verbal prediction, with its forward look, or prophecy, stands higher than mere substantive prediction through types. Prophecy, indeed, can only have its place where the Spirit of God, along with deeper consciousness of the defects of the existing stage of revelation, evokes firm faith in the certainty of its progressive development. But its most important place must be between the second and third stages.1 Through the revelation of the holy law man becomes conscious of the dignity to which he is called, but at the same time of how much he lacks, and that even apart from sin. But after sin has intervened there incorporates itself into the consciousness the opposite feeling, the feeling of the baseness, nay, culpability, of the empirical Ego, and of the greatness of man as to his idea and destiny. But in this way the consciousness is plunged into misery and discord, and the suspense connected therewith can only be relieved by hope of divine acts in the future. In comparison with the patriarchal stage the revelation of the law is an advance, but one that apparently repels, because the law, while it does not indeed form, is still the first rightly to disclose, the chasm between the holy God and unholy man; for the revelation of the law in the first instance merely originates knowledge, it does not prove stimulating to the will, to which it addresses itself. Thus the subject standing in the line of revelation must await the lacking consummation from the same God, from whom every previous gift originates, -even the law, which cannot remain a barren idea, but, rightly understood, points to a further revelation destined to conquer sin. The law in its secret depths is itself prophetic, and points to a future. Now, through the Spirit of God prophecy perceived that, unless a further concluding revelation were given through whose means the law first acquires operative power, the law remains an ineffectual message doomed to failure. The ideal element, the knowledge of what ought to be, longs after its complement and correlate, the side of reality. Now, through this operation of the spirit of revelation prophecy in the strict sense is introduced between the second and third stages. Raised by God's Spirit above the narrowness and constraint of the present, as also above the imperfection and sin of the world, the prophets apprehend the divine certainty 1 1 §§ 60, 61, 67. 2 Isa. lv. 8-11. of the consummation of religion upon earth,-not in individuals merely or in a nation, but in a kingdom all-embracing and indestructible,1 where God draws near to men and His tabernacle is among men, where, in the new covenant or the religion that makes all things new, the divine law is no longer written on tables of stone, but on the tables of the heart, and God's Spirit is poured out on all flesh, where, finally, Nature is privileged to participate in the glorification of spirits. But the prophets not merely behold the consummation of God's kingdom, but the more truly they ponder the previous course of revelation, the theocracy and its history, and search into the divine laws ruling therein, the more assured they become of a spiritualistic tendency desiring a full-grown consummation, and the more the image of God's kingdom in course of completion is able to unfold itself to them, and the knowledge of the historical media of the consummation to be disclosed to them. Thus the Spirit of God is able to bring before their eyes what He intends to do, nay, that consummation of which their prophetic message prepared the way. And thus, again, the consciousness is not wanting, that as God everywhere carries on His work by human instruments, so the final revelation requires a historical organ. And since further prophecy, although specially directed to what is still lacking, cannot overlook what is implanted and given in the previous stages or the prefigurements of the consummation, it adds to its stores by making use of the preceding types, of the significant phenomena or divine acts of the foretime. Thereby its image of God's perfected kingdom was enriched both in itself and as to the means of its accomplishment, and the essential features of the image were filled in. The theocratic dignities especially -kingship, prophecy, and high-priesthood—are known to be divine ideas, institutions destined yet to find a new and higher realization, to the salvation of the nation, to the glory of Jehovah, nay, to the salvation of the world. The prophets perceive that salvation cannot lie in a line of kings or priests, 1 Isa. ix. 7; Ps. ii., xlv. 7, cxlv. 13, ciii. 19, cx. 2; Dan. iii. 33, iv. 31, vii. £2, 27. 2 Isa. iv. 3 ff. + Joel iii. 3 Jer. xxxi. 31-33; Deut. xxx. 6; Ezek. xi. 19. 5 Isa. lxv. 17, lxviii. 22. 7 Deut. xviii. 15-19. 61 Pet. i. 11. or in a succession of prophets, nay, that no one of the offices can desire its own perfection apart from the rest.1 And thus even in the spirit of the prophets the offices converge to each other, and (while prophecy is presupposed as divine inspiration, the basis for the two others) from each one of them, according as in the given circumstances it forms the centre of the nation's guidance, during the course of prophecy the others are born as the essential complement of its perfection. But at the same time, all the rays, everything highest contained in the world previously in scattered features, converge more and more to the centre of an ideal personality, destined to be the divine instrument of consummation, and never again to give way to another, because when the perfect is present, reason for change no longer exists. And this is the idea of the personal Messiah, such as was looked for without doubt in Israel, nay, beyond Israel, far in the depths of the East, as the bringer of a golden age of peace and righteousness, not merely embracing Israel, but destined to form a universal kingdom. As the day of the Lord, the great judgment-day, will be One and alldecisive (for otherwise nothing but a vacillating, restless movement without fixed aim and progress would be left, out of harmony with the teleological character of the Hebrew religion), so also the perfecting of the world's course hitherto will be and remain for ever One. This Saviour will be King in power, glory, and righteousness, mighty for conflict, still mightier in His grace as Prince of Peace. On Him God's Spirit will perfectly abide, and by this very means His person be raised above the measure of inspiration. He will be the personal embodiment of the communion of God and humanity, the personal covenant between God and the nation,* the true Priest between God and man, having also kingly power at His command." He will be not David's Branch alone, but Jehovah's. But while this Branch from David's stem is at the outset adorned with all images taken from the flowery age of the kingship,-in His character of martial Leader and victorious Hero, Ruler in wisdom and righteousness as well 6 2 1 Deut. xviii.; Ps. cx.; Zech. vi. ; Isa. lii. 13, liii. 12. Isa. xlii. 6, xlix. 6, lv. 3, liv. 10, lxi. 8. 6 Isa. iv. 2; Jer. xxxiii. 15; Zech. iii. 8, vi. 12. DORNER-CHRIST. DOCT. 11. 3 Isa. xi. 1. Ps. cx. 1-4. S as Peace-bringer, the consciousness of sin, more and more awakened by the operation of the law and the idea of God's holiness, seeks likewise the reconciliation, seen to be necessary, nowhere but in Him. The way being prepared by the idea of substitution, as well as by the development of the raceconsciousness in general and the sense of common guilt, prophecy in its further development teaches that while the Messiah will not in the first instance appear as king, but in servant-form, nay, as a sufferer, He is able, in virtue of His lofty personality, to represent the nation before Jehovah and Jehovah before the nation, and that by vicarious suffering and obedience He expiates the nation's guilt and intercedes for sinners.1 And now, having passed through the high-priestly service and suffering, the kingship, along with prophecy, is re-born in new, glorified form.2 4. The consciousness of the high destiny of Israel, from which the consummation of the kingdom is to spring, holds together the kernel of the nation even after the overthrow of the State in the year 589 B.C., in order to make ready a place for the Messiah's birth. After the exile the nation comes into contact with the Persians and Greeks, and the influence of the latter grew into special importance. In opposing the religions of nature which confounded God and the world, the idea of God in Judaism had gradually assumed a somewhat rigid and one-sidedly transcendent character, such as was not inherent in the O. T. idea of God itself. A preparation could not then fail to appear, doing away with the repugnance which the strict Judaistic spirit felt towards the idea of incarnation. After Israel had fulfilled its task of maintaining the elevation of the one true God above the world in opposition to the entire world, heathenism rendered to Israel a counter service in being compelled to help in opening Judaism to the idea of the God-man, in again freeing and reviving the prophetic beginnings of the combination of the divine and human, and overcoming the abstract monotheism of Judaism in the interest of the Trinitarian idea of God.— Meantime the Romans,-those antipodes of the Hebrew principle, in the name and in accordance with the oracle of the Capitoline Jupiter, had set up their world-dominion, the ethnic 1 Isa. liii.; Zech. ix. 9, xii. 10, xiii. 1; cf. Dan. ix. 26. 2 Isa. liii. 12. caricature of the Hebrew theocracy which likewise laid claim to universality. About this time they came into collision with the Jewish nation. The iron arm of the Roman began to shatter the theocratic husk which yet must be the cradle of the Messiah, whether He appear as a Hero and victorious Prince or as a spiritual Ruler and King of Peace. Now or never must the Redeemer looked for by the nation appear in it; for soon it was scattered to the four winds, and its independent nationality for ever broken. While these parties within contended with each other, the one, through delight in the foreigner, sinking the national along with faith in the nation's destiny and duties in the materialism of unbelief without hope and progress, the other remaining faithful to the letter, but at the same time falling into stagnancy, emptying the Messianic hopes of spiritual import, and thus falling victim. to the materialism of superstition,-the Jewish nation was on the point of spiritual extinction, unless the Deliverer came, for whom at this very moment the simple Israelite believers were waiting with most eager expectation. Then the time was fulfilled, Jesus of Nazareth was born. Before, however, we pass to this point, another religion has to be mentioned which appeared after Christianity-the Mohammedan. For, Christianity, claiming to be the ever-sufficient and universal religion, while on the other hand even after it the power of producing new religions cannot yet be held to be exhausted, the question is: In what relation does Mohammedanism stand to Christianity? § 69. Appendix.--Mohammedanism. Destitute of religious originality, Mohammedanism is a rigid Judaism, based on abstract monotheism and divested of the prophetic character even in its eschatology, with the addition of the claim to be a universal religion, and can only be regarded as on the whole a means of preparing heathen masses for Christianity by the instrumentality of law and monotheism. * Gal. iv. 4. |