominator the
priestly and the prophetic elements? the theology of ancient Israel
and of post-Exilic Israel? For the orthodox view of the Bible this is
an absolutely hopeless state of affairs. But for the truly Biblical un¬
derstanding of the history of revelation, there is no special difficulty
in all this. God’s revelation cannot be measured by the yardstick of
theological doctrine. It has pleased God to make use of childlike and
primitive ideas as an expression of His will. Indeed, the very fact
that these extremely primitive elements occur in the Old Testament
— as, for instance, in parts of the Book of Judges, or in some of the
Yahwistic narratives in the Pentateuch — is particularly significant,
since it is a token of His grace and mercy, which accommodates itself
to the meanest intelligence. Alongside of the magnificent freedom
and spontaneity of Prophetism, the priestly rigidity is not only an
important method of educational discipline, but it is also the nec¬
essary pointer toward the Sacrifice and the High Priest, through
which alone the system of Temple worship and sacrifice was abro¬
gated, because He had fulfilled its meaning. Even the special features
of post-Exilic narrowness and rigidity gain their positive significance
in the light of the economy of salvation. The Law had to be taught
and practiced in all its painful severity, if it was to do its service as
a “ schoolmaster ” to bring us to its fulfillment in Christ. The pre-
Exilic unity of national royal power and the people of faith had to
be destroyed, and Jewry had to be dispersed to the four winds, for
the Church of the New Testament to find a point of contact. As soon
as we begin to look at the revelation in the Old Testament from the
point of view of saving history, instead of from the standpoint of
orthodox theology (and this means, as soon as we look at it in the
light of the New Testament and not from that of Judaism), all that
previously was painfully embarrassing at once gains meaning and
light. Only we must not confuse this standpoint of “ saving history ”
with that of the “ evolution of history.” Saving history is God’s institu¬
tion of revelation, which takes human development into account, but
is not itself the product of development.
The doctrinal differences of the Old Testament are great; the con-
292 Revelation and Reason

tradictions seem to mock all efforts to gain a unified view. Indeed,

anyone who tried to make a scientific unity of view out of all these
different and contradictory elements would only knock his head
against a wall.34 This unity, like the unity of the Apostolic witness
to Christ, can be grasped only in faith, which presses behind the
doctrine and takes account of Him to whom the doctrine bears wit¬
ness, and of God’s action in the process of bearing witness. To be
sure, this is true only from the point of view of the Christian faith,
not from that of Judaism; for the latter is not able to come to this
view of faith — not even in the garb of “ Christian ” orthodoxy. Of the
Jews, the saying of the Apostle is true, that “ unto this day, when¬
soever Moses is read, a veil lieth upon their heart, but whensoever a
man shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” *

8. So we perceive that the labors of historical critics are not, as the

champions of the old orthodoxy thought, works of the Devil, hostile
to the Christian faith, but they are a help for the right understanding
of the Word of God. Historical criticism certainly destroys a good
deal, but it destroys nothing of the truth of God. Indeed, how could
it do so? It simply destroys those human elements that are either
too scrupulous or too easygoing, and also too limited in their view of
the essence of the Word of God in the Scriptures. Thanks to the work
of the critics we have gained the possibility of a far fuller under¬
standing of the message of the Apostles and the Prophets. This is
an important example of the truth that “ all things work together for
good to those who love God,” 35 even the hypercritical research of
a man like David Friedrich Strauss or the too broadly critical revi¬
sion of the traditional picture of the history of Israel by Wellhausen.
Both were points of transition for a better understanding of the Gos¬
pels and of the Prophets.
In this sphere, it is true, the individual will now and again have
34 The great merit of the Old Testament theology of Eichrodt lies in the
fact which those who want to receive Hengstenberg’s Christus im Alten Testa¬
ment turn into a reproach: in the combination of the theological standpoint
with that of “saving history.” We can only wish that Eichrodt would come
out still more clearly with his distinction between the childlike and the mature
elements in the Old Testament, and thus sweep away the last vestiges of the
view that in so doing any harm at all is done to the character of the Old Testa¬
ment as revelation.
* [II Cor. 3:15, 16 (R.V. Version). Tr.]
35 Rom. 8:28.
 Biblical Faith and Criticism 293
to meet tensions which — like tensions in the sphere of ethical reality
— may even lead to loss of faith. But, on the other hand, we must
remember that a firm Christian faith protects one against intellectual
adventures, and gives the historical judgment a sureness of touch that
can be proved right by facts only long afterward, possibly after dec¬
ades or even after centuries. There is no longer any room for the
view that the “ believer ” is always “ conservative ” and the “ un¬
believer ” radically critical. There is, however, a “ radicalism ” which
from the standpoint of faith has once for all become impossible, and
a “ conservatism ” which has equally become impossible from the
point of view of historical criticism. Within these extremes — the as¬
sertion of the infallible correctness of the Bible, and the denial of the
most fundamental facts, as, for instance, that of the existence of Jesus
— there remains room for a great deal of variety. It is a good thing
that not all believers are so critical as a man like Bultmann, and that
not all critics are so conservative as a man like Schlatter, but who
would be without the work of the one or the other as expositors of
the New Testament?
It is one thing to maintain the unity of the Word of God in the
Holy Scriptures of the Old and of the New Testaments; it is quite an¬
other thing to assert the unity of the doctrines of the Apostles in the
New Testament and of the men of God in the Old Testament. Once
for all the latter has been destroyed by the work of critical research;
that is, it has been proved that it does not exist. But the work of
the critics has shown the former to have become very great and
wonderful. It is the one God who encounters us in the Book of
Judges and in the Gospel of John, as He who calls His creatures to
Himself, to whom in the Old Testament He shows the first elements
of the knowledge of God to those who are “ children in understand¬
ing, ’ while here in the New Testament He entrusts us with the whole
secret of His revelation in Jesus Christ. So it is precisely the nonuni¬
form doctrine of the Bible that becomes a demonstration of the di¬
vine mercy and of His education by love; here He shows us how
gently and graciously He accommodates Himself to the limited
powers of His human children, leading them into truth as they are
able to bear it; here too He gives us an indication of the goal to
which revelation will lead us.
294 Revelation and Reason

19. SCIENCE AND THE MIRACLE OF

REVELATION
To believe in revelation means to believe in a miracle, in some¬
thing that breaks into this world from beyond it. The Christian belief
in revelation understands the miracle of revelation in an uncondi¬
tional, radical sense. The God of revelation — the “ God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers,” to use Pascal’s
phrase — is not the God of Deism, the God who “ moves the world
from the outside,” nor is He the God of Pantheism, so closely in¬
volved in nature that He merely “ moves the world from within,”
but He is the “ Living God,” who intervenes in natural happenings,
who with His revelation bursts through the barriers of the natural
possibilities of knowledge, who not only creates something new, but
who creates the new, that which is absolutely new, life in communion
with Himself through the sending of His Son. He is therefore, as
Revealer and as Redeemer, plainly the God of miracle; revelation too
is plainly miraculous.
To the modern man, however, miracle is “ the offense.” The Gospel
is always a “ folly ” and an “ offense ” to the “ natural man ”; but for
the modem man the miracle of revelation is particularly repellent and
incredible. At bottom, modem man may not differ from ancient man,
but he differs from the latter in the fact that his view of the world ex¬
cludes the miraculous — or at least so he thinks. The unbroken chain
of causality which is characteristic of all his striving is foreign to the
outlook of man in the ancient world — apart from a few exceptions.
In this modern outlook there is a concentration on the affairs of this
world, an intense secularism of thought, and at the same time an ar¬
rogant elimination of all mystery, which has few or no analogies in
the history of mankind at earlier periods.1 At this point then — the
question of miracle — the clash between Christian and modem
thought is, inevitably, peculiarly sharp.

1. The Christian revelation asserts the absolute miracle: that is,

that the Creator Himself has broken through the creaturely barrier;
the Eternal has entered the time series and become the Temporal;
1 Cf. Heim, Glaube und Denken, pp. 38 ff. [English trans., God Transcend¬
ent, pp. 35 ff. Tr.]
 Science and the Miracle of Revelation 295
the Absolute has appeared within the world of conditioned phenom¬
ena; in the person of the God-man the contradiction between tran¬
scendence and immanence has been removed in the Incarnation of
the Word of God; this is not “ a miracle,” not “ a particularly great or
rare miracle,” but simply the miracle. The particular “ miracles ” of
the Gospel narrative are related to the miracle of revelation itself
as “ pointers ” to the central fact, just as the train of attendants ac¬
companying a king point to the king himself. He Himself, Jesus
Christ, “ God with us,” is the absolute miracle. But when we believe
this, do we cease to live in a causally ordered world? Can a man be
lieve this, and at the same time continue to work as an astronomer or
a physicist with the concept of absolutely unbroken causality? If
we hold a faith of this kind, do we not put ourselves outside the
ordered world, in which everything that happens happens according
to rule, even though the rule itself may be unknown to us?
Every “ miracle ” is offensive to the rational man; it gives him a
“ jolt,” and seems to confront him with the alternative: Either I am
mistaken in my conviction of the ordered process of the way in which
the world devolops or this miracle is an illusion — the assertion of
men who are not used to probing to the heart of problems, and who
therefore seek fantastic explanations as soon as their usual categories
and methods prove to be inadequate. To the man who regards the
world from the point of view of an ordered universe, miracle appears
to resemble that which the strictly logical jurist regards as a breach
of law — something lawless and arbitrary, something which from
time to time ignores the rules of equity; he feels himself challenged
to make a vigorous protest. There can be no miracles, or the ground
on which he stands is no longer secure. Who could even continue to
count if there are miracles, that is, “ interruptions of the context of
nature ” (Schleiermacher) 2 or a perforation of the context of
nature ” (Strauss) 3? But if this is the situation where “ miracles ” in
general are concerned, how much more is this the case with “ the ”
miracle! The man who has been trained on scientific lines is tempted

2 Schleiermacher, Glaubenslehre, par. 47, 1.

3 Strauss, Glaubenslehre, I, p. 276. The criticism of Strauss is the only one
that regards the Christian view of revelation as such from the point of view
of miracle, and attacks it for this reason. “ The penetration of the context of
nature and the contradiction into which the divine Being would fall on account
of this, are also many of the reasons against the possibility of a supernatural
revelation in the ecclesiastical sense of the word.”
296 Revelation and Reason

to think that he can meet this claim of revelation only with that
denial which includes within itself the explanation of this claim; that
is, everything is assigned to the tendency to create myths. And yet
there are scientific scholars, who stand in the front rank in research,
who not only refuse to make this act of rejection and denial, but
who “ believe this nonsense,” who indeed would be willing to give
up all their science for it.4 * How are we to understand this?

2. We might be inclined to think that we could find a way out of

this difficulty by seizing on the crisis in the concept of causality in
the latest development in physics, as the long-hoped-for way out,
which has, at last, been discovered. In point of fact, since the dis¬
covery of radium and the formulation of the Quantum Theory, and
particularly since Heisenberg formulated the “ principle of uncer¬
tainty,” * physicists and philosophers 6 have never ceased to discuss
the limits to the idea of causality. Even in the interpretation of
purely material happenings an idea — at least hypothetically and
tentatively — has emerged, which hitherto was confined to the sphere
of the organic in life: the spontaneous,6 and, vice versa, the possibility
of a purely mechanically causal interpretation of events is even
doubted where, until recently, it was never questioned, in the sphere
of purely material processes, of “ dead ” matter.
But interesting, and indeed fascinating, as these latest develop¬
ments within physics may be, and however they may open up new
vistas in our thinking, it is neither advisable nor necessary to make
too much of this in our discussion of this problem. In the realm of
empirical research things are not far enough advanced to draw as¬
sured conclusions, either for the theory of knowledge or in meta¬
physics, nor are the concepts of causality, spontaneity, the acci¬
dental, and the necessary, sufficiently clear to justify us in claiming
for them results of great significance for our general philosophy of
life.7 The theologian will be well advised to resist the temptation, on

4 Zockler, Gottes Zeugen, et cetera.

° [Also called the “ principle of indeterminacy.” See Eddington, The Nature
of the Physical World, p. 216. Tr.]
6 Cf. the excellent work by that master of modern physics, M. Planck, in
the collection with a preface by Neuberg, Das Weltbild der Physik. Also the
monumental work by Titius, Gott und Natur; Bavink, Ergebnisse und Probleme
der Naturwissenschaften; Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World.
6 Thus in Medicus, Die Freiheit des Willens und Hire Grenzen.
1 Cf. the considered observations of Neuberg, op. cit., p. 96, on the “ Krisis
 Science and the Miracle of Revelation 297
this ground, to reap an easy harvest; nor does he need it. Pancausal-
ism, as Laplace put it in his well-known formula for his world view,
has not been contradicted just lately by tire latest discoveries in
physics; this had already been done, long ago, when Laplace made
his formulation.8 Here we will insert a brief methodological con¬
sideration.
All research is guided by two principles — the principle of economy
and that of openness to reality. The principle of economy demands
that the fewest possible categories, and if possible one only, be used
for the explanation of the event. This principle of economy is rooted
in the striving of the mind for unity. Thus since it is indubitable that
what is called physical or mechanical causality exists — for example,
Galileo’s laws of motion — so the primary urge of the mind is to de¬
mand that all that happens should be explained by this principle of
causation. Here, however, the second principle, that of openness to
reality, comes in, which requires that reality should never be forced
into a false position for the sake of unity, for the sake of the simplicity
of the explanation; that is, an explanation of the event in terms
which may, it is true, be simple and illuminating, but which do vio¬
lence to the reality of the facts, must not be allowed. Simplification
must not be pushed farther than the facts themselves permit. The
unity of the principle must not become a dogma. To undervalue the
second requirement for the sake of the first transforms a genuinely
scientific attitude mto one which is merely doctrinaire; that is, one
in which the facts are forced to fit mto the mold of a preconceived
opinion or doctrine. A doctrinaire attitude of this kind, in striking
contrast to Galileo’s causal method of explanation, is represented by
Laplace in his Exposition du systeme du monde, in which he develops
a world view that he regards as axiomatic.

3. The causal-mechanistic schema of explanation was always kept

within certain bounds by the observation and examination of life

der Kausalitat,” where he shows how differently the leading scholars think
about this question, for they are certainly not full of positivist-agnostic preju¬
dices. Certainly, so much we can say definitely: modern physics has shaken
the “ Pancausalism ” of the Laplace type very greatly, and to this extent it has
opened the path for faith. Cf. also the book The Open Universe, by the mathe¬
matician Weyl. The fact that here Weyl represents an Idealistic idea of God in
opposition both to materialism and to the Biblical claims of revealed religion, is
due to his general philosophy of life, but it does not proceed from the scientific
outlook of this eminent scholar.
e Cf. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, II, p. 196.
298 Revelation and Reason

processes, of organic happenings.9 It is hue that for a short time the

Darwinian theory of natural selection suggested the possibility of a
purely mechanistic explanation of the formation of organic life, until
it was seen that the selection formula itself presupposes certain
antimechanistic assumptions,10 and, further, that this formula was
quite inadequate for the explanation of the organic process, even if
we look at its essential phenomena only. The farther the biologists
proceeded in their researches, the more plainly they saw the im¬
possibility of a purely mechanical explanation, and the more neces¬
sary the organic explanation became, that is, the explanation from a
whole, a whole plan, instead of from elementary processes working
upon one another. The last decades of biology have been character¬
ized by the regaining of that unity of outlook which used to be taken
for granted in the sphere of the life processes. That which the simple,
unsophisticated person, without any scientific training, can see di¬
rectly, without any argument, has now become plain through scien¬
tific research; doctrinaire views of causation have been forced to
yield to the truth that in all life — alongside of strictly mechanical
processes — there is a movement of a nonmechanical and, indeed, of
an organic nature, whose interpretation is necessary for one who
thinks in mechanical terms, the “ mystical ” category of “ organic
totality,” or whatever we may choose to call it. This must be men¬
tioned, because here, for the first time, the concept of miracle
emerges. For the man whose whole outlook is bounded by physics,
or, to put it more cautiously, for one who thinks only in terms of the
mechanical causal schema, the organic is a “ miracle,” something that
cannot be integrated within his schema of thought, which he meets
with the same instinctive and absolute rejection as reason always
does when it encounters miracle. The idea of miracle always enters
in where the encounter with a higher stage of being takes place.
From the standpoint of the purely material event all organic life is a
miracle.

4. A similar experience of surprising novelty, which leaves one

baffled, meets one who presses on in thought from the sphere of the
merely living into that of the mind. It is true that here too there

9 Cf. Bavink, op. cit. Also Needham, “ Mechanistic Biology and the Re¬
ligious Consciousness,” in Science, Religion and Reality, 1925.
10 Cf. Bergson, Evolution creatrice, pp. 64 ff.
 Science and the Miracle of Revelation 299
seems to be already something that is analogous to the organic,
namely, the “ organic totality ” of the meaning of the whole. The
meaning of a sentence cannot be explained from its elements. In the
meaning of a mental act we experience “ inwardly ” that which we
can establish outwardly only in the organic happening, namely, the
whole, which is “before ” its parts. The idea of the work of art pre¬
cedes its creation out of material parts. Wherever mind creates, this
causa final is, this “ whole,” the meaning or the plan of the whole, is
at work. The planning assigns to each part its place in the whole.
But this totality is distinguished from that which is simply “ alive
organically by two signs: first, by the element of the freely creative,
and, secondly, by the fact that this is accomplished in the recogni¬
tion of a norm. The great artist, the genius, creates “ organically,”
like nature (Goethe), and yet quite differently from nature. He
shapes freely, and yet he shapes his work of art according to a law of
meaning, according to an idea of the beautiful or the significant.
In this twofold character of creative freedom and the law of meaning
or ideality we recognize the mind and the spirit of man.
Again, this phenomenon of “ mind ” is a “ mystery ” to one who is
used to Blinking only in terms of mechanical and organic categories,
who knows only nature, whether “ dead ” or “ living.” Over against
nature — living as well as dead — the mind, and mental activity, is a
mystery. In comparison with the previous stage we might even
describe it as, in a higher sense, miraculous.
For every scientist, however, this higher mystery of the mind
should be the starting point of his thinking, and not a hypothetical
entity. For, indeed, his very science is itself the activity of this crea¬
tive-normative mind. In the realm of science there are ideas, not only
facts, as in nature; these ideas are time and false, “ yes ” and “ no,”
statement and counterstatement. The scientist lives, as a thinking
subject, on the movement of this mystery of mind, even when the
“ nonmysterious,” the strictly mechanical process in the world of
objects, is the subject of his thinking and his research. If any scientist
were to deny this mystery or miracle of the mind he would be cut¬
ting off the branch upon which he is sitting. The dignity and validity
of his science is the dignity and validity of freely creative and noima-
tive intellectual life.11
11 One day it will be regarded as one of the most remarkable and incom¬
prehensible phenomena that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries so many
300 Revelation and Reason

5. Now, however, we must go a step farther. In the organic proc¬

ess mechanical laws are not suspended, but they are transcended by
the organic. The organism itself is not to be explained in mechanical
terms, but it “ uses ” physical laws as well as “ dead matter ” for the
building up of itself. Similarly, neither the mechanical laws nor the
organic totalities are eliminated by the mind; rather, the mind uses
both for its creations. The sculptor moves his arm according to or¬
ganic laws, and his hammer breaks off pieces from the block ac¬
cording to mechanical laws. The lower spheres are always inte¬
grated into the higher spheres, but not vice versa. All three spheres
are accessible to man, two to the amoeba, one only to the stone. Thus
the “ miracle ” of the organic is accomplished in such a way that the
mechanical element is not eliminated, but it is integrated and used.
The miracle of the mind is accomplished in such a manner that
both the mechanical and the organic elements are co-ordinated and
used. What the sculptor does in his studio with the block of marble
may be described in mechanical, organic, and intellectual terms, but
only these three descriptions together give the whole truth. The two
“ lower ” spheres are always naturally included in the third; from the
point of view of the lower, the higher sphere is always the miracle,
the unintelligible. The mind uses all three categories, the mechani¬
cal, the organic, and the creative-normative; for the mind, even the
miracle of the mind, is “ natural ” — not nature, for it is indeed pre¬
cisely that which is other than nature, but yet it is intelligible, be¬
cause it knows it from within, as its own life.
Now, indeed, we begin to see that the theoiy of doctrinaire causa¬
tion, of the mechanistic world theory, is extremely limited. It is an
act of the most complete intellectual dissipation. In order to formu¬
late it, and to believe in its validity, the scientist Laplace was forced
to forget who he was, and what he was actually doing at the moment
when he was thinking out this, or any other, theory. To think out
anything that is either true, or regards itself as true, is a free and
normative act of the mind, an event that is fundamentally different
from every kind of mechanical happening, as different as meaning is
scientists, who maintained a high level of scientific research, did not notice the
contrast between their genuinely scientific spirit and a completely materialistic
theory of the mind, which this science produces, and thus that they did not
see how funny it is to regard a mere product of the fibrous membrane of the
brain with religious reverence, and to ascribe to it a validity which lays its
obligations upon us.
 Science and the Miracle of Revelation 301
from meaninglessness. On the other hand we admit that the concept
of miracle, evidently, is not simple, but one that must be approached
by degrees. Before we could deal with miracle, which is our actual
subject, we have already been obliged to distinguish two stages of
miracle.

6. From the time of Plato we can know clearly that which, before
his time, was known only in terms of actual experience: what a
mental happening is, in contrast to a natural happening. From the
days of Plato, however, the miracle of the mind has also been placed
in relation with the divine. The normative quality which indwells all
mental acts, the validity of ideas and values, which mental activity
does not “ produce,” but which the mind recognizes as “ discovered,”
and thus grasps as always already “ existing,” and apart from the one
who discovers them, must necessarily direct man to something
“ higher ” than himself.12 The more freely man develops, the more
he feels that he is bound to some inner law, to a norm, an “ ought,”
an obligation, an idea; the more he realizes that he is set within a
context that he has not created, but which he discovers, finds present,
and recognizes. And, conversely, the more he submits to this idea
or norm, the more wholly he gives himself to this value, the freer is
his activity, and his whole life as an intelligent human being. Thus
his intellectual existence, in its very freedom, is a state of being
bound to a higher reality, as a member of which he feels himself in
his intellectual activity.
Man is most conscious of his creative freedom in artistic activity;
he feels his obligation to a divine law most strongly in the activity of
the moral will. The moral law, or the moral idea, is therefore the
point at which the sublimity of this “ higher ” court of appeal — the re¬
gion of the mind — becomes most clear to his consciousness. In the
act of thinking he experiences a sense of obligation, a sense of being
carried by a Logos which transcends him, by a truth which equally
moves him to search for truth, gives it direction, and judges it. In the
moral act of willing he experiences the law of the good, both as the
guiding principle of and the judgment on his willing.13 Thus man

12 On this see Chapter 20.

13 Every human being, whether he be an unbeliever or a believer, experi¬
ences something of the reality of the God who confronts him in the conscience
which judges him according to the moral law, especially in tire so-called “ bad ”
302 Revelation and Reason

becomes aware of the “ ground ” from which the miracle of the mind
springs. He becomes aware that this miracle is a divine miracle.

7. But the miracle of revelation, with which we are here con¬

cerned, is a different kind of miracle; it is a miracle in the proper
sense of the word, the miracle of the freedom of God. The miracle
of organic life is the incomprehensible phenomenon of the organic-
spontaneous element contrasted with the mechanical and causal. The
“ miracle ” of human intellectual life is the incomprehensible phe¬
nomenon of the freedom of man, contrasted with the limited powers
of nature. The miracle of revelation, however, is the miracle of the
freedom of God contrasted with the limited powers of the creation as
a whole. It is the miracle of the personal presence of God in the world
of man and of nature. It breaks through, therefore, the sphere of hu¬
man intellectual freedom, just as the organic breaks through the
sphere of the mechanical, as the human mind breaks through the
sphere of nature. It is, therefore, that which we cannot grasp with
our minds. It cannot be integrated into the schemata of thought by
means of which we grasp matters that concern the human mind. It
is “ folly and scandal.” 14 It is “ folly ’ in so far as it is essentially that
which is unique, once for all, and in so far as it cannot be controlled
by the powers of the human mind, by ideas. The realm of ideas is
the Universal, and as such it is familiar to us; it is indeed the sphere
in which we as humani, as bearers of ideas, are at home. But revela¬
tion is precisely not an idea, it is not something universal, but it is the
series of acts in which God makes Himself present in the unique
Event, the Event which takes place once for all. And it is an “ offense ”
for the will, in so far as here the Good is not realized as something that
ought ” to be, as a “ righteousness of the Law,” but as tire super¬
seding of the Law by grace. The moral man, with the Jew, is scandal¬
ized by this, for he says “ the righteousness of God is severed — xwPLS
— from the Law,”15 and that this therefore is a righteousness which is

conscience which accuses him according to the law. In the “ good ” conscience
he may still confuse himself with the Lawgiver, as is done in Idealism. But in
the “ bad ” conscience, however imperfectly, he becomes aware of his non¬
identity with the court which legislates. Hence the “ bad ” conscience, the
sense of guilt, is the point of contact for all the preaching of the Gospel. Here
revelation takes place, as the forgiveness of sins.
14 I Cor. 1:19 ff.
15 Rom. 3:21.
 Science and the Miracle of Revelation 303

given, not demanded; “ strange,” instead of being one’s own.16 In

both, however, as “ folly ” for thought, and as an “ offense ” for the
will, the revelation is for us something that is not at our disposal, the
Event in which God deals with us, in which the freedom of God
breaks into the sphere of our freedom.

8. It is also true of the miracle of revelation that it too includes all

the * lower ” spheres of existence, and does not eliminate or exclude
them. As the artist when he freely creates the works that proceed
from his mind uses both the organic power and effectiveness of his
arm and the mechanical power and ability of the chisel, and thus
while he creates in freedom does not eliminate the laws of organic
and mechanical existence, so is it also with revelation: It does not
break into the sphere of human existence in such a way that it either
pushes the human element aside or puts it out of action, but it enters
by using the “ human ” in its service. Jesus Christ is a human being,
“ born of a woman,” 17 born of the seed of David according to the
flesh 18 He is “ subject to the Law.”19 He lives a natural human life,
He is fed by ordinary material human food, He feels hunger and
thirst. He knows fatigue, He suffers bodily pain, He dies as the result
of bodily exhaustion caused by excruciating torture. Mentally too
He lives like other men: He “ increased in stature and in wisdom, 20
He learned the language of His people, and He submitted to their
religious laws and practices. He hopes and fears; He makes plans and
is disappointed. In a word, He is true man, as the dogma says. The
fact that He is the “primal Image” (Urbild) of piety (Schleier-
macher),21 that He is the One in whom “ the idea of the Kingdom of
God first of all has been historically realized ” (Ritschl),22 that He is
the wisest, kindest, and holiest of men, does not lift Him out of the
sphere of “ humanity.” All these attributes do not constitute a “ folly ”
or a “ scandal,” and they are all applied to Him. Just as it is possible
to describe the creation of a work of art with purely mechanical
16 Luther, Disp., p. 58: “Extra nos esse est ex nostris viribus non esse; the
justitia is aliena a nobis quia non meruimus earn. Thus also we are to understand
the ponit nos extra nos (W.A., 40, I, 589).
i' Gal. 4:4.
18 Rom. 1:3.
19 Gal. 4:4.
20 Luke 2:52.
21 Schleiermacher, Glaubenslehre, par. 93.
22 Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, III, 4, p. 425.
304 Revelation and Reason

schemata, or in mechanical and organic terms combined — although

one is aware that in doing this one is not describing a work of art
— so also it is possible to describe the life of Jesus in purely hu¬
man, natural, “ immanental ” terms, although in so doing it is not
revelation that is described. This description is not false; only
— just as in the case of the work of art — it misses, precisely, the
decisive point, namely, that Jesus is the Christ, that He is the
revelation.
The way in which the various spheres of existence overlap and
become interwoven is nowhere intelligible to us. We do not under¬
stand how it is that the organic becomes involved in the mechanical;
we merely become aware of it; we do not understand how the in¬
tellectual enters into the organic-mechanical sphere: we merely be¬
come aware of it. We see how the sculptor, without any breach with
natural experience, uses the mechanical element, the chisel, and
the organic element, the hand, for his free creation; that is, with his
hand and the use of the chisel he carves into the stone the image that
he has in his mind, in a mysterious mingling of the various spheres
of existence. Thus we see also in a singular unique Event the inter¬
vention of the freedom of God in the sphere of human freedom in the
person of Jesus who is the Christ. All in Him is truly human, truly
natural, and yet at the same time visible to the eye of faith alone,
truly supernatural, the miracle of revelation. What is this supernat¬
ural element, the miracle of revelation?

9. The Christian faith claims that as Jesus of Nazareth was true

man, so also was He true God; and this divinity does not remove His
true humanity, but completely interpenetrates it. All that to the ordi¬
nary sight of man can be seen only as human and natural is visible to
the eye of faith as the presence of God Himself. This does not take
place alongside of the human natural existence, but in it; here, and
heie alone, there occurs what by its very nature can happen only
once for all: the complete revelation of God, His personal presence.
Faith consists in the fact that Jesus, not only a man, but the Almighty,
eternal God Himself speaking and acting as the subject of this life,
meets man in man.
When we say this we have already implied that “ the miracles ” are
not the reason why anyone believes that Jesus is the Christ. For many
of the contemporaries of Jesus the miracles may have had this signifi-
 Science and the Miracle of Revelation 305
cance as a sign of the mystery of His person, and may have drawn at¬
tention to Him and to His secret. But many who were witnesses of
these miracles, in spite of this, did not believe in Him; and to many
who believe in Him these miracles are comparatively unimportant.
For anyone who really believes in Him they should not be more than
“ signs ” or suggestions, or indications.23 In no case are they the basis
of belief.24 This is true even of the miracle of the resurrection. It is
true that the Apostle Paul says of Jesus, born of the seed of David,
that He was “ declared to be the Son of God with power ... by the
resurrection from the dead.” 25 But he does not mean, either, that
Jesus became Son of God by the resurrection from the dead, or that
faith in the Godhead of Jesus Christ is based upon the fact of the
resurrection. The resurrection is not the reason, but the result, of
the Godhead of Jesus, and belief in the resurrection is not the basis,
but the result, of faith in the Godhead of Jesus. No one believes that
Jesus Christ rose from the dead who does not first of all believe that
He is the Son of God. Rather, the whole witness of the Apostles to
the divine Sonship of Jesus and His resurrection is the means by
which God creates in us the knowledge that “ this Man was truly
Son of God,” 26 the means through which He drives us to the confes¬
sion of faith, “ My Lord and my God.” 27
In the resurrection, within historical time, His divine glory broke
through the concealing veil of His human “ form of a servant.” The
incognito is lifted, and only when this happens does there arise in the
disciples the full perception of the truth that He is the Son of God;
this truth was already present, to be sure,28 but it was not perceived
before the shattering impression of His death on the Cross. The
23 The twofold nature of the belief in miracles is emphasized particularly
clearly in the Gospel according to John, e.g., John 2:23 f.
24 It is well-known that the “ proof from miracles ” has played a large part
in orthodoxy, both Catholic and Protestant. It is still a “ means of proof ” in
the Catholic system of belief. See Hettinger, Apologie des Christentums, 13.
Vortrag; Sawicki, Die Wahrheit des Christentums, “ Das Wunder ah Beweis fiir
den Offenbarungscharakter des Christentums,” pp. 351—365, especially pp.
363 ff. On the other side, see Seeberg, “Das Wunderin the Prot. Realen-
cyklopadie, XXI, p. 562: “ Miracle was once upon a time the foundation of all
Apologetics; then it became a crutch for Apologetics, and today we might say
that it has become the ‘ cross ’ of Apologetics.”
25 Rom. 1:4.
26 Matt. 27:54.
John 20:28.
28 Matt. 16:16.
306 Revelation and Reason

resurrection is the proof with power of His divinity which belongs

to the mystery of His person, and belongs therefore to the image of
His person, through which He lays hold on us in faith as the living
and present Lord. But the resurrection is not the “ miraculous
proof ” of His divinity. The divinity of Jesus, it is true, would not be
thinkable apart from His resurrection; He who in truth was Son
of God had to rise from the dead; death could not hold Him. But
it is not this miracle in itself, as an isolated event, that is the basis for
faith in His divinity. The self-communication of the Risen Lord to
His disciples is a “ sign ” of His divinity; like all His “ signs ” or mira¬
cles, it is the shining forth of His divine Being in the sphere of the
natural human world.

10. The miracle of the revelation in Jesus Christ is its uniqueness,

the fact that, by its very nature, it could take place only once for all.
Could it have happened more than once, it would not be the miracle
that it is. The Atonement takes place either once for all or it never
really takes place at all. If the event takes place several times its seri¬
ousness is impaired. This gives us a new insight into the whole prob¬
lem of miracle. Moreover, the nonmiraculous and the miraculous,
so to speak, form a pyramid. All that exists has a share in the non¬
miraculous causal sphere of life; the material is the substratum of all
creaturely existence known to us within this world. Over against that
the sphere of the living is already an “ exception within the uni¬
verse.” But once again, as compared with the world of organic life,
man and his * intellectual freedom is also an “ exception,” the tiny
island of the human in the cosmos. And yet we human beings call
the intellectual “ the universal,” because indeed all men share in it.
It is intellectual freedom which, even if in very different degrees,
makes us all kuniani, human beings, in contrast to the animals. Even
though the share that we all have in this intellectual freedom may
be very different — from the extreme instance of the idiot to the ex¬
treme instance of the genius — yet it forms part of the very nature of
man, and is, indeed, identical with it. We are human beings because
we share in this freedom. Hence it is universal.29 It is also the uni¬
versal through its inner structure: through law, or the legally univer¬
sal, and through idea, which is the normal universal. This domain of
mind extends exactly as far as universal laws obtain.
[ Intellectual (geistig) is here used to denote the sphere of mind. Tr.]
29 Cf. Kierkegaard, Postscript, I.
 Science and the Miracle of Revelation 307
Above this sphere of the human-universal or that of the freedom
of man there is only one other: the sphere of the freedom of God, the
One. By His veiy nature He is transcendent. That is what we mean
when we speak of God. But the freedom of God makes itself known
as revelation through the Creation — in the sign of transcendence
upon all that has been created, and especially in the mind of man.
As preparatoiy revelation it makes itself known in the word which
God gives to some of His chosen messengers as a word from His
mystery, as a word of revelation not at the disposal of man. But ulti¬
mately it makes itself known in the personal self-manifestation of the
personal God, in the incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ. This
self-manifestation is, by its very nature, just as unique, and as “ un¬
repeatable ” as the Prophetic manifestation was repeated, and the
revelation through the Creation is universal. The miracle of the reve¬
lation in the person of Jesus Christ is the unique historical event
which has taken place once for all; it is therefore without compari¬
son, and, because it is without comparison, “ without security ” it
stands there, confronting thought. This implies the possibility of
rejecting it as “ folly ” and “ offense.”

11. The fact that Christ is divine does not, as we have seen, do
away with His humanity, but it permeates His humanity in a way
similar to that in which the intellectual act of the artist permeates the
organic and mechanical means and laws which he uses. We “ can ”
therefore also understand Jesus Christ simply as a man, and thus
accord Him a place in the sphere of the universal, where He stands
at the head of those who bear “ Spirit.” This attempt takes place
in the use of such concepts as genius, sage, saint; or, negatively,
insane, ecstatic, visionary. But all these categories of interpretation
must to some extent seem unsatisfying to anyone who has simply sur¬
rendered himself to the impression made by the person of Jesus. Jesus
is, indeed, not only an enigma for thought, which does not fit into the
rational view of the world order; the disquieting influence which
proceeds from Him is not that of a singular object. No one can ap¬
proach Him without being challenged by Him in the center of his
being, as a responsible person, as a moral being, and forced to come
to a decision. The miracles which are recorded of Him probably
cause some of this disquiet, but they are never the decisive element.
The decisive element is Himself. No one believes in Him because of
308 Revelation and Reason

the miracles; no one fails to believe in Him simply because it would

mean that “ he would have to believe in miracles.”
The question of believing in Jesus Christ or not is not decided in
the intellectual sphere of the problem of miracle. The miracle of
Jesus consists in the very fact that He places us in the presence of
the reality of God, as the reality of Him who lays His demand upon
us, and who desires to give Himself to us. The miracle of God is so
deeply hidden in the incognito of the humanity of Jesus that it does
not appear to us as absolutely miraculous, but it impels us to a deci¬
sion of faith. The miracle of the Christian revelation does not appeal
to “ belief in miracles,” but to the conscience. A man who evades
the divine claim of Jesus does not do so because “ he cannot believe
in miracles,” but because he wants to retain his own self-chosen
freedom. It is not the scientific man as such, but the man who wishes
to be independent, and to remain so, who pushes the message of the
God-man away from himself. The problem of miracle is only the
excuse behind which, more or less consciously, the defiant freedom
of the sinful man, who desires to be “ free ” from God, takes shelter.
It is not the offense for thought as such, but it is that offense which
is expressed in Nietzsche’s Antichrist, which keeps him from say¬
ing, “ Yes,” and drives him to say, “ No.” He does not want God to
come so close to him, as is the case if Jesus is the Christ. It is that
rebellion of the wicked husbandmen who killed the heir in order that
henceforth they might play the role of masters.
Science as such has nothing to say about the question of the di¬
vinity of Jesus Christ, either for or against. The truth of the claim of
Christ is not a problem for science, but it is the problem of personal
decision. There is a doctrinaire pseudo science, it is true, which de¬
nies not only the miracle of revelation but also the miracle of the
mind, and indeed perhaps even the miracle of life. A person who
has so little sense of reality that he can hold a materialistic theory
of reality, that is, one who sacrifices the consciousness of responsi¬
bility to a mechanistic doctrine, will not perceive the claim of God in
Jesus Christ. This does not mean, however, that an Idealist — for
instance, that is, one who acknowledges the miracle of the mind —
will therefore more easily listen to the claim of Christ. The recogni¬
tion of the miracle of life and of the mind is, indeed, in itself a good
thing: it means that one has preserved an open mind toward reality.
But it does not extend into that sphere where the question of faith is
 The Logos of Revelation and the Logos of Reason 309
decided. For the real, serious menace to faith does not come from the
interpretation of the world, but from the will to freedom. The fact
that a man has recovered from the childish disease of materialism
does not mean, by a long way, that he has got over the real disease
of humanity, which especially in the strongest characters can reach
a dangerous height: the arrogance of the human mind which makes
itself a god. Only where man is ready to abandon this pride, to con¬
fess it as his sin, and to let God forgive this sin, is faith in Christ
possible; or, rather, with this readiness he has already begun to
believe in Christ.
The decision for or against Jesus Christ and the miracle of His reve¬
lation is not a decision between causation and miracle, but between
the freedom of man and the freedom of God. In this sense the Ideal¬
ists find it more difficult to believe in Jesus than do the materialists;
Idealism — understood as religion — is the assertion of the absolute
freedom of the human mind on the basis of its divinity. Here science
is not reacting against faith — which is always a childish misunder¬
standing — but faith against faith, namely, the faith of the man who
is his own god against the faith in which God becomes his Lord. All
religion of immanence is finally self-deification, but faith in God’s
revelation in Jesus Christ is simply the end of this rebellion, and the
return to the divinely created dependence on the Creator, who, in
His love, gives us life.

20. THE LOGOS OF REVELATION AND

THE LOGOS OF REASON
The problem of reason and revelation in the narrower sense, that
is, the question of the relation between the knowledge of reason or
the truth of reason and the truth of revelation, is foreign to the out¬
look of the Bible. Its formulation of the question is always: the con¬
crete, actual human being and his relation to the God of revelation.
Neither the Prophets nor the Apostles have made this abstract entity,
“ reason,” the subject of consideration.* 1 This abstract formulation
1 The personification of reason by Luther in the controversial sense (“die
Hure Vernunft” et cetera) is not derived from the Bible but is to be under¬
stood in the light of the Scholastic use of the rational principle. In the Bible it
is not so much the reason that is sinful as the heart, and that means the person.
310 Revelation and Reason

of the problem could emerge only when the Gospel entered into the
world of Greek philosophical thought. Since then it has become one
of the major themes of Western theology and philosophy. From the
very beginning the early theologians of the Church, with almost
complete unanimity, contended that although the Christian revela¬
tion is above reason, it is not contrary to reason. A polemical attitude,
opposed to rational knowledge as such, and even to philosophy as
such, is not characteristic of the Church; this is true, in spite of the
fact that since the Apologists of the second century the campaign
against pagan philosophy became part of the program of the Church.
In Augustine’s writings we find for the first time a comprehensive
and fundamental consideration of the relation between the two ques¬
tions, which reaches its zenith in his credo ut intelligam, and thus
points the way toward that synthesis of reason and revelation which
is characteristic of Scholasticism. Upon the foundation of a rational
doctrine of God, which finds its most daring and impressive expres¬
sion in the “ proofs of the existence of God,” the Church erects the
structure of its theology of revelation; the theologia naturalis and the
theologia revelata appear in unquestioned agreement, mutually sup¬
porting and completing each other.
This imposing synthesis, which is the counterpart of the medieval
theocracy and the ecclesiastically controlled civilization, was severely
shaken by the Reformation; this event tore asunder Church and
State, the Church and the world, but it also destroyed the intellectual
foundation of this unity, the synthesis between philosophy and the¬
ology, reason and revelation, and asserted the opposite view. But
even in the first generation of the period of the Reformation, Me-
lanchthon, as a teacher of languages, and a teacher of teachers, found
himself constrained to restore the broken unity. Since then the
question, To what extent should the relation between reason and
revelation be one of war or peace? has never ceased to occupy
Protestant theology. Twice the solution of a radical antithesis has
been suggested: first by S0ren Kierkegaard, and, secondly, under his
influence, in the Dialectical Theology.
On the reason as such, Paul, for instance, speaks positively rather than nega¬
tively: I Cor. 14:15; Rom. 7:23-25. In his translation of the Bible, Luther has
allowed himself more latitude to his hostility to the reason than the text permits.
In the New Testament there is an “ instrumental ” conception of reason: it is
good when it is rightly used; it is bad when it is controlled by the sinful heart
in a sinful way. Not the nous but the heart, the will, is the agent of sin.
 The Logos of Revelation and the Logos of Reason 311

But the greater the intellectual apparatus which theology has at its
disposal, the more impossible does a purely negative, antithetical
conception of the relation between revelation and reason appear. To
study theology scientifically means to place the reason at the service
of the Word of God; this implies the usefulness of the reason for this
service; this, again, at least suggests that there may be a positive re¬
lation between reason and revelation. In daily practice, indeed, the
Christian Church acts on this supposition, in so far as she does not
allow herself to be carried away from her faith by the fact that she
uses the means that are at her disposal, as supplied by modern ra¬
tional civilization. Hence the question can never be whether, but to
what extent and in ivhat sense, reason and revelation, faith and
rational thinking can be combined with one another. The present
and the following chapters of this work will be devoted to this
inquiry.

1. It was not an “ invention of the Greeks ” (Scheler),2 but a dis¬

covery of far-reaching significance, when Greek philosophy per¬
ceived the Logos to be the principle of the cosmos as well as of hu¬
manity. In any case, from the standpoint of the Christian doctrines
of Creation and Providence, there was nothing at first against the
assertion that there was a meaning in all existence, and in all that
happens; that behind the actual there stands the divine reason. Nor,
from the point of view of the Biblical understanding of man, could
any objection be raised to the idea that all human action acquires
its truly human quality through its relation to a meaning, through its
agreement with the divine idea, with the divine reason. Is not this
the message of the Bible itself? 3 And does not the doctrine that man
has been created in the image of God express a view which, at any
rate at first, is not opposed to the Logos thesis of the philosophers?
At first we translate Logos simply as “ meaning,” and we have good
reason for doing so. This was what was meant first of all, and chiefly,
when a philosopher inquired into the “ Logos ” of an action or a
speech.4 It is the “ meaning ” which lifts anything out of the sphere
of the trivial and the accidental, and gives it dignity and value. All
2 Max Scheler, in a lecture at Zurich.
3 This is indeed the meaning of the Christian doctrine of Providence and of
the divine decree which determines all tilings.
4 On the various meanings of the Greek Logos conception and its relation
to the New Testament, see Kittel’s Worterhuch, IV, pp. 76 ff.
312 Revelation and Reason

human action should have a meaning; the meaningless is unworthy

of man. To create or to realize meaning is the specifically human
quality, from the simple instrument which is fit for a definite pur¬
pose, from the simplest ornamentation of a clay vessel, or the most
childlike nursery rhyme, up to the highest technical and artistic
achievements. All this, in the Greek terminology, is “ logical ” — not
only the proof of the Pythagorean theory, or Kepler’s laws of the
rotation of the planets round the sun, but also the poems of Goethe,
the fugues of Bach, the civil code of law, the constitution of the
State. The Greek would not fail to add that every plant in its struc¬
ture, every animal in its instinct, is “logical,” as indeed the whole
fabric of the universe is “ logical.” 5
But problems arise with this extension of the concept. If even
causal happenings, on account of their causal fidelity to law, are
“ logical,” meaningful, what then is meaningless? Even that which
is described in human life as meaningless does not lack agreement
with causal law (Gesetzmassigkeit). Even — and especially — the
idiot or tire insane acts according to causal laws, particularly where
his action or his speech is meaningless. Therefore we shall do well to
claim the idea of the Logos first of all only for an event behind which
there stands a Subject who sees, wills, thinks “ meaning.” Even with
this limitation the sphere of the Logos is comprehensive enough: it
embraces all that is divine and human — indeed, even the daemonic
itself; hence a still broader differentiation is required.

2. The problem of the Logos presents itself very differently, ac¬

cording as we translate it by “ meaning ” or by “ reason.” “ Meaning ”
is the broader conception. At the same time we must note its rela¬
tivity. The threatening letter of a criminal has a meaning, as well as
the conversation of a pastor with a member of his flock on matters
concerning the spiritual life. In all his undertakings the Devil goes
to work with a great deal of meaning — for it is his work to destroy
all that has meaning.
Thus, in this formal sense, the Logos includes all that has unity
of thought of any kind, whether it be the Word of God or the word
of man, whether it be diabolical or holy, whether it be something
very ordinary or something extremely significant. Now, however, in
6 Cf. Heraclitus: yi.pop.epwp yap tto-ptup Kara top \6yop. Diels, Fragm. 2, and
the Logos doctrine of the Stoics.
 The Logos of Revelation and the Logos of Reason 313

the Greek idea of the Logos there is not only this formal element of
unity of meaning; it also contains the normative, the relation to the
truth, the truly meaningful, that which is good, just, valid. The
X070S and the \6yov 8l8ovcu — to give meaning, to give an account of
something — demands a relation of the single significant thing to the
whole of meaning. At this point alone does that which was formerly
only a formal problem in logic — whether something in itself repre¬
sents a unity of meaning — now become a theological problem, that
is, does this particular unity of meaning agree with the ultimate di¬
vine meaning? Is it derived from this divine meaning? The meaning
of that which is deeply significant is transformed from something
which made no claims, and was complete in itself, into something
which makes absolute demands. It becomes the ultimate question,
the ultimate standard, the ultimate norm, on which everything de¬
pends, the norm of the unconditioned or divine truth, of uncondi¬
tional goodness, of absolute value. What is the relation of revelation
to that which is absolutely meaningful, and of that which is abso-
lutely meaningful to revelation? What is the meaning of the Logos in
this comprehensive sense to the Logos of revelation?

3. Here we must first of all follow a rule laid down by Bacon: we

must be on our guard against the deceptions which lie in words.
When we assert, “ The Word of God is * true,’ God reveals Himself as
‘ the Good,’ ” at first sight this seems to mean that we can define God,
and His acting or speaking, by means of predicates that are already
at our disposal. Thus by definite norms that are known to us of the
true and the good, God’s action and His speech are measured, and
then sanction is given to that which is found in agreement with these
norms. This state of affairs, which from the very outset looks highly
suspicious, proves on closer examination to be a deception produced
by language. For what we usually call “ our ” standard, “ our ” norm,
is in reality the truth of God and the norm of God. The ideas of truth
and justice, which enable us apparently to summon God to appear
before the bar of our judgment, are, in reality, a reflection of His own
Being; the idea of truth is simply the way in which God Himself,
at all times, in all our mental acts, makes Himself felt as their hidden
norm. “ In Thy Light shall we see light 6 in His truth we can under-
6 Ps. 36:9. It is a common Christian tradition, which the Reformers in gen¬
eral also follow, that the lumen naturale by means of which we perceive the
truth of whatever kind it may be is of divine origin. “ For the cows and the sows
314 Revelation and Reason

stand and use what is true and false — we can see the meaning of this
distinction. Thus when we speak of God as just, good, true,
we are not placing Him under a law outside Himself, but we are re¬
ferring to the law of His own nature, which is the source of our ideas
of truth and of the good. The fact that we know anything at all about
what is “ true ” and “ good ” comes “ from the Light or from the
Word which was the Life of men," says Luther, commenting on the
words of John 1:4; but from this he does not draw the conclusion,
with Augustine or with Bonaventura, that with, or in, these ideas we
know God. At this point the Biblical faith in revelation and theologi¬
cal rationalism — especially rational theology — part company, and
go their several ways.

4. In principle, at least, every human being possesses the ideas of

the good, the true, the just. Essentially, indeed, it is characteristic of
the human mind to be able to distinguish between the true and the
false, between good and evil, just and unjust. Therefore we say these
ideas are “ immanent ” in the human mind. This does not mean that
they are inborn, but it does mean that “ being human ” implies that
as the mind of man develops, these ideas become effective as motive
forces for his thinking and willing, and as the criteria which de¬
termine his judgments.* * * * * 7 In and through these ideas God work
every human being. This forms part of the universal revelation, which
at the same time determines the essential structure of human exist¬
ence. Without these ideas man is not man, and these ideas come
from God. Because, and in so far as, God is near to man with His
truth and His goodness — even to sinful, godless man — man can
inquire after truth; that is why he is so restless until he finds the truth;
that is why he can never be satisfied with evil; that is why he is con¬
tinually seeking the good — even if he seeks in a wrong way — and,
whether he will or not, he must inwardly agree with the good.8 These

have indeed also a common light of the sun by day and the light of the
moon by night, but man is especially gifted with the glorious light of reason
and understanding, so that men have thought out and discovered so many noble
arts, with ability and skill; all this comes from this Light, or from the Word
which was the Life of men.” On John 1:4; Luther, W.A., 46, 562.
7 Insculpta est boni et mali notitia hominibus . . . nec ulla unquam bar-
baries lucem hanc adeo exstinxit quin ubique viguerit aliqua legum forma; Cal¬
vin, Works, 49, 37. Lex omnibus est communis; Luther, Disput., Drews, 314.
8 Rom. 7:22, 23.
 The Logos of Revelation and the Logos of Reason 315

ideas set the whole mental life of man in motion. It is these ideas that
will never allow him to be content with what he is and has. The
absoluteness involved in the ideas of truth and of the good, the im¬
placable sternness with which these ideas assert themselves over
against all that is half true, provisionally true, partly true, is their di¬
vine part;9 in this they show their divine origin. This Logos of reason
comes from God.
But we do not say that this Logos is God’s Logos. God’s Logos is His
eternal Word, which we come to know in the revelation as His eternal
Son. The ideas of truth and of the good are only a reflection, a feeble
echo of this Word of God. They are the most precious things that man
has — and yet how empty they are! They are purely formal — and for
this very reason they are of the greatest significance for our thought
and will, as we may learn from Kant. But in spite of this they are not
the thoughts of God. God does not think in a formal manner. When
God thinks, reality comes into being. It is not the idea of the good
which creates — as Plato, perhaps, taught10 — but the idea of the good
is the extremely abstract and pallid way in which man, in so far as he
is thrown back upon his own thinking, knows of God, the Creator, and
of His creative, personal Word. The ideas are only a final dim recol¬
lection of that which we ought to have known originally of God, and
of His living and personal Word.
The ideas suffice to serve our thinking as the ultimate systematic
unity.11 Their “ effect on that which is below,” their significance as
a guiding and ordering power in the intellectual economy, cannot be
rated too highly. They constitute the element of absoluteness and
infinity in all our mental acts — not only in thinking and willing, but
also in artistic creation, and in our value-judgments. But they do
not help us to know God. The God whom we know through them is
not the Living God, but an abstraction. Indeed, it is questionable
whether we do attain the idea of God through them at all; possibly
it would be more honest to stand where Plato stood when he called

9 Luther goes so far: ratio est pars divinae naturae, Disp., p. 814.
10 The question is well-known, whether the idea of the Good of which Plato
speaks in the Republic (VI, 509b) should be identified with the Demiurge in
the Timaeus. More, in The Religion of Plato, pp. 119 ff., quoted by Gilson,
op. cit., I, p. 229, is against this. For it, however, could be brought forward
Plato’s doctrine of divine Providence in the Laws (903b). Cf. Webb, Studies
in the Hisiory of Natural Theology, pp. 104 ff.
11 Cf. Kant, Kritik d. r. V., Transzendentale Dialektik, first book.
316 Revelation arid Reason

the idea of the good the highest of all the ideas, but did not call it
“God”13
We must not forget that the ideas of the true and the good do not
say more than this: that there is an absolute truth, and you must
seek it; that there is an absolute good, and you must realize it! But
what this truth is, and what this good is, these ideas do not tell us.
That is precisely their formal character — that quality, by means of
which they are functionally so important for our thinking, and
through which materially they are so inadequate for the knowledge
of God.13 There are two statements which sound exactly the same,
and yet lie as far apart from one another as the world of the Platonic
theory of ideas and the world of Biblical revelation. They are these:
God is (the same as) the Truth; and God is the Truth. In the former
instance, that of Platonism, the concept of God is filled out with the
content: truth. Thus when we think “ God ” we think no more than
when we think “ truth.” In the second instance, that of the Biblical
faith, we say that that which we call “ truth ” in abstract terms is in
reality God, the God whom we know from revelation. Abstract truth
is only a reflection of the Truth which is God, the Creator, the Re-
vealer, the holy and merciful One, the Father of Jesus Christ.

5. Thus we believe that Augustine was right when he related the

idea of truth of the Platonic philosophy with God, and that those
who find in this “ a confusing blend of Idealism and Christianity ”
are wrong. First of all, there is no “ confusion of ideas ” here; Au¬
gustine simply relates two conceptions; this is done very carefully,
and it is a sober view, since it claims that the idea of truth is unthink¬
able apart from God. The idea of truth, which is empty, can be filled
with meaning only by the idea of God of the Christian revelation.

12 The way in which Augustine makes the transition from the establishment
of the truth which is binding upon all men, from the idea of truth to the Christian
idea of God (cf., for instance, De vera religione, chs. 30, 31), or the way in
which he moves from the idea of truth which cannot be taught to the inward
Teacher, Christ (De magistro, XII, 38 ff.), must certainly be described as pre¬
mature from the standpoint of philosophy and questionable from that of
theology.
13 These are the merae tenehrae rationis of Luther, who means by his dis¬
tinction that the reason may indeed come to know the quod est of God but
not the quid est, something similar to that which we mean when we recognize
the ideas as hints which point toward God, but not means whereby we come to
know God.
 The Logos of Revelation and the Logos of Reason 317

The erroneous blending of Biblical faith and Neoplatonist Idealism

— in which even an Augustine erred — does not begin here, but only
where the Biblical statement about the Logos of God, Christ, and the
relation to Him through faith, is interpreted from the point of view
of the Platonic ideas, and is thus misinterpreted.14
Nor from the standpoint of the Biblical truth of God have we any
right to reproach Augustine, because he understood the structure
of the human mind, and the mental acts, as due to man’s origin, to
his creation, by God, to his relation with God. We have already said,
in an earlier chapter,15 that in the Old Testament doctrine of the
imago Dei — in contrast with that of the New Testament — it is pre¬
cisely this formal element in human existence, the humanum, that
which distinguishes man from the animal, which is related to the
fact that he has been created in the image of God, and is indeed
identified with it. Because man is always, even as sinner and pagan,
a being who is responsible to God, because he is always “ man be¬
fore God,” and stands in a relation with God — even if a negative one
— for this reason alone is he higher than all the rest of creation. For
his intellectual acts distinguish themselves from the merely biologi¬
cal-psychological processes by the fact that they are related to the
unconditioned, the normative, the valid, and the true, and therefore
that they always mean, whether man wills this or not, the absolute
truth. Human reason is always — whether man himself knows this
or not, wills it or not — orientated by the divine reason; it is always
related to it, and draws from it its power of perception, its law, and
its meaning.16 Behind this knowledge of Plato we can go back no
farther.
But it is a very different matter to maintain that this Logos of
reason is the Logos of the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ.17 Rather,
14 In the fact that Augustine identifies God and veritas, and in so doing
recognizes the Platonic anamnesis, that is, the speculative knowledge of God,
he binds together the knowledge which ascends to God similarly with the revela¬
tion which comes down from God, as in his concept of caritas he unites the
Christian idea of agape with that of the Neoplatonist eros.
15 See above, Chapter 5, p. 53.
16 Cf. the passages from Augustine that have already been quoted.
17 In the context mentioned, Augustine appeals to Matt. 23:10: Christ is
your “Teacher” (magister). Calvin brings together the lumen rationis and
Christ (commenting on John 1:4, 5, 9): “Nemo est, ad quern non perveniat
aliquis aeternae lucis sensus,” but adds, “Sic ignorantia mentem oppressam
tenet, ut quidquid lucis in ea restat, sine effectu jaceat suffocatum,” namely,
what concerns the knowledge of God, Works, 47, 6 and 9,
318 Revelation and Reason

this Logos of reason, which we can know through self-reflection on

the nature of the mind, and thus can know rationally, is only a “ rep¬
resentation ” of the genuine divine Logos, whom we know in Jesus
Christ. This rational Logos points toward Him, it is true, but it is not
He Himself. The idea of truth which we as philosophers perceive
when we take into account the nature of the mind characterizes the
place at which, for the knowledge of faith, there stands the eternal
Son of God, who in Jesus Christ became man. We must not even
say that the philosophical, rational, Logos idea is the idea of the
divine Logos of which faith speaks; for the idea of the Logos of
which faith speaks is always the idea of a Person, the idea of the Son,
in whom, through whom, and unto whom the world was created, in
whom God loves the world from everlasting to everlasting, and who
in Jesus Christ became flesh. Apart from this, His revelation, we do
not know the Logos of God; the philosophical Logos idea is only its
abstract substitute in abstract thinking.
Only in this very qualified sense is it allowable to say that all
truth comes from Jesus Christ. First of all, we must make a distinc¬
tion between the truth whose ground God is and that whose subject
He is. God is the ground of all knowledge of truth. All truth that we
perceive and discover we perceive and discover by virtue of the light
that comes from God. Even the perception of the simplest mathe¬
matical truth is possible only through a ray from the light of God.
God is the principle of all truth. But from this we have no right to
infer that in all knowledge God may be known. Knowledge that
comes from God is different from the knowledge of God. Mathemati¬
cal or scientific knowledge comes from God, but it is not the knowl¬
edge of God. Even the knowledge of the philosophical idea of the
Logos or of truth is not yet the knowledge of God.
As the medieval-Catholic doctrine of the revelation through the
Creation does not distinguish the objective and the subjective ele¬
ments, and thus derives the possibility of natural theology from the
revelation through the Creation, so also it does not distinguish be¬
tween the divine Logos as the principle of all rational knowledge and
the Logos which is perceived by the reason. After the procedure of
Augustine, it identifies the immanent idea of veritas, which our ra¬
tional thought contains, with the Logos of revelation, and upon this
bases its speculative doctrine of the “ Trinity ” and of “ Christ.” It
is here that the paths of medieval Catholic and Reformed theology
 The Logos of Revelation and the Logos of Reason 319

diverge. Revelation through the Creation, analogia entis, and the

idea of veritas — this is the doctrine of the Reformers — are not the
ground of the possibility of a rational knowledge of God, because
sin has perverted the reason.18 In our present connection this perver¬
sion may be more exactly described as abstraction. Abstract specu¬
lative thinking by means of the analogia entis and the veritas idea
does not lead to the true God but into the merae tenehrae rationis
(Luther). The ascent of the soul to God is a false path, the itinera-
rium mentis in Deum does not end in the Living God, but in the ab¬
stract ens realissimum of Neoplatonist speculation; the true God can
be known only by His coming down to us, in the revelation of Christ
which is disclosed to faith.
But even when we do not forget to make this fundamental distinc¬
tion between the objective and the subjective elements, the question
still remains whether it is advisable to call the Logos of God, which
is the principle of all rational knowledge of truth — for instance, that
of mathematics — without any further ado, Jesus Christ. Calvin, at
any rate, is very careful to preserve the Biblical use of language; he
speaks of Jesus Christ only where he is dealing with the incarnatus,
with the historical revelation; he speaks of the sermo Dei, where he
is dealing with the pre-existent Logos. He does not fall into the
error, which leads to so many unfortunate consequences, of trans¬
ferring immediately to Jesus Christ everything that is said in the
Bible about God’s working. There may be good reason for the
statement of Early Church doctrine on the Trinity: opera trinitatis
ad extra sunt indivisa; but already the early Protestant theologians
took care to observe that the Augustinian canon, “ Servato ordine et
discrimine personamm,” should not be overlooked, “ ne confundantur
discrimina et proprietates personarum.”19 Behind this apparently
“ scholastic ” definition of ideas there lies a central Biblical concern.
God works also where He is not known. He works in the orders of
nature, in the “ orders of preservation ” of human society, even where
nothing of Him is known.

18 Nowhere is this idea of a knowledge which rises up toward God expressed

with such classical purity as in Bonaventura’s Itinerarium mentis . . . with its
gradus ascensionis in Deum and speculatio ipsius per vestigia ejus in universo.
Karl Barth is more than justified in his rejection with all vehemence of this
analogia entis for a natural theology (cf. his “ Neinp. 37). On this point
we agree.
19 Chemnitz, Loci theol., I, 42.
320 Revelation and Reason

He gave e^ovaia to the Emperor Nero, which even the Christians

had to obey;20 He gave power to Pilate 21 to crucify Christ. This
hidden working of God, which does not take place through revela¬
tion and faith; this “ strange ” work of God, the opus alienum Dei,
the Holy Scripture never describes as the working of Christ — other¬
wise Christ would have given to Pilate the power to kill Christ; this
working is strictly, and with unconditional logic, ascribed to “ God
alone, never to Christ. For Jesus Christ is mentioned only where
the opus proprium Dei is concerned, His action in revelation and
redemption.
Now rational knowledge belongs neither to the action of redemp¬
tion nor to that working of God in nature which takes place without
human knowledge. What is in question is indeed knowledge, truth;
for instance, mathematical truths. Therefore the Reformers, with
Augustine, lead us back to the Logos of God; but in order to
avoid the devastating misunderstanding that rational knowledge
is the knowledge of Christ, in this connection they avoid calling
the Logos of God “ Christ,” and in so doing they remain strictly
faithful to the line of thought of the Bible. Jesus Christ is the
Logos incarnatus, not the Logos incarnandus. The name of Christ
is reserved for the historical revelation, in spite of the fact that
it is no other than the eternal Logos of God, who in Jesus Christ
became man. The eternal Logos, not Jesus Christ, is the princi¬
ple of the rational knowledge of truth; from Him comes the idea
of truth, as of all true ideas. But for that veiy reason, because
through these ideas, in spite of the fact that they have their ground
in Him, we cannot know Him Himself, they ought not to be con¬
nected with the name of Christ. Wherever anything true is perceived,
the eternal Logos is at work; but Jesus Christ is at work where, upon
the basis of His historical revelation, man believes in Him. He is the
Head of the Church; He is there where two or three are gathered
together in His name. He works as the redeeming Revealer, and all
that is redeeming revelation is ascribed to Him. But the veritas idea
of philosophy does not belong here, important as it may be for our
rational thinking. In the idea of truth taken from philosophical
thought as the immanent presupposition of all thinking and knowing,
we are certainly — this the Christian thinker knows — pointed to¬
ward God’s eternal Logos, just as our natural personal existence points
20 Rom. 13riff. 21 John 19:11.
 Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 321

toward tire person of the Creator whose image it is. But this
“ pointer ” is not yet knowledge. The Logos of reason is too abstract
to be identified with the Logos of revelation. It is impersonal, and
without relation to the divine will, as we know it through revela¬
tion. We learn to know the Logos of God, which in Jesus Christ
became man, only through this Incarnation itself, through the
historical revelation and faith. Just as we cannot say that our ra¬
tional nature or our natural personality is that imago Dei in whom
and for whom we have been created, so we cannot say that
the Logos as reason is the “ Son of His love,” 22 of whom the New
Testament speaks. But we should not have had this Logos of
reason without the Logos of revelation, just as we should not have
had our rational nature and our natural personality without that
genuine imago Dei derived from one Origin. By means of the Chris¬
tian revelation we perceive the truth of reason, and rational knowl¬
edge, to be a ray of the eternal Wisdom of God; but this rational
knowledge itself does not give us any access to that Wisdom of God; it
is merely a pointer to it, as it is a reflection from it. Just as a map does
not give us a real picture of a country, but rather a symbolical,
“ token ” representation of the country, so the veritas idea of reason
is a “ token ” representation of that Logos which in Christ became
man. This provides us with a basis for answering the questions
whether, how far, and how a rational knowledge of God is possible.

21. REVELATION AND THE MORAL LAW OF

REASON
Serious rational reflection and the Biblical Gospel are agreed that
responsibility is the center of human existence. But just as this is
the point of contact, so also is it the point of sharpest contradiction.
Luther uses the phrase “ habent cognitionem legalem” in two
senses: * 1 in the sense of the recognition of a knowledge of the will

22 Col. 1:13.
i “ So far the reason cometh in the knowledge of God, that it hath cogni¬
tionem legalem, that it knoweth the divine Commandment, and what is right
or wrong.” Luther, W.A., 46, 668.
322 Revelation and Reason

of God which is according to reason, and in the sense of the nega¬

tion of the true, evangelical knowledge of God, which is precisely
not legalistic, but is above the law. The moral law, the “ Thou shalt ”
of conscience, is the diacritical point of the whole of Christian the¬
ology. Hence, according to Reformation doctrine, to make a right
distinction between the Law and the Gospel is the most important,
and at the same time the most difficult, task of theology. Here we
have to solve it from the particular standpoint of the definition of
the line of demarcation between revelation and reason.2

1. What does the “natural man ” — that is, the man who is not
touched by the revelation of Jesus Christ in the Holy Scriptures — in
virtue of his immanent rational possibilities, know of the law of
God? The whole tradition of the Church, from the earliest Fathers
down to the Reformation, and from the Reformation to the begin¬
ning of the modern period, gives the same answer — based on Saint
Pauls teaching in Rom., ch. 2: man can of himself know the law of
God, in so far as it is only the demand for a certain way of life,3 even
though this knowledge may be to a large extent dimmed or obscured.
Following the terminology of ancient philosophy, and particular
statements of the Apostle Paul, the theology of the Church has
described this law of God known to reason as the lex naturae, that is,
as the divine law known to man by nature, or as the principle of dis¬
tinguishing between good and evil, which is given to man with his
human nature. Since the rise of relativistic Positivism and Histori-
cism in European philosophy this assertion has been questioned, and
recently, also, a certain theological tendency (thinking that in so
doing it is carrying the ideas of the Reformation a stage farther) has
2 Cf. Der Mensch im Widerspruch, “ Zur Dialektik des Gesetzes,” pp. 532-
540. [English trans., Man in Revolt, pp. 516 ff., O. Wyon. Tr.]
3 “ There are two kinds of knowledge of God, the one is called the knowl¬
edge of the Law, the other that of the Gospels. . . . The knowledge of the
Law is known to the reason and the reason hath almost grasped and smelt God,
for out of the Law it hath seen what is right and what is wrong. . . . This record
of the Law of God and the Ten Commandments they have by nature written
in their hearts ” (W.A., 46, 667). “Wherefore even if Moses had never written
the Law, yet still all men have the Law written by nature in their hearts.
What Moses hath written in the Ten Commandments that we feel by nature in
our consciences” (Luther, W.A., 16, 431). Calvin too says, “ Haec ipsa quae
ex duabus tabulis discenda sunt quodammodo nobis dictat lex ilia interior quam
omninum cor dibus inscriptam et quasi impressam superius dictum est (In¬
stitutes, II, 8, 1).
 Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 323

supported this view, denying at the same time the universal revela¬
tion or the revelation in the Creation, to which we have already
alluded. It is therefore necessary to re-examine the thesis of the
ecclesiastical tradition.
We begin, first of all, with an empirical statement of facts. Al¬
though the history of non-Christian ethics has not yet been written
— with the exception of philosophical ethics — on the basis of our
present documentary material we can still say with sufficient cer¬
tainty that there never have been either peoples or periods that have
not known the distinction between good and evil.4 It is true that
when we allow the “ voices of the peoples ” of all times, and from all
parts of the earth, to speak to us, there is no agreement about what,
in detail, is good or evil. On the contrary, the definitions of the con¬
tent of the moral law differ widely. Yet the question of agreement
on this point is not important. When we ask whether the black races
are capable or incapable of mathematical thought, if one single
Negro is a competent mathematician this is sufficient to enable us
to give a positive reply.
The question whether the knowledge of the moral law is possible
for the human reason as such or not is not dependent on the proof
that all, or even the majority of mankind, actually achieve this knowl¬
edge. Even were only a few to do so, this would merely prove that
the majority of human beings do not possess a great deal of reason,
but not that the rational knowledge of mankind is either limited or
uncertain. It is true that there are mathematical truths that are ac¬
cessible only to a comparative minority, but of whose rationality no
one stands in any doubt. The question of the fundamental rationality
of a truth must be strictly distinguished from its universal existence.
Actually, however, very widespread agreement exists on what con¬
stitutes good or evil among peoples of all races and periods in human
history. Not only are the “Commandments of the Second Table”
of the Decalogue known to many peoples outside the range of influ¬
ence of the Bible, but even the summary of all commandments into
one which is established in the New Testament itself, the so-called
Golden Rule, the command to love one’s neighbor, and indeed to
love one’s enemies, have been formulated on different levels of cul¬
ture, quite apart from the Bible. Not only killing, but also hatred;
not merely adultery, but also the unchaste desire, is forbidden; and
4 Cf. Cathrein, Die Einheit des sittlichen Bewusstseins, 3 vols.
324 Revelation and Reason

not only is evil-doing forbidden, but to do good is commanded.5 Ex¬

perience also shows again and again that the moral sense is aroused
or formed wholly apart from the assistance of religious or even of
Biblical-Christian doctrines; that even where the background,
whether of the general philosophy of life or of religion, is very dif¬
ferent, a moral consensus with respect to good and evil can be estab¬
lished, without, in so doing, in any way denying the fact that the
various ethical opinions are conditioned by religious views. In his¬
tory we perceive two phenomena side by side: that the moral con¬
sciousness helps to determine religion, and that religion helps to
determine the moral consciousness;6 but it may be stated as a proved
fact that the moral sense of mankind is to a high degree independent
of any religious tradition, whether Christian or pagan.7

2. A purely empirical statement of fact of this kind, however, is

not enough. We need a fundamental inquiry into the question of the
extent to which the perception of the moral reason can go. By what
concept is the morally good, in so far as it can be known to rational
thought, to be determined? Essentially, philosophy has used three
concepts for the solution of this problem: value, the idea, and law.
But only where the value or the idea assumes the form of a command
does the moral arise in its purity, while idea and value, without the
idea of law, permit the moral element to be confused with the aes¬
thetic, or the logical element, or even with natural desire.8 Con¬
nected with this also is the prephilosophical situation, where the
moral standard of the peoples of the world is, as a rule, expressed
in the form of “ Thou shalt ” and “ Thou shalt not.”
A “ Thou shalt ” which is in some way sacred, not at the disposal of
man — a court of appeal which has the power to command, to re¬
quire, to direct — is that which lies at the basis of the moral con¬
sciousness, giving it both stability and direction. Thus the Bible also
5 Cathrein, in his monumental work, provides a mass of illustrative material
from all periods and countries.
6 Cf. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, which
shows the relative independence of the moral, and Max Weber, Religions-
soziologie, which shows how the moral is conditioned by the systems of re¬
ligion. For both there are many examples in classical antiquity.
7 Cf. Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, Chinese Humanism, pp.
131 ff.
8 Neither Plato nor Aristotle has made this distinction quite clearly; the
confusion exists in the fundamental Greek conception of kalokagathia.
 Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 325

defines the “ law ” as something that gives direction to the moral

judgment of the natural man, the pagan or the adeos. The form of the
“ Thou shalt ” in the mind of man as it is apart from the Christian
revelation reflects the fact — from the Christian point of view — that
man has been created by God for God. Without the historical revela¬
tion all that man knows of the will of God is that he is under an
obligation to obey a holy law. Who the author of this law is; what
this holy will requires of him, save that it requires of him the good;
and how this originator of the law is disposed toward him, the actual
human being, man in his need and guilt — this the moral reason, as
reason, does not know. Here, as everywhere else, reason extends as
far as the law extends. The strictness of the reason is the strictness of
its legalism. That which is above the law is also above reason; it can
no longer be grasped rationally but can be grasped only by faith.
Where the law ceases there also rational knowledge ceases, in the
sphere of the moral as well as in that of the knowledge of the world.
Rational thinking is thinking in accordance with law; where the
support of the law or the norm ceases, there the reason becomes un¬
certain, there it gropes about in obscurity. There is no cause to as¬
sume that the moral reason should not know the love of our neighbor
to be the content of this law; rather, historical experience goes to
prove that man possesses a knowledge of this commandment as the
summary of all the commandments.9 Through moral reason man can
know that the rule of loving one’s neighbor, not merely the rule of
justice, should be the standard for his conduct, and that in this all
morality consists. The question is not whether all men know this, and
still less whether they all acknowledge it, but whether they all can
know it. To this question critical analysis — as, for instance, in the
work of Kant — and the Bible give the same answer: yes; that man
really knows it is confirmed by the fact that man requires this con¬
duct toward himself from others. Thus he knows the requirement of
love of one’s neighbor, even if he pours scorn upon it or denies it
either in practice or in theory.
The Early Church and the Reformers have defined the field of
moral knowledge, and this definition of natural moral rational knowl¬
edge passes both the critical and the empirical tests: “ Habent cog-
nitionem legalemBut now, when we look into the matter more
9 Cathrein, op. cit., passim, for instance, from the Confucian and Taoist
sphere of life (I, pp. 91, 95).
$26 Revelation and Reason

closely, we see that in that very fact is the basis of the limits and the
inner problems of the moral rational perception. Such limits must be
shown at four particularly important points: in the incapacity to de¬
termine whence this law comes, in the incapacity to know evil in its
depths, in the abstract nature of the demand, and in its impotence
to overcome resistance.

3. At first sight the moral law, precisely because it is based on

reason, seems to occupy an impregnable position of independence.
It is independent of the conflict of theological metaphysics; it is com¬
pletely self-sufficing. But historical reality shows that this independ¬
ence, while it exists de jure, de facto is a very questionable entity.
The power of influence and of conviction of the moral law appears
to be connected to a high degree with a supporting background of
religious convictions. Where the consciousness of the Holy disap¬
pears, where the religious element becomes blurred, or even is ques¬
tioned and regarded as superstition, there the moral is menaced with
becoming something purely conventional or utilitarian, and thus per¬
verted. “ The law in itself ” has, so to speak, no historical consistency.
If there is no answer to the question of the Lawgiver, then the law
itself is in danger of losing its convincing power.10
In point of fact, however, reason knows no answer to this question.
In Plato, as in Kant, we see the same inability to get beyond the em¬
barrassment about the statement: the Giver of the law is God (or the
idea of the good is God), and, God is the Giver of the law (or God is
the idea of the good.11 It lies in the nature of the reason as reason
that it cannot burst through the framework of the law, and thus can¬
not acknowledge a Lawgiver, without becoming uncertain in its
judgment. The God whom the reason can grasp is actually the court
which promulgates the law. Beyond that one may speculate or postu¬
late, but beyond that, purely through the reason, man cannot dis¬
cover any further certainty.

10 This process has been accomplished twice in history on a large scale,

and can therefore be narrowly examined, once in Greek Rationalism in the
severance from tire sacred bonds of the popular religion, and in the period of
the Enlightenment down to our own day.
11 We can see what becomes of the idea of God when the basis from which
it is thought out is only that of the moral Thou shalt, not only in the teaching
of Kant but also in that of Comte or Albert Schweitzer. For the oscillation
between the affirmation and the denial of a suprasubjective divine reality in
Kant see his opus postumum (some quotations in my work on ethics, Das Gebot
und die Ordnungen, p. 566. [English trans., The Divine Imperative. Tr.]
 Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 327

This defect may remain hidden so long as religious convictions

are present, which derive their strength from some other source. But
if these fall away, then the vision of the moral reason sinks to zero;
ethics are reduced to expediency, because they are no longer sup¬
ported by the consciousness of the sacred command, “ Thou shalt! ”

4. The crisis of the moral reason, moreover, breaks out in the

problem of evil. Certainly, because the law is written in their hearts,
all men know something of evil; outside the sphere of influence of
the Biblical revelation we find unmistakable evidence of a sense of
guilt,12 and — in connection with the world religions — even a sense
of sin, which is often expressed in a very impressive manner.13 But in
our present connection, if we set aside for the moment the religious
knowledge of evil in the non-Christian religions, as it breaks through
into consciousness from the irrational depths of the human con¬
sciousness, and ask what knowledge of evil can be attained by ra¬
tional thought through philosophical reflection, the result of the in¬
quiry is very remarkable, namely, philosophical ethics, measured by
the Christian standard, knows less of evil than the man in the street;
thus it seems that philosophical reflection does not contribute to the
knowledge of evil. We shall soon see why this is so.
It is indeed a striking fact that philosophy — in any case where it is
either outside the Christian tradition, or only in very loose connection
with it — has shown very little concern about the problem of evil at
all. Evil is regarded as something irrational, scarcely worthy of a
philosopher’s attention.
Philosophers have suggested the following partial explanations of
evil: it may be due to man’s finite nature, as such,14 or to the imprison¬
ment of the soul within the body, and thus to man s bondage to the
senses,15 which is a drag on man s higher nature; 01 it is due to
lack of knowledge and is thus conceived as error;16 others regard
it as the necessary presupposition of the good,1' or again it is said
12 Cf. Kahler, Das Gewissen.
13 Cf for instance, the Babylonian psalms of repentance, by Zimmern, espe¬
cially pp.’ 18 ff., newly translated under the title Babyl. Hymnen und Gebete.
14 Plato, Timaeus, 48A and 46C.
15 Plato, Phaedo, 79. , _ _ ,.T> .
16 Thus Socrates, according to Aristotle, Magna Moralia, I, 9 (Nicornacncan
Ethics HI 7) “ No one indeed would voluntarily choose unrighteousness and
no one deliberately chooses to be bad.” Similarly Epictetus (Zeller, Philosophie
der Griechen, IV, p. 753). ., ... , ,
17 Thus the Stoics, for instance, Chrysippus, in Zeller, Philosophie der
Griechen, IV, pp. 166, 175.
328 Revelation and Reason

to be derived from a metaphysical dualism, from an original evil

principle.18
All these explanations have one common element: evil is something
negative, that is, something that is lacking, that does not exist, an
emptiness, an absence of the positive.10 It is therefore intelligible
that Greek philosophy never made a clear distinction between nat¬
ural evil and moral evil; even a thinker like Plato discussed evil
mainly under the concept of sickness.20 This is not surprising. For
how could the reason arrive at a positive conception of evil? Reason
is indeed the good; thus evil can only be the absence of reason. In this
negative definition of evil not only all the ancient philosophers, but
also all the modern philosophers who do not explicitly accept the
Christian position, are agreed, with one single exception, which in
the last resort does not prove to be an exception: Kant, in his tractate
on radical evil.
The analysis of the good and the evil will leads him at first to
the perception that evil cannot have its origin in sense or in finitude,
but only in the act of will itself. Having clearly grasped this point,
he goes farther and points out that it is impossible to account for the
origin of evil, and that the best interpretation is still the myth of the
Fall. Evil is “ radical.” It is easy to understand that the contemporary
philosophical world was greatly incensed at this confession of the
Konigsberg champion of reason, and that they hurled violent re¬
proaches at him for a disgraceful apostasy from the philosopher’s high
calling.21 Men had an uneasy sense that here the very limits of the im-
manental, rational interpretation of reality had been reached; to
recognize radical evil as a fact means that we are standing at the
very door of the Christian faith. On the other hand it is quite clear
that Kant does not derive his idea of radical evil from any religious
system, but that he simply sees and describes the fact of evil as it is.
But perhaps it is precisely that “ to see this actual fact as it is ” is

18 Thus Plutarch, who assumes the existence of an evil world soul (Zeller,
V, p. 171), and Plotinus, who identifies evil with matter (Zeller, V, p. 547)n
19 In Plotinus evil is explicitly described as airovaL ayaOov (Zeller, V, p.
548). It is well-known how deeply the doctrine has influenced the thought of
Saint Augustine, and through him the whole of medieval theology.
20 Plato. See Zeller, II, p. 733.
21 Cf. the passage in a letter from Goethe to Herder quoted by Troeltsch
(in his Bedeutung des Protestantismus, p. 18) in which Goethe says that Kant
“ has shamefully defiled his philosopher’s cloak with the stain of radical evil.”
 Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 329

not simply a rational possibility. In any case it is plain that no thinker

outside the Christian sphere of influence has ever seen the situation
thus, namely, so clearly and so objectively. The only philosopher
who, without claiming the direct support of the Christian faith for
it, has as deep an insight as Kant is Schelling,22 and he too, like Kant,
stands on the threshold of the Christian faith. Perhaps we might
reverse the usual view and say: Only faith can see the reality of man
objectively; unbelief implies that we still retain our highly colored
prejudices. So long as man does not see himself as he really is, he
does not believe; and, conversely, so long as man does not believe,
he does not see himself as he really is. On the negative side, faith
might be regarded as unprejudiced realism so far as evil is concerned.
On the other hand, this unprejudiced realism can be gained in no
other way than through faith.
Reason could see the phenomenon of evil with unprejudiced eyes
only if it were not blinded by sin. That which reason ought to see
it cannot see, because it is itself too deeply involved in it.23 The more
deeply the reason is infected by sin, the more crass is its deception
about the nature of evil. Faith begins with the destruction of this
deception, with the penitent “ coming to himself.” Here we have
reached the point where it becomes clear that the abstract way of
speaking about a “ rational possibility in itself ” finally leads out into
the void. In ethical experience this “ reason in itself,” free from the
deception of evil, does not exist. Knowing and being, moral condition
and moral knowledge, are connected in a very different way from
that which is the case in the sphere of theoretical scientific knowl¬
edge.24
Just as remarkable and instructive as Kant’s theory of radical evil,
however, is also his retreat from the embarrassment into which it
led him. The logical consequence of his perception of this truth
would have been to break away from the “ Pelagian ” point of view,
namely, that man can at any time, from his own inner core of good¬
ness, free himself from evil, or can indeed “ pull himself together ”
to the good. But this would have meant a break with his philosophy
of immanence as a whole, the renunciation of his transcendental
22 Schelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen iiber das Wesen der mensch-
lichen Freiheit, Ausg. Werke, Bd. TV, pp. 223 ft.
23 Cf. Kierkegaard, Postscript, II, p. 262 [German trans.], and Sickness Unto
Death, pp. 94 ff. [German trans.].
24 See below, Chapter 25, p. 383, on the principle of “ closeness of relation.”
330 Revelation and Reason

Idealism; then Kant would have had to confess himself an adherent

of the Christian faith. This he was not willing to do. So he began to
withdraw from this position, beginning to assert what he had pre¬
viously denied: that the self, by an act of moral revolution, is able to
free itself from evil, and to regenerate itself, because “ a germ of the
good has remained in all its purity,” namely, “ respect for the moral
law.” 25 In order to save his standpoint of immanence he finally
abandons his concept of radical evil. Thus, even in the consideration
of the history of philosophy the question of the nature of evil proves
to be a problem which is not decided theoretically, but practically,
not by the power of thought, but by a profound fidelity to conscience
and honesty of mind. Only if one is absolutely honest with oneself
can one believe; indeed, this absolute honesty is itself the beginning
of faith.26

5. The third problem is the abstract character of the rational ethic.

As we have already seen, it lies in the very nature of that which is
according to law, that it is sure of itself only so long as it can “ walk
by law.” Legalism and rationality are inseparable. That which tran¬
scends law also transcends reason. Hence the rational ethic never re¬
gards the “ other,” the one who is “ over against ” me, the “ neighbor,”
really as “ the neighbor,” but as the representative of a universal pos¬
sibility, as a “ case,” and my relation to him is not that of love, but of
respect, from a sense of duty. The rational ethic does not understand
the other as the concrete" thou,” just as it is, but as an ideal abstract
“value,” as a bearer of reason, as a “something” to which there
clings the value of reason or of mind, or as an occasion for acting
according to one’s duty.27

25 Kant, Religion innerhalb, p. 47 (Ausgabe Reclam).

26 See below, last chapter of this book, pp. 423, 424.
27 Kant’s discussion of the Christian commandment of love (Kritik d. prakt.
Vernunft, I. T., I. B., Ill Hauptst.) is extremely instructive, owing to the clear
way in which he here shows the limits of legalistic morality, and yet at the
same time retains as the ideal. “ Love . . . cannot be commanded.” “ For a
command to do something willingly is in itself a contradiction.” “ No creature
can attain this stage of moral disposition.” “ Love, which has no inner resistance
of the will to the Law . . . would cease to be virtue.” Hence that cannot be
what is meant in the Gospel for that would be “religious sentimentalism.”
Rather, true morality is not concerned with the personality of the other man
but with respect for the law. I am not bound to love my neighbor but “ willingly
to fulfill my whole duty toward him ” out of respect for the law.
 Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 331

The love, the agape, of which the New Testament speaks, is of a

wholly different character. It is “ superabundant,” as Kant says. But
while Kant means this as a criticism we perceive in it precisely the
truth which reason seeks in vain. We cannot love with the reason; we
love with the heart. The reason knows nothing of love, because it
knows nothing of the “ superabundant,” of that which is more than
just, more than is owed, more than equity. Love is the suprarational
element which leaps over all barriers, which goes forth to the
“ other ” for his own sake, which will sacrifice himself for the “ thou,”
but not for an ideal.28 In the last resort, therefore, rational morality
can create only people who are governed by “ duty,” but not those
who are controlled by love. Love is the gracious, true gift of the lov¬
ing God; it begins exactly where the law leaves off; that is, where the
rational and the Immanent leave off, at the point where with the
revelation of the divine “ Thou ” there is also given to me the “ thou ”
of my fellow man.

6. The fundamental defect of legalistic morality, however, is that

on which both the Bible and the Reformers lay particular stress,
namely, the impotence of the law to create the good will or to over¬
come evil. The law may indicate the presence of sin, but it cannot get
rid of it. The law may tell us what we ought to do, but it does not
give us the power to will it.29 The great illusion of morality consists
precisely in the fact that it does not see this impotence of the moral¬
ist’s demand. It would be perhaps unjust to speak absolutely of
“ moral impotence ”: it is not wholly useless “ to preach morality,”
and to teach the law. There is indeed a kind of virtue that grows
out of such moral teaching, a fruit of education in tradition. The
finest example of this is Confucianism, a good example of the rational
possibility by the very fact that in it the ethical element is almost
entirely divorced from any religious basis. If we are concerned only
with the “ justitia civilis,” then the law is not an improper means for
attaining it. But where we are concerned with personality itself, with
the person — not merely with his external behavior, but with his
28 Cf. G. Sporri, Das Inkoordinable bei J. J. Gourd, pp. 32 ff.
29 “ The law is a sermon which teaches me the way of life . . . but it does
not give it to me. Just as a hand which shows me the way, but if I have no feet,
nor a carriage, to take me along the way ... I shall have to leave the way
alone, the hand will not guide me along the way, and yet it is true that the
hand shows me the way aright.” Luther, W.A., 46, 661.
332 Revelation and Reason

inmost temper or disposition, with love and the absence of love

where we are concerned with true reverence and gratitude toward
the Creator, there law breaks down. The law cannot awaken love; it
can only demand it. And indeed even in the demand it breaks down,
in so far as it is itself, thanks to legalism, not really able to say what
love is. The form of the “ Thou shalt, the law, is always in con¬
flict with its content, love. Here is where the conflict breaks out:
Love cannot become a reality as something which is demanded
by law, but only as that which is given by grace. The law there¬
fore cannot give what, in the strict sense of the word, is the only
morality. So long as man stands under the law he cannot do what he
ought to do — the only true content of the demand of the ought.
We can do what the law demands only when we are no longer under
the law, but are enfolded in the generous love of God. That is the
central Biblical argument against the ethic of law.

7. The Biblical doctrine of “ law ” is very complex. “ Law ” means,

first of all, the whole Mosaic Law, and, indeed, in the New Testa¬
ment it means the whole revelation in the Old Testament; secondly,
it means the sum total of the commandments of God, as they were
given in connection with the revelation, as an element of the making
of the divine covenant. Law means, thirdly, the law of the cultus and
the ceremonial in particular; and, fourthly, and especially in the
thought of Paul, the abstract, bare demand of God, severed from
the generous grace and revelation of God, and entirely apart from
grace.30 It is with “law” in this sense that Paul is dealing in his
arguments against the “ righteousness which is of the law.” This law
is the point of contact, and at the same time the point of opposition,
between the old and the new righteousness, between the “ Law and
the Gospel.” This law, however, is also that which is written in the
hearts of men, that which we call the “law of conscience,” the

30 It is quite evident that Luther understood the Pauline conception of law

more clearly than Calvin, who (see his Commentary on Galatians) over and
over again finds it difficult to understand the absoluteness of the Pauline antith¬
esis, because he understands the law essentially from the point of view of
the Old Testament as the Law of the Covenant. But even he knows this con¬
cept of the law without grace in the sense of the Pauline nomos. He formulates
it, for instance, thus: Si legem duntaxat (that is, the Law alone, the “mere”
Law) intuemur, nihil aliud possimus qaam animum despondere . . . ac de-
sperare” (Institutes, II, 7, 4).
 Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 333

“moral law of reason.” The law which is severed from revealing

grace and gracious revelation is the “ categorical imperative.”
Thus it is not a doctrine which has been brought in from the out¬
side, from the Stoics, and incorporated into the doctrine of the Chris¬
tian Church, but it is a fact to which the Scriptures and the best
teachers of the Church bear witness with one voice: that man as
man knows the law of God — in so far as it is only law31 — and indeed
that this knowledge of the law is the center of the natural human
existence and the natural self-understanding of man. Legalism is the
essence of nonevangelical religiosity apd morality,32 the principle
of the “ old man.” Therefore, according to the teaching of Paul, law
and sin belong so closely together, not only in the fact that the law
measures and judges sin, but also in that the law draws sin out and
brings it to maturity.33 This law, therefore, does not stand in con¬
nection with the gracious revelation of God; it “ has come in be¬
tween.” 34 Although in the law the eternal will of God is expressed,
it is a misunderstanding of the will of God, in so far as it is this
abstract “ law.”
God wills, it is true, that we should not kill or steal or commit
adultery; but He wills that we should not do these things because we
love Him and our neighbor. And He tells us, it is true, that we ought
to love Him and our neighbor; but this is not to take place because
of a divine command, but as a natural result of the fact that we know
that we are loved by Him. The understanding of the will of God

31 Luther is never tired of emphasizing the fact that the law of nature or
the law of conscience and the Biblical law are one; conversely, thus the Gospel
and reason (especially the law) are opposed to one another. The law is in¬
deed a law of life . . . which was thus given through Moses, but through
Christ something more has taken place, who comes and fills the empty vessel
and the empty hands” (W.A., 46, 662). While of the law it is true that “ so
far have the heathen and all wise men and philosophers come that they have
known God through the law”. . . of the Gospel “this is the right and funda¬
mental knowledge, the wise and true thought of God. ... It does not grow
in our garden, the reason does not know anything about it; on thejeft hand it
can know God according to the law of nature and of Moses, . . .” but of the
grace of God “reason knows not a whit and it is indeed hidden from it; it
speaks of it as a blind man would speak of color ” (W.A., 46, 668).
32 Vossberg, Luthers Kritik oiler Religion, p. 118: The Christian religion
is [according to Luther], by its very nature as the theocentric religion, the
criticism of all the egocentric piety of other existing types of religion.”
33 Rom. 7:8 ff.
34 Rom. 5:20.
334 Revelation and Reason

from the point of view of naked obligation is the great misunder¬

standing, and this misunderstanding is due to sin. The sinful man,
who has fallen away from the grace of God and emancipated him¬
self from God, cannot understand the will of God otherwise than
through the “ Thou shalt.” The legalistic understanding of God is
therefore twofold: that which the sinner still retains of the knowl¬
edge of God, which still holds him to God, that by means of which
God still has hold of him;35 and it is that in which the perversion of
man’s relation to God comes out most plainly and fatally. The pious le¬
galist and the legalistically “ good ” man are farthest away from God,
because they stand over against God on their very own feet, because
they will to realize as their own achievement that which is possible
only through the gracious gift of God. Legalism is the practical out¬
come of the reason which sets itself up as autonomous. Man can,
however, believe that he can fulfill the demands of the law in his
own strength only if he robs the law of its unconditional character,
and pours it into the mold of the possible; he turns the absolute law
into conditional precepts; out of the one demand he makes several.
Thus he interprets the law of God in a manner that permits him to
believe that he can fulfill it in his own strength. The moral principle
which is according to reason creates moralism and the Pelagian
optimistic view of man. The law as the principle of true human exist¬
ence produces self-righteous people. But nothing is in greater op¬
position to the holy and generous God than this fundamental self-
satisfaction, this complacency of the man who is too sure of himself.
This is the deadly opposition between the Law and the Gospel. It
was this self-satisfied morality and religion which brought the Lord
Jesus to the Cross; just as, conversely, it was on this self-satisfied
piety and morality that Jesus declared war. The legalistic under¬
standing of God and of man is, it is true, the highest of which man is
capable by his own efforts; but it is precisely upon this high level
also the decisive antithesis of the Gospel of grace.

8. But this is still only one side of the question. This same law, the
principle of the “ legalism ” of the self-righteous man, is also the
means by which God calls this self-complacent man to repentance.
For ‘ through the law there comes knowledge of sin ” — and indeed
precisely through this law which has no “ grace ” in it, and is known
35 Gal. 3:23.
 Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 335

as pure demand. Only when man is frightened to death by this ruth¬

less “ Thou shalt,’ and breaks down inwardly at this point, is he able
to hear, or even to want to hear, the message of forgiveness and of
redemption. Until this takes place, indeed, he has no sense of need:
he is sure of himself; he feels he has all he requires. This possession
must be struck out of his hands before he will throw himself into the
saving arms of love. It is only the poor man who is willing to receive
a gift, and it is only the guilty man who is thankful to be pardoned.
Before man has become poor and guilty, he does not reach out for
the grace that is offered to him. If your cup is full, you do not want
it to be filled. But it is precisely the law which creates this emptiness;
which “ shows up sin which, as Luther puts it, “ is a message that
arouses a sense of need; it creates hungry souls, fearful, troubled,
needy hearts and consciences, who sigh after the grace of God/’36
Apart from the idea of perfection there is no longing for the per¬
fect; without the demand for righteousness there arises no sense of
unrighteousness. The new life, the new understanding of God in
Christ, cannot come to pass save through an “ ad nihilum redigi ” of
man 37 and this takes place through the law. “ Through the law ” the
old man must “ die to the law.”38 The law must fulfill itself in the
sinner, by “ killing ” him before Christ can make him “ come alive.”

9. The dialectic of the Law and the Gospel, however, goes still
deeper. Christ Himself, as the Crucified, must fulfill the law, before,
as the Risen Lord, He can give us the grace of God. Thus the revela¬
tion of grace is itself, from one point of view, the fulfillment of the
law, in the sense that it takes the law seriously, and asserts its claims
in no uncertain manner. Jesus Christ fulfills the law in three ways:
First, He alone does what the Law requires, unconditionally, with¬
out any diminution. He “ loves His neighbor as Himself ” in that,
unlike us, He does not allow Himself to be served but He serves 39

36 Luther, W.A., 33, 443. Also Calvin, Ut suae non esse facultatis sentiens
exsolvere quod Legi debet in se desperabundus, ad opem aliunde poscendam
et exspectandam respiret (Institutes, II, 8, 3). Thus the law is “the only true
preparation for Christ.” It is the meaning of the Law “ that men feel how
naked and empty they are and so they take refuge in God’s mercy” (ibid., 7,
2 and 8).
37 Luther, Disputationen, p. 270.
38 Gal. 3:19.
39 Matt. 20:28; John 13:14 ff.; Phil. 2:6, 7.
336 Revelation and Reason

until death, to the utmost point of freely willed self-sacrifice. He does

this, He loves His neighbor, because He loves God with all His heart.
It is His “ meat and His drink to do the will of God and to finish His
work.” 40
Secondly, He takes the consequences of the transgression of the
law, the wrath of God, the curse of sin, upon Himself; He tastes the
penalty that is due to the transgression of the law to the point of
despair, and to the gallows of the criminal.41 The law, with all its
final consequences, must be fulfilled in Him. This shows how seri¬
ously God takes His law, how seriously He regards sin. The merciful
God comes to man only through this point where the man stands who
is laden with the curse of the law. It is at this point that He must come
down to our level; this account of guilt must be paid. That which man
must do subjectively in repentance — acknowledge the law to be just
toward himself — that Christ does objectively on the Cross. He can
“ bear away the sin of the world ”42 only by bearing the burden of
it Himself. Thirdly, in that He does this He reveals the meaning of
the good, which the law hides: self-giving love, which does that
which is not laid down anywhere as a duty, the “ superabundant,”
fathomless love which gives and gives, leaving far behind it all
thoughts of “ commands ” to be obeyed.43 It reveals itself as fathom¬
less love, which does not love those who are worthy of love but the
unworthy, which does not love in order to satisfy its own desire, but
in loving gives itself.
Man knows nothing of this love, and thus of the truly good, so
long as it is merely required of him in a legalistic way. What Kant
says is quite true: 44 “ Love cannot be commanded.” And yet again it
is the only thing that must be commanded, because it is the only
thing that is really good. This love, of which man knows nothing so
long as he knows it as only a commandment, is the fulfillment of the
law. This love defines itself in Jesus Christ, in His suffering and dy¬
ing for His enemies. The real New Testament commandment of love
is therefore this: “ Let us love one another, for He has first loved
us ”;45 it is both “ the old ” and “ a new commandment.”46 One who

40 John 4:34. 44 See above, pp. 330 ff.

41 Gal. 3:13; Rom. 8:3. 45 I John 4:19.
42 John 1:29. 46 I John 2:7, 8.
43 Luther, W.A., 36, 352 ff.
 Revelation and the Moral Law of Reason 337

understands this knows that before this he knew nothing of the truly
good, when he knew it only in the form of obedience to law.

10. Thus the Gospel of Jesus Christ is both the fulfillment and the
abrogation, the goal and the end of the law. He who lives in Christ
does what the law requires “ of himself,” because “ love constrains
him,” 47 because “ the love of God has been shed abroad in his heart
through the Holy Spirit,” 48 because those who are “ led by the
Spirit ” are no longer “ under the law,” 49 but in the freedom of the
children of God, and yet in that freedom which does what the law
commands, in the freedom of love.50 Here we have, if we may put it
so, a proof of the truth of the Gospel: it abrogates the law in such a
way that at the same time it fulfills the law. It stands on the other
side of the conflict between the rigorism of law and the protests of
antinomianism, because it sets aside the law by fulfilling it, instead
of by protesting against it.
In the Gospel of the grace of God the rational knowledge of the
good is regarded as both right and wrong. It is right in so far as it
is really concerned with obedience, as responsibility is actually the
core of human personal existence, in which its freedom is really
grounded. But it is wrong in so far as true responsibility does not
spring from the law of duty, but from the self-giving will of God.
Obedience does not spring from the command, “ Thou shalt,” but
from being apprehended by the love of God. True freedom is not
that of the autonomous man, but that of the children of God.
But this transition from the old to the new man certainly hap¬
pens “ at the place of responsibility,” in the conscience. The man
whose conscience has been pierced by the law must repent; in the
conscience the man who has been “ killed ” by the law must be met by
the Word of God, in order that he may be made alive. A “ comforted
conscience ” is therefore the first formula by which the Evangelical
faith must be described. It is only when the demands of the con¬
science and the pangs of conscience are taken seriously, it is only
by following the way of the law to the very end, until repentance is
reached, that at the end of this way the new way can be disclosed.
Only by “ coming to himself ” does the prodigal son come back to the
father.
47 II Cor. 5:14. 49 Gal. 5:18.
48 Rom. 5:5. 50 Rom. 13:10.
338 Revelation and Reason

22. THE PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

The self-confidence of the reason is nowhere more evident than in
the attempt to prove the existence of God.
The proofs of the existence of God certainly constitute the zenith
of rational theology, for the rational knowledge of God here main¬
tains that it possesses the stringency of logical proof, and thus of
intellectual necessity. It is, of course, impossible to enter into a logi¬
cal examination, in terms of the theory of knowledge, of the cogency
of the so-called “ proofs ” of the existence of God; this would require
a whole book, and such a book would belong to the sphere of refer¬
ence of a philosopher, not that of a theologian. In principle, how-
ever, it is doubtful whether such a book would render a real service.
A survey of the state of this problem may be sufficient to justify
these misgivings.
The state of the problem is very curious. While for centuries in
Western thought the validity and the binding character of the proofs
for the existence of God were regarded as axiomatic — we must not
overlook the fact that even in those days Europe possessed thinkers
of the first rank — Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, gave the
deathblow to these proofs of the existence of God. So at least most
people believed. The conviction was widespread that Kant had
shown convincingly that there can be no proofs for the existence of
God, that all supposed “ proofs ” were in reality illusory. At the
same time Kant stated in all sincerity that in saying this he had no
wish to discredit the belief in God itself, but that on the contrary
his great desire was to “ create room ” for it. Now, however, men
have come to see that neither the great authority of Kant nor his
massive intellectual achievement was sufficient to banish the proofs
for the existence of God from the sphere of philosophical debate.
Again and again thinkers of high reputation and intellectual vigor
have arisen, in order to defend their validity and to destroy the
value of Kant’s criticism.1 They have revived the proofs for the exist¬
ence of God partly in their ancient form, and partly in a somewhat
modified form. On the other hand, even before the time of Kant, but
especially since his day, there have been many more or less important
1 Here I need only remind the reader of Trendelenburg and Lotze on the
one hand, and of A. E. Biedermann and Pfleiderer on the other.
 The Proof of the Existence of God 339
thinkers who believed that by the power of their thought they could
destroy not only the “ proofs ” of God but even faith in God itself;
thus they asserted that anyone who was really able to think could
no longer admit the validity of any proofs for the existence of God.
nor the reality of any God at all; or at least they could only say that
they believed that they had proved the truth of the words, “ Ignora¬
mus, ignorabimus.” 2 Further, we must add that there are scarcely
two thinkers of good repute who think alike about the question of
the proofs for the existence of God; the only considerable consensus
is that within Catholic theology, in which not only the proofs for the
existence of God as such but the traditional form of these “ proofs ”
belong to the orthodox doctrinal system. A Catholic believer is also
convinced that the proofs of the existence of God are capable of be¬
ing verified by anyone who takes the trouble to think at all. What is
the result of this state of affairs?
First of all, this: There are certain definite metaphysical processes
of thought which with a certain logical clarity lead to the idea of
God; for any people who are trained to think — some of whom are
outstanding thinkers — these arguments possess considerable, and
indeed convincing, cogency. There is, however, no court of appeal
which — from the outside, as it were — can establish the rightness
or wrongness of the proofs for the existence of God. The examination
of the proofs is possible only for one who himself takes part in the
process of thought, and who therefore makes his own judgments.
From the time of Kant this is what many have done with good will
and with the best intellectual equipment; the result, however, is
always ambiguous, namely, that many, but by no means the majority,
or even all who have been competent to deal with the problem,
regard the proofs for the existence of God as verifiable.
Now the most ardent champion of the proofs for the existence
of God must admit that there is something not quite right about a
proof of which only one section - and today I suppose we must say
a small section — of those who are capable of forming a judgment are
convinced. One can hardly regard such a proof as very convincing.
It would seem, therefore, that the acceptance or the rejection of the
proofs for the existence of God must involve other elements besides

2 In more recent times this occurs not so much through rational counter¬
proofs as through the naturalistic explanation of religion, which has been dealt
with in an earlier chapter of this book (pp. 237 ff.).
340 Revelation and Reason

the rational ones, and thus that the proofs for the existence of God
require the co-operation of other motives, which lie outside the scope
of reason, if the “ proof ” is to be felt truly convincing. But it is a
Catholic prejudice that everyone who is not impressed by the co¬
gency of the proofs for the existence of God is either incapable of
thinking or does not wish to know anything about God;3 yet there
are decidedly Christian thinkers among those who contest the valid¬
ity of these “ proofs,” as, for instance, Pascal and Kierkegaard, who,
precisely on grounds of faith, regard such proofs as arrogant or harm¬
ful to true faith.4 On the other hand, it cannot be maintained, in face
of the seriousness of the work which has been achieved, that the
proofs for the existence of God have been so mistaken all along, from
the point of view of thought, that it is not worth-while to take them
seriously.
From the standpoint of the Christian faith there are two things
to be said about the proofs for the existence of God in general.
First, faith has no interest in them. The way in which the divine
revelation produces the certainty of faith is quite different from that
of proof, and it is completely independent of the success or failure
of the process of proof. Secondly, the content of the knowledge
“ secured ” by these proofs is something quite different from the
content of the knowledge of faith. The “ God ” of the proofs for

3 This is, in general, the Catholic view. The Vatican, with its “ naturali
humanae rationi lumine e rebus creatis certo cognosci posse ” (Denzmger,
1785), has made the proofs for the existence of God into an article of faith. On
this point cf. Mausbach, Dasein und Wesen Gottes; Sawicki, Die Wahrheit des
Christentums.
4 Kierkegaard: “ So, rather, let us mock God, out and out, as has been done
before in the world — this is always preferable to the disparaging air of im¬
portance with which one would prove God’s existence. For to prove tire exist¬
ence of one who is present is the most shameless affront, since it is an attempt
to make him ridiculous; but unfortunately people have no inkling of this, and
for sheer seriousness regard it as a pious undertaking. But how could it occur
to anybody to prove that he exists, unless one had permitted oneself to ignore
him, and now makes the thing all the worse by proving his existence before
his very nose? The existence of a king, or his presence, is commonly acknowl¬
edged by an appropriate expression of subjection and submission — what if in
his sublime presence one were to prove that he existed? Is that the way to prove
it? No, that would be making a fool of him; for one proves his presence by
an expression of submission which may assume various forms according to the
customs of the country — and thus it is also that one proves God’s existence by
worship.” (Unscientific Postscript> p. 485.)
 The Proof of the Existence of God 341
the existence of God is not the Living God of faith, but an in¬
tellectual abstraction, an “ Idea,” an “ Absolute,” a “ Highest,” or
“ necessary Being,” the “ unconditioned Value,” et cetera, an en¬
tity whose concept may perhaps be brought into agreement with
the God of faith, but which never evokes it. Hence the role of
the proofs for the existence of God seems to be negative rather
than positive — and this is certainly not unimportant. It shows that by
thinking we do not necessarily fall away from faith in God, but rather
that we are led toward Him, presupposing, of course, that we
think thoroughly and without prejudice. Thus no one who is a good
thinker is, on that account, an unbeliever or an atheist; rather, on the
contrary, ceteris paribus, the better thinker, even if he has no other
intention than that of following the urges of his reason, is continually
moving in the direction of the idea of God. To deny God, from the
point of view of pure thought, is a proof of lack of thinking power
rather than its opposite.
The time has long gone by when men claimed that they had
learned “ to think better,” and therefore thought that they could
say, “ God is dead.” If a man who claims to be a thinker says such
a thing today, he only reveals the shallowness of his thinking, or the
superficiality of his education. There is one system, however, which
I would like to maintain has been overcome for everyone who can
think, and that is materialism, the world view of the dilettanti in
the world of thought. All the more serious thinkers, at all times,
have agreed to reject materialism as something that has not been
thought out; it is lack of thought turned into a system. But beyond
this point vigorous thinkers part company and go in very different
directions, as will be shown in the next chapter.
One of the distinctive signs of the metaphysical reason — as ap¬
plied to theology — is this: wherever it begins to move away from the
basis of revelation, wherever it assumes the right itself to give the
answer to the ultimate — that is, theological — questions of human
existence, it inevitably breaks up into a mass of widely diverging
lines; it then creates a large number of extremely contradictory meta¬
physical systems, each of which claims that it alone is purely rational.
This was the case in pre-Christian Greek metaphysics; this, again,
was the case in the metaphysics which arose after the Renaissance and
after the Enlightenment, with its varying degrees of detachment from
342 Revelation and Reason

Christianity.5 Certainly, the rival metaphysical possibilities seem to

be limited in number; all the systems of rational metaphysics that
have so far emerged can be classified under a few main types — those
of antiquity as well as of the modern period. In the course of time the
arguments may have altered, but even here the main types seem
to persist. Scientific progress possibly affects some of them in detail,
but it is evidently unable essentially to alter the situation, so far
as these traditional main types are concerned. Even at the present
day there are “ Aristotelians,” “ Platonists,” Pantheists of the Stoic
type, Materialists of the school of Democritus and Epicurus. In vain,
however, is reason invoiced to put an end to the strife of the schools
of thought. For each appeals to its own as to a judge, and each can
produce the proof that its system, to a high degree, does justice to
the demands of rational thought. In view of this state of affairs what
becomes of the proofs for the existence of God? For these proofs are
one kind of rational metaphysics, no better and no worse than others,
in so far as the criterion is strictly rational thought.
But the question of the certainty of the rational way of knowing
God is only one point. The other is that of its content. We will now
inquire, without troubling any further about the question of the
convincing nature of the proofs, about the theological content of the
classical proofs for the existence of God.

1. The cosmological argument, de contingentia mundi. In its sim¬

plest form it runs thus: finite, relative, conditioned existence cannot
have its ground in itself; rather, we must assume as its ground an
absolute or unconditioned existence.6
This proof presupposes the distinction between the conditioned
and the unconditioned, the finite and the infinite, the creaturely and
the divine, existence. It is questionable whether of himself, without
knowing of the true Creator through revelation, man is able to make
this distinction, and therefore to build this proof upon it. In any
5 Here the concern is not the same as in the argumentum de contradictionibus
philosophorum, where, as in the language of the second century (Hermias,
gentilium- philosophorum irrisio, quoted by Gilson, op. cit., I, p. 222), the
falsity of the heathen philosophies is held to be proved from the contradiction,
but merely with the claim to convincing power.
6 Sawicki, op. cit., pp. 46 ff., distinguishes the proof from contingency and
proof from causality as subdivisions of the cosmological proof, whereby the
proof from causality simply means that “ the causal series of world events can¬
not stretch back infinitely into the past; there must be a beginning to the series.”
 The Proof of the Existence of God 343
case, it is worthy of notice that pre-Christian philosophy does not
know the cosmological argument, unless we claim that the Aristo¬
telian inference from motion to the “ Prime Mover ” may be taken
as such. To inquire back from given existence to that on which it is
based is certainly a necessity for the human mind; but whether this
necessity arises in natural rational thought in order to make an end
of the regress by the idea of an existence which no longer needs any
further basis is still extremely questionable. On the other hand, it
cannot be denied that in the formation of religio-mythical ideas the
idea of a world founder appears everywhere;7 yet we must at once
add that there are theogonies in which the world founder himself is
again derived from something else. It is only by accident — so to
speak — that the regress stands still at some point, merely because
the inquirer is tired of probing further. In ancient philosophy the
standard idea is rather that of the eternity and uncreatedness of the
world, and with that the fluid transition between the conditioned
and the unconditioned. Thus the cosmological argument seems to
be simply a rational form of the Biblical idea of the Creation. It
formulates — in the particular and questionable form of a theistic
proof — the truth gained from the Biblical revelation, that God alone
is the Lord of all that exists, and that this existence is thus dependent
and conditioned existence. In experience this “ proof ” only con¬
vinces those who are already, through faith, convinced of the exist¬
ence of the Creator, God.8

2. The ontological argument. In its classic form, given to it by

Saint Anselm, it runs thus (to put it briefly): The idea of God as the
perfect Being includes existence. To think God is necessary, and to
think Him means that we think Him as existing.9 Kant’s criticism of
this proof is certainly one of the weakest parts of his philosophy.10 It
7 Cf. S0derblom, Das Werden des Gottesglaubens, and Pater W. Schmidt,
Der Ur sprung der Gottesidee.
8 A. Schlatter, Das christliche Dogma, p. 27, speaks of the “ inevitability of
the idea of God ” and bases this statement on the “ certainty of creatureliness.”
Here there is a religious transformation of the Cartesian cosmological-onto¬
logical argument. See the following note.
9 The original argument of Saint Anselm is to be distinguished from Des¬
cartes’ argument, derived from it, who deduces from the fact of the idea of
God its only possible source, and thus fuses the three proofs into one. Cf. Bieder-
mann, Christl. Dogmatik, I, par. 92.
10 Cf. A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a Moralist, I, p. 33.
344 Revelation and Reason

is all the more incomprehensible since Kant himself in his “ ethi-

cized ” theology makes vigorous use of the ontological argument,
evidently without being aware of the fact.
The theological content of the ontological argument — we are not
here dealing with its cogency as a proof — is the fact that in the hu¬
man mind, not only in thinking, immanent ideas are operative, and
indeed for the intellectual as such are constitutive, which point
beyond the sphere of the finite and the creaturely. We cannot derive
the idea of the unconditioned, of the ultimate, of the infinite, of the
perfect, or above all, the ideas of truth and the good, from any given
and finite sources. It was thus that Kant regarded the categorical
imperative, the immanent law of the good, and he believed that in
this he discerned the germ of the idea of God.11 Whether from the
standpoint of these ideas we conclude that there is a God, or that we
believe that in them we meet with God directly, is a distinction
that is of little consequence for our present inquiry.12 What is de¬
cisive, even for the Christian thinker, is that in the human mind we
come upon something that points beyond man to the dimension of
God. In these ideas the Christian thinker cannot help seeing, even in
the idea of perfect being, a reflection of the divine in the human
mind. For who save God could lead our minds to the truth in these
ideas? Thus the ontological proof conceives a situation — even if it
does this only in a very questionable manner — which can be denied
only by dull and stupid people. In this situation we perceive some¬
thing of the original revelation of God in the human mind, namely,
that which constitutes the nature of the human mind as mind. It is
precisely this which distinguishes the human mind from the animal
intelligence: that these ideas are immanent; that whether man will or
not, whether he believes or does not believe, he is moved by them and
looks to them as his standard. Therefore in the human mind itself
there is something transcendent, an immanent transcendence, which
constrains man, when he reflects upon himself, to go beyond himself.
But these immanent facts - the ideas of truth, of the good, of the

11 When Kant is not developing the moral argument, as in the Kritik d.

pv. V., but when he sees in the fact of the moral within us the inevitability of
the idea of God, he is following the ontological argument.
12 Cf. Gilson, Der Heilige Bonaventura, on the profound difference between
the Augustinian doctrine of Bonaventura and the Aristotelian doctrine of
Aquinas. On this, cf. Heim, Das Geivissheitsproblem, von Augustin bis Schleier-
macher.
 The Proof of the Existence of God 345
perfect, et cetera — are not sufficient to teach man to know God. On
the contrary, “ ontological thinking ” — by which I mean thinking
which utilizes this view of the matter conceived by the ontological
argument in terms of rational theology — will always, if left to itself,
lead to an idea of God which has more in common with Pantheism
than with the Christian idea of God; for it lacks the contrast between
Creator and creature. The immanence of the ideas leads to thinking
of God Himself as immanent, and to understanding the relation
of the human mind and the divine mind in a more or less pan¬
theistic sense as a share of the finite in the divine mind. Specula¬
tive Idealism is that kind of thought which arises, when thought
speculates without the control of the Christian idea of the Creation,
upon the basis of those immanent ideas about God and His relation
to man.
Hence that sentence of Pascal, “ Thou wouldst not seek Me, hadst
thou not found Me,” is true when it is said of a Christian, but not true
when spoken of a non-Christian. The Christian can say that it is God
who made him restless until he found God. But one whom God has
made restless through the idea so that he feels impelled to seek Him
does not yet really know God, but at the best that idea, and thus an
abstract representation of Him. That “ necessaiy being ”13 which
corresponds to the argument of Anselm, is, it is true, a pointer to¬
ward God, but it is not God Himself. The identification of both, the
utilization of these abstract predicates of being in the theological
conception of God, has at all periods drawn Christian theology away
from its Biblical foundation and has made the idea of God abstract
in such a way that it does not accord with the Biblical revelation.
The “ ontological ” theology has not been a support to the Christian
belief in God, but it has been a perversion of it, since it identified the

13 A whole book might be written on the speculative — and especially Neo-

platonist — interpretation of the name of Yahweh (Ex. 3:14) in patristic and
Scholastic theology and philosophy. Even before Augustine, Hilary of Poitiers,
Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzen, among others, used the phrase, Ego
sum qui sum in the ontological sense. Cf. especially Eusebius, Praeparatio
evangelica, XI, 11: “Of Being According to Moses and Plato.” It is obvious
that — particularly through the pseudo-Apostolic authority of the Areopagite —
this interpretation became widely accepted. Cf., as one instance out of several
hundreds, Bonaventura, Itinerarium, ch. 5, “ De speculation divinae unitatis
per eius nomen primarium, quod est esse.” Cf. with this that which is said in
ch. 7 about the name of God, in order to understand the whole contrast between
the two worlds of thought: Biblical and rational theology, respectively.
346 Revelation and Reason

“ God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ” with the “ God of the philoso¬
phers.” A whole book might be written upon the confusion that has
been caused in Christian theology by the Platonizing, ontological
interpretation of Ex. 3:14, “ I am that I am.” We must indeed beware
of thinking that we can enrich theology by means of ontological
philosophy.

3. The teleological argument. This is the most popular of the the-

istic proofs, and it is the most simple and impressive. Even Kant
could not deny that “ it must always be mentioned with respect,”
and therefore that some value must be ascribed to it.14 In general
terms this is the line of argument: The state of the world is such that
we must conclude from looking at it that the original cause of this
condition is its derivation from a Will and Mind which has planned
it so, and which gives the world its meaning. In its simplest form:
The purposefulness of natural arrangements suggests the existence
of One who has ordained this purpose; the reign of law suggests a
Lawgiver. From time immemorial the relation between this idea and
that which the Bible says about the Creation has been pointed out.
“ He that planted the ear shall he not hear? He that formed the eye
shall he not see? ”15 What Paul says in the frequently quoted passage
in the Epistle to the Romans about tire revelation of God in His work
in creation 16 seems at first sight nothing more than a popular form
of the teleological or physicoteleological argument. Thus at all times
it has found devoted champions. No less a thinker than Kant,
with his famous saying about the “ starry heavens,” belongs to this
group.
Yet the fundamental difference between this argument and the
witness of the Bible should not be overlooked. In the Bible there is
never any talk of a process of argument leading to a conclusion; it
is always concerned with a revelation of God in His works, which
14 Kant, Kritik d. r. V. Transzdt. Dialektik, II, 3, 6: “This proof always
deserves to be mentioned with respect. ... It would therefore not only be
a thankless task but also a futile one to try to diminish the force of this proof.
. . .” No criticism can so “ suppress reason that it cannot be moved by a glance
at the wonder of nature and the majesty of the structure of the universe . . .
to rise from the conditioned to the condition, up to the supreme and uncon¬
ditioned Source of all.” Can we say that Kant rejects the proof but recognizes
the revelation in the Creation?
15 Ps. 94:9.
16 Rom. 1:19 ff.
 The Proof of the Existence of God 347
calls the whole man to adoring, obedient submission. Even the rev¬
elation in the Creation, like the revelation in the word of the Proph¬
ets or in the incarnation of the Word, presupposes as receiver the
believing man. It is true that Paul says, voovpeva Kadoparcu. The
organ with which the revelation in the Creation is received is the
vovs. But the continuation of the Pauline passage shows how far
removed Paul is from a rational proof or a process of deduction by
argument. The revelation through the Creation, he says, becomes
ineffective, and in idolatry perverted, through the fact that man
refuses to give the glory to God. The disobedient, irreverent, sinful
spirit of man always finds ways of throwing off or transforming the
impression of the revelation in the Creation. It does not matter
whether man does this consciously or unconsciously. Indeed, were
man healed of his irreverence, were he to listen with reverence to
Gods revelation, he could, through the wus, perceive the majesty
of God the Creator, and indeed, he can do this, in so far as through
Jesus Christ his eyes have been opened, as the example of the
Apostle himself shows, and as Paul assumes is the case with the
Christian Church in Rome. But then it would not be a process of
deduction, but a genuine act of faith, as for instance can be seen
in the humble, reverent answer of Job to God who speaks to him
out of the whirlwind.17 Thus the teleological argument is simply the
rational formulation of the revelation through the Creation, of the im¬
manence of the wisdom of the Creator and of His power in the
Creation. This rational formulation, however, apart from faith, is of
very questionable value; for just as speculative reason misunder¬
stands this, so will it continually misunderstand this in a deistic or
in a pantheistic sense. Natural teleology at the time of the Enlighten¬
ment was the proper soil for the growth of a rationalistic, deistic
pseudo theology; it can, however, as we can see in the example of
Goethe and of vitalistic Pantheism, be used just as much in the op¬
posite direction, and be interpreted in pantheistic terms. In place
of God there is creative nature as a whole, the evolution creatrice,
et cetera. The perception of nature as ordered for a purpose is not, in
itself, a part of Christian truth, though it may be connected with it,
namely, when men perceive in it a manifestation of the sovereignty,
wisdom, and goodness of the Creator. But the reason alone cannot
attain this. Within a merely rational system of thought teleology will
17 Job, chs. 40: 42.
348 Revelation and Reason

always acquire meaning which cannot be combined with the Chris¬

tian idea of God.
That which had to be said about the certainty of the theistic proofs
must also be said about their content: Where they are supported
by the Christian tradition the abstract idea which they attain is con¬
nected with an idea of God which is related to the Christian idea
of God in some way or another; but where this Christian basis dis¬
appears they lose not only their convincing power, but also their
Christian theistic content. How easily the idea of the Absolute and
the Christian idea of God were identified in medieval theology is
shown very clearly in the refrain with which Saint Thomas closes
his proofs for the existence of God: 18 “ Et hoc omnes intelligunt
Deum ” (“ and that they all call God ”). That which was so obvious
to him has today, both to pagans and to Christians, become prob¬
lematical in the extreme, namely, that “ that ” is God.

, 23. RATIONAL THEOLOGY

The theistic proofs are an intensified form of rational theology,
as it was formulated by thinkers who were either Christian or at
least were within the realm of Christian tradition. But the specula¬
tive metaphysical reason also follows very different paths, and
reaches results that cannot be utilized by Christian theology in the
support of its own doctrines. We have already pointed out that the
human reason, when left to itself, leads to very different, and even
opposed, “ theologies,” each of which claims to be “ according to rea¬
son.” We must now survey these different “ theological ” results, in
order that here too we may be on the alert to see whether we can
discern the hidden elements of truth which the reason contains.

1. Atheism. This too must be reckoned among the “ theological ”

possibilities; it is negative rational theology. Here thought is used in
order to facilitate the denial of God’s existence. Atheism is always a
late fruit of culture; it appears, however, in very different places and
at different periods in history. There was an atheism in ancient
18 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., I, 2, 3.
 Rational Theology 349

India,1 in the Sankliya philosophy, and in modern India philosophic

atheism exists in the religion of the Jains; there was a Greco-Roman
atheism, due in part to the skeptical philosophy of the Sophists, and
in part to the materialistic philosophy; there was an atheism in later
Islam, especially in Persia, which developed out of the mystical sects;
above all, however, from the days of the Renaissance there has been
a development and an expansion of atheism which makes the earlier
forms of atheism look like harmless exceptions. Modem atheism is
always connected with a naturalistic psychological theory of religion.
This, again, in some form or another, is derived from the philosophi¬
cal doctrine of Sensationalism; this naturalistic theory also explains
away, by its psychological arguments, all those immanent-transcend¬
ent ideas of truth, goodness, and perfection.2 Apart from a natural¬
istic philosophy which derives mind from nature, the atheistic thesis
is difficult to prove, unless — as in modern times in Nietzsche and
Nikolai Hartmann — it appears as “ postulatory atheism.’ “ If there
were gods, how could I bear it not to be a god? Thus there are no
gods.” 2a For the sake of freedom God must be denied. In this form
atheism betrays its real dynamic idea. Man wills to be master; there¬
fore there can be no other Master. This kind of atheism is obviously
the lie accepted by the man who refuses to be a creature, but who
wills to be absolute. Philosophy is exploited in order to prove what
man desires to see proved. Nietzsche himself is the classic example
of his own voluntaristic theory of knowledge, just as Freud s atheism
could very well be derived, in terms of psychoanalysis, from a nega¬
tive Father complex.3
In spite of the fact that convinced atheists, who deny the existence
of God, are not usually outstanding thinkers, it is impossible to deny
that there is an element of truth in atheism, particularly when we
examine it from the Christian point of view, and especially in the

1 Cf. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, II, pp.

89 If. One might certainly rather describe the religion of the Jains as radical
Pluralism. For the Sankhya doctrine, cf. Deussen, Allg. Geschiclite d. Philo-
sophie, pp. 216 ff. Further, Mauthner, Geschichte des Atheismus.
2 See what was said above, pp. 238 ff., on the naturalistic interpretation of
religion.
2aZarathustra, II, “On the Happy Islands” The continuation of the verse
characteristically goes on to say, “ Indeed I drew the conclusion but now it
draws me.”
8 In actual fact, a disciple of Freud in a more or less clever way has applied
this theory to its discoverer (Maylan, Freuds tragischer Komplex).
350 Revelation and Reason

light of certain historical facts. Historically, it has been the mission

of every atheistic system to protest against the religious systems
which were dominant at that particular time. The official religion
that happens to prevail in any particular period always has several
vulnerable points that are open to attack by atheism. Even a man
like Schopenhauer, and still more a man like Nietzsche, had a mission
to discharge in the presence of a Christianity and an idealism which
had been perverted into a kind of bourgeois optimism. The God
against whom atheism contends is actually always more or less an
illusion which the atheist blindly holds to be the truth. Atheism is
the necessary shadow cast by all human theology, even Christian
theology, in so far as it burdens the Christian revelation with “ all-
too-human ” interpretations, and obscures evangelical truth by its
systems. We understand atheism when we know the dark side of
the history of theology. In the face of all the unhappy developments
that have been due to so-called “ Christian ” theology down the
centuries, European atheism must be regarded as an unavoidable
reaction. The history of theology confronts us with the question. Is
it possible that God may even prefer many of those who deny His
existence to those who claim to “ defend ” Him? Indeed there is a
permanent truth in atheism, namely, the right to protest against that
element of untruth which clings to every human formulation of di¬
vine truth, the all-too-human ” and godless element in all theologyl
Atheism challenges us to recognize that in our hands the divine
revelation itself is always mingled with error and arrogance.

2. Pantheism. Pantheism may be described as the intellectually

developed, reflective type of paganism, just as, on the other hand,
polytheistic paganism is the nonreflective, naive type of Pantheism.
For it is of the essence of paganism to fail to make a distinction be¬
tween God and the world; the transition from the creature to die
Creator is fluid. Nature is deified, and God is drawn into the natural
sphere. Out of this naive confusion philosophical Pantheism formu¬
lates definitely its system of identity. In it God and nature are one —
Dens sive natura — seen from two angles, as the mind and the physical
powers are two attributes of the same being. All that is isolated,
individual, and peisonal is only a form (modus) of appearance of
the One, and has no metaphysical existence of its own, no independ¬
ent being. There is only one genuine form of existence.
 Rational Theology 351

In this pantheistic idea there is a considerable element of truth,

as, indeed, even Calvin admits at the beginning of the Institutes
when he uses the phrase “ Deus sive natura ” presupposing that it
is used in a religious sense.”4 For if God is the Ground of all, if all
being is derived from and maintained by Him to such an extent that
apart from His preservation it would at once fall back into the noth¬
ingness out of which it came, then actually God is the only One who
exists, He “ who alone hath immortality.” 5 We need only think out
the idea of absolute dependence on God, of the sola gratia, of the soli
Deo gloria, of the omnipotence of God, to its farthest point, logically,
and we shall find that we shall end — as, for instance, we can see in
Zwingli’s work De providentia — in the very heart of Pantheism.6 If
God does everything, then all creaturely independence is an illusion.
A Christian theologian, however, ought to be able to draw the
opposite conclusion, namely, that even the best and the truest ideas
can be ridden to death if treated with this ruthless logic. To think any
theological truth to its utmost limits always leads to horrible errors.
True Christian theological thinking is, moreover, a circular move¬
ment, which holds firmly to the evangelical center, whereas errone¬
ous doctrine always springs from the fact that a tangent is drawn
from some point or other which takes it farther away from the central
point; that is, from any given theological statement conclusions are
drawn in a perfectly straight line of rigid, abstract logic, instead of
keeping the central point in view at every step in one’s thinking.
Christian theology is accomplished by the continual elimination of
the tendency to fly off at a tangent by holding firmly to the center of
revelation.
Pantheism is the idea of the omnipotence of the Creator developed
in a onesided manner, over against the creature and creaturely de¬
pendence, without consideration of the other fundamental Biblical
idea: the relative independence of the creature due to the love of

4 Calvin, Institutes, I, 5, 5. Cf. also Luther’s phrase “ Universa creatura eius

est larva ” (W.A., 40,1, 174). The course of history is “ God’s mysterious hidden
action, behind which He Himself is at work” (W.A., 15, 373).
5 I Tim. 6:16.
6 This work of Zwingli is the classic example of the way in which when
the speculative abstract idea of God — summum bonum = summum ens = po-
tentia absoluta — is taken as the starting point, it leads to deterministic and
pantheistic ideas, which on their part seem to be the logical conclusion from
the doctrine of grace.
352 Revelation and Reason

God. God does not only effect everything, and preserve the universe
in being, as the One who loves and wills to be loved, He also creates
an independent “ other,” who stands over against Him, to whom He
gives a definite measure of independence and freedom, by means of
which the creature is able to love Him in return. Pantheism denies
this responsibility due to the relative freedom granted to man by
God. Thus Pantheism is a temptation to the strict logician, in whom
the feeling for responsibility is weaker than the sense of dependence
upon God; it is the product of a way of thinking in which the reli¬
gious element has absorbed the ethical motive. Hence it shows us
clearly the danger for the Christian faith of a onesided development
of the idea of dependence; it shows us the abyss into which we fall
when we follow out an idea, even were it the most central Biblical
idea, in a completely onesided way; this makes us aware of the di¬
alectic inherent in the Christian revelation of unity and multiplicity,
necessity and freedom, dependence and independence, holiness and
mercy, reverence and love. Pantheism is a danger to strong minds and
weak consciences.

3. Speculative Idealism. There is a critical Idealism which, soberly

and reflectively directed toward the investigation of knowledge,
does not attempt to set up its own rational theory of religion. The
Christian faith cannot conflict with this critical Idealism. Speculative
or absolute Idealism, on the other hand, ventures, on the basis of
those immanent ideas, to think out the idea of God independently,
and to set up a religious system. The most daring form of speculative
Idealism is found in the teaching of the later Vedanta.7 This, in
contrast to Pantheism, has been described as “ Theopanism.” * It
does not maintain the identity of God and the world, but of God and
the self, of the Brahman and the Atman, coupled with the denial of
the reality of the external world. It is an acosmistic form of “ spiritual
religion.” Perhaps the nearest approximation to it on European soil
is the “ I ” philosophy of Fichte.8 The immanence of that divine
7 Cf. Deussen, op. cit., Die Philosophie der Upanishads.
0 [See note on p. 224. Tr.]
8 Fichte, Ausg. Wke., V, p. 191: “The acceptance of the idea of a Crea¬
tion is the absolutely fundamental error of all false metaphysics and theory of
religion, ... for a Creation cannot really be conceived by the processes of
thought. ... To posit a Creation is the first criterion of the falsity of ... a
theory of religion.” Similarly Schleiermacher, and among modern writers, for
instance, P. Pattison (The Idea of God, pp. 303 ff.), replaces the idea of crea¬
tion by that of eternal correlation.
 Rational Theology 353

idea of truth, of the good, of the perfect, is here, with the explicit
and passionate rejection of the idea of the Creation, interpreted in
such a way that the “ self ” is identical with the subject of those ideas.
The deepest, truest “ self ” of man is the divine Self. Here “ eritis
sicut Dens ” has become a system. The insanity of longing to be a
god has appropriated those ideas through which God’s mind works
upon the human mind, and now interprets them as the absolute truth
which is in the self.
There are also “ more moderate ” systems of Idealism, such as
those of Plato and Kant, or the monadology of Leibnitz. The decisive
theological criterion for estimating their value is always the ques¬
tion, Do they acknowledge the fact that the human self has been
created, or not? In general we may say that at this point Idealism,
even in its more moderate forms, swerves from the truth in that it
regards the self, the soul, the human spirit or mind, as a part, a
spark from the fire of the divine mind and spirit, and so ultimately it
still ends in the identity of the human spirit and the divine spirit, the
human reason and the divine reason.9 When, on the other hand, as
with Leibnitz — and in certain parts of the writing of Kant — the
idea of Creation is accepted, then we can hardly speak any longer of
speculative Idealism; here it would be truer to speak of philosophical
Theism.
The element of truth in Idealism is its perception of the divine
self-testimony in the human spirit as such. It sees that those ideas of
truth, goodness, and perfection are immanent in the human mind,
and that they are “ of divine origin.” Thus the statement of Plato
that God is the Good may be acknowledged as true even from the
standpoint of the Christian faith, in spite of the fact that the more
exact interpretation which the Christian must give to it completely
diverges from that of Plato. Plato teaches the immortality of the soul
in order to be able to make the soul the subject of the ideas. The doc¬
trine of the immortality of the soul removes the necessity to answer
the question, How, then, did the ideas come into the human soul?
His answer is, They were in the soul from all eternity. The Christian
faith replies, God, the Creator, bears testimony to Himself through
them in the mind of man.

9 Among the popular Stoic philosophers this idea is particularly evident;

it is, however, equally present in Plato’s idea of the immortality of the soul
and in Kant’s conception of the intelligible self as the authoritative court of
appeal.
354 Revelation and Reason

The truth of Idealism, from the Christian point of view, is the

perception that man, as man, is always moved in his spirit by God,
that human existence cannot be severed from the divine self-revela¬
tion. “ In Him we live and move and have our being.” 10 Wherever
we perceive truth and can distinguish between good and evil; wher¬
ever we are attracted by beauty; wherever we are drawn by the sense
of something holy to reverent adoration, or are moved to discard all
thoughts of personal interest in order that we may stand for justice
and righteousness, and wherever our minds are stirred for the sake
of an idea, there we are moved by God, there divine truth is working
in us by means of ideas.11 Idealism sees that man cannot truly speak
about man without at the same time speaking about God; it has
perceived something of the truth that man has been made in the
image of God and that man has been created as person.12
Hence it is fanatically shortsighted to ignore these significant
elements of truth in Idealism; some Christian theologians, however,
are so afraid of increasing the confusion of faith with speculative
Idealism that instead of disentangling and re-expressing the elements
of truth which Idealism contains they deny it all, root and branch.
The Fathers of the Early Church did not do this, nor did the Reform¬
ers; rather, they emphasized, in no uncertain tones, the relative ele¬
ment of truth in Platonism, over against all skeptical naturalistic de¬
nials; hence even in their doctrine of the corruptio imaginis they
never went so far as to deny the existence of that “ relic ” of the
imago, upon which the distinctive character of human existence,
and its superiority to that of the animals, is based.
Here there is no need to emphasize the fact that, ultimately, Ideal¬
ism gives a wrong interpretation of the truth of God, because it neither
perceives the distinction between the Creator and the creature nor is
it aware of sin; we are not speaking of a synthesis of Christian faith
and Idealism,13 but we do desire that the facts to which Idealism
10 Acts 17:28.
11 See what was said above on pp. 313 ff. about the ideas.
12 Cf. Pascal’s Entretien with M. de Saci on Epictetus and Montaigne about
the Idealists: “ Remar quant quelques traces de sa premiere grandeur et ig¬
norant sa corruption.”
13 Certainly there is a “ Christian Idealism ” which more or less, following
in the traces of Augustine, “ tempers ” Idealism in a Christian way, and like¬
wise twists the Christian conceptions in an Idealistic direction; but, on the
other hand, both logical Idealism and logical Christian theology will refuse
to accept this transformation. The criterion will always be the doctrine of sin.
 Rational Theology 355

calls our attention should also be given due weight in Christian

thought. This can be done, without any kind of compromise. The
Biblical doctrine of the universal revelation and of the creation
of man in the image of God means, rightly understood, precisely
what Idealism sees, to be sure, but to which it gives a wrong interpre¬
tation.
It cannot be denied that even in the early days of Christianity,
through the Logos doctrine of the Apologists and of Origen, through
Augustine’s Neoplatonist speculations on veritas, and, above all,
through the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, a synthesis of Bib¬
lical faith and speculative Idealism was accomplished which dimmed
the purity of the Biblical idea of God to a dangerous extent, and
permeated faith with alien mystical ideas. But this does not alter the
fact that in the Platonic theory of ideas there is a truth which, even
in Christian thinking, should not be allowed to disappear, and which
Augustine saw more clearly and correctly than all his predecessors.
The fact that he related this to the God of revelation was an act of
genuine Christian perception; the way in which he did it remains
open to criticism. In this limited sense all the Reformers were Au-
gustinians,” especially Calvin, as well as Pascal and Kierkegaard.
For they all taught that the light of the reason is a divine light, given
to us that we may know the world, but not able to lead us to know
the Living God; that it does indeed point back to its origin in God,
but in so doing does not open a way to the knowledge of God.

4. Deism, Agnosticism, Positivism. Deism, the rational theology

which was characteristic of the later period of the Enlightenment,
belongs to the past. It is only historically intelligible as the final
product of a continual process of “ subtraction, of a progressive thin¬
ning of the substance of Christianity.14 It is therefore difficult to grasp;

14 How strongly Deism, at the outset, was influenced by Christian ideas and
feelings and therefore actually was rather rational Theism than Deism proper,
comes out very clearly in a prayer of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the “ father
of Deism,” which he has written down at the close of his book De Veritate.
Here he asks God whether he may publish his book: “ O Thou Eternal God,
the Source of Light and the Giver of all inward illumination, I beseech Thee
out of Thine infinite Goodness to forgive me for bringing a request which is
indeed more than a sinner has any right to ask, and then he begs for a sign
whether he dare publish this book, and he receives the sign in a rare experience
which was both interior and exterior, “ upon which I resolved to have my book
printed.” (Cf. Webb, Studies, et cetera, p. 352.)
356 Revelation and Reason

its determining essential characteristic is a negative element, “re¬

moteness ” from the actual world, whether it be human and historical
or cosmic and natural. This is the idea of God at which Goethe scoffs
when he writes:

“ What kind of God were this, who only from without

Would move the world.
Letting the universe flow in circles round His finger? ”

The God of Deism is One who, after the creation of the world,
withdrew to His own heritage; * * He is the God who has said farewell
and gone away. He has an obvious affinity with the “ Prime
Mover,” 15 known to us from the history of religions, of whose exist¬
ence one knows, it is true, but who plays no part in religious worship
or in social practice. This outlook has been replaced in later times by
the “ unknowable,” the “ unfathomable mystery ” of agnosticism, or
the metaphysically sterile emptiness of Positivism. Agnosticism and
Positivism are two aspects of one and the same fundamental attitude
of the renunciation of knowledge of the supramundane in favor of
a “ positive ” inquiry into facts.
Agnosticism (Spencer) is perhaps a shade more doctrinaire than
Positivism (Comte), since it ventures to express as a universal state¬
ment the phrase ignoramus, ignorabimus. Positivism, on the other
hand, is a shade more voluntaristic, since it refuses to deal with the
question whether there is such a thing at all as metaphysical knowl¬
edge. Otherwise it is difficult to distinguish them from each other.
At the same time we must certainly note a point that is more or less
true of all these philosophical positions: they are rarely maintained
in practical life. In his relations with wife and child, friends and fel¬
low countrymen, the Positivist makes presuppositions of a spiritual
and personalistic character, which are in the sharpest opposition to
his abstract scientific theoiy.
Apart from this, however, we cannot deny that this position does
contain a certain element of truth. This view has some perception of

[The word used is “ Altenteil.” In Switzerland and in South Germany

sometimes the owner of an estate or of a farm will hand over his property to
his heir during his own lifetime. When he does so, he reserves a portion for
himself - the “ Altenteil ” - and his son must support him there. Thus the idea
here is of a God who is “ pensioned off.” Tr.]
15 Cf. S0derblom, Das Werden dies Gottesglaubens, pp. 114 If.
 Rational Theology 35?

the truth that man cannot know God by his own efforts, that all ra¬
tional knowledge of God is to the highest degree hypothetical and
uncertain.16 The Positivist is not prejudiced or “ crazy ” about any
metaphysical system; frequently, therefore, he is more open to the
Christian message of revelation than the Idealist or the Pantheist.
He has a feeling for the arrogance of all rational metaphysical systems,
and he has something of the modesty of one who is aware that he is not
sufficient for these things. The Positivist, however, erects this posi¬
tion of reserve into an axiom, a doctrinaire attitude, from the stand¬
point of which he fights against all religious faith and all metaphysics
as “ humbug,” with the fanaticism of a member of the Inquisition;
thus in addition to failing to solve his own problem he blocks the way
which he might have perceived had he only remained open to truth.
On the other hand, we must never forget that much of the blame for
this negative Positivist attitude must be laid to the account of the
Christian Church and its theology, which has often bitterly opposed
the champions of science, and on the other hand has frightened them
away from Christian truth by its clericalism and its rabies theologica.

5. Theism. First of all, as a historical fact it must be made clear that

in the strict sense of the word Theistic philosophy exists only within
the Christian sphere. The ancient world knew only dim foreshadow¬
ings of this truth. The teaching of Plato and of Aristotle certainly
contains the germs of a Theistic philosophy,17 but equally clearly
we can see that their development was hindered by other elements
of thought, whether Pantheist, or Deist, or anti-Theist. In addition
we are unable to find out what was the relation of both these think¬
ers to the polytheistic religion of their own people. Theistic ideas
come out more clearly in the schools of later ancient philosophy,
especially in that Roman group of popular philosophers who have
had so great an influence upon the Christian West: Epictetus, Cicero,
Seneca, Marcus Aurelius. Here we come upon the ideas of the divine
creation of the world, as well as of a personal Providence and a lov¬
ing direction of the world. On the other hand we must not overlook
two points: first, that Theistic ideas very swiftly merge into either

16 Religion, says Spencer (First Principles, p. 67), has always been more or
less irreligious. It has always claimed “ to have a knowledge of that which
transcends knowledge.”
17 Cf., on this point, pp. 315 ff.
358 Revelation and Reason

Pantheism or polytheism;18 secondly, that we are here already in a

historical epoch when the Hebrew belief in revelation, with its im¬
pressive monotheism, is influencing the Mediterranean world. The
Hellenistic Jew Philo 19 is hardly an isolated phenomenon. The same,
of course, is true of Neoplatonism, which already betrays traces of
Christian influence.
Strictly Theistic systems exist only upon the foundation of Chris¬
tianity. This applies to the whole of Christian philosophy from Au¬
gustine down to the great representatives of Scholasticism, who were
indeed always both theologians and philosophers; this is also true
of the whole current of tradition in modern European philosophy,
which flows from Augustine and Scholasticism, by way of Nicholas
of Cusa, and other thinkers of the Renaissance, merging finally into
the neo-Idealistic philosophy.20 Practically everywhere it is evident
that the Theistic philosophy has had a vigorous development only
where the Christian theological tradition was living. With a slight
exaggeration we may say that philosophical Theism is identical with
Christian philosophy.
The element of truth in philosophical Theism, therefore, is obvi¬
ous: it is the philosophical doctrine of God, which develops in agree¬
ment with the Christian faith, but — either in intention or actually
- from rational motives. In general, Theism usually follows the lines
of the old Theistic proofs, even where it does not itself formulate
them as its basis. It utilizes equally the cosmological, ontological,
teleological, and ethical elements of thought. Of late two ideas in
particular have come to the fore: the idea of absolute values and the
idea of the indissoluble human personality. If “ person ” is the high¬
est form of being that we can experience, why should not the con¬
cept of “ person,” like any other concept gained from the world of
experience, be applied to the final depths of all being? Can that
which is the ground of personal existence be less than person? The

18 Cf. on this my book Der Mensch im Widerspruch. [English trans. Man

in Revolt, Appendix V., O. Wyon. Tr.]
19 For some considerable time scholars have been examining the influence
of Plato upon Philo and of Philo upon Christianity; it would be worth-while
to examine into the influence of Philo upon various non-Christian philosophies
both contemporary and later ones. ’
20 Cf. Cassirer, Der universelle Theismus und das Problem der natiirlichen
Theologie im 17. Jahrhundert in Descartes Lehre, Personlichkeit, Wirkung,
 Rational Theology 359

Christian idea of the imago Dei here appears as the theme of meta¬
physical method. Philosophical Theism has indeed everywhere ac¬
cepted the idea of the creation of the world, and with that also
of the created character of the human mind and spirit. It is at this
point that it draws the line between itself and speculative Idealism.
At this point two questions press for an answer: First, must not
Theism, for the sake of its rationality, make deductions from the
personal idea of God which will lead it nearer to either speculative
Idealism or Pantheism? On the other hand, is not its rationality an
illusion, since it claims as the discovery of reason that which is
actually historical revelation? Thus we are here confronted by the
problem of “ Christian philosophy for the moment, however, we
cannot deal with this question.
That which is usually described as the beginnings of Deism — the
theology of men like John Locke, Herbert of Cherbury, John Toland
— is, in the formal sense, in the way of argument, a rational theology
which is more or less consciously severed from the Biblical historical
revelation; but in the material sense, according to the content of its
doctrine of God, it is not “ Deism ” at all, but Theism, in so far as God
is not only conceived as a personal Being, but also as One who as the
Preserver and Redeemer is always at work upon the created world.
It is a “ natural theology ”21 which takes account only of the uni¬
versal revelation, or the revelation in the Creation, inside and outside
of man; which derives its statements about God, and His relation to
man and the world, solely from this universal revelation, by means
of a rational process of conclusions and combinations, and therefore
appeals only to the reason which all men have in common, but with¬
out straying too far away, in its idea of God, from the Christian idea
of God. Certainly the story of the development of Deism shows how
soon this original relation to the Christian idea of God was lost, and
the “ Christian ” content of this rational doctrine of God was lost, in
the two opposite tendencies, Deism and Pantheism; but there al¬
ways remains, down to the present day, alongside of the Deistic
and Pantheistic view, as one of the elements of Western philoso-
21 In a very informative manner E. Fueter, in his Geschichte der exakten
Wissenschaften in der schweizerischen Aufklarung, has made clear the motives
and the form of this natural theology as illustrated by the example of Switzer¬
land. In this connection two points are of special interest: how this natural
theology stands at first quite consciously upon the foundation of Christianity,
and also how it forms the only possible point of contact for free natural science.
360 Revelation and Reason

phy, a relic of the original Theistic view. At the same time there
is one point that must not be overlooked: although this Theism
consciously renounces all dependence upon the historical revela¬
tion, and thus tries to be a strictly rational theology, yet its power
to produce conviction and to mold thought seems to be connected
with the presence and the vitality of the Christian tradition by which
it is surrounded and permeated. The intellectual history of the last
few centuries may indeed lead us to the conclusion that there is no
room for a rational theistic theology, or “ philosophy of religion ” 22 in
a sphere which is completely alienated from the Christian tradition,
and that to the extent in which Christian influence weakens it merges
into other tendencies, whether agnostic, or pantheistic, or those of
speculative Idealism. But this means that rational Theism confronts
us with the problem of Christian philosophy.23
Here, therefore, we cannot, as in the case of the other explicitly
non-Christian forms of rational theology, search for the element of
truth which it contains in the sense in which we used the Christian
belief in God as our standard. For from the point of view of content
this Theism always turns out to be a more or less strongly diluted
form of the Christian idea of God. Just as within Western culture
there are ideas and values that are derived from the Christian faith
which sever their connection with their “ mother country ” and still
go on working as a secularized Christianity, more or less independ¬
ently, and often very fruitfully, so too is it with the Christian idea
22 It is perhaps not wholly without significance that in the sphere of the
German language the idea of “natural theology,” in the positive sense, has
almost entirely disappeared, and has been replaced by the philosophy of re¬
ligion, whereas in England it still occupies a place of considerable importance
in thought. The fact of the Gifford Lectures, which are explicitly designed to
be a support to natural theology, shows this plainly, and these Lectures have
had a good deal of influence upon contemporary thought.
23 The example of the Gifford Lectures by A. E. Taylor (op. cit.) is typical
of the blending of rational theistic philosophy, natural theology, Christian
philosophy, and Christian theological apologetics. It is in the nature of the
case that Christian philosophy, when it deals with the problems of religion,
offers this aspect. It is wholly injurious, and not in any way fortunate for Ger¬
man Protestantism, that it has practically lost this, for it, important link be¬
tween philosophy and theology, between the message of the Church and secular
knowledge.
Until the middle of last century, even in Germany, there was a more or less
rational Theism-the younger Fichte, Ulrici, Weisse, and above all Lotze-
which was able to exert a not unimportant function as a buffer between ecclesi-
astical theology and secular knowledge.
 Rational Theology 361

of God. The Theistic idea of God has been, so to speak, lent by Chris¬
tianity to the cultural world which has severed its connection with the
Christian faith. Hence, like those ideas of ethical values that have
been derived from Christianity, it remains alive only so long as, in
some way or other, even if it be “ underground,” it retains its con¬
nection with Christianity. It is not an independent entity, but a de¬
pendent one, and one of great significance.
In the terms of Christian theology this is the problem of Theism:
What is the relation between the Unitarian and the Trinitarian idea
of God? The rejection of the Trinitarian idea of God corresponds
materially to the rejection of the historical basis of revelation; as,
conversely, if we take the historical revelation seriously we are led,
of necessity, to the Trinitarian conception of God. The Triune God
of the Christian faith, the God who reveals Himself in Jesus Christ,
in His personal presence, “ the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
not the God of scholars and philosophers,” is the God whose personal
Being is indissolubly connected with His self-giving love; the God
of rational Theism, on the other hand, is He of whom love can only be
predicated per accidens and without certainty, who does not enter
into history, and who therefore stands nearer to the God of Deism
— who is remote from the world, and cares nothing about human
beings — than He does to the Living God of faith.

6. When we look back and survey the historical actuality which

we call the rational doctrine of God, and if, in so doing, we look
away from the particular case of a philosophy that is deliberately
based upon the Christian faith, then we must confess that there is no
particular doctrine of God that is “ rational,” or “ according to rea¬
son,” but that there are a number of very different kinds of meta¬
physical systems, whose theologies differ as much from each other
as they do from the Christian faith. Doubtless they stand very de¬
cidedly either near to or far from the Christian doctrine of God.
But even those which, according to a well-founded tradition, are
regarded as the nearest to Christianity - as, for instance, those of
Plato or Aristotle — show in then idea of God only a very indistinct
relation with the Christian idea, while at some essential points they
are irreconcilably opposed to it. Only an exaggerated apologetic
which desires peace at any price, or an anxious desire for support and
certainty, can ignore these fundamental contradictions. We cannot
362 Revelation and Reason

ever doubt the enormous value and intellectual achievements of

thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, or Hegel, or their deep moral
and religious seriousness; but, on the other hand, it is the duty of
Christian theology to make plain that, measured by the standards
which faith gives into her hands, the contradictions are far more in
evidence than the agreements. Neither the God of Plato or Aristotle
nor that of Spinoza or Hegel is the holy and merciful Father and
Lord, “who forgiveth all our iniquities, . . . who redeemeth our
life from destruction, and crowneth us with loving-kindness and ten¬
der mercies.” The human mind may find elevation and satisfaction
in this rational theology; it will not find in it the “ truth which makes
us free,” 24 it will not be able to recognize the God who wills to real¬
ize His Kingdom. One who seeks for a friendly synthesis between
any of these ideas of God and Christian doctrine should beware lest
in so doing he may lose both: the rational basis of argument, and
the truth of revelation of the Living God, the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ.

24. THE TWO CONCEPTIONS OF TRUTH

Revelation and reason possess one common element: they both
claim truth. The genuine scientist wills, not that his opinion should
prevail, but that truth should prevail; unbelievers have frequently
surpassed Christians in their love of truth, and in their willingness
to sacrifice their own interests to the truth they have put many a
Christian to shame. But the Christian faith also is concerned with
truth. It is the will of God that we should “worship Him in spirit
and in truth ”;1 even the Apostle who proclaims most decisively the
message of the Cross proclaims: “We can do nothing against the
truth, but for the truth ”;2 He who says of Himself that He is the
Life says also, “ I am the Truth.” 3 Faith can only will the truth that
saves, and not an illusion that gives a passing happiness. “ The truth
shall make you free.”4 Is “ truth ” in both cases the same thing? Or
is there a difference, not only in the approach to truth, but in the
very conception of truth itself?
24 John 8:32.
1 John 4:24. 3 John 14:6.
2 II Cor. 13:8. 4 John 8:32.
 The Two Conceptions of Truth 363
1. At first sight it seems as though the truth claimed by reason
has one great advantage over that claimed by faith in that it is uni¬
versally recognized. The truth of revelation is universally valid, but
it is not everywhere recognized as such, in comparison with the truth
of reason. “ Twice two makes four,” is a truth for everyone, but the
fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Redeemer of the
world is not recognized by everyone. In order to be accurate, how¬
ever, we must make some reservations about the universal validity
of the truth of reason. Idiots know nothing of truth; children and
primitive people do not possess the strict conception of truth; the
insane believe things to be true which everyone else regards as un¬
true; skeptics doubt tire ultimate truth of any and every statement;
fanatics eliminate the idea of rational truth from their outlook al¬
together.
And yet there is a certain irresistible character about rational
truth; it presses through all hindrances. The process of science, in
spite of all setbacks in detail, is as a whole continuous. This is so be¬
cause truth in the sphere of reason can be perceived by means of
criteria that are at man’s disposal, and can be verified by norms that
are at his disposal. On its side it has either proof or experiment and
observation respectively; this means it possesses the evidence of
logical connection or perception. In addition, especially in modern
times, there is the “ evidence ” of technical proof. None of this can
faith claim for itself; what is true for faith can be recognized only
in decision. Because so often men have not sufficient strength for
such decision, it constantly seems as though the truth of faith were
based on an insecure foundation.
When we look at the matter a little more closely, however, the
advantageous position of reason seems very uncertain. It is a well-
known fact that skepticism, doubt of all truth, is precisely the prod¬
uct of a highly developed activity of reason. The process of science
is continuous and progressive, it is true, but it does not gradually
enable man to secure one section of truth after another; each newly
acquired piece of knowledge more or less invalidates the truth which
had hitherto been regarded as axiomatic. Indeed, the progress of
knowledge shakes the ultimate presuppositions of all that until then
had been generally accepted. In the days of Kant, who would have
thought it possible that the geometry of Euclid or the measure of
time and space would ever have become relative? The first principles
364 Revelation and Reason

themselves, as well as the last most comprehensive result of the

knowledge gained by reason, remain uncertain so long as the process
of knowledge continues. Only the foreground is clear — “ the mul¬
tiplication table and the barest facts of geography ”; the background
remains dim and uncertain. Thus there remains room for skepticism
precisely among those who stand on the summit of the knowledge of
their day, and who are in possession of all the methods of scientific
or philosophical knowledge.

2. Here, however, we are not concerned with the problem of the

validity of truth, but with the kind of truth. Of what kind is the
knowledge gained by reason? We will reply with the statement —
at present not proved — that all rational knowledge is impersonal.
This is true primarily of the sphere of strictly scientific knowledge, in
mathematics, logic, and the natural sciences. The student is here
concerned with objective knowledge; his aim is to know either the
general law or the object which is exactly described. The funda¬
mental category of this knowledge of truth is called “ it.” But this is
no less true of the Humanities. They do not deal with concrete
things, it is true, but with intellectual “ objects,” with subjects like
culture, law, ideas, values, and norms. Here too our concern is
with abstractions; it is a world dominated by “ it ” in its abstract¬
ness. Although the methods used in such study may differ greatly
from those used in the natural sciences, both in thought and in
research, in the last resort they are still one in the fact that they
are concerned with the impersonal, and that their one aim is to be
“ objective.”
Rational knowledge, however, also includes the whole sphere of
historical and everyday human experience. Who would maintain
that the historian, the biographer, the poet, the politician, the man
of business, the educator, in so far as in his or her own sphere they
are concerned with truth, are concerned only with “ impersonal
truth ”? Such an argument seems absurd in the light of the fullness
and depth of the natural human personal relationships which char¬
acterize the cultural and the social life of man. The concept of “ per¬
son ” and the apprehension of the truth about persons belong, so it
seems, to the natural sphere of reason. The concept of the person
which is there utilized is primarily, for instance, that which Boethius
was the first to define: “ Persona est naturae rationalis individua sub-
 The Two Conceptions of Truth 365
stantia”8 or, according to Locke, a reflective, rational, self-conscious
being, understanding itself as identical, or, with Kant, “ the power
to become conscious of oneself in the different circumstances of the
identity of one’s existence ” — thus, in brief, a being with reason and
self-consciousness. We may, perhaps — with Kant — go a step farther,
and point to the connection between person and idea, person and
moral law, and may thus define “ person ” as “ that subject whose
actions are capable of being calculated,” or “ the freedom of a being
under moral laws.” Indeed, reason may also apply the concept of
person to the Absolute, and form the idea of an absolute Person
who is conceived as subject of the eternal ideas and truths and of the
moral law, and even as the World Creator. As we have already seen,
theistic theology does not altogether lie outside the realm of rational
knowledge. Here we are not inquiring into the degree of certainty
which such rational-theological statements possess, but merely into
their possibility for thought. Thus the object of reason is not only
the human person but also the divine person; in both senses rational
truth can also be personal truth.

3. And yet all this truth is “ truth that I acquire for myself.” The
“ other,” who confronts me as person, is a part of my world, of the
world in which “ I ” as the subject am the center. He, even as person,
is the object of my knowing. It is true, of course, that between me and
my fellow man, as I perceive and experience him, exchanges of various
kinds take place. We work together, and we speak with one another.
He allows me to share in his knowledge; he “ has something to say
to me,” and even very much to say. In the last resort, however, what
he has to say to me is something that comes to me from him acci¬
dentally. He does not break through the circle of that which I could
also have told myself. Rational truth, in which he is my teacher, is
of such a kind that I also could have learned it for myself. Indeed,
the best teacher is precisely the one who makes me independent,
and weans me from dependence upon himself.6 The fact that it was
6 Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, c. 3.
6 It would be worth-while for someone to make a comparative study of
Saint Augustine’s De magistro and Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments. Both
deal in a fundamental way, from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge,
with the “ teacher.” But their aims are entirely opposite. Kierkegaard, who, like
Augustine, starts from the thought of Plato’s Meno, and thus from that of truth
as “ anamnesis,” sets out to show that the true knowledge of God is not acquired
366 Revelation ancl Reason

another than myself who led me to the truth is, so far as truth is
concerned, an accident; whether I find it for myself or whether it
has to be imparted to me before I could know it for myself does not
alter the truth itself in the very least. Nowhere in the sphere of ra¬
tional knowledge does there emerge truth of such a kind that essen¬
tially, of necessity, it could reach me only by way of the “ other ” —
truth which I, in the very nature of the case, could not have found out
for myself. The reason and its truth are at our disposal in common;
they are universal. I am the bearer of the same reason as the other.
In so far as rational truth is concerned, it is all the same whether I
alone know it or whether I reach it with the help of someone else.
Indeed, it becomes real knowledge when I know it so well that I
might even be the only person in possession of this truth. Thus in
principle even rational knowledge leaves me isolated.
This is true also of the rational knowledge of God. Even God is
here part of my rational world, in which I am the center; even He is
the Object of my knowledge. It is true that I think of Him as Subject,
as the absolute Subject; but I myself am the subject of this thought;
it is my thought; I introduce God into the world of my thought.
Nothing happens that breaks through the circle of my self-isolation.
I am alone with my truth, even with my idea of God. The God whom
I think, is not the one who really confronts me. Nothing has hap¬
pened on His side to change my situation; neither my sin nor my
distress has been altered. I can, of course, interpret my sin and my
distress in the light of my idea of God; thus I can give it another
meaning, I can place it in another connection; but I cannot alter
it, and the God whom I think out for myself also does not alter it.
Neither the human nor the divine Person is able to drag me out of
my self-isolation. The human person cannot do it because he cannot
say or give anything to me that I do not — in principle — myself
by human effort, but that it is a “ communication,” while Augustine regards the
knowledge of God as the final result of the reflection of the knower. The root of
the difference is clear: Kierkegaard takes into account the fact that “ the learner ”
does not possess ” the “ condition ” required for the understanding of truth,
in spite of the fact that he ought to have been in possession of it by means of
the divine Creation, and therefore that “ the learner has himself forfeited the
condition and is engaged in forfeiting it” [p. 10, Swenson’s translation. Tr.]
The learner is in untruth, and indeed this is due to his own fault, that is, to sin.
This is a point which the Evangelical thinker can never forget when he is think¬
ing about truth and knowledge, whereas the Catholic Christian philosopher
forgets it as long as he is engaged in the pursuit of philosophy.
 The Two Conceptions of Truth 367
possess; the divine cannot do it because it does not give me anything
at all — it simply is — namely, the idea of my thought world.7
Neither the concrete “ thou ” of my fellow man, nor the divine
“ Thou ” of my own thinking, is a true “ Thou,” which really changes
and alters my life. The “ thou ” of my fellow man cannot give me
what I need, because he is only my — equally poor — fellow self. He
cannot give me the truth which is life, because he possesses only the
truth that I also possess. And the God whom I conceive myself can-
not give me the truth, because He gives me nothing at all. For that
which I know of Him I know through the processes of my own
thought; what I know of Him is of such a kind that I might have
known it all along, a truth that already lay in the depths of reason.
It is not truth in the form of an event; it is not truth which has the
power to change life. Ruthlessly the reason spans the circle of im¬
manence around me, even if the idea of transcendence belongs to
this immanence. All the transcendence that I think out for myself
is only transcendence within immanence; all that I describe as thou
within this my world of immanence is only “ thou-within-the-world-
of-the-self.” This world of immanence, in spite of all the variety that
takes place within it, is at bottom a static system. No real communi¬
cation takes place. God does not communicate Himself because I
simply think about God, and that is all; my fellow man does not
communicate himself because he can tell me and give to me only
what I, as his fellow man, as the bearer of the same reason, “ at
bottom ” indeed myself possess.8 Indeed, if God, instead of being
7 This is the obvious limitation of rational Theism. It is the knowledge of
the personality of God within the framework and upon the basis of the law. It
is possible for the rational Theist to call God the Good, in so far as His will is
indeed identical with the law of the good; but it is not possible for him to call
Him the loving God who forgives sin. Forgiveness is that which lies “ beyond-
the-law it is the “ righteousness of God ” apart from the law, rod vopov.
8 From the time of Augustine onward, (Christian) speculative theology has
been accustomed to bridge this gulf between the immanent knowledge of truth
and the truth of revelation or of “ communication ” by means of the concept
of illuminatio. In Plato the situation is clear: the soul perceives the divine truth
(Republic, VII), the divine truth appears inwardly to the soul; no “ communica¬
tion ” or active movement proceeds from God. The same is true of Plotinus.
But Augustine differs from Plato in the idea that the soul has been created, and
thus that the lumen rationis has been implanted within it. The divine truth is
indeed given to the reason through the Creation, but the knowledge of truth
is not accomplished as “ communication ” but — exactly as in Plato — as a per¬
ception of the idea (the image of sun and eye, cf. Civ. Dei, 10:2), and this
conception with its appeal to John 1:4 ff. is regarded as that of the Holy Scrip-
368 Revelation and Reason

“ thought ” by me, were to impart Himself, that would be no longer

merely a relative, but an absolute, self-communication, and, there¬
fore, something that would truly change my life! Then the circle
of my self-isolation, which reason draws round me, would be broken.
Then something would be said which neither I myself nor another
could say to me; then something would be given to me which would
make my life fundamentally different. But how is that to take place?
If it is to be a real happening, then it would have to take place in a
concrete historical encounter with a “ thou ”; but the concrete his¬
torical encounter which takes place between human beings is al¬
ways the encounter with a poor fellow man, who, in the last resort,
has nothing to say to me or to give to me. To be more than that,
that which happens would have to be more than human, namely,
divine; more than temporal, namely, eternal.
But how would it be were God to impart Himself precisely where
a human being really imparts himself? True self-impartation is love.
Were a human being to meet me in unconditional love, in the very
fact that he imparted himself, he would give me that which I cannot
give to myself, and he would say that which I cannot say to myself.
This would release me from my isolation. We can indeed form some
conception of such a happening, but the thing itself does not take
place. The human love which we experience is always “ all-too-hu-
man, tainted with egoism, falsified by self-love, and is precisely not
unconditional self-surrender. The true self-surrender of man is not
a human, but a divine, possibility. Unconditional love can happen

tures themselves. In spite of the fact, however, that in this perception of ideas
no kind of communicating activity is ascribed to God, by means of the am¬
biguous expression illiiTnincitio God is described as the Giver of the perceptio
(knowledge) as pater illuminationis nostrae (Soliloquia, I, 1, 2) whereby fre¬
quently Eph. 5:13 ff. is adduced as Biblical support. In spite of the Biblical
terminology, however, there can be no doubt that here we are dealing with
truth which man acquires for himself; this occurs because the soul naturali
ordine, disponents creatore, subjuncta sic ista videat (quoted by Gilson, in his
book on Saint Augustine, p. 151). The “communicating” activity of God is
here confined to the fact that He has created man’s reason in such a way that
he is himself capable, by his own efforts, of acquiring such knowledge of
truth; credendum est, mentis intellectuals ita conditam esse naturam (ibid.).
*s rati°nal truth discovered by thought, and it is abstract speculative truth,
which receives its personal meaning only through being combined with the
Biblical belief in revelation. To use the language of Kierkegaard, it is an “ im¬
manent knowledge ” and in the nature of the case that nonparadoxical “ Re-
hgion A [Kierkegaard, by Lowrie, p. 323. Tr.] and thus that which we have al¬
ready described above in the text as “ thinking God from our own standpoint.”
 The Two Conceptions of Truth 369
only as the love of God. But could Gods love take place as human lov¬
ing? Our reason does not feel that it can cope with this possibility;
when we think about God in a rational manner we cannot take such
a possibility into account. Reason knows nothing of such love, or
of such an event. Reason cannot conceive that which transcends it,
which breaks through that ring of immanence of the self-world in
which the rational self is the center. This is what the Christian faith
means by revelation, and what it proclaims as the very cause of its
being.

4. That is the content of the Christian claim to revelation. Only

because this has taken place, and we as believers start from this
standpoint, have we been able to put the question as we have done.
But in this question we have certainly unveiled the situation of man
in his “ natural existence,” as it is apart from the event of revelation
and of faith. Only from the standpoint of faith is it possible to look
at both together — existence and knowledge, the question of truth
and the question of life — from that standpoint of faith, indeed, in
which truth and life are one. We now have to describe in more exact
terms the concept of truth to which this gives rise.
(a) Truth, which happens. For our rational understanding of truth,
this is an absurdity. Truth has nothing to do with “ happening
truth “ is.” Truth is the agreement of something thought with some¬
thing that exists. Such truth we can discover, and thus introduce it
into time; but when it is known already this introduction into time
becomes meaningless. A geometrical theorem was once discovered by
someone for the first time; but since then this fact is of no interest
so far as truth itself is concerned. The moment that it was perceived
it became timeless.9 The truth of revelation is totally different.
9 Completely oblivious of the Christian idea of truth, Webb (op. cit., p. 37)
gives expression to this rationalistic axiom: “Whoever makes us acquainted
with the truth, in whatever way we gained knowledge of it, now we see that it
is so and must be so. ... For whenever we see that this or that must be true
of God, our knowledge has passed into the sphere of rational or natural the¬
ology,” and this, he says, constitutes the difference between mere opinion and
knowledge! But this rational knowledge also is “ revelation,” in the sense indi¬
cated in the previous note. These statements are so instructive because they
show very clearly the connection between natural knowledge and that which
is “ necessary ” for thought or law. Indeed rational knowledge is the knowledge
of whatever “ must ” be thus and so about God. But “ knowledge ” in the Biblical
sense of the word is concerned with the freedom of the divine communication,
with the God who forgives sins. Try to think the forgiveness of sins and this
“ must ” together, and we have complete blasphemy. Hence this is the “ offense.”
370 Revelation and Reason

“ Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” 10 This does not mean that
they were discovered, so that all this now “ is ” because it has been
discovered. Rather, the knowledge of the truth remains permanently
united with the historical process in which it came to us for the first
time. The truth, the eternal Being and the eternal will of God, “ the
mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations now
is made manifest to His saints.” 11 But because it has been made
manifest it has not become a “ static ” truth. It is, and it remains,
truth only for him who enters into that Event which is Jesus Christ,
and remains there. It is always true only as something that “hap¬
pens,” as grace. Therefore “ grace and truth ” belong indissolubly
to one another. It is genuine communication, which remains bound
to the act of communication. It is the truth-oi-us, which was sepa¬
rated from our reality and was and is united with our reality only
through that happening, the eternal divine determination or elec¬
tion. It is true only in so far as it was and is posited. It is and it remains
truth which has been communicated.
(b) Therefore “ I am the Truth.”12 This is not an impersonal, ob¬
jective “ it ” truth, but a “ Thou ” truth. In this Event of revelation,
in the Person of Christ, the divine Thou addresses me, in love. God
imparts Himself to me in the life of Him who alone was able to say,
“ I came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give My
life a ransom for many.” 13
In this God reveals Himself as the God-for-us, as the God of grace,
and He reveals us to ourselves as those who are loved. Here alone
do we receive God as our unconditional “ Thou,” as the One who in
unconditional love addresses us.
(c) It is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the word, given truth.
In rational knowledge logos and givenness fall apart. The “ logical,”
that which has to do with ideas, the a priori, the noetic, is not given,
but — to use Plato’s phrase — it is something “ recollected,” some¬
thing that has been merely awakened in us. That which is given,
however, is an irrational element - the actuality of sense, or of his¬
tory, which cannot be derived or understood from anything else; it
is what it is; and, in spite of all the illuminating explanations that we
seek and find, still always preserves a remnant of this “ wretched ac¬
tuality ” in itself. What we receive through Jesus Christ, however, is
10 John 1:17. 12 John 14:6.
11 Col. 1:26. 13 Matt. 20:28.
 The Two Conceptions of Truth 371

something given, which is at the same time the Logos, the eternal
Word of God, as something given personally, and in time. It is not
that once we have received it we know it as a truth, which we might
have known all along, of which we simply had to become aware.
Rather, the situation is that we have this truth only when we continu¬
ally receive it afresh. But when we do receive it we know that it is
truly meaningful: the truth, the Logos.
(d) “I am the Truth and the Life.” Here at last the dualism of
truth and life is overcome. In the natural-rational world truth and
reality are two. The true man is something other than the actual man;
the true life is something other than the actual life. Idea and concrete
reality fall apart. Here, however, the eternal truth of God confronts
me as the historical reality; the eternal truth of God and the eternal
truth of man, which were both remote and distant from me, have
now come close to me, as near as my own thought is to me, as the
“ Christ in me ” through faith. To be in God through Christ, that is
the reality that has become true, and the truth that has become real,
of man. This is Life. The true life is existing in the love of God.
(e) This truth is personal encounter.14 Here that ring of imma¬
nence which made me solitary is broken through. The monologue of
my thought becomes the dialogue of revelation and prayer. The
deity who is “ thought ” disappears, and in his place there comes the
God who calls me to Himself. But in this call the man who listens and
believes first becomes truly a person. We are always already persons;
but we become truly personal persons in love only in that love
“ which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”15 We are
truly personal only when we are in fellowship, when all “ it ” rela¬
tions with our fellow men, all cold objectivity or passionate desire, all
desire to “ exploit ” other human beings, have been replaced by that
way of life in which each lives for the other.
(/) This truth cannot therefore be appropriated in one act of ob¬
jective perception of truth, but only in an act of personal surrender
and decision. In order to gain this truth, not only must we make
room for it, but we must “ die ” in order that we may be raised by
Christ to a new way of life. We cannot “ possess ” this truth as we can
“possess other truths,” but we must be in this truth, we must live

14 On this point, as indeed for this whole chapter, see my work Wahrheit
als Begegnung. [English trans., The Divine-Human Encounter. Tr.]
15 Rom. 5:5.
372 Revelation and Reason

this truth, we must do it. “ If any man willeth to do His will, he shall
know of the teaching whether it be of God.” 16 Here the separation
between being and thought, between theoretical and practical reason,
has disappeared. This knowledge of truth is at the same time the
good will, and this goodness of the will is based on the recognition of
the revealed truth. He alone knows Christ truly who, in love, be¬
comes His disciple, and he alone is in love who abides in Him. Hence
it is the same John who speaks of the truth that has become real who
equates being-in-the-truth and doing-the-truth with being-in-love
and keeping the commandments of God. Here, at one point, the great
questions of human existence are solved: the question of truth or
knowledge; the ethical problem, or the question of community; the
question of life or of happiness; the question of the meaning of the
world and of the self. He who is in this truth is one who has been,
and is, redeemed.

5. But what is the relation between the two concepts of truth, that
is, between the impersonal conception of reason and the personal
conception of revelation? It is not that of “ either or.” The multiplica¬
tion table and the truths of natural science are not eliminated by the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The impersonal is not an untruth,
for God has also created the impersonal. There is a truth of “ things,”
because things exist; there is objective truth because there are ob¬
jects. We gather all this up in a phrase and call it “ the world.” We
have to learn to know the world objectively, and to use it. There
is also impersonal truth that is not concerned with “ things,” the
world of ideas, the intellectual world. These are not merely aids to
our thinking, but principles which have their basis in the thoughts of
God. We are meant to use them also, and they are not above us, but
under us.
But we must not use persons. Nor can we learn to know them ob¬
jectively. Persons are to be known in their God-given personal being;
that means, they must be loved. The objective attitude toward per¬
sons is as wrong as a personal attitude toward things. Persons are not
objects, but subjects; they have a claim on us to be known as “ thou.”
The recognition of the person as “ thou ” is love.17 This love is some-

16 John 7:17.
17 In the Kantian ethic and concept of the person the contrast between faith
and reason comes out very clearly. On the one hand we see the recognition
 The Two Conceptions of Truth 373

thing we ought to have, but it is that which, as sinners, we cannot

achieve, nor can we will it. From the ethical point of view sin is
simply the treating of the “ thou ” as though it were not a thou, as
an object — as an object of exploitation, of enjoyment, of domination.
The thou relationship to our fellow man is created only when the
Thou relation to God is created. Agape is the fruit of pistis. Com¬
munity is the result of listening to the Word of God. The truth of
community, however, stands above the truth of things, even that of
truth expressed in the realm of abstract ideas. Love stands above all
science, art, and culture.
The relation between the two kinds of truth is the same as that
between the planes of existence: 18 the higher includes the lower, but
not vice versa. The personal truth of revelation, faith, and love in¬
cludes within itself the impersonal truth connected with “ things,”
and the impersonal truth connected with abstractions, but not vice
versa. God Himself thinks, but He is not a thought. God has ideas,
but He is not an idea. God has a plan, and He creates an order, but
He is not a world order. God’s Logos includes all the logos of reason
within Himself, but He Himself is Person, the eternal Son. The super¬
ordination of the personal over the impersonal is based upon the fact
that God in Himself, for Himself, is a Thou, the Triune God. Hence a
conflict between objective and personal truth can arise only when
the limits between them are not observed; for instance, when some¬
thing is stated as a truth of faith which is a statement in the sphere of
the truth of the world; or a statement in the sphere of personal truth
is stated as objective truth. Science has the presumption to think it
can understand the mystery of God which discloses itself only
through revelation and faith; and the Church has the presumption
to declare as revealed truth that which is only a primitive view of
the world. As believers, we have to refer all things to God, even the
things and truths of the world, but we must not do this in such a way
that they lose their character as things of the world. Likewise, as
those who are called to rational knowledge, we ought to inquire into
all that belongs to the rightful sphere of knowledge, with our reason,
of the person as “ rational nature ” and the good as “ the idea of the will of
every rational being as a universally legislative will” (see the Fundamental
Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals), and on the other, love to our actual
concrete neighbor in the unique and unrepeatable and underivable fact of
“ encounter.”
18 Cf. above, pp. 298 ff.
374 Revelation and Reason

but we ought not to think that the mystery of God also belongs to
this category of legitimate subjects of inquiry. God has permitted His
creature to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the Garden; only the
tree in the center of the Garden, His divine mystery, has He kept for
Himself; that must not be touched. This is the situation: only one
who respects this divine center and regards it “ with holy awe ” can
also receive a clear view of the things of the world. But where man
exalts his reason to be a god, and makes himself the center of every¬
thing, everything gets out of focus; he sees nothing right. Everything
is out of perspective, and, above all, it is out of the true order of life.
Hence the right order of the relation between faith and reason is one
of the main tasks of human life.

25. THE PROBLEM AND THE IDEA

OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY
1. Christian philosophy is a fact. All explanations of the problem
to which this fact gives rise must begin at this point. Whether this
Christian philosophy is good or bad, whether it has worked out, or
must work out, to the disadvantage of the Christian faith or of phi¬
losophy, is a second question; but it is not a question but an estab¬
lished fact that there is a long series of philosophers without whom
we could not think of the history of philosophy in the West at all,
upon whose thought the Christian faith, whether their own or that
of their contemporaries or their teachers, has been of the greatest
influence. “ Si Von ne pent concevoir que les systemes de Descartes,
de Malebranche, oil de Leibniz eussent pa se constituer tels quits
sont, si l influence de la religion chretienne ne s’etait exercee sur eux,
il devient infiniment probable que la notion de philosophic chretienne
a un sens, parce que l influence du Christianisme sur la philosophic est
une realite, says Gilson, in tire introduction to his great work on the
spirit of the philosophy of the Middle Ages.1
“ Although it is not itself a philosophy, Christianity has had a very
strong influence upon philosophy.” 2 To take only one example: “ The
question of a collective meaning of the history of humanity, of a
1 Gilson, L’esprit de la philosophic medievale, I, p. 19.
2 Ritter, Geschichte der christl. Philosophic, I, p. 18.
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 375

planned connection of historical development, was never posed as

such, and still less did it enter the minds of the thinkers of the an¬
cient world to see therein the real nature of the world “ Christi¬
anity, however, found from the very outset the nature of the whole
movement of the world in the experiences of persons,” so that “ in¬
stead of an eternal process of nature the drama of world history as a
temporal activity of free and active wills became the content of
Christian metaphysics.” 3
Whether from the point of view of philosophy, or from that of
faith, we may deplore this co-operation of philosophy and faith in
Western philosophy, or, on the other hand, we may rejoice in it — in
any case we cannot deny its existence as a fact, and indeed as a fact
from which even a thinker who deplores it, or a believer who con¬
demns it, cannot get away. A great number of the philosophical con¬
ceptions which today every philosopher uses naturally, as part of
his intellectual equipment, have been created by Christian philoso¬
phers; on tire other hand, no Christian theologian — however hostile
he may be to philosophy, and however deeply his own thinking may
be centered in the thought of the Bible — can carry on his work
without using conceptions that are derived from philosophy. The
synthesis of philosophy and Christianity, in some way or other, is a
fact that cannot be undone; it is part of our destiny.
On the other hand, there appears to be good reason, both on the
part of philosophy and on that of faith, for the grave misgivings that
are expressed about this synthesis. “ On ne pent pas plus parler d’une
philosophie chretienne que d’une mathematique ou d’une physique
chretiennes ” (Brehier) .4 Reason is reason; there is only one reason,
as there is only one multiplication table, only one theorem of Py¬
thagoras, only one logic for all human beings. All who wish to think
at all must think according to the rules of this one reason, which is
exactly the same for all; if a man does not think in this way, he is
not “ thinking ” at all; he is simply indulging in fantasy. Individual
differences occur only where man strays from the rules of thought,
and this means wrong thinking. True thinking does not admit any
expression of individuality, of time, or of personal experience. It is
interesting to note that this demand for the unrestricted autonomy
of reason within its own sphere — which includes philosophy — is
3 Windelband, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, p. 213.
4 Brehier, quoted by Gilson, op. cit., p. 521.
376 Revelation and Reason

made not only by philosophers who are hostile, or indifferent, to

religion as a whole, but also by Christian theologians.5 Grant reason
its legitimate rights, in order that faith also may have its full rights!
Opposition to the synthesis of philosophy and faith is quite dif¬
ferent when it comes from those who as Christians distrust all phi¬
losophy. In support of this position such people appeal to the Apostle
Paul, who speaks in the First Epistle to the Corinthians 6 of “ wis¬
dom ” as “ folly,” and in the Epistle to the Colossians warns those
to whom he writes against being deceived by “ philosophy.”7 From
the time of Tertullian onward certain sections of the Christian
Church and of Christian theology have been impregnated with a
spirit of profound distrust and dislike of philosophy and, indeed, of
reason as a whole. “ Unhappy Aristotle! who invented for these
men (the heretics) dialectics, the art of building up and pulling
down; an art so evasive in its propositions, so farfetched in its con¬
jectures, so harsh in its arguments, so productive of contentions —
embarrassing even to itself, retracting everything, and really treating
of nothing! . . “ What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? . . .
Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic,
Platonic, and dialectic composition! . . . We want no curious dis¬
putation after possessing Christ Jesus. . . . With our faith we desire
no further belief, for this is our palmary faith that there is nothing
that we ought to believe besides.”8
This renunciation of philosophy from a genuine and ardently re¬
ligious standpoint comes out in Bernard of Clairvaux, and Peter Dami-
ani, among the early Franciscans;9 in Luther, Pascal, and Kierke¬
gaard. The two last names in particular, as well as that of Tertullian,
should, however, remind us that the warning against a synthesis of
religion and philosophy, believed to be injurious to faith, is not in¬
tended to discredit the use of reason, but is directed only against
philosophical thought as such. If anyone has ever used the slogan
credo quia absurdum, it was Kierkegaard. But he writes — and pre¬
cisely in the work in which he develops the opposition between rea¬
son and faith in the strongest terms:“It is very easy to evade the
5 Thus the Thomists in the narrower sense. Cf. Gilson on cit n 9
6 I Cor. 1:19 ff. ’
7 Col. 2:8.
8 Tertullian, Against Heretics.
9 Cf. Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, ch. 1.
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 377

toilsome task of developing and intensifying one’s intellect, and to

fall into a glorified childish attitude of gay irresponsibility, and to
defend oneself against every reproach by saying, ‘ This is a higher
form of intelligence! ’ Thus the believing Christian possesses and uses
his intellect, respects that which is universally human, and does not
explain the fact that someone does not become a Christian by saying
that he lacks intelligence, but in relation to things Christian he be¬
lieves against the understanding, and here also he uses his under¬
standing in order to take note of the fact that he believes against
the understanding.”
“ The opposite has often happened: without further ado Christ
and Christianity, the paradox and the absurd, in short, all that is
Christian, has been appropriated in an aesthetic galimatias just as if
Christianity were a godsend to dunces, because it cannot be thought,
and just as if the fact that it cannot be thought is the most difficult
thing about it if one really wants to live in it, and most difficult of
all for highly intelligent people.” 10
Kierkegaard himself is an example of a truly great thinker who was
a Christian, and, indeed, a very great Christian who was a thinker,
and not only a theological but a philosophical thinker. In his own
person he illustrates the problem and the task of Christian philoso¬
phy: he was a Lutheran Christian, genuinely loyal to the principles
of the Reformation, who used his great philosophical powers in the
service of his faith.

2. In his lecture on “ The Gospel and Culture ” 11 Karl Barth has

set forth and argued this thesis: “ The Gospel, as the message of Jesus
Christ, reveals to the ‘ cultured ’ man or woman the possibility, the
necessity, the meaning, the range, and the solution of the task of cul¬
ture.” In this thesis, and in its development in detail, we can perceive
the program of a Christian theory of culture, in which the demand
is made to formulate and to erect standards for the whole of human
creative activity from the standpoint of the knowledge of Christ
through faith.12 “The Church knows that in the Word of God she
has received her complete divine message. There is no question that
could not be answered in the Word of divine judgment and of divine
10 Kierkegaard, Unscientific Postscript, II [German trans., pp. 249, 239].
11 Barth, Evangelium und Bildung, p. 10.
12 On this, cf. Barth’s remarks on general and Biblical principles of interpre¬
tation, Kirchliche Dogmatik, I, 2, pp. 516 If.
378 Revelation and Reason

mercy. Hence, since everything has been said in the Word of God,
everything is included, everything is judged, and everything is ac¬
cepted in grace. There is nothing the Church has to do or to proclaim
which lies outside the sphere of the Word of God.”13
These words of an interpreter of the Barthian theology express —
this time in view of the State — the same fundamental point of view,
namely, that the Word of revelation is the sole and sufficient source
of all truth and of all knowledge of truth. Thus over against extreme
rationalism, which proposes to solve all problems of knowledge ex¬
clusively by the autonomous reason, there is here set up an equally
exclusive and radical fideism which, alongside of the Word of revela¬
tion does not recognize any second, independent source of knowl¬
edge for any sphere of life. Just as in rationalism the reason has
the only, the first, and the last word, even in theology — for even
Positivism, agnosticism, or atheism is theology, even if negative in
character — so here the Christian revelation has the only, the first,
and the last word, even in questions of secular knowledge and the
ordering of the world; for if anything is the “ world,” and the “ order¬
ing or administration of the world,” then it is the State. Here, there¬
fore, reason and revelation are absolutely opposed. But while the
argument of the rationalists is feasible, and is often carried out in
practice, it is obvious at first sight that the second assertion is, in it¬
self, quite impossible. Can anyone seriously maintain that all ques¬
tions in mathematics, physics, biology, and astronomy are “ answered
in the Word of God ”? Does anyone seriously contend that in the
future, instead of turning to Euclid for geometry, to Galileo for phys¬
ics, to Lyell for geology, we must turn instead, for eveiything, to
the Holy Scriptures? It is a well-known fact that not even that school
of theology which regarded the geological, astronomical, and archae¬
ological statements of the Bible as infallible ever held this view; for
they admitted, at least alongside of faith, that the reason was a
source of knowledge for the knowledge of the world and the forma¬
tion of judgment in secular matters.14 This exclusive emphasis upon
the Bible may appear to the believing Christian, at first sight, as a
liberating and happy solution, wholly in line with the spirit of the

18 Arthur Frey, Der rechte Staat, p. 5.

14 Cf. Althaus, Die Prinzipien der deutsch-reformierten Dogmatik im Zeit-
alter der aristotelischen Scholastik, and E. Troeltsch, Vernunft und Offenbarung
bei Johann Gerhard.
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 379

Reformation, sola fide; in reality, however, it is absolutely impossible.

For even the grammatical understanding of the Bible presupposes a
rational activity; it assumes logical thinking and training in the use
of ideas. The problem which is set us by the idea of Christian philos¬
ophy cannot be solved in this arbitrary manner.
On the other hand, however, it is no solution of the problem to
say that “ there are no Christian mathematics.” The multiplication
table is the same for all men, it is true, for Christians and pagans
alike. It is true that the laws of logical thought are the same for all,
believers and unbelievers; and to draw a false conclusion in the¬
ology means the same failure in logical thinking as in any other aca¬
demic subject. But how do matters stand when we turn to the doctrine
of man, of freedom, or to views about right and wrong, good and evil,
the family, the individual, and the community? Just as it is clear that
there is no specially “ Christian ” multiplication table, so, on the other
hand, is it clear that there is a Christian doctrine of man which dif¬
fers from all others; a view of his responsibility; a Christian doctrine of
freedom and unfreedom, of the meaning of life, of marriage, of the
‘ calling.” There is no “ Christian ” grammar, but there is a Christian
doctrine of the Word; there is no “ Christian ” logic, but there is a
Christian doctrine of reason.
This dualism cannot be ignored by the rationalist, the fideist, or the
fundamentalist. Even the rationalist has to admit that while every¬
one agrees with him in the use of the multiplication table, he is
confronted by the decided resistance of other thinking human beings
when he attempts to solve the “ ultimate ” questions, questions of the
interpretation of the meaning of human existence, by the methods
of rational thinking alone. On the other hand, even the most doughty
champion of the Biblical truth of revelation as the sole solution of
these “ ultimate ” questions must also admit that there are other
problems, “ secular ” and “ formal,” in which reason alone can act.
Between these two poles, that of formal logic and mathematics on the
one hand and the problems of theology on the other, there is a whole
series of problems in which it is evident that both faith and mere
reason ” are involved. This dualism of the concept of truth and of the
criterion of truth cannot therefore be got rid of by any monistic solu¬
tion, whether the monism of reason or that of the Word of revela¬
tion. Even Luther, the theologian who was perhaps one of the most
passionate and convinced opponents of every kind of false synthesis
380 Revelation and Reason

between reason and revelation, philosophy and theology, at the most

decisive moment in his life, when he had to state before the whole
world the standards by which his work should be judged, said this:
“ Unless I am proved to be wrong (convictus fuero) by the witness
of Scripture or by evident reasons (ratione evidente) ...”16

3. The question for Christian theology is not whether the reason

has any rights, whether the reason has any authority to judge what is
true and what is false — for this can be asserted only in complete
misunderstanding of all that we all do, and wish to see done, every
day of our lives — but where the line must be drawn which delimits
the sphere in which reason has complete control. It is not tire validity
of the criteria of reason as such against which faith has to fight, but
the fact that they are turned into absolutes, making absolute claims.
The problem is one of defining the sphere of reference.
We might even say that it is the problem of the specialist. No
Christian, however deeply his faith is nourished by and based on the
truth revealed through the Bible, would think that a deeply believ¬
ing penetration into the meaning of the Holy Scriptures could be a
substitute for special expert knowledge in any sphere of human life.
The Bible teaches us nothing about the making of machines or about
counterpoint; about the differences in the use of words or about the
principle of the division of power in the State. In all these things
there is a specialist knowledge which can be acquired by study; all
this belongs to the sphere of the “ natural reason.”16 It is the sphere
of that which man “ knows of himself,” or which he can learn by
himself, with the aid of purely natural human methods. Although
not everything in this sphere is accessible to every man, yet in princi¬
ple it is all accessible to “ man ” as a whole. In these questions reason
is supreme, and reason alone. But all these questions stand in a con¬
text, in a whole context; this specialist knowledge, therefore, is not
something that can be isolated from all the criteria that are con¬
nected with it regarding what is true and what is false. All these
rexvai man carries on as man, and is therefore responsible for the
way in which he carries them on, not only by the criteria of expert
15 Luther, W.A., VII, p. 838.
This view of the relation between the knowledge of experts and Christian
knowledge lies at the basis of the ecumenical study work inaugurated by Dr.
S1<nkam’ and the 6mphasis lays upon the c°-°Peration of nontheologicai
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 381

accuracy but also in the whole context of his life. But where the whole
context of life is viewed, there the question of theology, or, rather,
of faith, also becomes evident. The problem is not that of the spe¬
cialist knowledge as such, but of its integration into the whole, and
in the effort to solve this problem we must pay attention to the voice
of faith, the Word of revelation given to faith. Jesus Christ did not
come in order to solve the problems of our special subjects of study
and research; hence it is not true to say that “ the Word of God gives
an answer to all questions.” Jesus Christ came in order to redeem us,
and to set up the Rule of God, which is not contradicted by the
knowledge and the competence of the specialist or the expert, but
by its being wrongly incorporated into life as a whole. “ Who set Me
up to be a judge and divider over you? ”17 Here Jesus Christ ex¬
plicitly rejects the responsibility for answering questions that do not
refer to the Kingdom of God, to the totality of human existence, but
to matters of expert knowledge in which reason is competent to
judge. The problem of Christian philosophy is the problem of the
interpenetration of the two spheres, of the secular and knowable, and
the supernatural and revealed. It is the question of the limitations of
the specialist. Here we need to do some more fundamental thinking.

4. God is not only the Creator; He has created a world. This world
has received from Him a definite form and a stable order. This order
is its law — thus established by the Creator through the freedom of
His creative work; but He has established it in such a way that this is
its way henceforth, and this must be recognized. Further, the Crea¬
tor, when He created man, gave to him — and to him alone of all
creatures known to us — the capacity to know this world as it is, in
the way in which it has been established according to the Creation.
This capacity we call “ the power of rational perception.”
Thus the knowledge of the world as established by God in its
given order is different from the knowledge of the Creator Himself.
“ The earth has He given to the children of men.”18 As it has been
granted to man to dominate the rest of the creatures by his reason,
so also it is given to him to know them. In so far as the knowledge of
things as they are in the world, and its order, is concerned, reason
alone is quite competent to deal with them. For that is the purpose
for which it has been given to man by God. But as man himself, in
17 Luke 12:14. 18 Ps. 115:16.
 382 Revelation and Reason

each of his individual acts of knowledge, stands and acts in the

context of the whole of his life, so also all the things of this world,
in addition to their “ secular ” form, or established order, also have
their secret connection with the Creator Himself. Hence they can
indeed be known, but this knowledge is never complete. Even the
simplest atom of hydrogen has its “ metaphysical background,” as,
indeed, all and each have its definite place in the whole plan of the
Creator and Redeemer. This place, this determination, and this back¬
ground are no longer a secular problem, nor a problem of specialist
knowledge; in order to know, God Himself must be known. For in
Him lies the “ connection ” that we seek. “ In order that I may know
what it is that holds the world together in its inmost being ” — this
means no less than the knowledge of the Creator Himself. But we
have this knowledge, not through reason, but through the revelation
of God, in faith. The distinction between God and the world is also
the basis of the distinction both of a twofold source and also of a two¬
fold kind of knowledge: that of revelation and of reason.
Revelation itself, however, tells us that God has already revealed
Himself always, and to all men, and, therefore, that there is a revela¬
tion in the Creation that is independent of, and precedes, the histori¬
cal revelation; hence the peculiar quality of man as man and the
rational nature of man, in particular, are both derived from this reve¬
lation. Man would be unable to know the world as it is had he not
been created in the image of God, did he not possess in his reason a
reflection of the divine light of the Logos. Man, so the Scriptures
tell us, has been created not only in order that he may know the
world, but also that he may know God Himself, as He reveals Him¬
self to him in the works of the Creation, and as He gives Himself to
the vovs to be known. But in the Scriptures this first article of faith
- of the Creation, and the revelation in the Creation — is followed
by the second article — that of sin, and the way in which sin prevents
the reason from perceiving the truth. Thus the fact of the Creation,
and the divine revelation therein, constitutes the basis of an inde¬
pendent, rational knowledge; sin, however, sets up a peculiar, ir¬
rational barrier.18 Where, then, is this line drawn?
19 T^is is w^at Luther means when he continually makes a distinction be¬
tween philosophical and theological truth. Metaphysice, secundam substantiam
means, for instance, that man has a liberum arbitrium, theologice, the servum
arbitnum (W.A., II, 464). The error of the “ Sophists,” that is, of the Scholastics
consists, he suggests, in the fact that they do not distinguish between the two!
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 383

No Christian theologian known to me has hitherto maintained that

our mathematical knowledge or our formal logic is affected by sin;
on the other hand, all theologians are agreed that our knowledge of
God — as an integrating factor of our relation with God — is most
deeply affected by sin; for this lies in the nature of sin, in the very
idea of sin itself. Sin and faith, a wrong and a right relation with God,
both presuppose formal reason, that is, the power to think at all.
Here, therefore, we should find the basis of that fact which is estab¬
lished purely empirically: that there is, it is true, no “ Christian math¬
ematics,” but that there is a Christian theology and a Christian an¬
thropology. We cannot indicate the state of affairs by drawing a line
of demarcation between them, but only by a proportional statement:
The nearer anything lies to that center of existence where we are
concerned with the whole, that is, with man’s relation to God and
the being of the person, the greater is the disturbance of rational
knowledge by sin; the farther away anything lies from this center,
the less is the disturbance felt, and the less difference is there be¬
tween knowing as a believer or as an unbeliever. This disturbance
reaches its maximum in theology and its minimum in the exact
sciences, and zero in the sphere of the formal. Hence it is meaningless
to speak of “ Christian mathematics ”; on the other hand, it is signif¬
icant and necessary to distinguish the Christian conceptions of free¬
dom, the good, community, and still more the Christian idea of God.
from all other conceptions. In any case, the word “ Christian ” sug¬
gests the way in which rational knowledge is corrected by the knowl¬
edge of faith, but its significance varies with each particular instance.
In the case of the idea of God it is not merely a case of correction,
but of a complete substitution of the one for the other; in the sphere
of mathematics or logic this correction disappears altogether — save
where we are not concerned with mathematical problems in particu¬
lar but with the foundations on which they are based, where once
again the sphere of knowledge is affected by that mysterious back¬
ground of the whole. It is from this “ law of the closeness of rela¬
tion ” 20 too that we perceive the existence of several problems which
lie “ midway,” in which the purely rational knowledge and that of
20 I used this idea for the first time in my book on ethics in order to solve
the problem of the relation between the invisible and the visible Church; since
then it has become my guiding principle for all problems that concern the re¬
lation between the Christian and the world. Cf. Das Gebot und die Ordnungen,
pp. 514 ff. [English trans., The Divine Imperative, ch. 43. Tr.]
384 Revelation and Reason

faith are intermingled, as, for instance, in the sphere of law, the State,
history, et cetera. There is not a “ Christian science of law ” in the
same sense as there is a “ Christian theology but in spite of this
there is good reason for forming that concept, because the concept
of law or justice is related to that of the Just, and therefore also with
the theological idea of the divine righteousness or justice, even
though this relation may not be a direct one. The more formal the
juridical questions, the less difference is there between “ Christian ”
and “non-Christian”; the more fundamental they are, the greater
is the difference.21 From the standpoint of faith, rational knowledge
needs correction or modification in all questions that concern hu¬
man beings as persons, as responsible beings; in other questions ra¬
tional knowledge needs less correction. In other words, the more
we are concerned with the world, as the world, the more autonomous
is the reason; but the more we are concerned with the world as God’s
Creation, the less autonomy is left to the reason.

5. These fundamental theological considerations have brought us

to the point at which we can achieve a solution of the problem of
“Christian philosophy.” The first statement must be: The Christian
faith — as is obvious from the very way in which it arises — is some¬
thing fundamentally different from philosophy. It is the personal en¬
counter between the God who reveals Himself and the man who,
through this revelation, is delivered from his imprisonment within
himself. But philosophy, whatever else it may be, is something that
comes into being through human thought, through systematic steps
in a process of thought that is produced and controlled by man. The
second statement must be: Philosophy, whatever it may be, is not
the primary interest of a believer. For his primary interest is, and
ought to be, “ to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.”
But this does not mean that he is not to have any interest in philoso¬
phy, and therefore may not use or study philosophy. “ All things are
yours.”22 If a Christian may study music-which until now has
never been doubted — then why should he not study philosophy?
Theologians as a body tend to believe that to think as a Christian
must mean to study theology. Theology is not Christian thinking

21 It is thus, I suppose, that we must understand Luther’s words, “ Naturalia

sunt Integra, concedo” (W.A., 40, I, 293).
22 I Cor. 3:22.
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 385

pure and simple — otherwise what would become of a Christian

philologist or a Christian jurist? — but theology is thought about the
content of the divine revelation as such. Theology is the explication
of the great words of the Bible: Creation, redemption, repentance,
faith, rebirth; above all, it is reflection on that which has been re¬
vealed to us through and about Jesus Christ. And indeed it means
thinking about these things in such a way that both the preaching
of the Church and the deepening and clarification of faith itself will
be served by it. We cannot here discuss how, in this process of think¬
ing, within theology itself, faith and reason are related to each
other; for the moment we must be satisfied with the establishment of
the fact that the subject of theology is the content of the Biblical
message and of faith.
But the believing Christian lives in a world in which there are
many questions that do not directly belong to this sphere. First of all,
there is the whole complex of problems which, upon the basis of our
earlier reflections, we may describe as “ specialist ” questions. Now,
in so far as on the one hand we are here concerned with the “ law of
closeness of relation,” and on the other with that “ background ” by
means of which everything created is united with the mystery of the
Creation, new questions arise which cannot be answered wholly
either by reason alone or by faith alone; indeed, most of them lie out¬
side both spheres: that of scientific academic discussion on the one
hand, and that of theology proper on the other. They are problems of
that fundamental kind which, as a: rule, engages the attention of phi¬
losophers; on the other hand they are problems in which, in part at
least, the importance we ascribe to them depends upon whether we
regard them from the Christian or from the non-Christian point of
view. So long as the linguistic scholar confines himself to the empiri¬
cal description of the actual situation of language study or the growth
of language, neither philosophical nor Christian problems will arise.
But as soon as he touches the real kernel of the phenomenon of
language, and the phenomena connected with it, then he is con¬
fronted by questions that cannot be met by purely scientific means;
the questions are mostly those in which the difference between a
Christian and a non-Christian understanding of man comes out
plainly. The same applies to the realm of law and political science.
Not in juridical technique, but certainly in the fundamental ques¬
tions of the nature and obligations of law and of the State, we must
386 Revelation and Reason

face fundamental points of view which affect our whole philosophy

of life. The “ law of closeness of relation ” works itself out; the under¬
standing of man as person, and of the human community as a com¬
munity of persons, comes in sight.
The ideal of “ unprejudiced,” “ purely objective ” science is valid,
and should never be renounced; only its sphere of validity is limited
to that which “ now exists.” 23 But man is never simply confined to
that which simply exists; the understanding of man as person pre¬
supposes one s own personal decision, or at least the knowledge of it.
What historian could abandon the ideas of guilt or responsibility?
In order to do so he would have to dehumanize history, and in so
doing he would become remote from his subject and would regard
it in a wrong light. For human life is certainly not “ objective,” but it
is pregnant with decision; to give any account of human life one
must at least take a sympathetic share in its decision and its re¬
sponsibility. The more significant a human phenomenon is, the less is
it open to an “ objective ” presentation, the more must one who de¬
sires to do justice to it in his knowledge share its personal character.
Just as a man who wants to make a realistic war film must go into
the fiont line and share the danger of death, so one who desires to
understand human affairs in a fundamental way must himself be
involved in decision. It is at this point that the reality of his Christian
faith will come out or not. This faith will express itself in a Christian
way of thinking, it is true, but not in Christian theology, since its ob¬
ject is not the Gospel, nor the Christian doctrine of man, but a definite
sphere of life and the problems which this raises. A Christian man
will not study theology instead of explaining Goethe’s Faust, but he
will certainly interpret Goethe’s Faust, and the problems of human
existence which it raises, in a different way from a non-Christian. For
this very reason he will understand Goethe more deeply than anyone
else, although this will not lead him to try to turn Goethe into a
Christian.
There is also, however, a whole series of problems which, from

-3 Mathematics alone is purely objective. Even in physics the presence of

the subjective makes itself felt in the necessary consideration of the “ relation-
structure,” of the point from which we observe phenomena. Again, this point
of observation can itself be completely objectified, that is, fixed with mathe¬
matical precision, like the “ personal equation,” whereas in the sphere of mind
and spirit this “observation point” becomes more personal and decisive the
more closely it approaches the center of personality.
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 387

time immemorial, have occupied philosophers and have been me¬

thodically investigated by them alone. I choose as an example the
problem of time. It cannot be dissociated from that of eternity; it is
therefore indissolubly connected with definite views that are deeply
anchored in the Christian faith. We may say, of course, that there
is a Christian, and a Biblical, idea of time; but we must immediately
add that nowhere has it been fully developed, either in the Bible or
in the doctrine and teaching of the Church. It is an unexpressed pre¬
supposition of all Biblical thought and teaching, but it has never
been clearly stated or explained. From the time of Augustine too
theologians have dealt with this problem intensively,24 but it has not
yet become a theological problem. For in order to deal with it prop¬
erly it is obvious that methods must be used that are not at the dis¬
posal of a theologian as such. It is a typical border problem of the¬
ology and philosophy; or, rather, it is a philosophical problem which
will find a different solution within Christian thought from that
which it will receive within any other type of thought. We have al¬
ready mentioned the related problem of history, as an example of a
subject of philosophical reflection, which only through Christianity
came to be regarded as a question at all. It is a fact that can be proved
that only since Jesus Christ, and through Him, is there a philosophy
of history.

6. In what way, then, can a Christian be a philosopher? Gilson,

who among contemporary scholars is the one who has paid most at¬
tention to the problem of Christian philosophy, tries to meet the
Catholic and the rationalistic-positivistic opponents of a Christian
philosophy by endeavoring to prove that the Christian faith has no
direct influence upon philosophical thinking; he assigns to philoso¬
phy merely the role of a stimulus or a warning. He defines it accord¬
ingly: Christian philosophy is “ toute philosophic qui, bien distingu-
ant formellenient les deux ordres, considere la revelation chretienne
comme un auxiliaire indispensable de la raison25 For he clings
firmly to the principle that “ il ny a pas de raison chretienne, mais il
peut y avoir un exercice chretien de la raisonBut his own brilliant
presentation of the history of Christian philosophy militates against
24 Cf. Heim, Zeit and Eivigkeit in Glaube and Lehen, p. 539; H. W. Schmidt,
Zeit and Eivigkeit; and my article “Das Einmalige and der Existenzcharakter
in Blatter fur deutsche Philosophic, 1929, pp. 265 ff.
25 Gilson, Esprit de la phil. medievale, I, pp. 15, 39.
388 Revelation and Reason

this statement. For again and again he has to point to the fact that
the Christian idea of God, directly and materially, determines
thought about the problems of being, of necessity, of freedom, and
so on.
A Catholic philosopher like Gilson is able to skate over the diffi¬
culties raised by this quid pro quo more easily than a thinker of the
Reformed Church. For although he accepts the fact that the idea of
God of the Christian faith is revealed, he believes in addition that it
can be appropriated by the reason, that it can be understood apart
from the fact of revelation, according to the saying of Augustine and
Anselm, fides quaerens intellectum. We would say, however — and
this was the main subject of the first part of this book — that the
Christian idea of God remains wholly bound up with revelation, and
that it can be rightly understood only within revelation, that is, only
in faith. Revelation includes, in faith, the reason, but reason never
includes revelation. The conception of the God of revelation is and
remains suprarational, because God is the Lord, who can be known
only through revelation. The Being of God is “ revealed Being that
is the very meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Catholic phi¬
losopher, that is, one whose thinking is controlled by Scholastic the¬
ology, can more easily forget this indissoluble connection between
the idea of God and the fact of revelation than can the Evangelical
thinker, because — actually — the idea of God of Scholastic theology
has been strongly influenced and altered by speculative thought.
Since Augustine a synthesis has been formed which affects the
idea of God itself, namely, the synthesis of the Biblical and the Neo-
platonist idea of God. The fides quaerens intellectum, in the effort to
understand what has been revealed, has made the idea of God of
revelation into something else: the summum ens and tl,e summum
bonum, the ens simplex, whose qualities can be expressed only in
negation.26 It is only fair to add that orthodox Protestant Scholasti¬
cism took over these abstractions of Neoplatonist origin; that Protes¬
tant theology too, in its traditional doctrine of the attributes of God,
bears evident traces of this “ synthetic ” idea of God of medieval
theology. But from the time of the Reformation onward, and es¬
pecially under the influence of the renewed emphasis on the Bible
in the nineteenth century, there has been a protest against this dan-
26 See the very important small book by Cremer, Die christliche Lehre von
den Eigenschaften Gottes.
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 389

gerous synthesis; this is why an Evangelical Christian experiences a

sense of extreme distaste when for the first time he steps out of his
Biblical world into the world of ideas controlled by the Scholastic
idea of God.

7. Thus if the step from the fides to the intellectus, from the idea
of God of the Christian to its philosophical formulation and applica¬
tion, is not a great one for the Catholic Christian philosopher, yet
for one who makes “ faith ” central in the Reformation sense the
problem of Christian philosophy essentially is more difficult. Because
to him faith is something quite different from that which it is for the
Catholic, he has also a wholly different view of the relation between
thought and faith. For him the transition from faith to thought does
not consist in the fact that that which he has accepted on the grounds
of authority and tradition now becomes his own possession, but in
the fact that he moves out of the dimension of personal encounter
into that of intellectual truth. Where, as in the Catholic view, revela¬
tion is understood as the supernatural communication of doctrine,
the transition from faith to thought does not mean moving into an¬
other dimension, but simply an expansion of the sphere of thought.
Through the intellectualistic idea of revelation and of faith Catholic
faith is already, from the very outset, prepared for a move forward
in the sphere of philosophy; but where revelation and faith are
understood in a strictly Biblical and personalistic way, then this
transition is, so to speak, to be accomplished only at the risk of one s
life.
But this will be accomplished, and it must be accomplished; only
in Reformation thought it will be accomplished at another point,
namely, in the sphere of theology itself. The break does not occur
between theology and philosophy, but between theology and faith.
That transposition of the encounter of faith — of that conversation
between the God who addresses man and the man who responds
is accomplished already in the doctrine of the Church by the transi¬
tion from the sphere of the personal into that of ideas. “ Thinking
it over ” is the beginning of the process that will be carried farther
by a Christian philosophy. We have already dealt at length with the
necessity for, and the danger of, this transference from one dimen¬
sion to another.27 Now we have to draw the conclusions for the prob-
27 See above, pp. 120 ff., 149 ff., and Chapter 24.
 390 Revelation and Reason

lem of Christian philosophy. Let us state once more, quite plainly,

our point of departure: the dangerous gulf does not lie between
the theologian and the philosopher, but between the act of faith,
on the one hand, and the process of thinking about it, on the other
— whether these reflections are theological or philosophical in
character.28
The difference between the Christian theologian and the Chris¬
tian who, without forgetting his faith, reflects upon the problems of
time and eternity, necessity and freedom, the individual and the
community, is merely a difference of subject, not of method. The
difference between Christian philosophy and Christian theology is
therefore not one of principle, but it is a fluid transition. Every “ sys¬
tematic theologian ” - whether he be Kahler, Heim, or Barth - is
philosopher and theologian in the one person. He is a theologian in
so far as he is occupied with the problems that are raised directly by
the message of the Bible; he is a philosopher in so far as he is oc¬
cupied with the problems that are in the background of the Biblical
revelation. A man who reflects on “the time of revelation” and
distinguishes between “Gods time and our time,” the “tune of ex¬
pectation and the time of fulfillment — as Karl Barth does in
one of the most instructive passages in his Dogmatics 29 — is moving
in the realm of Christian philosophy. A theologian in the strict sense
is a man who restricts himself - like Melanchthon in his Loci, or
Calvin in his Institutes — only to the creation of a “ dictionary of the
main ideas of the Bible.” But it is also quite easy to prove from every
chapter of both these classical works of Reformation theology that
even then this cannot be done without the assistance of philosophical
ideas.

8. The widespread Protestant objection to Christian philosophy

is due to two facts: first, to its awareness of that questionable syn¬
thesis of the Biblical and the Neoplatonist idea of God in Catholic
Scholasticism; secondly, to the traditional confusion between faith
and theology, which is a relic of the intellectualistic idea of revela¬
tion, and thus a remnant of Catholic thought. “ Sacred ” science is
set over against the secular ” sciences. But theology is not a “ sacred

28 This is the important matter in H. M. Muller’s Erfahrung und Glaube bei

Luther, and in Grisebach’s fight against theology as a “ sacred science.”
29 K. Barth. Kirchliche Dogmatik, I, 2, par. 14.
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 391

science,” though it contains, as its content and its basis, the sacred
revelation. It is hallowed by the Word of God, which, appropriated
in faith, is at once the subject and the foundation of its work. The¬
ology itself is secular like every other academic subject. This is the
only view of the relation between theology, science, and philosophy
that results from the Reformation understanding of God and the
world, of the “ sacred ” and the “ secular.” From the orthodox — and
that always means the Catholic — tradition, Protestant theology has
taken over the prejudiced view that revelation is revealed theology,
and that theology itself is therefore a “ revealed,” that is, a “ sacred,”
science.
Once this misunderstanding has been perceived, and the Biblical
understanding of revelation has been regained which is characteris¬
tic of Reformation theology, there is no longer any room for this
“ sacred ” isolation of theology. The “ priesthood of all believers ”
is also worked out in the “ conflict of the faculties.” The Christian
theologian stands alongside of the Christian philosopher, and both
of them stand alongside the Christian jurist, philologist, and natural
scientist. At the same time the “ law of the closeness of relation ” will
work out in such a way that for the one and for the other the influ¬
ence of the Christian faith upon a specialist’s knowledge and sphere
of research will vary greatly. The philosopher will have little oppor¬
tunity to be conscious of his Christianity where he is occupied with
formal logic, or philosophy, or mathematics. But he will be continu¬
ally forced to appeal to his faith where he is concerned with ques¬
tions of personality, of the community, or of the ultimate meaning of
existence.
Where the Christian philosopher speaks of religion, faith, reve¬
lation, God, he will, indeed, say the same thing as the Christian
theologian, but he will say it in a different way.30 For it is not his
duty — as it is that of the theologian — to serve the proclamation of
the Christian message directly. What he knows as a Christian he
has to bring into contact with that which non-Christians also know;
30 As an illustration of the way in which a Christian philosopher speaks
quite differently about the Christian religion from the way in which a Christian
theologian is bound to speak, cf., for instance, A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a
Moralist, Gifford Lectures for 1928, II, pp. 109 ff., or J. Royce, The Problem
of Christianity. Unfortunately Heinrich Barth, who is probably the most eminent
Christian philosopher (German-speaking), has not yet given us the work on
the philosophy of faith for which we have waited so long. Cf. also Knittermeyer,
Die Philosophic und das Christentum.
392 Revelation and Reason

he does not turn to the preachers of the Gospel, but to every man
who, like himself, as a Christian, has to find his way about in the
problems of the world around him. He discusses with his colleagues
in the faculty of law the fundamental principles of law and of the
State — and he does this as a Christian; he confers with the philolo¬
gist about the origin and nature of language; with the art historian
about the meaning of art; with the natural scientist about the ulti¬
mate presuppositions of the knowledge of nature and the principles
of the processes of nature, and he does this as a Christian. He studies
all those ultimate and abstract problems which from time immemo¬
rial have been the subject of philosophy — time and space, being
and becoming, necessity and freedom — in inward contact with all
the great thinkers, pagan and Christian, who have done this before
him, and he does it as a Christian who is certain of his faith. He is
especially fond of discussion (which has its own dangers) with his
“ brethren in theology ” — as a philosopher, who reminds his partner
in the discussion that the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives not only the
theologian something to think about, but also all the other Christian
believers, to whom a definite sector of secular life has been appointed
as their sphere of labor.

9. Christian philosophy is therefore both possible and necessary,

because as Christians we neither can nor should cease to think. It is not
reason, but rationalism, that makes Christian philosophy appear im¬
possible. The thinker must reckon seriously with the fact that the
material of thought does not come first from the reason. Even the
most strictly philosophical thought is obliged to depend upon ex¬
perience. This experience includes not only the variety of sense im¬
pressions; it also includes the inward variety and multiplicity of the
human mind, the moral, artistic, religious experience. Philosophy has
not to produce experience or to replace it by its own concepts, but it
is its business to set it in order, and to present it in its right context.
The “ deduction ” of the world from a principle is rationalistic dog¬
matism, which philosophy has certainly followed since its very earli¬
est founders, the Ionic nature philosophers, but which critical think¬
ers have again and again shown to be an erroneous way of thinking.
Among all these critical thinkers the Christian philosopher must
be the most critical, for the experience to which he, in contrast to all
the others, has access, and on which he lives as a Christian, is the
encounter with the Living God through revelation and faith. This
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 393

makes him immune to rationalistic dogmatism, to making any ex¬

perience or principle into an Absolute.
Christian philosophy is possible because faith does not ignore or
coerce the thinking reason, but leads it back to its original purpose,
and sets it free. From this point of view faith consists simply in
this, that the illusion of the autonomous reason, which is the basis
of all philosophical dogmatism, has been dissolved, and the thinking
self has once more been set where it belongs, at the place where it
is no longer that which comprehends everything, but where it is the
subject which is itself comprehended, where therefore the desire
to set up the absolute system has come to an end; its place is taken
by the rightful endeavor to perceive the connection between all that
exists for the sake of the Creation. Where “ knowing ” the world is
concerned faith means the regaining of a truly critical, and therefore
realistic, way of thought. Only the Christian philosopher can think
truly critically, and truly realistically, and only the critical philoso¬
pher can be a Christian. This comes out very plainly at one point:
in his thinking about man. The Christian philosopher alone is in a
position to see man as a creature, as finite, not-absolute reason, and
as a fallen creature, as “ man in revolt.”
So long as faith consists in the acceptance of doctrines on authority,
for which someone else — an Apostle, the Church — must take the
responsibility, Christian philosophy is possible only in this way: that
the revealed faith merely plays the part of an “ auxiliary for a con¬
scientious thinker would not permit faith to influence his thinking
in any other way. But if faith is the most intimate personal experi¬
ence — experience of God through His Word — then there is as lit¬
tle reason to object to the validity of this experience in philosophical
thinking as there is to object to the validity of any other experience.
But the fact that this experience, in contrast to all others, is the funda¬
mental experience of man, namely, that in which there is not only
shown, but given to him, the meaning of and the reason for his exist¬
ence, cannot, from the standpoint of thought, be any reason for deny¬
ing its validity. No human being can think from a purely negative
point of view. Everyone who philosophizes does so from a definite
starting point, upon which he, as this particular man, stands. The
Christian philosophizes from that point at which God’s revelation
sets him.31
31 Cf. Kierkegaard, Unscientific Postscript, I, on the “ dialectic of the be¬
ginning.”
394 Revelation and Reason

10. Such Christian philosophy is not the “ music of the future.”

Nor is it a possibility that has been realized only in Catholic terms.
As Protestant Christians there is no reason for us to evade this investi¬
gation. In S0ren Kierkegaard the Protestant Church possesses a phi¬
losopher of the first rank, whose thought is not yet adequately known
in spite of some fifty years of the study of his works; far less is it fully
utilized. But Kierkegaard does not stand alone, although he stands
head and shoulders above the rest. The fact that within the sphere
of German Protestantism Christian philosophy has been compara¬
tively little developed is not due so much to Protestantism — that is,
to the Reformation form of faith — as it is to the course of thought
in German culture as a whole, to which, however, in German-speak¬
ing lands the special development of philosophy, theology, and of
the Church belongs. In other countries where Evangelical faith is
dominant, the tradition of Christian philosophy has never been
broken.32 Here, as in other matters, the “ priesthood of all believers,”
that is, the co-operation of nontheologians with the work of the
Church, has been developed more vigorously and independently.
Where there are thinking Christians who are not theologians, Chris¬
tian philosophy is taken for granted.
It may seem a strange thing that a theologian should lay so much
stress on Christian philosophy. The explanation is simple: Because
even a theologian must never forget what the “ priesthood of all be¬
lievers ” means and what it involves. For far too long the Church of
the Reformation has been burdened and hindered by the idea that
the intellectual aspect of Christianity must be theology. This mis¬
understanding has considerably broadened the gulf between the
theologians and the so-called laity, a gulf that was already wide
enough through the organization of the Church as a “ Church of pas¬
tors.” Christians who were not theologians found that then questions
— questions that arise out of the existence of Christians in the world
— were unanswered; for theology did not possess the means to an¬
swer these “ lay questions,” and in accordance with its own definition
32 Here, first of all, we should mention England, and, secondly, pre-Revolu-
tionary Russia. Almost all the more important Russian philosophers are and
intend to be Christian philosophers. In England too philosophy is influenced
by Christianity to an extent for which there is no comparison on the Continent.
What is true of England also applies to Sweden, and was true of America until
the beginning of the twentieth century.
 The Problem and the Idea of Christian Philosophy 395

it was not in a position to answer them. We had not the men who,
in their own spheres as specialists, could give expression to their
Christian truth — the jurists, the philologists, the historians, the natu¬
ral scientists, the political scientists, who were so sure both of their
expert knowledge and of their faith that they dared to be Christian
jurists, natural scientists, and historians. Enlightenment, Idealism,
and Positivism have among us conquered the university and the
scientific world to a far larger extent than has been the case in other
Protestant countries. On the other hand, the Church among us has
used the services of its “ lay members ” far less than elsewhere. The
lack of a Christian philosophy is partly the cause, and partly the
effect, of these unfortunate phenomena.

11. Now, however, the time has come when Christian thinking
must emerge from its fatal theological isolation, just as the Church
must cease to be the Church of the theologians. The problems of the
“ world ” have become too tragic for us to look on any longer, and
see how they are attacked and “ solved ” by means of a way of think¬
ing that has lost all contact with the Christian message. The events
of our own day have at last shown us that all culture needs a Chris¬
tian foundation. Were it true that the Bible could give us an answer
to every question, then we might leave the business of this founda¬
tion to the theologians. Everyone knows that this would not do the
world any good. We need Christian specialists in all spheres of life;
hence we need a Christian philosophy, which, from the standpoint
of the Christian faith, can penetrate into the region which the the¬
ologian does not enter, because he also is only a specialist in a par¬
ticular sphere of knowledge, namely, in that of reflection upon the
divine revelation. The co-ordination of the various spheres of life is
the task, not of the theologian, but of the philosopher. But if this co¬
ordination is to take place from the standpoint of the Christian faith,
then we need precisely a Christian philosophy. Because this task,
the penetration of the various spheres of human life with the Chris¬
tian spirit, is so great and so urgent, the problem of Christian philoso¬
phy is so important. In laying emphasis upon it two points emerge:
the necessary self-limitation of theology, and the urgent need for
the Christian faith to penetrate into and influence every sphere of
human life. There is a Scholastic saying, born within Catholic the-
396 Revelation and Reason

ology and Catholic faith: Philosophia ancilla theologiae.83 It is on the

same level as that other saying, that the Church is supreme, even
over the State. Both sayings spring from a misunderstanding of the
truth that Christ is and wills to be the Lord of the whole world.
Luther broke through the Catholic barrier with his saying, Christas
dominos et rex scripturae. Christ alone is the Lord — not the Church,
and therefore not theology. Rather, both the Church and theology
are instruments in His hands. Just as, according to the view of the
Reformation thinkers, the pastor is not above the “ layman ” — the
very idea of a “ layman ” is itself wholly of Catholic origin — so also
theology does not stand above philosophy. They both stand under
Christ, the one in an inner, and the other in an outer, circle; the one
with the task of understanding the message of Jesus Christ in its in¬
most depths of meaning, and thus of purifying the proclamation of the
Gospel and ever anew basing it upon the Word of revelation; the
other with the task of making clear the truth of faith in order to
throw light on the problems of Christians living in the world, and to
help them to deal with these problems in a creative way.

26. MYTH, HISTORY, AND REVELATION

1. Even among those who regard the “spirit of Christianity” as

the basis of our culture, and therefore wish to see the Christian reli¬
gion preserved, there is to a large extent a quiet and almost self-
evident agreement that by this they mean an intellectually “puri¬
fied ” Christianity, that is, a Christianity freed from its mythical
element. Among these “ mythical elements ” of the Christian tradi¬
tion, which are supposed to be incompatible with the intellectual cul¬
ture of a present-day European, are reckoned all events of a super¬
natural character: above all, the idea of a divine Incarnation, of the
divine and human character of the Redeemer, and of a unique and
33 Saint Thomas Aquinas, S. Theol., I, I, 5, [Theologia] utitur eis tanquam
inferioribus et ancillis. The view of the supremacy of the Church over the State
expressed in the Papal Bull Unam Sanctam (1302), namely, the theory of the
two swords, has never been revoked by the Catholic Church, but where cir¬
cumstances seemed favorable it has been constantly repeated, and, wherever
possible, put into practice.
 Myth, History, and Revelation 397
unrepeatable act of redemption. “ Myth is the history of the gods ”
(Tillich). In so far as we are concerned with the Biblical Gospel of
the “ coming ” of the Son of God into the world of men, and thus
with a divine history within human history, Christianity, it is said, is
mythical, and this mythical form no longer concerns us, since it be¬
longs to a prescientific and prerational mentality.
Now there is certainly in this sense a nonmythical kind of religion;
indeed, there are even a number of such religious possibilities,
namely, all those in which the historical has no constitutive signifi¬
cance. In mystical pantheistic religion, in the Idealistic acosmism
to which it is akin, and in the moralistic religion of the Enlighten¬
ment, there is no divine intrusion into history, no history of God and
of revelation. The divinity stands in a negative relation to the time
process; it is the timeless-eternal, the ascent out of this temporal
world into the world of eternal truth. Within such a conception of re¬
ligion the historical element has only a very accidental place. His¬
torical persons or events can here gain significance, it is true, as dis¬
coverers of truth, and historical events can gain significance as visible
forms that express the eternal truth, in the form of symbols. But
these “ discoverers,” and these thinkers who for the first time shape
eternal truth — “ mediators,”1 Schleiermacher calls them, borrowing
the Christian idea — have no essential relation to the religious experi¬
ence or knowledge of individual believers. They are “ teachers or
“ examples ” who set the real experience of religious men and women
in motion, showing them how to find this knowledge for themselves,
but essentially their service, like the service of the midwife of the
Socratic teaching, consists precisely in the fact that they lead their
“ pupils ” to an experience of their own, and thus make them inde¬
pendent of themselves. They are exemplary religious people, pioneers
and forerunners in the sphere of religion, but they are not the object
of faith.2
It is thus that in more recent days German Idealism, in its philoso¬
phy of history, has understood and reinterpreted Christianity. It has
indeed seen that the nonhistorical “natural religion” of the En¬
lightenment is something different from the Christian religion.
Therefore it has desired to incorporate the historical into its system

1 See Schleiermacher in his Reden, 1st ed., p. 99.

2 Schleiermacher: He who has himself found the Infinite . . . no longer
has any need of a Mediator.” (Ibid.)
398 Revelation and Reason

of truth, and thus to make reason itself historical. Lessing began

this transformation with his idea of the divine “ education of the
human race,” according to which revelation is simply a divine institu-
tution [Veranstaltung] through which the eternal truths became the
possession of the human race sooner than would have been possible
apart from revelation. Herder followed him with his “ideas for a
philosophy of the history of humanity.” With him begins the infiltra¬
tion of the Pantheistic idea of a gradual self-realization of the divine
Spirit in the history of mankind, which then attains its zenith in
Hegel’s magnificent theoiy of the philosophy of history. Here too
the historical is not — as, for instance, in the Christian faith — an
object of faith; rather, history is the process of the self-realization of
the absolute Spirit in the finite spirit. The eternal truth, in itself time¬
less, which becomes known as such in the Hegelian system becomes
recognized as this absolute eternal truth only in the course of history.
The various peoples with their cultures and religions, indeed even
the great religions of the world themselves, with Christianity at their
head, are simply transitional stages in the process by which the
human spirit becomes aware of eternal truth. Similarly Schleier-
macher the philosopher, regards the immanent, historical world
process as the universal transformation of nature into spirit, which
attains its goal in religion - subjectively, as the consciousness of the
unity of all contradictions, and objectively, in the final accomplish¬
ment of civilization, whereas Schleiermacher the theologian, closely
united with the philosopher in personal union, tries to equate this
religion of timeless mysticism with the Christian faith.3
The grandeur of these theories of the philosophy of history, how¬
ever, must not blind us to the fact that in them all history is merely
the setting for religion; it is never the object of faith. Hence this com¬
plete emancipation of Christianity from the mythical element, by
means of the interpretation of revelation in symbols of the eternal,
has only one unfortunate result: that nothing of Christianity is left.
It is true that this process of transformation certainly produces a
nonmythical religion, one that is entirely severed from the historical
and the temporal; but this religion has no longer anything in com¬
mon with the Christian faith. Genuine Biblical Christianity, the
Christianity of all Churches and denominations, has as little affinity
with this nonhistorical religion as it has with any kind of crass poly-
3
See my book on Schleiermacher, Die Mystik und das Wort,
 Myth, History, and Revelation 399
theistic paganism. In the Christian faith the relation to historical
events, and in particular to that historical fact which is called “ saw
ing history ” — the history of revelation in Jesus Christ — is not a
“ form ” from which the “ content ” could be severed. Rather, the
relation to this historical event is itself the very heart and essence
of the Christian faith. The Christian faith is faith in that which actu¬
ally took place in Jesus Christ, or it is nothing at all. This faith may
be foolishly uneducated or objectionable — but still that is what it
is. If we remove this so-called “ myth ” of the Incarnation and the
act of redemption on the Cross, and change this historical event into
a symbol of eternal truth, what is left is not a rudimentary element,
but nothing at all. Or rather, its place is taken by a faith, a religion,
of a quite different kind and structure, the “ religion of immanence,”
“ Religion A Kierkegaard has shown us in a masterly way what an
abysmal difference there is between this kind of religion and the
“ paradoxical ” religion, or the transcendental religion, which he
calls “ Religion B.” 4 In opposition to all such symbolic, timeless, and
nonhistorical religion, Christian faith is faith in the historical revela¬
tion and redemption; faith in the redeeming, revealing intervention
of God in history; faith in a definite, unique, unexchangeable, divine
history. That this is the Christian faith, and nothing else, can be
proved from the classical sources, and we believe that we have sup¬
plied this proof in the first section of this book; but it is not possible
to prove that this Christian faith, in this definite form, which is not
to be confused with Idealism, is the truth; this is itself a matter for
the decision of faith; experience of faith and its truth is not the truth
of an idea but truth as personal encounter. If divine history is a
“ myth,” then the Christian faith is hopelessly “ mythical.”

2. The difference between the “ divine history ” of the Christian

faith and that which we know as “ myth ” in the rest of the religions
of the world is just as plain as its entire difference from every kind
of nonhistorical, timeless religion. “ Myth is the history of the gods.”
In this definition the plural is not accidental. “ The gods ” are part
of the myth. The plurality of acting divine subjects is as essential to
the myth as the irrational variety and color of the incidents it records.
Where there are no gods there are no myths. The Christian faith
has as little to do with tales of the gods as with “ gods ”; it is faith in
4 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments and the Unscientific Postscript.
400 Revelation and Reason

the one revealed story of the one God. Hence we cannot speak of
a “ Christian myth.” The adjective “ mythical ” is no more applicable
in its relation to the historical than its supposed “ purification ” from
the mythical element (which is actually a severance from the histori¬
cal) is an apt or true description of its nonmythical character. In
order to see this clearly we need to give our attention for a moment
to the question of symbols.
Every myth uses symbolical elements, but not every religious sym¬
bol is mythical. The myth is symbol in movement; the symbol is myth
without movement. Symbolism in the conception of God makes Him
visible in space; the myth makes Him visible in time. Even in the
Bible and in Christian doctrine God is made visible. But this does
not mean that He is “ made visible ” in spatial, optical imagery; He
makes Himself visible wholly and entirely in personal terms. The
Old Testament, which often speaks of God in such a “ grossly anthro¬
pomorphic ” manner, has also forbidden man to make any “ images ”
of God. It is true, of course, that the Bible uses all kinds of “ ex¬
treme ” terms about God that are parables taken from human ex¬
perience: Father, Lord, King, Judge, et cetera. These expressions are
in themselves as inadequate as those very naive anthropomorphisms
that we find in the earliest traditions handed down in the Old Testa¬
ment. “ And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which
the children of men builded.” 5 We cannot really say that God had
to come down in order to see more clearly, nor can we, literally, say
that He “ hears,” “ sees,” “ speaks,” or that He is “ Father,” “ King,”
et cetera. All these expressions are parables drawn from the finite
sphere to express the infinite.
From the time that Christianity entered into the world of Greek
civilization Christian theology has made great efforts to find “ more
spiritual expressions ” to take the place of these “ anthropomorphic
expressions.” These “ more spiritual expressions,” however, when they
are examined more closely, are abstractions — necessary Being, the
Truth, the Summum Bonum — in which the decisive element in the
Biblical idea of God is either lost or at least seriously endangered:
God, that is, as the “ Living God,” the unconditioned personal nature
of God, God as the acting Subject of the history of revelation and
redemption. The tendency to symbolical purity leads to an abstract,
impersonal idea of God, that is, to that idea of God which belongs,
6 Gen. 11:5.
 Myth, History, and Revelation 401
not to the sphere of revelation, but to that of reason. Behind all de¬
personalizing, neutralizing abstractions, however, there lurks the
idea of the world, the “ it.” The spiritual Being of God is conceived
in the category of the “ it ” instead of the “ Thou it becomes neuter.
The Biblical writers take an entirely different line. They attempt to
speak of God apart from symbols; and, indeed, they hold firmly and
passionately to anthropomorphic expressions as opposed to all the
claims of abstract spirituality; but by the use of other parabolical
expressions they make it plain that God is infinite, suprahuman, the
absolute Personality. The “Heavenly Father,” the “Creator of the
heavens and the earth,” is less likely to become merged in the finitude
of the human consciousness than the “ Being for itself in itself ”
(Biedermann).6 The history of Western philosophy shows us very
plainly that no abstractions, however sublime, guarantee that the Be¬
ing of God and the being of the world, the Spirit of God and the
spirit of man, will not become merged in one another, whereas the
Lord God of Isaiah and the Heavenly Father of the New Testament
cannot be confused with nature and the world, nor with the nature of
man. The pictorial language of the Bible is directed to this one end:
to hold firmly the free, sovereign Personality of God who cannot be
thought, but who discloses Himself in revelation. God is not the God
whom we find through thought, within our own reason, but He is the
God who graciously allows us to know Him as the One who Himself
acts, speaks, and gives Himself to us. The symbolism of the Bible is
related to revelation; that is why it is most closely connected with the
supposedly mythical element, that is, with the story of God’s mighty
acts.

3. In the reality that we know from experience we know that

there are various degrees of relation between time and events. The
lowest stage of time in events is in the sphere of physics and chem¬
istry. In physics happenings are interconvertible; bodies that are at
rest are set in motion and bodies that are in motion come to a state of
rest; heat is transformed into motion and motion into heat. Hence
this kind of happening is completely at our own disposal. We direct
the transformation of energy. We analyze sodium chloride into chlo¬
ride and sodium, and we combine chloride and sodium into sodium
chloride. The happening has no direction of its own, no meaning of
6 Biedermann, Christliche Dogmatik, par. 706.
402 Revelation and Reason

its own, it does not move along a “ one-way street.” 7 Actually, there¬
fore, here nothing “ happens the happening is like the movement
of the waves in a tossing sea. That which was at one moment moved
in one direction returns in the next moment in the other direction,
and so it goes on without aim and without end.
The organic sphere is essentially different. Organic nature shows
us a form of happening in which its connection with time is of a
higher order. Life processes cannot be reversed. We can analyze a
living flower, it is true — that is, we can dissect it into its various com¬
ponent parts — but we cannot put it together again like the parts of
a machine that has been taken to pieces. The living happening has a
meaning of its own; it takes place once for all in moving from one
direction to the other. Every living thing has its own life history.
Hence it is not at our disposal. We can experiment with life, it is true;
but this experimentation is quite different from that carried on in a
chemical laboratory. It consists only in altering the conditions of life,
or of producing in the living creature some definite changes in the
course of life. We can, moreover, have an influence upon these proc¬
esses of life like a man who controls a switchboard; we can change
direction, but we cannot produce life itself in any form as we can
produce movements in nonorganic matter.
In spite of the fact that organic happenings can be described as a
“ course of life,” this course is just as pointless, so far as time is con¬
cerned, since it is controlled by the law of recurrence of the same.
All organic life moves in cycles; from the seed comes the tree, from
the tree the fruit, from the fruit the seed, and so on in eternal re¬
currence. That is why we cannot really speak of “ natural ” history;8

7 Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, pp. 67 ff., certainly calls
attention to the significance of the second thermodynamic law, according to
which a definite tendency, a “ time arrow,” even in the whole realm of physics
must be assumed, namely, in the sense of “ entropy.” Of course, all this does
not in the least alter the unrepeatable character of the individual processes of
physics.
8 Also, and particularly, in biology exception can be taken to the assertion of
the completely nonhistorical character of the event in view of the process as a
whole (cf. the previous note). There is, indeed, also a history of flora and
fauna in the sense of something unique which is not repeated, a series of epochs
in forms of life. But even this does not alter anything in the cyclic character
of the life processes. Natural history does exist in the sense that the present
state of the forms of life did not exist at an earlier stage, and that later on it
will have disappeared; but there is no natural history in the sense that the
subhuman forms of life — whether as a whole or in detail — aim at a goal that lies
 Myth, History, and Revelation 403

this series of happenings is nonhistorical. Where the same thing con¬

tinually recurs, there is no history. History takes place only within
the human sphere — historical events are the third stage in time.
History enfolds time in a quite different way from nature. Human
time, historical time, includes, it is true, that organic “ time of growth
and becoming,” but it is itself “ decision time.” No decisions are made
in nature; history is the sphere of decision. Decisions are made where
the mind or spirit, and above all the will, emerge. The spiritual will
creates decisions that cannot be reversed. The more spiritual will
there is, the more decision; the more history, the more that which is
irrevocable. But the will is the kernel of personality. The more per¬
sonal life becomes, the more relation there is with time.
But even history, understood as human history, does not repre¬
sent the highest stage in the time character of events. History, it is
true, is the sphere of the unrepeatable, in contrast to nature as the
sphere of recurrence. In the cycle of summer and winter, becoming
and vanishing, that which never recurs is imbedded. However, re¬
garded in a larger context, even the historically unique events are
not so unrepeatable as they claim to be at first — “ there is nothing
new under the sun.”9 Even history, when regarded purely as human
history, possesses something of a cyclic character. For human beings
never escape from the control of the forces with which they wrestle.
The conflict must continually be fought out afresh, and yet it is never
fought to a finish. It remains, essentially, the same from age to age,
in spite of the uniqueness of historical events.
There are decisions, but the decisive event does not take place;
there are turning points, but the turning point does not happen;
there are unique events, but the one unique event, which can never be
repeated, does not take place.10 The unique, the turning point, the
decisive event, would have to be an event that would break the
power of those forces with which man is always in conflict, which
would realize not only the partial meaning, but the whole meaning of
life; it would be the absolutely significant, the absolute solution, the
redemption, which would take place through the fact that the
Eternal Himself breaks into time, and the Perfect into the world of

outside the sphere which might be described as the breadth of variation of or¬
ganic life.”
9 Eccl. 1:9.
10 Cf. my article “Das Einmalige und der Existenzcharakter.”
404 Revelation and Reason

imperfection. It is this event precisely that is the revelation in Jesns

Christ. He is tire Eternal — or, rather, the Eternal in time. Hence the
story of Jesus, as faith understands it, is that which is absolutely
unique and unrepeatable, that which by its very nature excludes all
possibility of repetition, the absolute decision. That is why we are
here not dealing with a myth.

4. All myths contain an event in which not only man but divine
forces intervene in the life of man. At first it may seem as though the
myth of the nature religions has nothing to do with man, but is con¬
cerned only with nature and with natural occurrences. In reality,
however, this kind of myth is dealing with the destiny of man, with
human happiness and human life. Myth is the interpretation of hu¬
man existence, of human destiny. But in mythology this decisive
happening appears in the form of that which is like nature: the cycle,
that which is continually repeated. In these events personal “ gods ”
are involved, it is true — only so does the natural event become a
myth — but they are not themselves decisive; they are only spokes in
the great wheel of existence, which is turned by an unknown Power.
It is an impersonal destiny that determines the fate of the gods.11 The
number of the deities who are actively at work, and the number of
the supposedly decisive events, means that a really decisive event
has not taken place. Here time is not yet actually decision-time,
otherwise it would have to cease to be cyclic nature-time. This time-
cycle — time that is not really serious, the time of illusory decisions
— had to become time that goes straight ahead, serious time, by
which the beginning and the end of time curve away from a common
center. The gods of mythology are not capable of such an act of ex¬
tension of time.
They are not capable of this because they are not real subjects.
The really determinative factor is not an actual subject at all. It is
fate which turns the wheel of the world, an impersonal force, which
does not really intervene, but “ unrolls ” that which was already pre¬
determined, just as we would unroll a carpet that had been rolled up.
Time has no real quality of decision because it is time controlled by
fate. It acquires the character of time of decision only where the
personal God Himself separates the beginning from the end, gives to

11 Cf. my article “ Schicksal und Freiheit in christlicher Sicht” in the Neue

Schweizer Rundschau, 1938, pp. 521-550.
 Myth, History, and Revelation 405

the happenings in the world the direction, ‘ time s arrow, in that He

causes the decisive event of all to take place. Time that has a begin¬
ning and an end is Messianic time, time that was planned from the
beginning toward the end. In this Messianic time life has the quality
of unconditional decision. Heaven and hell are involved; the deci¬
sion of faith decides heaven and hell. But Messianic time can be only
where there is the Messiah. And the Messiah is the Unconditioned
in time, the Decisive in time — or rather, not the decisive element,
but the decisive Person. For that precise reason, because now the
personal God Himself comes on the scene instead of the gods con¬
trolled by fate, does the mythical cease to be. Now in real history the
one Event takes place once for all.

5. It is only through Jesus Christ that history can be defined as

world history. World history as a unity exists only where there is an
absolute final goal of history, where even the beginning, the Crea¬
tion, is determined by this goal, and directed toward it.lj World
history as the unity of events, as a connected chain of events diiected
toward a goal, is an eschatological, a Messianic idea. Messianic his¬
tory creates the Messianic existence of the individual man, the deci¬
sion of faith. Since the individual finds himself in this world history
which is controlled by God, he is not permitted to lose himself in the
mere contemplation of this dream. As a believer I am immediately
drawn into this drama as an actor; I am involved in the decision that
controls the history of the world, in the influences that biing decisive
changes into world history. The faith decision of the Christian cor¬
responds to the faith decision of Christ. He who causes the turning
point in the history of the world also causes the turning point in my
life through the decision of faith. That which is the decision for the

12 It would also be possible to say that the religion of Zoroaster has this
kind of world-view of the whole. “The time in which all takes place is not a
mere series of happenings, but all is directed toward a goal This goal is equally
for the all as for the individual, so far as God has created ip the final salva¬
tion and all that happens is saving history [Heilsgeschichte]. (Lommel, Die
Religion Zarathustras, p. 130.) The difference from the Hebrew-Chnstian view
of the whole is that the historical event is not united with this eschatolog¬
ical one that Ormuzd does not make himself known, like Yahweh, thiough
his prophets, and that present history is not the history of a covenant which
continues down the generations, and therefore that not even the world of na¬
tions is regarded as the object of the divine saving action Hence the religion
of Zoroaster, in spite of its eschatology, has remained mythical.
 406 Revelation and Reason

whole world is decision for the individual only through the fact that
he himself decides for Christ. This decision creates a “ before ” and an
after which is absolute, and cannot be reversed, a line in time
which is extended absolutely, the direction to the final goal. In the
event of Christ, as it is grasped by faith, the mythical cycle has been
broken through, the idea of everlasting recurrence has been elimi¬
nated. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; the former
things have passed away.” 13 As the cycle of world time has been ex¬
tended into a straight line by the beginning, the “ Creation,” and the
end, redemption,” so also the life of the individual becomes a clear
time of decision, along which one presses eagerly toward the goal.14
It is Jesus the Christ who thus controls time. He is able to do this be¬
cause, and in so far as, it is He in whom the Absolute has actually
entered the sphere of historical events.
Thus the personal and the temporal are closely connected. The
personal character of the power that determines history, God, and
the historical character, the decisive seriousness of the event, are
two aspects of one thing which is indivisible. It is only the personal
God who can thus enter into history; only in this His entry into his¬
tory can He be known as the personal God. And only through His
entry into history and the knowledge thereof does history gain this
extension in time which is called “ absolute decision.”
Here there is no longer any talk of gods, or of legends, but only
of the one God and the one history of the Absolute and the Unique.
Through the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ the myth has been
done away —the myth of gods who become men and yet are not
real human beings, the myth of the dying and rising Saviour-God
who yet never really died, and never really rose again, because he
never really lived at all. It would be absurd to ask where Hercules or
Rama or Krishna were bom or died, with what date in world history
their lives coincided.15 But in the Christian Creed we say, “ Crucified
13
II Cor. 5:17.
14 Cf. I Cor. 9:24; Phil. 3:14; Heb. 12:1.
15 In his work Das Wesen der Offenbarung (The Nature of Revelation),
O Phster points to Akhenaton as a historical personality who ascribed to him¬
self a revelatory significance similar to that of Jesus Christ (p 19) Here is
a real historical personality, an Egyptian king, who proclaims “the’beauty”
, . °”e G°d At?n’ a,nd makes His name great; “he makes known to the
land its Creator and makes this name radiant for all men. For his Father the
God has revealed Himself to him, to him alone has He given the power to
understand His thoughts and His power” (quoted by Erman, Die Religion
 Myth, History, and Revelation 407
under Pontius Pilate.” Here there stands before us in the full light
of histoiy a human person — the only really human Person, the only
truly divine One. It is no accident that Jesus was condemned to
death by the representative of the Roman Empire. It was thus that
world history had to meet the Eternal, and thus that the Eternal had
to meet historical humanity.
Myths are products of the religious imagination; their characters
with their acts are not written in any book of world history: they
are dissolved into nothingness by historical criticism. They are
dreams — the fruit of wishful thinking and of men’s fears. They are
neither properly human nor properly divine. Jesus, the Carpenter
and Rabbi of Nazareth, His life and His death, are events in world
history. This bit of world histoiy is divine histoiy, by which faith
lives. For “ God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” 18
To faith it is evident that in His speech God is addressing us, that in
His deeds and His sufferings God is dealing with us. “ Having put
off from Himself the principalities and the powers, He made a show
of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” 17 Before the truth which
He is, the whole pantheon of divine powers with a limited authority
dissolves into nothingness, and the dream world of nonhuman and
nondivine mythology disappears. For in Him the holy and merciful
God lays hold of us; in Him the meaning or the meaninglessness of
our existence is decided. Here at one blow the problem of symbol
and myth is solved.

6. Were anyone to try to understand the meaning of the words,

“ God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself,” without the
use of the “ mythical ideas ” of the Incarnation and the redemptive
death of Christ, he would soon perceive that he had not only got rid
of a “ formula,” but that in so doing the matter itself had been al¬

der Aegypter, p. 122). But this monotheistic revelation soon showed itself from
the royal point of view as something that, although not insignificant, was still
artificial, that can be explained partly from political considerations, partly from
the polytheistic myth, partly from the traditional doctrine of the divinity of
kings, and, indeed, possibly also from a certain primitive theological rationalism.
This artificial product had not real vitality. “ With him [Akhenaton] the fa¬
natical energy of the revolution was broken.” The ancient religion regains
a much greater power than it possessed before the revolution of Akhenaton ”
(Chantepie, Lehrbuch, I, p. 494).
II Cor. 5:19.
it Col. 2:15.
408 Revelation and Reason

tered. For his understanding of Jesus would then be either that of

immanental religion — Jesus the sage, the religious genius, the su¬
preme teacher, the greatest and purest example — or that of the Old
Testament stage of revelation — Jesus the greatest of the Prophets.18
His understanding precisely does not reach the new thing that took
place in Jesus, the event of the New Testament revelation, the divine
self-communication in personal revelation. The particular parabolic
expressions that are used to try to express this event do not matter
much; the Apostolic testimony of the New Testament produced a
great number of such expressions, evidently because none was
wholly adequate to express the content of the revelation. We may
also try, following the line of the Fourth Gospel, to express the event
of Christ in more abstract words than the Bible uses, when we say
that in the acting and speaking subject of this Man the active and
speaking subject of God meets us. Whether we say this, or: “ I am
from above, ye are from beneath ”;19 “ The Word became flesh ”;20
He “ took on Himself the form of a servant ”;21 “ God sent His Son in
the likeness of sinful flesh ”22 — all these sentences describe the same
mystery, that here God Himself is on the scene. The decisive thing
is not whether we describe this entrance of God into history in an
abstract way, or in the more concrete and naive formulas of the
Bible, but whether this one tiling is what is meant: that once for all
the frontier line between Creator and creature has been crossed, and
that this event constitutes the absolute self-communication of the
holy and divine Judge, who is also the Forgiving and the Merciful.
One to whom the event of Jesus means this, one who has become a
believer, will no longer feel any desire to replace the “ naive ” and
“ concrete ” expressions of the Bible by more abstract terms —
save perhaps with the aim of making tilings clearer, in order to
complement and comment on them. On the contrary, the more one
understands what is meant, the more precious do the “concrete”
and “ naive ” expressions of the Bible become, and the better we
understand that they are the most apt and the most suitable. Faith is
far less afraid of anthropomorphic expressions than it is of abstrac¬
tions, because it has to do with the personal God. For in anthro¬
pomorphic language “God the Father” is the heart of the Biblical

18 Cf. Chapter 7 above, pp. 101 f. 21 Phil. 2:7.

19 John 8:23. 22 Rom. 8:3.
20 John 1:14.
 Myth, History, and Revelation 409
faith, the real “ Thou ” of God is firmly held, and in the “ mythical ”
idea of the incarnation of the Logos is the center of the Biblical mes¬
sage, the event of personal revelation which is redemption. The “Liv¬
ing God ” is “ not the God of scholars and philosophers, but the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” the God who reveals to us His nature
and His will in a particular historical event. God comes to us in per¬
son in Jesus Christ, and only in this event is He our real Thou. The
historical revelation is the ground of knowledge for God’s personal
Being and God’s personal Being is the actual ground (Realgrund)
of His revelation. Outside diis, His historical revelation, we do not
encounter the personal God, but we conceive Him in thought on an
impersonal basis by our own efforts. But tire God who is thus con¬
ceived is not the God who communicates Himself; therefore He is
neither the truly personal nor the truly loving. He who would “ as¬
cend ” to God by the way of thought does not find the Living God
who stoops down to man, but he finds an abstraction. This way leads,
to use Luther’s phrase once again, “ into the dark emptiness of the
reason.” 23 Hence if we want to know God we must gaze at Jesus
Christ alone, and we must perceive God in Jesus Christ if we wish
to understand tire mystery of His Person.

7. The perception of this truth also finally changes our thought

about the impropriety of the use of the category of personality for
God. For instance, so long as we believe that we know what “ per¬
son ” means without revelation, by our own unaided efforts, then we
understand “ person ” in diat illuminating and neat way in which it
is expressed in the definition of Boediius, as the rational conception
of “ person”, which, therefore, as a legacy from the ancient world,
23 Luther saw very clearly the connection between the “ ascending ” specu¬
lative knowledge of God of the Neoplatonist mysticism — connected with the
Areopagite — which dominates the Middle Ages, and the self-righteousness
of legalistic morality and religion. “ When thou dost allow such a gaze [at the
God-man Jesus] and dost hoist thyself up to the Majesty on high, so must thou
be terrified and fall back, because thou hast withdrawn thyself from the glance
of grace, and now art staring at the naked Majesty which is too high and too
awful for thee. For outside Christ can nature neither see any grace or love in
God nor can it desire it” (W.A., 28, 117). Periculosum est sine Christo medi-
atore nuchim divinitatem velle humana ratione scrutinari. . . . Ad has specula¬
tions de maiestate Dei nuda dederunt occasionem Dionysius cum sua mystica
theologia et alii eum sequentes. . . . Admoneo vos, ut istam theologiam Di-
onysii mysticam et similes lihros . . . detestemni tamquam pestem (Disputa¬
tion, ed. Drews, op. cit., p. 294).
410 Revelation and Reason

was inherited by the thought of the Church and thus entered the
thinking of the West.24 Now if this is what we mean by “ person,” then
we can regard all talk of a “ personal ” God only as an improper
“ transference ” of ideas, as an anthropomorphism. But when we look
at this from the point of view of faith we see it quite differently. Kant
indeed defined “ person ” in the light of the moral law, and thus felt
himself obliged to define “ personal ” life as responsibility; we do this
too, and most decidedly, but from the standpoint of a highter re¬
sponsibility: we are persons, because, and in so far as, we have been
called by God. This summons comes to the “ natural man ” through
the law; it creates a legalistic responsibility and a legalistic person¬
ality. But to the believer this call comes through revelation, through
Jesus Christ. It is the personality which man does not receive until
he has come to faith in Christ, to the divine love. Law is the mere
form of responsibility, but its content is love — the content that no
one can reach by straining after it in thought, which can be, and
indeed is received only as a gift, in faith. In faith alone does man be¬
come human, because it is love alone that makes him human — the
love which God gives.
But this love is the love of God. Man receives his true personality
only through the Word of God. Personal being in the full sense, in
the nonlegalistic sense, hence the genuine personal sense, is no
“ neat ” entity which is an isolated phenomenon, but it is only in actu
Dei; it springs out of the free giving of God, through which alone we
become truly like God, “ images ” of God. Thus our personal being is
a reflection of the divine Being, who is the primal personality, and
this reflection arises out of His revelation. “ But we all, with unveiled
face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed
into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the
Spirit.”25 The psychological idea of the “person” of Boethius is
purely a classification; it does not define our nature; the ethical con¬
cept of the “ person ” of Kant goes to the center, but it touches only
the abstract personal existence of man under the law; the New Testa¬
ment idea of the “ person ” is “ theological ”; in accordance with it
we are persons because God makes us like His own Being through
His self-revelation in Jesus Christ, as “ reflections ” of His “ counte¬
nance.” As Plato said, 6 Geos yeoperpL^ei,, so we say, 6 Geos avdpcoiro-
poptpL^L — God creates men after His own image, in that He meets
24 See above, p. 364. 26 II Cor. 3:18.
 Myth, History, and Revelation 411
us as Man. We are likenesses of God, our personal being is a reflection
of His personal Being, and this likeness becomes a true simile only
through the revelation in the Son. We are persons because we stand
in relation with God; we become truly personal when we stand in
the true relation with God, and this personal being is the reflection
in the believer of the divine Person who in Christ reveals Himself in
the human spirit.

8. When we have grasped this, we are delivered from the preju¬

dice that the more abstract the idea of God, the more “ spiritual it
is, and therefore more worthy of Him. Every abstraction means a
moving away from the personal to the impersonal, a falling away
from the dimension “ Thou ” and “ I ” into the dimension it and
“ I ” — that means, into the dimension of the world. Abstraction is
secularization. It is a sinister heritage of the ancient world which the
Church took over from Augustine 26 that the abstract is the spiritual.
The abstract may indeed be the spiritual, where the world is con¬
cerned; but it is precisely the nonspiritual because it is the secular, so
far as God and His relation to man is concerned. Abstract thinking
about God is the “ curse of the law ” in the sphere of thought. The
fact that we want to <c conceive God, instead of meeting Him in His
revelation of Himself to us; that we want to rise to Him in thought
by our own efforts, instead of receiving Him as He bends down to
us; that we want to be able to dispose of God as we will in our think¬
ing, instead of opening our hearts to His self-disclosure and His ab¬
solute demand - that is the sin of autonomy, of the self that prides
itself upon the sufficiency of its reason.
When we have grasped this point we shall have lost a second
prejudice - or, rather, it is not a second one but the same one from

28 This emphasis on the universal, for Augustine, is the result of the equating
of the universal with the invisibilia, and of the invisibilia with the invisibilia Dei
(Rom 1:20) with the ideas or thoughts of God. It rises also out of the fact that
the ideas are not only common to men, but that as the truth common to all they
can proceed only from God. “ In una schola communem magistrum tn coelis
habemus” (Gilson, op. cit, p. 141). The res inteUigibUes-the ideas, formae
species, rationes, regulae - all these dwell in the mind of God. It is very signifi¬
cant that Luther, who not only knew Augustine’s thought very well, but also
recognized him as an authority, regarded this way of thinking with a good deal
of misgiving in spite of the fact that he never denied the connection between
the lumen naturale and the divine Logos. Cf. the famous explanation of the
Trinity, W.A., 10,1; 1, pp. 181, 188.
 412 Revelation and Reason

another point of view. Just as faith gives us a fresh insight into the
anthropomorphic ” element in the idea of God, so also it takes away
from us the prejudice against the “ mythical element ” in the Biblical
message. For this prejudice is based upon the idea that truth “ is ”
and that it does not “ happen ”; that it is “ static ” and eternally un¬
changeable. The Bible tells us, it is true, that “ the law was given by
Moses,” but that “ grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” This
means that it has come, and indeed that it came in the fact that He
came who is Himself the Truth, namely, our truth as God’s truth.
This is the “ mythical ” element which is such an offense to the rea¬
son, based on exactly the same grounds as the dislike of the “ anthro¬
pomorphic ” element in the personal conception.27 In faith, however,
we perceive that this “ coming ” is the breaking through of our au¬
tonomous self-sufficiency, and at the same time redemption from the
solitude of our self. In faith the door of the soul, which is shut and
barred by sin, is burst open in the fact that God is no longer one
whom I “ conceive ” for myself, but the One who comes to me. The
coming of God to us in Jesus Christ is the release from “ the law of
sin and of death, from the legalism which is the same as the au¬
tonomy of reason. The truth disclosed to faith is both personal and
temporal; it comes, and it is a Person. It has come once for all, and
for each one whom it encounters it has the character of absolute de¬
cision; it has not come as something true,” but as He who is alone
our truth and the truth of God. Only the reason that still wishes to
be the lord of truth rebels against the “ Christian myth,” just as it
revolts against the “ anthropomorphism ” of the Bible, and it does
this because it is still self-centered, and not rooted in Him who has
created it and wills to give it a new creation.

27. REVELATION AND REASON IN FAITH

The Word of God in Jesus Christ is the Word that calls men back
to God and creates them anew. It recalls man to the truth of his ori¬
gin. Hence, although it makes him a “ new creation,” it is not abso¬
lutely new in its creating activity like the word of the origin. It pre-
27 Cf. the excellent observations on the reasons for this revulsion against a
particular revelation in Taylor, op. cit., pp. 47 ff. The treatment of the relation
between religion and history, reason and revelation, in this work is a classic
example of genuine Christian philosophy.
 Revelation and Reason in Faith 413
supposes man as “ over against ” God, created by God, as the subject
which is addressed by God. This Word does not pass man by; it
claims him. The Word of the Gospel gives us the new life, since it
summons us as persons.1 The Word offers itself to man to be ap¬
propriated; it summons him to an act of acceptance and surrender, to
a personal act of the most intense character, in which the personality,
the heart, is wholly involved. In the New Testament this twofold
act is called repentance and faith. But both the “ coming to oneself
in repentance and tire 4 going out of oneself in faith take place
through an understanding — an understanding of the Word and an
understanding of ourselves; hence it does not ignore the reason, but
it passes through the reason. Thus in faith itself both revelation and
reason meet. The subject, therefore, of our final inquiry is. How does
this meeting take place?

FAITH AND UNDERSTANDING

1. First of all, two misconceptions must be removed which stand

in the way of the explanation of this subject. The first concerns our
interest in this question. This is not a humanistic question, but it is
absolutely and entirely a question that concerns the Church. We are
not trying to save mans “face” or his honor; here our one concern
is with the question of the preaching of the Gospel, leligious instruc¬
tion, and the “ cure of souls.” For the preacher — and for the Church
as a whole — to have a deep concern for the person to whom the
preaching of the Church is addressed is certainly not a “ secondary ”
matter; it is not a “ merely educational affair,” and therefore “ non-
theological,” and thus a merely subordinate question, or even, pos¬
sibly, of no interest at all. On the contrary, this concern for man is
an integral part of the message itself. For the whole revelation is
God’s concern for man. For man’s sake God became man; out of pity
for His lost creature God stooped to the level of man. He who is
called the Incarnate Word did not come “ to be ministered unto but
to minister, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” 2 The whole
story of salvation is simply and solely the story of God’s concern for
man, which the Lord describes in the parable of the shepherd who
seeks His lost sheep until He finds it, at the very point where it went
astray.3
The whole business of revelation is solely and unfathomably con-
i See Chapter 5. 2 Matt. 20:28. 3 Luke 15:3 ff.
414 Revelation and Reason

cerned with Gods adaptation to man; the whole purpose of this is to

lay hold of man, and to draw him once more to Himself, in order to
set him once again within the “ Kingdom of the Son of His love.”4
All the activity and the message of the Church is set within this act of
divine condescension; the message of the Church must be integrated
into this movement of the divine condescension toward man as the
instrument of His Word, in order that the Church may seek man
where he is, and where he is hiding from God, to lay hold of him
and draw him out into the open to face reality. Hence preaching is a
wholly transitive process; it is the moving from God to man, the
bringing of God to man. Hence our concern for man is not a second¬
ary matter, alongside of the Gospel; it is the whole meaning of the
central concern of the Church itself.
This misconception is simply the old orthodox misunderstanding
over again, which regards revelation as revealed doctrine, which is
regarded as something higher than this concern for man; here the
question of “ how ” to preach the Gospel is severed from the content
of the Gospel; the process by which the Gospel is brought to man
then becomes something secondary, “merely pedagogical,” “non-
theological.” The whole passion of the divine agape, the whole
mercy of God, lies in the way in which the Apostle adapts himself to
the situation of the hearers whom he is trying to win, when he says:
“ For though I was free from all men, I brought myself under bondage
to all, that I might gain the more. And to the Jews I became as a
Jew, that I might gain Jews; to them that are under the law, as under
the law, not being myself under the law, that I might gain them that
aie undei the law; to them that are without law, not being without
law to God, but under law to Christ that I might gain them that are
without law. ... I am become all things to all men, that I may by
all means save some.”5
This is what it means to preach the Gospel; there is no other way;
the Church must turn wholly toward man on God’s behalf in order
to give His message. Anyone who says that it is impossible to take
man very seriously if we take God quite seriously, or that if we
are really wholly taken up with “ fundamental ” concerns we cannot
afford to look away from them to man, has not understood the spirit
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, where enthusiasm for God and enthusi¬
asm for man are one, because what is at stake is God’s sovereignty
*0)1.1:13. 5 I Cor. 9:20 ff.
 Revelation and Reason in Faith 415
over man. The more seriously we take God, the more seriously we
take man; the more we are passionately concerned for the cause of
God, the more passionately we strive with men. Preaching is not an
impersonal proclamation of truth to the world — and let anyone re¬
ceive it who feels so disposed; but to preach the Gospel means to
“ discover ” man in the sight of God, and to “ lay hold of ” him for
God. Only someone who cares intensely about man can claim that
he preaches the Gospel.6
The second misunderstanding comes from a wrong application of
the truth that the arousal of faith in the spirit of man is God’s secret,
which it is neither possible nor permissible to try to investigate; but
this is true of everything that is the object of faith. How faith comes
into being is the secret of God. But were we to conclude from this
that we ought not to try to understand it at all, then all theological
investigation would have to be abandoned. How the heart of man
opens to receive the Word of God, and hoto the reason receives and
understands the Word, is as mysterious as the incarnation of the Son
of God.
But just as the mystery of the Incarnation is followed by our the¬
ological reflection upon it, in order that we may understand it and not
coiSuse it with something else, so is it with the relation between
revelation and reason in faith. We will allow the mystery - in all rev¬
erence — to remain a mystery: but that does not exempt us from the
necessity of making an effort to understand as much of it as we can,
in order that we may learn what it means to meet man with the Gos¬
pel exactly where he is, and not to try to find him where he is not.
A wrong conception of the sola gratia has on occasions led Reforma¬
tion theology to reduce the significance of the reason which receives
the Word to nothing, and so to turn the subject into an object, to
make it truncus et lapis. The Bible gives no support to this view. It
leaves no doubt at all that the Word of God claims man, and thus
that faith is a personal act in which the Word is “ appropriated.” The
present theological situation is similar to that which pievailed in
Kierkegaard’s day, to whom the problem of appropriation seemed
the decisive one, and who from this point of view dared to say. Sub¬
jectivity is truth.” 7

6 Cf. my article “ Der Zweck der Verkiindigung ” in the small volume of

essays entitled Vom Sinn der Verkiindigung, Zollikon, 1941.
7 Kierkegaard, Unscientific Postscript, I, p. 187.
416 Revelation and Reason

2. Since the Bible describes revelation as the “ Word of God ” it

shows clearly that revelation presupposes a receptive spiritual sub¬
ject. The manner in which the Word works is different from all ob¬
jective-causal, concrete-magical influences. The Word does not over¬
whelm, it does not coerce, it does not ignore the one “ over against it,”
but it calls, addresses, threatens, and entreats; it “ calls forth ” or
evokes decision. It appeals to hearing and understanding. The proc¬
lamation through the Word therefore applies only to the human
creation which is endowed with reason. Certainly, “ God can of
these stones raise up children to Abraham 8 He can create men out
of nothing by His almighty Word. But that is not our concern here;
for God does not ordain that His Gospel shall be proclaimed to
stones, plants, and animals, but to men alone; for they alone are
XoyLKoL, beings designed for the reception of words. God can redeem
even idiots who are without reason; but this does not take place
through the preaching of the Word. For an idiot, in the strict sense
of the word, is a creature who is incapable of understanding words;
he is open to the working of God’s mighty power, but not to the
Word of God, because he cannot understand speech at all.
God, when He became man, came down to man’s level, in order
that man might be able to meet Him. He has adapted His revelation
to man, in that He clothed it in the human word of the Apostles. He
chose this form of revelation because communication through speech
is the proper way in which human communication is carried on. Man
uses words, wherever he awakens to humanity; as humanus he uses
language, that is, he can speak and he can understand the speech of
others. This capacity was given to him as his own in the Creation.
Wherever the Gospel is proclaimed this capacity is presupposed.
Capacity for speech is not given to us by the message of Christ, but
it is claimed and used for the message of Christ.
Human capacity for speech belongs to the lumen naturale; indeed,
it is the primary token by which we perceive the presence and the
operation of the natural light, or the light of reason. But this lumen
naturale is not without an original relation to the divine Word, which
in Jesus Christ became flesh. It is not the same, but it comes from the
same source, from the Logos of God. When God created man as a
rational being, as a Xoyt/cos, one who can understand and use words.
He created him for the reception of His Word of revelation. As the
8 Matt. 3:9.
 Revelation and Reason in Faith 417
personal being of man is a reflection of the divine personal Being,
imago Dei, so the human word is imago verhi divini. Man’s capacity
for speech is intended by the Creator as receptivity for His Word;
that is its most original and direct meaning. “ God is our nearest rela¬
tion,” says Pestalozzi. So also the Word of God is that which alone
makes men “ human ” in the fullest sense of the word.9

3. The Word of God comes to us as a human word — as the word

of an Isaiah, a Paul, or a John. It makes use of a definite human lan¬
guage that is already in existence, with its vocabulary and its gram¬
mar. The Prophet speaks Hebrew, the Hebrew which every Hebrew
understands; the Apostle speaks the Greek which every Greek and
every educated man of his day understands. The Word of God makes
use of these languages, and thus presupposes the understanding of
these languages. It turns to the understanding of the hearer with his
own particular language and mentality. It claims this understanding
of language for itself. This adaptation, this consideration of that
which man already has, comes out very clearly in the “ translation ”
of the Hebrew-Greek Bible into other languages. Without this trans¬
lation the Word of God remains closed and unknown. To such an ex¬
tent does the Word of God presuppose an understanding of man —
namely, of language — that it remains completely ineffective where
this understanding cannot be presupposed. The Word of God sub¬
mits to the process of translation into all the languages of the world;
this shows how seriously God takes man. For God wills that man as
subject should not be overwhelmed, but that he should come into
communion with Himself. That is why He speaks to him in a word
that he is able to understand.
To the Greek He comes as one who speaks Greek, to the Chinese
as one who speaks Chinese, in order that man may be able to under¬
stand Him, just as a tall man will bend down to a little child and take
him on his knee in order that he may be able to look into his face.
God does not talk over the heads of His human children, and He does

9 Inter omnia opera seu dona praestantissimum est loqai. Hoc enim solo
opere ah omnibus animalibus homo dvffert. . . . Quare et hoc ipsum argu-
mentum est quod altissima natura est verbum (Luther, Tischreden, I, 565). Or
this element, which makes man different from the animals, he says (W.A.,
42, 66), “ Gerit imaginem et similitudinem Dei quam coeteri animalia non
gerunt” On the lumen naturale and its relation to the Son of God, see above,
pp. 313 ff.
418 Revelation and Reason

not pour His Spirit into their hearts by force; but He speaks to them
in a way that they can understand. The understanding of the Word
— in so far as it is the grammatical and logical understanding of
something that has been said; also in so far as it is the grammatical
and logical understanding of the preaching of the Gospel — is an act
of mental and rational self-activity on the part of man. Without this
rational self-activity or appropriation no faith arises. We do not say
that faith is this rational self-activity of man, but that it is the logical
grammatical understanding of that which is said, even if said by an
Apostle or a Prophet; without this mental, rational self-activity the
Word of God cannot be understood; without it no faith arises. Rea¬
son is the conditio sine qua non of faith.

4. So long as we are talking about language in general terms the

matter is simple, and no one will contradict us. Here we are only
dealing with the formal element, with the mere fact of capacity for
speech, with the mere fact that the reason is present as the organ of
reception. Here also the law of “ closeness of relation ” again works
itself out: in the formal element as such one can scarcely speak of the
effect of a “ darkening by sin.” But the whole situation is quite dif¬
ferent when we proceed farther and say that the Word of God also
makes use of certain existing religious or theological words, and thus
of the corresponding ideas. And yet that also is true. When the
Apostle Paul was preaching the Gospel in Athens for the first time
he did not simply speak the Greek in common use, interlarding it
at the crucial points in his discourse with Pauline or “ Apostolic ”
phrases. No; he said all that he intended to say, even the absolutely
new verities of “ redemption ” and “ resurrection,” in language fa¬
miliar to the Greeks of that day. He used the vocabulary and the
ideas that were already there; he even used the existing theological,
religious, and ethical terms, in order to make himself intelligible.10
10 Das theologische Worterbuch des Neuen Testaments, on which so much
industry is being expended by so many excellent scholars, is the clearest proof
of this fact. We cannot understand the N. T., if we do not know what is the
meaning of the words it uses, the vessels into which the Apostles poured their
new message; we have to find out their meaning from the ideas that they found
and utilized; but the truly theological work begins only where the new mean¬
ing is grasped, the new wine that has been poured into these old bottles. It is
in this coalescence of the old and the new that there lies the whole problem
of reason and revelation, and with that also the problem of the “point of
contact.”
 Revelation and Reason in Faith 419
Certainly what he meant by these words — God, sin, love, guilt —
was something quite different from that which the Greeks had previ¬
ously meant by them. He gave a wholly different content to the ideas
that already existed, but he did it simply by using these words and
ideas that he found there already; that is, in order to help men to un¬
derstand the new message he linked it with what they already knew.
We do not say this in any way to detract from the newness of his
message, but in order that the newness may not be understood in
a wrong sense. We have no intention of weakening the contrast be¬
tween faith and the rational self-activity of man; but we should like
it to be observed at the right point. Thus in claiming the religious
and theological ideas contained in this language the Apostle also took
into account the religious and theological understanding that already
existed. In order to convey the new element in what he had to say
he did not talk over the heads of his hearers, but he used the ideas
they already possessed in order to help them to understand his mes¬
sage. He did so, because he wanted to say this to them. For unless one
can count on being understood there is no use in saying anything;
without the utilization of the previous understanding it is impossible
to say that which is new and has never been heard before. Through
Paul’s preaching the familiar ideas gained a completely new content;
but this took place because he took the ideas and words that they
knew already and used them to open up their minds to the new mes¬
sage, as something wholly new.

5. We must, however, go a step farther if we are really to see the

great gulf that separates the word of man from the Word of God,
the human, rational word and the divine and spiritual understand¬
ing. In so doing we shall see that the gulf is often supposed to exist
at the wrong point, and that from this wrong view there springs that
fatal misunderstanding of faith which has met us over and over again
throughout this book. We would now add further that it is possible
to understand the new message of the Apostle Paul completely,
intellectually and logically, and that means theologically, without
having real faith. The believer, it is true, will reply, “ Then the mes¬
sage has not been rightly understood! ” But the difference between
an understanding based on genuine faith and the kind that can co¬
exist with unbelief cannot be proved in intellectual terms. An un¬
believer can pass the stiffest theological examination and prove that
420 Revelation and Reason

he understands “ Pauline theology ” so well that no examiner could

find any fault with his answers — and yet in the sense of spiritual
understanding based on real faith he has understood nothing, but
has remained a complete pagan. The Devil would pass the most rig¬
orous examination in dogmatic and Biblical theology with distinc¬
tion. Theology stands very close to the Word of God, but it is not it¬
self the Word. Sound doctrine springs from the Word of God and
from faith, but it is possible to understand it intellectually, to re¬
produce it theologically, and to make it part of one’s intellectual
equipment apart from faith. Faith, it is true, must pass through an
understanding of theological ideas, even if they are very simple
ones, but is not itself theological understanding.
Theological understanding still belongs to the sphere of reason, to
tire sphere of man.11 Christian doctrine, it is true, springs from the
Word of God; but the Word of God is different from Christian doc¬
trine. Faith cannot exist apart from sound doctrine, it is true, but it
is not itself the understanding of doctrines. It is possible to hold cor¬
rect views of doctrine without faith — and, indeed, in the course of
the history of the Church very many people have held correct
doctrinal views without possessing genuine faith. Correct doctrine
is something that can be learned, and indeed anyone who has a good
brain and is able to study at a good college or university can learn it
easily. But faith is not something that a man can “ learn it is the free
gift of God. It is extremely bad for the Church to confuse that which
is the gift of the Holy Spirit alone with that which anyone with a good
brain can learn at a good college.12 The gulf that separates the world
from the Kingdom of God, reason from the revelation of Jesus Christ,
does not lie between theology and other forms of learning, but be¬
tween the Word of God and theology, between the understanding
through faith by means of the Spirit of God and the theological
understanding of sound doctrine which any intelligent person can
learn. And yet no faith exists apart from sound doctrine, and the
Word of God cannot create faith apart from correct doctrine.

11 We may well believe that when we hear preaching we understand; but

we still lack much, solus spiritus sanctus hoc scit.’> “ I would have thought that
I could, because I have written so much and for so long about it, but when we
come to making it effectual, then I perceive that I lack much. Thus God alone
must be the holiest and the master” (Luther, Tischreden, II, p. 3).
That is why the confusion of theology with faith is such a fatal error,
which has injured the Church from the very beginning almost more than any¬
thing else.
 Revelation and Reason in Faith 421
Correct doctrine would never come into being unless God s Word
were at work. The formation of correct doctrine from the Word of
God is, as we have already seen, a necessity; and the basis of Chris¬
tian doctrine is the Word of God. But this does not alter the fact
that this doctrine, once it exists, can be understood by people who
merely possess good brains, but who have no faith. Hence a very
complete outfit of theological ideas and conceptions is absolutely no
criterion for faith; for it is a matter of reason, which, it is true, is
directed toward something that arose out of faith, but can also be
understood apart from faitla.13 Hence the idea that a good theologian
must eo ipso also be a good Christian, or even a Christian believer at
all, is a terrible misunderstanding; as a rule, indeed, the members
of the Church who are not theologians are well aware of this fact,
but theologians themselves seldom seem to realize it. And yet to
be aware of this fact should be part of a sound theology.
Faith means being gripped by the Word of God; it means that the
person submits in the very center of his being, in his heart, to Him
to whom he belongs, because He has created him for Himself. To
be actually surrendered like this is very different from knowing about
it. The former attitude is represented by the phrase, I myself am
, the latter by the phrase, Man is. . . . That is why, as Luther
puts it, everything in faith depends upon the personal pronouns
“ mine,” “ thine.” “ Thou art my Lord; I am Thy servant.”14 But this
does not mean an intellectual understanding, but a personal encoun¬
ter. Here, and here alone, lies the gulf between this world and the
world beyond, between reason and revelation. That is why a person
who has long ago given up faith can still go on for a long time teach-
in o' correct theology. It is always at his disposal. But there is one thing
that he can no longer do: he can no longer pray from his heart. For in
prayer we are concerned with Thyself and myself. This twofold self

13 Here the situation is similar to that which exists between those cultural
values and “the Christian ethic,” which have, it is true, arisen out of the
Christian faith, but which can be appropriated, applied, and even maintained
by those who are not themselves Christian believers. It is the problem of the
Corpus Christianum, of the Christianized, but not Christian world, with which
we here have to do. To it belongs, mirabile auditu, also Christian theology as
a possibility - not its coming into being, it is true, but still theological unde -

Stai4dlm'this lies for Luther, the difference between the fides historica and
genuine faith. “The historical faith saith: I hear that Christ hath suffered and
died True faith, however, said: I believe that Christ hath suffered death
for me.” (W.A., 44, 720.)
422 Revelation and Reason

— which is still reflected in the theological idea but is no longer

there as a self — that is the secret of the Holy Spirit and of faith, and
here theology ceases.15

REPENTANCE AND FAITH

Faith is an understanding, namely, that understanding which is no

longer merely intellectual, and therefore general, but that in which
I understand myself in the light of the God who addresses me in
Jesus Christ, in the light of God Himself. It is not “ man ” in general,
but me, this concrete individual, living thus, here and now, whom
I have to understand in the light of the Word of God; and not in the
light of a doctrine about God and Jesus Christ, but in His Light who
speaks to me through this doctrine as the Holy Spirit, and who gives
me my new understanding. But just as surely as faith is an under¬
standing, so also is it not only an understanding, but a decision. “ The
material of faith is the will ” (Luther).
We will now proceed to inquire into the problems of reason and
revelation, in the Christian faith, from this point of view.

1. Man cannot help continually passing judgments that serve as

the basis of his willed decisions, and from which, through his will, his
actions and his attitude spring. Man wills to live; he desires what
seems to him worthy of life, physical and mental and spiritual good,
truth in science, beauty in art, justice in the State, the good in ethics.
In all these things he wishes to make his life rich and great, strong
and free. He wills to realize himself.
This will to live finds resistance in actual reality. Man tries to over¬
come this resistance with the help of others; but this attempt suc¬
ceeds only in certain particulars, and not in life as a whole. The
powers that cross his will to life are stronger than his strength,
stronger than the powers of all human beings united. He beats his
head against obstacles that cannot be overcome by any amount of
effort, partly because, like death, they are there as a kind of fate,
and partly because they lie deep within his own nature. In this dis¬
tress, in the conflict between the reality and the will to live, the reli¬
gious question emerges. It is not that religion, still less the Christian
faith, should be thought to originate in this distress.16 But no religion,
15 Cf. my paper * \ ovn Werk des Heiligen Geistes,” pp. 30 ff.
18 Because Ritschl, and above all Kaftan, wrongly made this condition of
 Revelation and Reason in Faith 423
not even the Christian faith, can arise and ignore this distress. No
human being stretches out his hand to the saving Gospel who has
not learned through experience of this distress that he needs to grasp
some life line beyond anything he himself possesses; no one under¬
stands the saving Gospel as a believer unless he is ready to under¬
stand himself as “ one in need.” True faith begins when a person
no longer hides from himself the fact of his distress; when he has no
further illusions about it, but becomes quite honest, and sees that
he is in real need, and that this need is great, and that it is of a specific
kind. The Christian faith cannot strike root save in the heart of a
person who recognizes that his need is desperate.17

2. A man perceives that his need is desperate only when he sees

that it is not outside himself at all but deeply embedded within his
very self. The Stoic believes that he can deal with the distress of life
because he does not know himself. He is aware of death, of the fool¬
ishness and wickedness of the world around him, but he does not
know that he is a sinner, that is, that his real distress is the contradic¬
tion within himself against the destiny which has been given him by
his Creator. He cannot come to the releasing truth until he admits
the truth about himself; and he is unable to confess this truth
about himself because it is a truth that drives man to despair.
But the one and only thing that man — who is always striv¬
ing, always piling effort upon effort — never, never will do is to
admit that he is in despair about himself. Indeed, he cannot do so,
for this admission would cut away the ground from under his feet.
Man can only genuinely despair about himself when he no longer
needs to despair, because a different ground has been placed under
faith into the motive of faith, we ought not to underestimate or even to reject
their perfectly correct observation that faith can arise only in this situation. T e
perception of desperate need is the conditio qua non of faith, but it is not its a
sufficient basis. Justificatio quidem sequitur ad contritionem, non ut effectus con-
tritionis sed gratiae; homo sentiens hos terrores arripiat verbum gratiae (Luther,
Disp p 284). Lex vtdt me desperare, sed ita, ut veniam ad Christum (p. 367).
Calvin teaches exactly the same: It is the task of the law, coecum etebrium
amore sui hominem ad notitiam simul et confessionem suae imbecilhtatis et im-
puritatis adigi (Institutes, II, 7, 6). For men are incapable of receiving the
Grace of Christ until they have been fully humbled (Ibid., 11).
Cf. Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death, p. 23: “Despair is the sickness of
which it is true that it is the greatest misfortune never to have suffered from
it, and that it is a great piece of good fortune and a gift from God to have
had it, even though it is the most dangerous illness.”
 424 Revelation and Reason

his feet, because there has already been offered to him a new health¬
ful possibility of life, which is the antidote to despair.
This is the dialectic of repentance and faith, faith and repentance:
that faith comes only when we stretch out in despair for the only help
available; and yet that we are only properly despairing in our search
for help when it is already in sight; that is, when we already dare to
admit our desperate situation. This dialectic is no other than that
of Law and Gospel, Gospel and Law.

3. If we ask the New Testament, Where does this despairing

knowledge of distress and need, that is, the awareness of sin, come
from? the answer comes first of all quite plainly: From the law —
from the law which is not one with the Christ, but which is His
counterpart, and at the same time also His forerunner,18 from the
law which knows no “ grace,” the law which only makes demands,
which “ worketh wrath.” 19 This law is the way in which the will of
God is present in the unredeemed sinner, in the “ natural man.” Thus
God is present outside Christ, as Christ is present xcopts rov rojuov.20
Legem accipimus extra Christum. ‘ To feel one’s conscience,” says
Luther, “ is to hear the voice of the angry God.”21 For the law, simply
as this law (and this in principle, not merely in a psychological
sense) creates nothing else than this despairing self-knowledge.
The law is the principle of natural self-knowledge; it belongs ab¬
solutely to that which man can tell himself.22 The final effect of this
law, its supreme achievement — again in principle, and not from
the point of view of psychology — is the despairing self-knowledge of
man: “ I died.” 23 The man whom the law - and nothing but the law
- confronts in its absolute severity can only say, “ It is all up with
me! It is only thus that a man takes the law seriously, and only in
the fact that he takes the law seriously does he take his own possibil¬
ity of life seriously - a possibility which does not exist. The effect of
the Law is, as Luther puts it, that through it man ad nihil redigi.2i
18 Rom. 3:20. Here the first three chapters are summed up, which deal with
the Law which is tire precursor of Christ.
19 Rom. 4:15.
20 Rom. 3:21.
21 Luther, Disp., p. 423, and W.A., 42, 419.
22 See Chapter 22.
23 Rom. 7:10.
24 Luther, “ Through the revelation of sin lex redigit in nihilum hominem
et condemnat et impellit quaerere Christum ” Disp., p. 276.
 Revelation and Reason in Faith 425
4. In principle this is the last word that lies within the sphere of
man’s own possibility. The sphere of law is the sphere of man s own
possibility. And the final judgment that man can pass upon himself
in this sphere is “ I am lost! ”25 This is fundamental; in the very
nature of the case this is the final thing that man can say about
himself. Actually, however, he does not say this. For this truth is
far too perilous for him to venture to utter it. He evades it: through
cynicism or through idealism, through an escape into sense enjoy¬
ment or into the attitude of a spectator who devotes himself to aes¬
thetic or intellectual pleasure and the life of culture. That which in
principle ” is possible - for our concern, indeed, is about that which
man ought to say of himself if he were wholly honest — this in fact
does not happen. Man is far too profoundly a sinner to be able to
admit his sin. That is the dialectic of repentance: that man admits
his true and vital need, the need which lies in himself, and which
he could know himself only when he is no longer in this distiess.
Only through faith which does not in any way lie within the sphere
of merely human possibility, since it becomes possible only through
the Christian revelation, does man, in fact, know what in principle he
might and ought to have been able to tell himself, because it lay
in the sphere of law, that is, in the sphere of human possibility. Faith
alone gives man the “ standing in which he is able to bear the
desperate truth about himself. But this perception is not the proper
effect of faith; it is its “ strange work.” 26 Faith, so to speak, holds man
firmly by the arm while he gazes down into the abyss of his own
nature. It is not through faith that he gazes into this abyss - faith
has a quite different point of view from this — but it is only because
faith upholds him that man is finally able to do what he ought to

25 The law which is written in our hearts is that which we can tell ourselves.
But that which the law, taken seriously, says to us is that we are sinners and
therefore that we are under the wrath of God. So “ the law accuses thee through
thine own conscience” (W.A, 36, 368). Si legem intuemur, nihil ahud pos-
sumus quam animum despondere, confundi ac desperare cum ex ea damnemur
(Calvin, Institutes, II, 7, 4). <£ , „ , .,
26 For Luther the distinction between the strange work and the proper
works” of God is fundamental (cf. Theodosius Harnack, Luthers Theologie,
I p 265), which in the teaching of Calvin is replaced by the doctrine of a
twofold predestination. Cf. W.A., 1, 112: To the “strange work of God be¬
longs all that belongs to the powers of wrath: death, sin, law, namely, the
law as an annihilating, accusing, condemning power. 1^ Paul, the law came
in beside” (Rom. 5:20); its working is deadly (Rom., ch. 7).
 426 Revelation and Reason

have done long before, and, indeed, what he actually could have
done: admit what his real situation is.
In this judgment on man, which, it is true, is not given by faith,
but with the aid of faith, the naked reality of man’s need stands out
clearly. Hence this judgment includes all that man already knew
about himself — that he is in distress; that he is sinful, guilty; that he
is dissatisfied with his existence. Only now, however, do all these
perceptions come wholly to the surface, whereas formerly they were
forcibly suppressed. Now alone do they come out into the open, just
as they are, without any illusions, no longer repressed by the censor
of the self which loves itself and is anxious about itself, but in the
stern severity of the truth, which sees things as they are in the merci¬
less light of the law. Here all “immanent” self-knowledge comes
into its own, only without all the modifications connected with the
insistence on the autonomy of the reason.27 Thus faith does not reject
the rational judgment of man on himself, but it merely impels man
to express fully what previously he had only half admitted. Faith
forces the reason to complete honesty. For it is only in this honesty,
which unveils man’s real situation as a whole, that faith — or, rather,
Christ — can speak His own word, which was not within man’s power
at all. Here, then, something quite new emerges, a paradoxical self-
knowledge, namely, identification with Christ: Christ my Righteous¬
ness.28

5. Thus faith speaks at the same time two words, one directed
below and one “ above.” The first word — looking downward —
is addressed to the natural man,” the man who stands under the
law. Indeed, it is a word in the sphere of reason, a word about the
way in which man ought really to speak to himself, namely, the word
in which the sinner confesses himself to be what he is; the word
of repentance, of coming to oneself, of honest self-knowledge, free
from all illusions. Faith “ liquidates ” — in place of reason which is
On this cf. Kierkegaards distinction between (immanent) knowledge of
gm/t and a paradoxical-transcendent knowledge of sin. “The consciousness
07 still lies essentially in immanence, in distinction from the consciousness of
sin ( Unscientific Postscript, p. 474); “ the individual is unable to acquire sin-
consciousness by himself, as he can guilt-consciousness; for in guilt-conscious¬
ness the identity of the subject with himself is preserved, and guilt-consciousness
is an alteration of the subject within the subject himself; sin-consciousness . . .
is an alteration of the very subject himself.” (Unscientific Postscript p 517 )
28 I Cor. 1:30; II Cor. 5:21. v
 Revelation and Reason in Faith 427
incapable of doing so in its own strength — “ the business ” of the
natural-legalistic existence, of the man who lives on what he can do,
and does, of himself. It declares the bankruptcy of this autonomous
humanity. It makes man admit that his illusion of autonomy is an
illusion; it opens his eyes to what he is in himself, and what this
avros eyec is.29 In that it holds before his eyes the law in its whole
stern inflexibility it forces him to capitulate to this law as one who
can never satisfy its demands.
The second word, the real word of faith, is the repetition of the
divine acquittal, of the word of grace in Jesus Christ. In this word
man does not express himself, but he allows himself to be addressed,
and he accepts this address, and allows himself to hear what he could
never have said to himself. The believer repeats in obedience the
word of Christ which has been said to him: “ Thou art Mine; I am
thine.” Man accepts the fact of adoption, to which he can add noth¬
ing, with which he has nothing to do. The only thing that is left to
him is to receive it. But it is precisely this which, from God, and in
relation to God, is the original destiny of reason. It is intended to
perceive, to receive, what God speaks. Through faith the reason is
once more placed at its original point, the place assigned to it in the
purpose of the Creation; it is to be the echo of the Word of God,
imago Dei. Man is to receive his destiny as one given by God, as a
possibility of life which is a pure gift. It is only the man who prides
himself upon his autonomous self-knowledge, who is full of the il¬
lusory idea that he is equal to God, who thinks that this is something
unworthy of reason. If this illusion is removed, then the reason is
again free to fulfill the purpose for which it has been created. Faith
is, therefore, truly in accordance with reason, it is “ truly rational,”
and life in faith, therefore, is that which the Apostle describes as the
\oyu<ri XarpeLa, our “ reasonable service ” of God.30

6. This description of faith, to be sure, is onesided. In the Bible,

as a rule, faith is connected, not with reason, but with the “ heart.”
This does not mean the sphere of emotion, but the center of the per¬
sonality — of the personality as a whole. The reason is not the whole
person, in spite of the fact that the rational faculty is the distinctive
characteristic of man. The whole man, in the unity of thought, feel¬
ing, and willing — man as he is “ with his whole nature,” in his atti-
29 Rom. 7:25.
30 Rom. 12:2; similarly I Peter 2:2; I Cor. 14:14; Rev. 13:18; 17:9.
428 Revelation and Reason

tude of surrender or of withdrawal — is “ the heart.” Only where we

do anything “ from the heart ” are we doing it with our whole being.
This is the case because man essentially has been created, not for
thought, but for loving.31 In love alone, which includes the right
kind of thinking, is man wholly himself. In love — whether of the
right or the wrong kind — his life is decided. Far truer than the one
statement, “ Man is what he thinks,” is the other statement, “ Man is
what he loves.” His loving and his hating, what he values and what
he loathes, decide his life. In love, thinking, willing, and feeling are
one. But again this is true only where man is “ integrated,” where he
is undivided, where he is whole; but in sin he is divided, there the
heart is separated from the reason. The unredeemed man has two
centers, one of reason and the other of love: “head” and “heart”
are divided. But from the point of view of the doctrine of man,
faith consists precisely in the fact that the heart and the reason
again become one, that the reason becomes warmed, and the heart
becomes rational. For in faith man receives the right sort of love,
the love with which God calls him into life and makes him His
son, the love which gives to man his divine and his human thou,
agape. In agape alone is man wholly integrated; without it he loves
unreasonably and he reasons lovelessly.
Thus faith assigns reason its place, in that in uniting it with God
it at the same time unites it with the heart. Or, to put it more cor¬
rectly, Gods Word, since it awakens faith within us, has the power
to bring the heart and the reason together. Only where this takes
place is there real faith. Merely “ intellectual ” belief is not faith, but
it is an intellectual substitute for faith. It is only true of “ heartfelt
faith ” that “ it worketh through love ”; that is living faith, the faith
which makes alive, whereas intellectual belief is a worthless imi¬
tation of faith, which neither signifies nor effects any real change in
life or character. This kind of faith, however, is a dogmatic belief,
but the faith of the heart is a personal encounter. Only where the
God revealed in Jesus Christ Himself personally meets me, myself,
is the radix cordis touched (Calvin); only there does faith come into
being as “ heartfelt trust.” 82

81 Cf. Der Mensch ini Widerspruch, pp. 92 ff. Cf. also Luther’s doctrine
of the love which wells up like a fountain, for instance, in the sermon entitled
“Die Summa des christlichen Lebens,” W.A., 36, 352 ff.
82 Rom. 10:9 ff.; II Cor. 4:6; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 1:18.
 Revelation and Reason in Faith 429
7. Thus faith does not put the reason out of action, but through
faith the Word of God takes the reason into its service.33 Rational
thought is not abandoned — for faith itself is truly rational thought
about God and about life as a whole — but all that is got rid of is
the sinful misuse of thought, the illusion of reason. Reason is not
annihilated by faith, but it is set free. Just as the believer does not
cease to speak — but only ceases to speak in ways that are contrary
to the will of God — he does not cease to think, but he begins to
think in harmony with God. God’s Word, received in faith, does not
eliminate the humanum, that is, all that distinguishes man as man,
but it purifies it from all that is inhuman, which comes from the
illusion of reason and from sinful desire. The Word of God does not
want to make us into savages, but it desires to make the whole of
human culture and human life truly “ human ” by uniting it with
God.
Man as sinner is like a usurper who has illegally wrenched a city
out of the hands of the king and brought it under his own authority,
which is really a false sovereignty. Thus man as sinner, in his im¬
agined and false autonomy, has brought life under the dominion of
the reason severed from God and the arbitrary sway of instinct. All
human powers stand in an order that is disorder. Life in the city goes
on its ordered way, it is true; much goes on almost as though it were
not the usurper but the rightful lord who is in power. The more
impersonal the sphere, the less disturbance there is; the more per¬
sonal, the greater is the disturbance. Mathematical thought and
technical dexterity are far less affected than marriage and the life of
the family. The disturbance is great wherever personal human rela¬
tions are involved; the disorder itself, however, is the usurpation as
such, that is, the negative relation to God. Now the meaning of the
Christian revelation is this: that by it, where it is received in faith,
the rightful King is reinstated in the seat of authority. This means
that everything in the city becomes different; but everything is
not altered to the same degree. Through Christ we do not receive
a different mathematics, physics, or chemistry, but we do find a
different kind of marriage, family life, a different relation to our fel¬
low men, and hence, influenced by that, a different kind of public
justice. The role of reason is especially altered fundamentally in its
“ higher centers,” whereas in its “ lower organs ” there is little change.
33 “ Bringing all reason into captivity to the obedience of Christ,” II Cor. 10:5.
430 Revelation and Reason

What is totally different and completely new, however, is man’s rela¬

tion with God, and the personality based on this: “ If any man be in
Christ, he is a new creation.”34
How does this revolution take place? Not physically, but spiritu¬
ally, through the act of the self-proclamation of God, and an act of
abdication on the part of the self which desires to be its own master.
By its own efforts the self cannot achieve this, but it must do it under
the influence of the divine Word. The autonomous self must resign —
that is repentance. This is the last act of the usurper’s government;
it differs from all the others in the very fact that it consists in giving
up the reins of government. The self-assured “ I ” capitulates to its
rightful Lord; but it can do this only because the rightful Lord is
already “ at the city gate.” Repentance is the first effect of the Word
of God that comes to us.
Repentance is accomplished in an act of reason, but in such a way
that in it the reason renounces its autonomy. Reason is able to do this
only because it has been conquered by the Word of God; but this
conquest takes place in acts of the reason, in a /xera-voia, in a trans¬
formation of our thought about ourselves and about God, in an
understanding of what God is saying to us. The self expresses this
because it has been impelled to do so by the truth of the divine Word.
The transference of the authority of Christ takes place through Christ
Himself, but it can take place only where the self-reliant “ I,” the
autonomous self, has abdicated. In its own name the reason still says
only: My autonomy is an illusion; what henceforth is expressed posi¬
tively the new King alone can say who in His mercy installs the
previous rebellious usurper, now become obedient, as His servant.
What the self henceforth expresses as a believer takes place simply
in the repetition of that which his Lord says to him. In this subordi¬
nation, however, all the powers of the rational self alone come to
their full development. As master it had to play a part for which it
was not suited; as a subordinate, it can do all that God has given it
to do in His purpose in the Creation. To abandon metaphors, all
that remains for us to do is to express that which the Apostle has
said to us as the Word of God: “ I have been crucified with Christ, yet
I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which
I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of
God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Thus Christ con¬
quers the reason and in so doing makes it free to serve.
34 II Cor. 5:17.
 INDEX OF NAMES

Adler, 124, n. 13 Brunner:

Althaus, 189, n. 13; 218, n. 1; 219, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen,
n. 3; 284, n. 21; 378, n. 14 326, n. 11; 383, n. 20
Anselm, 107, n. 49; 178; 343; 388 Der Mensch im Widerspruch, 40,
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 55, n. 11; 153, n. 23; 49, n. 1; 54, n. 9; 214,
n. 34; 176, n. 23; 344, n. 12; 348, n. 13; 262, n. 8; 281, n. 16; 322,
n. 187; 396, n. 33 n. 2; 358, n. 18; 428, n. 31
Areopagite, Dionysius the, 345, n. 13; Der Mittler, 100, n. 25; 113, n. 72;
355 284, n. 21
Aristotle, 42; 55; 247; 324, n. 8; 327, Die Mystik und das Wort, 219, n. 4;
n. 16; 361 224, n. 13
Auberlen, 12, n. 17 Wahrheit als Begegnung, 114, n. *;
Augustine, 38, n. 16, 18; 74; 165, n. 3; 371, n. 14
167; 176; 177, n. 24; 314; 316, Bruno, 277
n. 12; 317, n. 14, 16, 17; 354, Buber, 88, n. 17; 233, n. 34
n. 13; 355; 358; 367, n. 8; 387; Bullinger, 127, n. 21; 195
388; 411, n. 26 Bultmann, 21, n. 3; 82, n. 2; 96, n. 4,
5; 104, n. 31; 119, n. 2; 281,
Bachmann, 49, n. 1; 286, n. 28 n. 17; 284, n. 23; 285, n. 24, 25;
Baillie, 8, n. 12 293
Barth, H., 391, n. 30 Burger, 137, n. 1
Barth, K., 58, n. la; 59, n. 2; 61, n. 4;
67, n. 7; 77-80; 84, n. 6; 99, Calovius, 7, n. 11
n. 20; 149, n. 30; 260, n. 5; 281, Calvin, 14, n. 19; 36, n. 9, 10; 59, n. 2;
n. 17; 319, n. 18; 377, n. 11, 12; 60; 62, n. 5; 66, n. 6; 67, n. 7; 68,
390, n. 29 n. 8; 70, n. 13; 75, n. 20, 21; 76,
Bartholomae, 227, n. 19 n. 22; 77, n. 24; 96, n. 5; 114,
Bartmann, 138, n. 7; 167, n. 5 n. 75; 127, n. 21; 141; 195; 198,
Baumgartner, 82, n. 2 n. 11, 12; 222; 258, n. 1; 262;
Bavink, 296, n. 5; 298, n. 9 263, n. 10, 15; 275; 314, n. 7;
Bellarmin, 138, n. 7 332, n. 30; 335, n. 36; 351; 355;
Bennett, 210, n. 9 390; 423, n. 16; 425, n. 25
Bergson, 298, n. 10 Cassirer, 358, n. 20
Bernard, St., 192, n. °*; 376 Cathrein, 71, n. 15; 323, n. 4; 324,
Biedermann, 338, n. 1; 343, n. 9; 401 n. 5; 325, n. 9
Boethius, 364; 409 Celsus, 186
Chantepie de la Saussaye, 4, n. 6; 227,
Bohl, 59, n. 2
Bonaventura, 314; 319, n. 18; 344, n. 19; 271, n. 29; 349, n. 1; 407,
n. 12; 345, n. 13 n. 15
Bonhoeffer, 286, n. 28 Chemnitz, 114, n. 75; 319, n. 19
Bousset, 119, n. 1; 122, n. 9; 227, n. 18 Cicero, 233; 357
Braseke, 71, n. 13 Cocceius, 195
Coe, 241, n. 21
Brehier, 375
431
432 Index of Names
Comte, 242, n. 24; 326, n. 11; 356 n. 8; 374, n. 1; 375, n. 4; 376,
Constantine, 164 n. 5; 387, n. 25
Copernicus, 277-279 Gloede, 59, n. 2
Cramer, 275, n. 6 Goethe, 186; 328, n. 21; 356
Cremer, 388, n. 26 Gotthelf, 142, n. 19
Cullberg, 248, n. 35 Gregory of Nazianzen, 345, n. 13
Gregory of Nyssa, 345, n. 13
Damasus, 144, n. 22 Grether, 85, n. 9
Damiani, 376 Grisebach, 390, n. 28
Darwin, 277; 279 f. Gutbrod, 51, n. 7
Denzinger, 37, n. 16; 126, n. 19; 156,
n. 36 Haas, 225, n. 16
Descartes, 343, n. 9 Haecker, 124, n. 13
Deussen, 349, n. 1; 352, n. 7 Hamann, 56
Dewey, 210, n. 9 Hamack, A., 99, n. 24; 108, n. 51
Diels, 312, n. 5 Harnack, T., 46, n. 9; 113, n. 74; 425,
Dilthey, 211, n. 10 n. 26
Dorner, 261, n. 6; 263, n. 12 Hartmann, 210, n. 9
Duhm, 287, n. 30 Hegel, 43; 251, n. 41; 260; 362; 398
Duplessy, 14, n. 19 Heim, 4, n. 5; 204, n. 1; 225, n. 16;
Durkheim, 241, n. 21 294, n. 1; 344, n. 12; 387, n. 24;
390
Echternach, 274, n. 3
Heisenberg, 296
Eddington, 296, n. *, 5; 402, n. 7
Hellbarth, 81, n. 2; 194, n. 1
Eichrodt, 21, n. 3; 69, n. 10; 81, n. 1;
Hengstenberg, 81, n. 1; 292, n. 34
82, n. 2; 89, n. 18; 90, n. 20; 91,
Heppe, 131, n. 30
n. 21, 23; 94, n. 28, 41; 194, n. 1;
Heraclitus, 312, n. 5
292, n. 34
Herbert of Cherbury, 219; 233; 355,
Elert, 3, n. 3; 278, n. 11
n. 14; 359
Epictetus, 233; 357
Herder, 398
Epicurus, 42; 75
Hermias, 342, n. 5
Erasmus, 14
Herrmann, 24, n. 6; 39, n. 19
Erman, 406, n. 15
Hettinger, 37, n. 15; 305, n. 24
Euhemerus, 238; 243
Hilary of Poitiers, 345, n. 13
Eusebius, 345, n. 13
Hirsch, 82, n. 2; 221, n. 7
Fehr, 59, n. 2 Hobbes, 243 f.
Feuerbach, 238 ff.; 241; 244-249; Hoffmann, 54, n. 9; 55, n. 11
259; 260 Hofmann, 81, n. 1
Fichte, 352; 360, n. 23 Holl, 147, n. 27
Freud, 238; 245, n. 27; 259; 349, n. 3 Hollbach, 241, n. 20
Frey, 378, n. 13 Hume, 238 f.; 244; 259
Fries, 260 Husserl, 245, n. 29
Fueter, 277, n. 9; 359, n. 21
Irenaeus, 47, n. 10; 48; 82, n. 3; 144,
Galileo, 277 ff.; 280, n. 15; 297 n. 21; 195; 196, n. 8; 200, n. 19
Geldner, 228, n. 20; 229, n. 23
Gerhard, 11, n. 16; 98, n. 19 Jakobi, 11, n. 17
Gilg, 114, n. 76 James, 252; 255, n. 49
Gilson, 176, n. 23; 178, n. 28; 315, Jones, 284, n. 21
n. 10; 342, n. 5; 344, n. 12; 368, Jud, 195
 Index of Names 433
Jiilicher-Fascher, 130, n. 29 Loofs, 156, n. 38; 195, n. 3
Jung, 269, n. 27 Lotze, 338, n. 1; 360, n. 23
Lowrie, 256, n. 50; 368, n. 8
Kaftan, 422, n. 16 Luther, 12, n. 17; 36; 47, n. 10; 60; 69;
Kahler, 12, n. 17; 260, n. 4; 261, n. 6; 70, n. 13; 73, n. 18; 125, n. 17;
262, n. 9; 273, n. 1; 327, n. 12; 127, n. 20, 21; 130, n. 27, 28;
390 131, n. 30; 133, n. 31, 32; 137,
Kant, 173, n. 18; 209, n. 5; 215, n. 14; n. 3; 143, n. 20; 145, n. 23; 150,
233; 234, n. 37; 247; 251, n. 40; n. 32; 155, n. 35; 163, n. 42; 171;
260; 315; 325 f.; 328-331; 344, 175; 180; 186, n. 5; 248; 258,
n. 11; 346, n. 14; 353, n. 9; 365; n. 1; 259, n. 3; 263; 266; 268,
372, n. 17; 410 n. 26; 269; 272, n. 30; 274-276;
Kepler, 277-279 278, n. 11, 13; 303, n. 16; 314;
Kierkegaard, 124, n. 13; 170, n. 10; 309, n. 1; 314, n. 6, 7; 315, n. 9;
182, n. 36; 186, n. 6; 214, n. 12; 316, n. 13; 321, n. 1; 322, n. 3;
234, n. 36; 256; 268, n. 25; 283; 331, n. 29; 332, n. 30; 333, n. 31;
306, n. 29; 310; 329, n. 23; 340, 335; 336, n. 43; 351, n. 4; 376;
n. 4; 355; 368, n. 8; 376; 377, 380, n. 15; 382, n. 19; 384, n. 21;
n. 10; 393, n. 31; 394; 399; 415, 409, n. 23; 411, n. 26; 424; 417,
n. 7; 423, n. 17; 426, n. 27 n. 9; 420, n. 11; 421, n. 14; 423,
Kittel, 4, n. 6; 69, n. 10; 139, n. 8; n. 16; 424, n. 21, 24; 425, n. 25,
196, n. 8; 311, n. 4 26; 428, n. 31
Knittermeyer, 391, n. 30 Lyell, 277
Koffka, 245, n.
Kohler, 21, n. 3; 44, n. 5; 69, n. 10; Marcellus of Ancyra, 195, n. 3
91, n. 21; 245, n. ** Marcus Aurelius, 233; 357
Konow, 271, n. 29 Martin, 8, n. 12
Kraemer, 218, n. 1; 222, n. 9; 226, Mausbach, 340, n. 3
n. 17; 230, n. 28; 265, n. 18 Mauthner, 4, n. 7; 349, n. 1
Kiltm, 6, n. 10 Maylan, 349, n. 3
Kiimmel, 37, n. 13, 14; 102, n. 28 Medicus, 296, n. 6
Kiinneth, 108, n. 51; 187, n. 7 Melanchthon, 113, n. 73; 114, n. 75;
127, n. 21; 141; 143; 145, n. 23;
La Mettrie, 241, n. 20 390
Lange, 297, n. 8 Mohammed, 229 ff.
Laplace, 297; 300 More, 315, n. 10
Lauterbach, 278, n. 11 Muller, 390, n. 28
Le Bon, 242, n. 23
Leeuw, van der, 20, n. 1; 222, n. 10; Nagel, 171, n. 11
223, n. 12 Needham, 298, n. 9
Lehmann, 228, n. 20 Neuberg, 296, n. 5, 7
Leibnitz, 353 Newton, 277 ff.
Lessing, 43; 219, n. *; 398 Nicholas of Cusa, 358
Levy-Bruhl, 241, n. 21 Nietzsche, 186, n. 4; 210; 244, n. 26;
Lewin, 245, n. 00 249; 350
Lightfoot, 278 Nygren, 10, n. 15; 29, n. 18; 38, n. 18;
Locke, 359; 365 42, n. 2
Loewenich, 161, n. 40
Lommel, 227, n. 19; 228, n. 22; 405, Oettingen, 261, n. 6
n. 12 Oldenberg, 20, n. 2
434 Index of Names

Oldham, 380, n. 16 Schrenk, 195, n. 4

Origen, 89, n. 18 Schiirer, 118, n. 1
Otto, 181, n. 34; 220, n. 5; 225, n. 14; Schweitzer, 101, n. 27; 254, n. 46;
252; 253; 260; 271, n. 29 285, n. 25; 289, n. 31; 326, n. 11
Schweizer, 112, n. 71
Pascal, 345; 354, n. 12; 355; 376 Scott, 21, n. 3
Pattison, 352, n. 8 Seeberg, 144, n. 21; 305, n. 25
Pesch, 38, n. 16 Seneca, 233; 357
Pfister, 205, n. 2; 406, n. 15 Snouck-Hurgronje, 229, n. 26; 231,
Pfleiderer, 338, n. 1 n. 30
Philo, 122, n. 9; 358 S0derblom, 269, n. 28; 343, n. 7; 356,
Planck, 296, n. 5 n. 15
Plato, 42; 75; 165, n. 3; 247; 250; Sohm, 139, n. 8
301; 315, n. 10; 324, n. 8; 326 ff.; Spencer, 241, n. 21; 356; 357, n. 16
353, n. 9; 362; 367, n. 8 Spinoza, 42; 362
Plotinus, 328, n. 18, 19; 367, n. 8 Spoerri, 269
Plutarch, 328, n. 18 Sporri, 331, n. 28
Prodicus, 238 Stahl, 59, n. 2
Strauss, 292; 295
Quenstedt, 274, n. 2
Taylor, 343, n. 10; 360, n. 23; 391,
von Rad, 82, n. 2
n. 30; 412, n. 27
Ramanuja, 226, n. 17
Temple, 8, n. 12
Rickert, 245, n. 29
Tertullian, 376
Ritschl, 107, n. 49; 113, n. 72; 146,
Theodosius, 164
n. 26; 303; 422, n. 16
Thielicke, 43, n. 3
Ritter, 374, n. 2
Thurneysen, 108, n. 52
Rosenzweig, 233, n. 34
Titius, 296, n. 5
Royce, 391, n. 30
Toland, 359
Sawicki, 38, n. 16; 212, n. 11; 305, Trendelenburg, 338, n. 1
n. 24; 340, n. 3; 342, n. 6 Troeltsch, 147, n. 28; 218, n. 1; 245,
Schalom Ben Chorin, 233, n. 34 n. 29; 328, n. 21
Scheler, 311
Uberweg, 238, n. 1
Schelling, 11, n. 17; 43; 265, n. 17;
Ulrici, 360, n. 23
329 Underhill, 224, n. 14
Scheuchzer, 277, n. 10
Ursinus, 195
Schlatter, 36, n. 11; 49, n. 2; 72, n. 16;
114, n. 76; 217, n. 18, 20; 260, Vischer, 81, n. 2
n. 4; 293; 343, n. 8 Volk, 54, n. 9
Schleiermacher, 100; 219 f.; 251, Vossberg, 231, n. 31; 272, n. 30; 333,
n. 42, 43; 260; 295; 303; 352, n. 32
n. 8; 397 f.
Schlier, 59, n. 2 Webb, 315, n. 10; 355, n. 14; 369, n. 9
Schlink, 71, n. 14 Weber, H. E., 145, n. 23
Schmidt, H. W., 387, n. 24 Weber, M., 324, n. 6
Schmidt, K. L., 139, n. 8 Weinel, 101, n. 27
Schmidt, P. W., 267, n. 20; 343, n. 7 Weisse, 360, n. 23
Schoeps, 233, n. 34 Wellhausen, 284, n. 23; 287; 292
Schopenhauer, 350 Werner, 33, n. 4
Schrader, 226, n. 17 Wertheimer, 245, n.
 Index of Names 435
Westermarck, 245, n. 28; 324, n. 6 Zahn, 195, n. 3
Weth, 195, n. 4 Zarathustra, 349, n. 2a
Weyl, 297, n. 7 Zeller, 42, n. 1; 327, n. 17; 328, n. 18
White, 6, n. 9; 277, n. 9; 278, n. 12 Zimmerli, 82, n. 2; 194, n. 1
Windelband, 245, n. 29; 375, n. 3 Zimmern, 327, n. 13
Witte, 218, n. 1 Zockler, 14, n. 18; 280, n. 15; 296, n. 4
Wrede, 289, n. 31 Zoroaster, 75; 227 f.; 405, n. 12
Wundt, 242, n. 22 Zwingli, 14, n. 19; 127, n. 21; 160.
n. 39; 171, n. 11; 183, n. 37; 195;
Yutang, Lin, 324, n. 7 258, n. 1; 275; 351
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Advaita, 226 verbal inspiration, theory of, 7-9;

See Hinduism 127 f.
Agape, N.T. concept of, 331 Vulgate, 274, n. 4
Agnosticism, 356 Zwingli’s attitude to, 275
element of truth in, 356 f. Buddhism, 224-226; 266; 271
Altenteil, 356, n. 00 Amita Buddha, 225 f.; 271
Amita Buddha, 225 f. claim to revelation in, 225
See Buddhism nirvana in, 225; 272
Analogia entis, doctrine of, 67; 80; Zen,225
319, n. 18
Analogia fidei, doctrine of, 67 Causality, concept of, 296
Anamnesis, Platonic, 317, n. 14 Christology, in N.T., 112 f.
Atheism, 266-268 of N.T., 127
ancient and modern, 348-350 and soteriology, 113
element of truth in, 349 ff. two natures, doctrine of, 114
Atonement, Christian message and, variety in N.T., 129 f.
236 Church, Bible translation and, 140 f.
fact of, 306 in Body of Christ, 137
Avesta, 227 canon of Holy Scripture and, 140
See Zoroastrianism function of preaching, 141 f.
Luther on, 137, n. 3
Bhagavad-Gita, 226 Comparative religion, revelation and,
See Hinduism 219-221
Bhakti religion, 226, n. 17; 271 Confessio Helvetica, 144, n. 22
Bible, authority of, 11; 127 Confession of faith, its function, 158
Calvin’s attitude to, 275 relative authority of, 159
canon of N.T., 130-132 Confessions of faith, 156-158
doctrine of its nature, 276 f. need for revision, 160 f.
fundamentalism and, 275 Creation, basis of man’s responsibility,
fundamentalist view of, 145 76
historical criticism and, 11; 273; Calvin on doctrine of, 60
292 f. integral element in message of sal¬
Luther’s attitude to, 275 vation, 66
Luther’s translation of, 274 and Kantian philosophy, 61
Reformation principle of, 276 Luther on doctrine of, 60
relation between O.T. and N.T., 134 original revelation not destroyed by
revelation contained in, 135 sin, 74
Roman Catholic view of, 146, n. 25 Pauline doctrine of, 63
testimonium spiritus sancti inter¬ revelation in, 59 f.
num, 170 in the Scriptures, 60 f.
and theology, 141
translation of, 140 f. Deism, 256; 294; 355-357; 359
unity of O.T. and N.T., 276 beginnings of, 359
variety of doctrine in, 288 ff. Christian influence on, 355, n. 14
436
 Index of Subjects 437
Doubt, and arrogance, 208 proofs of existence of God and,
and the divided mind, 214 338 ff.
an intellectual form of sin, 207 f. rational truth included in, 213
and original sin, 210 reason and, 14 f.
problem of, 205 ff. reason co-ordinated in, 217
release from tension through, 215
repentance and, 216; 413; 422
Enlightenment, philosophers of the,
243
Geneva Catechism, 1545, 60
religion of, 231; 233
Gestalt psychology, 245, n. **
Evil, Greek philosophy and problem
Gifford Lectures, natural theology
of, 328
and, 360, n. 22, 23
problem of, 327
Gnosticism, 8
Existence of God, Catholic theology
God, Scholastic idea of, 390
and proofs of, 339
Good, idea of the, 314
cosmological argument, 342 f.
Gospels, historicity of, 284
Kant and ontological argument,
Gottglaubigkeit, 256, n. ***
343 f.
Kant on proofs of, 338
Kierkegaard and proofs of, 340 Heisenberg, “ principle of uncer¬
Kierkegaard on, 340, n. 4 tainty,” 296
moral argument, 344, n. 11 Hinduism, Advaita (or “pantheistic
ontological argument, 343-346 Monism”), 226, n. 17
Pascal and proofs of, 340 Bhagavad-Gita, 226, n. 17
proofs of, 338 ff. bhakti religion, 271
teleological argument, 346-348 Upanishads, 226, n. 17
History, Christian faith and philoso¬
phy of, 398 f.
Faith, autonomous reason and, 213
Bible and, 168 f.
Idealism, elements of truth in, 353 f.
conceptions of, Augustine on, 10,
Kantian, 353
n. 15; 177, n. 24
later Vedanta and, 352
Luther’s view of, 150; 151, n. 32;
Leibnitz and, 353
180
Platonic, 353
Roman Catholic, 10; 37 f.
speculative, 352-355
two Protestant, 168, n. 6
Illuminatio, concept of, 367, n. 8
despair and, 423 f.
Imago Dei, doctrine of, 68-70
doctrine and, 389
O.T. doctrine of, 69, n. 10
in Epistle of James, 37, n. 14
Incarnation, central in Christian reve¬
integration of personality through,
lation, 236
428 Kierkegaard on the, 185 f.
meaning of real, 421 f.
Logos and the, 321
in N.T., 114; 116 f.
Islam, 271
Pauline idea of, 114
claim to revelation in, 229
as personal encounter, 9 f.; 399
creed of, 229
as personal relation to God, 175
Luther on, 231
a personal relationship, 36
a religion of law, 231
personal surrender, 41
personal trust, 39
perverted idea of, 9; 38 f.; 167— Jains, religion of the, 349, n. 1
169; 420 James, Epistle of, 130, n. 27
 438 Index of Subjects
John, Bultmann on Gospel of, 285, Miracles, modern science and, 294 f,
n. 24 Schleiermacher on, 295
Gospel of, 284, n. 22; 285, n. 24 significance of, 304 f.
Judaism, 271 Strauss on, 295
Jewish mysticism (modern), 233, Monotheism, 266
n. 34 Moral law, content of the, 323
revelation in, 232 Kant and the, 325
Justification by faith, doctrine of, 272 Plato and, 326
Justinian, Edict of, 144, n. 22 theology and the, 322
universal human obligation of the,
Kalokagathia, Greek concept of, 324, 325
n. 8 Motion, Galileo’s laws of, 297
Koran, 229, n. 24 Mysticism, 224
bhakti, 226
revelation and, 235
Law, Calvin on the, 332, n. 30; 335,
n. 36
Natural selection, theory of, 298
fulfilled by Christ, 335 f.
Natural theology, Biblical theology
Gospel and the, 322
opposed to, 61
and Gospel, dialectic of, 335
England and, 360, n. 22
Luther on the, 331, n. 29; 332,
K. Barth on, 77-80
n. 30; 333, n. 31; 424
Switzerland and, 359, n. 21
Legalism, grace and, 334
Neoplatonism, 250; 358
Lex naturae, 322
Nirvana, 225; 266
Reformers and, 70
See Buddhism
Logos, Calvin’s use of term, 319
Numinous, sense of the, 220
doctrine of, 113 f.
eternal, 320
Pancausalism, 297
Greek philosophy and, 311
Pantheism, 224; 294; 350-352; 359
Johannine, 317 f.
Calvin and, 351
as “ meaning,” 311
element of truth in, 351
as principle of the cosmos, 311
Zwingli and, 351
of reason, 315
Person, the Absolute and, 365
Reformers’ use of term, 319
concept of, 364 f.
Stoics’ theory of, 312, n. 5
created by faith in God, 410
truth and, 313
Philo, Christianity and, 358, n. 19
Word of God and the, 315
Plato’s influence on, 358, n. 19
Logos doctrine. Early Church and,
Philosophers, Stoic, 353, n. 9
355
Philosophical Theism, 357 f.
Logos idea and N.T., 311, n. 4
Philosophy, Christian, 361; 374 ff.
Lux Mundi, 286, n. 27
faith and, 374-376
Gilson on problem of Christian
Marxism, sociological theory of reli¬ 387 f.
gion and, 243 necessity for a Christian, 392
Mechanistic world view, 300 problem of Christian, 379
Messianic secret, 289, n. 31 Tertullian’s views on, 376
Metaphysics, pre-Christian Greek, 341 Platonic theory of ideas, 315
Mind, mystery of, 299 f.
Platonism, Augustine’s relation to
Miracle, Gospels and, 295 316 f.
■secularism and, 294 elements of truth in, 353 f.
 Index of Subjects 439
reason and, 31 forgiveness of sins and, 302, n. 13
truth and, 316 fundamental to the Christian faith,
Polytheism, 269 3 f.
Positivism, 356 f. history and, 193 f.; 397
Primitive man, Bible and, 279 through the Holy Spirit, 164 f.
Primitive state, doctrine of, 262, n. 8 See Incarnation and, 198
Islam and, 229-231
Quantum Theory, 296 Judaism and, 231-234
Kingdom of God and, 189
Radical evil, Kant on, 328-330 in the Mass, 162
Rational knowledge, content of, 366 miracle of, 294; 303
Rational religion and revelation, 234 in N.T., 95 ff.
Reason, Christ Lord of the, 430 N. T. Christology and, 112 f.
Christian doctrine of, 379 original, 262
integration of, 428 O. T. and, 81 ff.
repentance and, 430 in O.T. and N.T., 81 f.
self-sufficiency of, 212 in O.T., Suffering Servant and, 94 f.
Reformation, 310 Parousia and, 185
Religion, immanental theories of, in Person of Christ, 8
256 f. personal Christian faith and, 156
in light of revelation, 262 as personal encounter, 48
in light of Word of God, 265 personal transformation, 27
naturalistic theory of, 237 ff.; 349 polytheism and, 223
naturalistic view, 258 f. primitive religion and, 222
psychological theory of, 238-241; reason and, 13
258 f. reason not opposed to, 310
relativistic theories of, 219 f. and reason, Scholasticism and, 310
sociological theory of, 259 redemption and, 31
transcendental theory of, 260 f. relation to theology, 153 ff.
Responsibility, to God, 55 resurrection and, 305 f.
and revelation in Creation, 76 right use of reason and, 15-17
Revelation, the absolute Event, 32 as saving history, 8
in the ancient world, 4 science and, 5f.
Biblical symbolism and, 400 f. self-manifestation of God, 25
Christian claim to be unique, 235 f. sin and, 25; 50-53
claimed by all religions, 20 uniqueness of Christian, 306
coming glory and, 190 unity of, 193 ff.
comparative religion and, 219-221 unity of holiness and love, 46
competing claims to, 211 unity of word and act of God, 164
content of Christian claim to, 369 in witness and doctrine of the
Creation and, 382 Church, 148 ff.
in creation, K. Barth on, 77-80 Zoroaster and, 229
the Cross and, 106 f. Romans, Luther’s Commentary on the
in daily life, 162 Epistle to the, 60
as a doctrine of believing knowl¬
edge, 12 Sacrament, of the Lord’s Supper,
in early Buddhism, 20, n. 2 161 f.
equated with verbal inspiration, 10 Sankhys, doctrine, 349, n. 1
eschatology and, 189, n. 13 Scholasticism, 358
forgiveness and, 29 f. Catholic and Protestant, 388
440 Index of Subjects
medieval, 250 Hegel and, 251
Science, Church and, 276 f. Kant and, 251
faith and, 308 f. Schleiermacher and, 251
miracles and, 294 f. Trinity, doctrine of, 47; 114; 236; 318
Secularism, in the modern world, 5 as Event, 369 f.
Sensationalism, 245; 349 personal, 370
Sin, as apostasy, 264 Truth, personal decision and, 371
doctrine of original, 173 as personal encounter, 371
in the light of revelation, 52 reason and, 362 f.
original, 263 f. revelation and, 362 f.
perversion of man’s origin, 74
as rebellion, 50 f. Upanishads, 226
Sociological theory of religion, 241- See Hinduism
243
Space, Biblical view of, 277 f.
Word of God, in history, 84r-86; 408-
410
Talmud, 118, n. 1 Holy Scripture and, 118
Theism, 357 f. man’s reception of the, 416 f.
Trinitarian theology and, 361 N.T. and, 125
Theology, dialectical, the, 310 in O.T., 85 f.
not a “ sacred science,” 390 f. in Person of Jesus Christ, 109; 119
“ Theopanism,” 352 personal revelation in, 90 f.
Theory of ideas, Platonic, 353; 355
Time, Biblical view of, 278 f. Zen Buddhism, 225
Christian idea of, 387 See Buddhism
Tolerance, truth and, 219 Zoroaster, teaching of, 228, n. 21
Torah, 118, n. 1 Zoroastrianism, Avesta, 227, n. 19
Transcendental philosophy, theory of Christianity and, 227
religion in, 249 Gathas, 227, n. 19
Transcendentalism, Christian faith Geldner’s verdict on, 229
and, 253 the Saoshyant, 228
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