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ОглавлениеUNSETTLED QUESTIONS FOR THEOLOGY TODAY (1920)
Christentum und Kultur. Thoughts and observations on modern theology by Franz Overbeck, formerly Doctor of Theology and Professor of Church History at the University of Basel. Edited from his papers by Carl Albrecht Bernoulli. Basel, Benno Schwabe & Co., 1919.
How was it possible that the early protagonists of the theology that is today dominant could ignore a colleague like Franz Overbeck and remain so indifferent and so untroubled by the questions which he put to them? How could they possibly have been content to admire his historical scholarship and then deem it sufficient to congratulate themselves on the futility of his ‘purely negative approach’ and shake their heads in astonishment and disapproval at the fact that he was and remained a professor of theology in spite of himself and the world’s opinion?
Some of us have long puzzled over how it happened that at that time (I mean thirty years ago) theologians managed to pay no attention at all to the older and younger Blumhardt and their friends. There would have been something significant to learn—as later developments prove—from the books of Friedrich Zündel, for example. Theology would have been spared all sorts of round-about ways and false paths if we had let ourselves hear it. Were Blumhardt and Zündel too monolithic for us, too pietistic, too unscientific and technically inaccurate? That refusal to listen must be confessed, hard as it is for us to put ourselves back into the lofty academic atmosphere so characteristic of that time, which obviously closed many otherwise attentive ears to sounds from that direction.
But—we must ask today—why then did no one listen to Overbeck? If theologians were unwilling to give further consideration to the rather too murky performances at Möttlingen because the stumbling-block was much too great for the spirit of the time, why did they not turn to consider all the more carefully the equally promising and the closer stumbling-block offered them by the Christlichkeit der heutigen Theologie (The Christian-ness of Present Day Theology)?
Actually, Blumhardt and Overbeck stand close together; back to back, if you like, and very different in disposition, in terminology, in their mental worlds, in their experience, but essentially together. Blumhardt stood as a forward-looking and hopeful Overbeck; Overbeck as a backward-looking, critical Blumhardt. Each was the witness to the mission of the other.
Why did no one listen to Overbeck? He was no pietist, no believer in miracles, no obscurantist; he was as acute, as stylishly elegant, as free from all assumptions as could be desired. Was it because we wanted no stumbling-block at all that we did not allow ourselves to hear the call to our real task, even when it was given by a critical Blumhardt, the senior of the Basel Faculty? If we keep before our eyes only this one refusal, can we ever again hold the Lord God responsible for the slow and meandering course of the movement of Christian thought? Can we wonder, when we consider the opportunities missed, that the signs of the time in theology and church today point so definitely to deviation and disintegration? Should not those who today stand secure on the conclusions established by the consummation of the old war against orthodoxy and the like now in all seriousness turn back to the place where so many fruitful possibilities were disregarded? Such were the questions which occupied me as I read C. A. Bernoulli’s edition of Overbeck’s papers.
The book is a collection of fragments fitted together and given titles by the editor. It is ‘part material, part blueprint; half quarry and half foundation’, as the editor calls it (p. xxxvi). This is exactly the right form for what Overbeck has to say. The subject itself was too vast and the situation too complicated for him to do more than to make test borings. The well itself will finally be drilled—who knows when and by whom? Overbeck only took some soundings.
But in this prolific period which is so exhaustively exploring the whole meaning of our Hellenistic or pre-Reformation age, we must strain our ears to listen to this man, so that he may teach us to hear him aright, if now finally we have ears. I may add that the origin and form of the book are such that it cannot be read cursorily. It must be read as a whole, read more than once, and be viewed from different angles if it is to have its full effect.
‘Christianity and Culture’ is the title Bernoulli gives it. He could equally well have called it ‘Introduction to Theology’, for that is basically its theme. But it is necessary to note that this introduction could easily transform itself into an energetic expulsion of those uncalled. I very much wish that our students might gain from this book a real preview of what they are about to undertake—or rather will stumble into. But we pastors can still less afford to lose this opportunity for a basic survey of that which is our inheritance, so that we may actually take possession of it.
But be warned! The book is an inconceivably impressive sharpening of the commandment ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain’. If it is read and understood, the normal effect would be that ninety-nine per cent of us all will remain caught in its net and will make the discovery that it is impossible for anyone really to be such a thing as a theologian. And the few who escape must leave behind them so much beloved trash, so many dear illusions and practical, all too practical, naïvetés, that they find themselves freezing afterwards and know not where to turn for shelter.
All of us who are at all content with our calling will see the book printed and read with the same discomfort with which a normal physician views Weressajew’s Bekenntnisse eines Arztes (Confessions of a Physician). For it is a dangerous book, a book filled with the apocalyptic air of judgement. It is a balance sheet, a book which calls the comprehending reader away from the fleshpots of Egypt into the desert, to a place of durance where he can neither lie nor sit nor stand, but must of necessity keep moving, where he can neither gain nor possess, nor feast, nor distribute, but only hunger and thirst, seek, ask, and knock. That place recalls the words of the ‘Cherubic Wanderer’. ‘The foxes have holes and the fowls of the air their nests, but the Son of Man has not where to lay his head.’ All who wish to avoid this place should leave this book unread.
But perhaps the impressions and experiences of the last years have shown us that we have been living until now in a house built on sand; and that theology—if this venture ‘Theology’ is to continue longer to exist—would do better to clench its teeth and take the road to the desert. In view of the general situation, that would be more fitting than the unchilled confidence with which in many places men continue to assume the possibility of being theologians—as if it were nothing extraordinary.
Some of us are not wholly surprised by Overbeck’s revelations. We rejoice at this book. We greet it gladly in the hope that it will raise up comrades for us in our loneliness. For it will not be easy for some men of integrity to kick against these pricks. To all of us without exception, the book has some serious words to say.
I
The editor leaves it to the reader to decide whether on the basis of the material before him he will choose to regard Overbeck as a sceptic or as an inspired critic. Actually Overbeck stands just on the boundary between the two. And one side of his nature (if one can speak of two sides) will be comprehensible only through the other.
If one understands him, as his contemporaries did and as Bernoulli prefers, as a sceptic, one must at least call him as Bernoulli does ‘a happy, loving, doubter’ (p. xix). If he is understood, as I myself think is more rewarding, as standing guard ‘at the threshold of metaphysical possibilities’ (p. xxxvi), then his position must be labelled that of an ‘inspired critic’. In either case the reader must be able to separate sharply the irreconcilable antitheses of death and life, the world and the kingdom of heaven, and then again to see them both as one, before he can evaluate the concealed power of this unique spirit. For ‘this was a man and to be a man means to be a fighter’.
Decisive for any insight into Overbeck’s fundamental position are the sections ‘Concerning the Investigation of Super-History’ (Urgeschichte) (pp. 20–8) and ‘Of Myself and of Death’ (pp. 287–300). In the light of what is said here must be judged what is said (pp. 1–77) about the Bible and original Christianity (Urchristentum). All else in the book is application and illustration.
Two points, which are at once gateways and ends, determine and characterize, according to Overbeck, the being of man and of humanity. With the term ‘Super-History’ (Urgeschichte) or ‘creation-history’, he designates the one; with the term ‘death’, the other. Out of the supra-temporal, unknowable, inconceivable super-history which is composed wholly of beginnings, in which the boundaries dividing the individual from the whole are still fluid, we have come. To the single, inconceivably important moment of death in which our life enters the sphere of the unknown where, throughout our life-time, exists all which is beyond the world known to us, we go (pp. 20–1, 297). We have perhaps looked too deeply into the cause of things, we know too much about all things, even about those most hidden and unattainable, about the things of which we can actually know nothing at all, the last things. ‘We cannot escape this knowledge and we must live with it’ (pp. 293, 300).
What lies between these two ends, these ‘last things’, is the world, our world, the comprehensible world which has been given us. Whatever is or can be ‘historical’ is by its very nature (eo ipso) part of this world. For ‘historical’ means ‘subject to time’ (p. 242). And whatever is subject to time is limited, is relative, and is made manifest as world by the ‘last things’ of which we are now cognizant, whether we will or not. ‘It is in no way possible to concede to the Pharisees a kingdom of God already appearing among them, wholly on this side of the end’ (on Luke 17:20–1, p. 47). Frankly, in order to comprehend this world, so far as that is our aim, we do better not to step out of it; we should avoid even ‘the slightest breath of theology’ (p. 5), and as successors of the Rationalists, remain, with the resolute prudence of the true realist (p. xxviii), within its boundaries, the boundaries of humanity (p. 241).
If we cannot defend the things of this world and if none of the relationships in which we walk the earth can withstand the criticism which reduces the whole to relativity, we can still love them and we need take the criticism no more seriously than it deserves (pp. 29, 248). But this (fractured!) love for the things of this world does not originate in religion; it rests, even the smallest fraction of it, on our own action. Its ‘natural basis can of course be designated by the term God by anyone who knows what he is talking about’ (p. 249). The ‘capacity for ecstasy’ is by no means disregarded as ‘the source of the power of culture’ (p. xxviii) by the Rationalists with whom Oberbeck liked to align himself, as a sort of anonymous upstart, beside Kant, Goethe, and Lichtenberg (p. 136).
If the concept of death marks the limit of human knowledge, so it must also signify its transcendental origin. It can ‘serve us as an irresistible broom for sweeping out all the lies and shams that plague our earthly life’. If the command to remember death (memento mori) when rightly understood affects our life for good (p. 297), then we must ascribe to it a peculiarly creative and fruitful meaning. ‘Death creates life as well as destroying it’ (p. 247). Without a ‘tiny drop of ecstasy’ (p. 182), rationalism would not be the living, all-embracing principle that Overbeck understands it to be. For it happens that just this ‘tiny drop’ is the source of the stream. The two great unknowns, super-history and death, are exactly the hinges on which the ‘sceptical’ world-view hangs! ‘We men really go forward only when we launch ourselves from time to time into the air and we live our lives under conditions which do not permit us to shirk that experience’ (p. 77). ‘The man who actually and resolutely depends upon himself in this world, must have the courage to depend upon nothing’ (p. 286).
But such a man must reckon seriously with this ‘nothing’, and the tiny drop of ecstasy must be genuine; it must not be confused with mysticism, romanticism, and pietism—although ‘Pietism is for me the only form of Christianity under which a personal relation to Christianity would be possible for me’ (p. 179). For ‘a human individual can never expect to discover in himself a substitute for God.… Self-surrender is no sure road to God, but the (mystic-romantic-pietistic!) idea of man’s ever finding God in himself is still more hopeless’ (p. 286).
‘The essential quality in Overbeck was not intellectual but elemental. He was constantly “out of bounds”; and this was not a matter of stepping across a line in some small area; it was an impressive and genuine advance, a violent invasion. In his criticism, the jagged ledges of bared thought leave free the vista of the hidden valley below, green in the springtime.’ So Bernoulli says felicitously (p. xix); but unfortunately he somewhat obscures this important insight by the psychological trappings with which he decorates it as a sort of ideological antidote.
I myself would understand Overbeck’s fundamental doctrine of super-history and death with the deep sense of the dialectic of creation and redemption which is there expressed (e.g. pp. 29–31, 248 f.), as a transcendence of all ‘ideology’; and I would count the writer, with Socrates and Plato, among those ‘heathen proclaimers of the resurrection’ of whom it is said, ‘I have not found such faith, no not in Israel.’
From the unbelievably narrow and solid basis of this critical foundation are to be understood the three polemic discussions which in their manifold convolutions constitute the major content of the book. The first deals with the existence of Christianity in history; the second with the nature of modern Christianity; the third with the Christian-ness of all theology, especially of the theology of the present day. Overbeck’s unanswered question unfolds into several questions.
II
On the position of Christianity in history and its various aspects much has been said in the last decades. If I am not mistaken, Troeltsch’s thesis of the temporary social significance of the church and his dismal picture of the coming ice ages in which this social significance would be ended, constituted the last important stage which this discussion reached before the war. I listened to him, in Aarau in 1910, with the dark foreboding that it had become impossible to advance any farther in the dead-end street where we were strolling in relative comfort. But wholly different from the questions which evoked such answers is the question of whether there can possibly be any talk at all of a position of the church in history or of its historical aspects.
Does Christianity have the possibility of an historical development? That is, can it undergo the continuance, the becoming and perishing, the youth and old age, the degeneration and progress which are temporal characteristics? Does it in itself give evidence of a will to become an historical entity? Is it possible for a historian as such to do justice to Christianity? Or, to put the question from the world’s standpoint, can Christianity claim real significance as an historical entity? Is it possible for a historian to treat Christianity apart from culture?
Overbeck denies such a possibility categorically. Inflexibly he confronts us with the choice: If Christianity, then not history; if history, then not Christianity. ‘Historic Christianity—that is Christianity subjected to time—is an absurdity’ (p. 242). History is precisely the basis on which Christianity can not be established; for ‘neither Christ himself nor the faith which he found among his disciples has ever had any historical existence at all under the name of Christianity’ (pp. 9–10). ‘The first Christians are no proper subject for human historical writing’ (p. xxi). ‘History is an abyss into which Christianity has been thrown wholly against its will’ (p. 7). ‘From the a-priori of our concept of time, it follows that Christianity as a phenomenon of history has become indefensible’ (p. 244).
‘The best school for learning to doubt the existence of God as ruler of the world is church history, if it be granted that that is the history of the religion, Christianity, which was established by God in the world and if it be assumed that God has guided its history. Obviously he has done nothing of the kind. There is nothing miraculous in church history. To judge from it, Christianity seems as completely abandoned to the world as anything else which exists there’ (pp. 265–66). ‘Church history teaches that Christianity has been incapable of extricating itself from the effect of a single human weakness—just as has the supposed divine guidance of its destiny. Not one horror of history, not one horror among all the horrible experiences which history includes, is lacking in the experiences of church history’ (p. 19). ‘So far as Christianity in the area of its historical life has not been spared the corruptions and confusions to which other things are subject, church history possesses no advantage—least of all a special protecting power governing the church. On the evidence of the history of the church, the existence of God can be maintained only on the assumption that he withdrew his hand from Christianity in its historical existence. Such an assumption need not damage at all the honour due to God or to what men call God’ (p. 266).
‘To include Christianity under the concept of the historical, means to admit that it is of this world, and like all life has lived in the world in order to die’ (p. 7). ‘From purely historical considerations, the only possible conclusion is that Christianity is worn out and has grown senile’ (p. 71). ‘The idea of judging Christianity simply as history only heralds the dawn of the age when Christianity will come to an end and vanish’ (p. 9).
The only possible abode of Christianity lies, so far as the past is concerned, not in history, but in the history before history, the super-history (Urgeschichte). And only non-historical concepts, standards, and possibilities of observation could put us in the position to understand, to talk about—in fact, to represent in any way—this Christianity which is not Christianity in any historical sense. ‘Christianity means nothing else than Christ and the faith of his followers in him; it is something above time; in the life-time of Jesus, it had as yet no existence at all’ (p. 28). ‘Pursuit of the problems of super-history is permitted only to investigators who can see in that light—therefore to investigators with cats’ eyes who can manage in the dark’ (p. 20).
The beloved historical division between events and that which calls them into existence is impossible in relation to Christianity. For example, to take a New Testament book seriously means to know nothing of its author except for the book itself, and nothing of the ‘history of the times’. Direct conversation with the author makes the book as such superfluous and deprives it of its historical existence. Author and book coalesce into one (pp. 21–3). For another example, original Christianity in relation to the world had Socialism within itself; while our present-day combination of Christianity and Socialism, whether subsequent or anticipatory, only betrays our lack of the inclusive and conclusive possibilities of the super-historical (pp. 26–8). Hastily formulated historical hypotheses on the relation of beginnings to their continuations become impossible. ‘Can one human figure as passive as Jesus be thought of historically as the founder of anything in the world? Is not Christianity an historical edifice to the dimensions of which the figure of Jesus is wholly irrelevant?’ (p. 39). ‘The faith of Paul, springing to life after the death of Jesus, is no less of a miracle than the faith of Jesus in himself’ (p. 62).
The usual historical-psychological value judgements become impossible. For example, the dissimilarities between Jesus and Francis of Assisi are much more significant than the renowned likenesses (conformitates). On the one hand, ‘Francis exemplifies in himself the peace which Christianity proclaims even more completely than Jesus himself. Jesus required faith in himself, a demand which in itself excludes all peacefulness and presupposes the possession and use of power. Francis merely displays faith and shows a trait of amiability which Christ wholly lacks.’ On the other side, ‘to follow Christ, as St Francis understood it, was to follow him in the way which most exalts Christianity to the heights and glorifies it, and not to follow him where Christ himself stands, outside the ideal of Christianity’ (p. 39). Our Neo-Franciscan friends should ponder on that a little.
Most impossible of all becomes the all-too-hasty adaptation and application of supposedly historical concepts in general to supra-historical phenomena. Who, for instance, could dare to claim to understand Jesus unless he finds in himself the place where he feels himself to be simply one with God? And who could dare assert that oneness of himself? Who can fail to see that Jesus was ruled by the conviction that what is impossible in the actual world could be basic reality in another world? It is precisely in the demands which are based on this conviction that Jesus seems least of all to be a vague dreamer without experience of the world. But in this conviction, which alone would make him comprehensible, who dares to follow him with real earnestness and consistency (pp. 47–9)?
‘The contradiction between the original Christian eschatology and the contemporary hope for the future is fundamental’ (p. 66). ‘It is of no use to make profession of Christianity and to march in the opposite direction’ (p. 67). ‘The demand of Matt. 18:3 by itself either removes the possibility of Christianity in the world or takes the church off its worldly hinges’ (p. 64). Whoever recognizes all these ordinary impossibilities as such and yet finds a road to the super-history, to Jesus—let him walk that road, but not too quickly nor with too much assurance.
At the instant when things lose their immediate connexion with the last things, when the plain tie between the other side and this side ceases to bind, when any view other than the absolutely critical becomes possible for us, at that moment, which is all too similar to death, there begins the history of degeneration, church history. Overbeck even agrees with Zündel in his significant judgement that Paul already belongs in this second period; although it may be true that no one has really understood Paul who thinks today that he can share Paul’s opinions (p. 54), and equally true that Paul does not wholly lack important marks of the super-history (pp. 55–63).
But church history ‘stands actually between life and death, and to see it overweighted on the one side or the other depends solely on the situation and the arbitrary choice of the observer. History also continues life, even as it prepares death, (p. 21). But in any case, after the expectation of the Parousia had lost its reality, Christianity lost its youth and itself. It has become something wholly different; it has become a religion, an ‘ideological antidote’, as we must admit with Bernoulli. And ‘religion certainly shares with the world its origin from the human world’ (p. 74).
But Christianity will not be a religion, will not be in any sense an antidote—quite apart from the fact that such an antidote is of no use whatever to man. Man lives and must live from his certainty of the ‘last things’. And that is something very different.
III
Overbeck, unlike Kierkegaard, does not make his complaint against modern Christianity as himself an advocate of a true Christianity in opposition to a false (p. 279). He cannot assert forcibly enough that he is without any relation to Christianity of any kind. He claims for himself no religious mission. He holds so little of Christian belief that he never once counts himself among its believers! (p. 255). He will speak only of what he knows. And he expects (even apart from himself) no reform but only ‘a gentle fading away’ of Christianity (p. 68). He was early conditioned to regard even the religious struggles of the Reformation as pathological, even ‘without the stimulus of a serious hatred for Christianity and religion’ (p. 289).
But on our side, we know from his own words the significance it had for him when he thus placed himself ‘in the air’. Actually a more positive position does not exist than the mountain path he walks between the two chasms. His controlled, restrained pathos, as he steps forward, with the utmost knowledge of his subject, to give warning against the fictitious relationship between Christianity and the modern world, his far from ‘sceptical’ insight and reverence, and the urgency with which he speaks of those matters which merit it, the hopeless conflict of his whole life which was never fully resolved just because of his complete respect for reality, all these in the last analysis can be understood only as ‘Christian’, as a fragment of ‘super-history’. There hovers above this wholly critical book something of the peace of God that is higher than all reason—and perhaps this is all the more felt because its author did not at all so intend.
Yet it can even be debated whether Overbeck was more anxious to protect Christianity against the modern world or the modern world against Christianity. Bernoulli seems desirous of emphasizing the latter. Of course, Overbeck does both. But if his position is accurately portrayed at the end of the preface, where Bernoulli makes him stand guard on ‘the threshold of metaphysical possibilities’ (p. xxxvi), with the humanist culture in front of him and behind him Christianity, ‘the problem which puts all history in jeopardy, the problem whose nature is fundamentally enigmatic’ (p. 7)—it is a picture which inevitably reminds us of the Faustian ‘May the sun remain behind me’—then we may well be tempted to a different emphasis from Bernoulli’s.
It is not from humanist culture and it is not from Christianity that this theologian who does not wish to be a theologian comes. He comes rather from the elemental, the primary, the transcendental, the immediate expectation of the Parousia in the world, which stands behind Christianity (p. 291). From his words we catch a note of Jeremiah, however sternly it may be suppressed; under all the repression there is a sense of compulsion to act and to participate, which is not of this world. But we can be content with the sober statement that he was the guard of the boundary between here and there (the original), and not a mere observer.
The nature of ‘modern’ Christianity (it has always been determined to be ‘modern’) is therefore denatured, because in it the tension of contradiction is transformed into a normal relationship which must result in the corruption of both parts—humanity and Christianity (p. 68). Christianity has become such a problematical entity because it has lost the ‘force of the offensive thrust’ which it once wielded against the world, and therefore has also lost its victory over the world (pp. 65–6). But it has kept its impossible claim to advise man and direct him beyond himself. That claim, which has lost all validity since it is removed from the super-historical era with its unique possibilities, can only act as the wisdom which brings death (pp. 69, 279).
True Christianity and the world, since the loss of the immediate bond created by the expectation of the Parousia, can no longer understand each other nor be mutually understood. There is nothing which true Christianity rejects more firmly than a history in the world. Such Christianity never even thought of ‘the effect of Jesus on history’. His was the Spirit—and by that term Christianity meant something quite different (p. 68).
But nothing lies farther from the mind of the present day than belief in an imminent end of the world. The Christianity of today ‘has so little room left for the whole conception of the Return of Christ that it cannot even conceive it historically as belonging to the original Christianity; at the most it may admit its presence as a negligible factor (quantité négligeable)’ (p. 68). ‘A modern hat! Very good. That can conform to the fashion; but modern Christianity? Is not that quite different?… We who so judge are content with this truth; but the modern world around us is not and it speaks of modern and historical Christianity as realities to be taken seriously’ (p. 245). Historical Christianity (‘the religious community which developed into the Christian church out of the gospel as its pre-historic embryo’ p. 63) is in itself a contradiction.
‘Has Christianity brought a new era? Is the Christian form of dating, anno domini, based on actuality? Certainly not; for originally Christianity spoke of a new age only under a presupposition which has not been met, namely that the existing world was to perish and make room for a new world. For a moment that was a genuine expectation, and it has re-emerged now and again as such; but it has never become the historically established fact which alone could offer a real basis for a complete new calendar supposed to conform to facts. It is the world which has asserted itself—not the Christian expectation for the world; and therefore the alleged “Christian era” in it has always remained a figment of the imagination’ (p. 72). ‘The Christianity of all periods has always shown itself incapable of giving a universal message to the human world. It has helped only individuals and it has helped in no other way. In the community at all times a mediocre Christianity rules’ (p. 268).
‘A façade can lack an interior … on the other hand it is unendurable that an interior should present a false façade; and that is the case with present-day Christianity. But you cannot summon its interior as a witness against its exterior as though it could be found without it. And anyhow, no one has to listen to it.… Those representatives of Christianity who currently appeal to its “inner life” are its worst traitors’ (p. 71). For ‘the innermost and the real need of Christianity at the present time is the practice of it in life (Praxis). What Christianity lacks most in order to be able to assert itself in the world is evidence of its practical applicability in life’ (p. 274). ‘But our life is obviously not ruled by Christianity. In view of that, it is of little interest to proclaim how far it may rule the thoughts which are presented in writing. Modern Christianity itself performs only a grave-digger’s job, as by the sweat of its brow it widens the gulf between theory and practice.
‘Christian dogmas are polished carefully and fitted to modern thought. But the process merely erases the last traces which true Christianity still has left in life. What is accomplished serves wholly for the greater glory of the modern (ad majorem gloriam moderni) and to the detriment of Christianity (ad detrimentum Christianismi)’ (p. 67).
‘It is no wonder that the modern world so thirsts for orthodoxy and has so little use for Pietism, or that a dogmatic system like Ritschl’s won such a following while Rothe’s suffered so tragic a shipwreck.… The modern world is ready to do everything to make it possible to remain within the illusion of Christianity; and for that purpose, as it is easy to see, orthodoxy is more usable than Pietism’ (p. 274). ‘In modern life, Christianity is thirsting for life and in so far for Pietism. In modern Christianity, the modernity thirsts for orthodoxy since it has already drunk its fill of life; and so in modern Christianity, Christianity gets nothing to drink. For its thirst is of a wholly different nature from that of modernity.… Can this tragicomedy really have a prospect of playing before the world much longer?’ (p. 275).
And so it is that ‘the most significant fact about Christianity is its powerlessness, the fact that it cannot rule the world’ (p. 279). Think of its relation to Socialism (pp. 26–8). Or consider how shaky a bulwark it has shown itself against the danger of nationalism (p. 257). Look at the air of solemnity which Ritschleanism habitually wears when it handles in a cursory way the concept of vocation (pp. 278, 288). Consider (and in dealing with this evidence Overbeck for his part puts on a certain ‘solemn’ attentiveness) the religion of Bismarck (pp. 148–59), which provides the most magnificent example of the way the world pleases itself and wins the applause of the representatives of religion. Therefore Bismarck is the best-known advocate of the indispensability of religion for all earthly effectiveness. He had religion simply in order to keep his hands free for secular work. For the enigma which religion wills to solve, he had no time. All he wanted was something to free him from anxiety. His religion was erected on the basis of his self-esteem. Moreover, it was something which he had reduced to the size of a personal plaything and which he could lay aside at any time.
But the fact that he could play with it and occasionally had a Christian notion was sufficient in the eyes of the modern advocates of Christianity to make him a Christian, even a model Christian. He could even be hung in the gallery of ‘the classics of our religion’ next to Jesus, Francis, and Luther—to amplify with a more recent illustration. Thus Christianity has now been handed over to every holder of power. So cheap is today’s canonization in the Christian heaven. But none the less, it is this Bismarck who has done more for the historical existence of modern theology that Ritschl and Harnack. And what can be expected for this Christianity except ‘a gentle fading away’?
Again we are reminded of the attack on Christianity which the men of Möttlingen and Bad Boll once made from the same central standpoint, the expectation of the Second Coming; of their inquiry concerning the real power of the Kingdom of God, and the overcoming of religious subjectivity. But the friends of historico-psychological realism and the alleged Overbeck specialists in Basel need not be troubled. Against the greater keenness of observation and thought on the side of Overbeck is to be set the greater love, the enthusiasm and the joy in witnessing on the side of Blumhardt.
Yet Overbeck also was not without the holy fire, and Blumhardt was not without knowledge. In its essential nature—and that alone is important—the attack made is the same here and there. And with this double attack, theology has not yet really grappled.
IV
Overbeck’s third protest is directed against theology specifically, against the theology which today in Germany and Switzerland (and where not?) presides over the pulpit and the professor’s desk, the theology of a positive or liberal shade. One and all, those in authority today are ‘modern’.
I confess that I am not wholly of one mind about this attack, about which I feel strongly. I feel a glow of approval hard to restrain for the strong polemical food which is there offered. And yet there is the other feeling that it would have been better for the sake of the essential point to have held back some of these priceless apothegms on men and events. The ‘chest stuffed full of alphabetic notes’ left by Overbeck (as the preface states, p. xx) must, according to reliable reports, have included also some wholly different comments.
Bernoulli will be able to say in his own justification that he was forced to practise restraint in dealing with such a mass of material. But I recall what Overbeck himself said (pp. 3 f.) about the inaccuracy, in fact the impossibility, of all writing of contemporary history. I think of the emphatic words: ‘Men are not called to give final judgement on one another’ (p. 250). Now if what we read (pp. 159–80) under the heading ‘Albrecht Ritschl as Head of a School of Theology’, for example, or (pp. 198–241) under the heading ‘Adolf Harnack, a Lexicon’ is not a ‘final judgement’, then I have no idea what would deserve the name. Diana of the Ephesians will be overthrown only from within and below. Arguments ad hominem such as these, in which the other side still has the advantage of us, offer to our psychological age such easy opportunities for counterattack that any instruction which can be so turned aside will never penetrate. After this observation on tactics, we can now turn to the matter itself.
What is theology? ‘The Satan of religion’ (p. 12), ‘Christianity become worldly-wise’ (p. 124), Overbeck answers. It is ‘the attempt to impose Christianity on the world under the explicitly hallowed garb of modern culture, by concealing, even by denying its basically ascetic character’ (p. 125). It is ‘a desperate wrestling match, fought on behalf of religion against certain primary truths which show us too ruthlessly the final problems of our existence, the difficulties and the limitations under which men live’ (p. 13). Its typical representative is the Abbé in the French salon of the eighteenth century (pp. 125, 198). Its fiercest opponent is Blaise Pascal, who had no fear of using caricature, ‘the knight of truth, who undertook the impossible’ (pp. 126–34). Accordingly its nature is Jesuitry, the classic witness to the dire state of the church (p. 122).
The worst error of the Jesuits was not that they questioned morality, the most questionable of all the assumptions which exist among men. It was rather that they sublimated and refined and accommodated Christianity—an enterprise in which Protestant Jesuitry in the form of modern theology has far surpassed the Catholic (pp. 123–5). By this activity, the theologians have become ‘the most outstanding traitors to their cause’ (p. 236).
‘Do the modern theologians think that they can put us off much longer with their absurd delusion that Christianity’s best defence to insure its continued existence is its unlimited capacity for change?’ (p. 138). ‘Moses, Christ, Paul, and Luther are still given a place by these modern theologians as a part of their understanding of world history, but only as a kind of ornamentation which is recommended for display in public exhibitions. So far even modern theologians remain orthodox. But at the bottom of their hearts, they are the best of “believers in new things” and their master is Bismarck’ (p. 155).
‘Basically they have little to do with Christianity, but just for that reason they have a particular itch to start something with it’ (p. 278). ‘The Zeus on the Olympus of their priestly company they call “the present”. Their gaze is directed unwaveringly to the modern man’ (p. 218). ‘Theologians are never simply Christians, never men whose relation to Christianity is simple and unambiguous’ (p. 273). They expect indeed ‘to put God daily into their bag’ (p. 268). They allow themselves ‘to play [with God and the human soul] like children with their dolls, and they have the same assurance of ownership and the right of disposal’. They live in the naïve confidence that ‘men may do all things with God and in his name’; that ‘with God man finds himself in complete adjustment with the world; with him, man succeeds best’ (p. 267).
But the very existence of these servants of Christianity has as its prerequisite the existence of a world beside and outside of Christianity. ‘They are, under the most favourable conditions, middlemen between Christianity and this world; and therefore no one really trusts their counsel.… There always remains the sense that they are middlemen—a kind of men against whom there is a well-founded prejudice. And then besides, Christianity itself rejects middlemen. It recognizes no world beside itself, for it is absolute in its claims.’ And so theologians must undergo the painful experience of finding that the service they intend to offer is accepted with the most polite thanks, ‘but with no overlooking of the basic defect that those who offer the service come themselves from the same corner of merely relative evaluation of Christianity in which men in general commonly stand and out of which they would gladly be rescued. And when it is realized that this service is done for us by someone who merely shares with us our common need, it understandably elicits a very faint acknowledgement.…’ The theologians might be called ‘the Figaros of Christianity. In any case, these modern representatives of theology are the most available and usable, but also the most unreliable of its factotums. And as such, all honourable Pietists consider them, in the bottom of their hearts’ (pp. 273–4).
Their position is equally doubtful when considered from the standpoint of culture. ‘The Philistines of culture are men who are enthusiastic advocates of culture but have no aptitude for it; men who would like to be cultured but who apply themselves only half-heartedly and “part-time”, only for the sake of appearing as its representatives. Therefore theologians are the born Philistines of culture in all ages—not just at the present time. They always drag along with them the Christianity into which they were born or which was taught them and it weighs down all their cultural aspirations. Their culture therefore is culture with a bad conscience’ (pp. 270–1). We need only read over the descriptions of the Pharisees in Zündel’s book on Jesus to be convinced of the parallel here.
How radically Overbeck questions the possibility of the theology dominant today (and for him that meant questioning its Christian-ness) and with what earnestness he renounced it, will have become plain from the preceding excerpts. (I have for my part ‘practised restraint’ here.) Theology still owes the answer to the inquiry made to it in 1873.
In conclusion we naturally ask whether Overbeck believed a different, a better theology to be possible. His editor’s answer will be roundly ‘No’; and he can support his verdict by the fact that Overbeck himself, at least so far as it concerned him personally, repudiated this possibility. ‘I have no intention of reforming theology. I admit its nullity in and of itself and I am not merely attacking its temporary decay and its present basis’ (p. 291). An end to Christianity! (Finis christianismi!) rings his prophetic imprecation—still more an end to theology!
But the man who spoke so profoundly of death must somehow have combined with this finis a fruitful, living concept originating in the beginning. On the other side from the direct final question must be an answer; on the other side from the nothingness a new beginning; beyond the desert into which we are led must be a promised land. At least the fact about which his watching contemporaries talked so much and for which (at least in this book) neither Overbeck nor his editor is able to give a credible explanation—the banal fact that Overbeck himself was never anything but a theologian, cannot be without significance, in spite of his resolute repudiation. To call Overbeck, in his own despite, ‘a theologian learned in the ways of the kingdom of heaven and in the ways of earth’, as one of his secular colleagues said beside his grave, ought to be from the historico-psychologial viewpoint at least a portent; and from the point of view of reality it is perhaps not such a bad portent. The last can still sometimes be first. A theologian who is determined not to be a theologian might perhaps—if the impossible is to become possible—be a very good theologian.
Overbeck himself wrote, a few lines after his repudiation: ‘Theology, like everything else which exists, will be or has been good for something. Why not, for example, for establishing the limits of humanity, for our final, radical rescue from all demonic superstition and from all transcendental other-worldliness?’ (p. 292.) Now this comment, when examined word by word, makes an important assertion concerning matters which are fundamental and are not yet decided. (In considering it, we might even be permitted to overlook the has been.)
There are a few more statements which escaped the author almost against his will and which deal with at least the possibility of a theology of greater insight and more caution. They should not be omitted in this connexion. ‘Religious problems must eventually be based in a wholly new area [in contrast to the antagonism between Catholicism and Protestantism] at the expense of what has until now been called religion’ (p. 270). ‘Theology cannot be re-established except with audacity’ (p. 16). ‘The first, fresh Christianity is a Christianity without the experience of growing old and it cannot be saved by any theology which does not renounce all its pretensions, historical, scientific, and theological’ (p. 8). ‘Only a heroic Christianity which takes its position without regard to any era and establishes itself on itself alone can escape the fate of Jesuitizing’ (p. 126). ‘He who is to represent Christianity is not thereby called to represent “the truth”, although he may be convinced and show himself convinced that both are identical’ (p. 268). No presentation which attempts to ‘establish Christianity historically will ever be possible; only that composed from the heart of the matter itself, the non-historical Christianity’ (pp. 9–10).
Would it not be worth the effort to consider the spiteful assertion that ‘theologians are the fools of human society’ more seriously than Ritschl did? ‘Perhaps it might be concluded that the foolishness asserted is not such an unmitigated misfortune, and that just because of it theologians may be a necessary ballast and consequently be prized as necessary in human society’ (p. 173). ‘The eternal permanence of Christianity can be claimed only from the eternal viewpoint (sub specie aeterni), that is, from a standpoint which knows nothing of time and of the contrast of youth and age existing only in time’ (p. 71). ‘Religion does not so much bring us information about God (where do we have such information?) as assure us that God knows us. Furthermore, knowledge about God in itself could not help us where we feel in need of help; but everything which concerns us depends on his knowledge of us’ (p. 266).
The man who could express such thoughts, even if he himself developed them no further, as a theologian certainly wanted more than ‘to provide culture with information about theology’ as the editor asserts (p. x).
But we must urgently warn all those who desire positive results and directions that they should not rush too quickly towards the standpoint which Overbeck indicated, but did not himself employ. Still less should they suppose that the promised land will be reached tomorrow—perhaps even today! Our next task is to begin the desert wandering. Otherwise a new misfortune and a new disappointment could come. The matters dealt with in this audacious undertaking are too large for the theologian to be able to pass all the way through the narrow door of Overbeck’s negation—even if we think we know something of Blumhardt’s Yes, which is the other side of Overbeck’s No.
There were good reasons for Overbeck himself to refrain from the attempt to pass all the way through—and we are grateful to him for so refraining. A theology which would dare that passage—dare to become eschatology—would not only be a new theology but also a new Christianity; it would be a new being, itself already a piece of the ‘last things’, towering above the Reformation and all ‘religious’ movements. Whoever would dare to build on that tower would truly do well to sit down first and count the cost.
The next work for all of us, and the best we can do the more we feel ourselves forced under the pressure of present events to make decisions, to break through our limits, is to remain standing before that narrow door in fear and reverence, and without clamouring for positive proposals; to understand what is at stake and to realize that only the impossible can save us from the impossible.
We have the question of the practical significance of the ‘last things’, the question of the insights and possibilities which none can assume for himself unless they were given him from above. We have the question of pre-suppositions. To have thrown these questions at us, and, as was proper, only to have hinted at the answers—that is the service of Overbeck, for which presumably there is great appreciation in heaven.
Let us be content with the mighty STOP! which the dead has here given us. Let us not undertake to believe in the impossible, since we see, with Overbeck, that this STOP will not be the last word ‘on the threshold of metaphysical possibilities’. ‘It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.’
Σπείρεται ἐν φθορᾷ, ἐγείρεται ἐν ἀφθαρσίᾳ· σπείρεται ἐν ἀτιμίᾳ, ἐγείρεται ἐν δόξῃ· σπείρεται ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ, ἐγείρεται ἐν δυνάμει.
1 Cor. 15:42–3.
