The command to love enemies extends only to personal enemies, not to the enemies of God, the enemies of faith. “Does not the Lord Christ command that we should love even our enemies? How then does David here boast that he hates the assembly of the wicked, and sits not with the ungodly?.. For the sake of the person I should love them; but for the sake of the doctrine I should hate them. And thus I must hate them or hate God, who commands and wills that we should cleave to his word alone… What I cannot love with God, I must hate; if they only preach something which is against God, all love and friendship is destroyed; – thereupon I hate thee, and do thee no good. For faith must be uppermost, and where the word of God is attacked, hate takes the place of love… And so David means to say: I hate them, not because they have done injury and evil to me and led a bad and wicked life, but because they despise, revile, blaspheme, falsify, and persecute the word of God.” “Faith and love are two things. Faith endures nothing, love endures all things. Faith curses, love blesses: faith seeks vengeance and punishment, love seeks forbearance and forgiveness.” “Rather than God’s word should fall and heresy stand, faith would wish all creatures to be destroyed; for through heresy men lose God himself.” – Luther (Th. vi. p. 94; Th. v. pp. 624, 630). See also, on this subject, my treatise in the Deutsches Jahrb. and Augustini Enarrat. in Psalm cxxxviii. (cxxxix.). As Luther distinguishes the person from the enemy of God, so Augustine here distinguishes the man from the enemy of God, from the unbeliever, and says: We should hate the ungodliness in the man, but love the humanity in him. But what, then, in the eyes of faith, is the man in distinction from faith, man without faith, i. e., without God? Nothing: for the sum of all realities, of all that is worthy of love, of all that is good and essential, is faith, as that which alone apprehends and possesses God. It is true that man as man is the image of God, but only of the natural God, of God as the Creator of Nature. But the Creator is only God as he manifests himself outwardly; the true God, God as he is in himself, the inward essence of God, is the triune God, is especially Christ. (See Luther, Th. xiv. pp. 2, 3, and Th. xvi. p. 581.) And the image of this true, essential, Christian God, is only the believer, the Christian. Moreover, man is not to be loved for his own sake, but for God’s. “Diligendus est propter Deum, Deus vero propter se ipsum.” – Augustinus (de Doctrina Chr. 1. i. cc. 22, 27). How, then, should the unbelieving man, who has no resemblance to the true God, be an object of love?
§ 20
Faith separates man from man, puts in the place of the natural unity founded in Nature and Love a supernatural unity – the unity of Faith. “Inter Christianum et gentilem non fides tantum debet, sed etiam vita distinguere… Nolite, ait Apostolus, jugum ducere cum infidelibus… Sit ergo inter nos et illos maxima separatio.” – Hieronymus (Epist. Caelantiæ matronae)… “Prope nihil gravius quam copulari alienigeniae… Nam cum ipsum conjugium velamine sacerdotali et benedictione sanctificari oporteat: quomodo potest conjugium dici, ubi non est fidei concordia?.. Saepe plerique capti amore feminarum fidem suam prodiderunt.” – Ambrosius (Ep. 70, Lib. ix.). “Non enim licet christiano cum gentili vel judaeo inire conjugium.” – Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 39, c. 1). And this separation is by no means unbiblical. On the contrary, we find that, in support of it, the Fathers appeal directly to the Bible. The well-known passage of the Apostle Paul concerning marriage between heathens and Christians relates only to marriages which had taken place before conversion, not to those which were yet to be contracted. Let the reader refer to what Peter Lombard says in the book already cited. “The first Christians did not acknowledge, did not once listen to, all those relatives who sought to turn them away from the hope of the heavenly reward. This they did through the power of the Gospel, for the sake of which all love of kindred was to be despised; inasmuch as … the brotherhood of Christ far surpassed natural brotherhood. To us the Fatherland and a common name is not so dear, but that we have a horror even of our parents, if they seek to advise something against the Lord.” – G. Arnold (Wahre Abbild. der ersten Christen. B. iv. c. 2). “Qui amat patrem et matrem plus quam me, non est me dignus Matth. x. … in hoc vos non agnosco parentes, sed hostes… Alioquin quid mihi et vobis? Quid a vobis habeo nisi peccatum et miseriam?” – Bernardus (Epist. iii. Ex persona Heliae monachi ad parentes suos). “Etsi impium est, contemnere matrem, contemnere tamen propter Christum piissimum est.” – Bernardus (Ep. 104. See also Ep. 351, ad Hugonem novitium). “Audi sententiam Isidori: multi canonicorum, monachorum … temporali salute suorum parentum perdunt animas suas… Servi Dei qui parentum suorum utilitatem procurant a Dei amore se separant.” —De modo bene vivendi (S. vii.). “Omnem hominem fidelem judica tuum esse fratrem.” – (Ibid. Sermo 13). “Ambrosius dicit, longe plus nos debere diligere filios quos de fonte levamus, quam quos carnaliter (genuimus.” – Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 6, c. 5, addit. Henr. ab Vurim.). “Infantes nascuntur cum peccato, nec fiunt haeredes vitae aeternae sine remissione peccati… Cum igitur dubium non sit in infantibus esse peccatum, debet aliquod esse discrimen infantium Ethnicorum, qui manent rei, et infantium in Ecclesia, qui recipiuntur a Deo per ministerium.” – Melancthon (Loci de bapt. inf. Argum. II. Compare with this the passage above cited from Buddeus, as a proof of the narrowness of the true believer’s love). “Ut Episcopi vel Clerici in eos, qui Catholici Christiani non sunt, etiam si consanguinei fuerint, nec per donationes rerum suarum aliquid conferant.” – Concil. Carthag. III. can. 13 (Summa Carranza). “Cum haereticis nec orandum, nec psallendum.” – Concil. Carthag. IV. can. 72 (ibid.).
Faith has the significance of religion, love only that of morality. This has been declared very decidedly by Protestantism. The doctrine that love does not justify in the sight of God, but only faith, expresses nothing further than that love has no religious power and significance. (Apol. Augsb. Confess. art. 3. Of Love and the Fulfilment of the Law.) It is certainly here said: “What the scholastic writers teach concerning the love of God is a dream, and it is impossible to know and love God before we know and lay hold on mercy through faith. For then first does God become objectum amabile, a lovable, blissful object of contemplation.” Thus here mercy, love is made the proper object of faith. And it is true that faith is immediately distinguished from love only in this, that faith places out of itself what love places in itself. “We believe that our justification, salvation, and consolation, lie out of ourselves.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 497; see also Th. ix. p. 587). It is true that faith in the Protestant sense is faith in the forgiveness of sins, faith in mercy, faith in Christ, as the God who suffered and died for men, so that man, in order to attain everlasting salvation, has nothing further to do on his side than believingly to accept this sacrifice of God for him. But it is not as love only that God is an object of faith. On the contrary, the characteristic object of faith as faith is God as a subject, a person. And is a God who accords no merit to man, who claims all exclusively for himself, who watches jealously over his honour – is a self-interested, egoistic God like this a God of love?
The morality which proceeds from faith has for its principle and criterion only the contradiction of Nature, of man. As the highest object of faith is that which most contradicts reason, the Eucharist, so necessarily the highest virtue of the morality which is true and obedient to faith is that which most contradicts Nature. Dogmatic miracles have therefore moral miracles as their consequence. Antinatural morality is the twin sister of supernatural faith. As faith vanquishes Nature outside of man, so the morality of faith vanquishes Nature within man. This practical supernaturalism, the summit of which is “virginity, the sister of the angels, the queen of virtues, the mother of all good” (see A. v. Buchers: Geistliches Suchverloren. (Sämmtl. W. B. vi. 151), has been specially developed by Catholicism; for Protestantism has held fast only the principle of Christianity, and has arbitrarily eliminated its logical consequences; it has embraced only Christian faith and not Christian morality. In faith, Protestantism has brought man back to the standpoint of primitive Christianity; but in life, in practice, in morality, it has restored him to the pre-Christian, the Old Testament, the heathen, Adamitic, natural standpoint. God instituted marriage in paradise; therefore even in the present day, even to Christians, the command Multiply! is valid. Christ advises those only not to marry who “can receive” this higher rule. Chastity is a supernatural gift; it cannot therefore be expected of every one. But is not faith also a supernatural gift, a special gift of God, a miracle, as Luther says innumerable times, and is it not nevertheless commanded to us all? Are not all men included in the command to mortify, blind, and contemn the natural reason? Is not the tendency to believe and accept nothing which contradicts reason as natural, as strong, as necessary in us, as the sexual impulse? If we ought to pray to God for faith because by ourselves we are too weak to believe, why should we not on the same ground entreat God for chastity? Will he deny us this gift if we earnestly implore him for it? Never! Thus we may regard chastity as a universal command equally with faith, for what we cannot do of ourselves, we can do through God. What speaks against chastity speaks against faith also, and what speaks for faith speaks for chastity. One stands and falls with the other; with a supernatural faith is necessarily associated a supernatural morality. Protestantism tore this bond asunder: in faith it affirmed Christianity; in life, in practice, it denied Christianity, acknowledged the autonomy of natural reason, of man, – restored man to his original rights. Protestantism rejected celibacy, chastity, not because it contradicted the Bible, but because it contradicts man and nature. “He who will be single renounces the name of man, and proves or makes himself an angel or spirit… It is pitiable folly to wonder that a man takes a wife, or for any one to be ashamed of doing so, since no one wonders that men are accustomed to eat and drink.” – Luther (Th. xix. pp. 368, 369). Does this unbelief as to the possibility and reality of chastity accord with the Bible, where celibacy is eulogised as a laudable, and consequently a possible, attainable state? No! It is in direct contradiction with the Bible. Protestantism, in consequence of its practical spirit, and therefore by its own inherent force, repudiated Christian supranaturalism in the sphere of morality. Christianity exists for it only in faith – not in law, not in morality, not in the State. It is true that love (the compendium of morality) belongs essentially to the Christian, so that where there is no love, where faith does not attest itself by love, there is no faith, no Christianity. Nevertheless love is only the outward manifestation of faith, only a consequence, and only human. “Faith alone deals with God,” “faith makes us gods;” love makes us merely men, and as faith alone is for God, so God is for faith alone, i. e., faith alone is the divine, the Christian in man. To faith belongs eternal life, to love only this temporal life. “Long before Christ came God gave this temporal, earthly life to the whole world, and said that man should love him and his neighbour. After that he gave the world to his Son Christ, that we through and by him should have eternal life… Moses and the law belong to this life, but for the other life we must have the Lord.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 459). Thus although love belongs to the Christian, yet is the Christian a Christian only through this, that he believes in Christ. It is true that to serve one’s neighbour, in whatever way, rank, or calling, is to serve God. But the God whom I serve in fulfilling a worldly or natural office is only the universal, mundane, natural, pre-Christian God. Government, the State, marriage, existed prior to Christianity, was an institution, an ordinance of God, in which he did not as yet reveal himself as the true God, as Christ. Christ has nothing to do with all these worldly things; they are external, indifferent to him. But for this very reason, every worldly calling and rank is compatible with Christianity; for the true, Christian service of God is faith alone, and this can be exercised everywhere. Protestantism binds men only in faith, all the rest it leaves free, but only because all the rest is external to faith.
It is true that we are bound by the commandments of Christian morality, as, for example, “Avenge not yourselves,” &c., but they have validity for us only as private, not as public persons. The world is governed according to its own laws. Catholicism “mingled together the worldly and spiritual kingdoms,” i. e., it sought to govern the world by Christianity. But “Christ did not come on earth to interfere in the government of the Emperor Augustus and teach him how to reign.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 49). Where worldly government begins Christianity ends; there worldly justice, the sword, war, litigation, prevail. As a Christian I let my cloak be stolen from me without resistance, but as a citizen I seek to recover it by law. “Evangelium non abolet jus naturæ.” – Melancthon (de Vindicta Loci. See also on this subject M. Chemnitii Loci Theol. de Vindicta). In fact, Protestantism is the practical negation of Christianity, the practical assertion of the natural man. It is true that Protestantism also commands the mortifying of the flesh, the negation of the natural man; but apart from the fact that this negation has for Protestantism no religious significance and efficacy, does not justify, i. e., make acceptable to God, procure salvation; the negation of the flesh in Protestantism is not distinguished from that limitation of the flesh which natural reason and morality enjoin on man. The necessary practical consequences of the Christian faith Protestantism has relegated to the other world, to heaven – in other words, has denied them. la heaven first ceases the worldly standpoint of Protestantism; there we no longer marry, there first we are new creatures; but here everything remains as of old “until that life; there the external life will be changed, for Christ did not come to change the creature.” – Luther (Th. xv. p. 62). Here we are half heathens, half Christians; half citizens of the earth, half citizens of heaven. Of this division, this disunity, this chasm, Catholicism knows nothing. What it denies in heaven, i. e., in faith, it denies, also, as far as possible, on earth, i. e., in morality. “Grandis igitur virtutis est et sollicitate diligentiae, superare quod nata sis: in carne non carnaliter vivere, tecum pugnare quotidie.” – Hieronymus (Ep. Furiae Rom. nobilique viduae). “Quanto igitur natura amplius vincitur et premitur, tanto major gratia infunditur.” – Thomas à K. (Imit. l. iii. c. 54). “Esto robustus tam in agendo, quam in patiendo naturae contraria.” – (Ibid. c. 49.) “Beatus ille homo, qui propter te, Domine, omnibus creaturis licentiam abeundi tribuit, qui naturae vim facit et concupiscentias carnis fervore spiritus crucifigit” (c. 48). “Adhuc proh dolor! vivit in me verus homo, non est totus crucifixus.” – (Ibid. c. 34, l. iii. c. 19, l. ii. c. 12.) And these dicta by no means emanate simply from the pious individuality of the author of the work De Imitatione Christi; they express the genuine morality of Catholicism, that morality which the saints attested by their lives, and which was sanctioned even by the Head of the Church, otherwise so worldly. Thus it is said, for example, in the Canonizatio S. Bernhardi Abbatis per Alexandrum papam III. anno Ch. 1164. Litt. apost … primo ad. Praelatos Eccles. Gallic.: “In afflictione vero corporis sui usque adeo sibi mundum, seque mundo reddidit crucifixum, ut confidamus martyrum quoque eum merita obtinere sanctorum, etc.” It was owing to this purely negative moral principle that there could be enunciated within Catholicism itself the gross opinion that mere martyrdom, without the motive of love to God, obtains heavenly blessedness.
It is true that Catholicism also in practice denied the supranaturalistic morality of Christianity; but its negation has an essentially different significance from that of Protestantism; it is a negation de facto but not de jure. The Catholic denied in life what he ought to have affirmed in life, – as, for example, the vow of chastity, – what he desired to affirm, at least if he was a religious Catholic, but which in the nature of things he could not affirm. Thus he gave validity to the law of Nature, he gratified the flesh, in a word, he was a man, in contradiction with his essential character, his religious principle and conscience. Adhuc proh dolor! vivit in me verus homo. Catholicism has proved to the world that the supernatural principle of faith in Christianity, applied to life, made a principle of morals, has immoral, radically corrupting consequences. This experience Protestantism made use of, or rather this experience called forth Protestantism. It made the illegitimate, practical negation of Christianity – illegitimate in the sense of true Catholicism, though not in that of the degenerate Church – the law, the norm of life. You cannot in life, at least in this life, be Christians, peculiar, superhuman beings, therefore ye ought not to be such. And it legitimised this negation of Christianity before its still Christian conscience, by Christianity itself, pronounced it to be Christian; – no wonder, therefore, that now at last modern Christianity not only practically but theoretically represents the total negation of Christianity as Christianity. When, however, Protestantism is designated as the contradiction, Catholicism as the unity of faith and practice, it is obvious that in both cases we refer only to the essence, to the principle.
Faith sacrifices man to God. Human sacrifice belongs to the very idea of religion. Bloody human sacrifices only dramatise this idea. “By faith Abraham offered up Isaac.” – Heb. xi. 17. “Quanto major Abraham, qui unicum filium voluntate jugulavit… Jepte obtulit virginem filiam et idcirco in enumeratione sanctorum ab Apostolo ponitur.” – Hieronymus (Epist. Juliano). On the human sacrifices in the Jewish religion we refer the reader to the works of Daumer and Ghillany. In the Christian religion also it is only blood, the sacrifice of the Son of Man, which allays God’s anger and reconciles him to man. Therefore a pure, guiltless man must fall a sacrifice. Such blood alone is precious, such alone has reconciling power. And this blood, shed on the cross for the allaying of the divine anger, Christians partake in the Lord’s Supper, for the strengthening and sealing of their faith. But why is the blood taken under the form of wine, the flesh under the form of bread? That it may not appear as if Christians ate real human flesh and drank human blood, that the natural man may not shrink from the mysteries of the Christian faith. “Etenim ne humana infirmitas esum carnis et potum sanguinis in sumptione horreret, Christus velari et palliari illa duo voluit speciebus panis et vini.” – Bernard. (edit. cit. pp. 189–191). “Sub alia autem specie tribus de causis carnem et sanguinem tradit Christus et deinceps sumendum instituit. Ut fides scil. haberet meritum, quae est de his quae non videntur, quod fides non habet meritum, ubi humana ratio praebet experimentum. Et ideo etiam ne abhorreret animus quod cerneret oculus; quod non habemus in usu carnem crudam comedere et sanguinem bibere… Et etiam ideo ne ab incredulis religioni christianae insultaretur. Unde Augustinus: Nihil rationabilius, quam ut sanguinis similitudinem sumamus, ut et ita veritas non desit et ridiculum nullum fiat a paganis, quod cruorem occisi hominis bibamus.” – Petrus Lomb. (Sent. lib. iv. dist. ii. c. 4).
But as the bloody human sacrifice, while it expresses the utmost abnegation of man, is at the same time the highest assertion of his value; – for only because human life is regarded as the highest, because the sacrifice of it is the most painful, costs the greatest conquest over feeling, is it offered to God; – so the contradiction of the Eucharist with human nature is only apparent. Apart from the fact that flesh and blood are, as St. Bernard says, clothed with bread and wine, i. e., that in truth it is not flesh but bread, not blood but wine, which is partaken, – the mystery of the Eucharist resolves itself into the mystery of eating and drinking. “All ancient Christian doctors … teach that the body of Christ is not taken spiritually alone by faith, which happens also out of the Sacraments, but also corporeally; not alone by believers, by the pious, but also by unworthy, unbelieving, false and wicked Christians.” “There are thus two ways of eating Christ’s flesh, one spiritual … such spiritual eating however is nothing else than faith… The other way of eating the body of Christ is to eat it corporeally or sacramentally.” – (Concordienb. Erkl. art. 7). “The mouth eats the body of Christ bodily.” – Luther (against the “fanatics.” Th. xix. p. 417). What then forms the specific difference of the Eucharist? Eating and drinking. Apart from the Sacrament, God is partaken of spiritually; in the Sacrament he is partaken of materially, i. e., he is eaten and drunken, assimilated by the body. But how couldst thou receive God into thy body, if it were in thy esteem an organ unworthy of God? Dost thou pour wine into a water-cask? Dost thou not declare thy hands and lips holy when by means of them thou comest in contact with the Holy One? Thus if God is eaten and drunken, eating and drinking is declared to be a divine act; and this is what the Eucharist expresses, though in a self-contradictory, mystical, covert manner. But it is our task to express the mystery of religion, openly and honourably, clearly and definitely. Life is God; the enjoyment of life is the enjoyment of God; true bliss in life is true religion. But to the enjoyment of life belongs the enjoyment of eating and drinking. If therefore life in general is holy, eating and drinking must be holy. Is this an irreligious creed? Let it be remembered that this irreligion is the analysed, unfolded, unequivocally expressed mystery of religion itself. All the mysteries of religion ultimately resolve themselves, as we have shown, into the mystery of heavenly bliss. But heavenly bliss is nothing else than happiness freed from the limits of reality. The Christians have happiness for their object just as much as the heathens; the only difference is, that the heathens place heaven on earth, the Christians place earth in heaven. Whatever is, whatever is really enjoyed, is finite; that which is not, which is believed in and hoped for, is infinite.