Feuerbach Ludwig
The Essence of Christianity
§ 6
In religion man has in view himself alone, or, in regarding himself as the object of God, as the end of the divine activity, he is an object to himself, his own end and aim. The mystery of the incarnation is the mystery of the love of God to man, and the mystery of the love of God to man is the love of man to himself. God suffers – suffers for me – this is the highest self-enjoyment, the highest self-certainty of human feeling. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son.” – John iii. 16. “If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” – Rom. viii. 31, 32. “God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” – Rom. v. 8. “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” – Gal. ii. 20. See also Titus iii. 4; Heb. ii. 11. “Credimus in unum Deum patrem … et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum filium Dei … Deum ex Deo … qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit et incarnatus et homo factus est passus.” – Fides Nicaenae Synodi. “Servator … ex praeexcellenti in homines charitate non despexit carnis humanae imbecillitatem, sed ea indutus ad communem venit hominum salutem.” – Clemens Alex. (Stromata, l. vii. ed. Wirceb. 1779). “Christianos autem haec universa docent, providentiam esse, maxime vero divinissimum et propter excellentiam amoris erga homines incredibilissimum providentiae opus, dei incarnatio, quae propter nos facta est.” – Gregorii Nysseni (Philosophiae, l. viii. de Provid. c. i. 1512. B. Rhenanus. Jo. Cono interp.) “Venit siquidem universitatis creator et Dominus: venit ad homines, venit propter homines, venit homo.” – Divus Bernardus Clarev. (de Adventu Domini, Basil, 1552). “Videte, Fratres, quantum se humiliavit propter homines Deus… Unde non se ipse homo despiciat, propter quem utique ista subire dignatus est Deus.” – Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 371, c. 3). “O homo propter quem Deus factus est homo, aliquid magnum te credere debes.” (S. 380, c. 2). “Quis de se desperet pro quo tam humilis esse voluit Filius Dei?” Id. (de Agone Chr. c. 11). “Quis potest odire hominem cujus naturam et similitudinem videt in humanitate Dei? Revera qui odit illum, odit Deum.” – (Manuale, c. 26. Among the spurious writings of Augustine.) “Plus nos amat Deus quam filium pater… Propter nos filio non pepercit. Et quid plus addo? et hoc filio justo et hoc filio unigenito et hoc filio Deo. Et quid dici amplius potest? et hoc pro nobis, i.e. pro malis, etc.” – Salvianus (de gubernatione Dei. Rittershusius, 1611, pp. 126, 127). “Quid enim mentes nostras tantum erigit et ab immortalitatis desperatione liberat, quam quod tanti nos fecit Deus, ut Dei filius … dignatus nostrum inire consortium mala nostra moriendo perferret.” – Petrus Lomb. (lib. iii. dist. 20, c. 1). “Attamen si illa quae miseriam nescit, misericordia non praecessisset, ad hanc cujus mater est miseria, non accessisset.” – D. Bernardus (Tract. de XII. gradibus hum. et sup.) “Ecce omnia tua sunt, quae habeo et unde tibi servio. Verum tamen vice versa tu magis mihi servis, quam ego tibi. Ecce coelum et terra quae in ministerium hominis creasti, praesto sunt et faciunt quotidie quaecunque mandasti. Et hoc parum est: quin etiam Angelos in ministerium hominis ordinasti. Transcendit autem omnia, quia tu ipse homini servire dignatus es et te ipsum daturum ei promisisti.” – Thomas à Kempis (de Imit. l. iii. c. 10). “Ego omnipotens et altissimus, qui cuncta creavi ex nihilo me homini propter te humiliter subjeci… Pepercit tibi oculus meus, quia pretiosa fuit anima tua in conspectu meo” (ibid. c. 13). “Fili ego descendi de coelo pro salute tua, suscepi tuas miserias, non necessitate, sed charitate trahente” (ibid. c. 18). “Si consilium rei tantae spectamus, quod totum pertinet, ut s. litterae demonstrant. ad salutem generis humani, quid potest esse dignius Deo, quam illa tanta hujus salutis cura, et ut ita dicamus, tantus in ea re sumptus?.. Itaque Jesus Christus ipse cum omnibus Apostolis … in hoc mysterio Filii Dei ἐν σαρκὶ φανερωθέντος angelis hominibusque patefactam esse dicunt magnitudinem sapientis bonitatis divinae.” – J. A. Ernesti (Dignit. et verit. inc. Filii Dei asserta. Opusc. Theol. Lipsiae, 1773, pp. 404, 405. How feeble, how spiritless compared with the expressions of the ancient faith!) “Propter me Christus suscepit meas infirmitates, mei corporis subiit passiones, pro me peccatum h. e. pro omni homine, pro me maledictum factus est, etc. Ille flevit, ne tu homo diu fleres. Ille injurias passus est, ne tu injuriam tuam doleres.” – Ambrosius (de fide ad Gratianum, l. ii. c. 4). “God is not against us men. For if God had been against us and hostile to us, he would not assuredly have taken the poor wretched human nature on himself.” “How highly our Lord God has honoured us, that he has caused his own Son to become man! How could he have made himself nearer to us?” – Luther (Th. xvi. pp. 533, 574). “It is to be remarked that he (Stephen) is said to have seen not God himself but the man Christ, whose nature is the dearest and likest and most consoling to man, for a man would rather see a man than an angel or any other creature, especially in trouble.” – Id. (Th. xiii. p. 170). “It is not thy kingly rule which draws hearts to thee, O wonderful heart! – but thy having become a man in the fulness of time, and thy walk upon the earth, full of weariness.” “Though thou guidest the sceptre of the starry realm, thou art still our brother; flesh and blood never disowns itself.” “The most powerful charm that melts my heart is that my Lord died on the cross for me.” “That it is which moves me; I love thee for thy love, that thou, the creator, the supreme prince, becamest the Lamb of God for me.” “Thanks be to thee, dear Lamb of God, with thousands of sinners’ tears; thou didst die for me on the cross and didst seek me with yearning.” “Thy blood it is which has made me give myself up to thee, else I had never thought of thee through my whole life.” “If thou hadst not laid hold upon me, I should never have gone to seek thee.” “O how sweetly the soul feeds on the passion of Jesus! Shame and joy are stirred, O thou son of God and of man, when in spirit we see thee so willingly go to death on the cross for us, and each thinks: for me.” “The Father takes us under his care, the Son washes us with his blood, the Holy Spirit is always labouring that he may guide and teach us.” “Ah! King, great at all times, but never greater than in the blood-stained robe of the martyr.” “My friend is to me and I to him as the Cherubim over the mercy-seat: we look at each other continually. He seeks repose in my heart, and I ever hasten towards his: he wishes to be in my soul, and I in the wound in his side.” These quotations are taken from the Moravian hymn-book (Gesangbuch der Evangelischen Brüdergemeine. Gnadau, 1824). We see clearly enough from the examples above given, that the deepest mystery of the Christian religion resolves itself into the mystery of human self-love, but that religious self-love is distinguished from natural in this, that it changes the active into the passive. It is true that the more profound, mystical religious sentiment abhors such naked, undisguised egoism as is exhibited in the Herrnhut hymns; it does not in God expressly have reference to itself; it rather forgets, denies itself, demands an unselfish, disinterested love of God, contemplates God in relation to God, not to itself. “Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est. Modus sine modo diligere… Qui Domino confitetur, non quoniam sibi bonus est, sed quoniam bonus est, hic vere diligit Deum propter Deum et non propter seipsum. Te enim quodammodo perdere, tanquam qui non sis et omnino non sentire te ipsum et a temetipso exinaniri et pene annullari, coelestis est conversationis, non humanae affectionis” (thus the ideal of love, which, however, is first realised in heaven). – Bernhardus, Tract. de dilig. Deo (ad Haymericum). But this free, unselfish love is only the culmination of religious enthusiasm, in which the subject is merged in the object. As soon as the distinction presents itself – and it necessarily does so – so soon does the subject have reference to itself as the object of God. And even apart from this: the religious subject denies its ego, its personality, only because it has the enjoyment of blissful personality in God – God per se the realised salvation of the soul, God the highest self-contentment, the highest rapture of human feeling. Hence the saying: “Qui Deum non diligit, seipsum non diligit.”
§ 7
Because God suffers man must suffer. The Christian religion is the religion of suffering. “Videlicet vestigia Salvatoris sequimur in theatris. Tale nobis scilicet Christus reliquit exemplum, quem flerisse legimus, risisse non legimus.” – Salvianus (l. c. l. vi. § 181). “Christianorum ergo est pressuram pati in hoc saeculo et lugere, quorum est aeterna vita.” – Origenes (Explan. in Ep. Pauli ad Rom. l. ii. c. ii. interp. Hieronymo). “Nemo vitam aeternam, incorruptibilem, immortalemque desiderat, nisi eum vitae hujus temporalis, corruptibilis, mortalisque poeniteat… Quid ergo cupimus, nisi ita non esse ut nunc sumus? Et quid ingemiscimus, nisi poenitendo, quia ita summus?” – Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 351, c. 3). “Si quidem aliquid melius et utilius saluti hominum quam pati fuisset, Christus utique verbo et exemplo ostendisset… Quoniam per multas tribulationes oportet nos intrare in regnum Dei.” – Thomas à Kempis (de Imit. l. ii. c. 12). When, however, the Christian religion is designated as the religion of suffering, this of course applies only to the Christianity of the “mistaken” Christians of old times. Protestantism, in its very beginning, denied the sufferings of Christ as constituting a principle of morality. It is precisely the distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, in relation to this subject, that the latter, out of self-regard, attached itself only to the merits of Christ, while the former, out of sympathy, attached itself to his sufferings. “Formerly in Popery the sufferings of the Lord were so preached, that it was only pointed out how his example should be imitated. After that, the time was filled up with the sufferings and sorrows of Mary, and the compassion with which Christ and his mother were bewailed; and the only aim was how to make it piteous, and move the people to compassion and tears, and he who could do this well was held the best preacher for Passion-Week. But we preach the Lord’s sufferings as the Holy Scripture teaches us… Christ suffered for the praise and glory of God … but to me, and thee, and all of us, he suffered in order to bring redemption and blessedness… The cause and end of the sufferings of Christ is comprised in this – he suffered for us. This honour is to be given to no other suffering.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 182). “Lamb! I weep only for joy over thy suffering; the suffering was thine, but thy merit is mine!” “I know of no joys but those which come from thy sufferings.” “It remains ever in my mind that it cost thee thy blood to redeem me.” “O my Immanuel! how sweet is it to my soul when thou permittest me to enjoy the outpouring of thy blood.” “Sinners are glad at heart that they have a Saviour … it is wondrously beautiful to them to see Jesus on the Cross” (Moravian hymn-book). It is therefore not to be wondered at if Christians of the present day decline to know anything more of the sufferings of Christ. It is they, forsooth, who have first made out what true Christianity is – they rely solely on the divine word of the Holy Scriptures. And the Bible, as every one knows, has the valuable quality that everything may be found in it which it is desired to find. What once stood there, of course now stands there no longer. The principle of stability has long vanished from the Bible. Divine revelation is as changing as human opinion. Tempora mutantur.
§ 8
The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of participated, social life – the mystery of I and thou. “Unum Deum esse confitemur. Non sic unum Deum, quasi solitarium, nec eundem, qui ipse sibi pater, sit ipse filius, sed patrem verum, qui genuit filium verum, i.e. Deum ex Deo … non creatum, sed genitum.” – Concil. Chalced. (Carranza Summa, 1559. p. 139). “Si quis quod scriptum est: Faciamus hominem, non patrem ad filium dicere, sed ipsum ad semetipsum asserit dixisse Deum, anathema sit.” – Concil. Syrmiense (ibid. p. 68). “Jubet autem his verbis: Faciamus hominem, prodeat herba. Ex quibus apparet, Deum cum aliquo sibi proximo sermones his de rebus conserere. Necesse est igitur aliquem ei adfuisse, cum quo universa condens, colloquium miscebat.” – Athanasius (Contra Gentes Orat. Ath. Opp. Parisiis, 1627, Th. i. p. 51). “Professio enim consortii sustulit intelligentiam singularitatis, quod consortium aliquid nec potest esse sibi ipsi solitario, neque rursum solitudo solitarii recipit: faciamus… Non solitario convenit dicere: faciamus et nostram.” – Petrus Lomb. (l. i. dist. 2, c. 3, e.). The Protestants explain the passage in the same way. “Quod profecto aliter intelligi nequit, quam inter ipsas trinitatis personas quandam de creando homine institutam fuisse consultationem.” – Buddeus (comp. Inst. Theol. dog. cur. J. G. Walch. l. ii. c. i. § 45). “‘Let us make’ is the word of a deliberative council. And from these words it necessarily follows again, that in the Godhead there must be more than one person… For the little word ‘us’ indicates that he who there speaks is not alone, though the Jews make the text ridiculous by saying that there is a way of speaking thus, even where there is only one person.” – Luther (Th. i. p. 19). Not only consultations, but compacts take place between the chief persons in the Trinity, precisely as in human society. “Nihil aliud superest, quam ut consensum quemdam patris ac filii adeoque quoddam velut pactum (in relation, namely, to the redemption of men) inde concludamus.” – Buddeus (Comp. l. iv. c. i. § 4, note 2). And as the essential bond of the Divine Persons is love, the Trinity is the heavenly type of the closest bond of love – marriage. “Nunc Filium Dei … precemur, ut spiritu sancto suo, qui nexus est et vinculum mutui amoris inter aeternum patrem ac filium, sponsi et sponsæ pectora conglutinet.” – Or. de Conjugio (Declam. Melancth. Th. iii. p. 453).
The distinctions in the Divine essence of the Trinity are natural, physical distinctions. “Jam de proprietatibus personarum videamus… Et est proprium solius patris, non quod non est natus ipse, sed quod unum filium genuerit, propriumque solius filii, non quod ipse non genuit, sed quod de patris essentia natus est.” – Hylarius in l. iii. de Trinitate. “Nos filii Dei sumus, sed non talis hic filius. Hic enim verus et proprius est filius origine, non adoptione, veritate, non nuncupatione, nativitate, non creatione.” – Petrus L. (l. i. dist. 26, cc. 2, 4). “Quodsi dum eum aeternum confitemur, profitemur ipsum Filium ex Patre, quomodo is, qui genitus est, genitoris frater esse poterit?.. Non enim ex aliquo principio praeexistente Pater et Filius procreati sunt, ut fratres existimari queant, sed Pater principium Filii et genitor est: et Pater Pater est neque ullius Filius fuit, et Filius Filius est et non frater.” – Athanasius (Contra Arianos. Orat. II. Ed. c. T. i. p. 320). “Qui (Deus) cum in rebus quae nascuntur in tempore, sua bonitate effecerit, ut suae substantiae prolem quaelibet res gignat, sicut homo gignit hominem, non alterius naturae, sed ejus cujus ipse est, vide quam impie dicatur ipse non gennisse id quod ipse est.” – Augustinus (Ep. 170, § 6. ed. Antwp. 1700). “Ut igitur in natura hominum filium dicimus genitum de substantia patris, similem patri: ita secunda persona Filius dicitur, quia de substantia Patris natus est et ejus est imago.” – Melancthon (Loci praecipui Theol. Witebergae, 1595, p. 30). “As a corporeal son has his flesh and blood and nature from his father, so also the Son of God, born of the Father, has his divine nature from the Father of Eternity.” – Luther (Th. ix. p. 408). H. A. Roel, a theologian of the school of Descartes and Coccejus, had advanced this thesis: “Filium Dei, Secundam Deitatis personam improprie dici genitam.” This was immediately opposed by his colleague, Camp. Vitringa, who declared it an unheard-of thesis, and maintained: “Generationem Filii Dei ab aeterno propriissime enunciari.” Other theologians also contended against Roel, and declared: “Generationem in Deo esse maxime veram et propriam.” – (Acta Erudit. Supplem. T. i. S. vii. p. 377, etc.). That in the Bible also the Filius Dei signifies a real son is unequivocally implied in this passage: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” If the love of God, which this passage insists upon, is to be regarded as a truth, then the Son also must be a truth, and, in plain language, a physical truth. On this lies the emphasis that God gave his own Son for us – in this alone the proof of his great love. Hence the Herrnhut hymn-book correctly apprehends the sense of the Bible when it says of “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also our Father:” “His Son is not too dear. No! he gives him up for me, that he may save me from the eternal fire by his dear blood. Thou hast so loved the world that thy heart consents to give up the Son, thy joy and life, to suffering and death.”
God is a threefold being, a trinity of persons, means: God is not only a metaphysical, abstract, spiritual, but a physical being. The central point of the Trinity is the Son, for the Father is Father only through the Son; but the mystery of the generation of the Son is the mystery of physical nature. The Son is the need of sensuousness, or of the heart, satisfied in God; for all wishes of the heart, even the wish for a personal God and for heavenly felicity, are sensuous wishes; – the heart is essentially materialistic, it contents itself only with an object which is seen and felt. This is especially evident in the conception that the Son, even in the midst of the Divine Trinity, has the human body as an essential, permanent attribute. Ambrosius: “Scriptum est Ephes. i.: Secundum carnem igitur omnia ipsi subjecta traduntur.” Chrysostomus: “Christum secundum carnem pater jussit a cunctis angelis adorari.” Theodoretus: “Corpus Dominicum surrexit quidem a mortuis, divina glorificata gloria … corpus tamen est et habet, quam prius habuit, circumscriptionem.” (See Concordienbuchs-anhang. “Zeugnisse der h. Schrift und Altväter von Christo,” and Petrus L. l. iii. dist. 10, cc. 1, 2. See also on this subject Luther, Th. xix. pp. 464–468.) In accordance with this the United Brethren say: “I will ever embrace thee in love and faith, until, when at length my lips are pale in death, I shall see thee bodily.” “Thy eyes, thy mouth, the body wounded for us, on which we so firmly rely, – all that I shall behold.”
Hence the Son of God is the darling of the human heart, the bridegroom of the soul, the object of a formal, personal love. “O Domine Jesu, si adeo sunt dulces istae lachrymae, quae ex memoria et desiderio tui excitantur, quam dulce erit gaudium, quod ex manifesta tui visione capietur? Si adeo dulce est flere pro te, quam dulce erit gaudere de te. Sed quid hujusmodi secreta colloquia proferimus in publicum? Cur ineffabiles et innarrabiles affectus communibus verbis conamur exprimere? Inexperti talia non intelligunt. Zelotypus est sponsus iste… Delicatus est sponsus iste.” – Scala Claustralium (sive de modo orandi. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard). “Luge propter amorem Jesu Christi, sponsi tui, quosque eum videre possis.” – (De modo bene vivendi. Sermo x. id.) “Adspectum Christi, qui adhuc inadspectabilis et absens amorem nostrum meruit et exercuit, frequentius scripturae commemorant. Joh. xiv. 3; 1 Joh. iii. 1; 1 Pet. i. 8; 1 Thess. iv. 17. Ac quis non jucundum credat videre corpus illud, cujus velut instrumento usus est filius Dei ad expianda peccata, et absentem tandem amicum salutare?” – Doederlein (Inst. Theol. Chr. l. ii. P. ii. C. ii. Sect. ii. § 302. Obs. 3). “Quod oculis corporis Christum visuri simus, dubio caret.” – J. Fr. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. l. ii. c. iii. § 10).
The distinction between God with the Son, or the sensuous God, and God without the Son, or God divested of sensuousness, is nothing further than the distinction between the mystical and the rational man. The rational man lives and thinks; with him life is the complement of thought, and thought the complement of life, both theoretically, inasmuch as he convinces himself of the reality of sensuousness through the reason itself, and practically, inasmuch as he combines activity of life with activity of thought. That which I have in life, I do not need to posit beyond life, in spirit, in metaphysical existence, in God; love, friendship, perception, the world in general, give me what thought does not, cannot give me, nor ought to give me. Therefore I dismiss the needs of the heart from the sphere of thought, that reason may not be clouded by desires; – in the demarcation of activities consists the wisdom of life and thought; – I do not need a God who supplies by a mystical, imaginary physicalness or sensuousness the absence of the real. My heart is satisfied before I enter into intellectual activity; hence my thought is cold, indifferent, abstract, i. e., free, in relation to the heart, which oversteps its limits, and improperly mixes itself with the affairs of the reason. Thus I do not think in order to satisfy my heart, but to satisfy my reason, which is not satisfied by the heart; I think only in the interest of reason, from pure desire of knowledge, I seek in God only the contentment of the pure, unmixed intelligence. Necessarily, therefore, the God of the rational thinker is another than the God of the heart, which in thought, in reason, only seeks its own satisfaction. And this is the aim of the mystic, who cannot endure the luminous fire of discriminating and limiting criticism; for his mind is always beclouded by the vapours which rise from the unextinguished ardour of his feelings. He never attains to abstract, i. e., disinterested, free thought, and for that reason he never attains to the perception of things in their naturalness, truth, and reality.
One more remark concerning the Trinity. The older theologians said that the essential attributes of God as God were made manifest by the light of natural reason. But how is it that reason can know the Divine Being, unless it be because the Divine Being is nothing else than the objective nature of the intelligence itself? Of the Trinity, on the other hand, they said that it could only be known through revelation. Why not through reason; because it contradicts reason, i. e., because it does not express a want of the reason, but a sensuous, emotional want. In general, the proposition that an idea springs from revelation means no more than that it has come to us by the way of tradition. The dogmas of religion have arisen at certain times out of definite wants, under definite relations and conceptions; for this reason, to the men of a later time, in which these relations, wants, conceptions, have disappeared, they are something unintelligible, incomprehensible, only traditional, i. e., revealed. The antithesis of revelation and reason reduces itself only to the antithesis of history and reason, only to this, that mankind at a given time is no longer capable of that which at another time it was quite capable of; just as the individual man does not unfold his powers at all times indifferently, but only in moments of special appeal from without or incitement from within. Thus the works of genius arise only under altogether special inward and outward conditions which cannot thus coincide more than once; they are ἄπαξ λεγόμενα. “Einmal ist alles wahre nur.” The true is born but once. Hence a man’s own works often appear to him in later years quite strange and incomprehensible. He no longer knows how he produced them or could produce them, i. e., he can no longer explain them out of himself, still less reproduce them. And just as it would be folly if, in riper years, because the productions of our youth have become strange and inexplicable to us in their tenor and origin, we were to refer them to a special inspiration from above; so it is folly, because the doctrines and ideas of a past age are no longer recognised by the reason of a subsequent age, to claim for them a supra- and extra-human, i. e., an imaginary, illusory origin.