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Edward Caldwell Moore by Edward Moore

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As was indicated, Ritschl's epoch-making book bears the title, _The
Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation_. The book might
be described in the language of the schools as a monograph upon one
great dogma of the Christian faith, around which, as the author treats
it, all the other doctrines are arranged. The familiar topic of
justification, of which Luther made so much, was thus given again the
central place. What the book really offered was something quite
different from this. It was a complete system of theology, but it
differed from the traditional systems of theology. These had followed
helplessly a logical scheme which begins with God as he is in himself
and apart from any knowledge which we have of him. They then slowly
proceeded to man and sin and redemption, one empirical object and two
concrete experiences which we may know something about. Ritschl reversed
the process. He aimed to begin with certain facts of life. Such facts
are sin and the consciousness of forgiveness, awareness of restoration
to the will and power of goodness, the gift of love and of a spirit
which can feel itself victorious even in the midst of ills in life,
confidence that this life is not all. These phrases, taken together,
would describe the consciousness of salvation. This consciousness of sin
and salvation is a fact in individual men. It has evidently been a fact
in the life of masses of men for many generations. The facts have thus a
psychology and a history from which reflection on the phenomenon of
faith must take its departure. There is no reason why, upon this basis,
and until it departs from the scientific methods which are given with
the nature of its object, theology should not be as truly a science as
is any other known among men.

This science starts with man, who in the object of many other sciences.
It confines itself to man in this one aspect of his relation to moral
life and to the transcendent meaning of the universe. It notes the fact
that men, when awakened, usually have the sense of not being in harmony
with the life of the universe or on the way to realisation of its
meaning. It notes the fact that many men have had the consciousness of
progressive restoration to that harmony. It inquires as to the process
of that restoration. It asks as to the power of it. It discovers that
that power is a personal one. Men have believed that this power has been
exerted over them, either in personal contact, or across the ages and
through generations of believers, by one Jesus, whom they call Saviour.
They have believed that it was God who through Jesus saved them. Jesus'
consciousness thus became to them a revelation of God. The thought leads
on to the consideration of that which a saved man does, or ought to do,
in the life of the world and among his fellows, of the institution in
which this attitude of mind is cherished and of the sum total of human
institutions and relations of which the saved life should be the inward
force. There is room even for a clause in which to compress the little
that we know of anything beyond this life. We have written in
unconventional words. There is no one place, either in Ritschl's work or
elsewhere, where this grand and simple scheme stands together in one
context. This is unfortunate. Were this the case, even wayfaring men
might have understood somewhat better than they have what Ritschl was
aiming at.

It is a still greater pity that the execution of the scheme should have
left so much to be desired. That this execution would prove difficult
needs hardly to be said. That it could never be the work of one man is
certainly true. To have had so great an insight is title enough to fame.
Ritschl falls off from his endeavour as often as did
Schleiermacher--more often and with less excuse. The might of the past
is great. The lumber which he meekly carries along with him is
surprising, as one feels his lack of meekness in the handling of the
lumber which he recognised as such. The putting of new wine into old
bottles is so often reprobated by Ritschl that the reader is justly
surprised when he nevertheless recognises the bottles. The system is not
'all of one piece'--distinctly not. There are places where the rent is
certainly made worse by the old cloth on the new garment. The work taken
as a whole is so bewildering that one finds himself asking, 'What is
Ritschl's method?' If what is meant is not a question of detail, but of
the total apprehension of the problem to be solved, the apprehension
which we strove to outline above, then Ritschl's courageous and complete
inversion of the ancient method, his demand that we proceed from the
known to the unknown, is a contribution so great that all shortcomings
in the execution of it are insignificant. His first volume deals with
the history of the doctrine of justification, beginning with Anselm and
Abelard. In it Ritschl's eminent qualities as historian come out. In it
also his prejudices have their play. The second volume deals with the
Biblical foundations for the doctrine. Ritschl was bred in the Tuebingen
school. Yet here is much forced exegesis. Ritschl's positivistic view of
the Scripture and of the whole question of revelation, was not congruous
with his well-learned biblical criticism. The third volume is the
constructive one. It is of immeasurably greater value than the other
two. It is this third volume which has frequently been translated.

In respect of his contention against metaphysics it is hardly necessary
that we should go into detail. With his empirical and psychological
point of departure, given above, most men will find themselves in entire
sympathy. The confusion of religion, which is an experience, with dogma
which is reasoning about it, and the acceptance of statements in
Scripture which are metaphysical in nature, as if they were religious
truths--these two things have, in time past, prevented many earnest
thinkers from following the true road. When it comes to the constructive
portion of his work, it is, of course, impossible for Ritschl to build
without the theoretical supports which philosophy gives, or to follow up
certain of the characteristic magnitudes of religion without following
them into the realm of metaphysics, to which, quite as truly as to that
of religion, they belong. It would be unjust to Ritschl to suppose that
these facts were hidden from him.

As to his attitude toward mysticism, there is a word to say. In the long
history of religious thought those who have revolted against
metaphysical interpretation, orthodox or unorthodox, have usually taken
refuge in mysticism. Hither the prophet Augustine takes refuge when he
would flee the ecclesiastic Augustine, himself. The Brethren of the Free
Spirit, Tauler, a Kempis, Suso, the author of the _Theologia Germanica_,
Molinos, Madame Gayon, illustrate the thing we mean. Ritschl had seen
much of mysticism in pietist circles. He knew the history of the
movement well. What impressed his sane mind was the fact that unhealthy
minds have often claimed, as their revelation from God, an experience
which might, with more truth, be assigned to almost any other source. He
desired to cut off the possibility of what seemed to him often a tragic
delusion. The margin of any mystical movement stretches out toward
monstrosities and absurdities. For that matter, what prevents a Buddhist
from declaring his thoughts and feelings to be Christianity? Indeed,
Ritschl asks, why is not Buddhism as good as such Christianity? He is,
therefore, suspicious of revelations which have nothing by which they
can be measured and checked.

The claim of mystics that they came, in communion with God, to the point
where they have no need of Christ, seemed to him impious. There is no
way of knowing that we are in fellowship with God, except by comparing
what we feel that this fellowship has given us, with that which we
historically learn that the fellowship with God gave to Christ. This is
the sense and this the connexion in which Ritschl says that we cannot
come to God save in and through the historic Christ as he is given us in
the Gospels. The inner life, at least, which is there depicted for us
is, in this outward and authoritative sense, our norm and guide.

Large difficulties loom upon the horizon of this positivistic insistence
upon history. Can we know the inner life of Christ well enough to use it
thus as test in every, or even in any case? Does not the use of such a
test, or of any test in this external way, take us out of the realm of
the religion of the spirit? Men once said that the Church was their
guide. Others said the Scripture was their guide. Now, in the sense of
the outwardness of its authority, we repudiate even this. It rings
devoutly if we say Christ is our guide. Yet, as Ritschl describes this
guidance, in the exigency of his contention against mysticism, have we
anything different? What becomes of Confucianists and Shintoists, who
have never heard of the historic Christ? And all the while we have the
sense of a query in our minds. Is it open to any man to repudiate
mysticism absolutely and with contumely, and then leave us to discover
that he does not mean mysticism as historians of every faith have
understood it, but only the margin of evil which is apparently
inseparable from it? That margin of evil others see and deplore. Against
it other remedies have been suggested, as, for example, intelligence.
Some would feel that in Ritschl's remedy the loss is greater than the
gain.

This historical character of revelation is so truly one of the fountain
heads of the theology which takes its rise in Ritschl, that it deserves
to be considered somewhat more at length. The Ritschlian movement has
engaged a generation of more or less notable thinkers in the period
since Ritschl's death. These have dissented at many points from
Ritschl's views, diverged from his path and marked out courses of their
own. We shall do well in the remainder of this chapter to attempt the
delineation in terms, not exclusively of Ritschl, but of that which may
with some laxity be styled Ritschlianism. The value judgments of
religion indicate only the subjective form of religious knowledge, as
the Ritschlians understand it. Faith, however, does not invent its own
contents. Historical facts, composing the revelation, actually exist,
quite independent of the use which the believer makes of them. No group
of thinkers have more truly sought to draw near to the person of the
historic Jesus. The historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, is the divine
revelation. That sums up this aspect of the Ritschlian position. Some
negative consequences of this position we have already noted. Let us
turn to its positive significance.

Herrmann is the one of the Ritschlians who has dealt with this matter
not only with great clearness, but also with deep Christian feeling in
his _Verkehr des Christen mit Gott_, 1886, and notably in his address,
_Der Begriff der Offenbarung_, 1887. If the motive of religion were an
intellectual curiosity, a verbal communication would suffice. As it is a
practical necessity, this must be met by actual impulse in life. That
passing out of the unhappiness of sin, into the peace and larger life
which is salvation, does indeed imply the movement of God's spirit on
our hearts, in conversion and thereafter. This is essentially mediated
to us through the Scriptures, especially through those of the New
Testament, because the New Testament contains the record of the
personality of Jesus. In that our personality is filled with the spirit
which breathes in him, our salvation is achieved. The image of Jesus
which we receive acts upon us as something indubitably real. It
vindicates itself as real, in that it takes hold upon our manhood. Of
course, this assumes that the Church has been right in accepting the
Gospels as historical. Herrmann candidly faces this question. Not every
word or deed, he says, which is recorded concerning Jesus, belongs to
this central and dynamic revelation of which we speak. We do not help
men to see Jesus in a saving way if, on the strength of accounts in the
New Testament, we insist concerning Jesus that he was born of a virgin,
that he raised the dead, that he himself rose from the dead. We should
not put these things before men with the declaration that they must
assent to them. We must not try to persuade ourselves that that which
acted upon the disciples as indubitably real must of necessity act
similarly upon us. We are to allow ourselves to be seized and uplifted
by that which, in our position, touches us as indubitably real. This is,
in the first place, the moral character of Jesus. It is his inner life
which, on the testimony of the disciples, meets us as something real and
active in the world, as truly now as then. What are some facts of this
inner life? The Jesus of the New Testament shows a firmness of religious
conviction, a clearness of moral judgment, a purity and force of will,
such as are not found united in any other figure in history. We have the
image of a man who is conscious that he does not fall short of the ideal
for which he offers himself. It is this consciousness which is yet
united in him with the most perfect humility. He lives out his life and
faces death in a confidence and independence which have never been
approached. He has confidence that he can lift men to such a height that
they also will partake with him in the highest good, through their full
surrender to God and their life of love for their fellows.

It is clear that Herrmann aims to bring to the front only those elements
in the life of Jesus which are likely to prove most effectual in meeting
the need and winning the faith of the men of our age. He would cast into
the background those elements which are likely to awaken doubt and to
hinder the approach of men's souls to God. For Herrmann himself the
virgin birth has the significance that the spiritual life of Jesus did
not proceed from the sinful race. But Herrmann admits that a man could
hold even that without needing to allege that the physical life of Jesus
did not come into being in the ordinary way. The distinction between the
inner and outward life of Jesus, and the declaration that belief in the
former alone is necessary, has the result of thus ridding us of
questions which can scarcely fail to be present to the mind of every
modern man. Yet it would be unjust to imply that this is the purpose.
Quite the contrary, the distinction is logical for this theology.
Redemption is an affair of the inner life of a man. It is the force of
the inner life of the Redeemer which avails for it. It is from the
belief that such an inner and spiritual life was once realised here on
earth, that our own faith gathers strength, and gets guidance in the
conflict for the salvation of our souls. The belief in the historicity
of such an inner life is necessary. So Harnack also declares in his
_Wesen des Christenthums_, 1900. It is noteworthy that in this connexion
neither of these writers advances to a form of speculation concerning
the exalted Christ, which in recent years has had some currency.
According to this doctrine, there is ascribed to the risen and ascended
Jesus an existence with God which is thought of in terms different from
those which we associate with the idea of immortality. In other words,
this continued existence of Christ as God is a counterpart of that
existence before the incarnation, which the doctrine of the
pre-existence alleged. But surely this speculation can have no better
standing than that of the pre-existence.

Sin in the language of religion is defection from the law of God. It is
the transgression of the divine command. In what measure, therefore, the
life of man can be thought of as sinful, depends upon his knowledge of
the will of God. In Scripture, as in the legends of the early history of
the race, this knowledge stands in intimate connexion with the witness
to a primitive revelation. This thought has had a curious history. The
ideas of mankind concerning God and his will have grown and changed as
much as have any other ideas. The rudimentary idea of the good is
probably of social origin. It first emerges in the conflict of men one
with another. As the personalised ideal of conduct, the god then reacts
upon conduct, as the conduct reacts upon the notion of the god. Only
slowly has the ideal of the good been clarified. Only slowly have the
gods been ethicised. 'An honest God is the noblest work of man.' The
moralising and spiritualising of the idea of Jahve lies right upon the
face of the Old Testament. The ascent of man on his ethical and
spiritual side is as certain as is that on his physical side. Long
struggle upward through ignorance, weakness, sin, gradual elevating of
the standard of what ought to he, growingly successful effort to conform
to that standard--this is what the history of the race has seen.

Athwart this lies the traditional dogma. The dogma took up into itself a
legend of the childhood of the world. It elaborated that which in
Genesis is vague and poetic into a vast scheme which has passed as a
sacred philosophy of history. It postulated an original revelation. It
affirmed the created state of man as one of holiness before a fall. To
the framers of the dogma, if sin is the transgression of God's will,
then it must be in light of a revelation of that will. In the Scriptures
we have vague intimations concerning God's will, growingly clearer
knowledge of that will, evolving through history to Jesus. In the dogma
we have this grand assumption of a paradisaic state of perfectness in
which the will of God was from the beginning perfectly known.

In the Platonic, as in the rabbinic, speculation the idea must precede
the fact. Every step of progress is a defection from that idea. The
dogma suffers from an insoluble contradiction within itself. It aims to
give us the point of departure by which we are to recognise the nature
of sin. At the same moment it would describe the perfection of man at
which God has willed that by age-long struggle he should arrive. Now, if
we place this perfection at the beginning of human history, before all
human self-determination, we divest it of ethical quality. Whatever else
it may be, it is not character. On the other hand, if we would make this
perfection really that of moral character, then we cannot place it at
the beginning of human history, but far down the course of the evolution
of the higher human traits, of the consciousness of sin and of the
struggle for redemption. It is not revelation from God, but naive
imagination, later giving place to adventurous speculation concerning
the origin of the universe, which we have in the doctrine of the
primeval perfection of man. We do not really make earnest with our
Christian claim that in Jesus we have our paramount revelation, until we
admit this. It is through Jesus, and not from Adam that we know sin.

So we might go on to say that the dogma of inherited guilt is a
contradiction in terms. Disadvantage may be inherited, weakness,
proclivity to sin, but not guilt, not sin in the sense of that which
entails guilt. What entails guilt is action counter to the will of God
which we know. That is always the act of the individual man myself. It
cannot by any possibility be the act of another. It may be the
consequence of the sins of my ancestors that I do moral evil without
knowing it to be such. Even my fellows view this as a mitigation, if not
as an exculpation. The very same act, however, which up to this point
has been only an occasion for pity, becomes sin and entails guilt, when
it passes through my own mind and will as a defection from a will of God
in which I believe, and as a righteousness which I refuse. The confusion
of guilt and sin in order to the inclusion of all under the need of
salvation, as in the Augustinian scheme, ended in bewilderment and
stultification of the moral sense. It caused men to despair of
themselves and gravely to misrepresent God. It is no wonder if in the
age of rationalism this dogma was largely done away with. The religious
sense of sin was declared to be an hallucination. Nothing is more
evident in the rationalist theology than its lack of the sense of sin.
This alone is sufficient explanation of the impotency and inadequacy of
that theology. Kant's doctrine of radical evil testifies to his deep
sense that the rationalists were wrong. He could see also the
impossibility of the ancient view. But he had no substitute. Hegel, much
as he prided himself upon the restoration of dogma, viewed evil as only
relative, good in the making. Schleiermacher made a beginning of
construing the thought of sin from the point of view of the Christian
consciousness. Ritschl was the first consistently to carry out
Schleiermacher's idea, placing the Christian consciousness in the centre
and claiming that the revelation of the righteousness of God and of the
perfection of man is in Jesus. All men being sinners, there is a vast
solidarity, which he describes as the Kingdom of Evil and sets over
against the Kingdom of God, yet not so that the freedom or
responsibility of man is impaired. God forgives all sin save that of
wilful resistance to the spirit of the good. That is, Ritschl regards
all sin, short of this last, as mainly ignorance and weakness. It is
from Ritschl, and more particularly from Kaftan, that the phrases have
been mainly taken which served as introduction to this paragraph.

For the work of God through Christ, in the salvation of men from the
guilt and power of sin, various terms have been used. Different aspects
of the work have been described by different names. Redemption,
regeneration, justification, reconciliation and election or
predestination--these are the familiar words. This is the order in which
the conceptions stand, if we take them as they occur in consciousness.
Election then means nothing more than the ultimate reference to God of
the mystery of an experience in which the believer already rejoices. On
the other hand, in the dogma the order is reversed. Election must come
first, since it is the decree of God upon which all depends. Redemption
and reconciliation have, in Christian doctrine, been traditionally
regarded as completed transactions, waiting indeed to be applied to the
individual or appropriated by him through faith, but of themselves
without relation to faith. Reconciliation was long thought of as that of
an angry God to man. Especially was this last the characteristic view of
the West, where juristic notions prevailed. Origen talked of a right of
the devil over the soul of man until bought off by the sacrifice of
Christ. This is pure paganism, of course. The doctrine of Anselm marks a
great advance. It runs somewhat thus: The divine honour is offended in
the sin of man. Satisfaction corresponding to the greatness of the guilt
must be rendered. Man is under obligation to render this satisfaction;
yet he is unable so to do. A sin against God is an infinite offence. It
demands an infinite satisfaction. Man can render no satisfaction which
is not finite. The way out of this dilemma is the incarnation of the
divine Logos. For the god-man, as man, is entitled to bring this
satisfaction for men. On the other hand, as God he is able so to do. In
his death this satisfaction is embodied. He gave his life freely. God
having received satisfaction through him demands nothing more from us.

Abelard had, almost at the same time with Anselm, interpreted the death
of Christ in far different fashion. It was a revelation of the love of
God which wins men to love in turn. This notion of Abelard was far too
subtle. The crass objective dogma of Anselm prevailed. The death of
Christ was a sacrifice. The purpose was the propitiation of an angry
God. The effect was that, on the side of God, a hindrance to man's
salvation was removed. The doctrine accurately reflects the feudal ideas
of the time which produced it. In Grotius was done away the notion of
private right, which lies at the basis of the theory of Anselm. That of
public duty took its place. A sovereign need not stand upon his offended
honour, as in Anselm's thought. Still, he cannot, like a private
citizen, freely forgive. He must maintain the dignity of his office, in
order not to demoralise the world. The sufferings of Christ did not
effect a necessary private satisfaction. They were an example which
satisfied the moral order of the world. Apart from this change, the
conception remains the same.

As Kaftan argues, we can escape the dreadful externality and
artificiality of this scheme, only as redemption and regeneration are
brought back to their primary place in consciousness. These are the
initial experiences in which we become aware of God's work through
Christ in us and for us. The reconciliation is of us. The redemption is
from our sins. The regeneration is to a new moral life. Through the
influence of Jesus, reconciled on our part to God and believing in His
unchanging love to us, we are translated into God's kingdom and live for
the eternal in our present existence. Redemption is indeed the work of
God through Christ, but it has intelligible parallel in the awakening of
the life of the mind, or again of the spirit of self-sacrifice, through
the personal influence of the wise and good. Salvation begins in such an
awakening through the personal influence of the wisest and best. It is
transformation of our personality through the personality of Jesus, by
the personal God of truth, of goodness and of love. All that which God
through Jesus has done for us is futile, save as we make the
actualisation of our deliverance from sin our continuous and unceasing
task. When this connexion of thought is broken through, we transfer the
whole matter of salvation from the inner to the outer world and make of
it a transaction independent of the moral life of man.

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