has no existence other than in these forms of life. But despite their numbers and variety, men are one in themselves, and through knowing this have a generic consciousness. Every one is different from the rest, and destined to remain so. But distinction is here the essential condition of communion in receiving and giving; for only he can give and receive in a living sense who is himself something. And communion, the more it becomes reality, gets the better of limitations, and converts diversity into a bond of union in love. Love is the completion of generic consciousness. But it is the completion of the individual as well; for the latter is not merely this particular finite being. To his complete nature belong both organic division and particularity, and the powers of the universal, that universal will which the race wills, and without this the particular will is Egoism. But the particular will takes up the universal, and then from the more imperfect stages of individuality and subjectivity personality arises.1 Generic consciousness is the principle of all social life, and in virtue of it man strives with all his strength after communion; but this holds good in the highest degree of the spiritual departments of life. As spirit, man is designed to exist for spirit. He is only able perfectly to obtain and exercise his knowledge, his moral nature, in a life of communion. Nay, supposing man wills his own true nature in all these departments, he wills therewith the true nature of humanity in general, and must as matter of course devote himself to the task of communicating to it as well as of receiving from it. In no province belonging to the perfection of creation can anything of a lofty character dawn on the spirit, without generic consciousness being stimulated in the most powerful way." Hence religion. is of necessity creative of communion. In everything of a lofty character impressing us, the impulse to communicate awakens; and here language has its immense significance,this gift distinguishing man as a social being. Communication through language has withal supreme significance for his own development. Only when that which slumbered or stirred within us has found clear expression in words are we complete masters of the thing itself. It then has objective

1 Cf. above, § 31a.

Schleiermacher, Der Christl. Glaube, § 6, 60.

existence for us in definite form. And again, the one who makes the communication obtains security through the others, to whom he reveals himself, that the object moving him is no plaything of chance or mere idiosyncrasy, but something substantial. And it is only this knowledge of self in others, and being known by others, which perfects in us the conviction that the words spoken and acts done proceeded from the nature of the rational genus, the conviction being thus elevated beyond the value of the thing itself. Thus subjectivity is raised out of itself, and becomes aware of its intrinsic objectivity. Personality is the minister of the genus, the genus of personality. Only in the generic organism does the latter find. its true and secure position.

§ 41. Continuation.-The Divine Image.

Man's collective organization has its unity in the fact of his being destined for community of life with God or for religion. With religion the portrayal of God in the personal creature is realized, in order that man may be God's image. This is to be viewed partly as original endowment, partly as destination.

3

1. Biblical Doctrine. and refer not merely to corporeal resemblance. As God is not contemplated in the record under a corporeal aspect, the word must also have a spiritual import, although the dignity of man's form and his powers for ruling over nature and the animal world reflect something of the divine majesty, which did not disappear even on the entrance of sin. In the same way his spiritual powers and capacities bear the imprint of the divine likeness. Still, capacities are not God's actual image, but merely its possibility. The higher import of the word "image" points to the future. In reference to what he possesses already, he is created "in" the divine image as his model; but in reference to the chief matter-his destination-he has in God a norm and ideal.

1 Gen. i. 26.

* Gen. v. 3.

3 Jas. iii. 9; 1 Cor. xi. 7.

As also in Gen. i. 26, 27, the difference between and

p ?p seems to indicate.

According to the N. T.,. the Son of God is the original image of God,' and to Him men are to be conformed spiritually and physically.2 Consequently it is through Christ that we are to attain likeness to God. That this design was realized in Adam, or that Adam is an image of God in the same sense as Christ, is nowhere said. The direct opposite is evident from the fact that not Adam before the Fall, but Christ, is proposed as our pattern. With this the O. T. record harmonizes in ascribing to the first pair innocence and purity indeed, but not moral indefectibility, perfection, and holiness. On the contrary, even deficiency in knowledge of the distinction of good and evil is ascribed to them. Consequently, the divine image according to Holy Scripture is partly original endowment, partly destination.

3

4

2. ECCLESIASTICAL DOCTRINE.-The ancient Church very accurately distinguished between eixov and opoiwois, and the Greek Church does the same in its Confession. The latter phrase expresses man's destination, which is not to be regarded as carried out at the moment of creation. The Roman Church supposes in Adam a donum superadditum justitiæ originalis standing in external connection with man's nature, but that this nature itself is found in liberum arbitrium, which continues after the Fall, although in an enfeebled state. Luther and the Evangelical Church disclaim the notion that justitia can be called a donum superadditum, as also that liberum arbitrium, considered as formal power of choice, is the imago divina. On the contrary, holiness and righteousness are counted part of the idea and true nature of man, part of justitia originalis. And because his being destined for sanctitas et justitia is part of the idea of man affirmed in his likeness to God, it is held that, as fallen, man has lost the divine likeness. But, united as the Evangelical Church is in this theory of man, according to which mere liberum arbitrium as formal power of choice or neutrality of freedom is not sufficient to define his nature, divines, and in the same way

1 Col. i. 15.

2 Phil. iii. 21; Eph. iv. 23 f.; Col. iii. 9, 10; 1 John iii. 2. 3 Rom. v. 12-20; 1 Cor. xv. 45 ff., where moreover xoixós, Yuxinós affirm neither sinfulness nor even the want of all point of connection for iõμa, but simply that Adam was not yet πνευματικός.

4 Apolog. 52, 53; Heidelb. Cat. qu. vi. 7; Helv. post. vii. 9.

the Confessions to some extent, differ upon the question whether Adam had or had not perfect actual righteousness and holiness by creation. The first is held in the Belgic Confession, and the Formula Concordiæ approximates thereto.1 On the other hand, the Apology cautiously, and with well-considered reserve, only says, that the justitia originalis of man "habitura erat hæc dona: notitiam Dei certiorem, fiduciam Dei. . . aut certe rectitudinem (right inclination) et vim ista efficiendi." Later Lutheran theology adhered to the first view, partly in an anti-Pelagian interest, partly for the purpose of cutting away all ground for supposing that the admission of imperfection in man, as he came from God's hand, would make God responsible for evil. This question forms a criterion as to whether the religious element is recognised in its affinity with the moral; or, again, whether the two are separated or confounded.

3. DOGMATIC INVESTIGATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINE IMAGE.The most important point in the idea of this image is the correlation of all man's capacities with consciousness of God; but at the same time, the idea of likeness to God as man's destination is to be distinguished from the realization of this idea through the act of creation.

As relates to the first point, namely, man's destination, the idea of man, as it is conceived in God's world-plan, and therefore willed by God's creative volition, is not exhausted in the fact of his being a teleologically co-ordinated unity of nature and soul. The soul has not merely Nature for its contents, but is susceptible also of the infinite, the divine. Nay, the idea of man also includes within it his perpetual, actual, life-relation to God, more precisely-the satisfaction of his receptiveness for God and the divine, although empirically this may only be the fruit of a series of divine acts, in which the ideal man or the ideal of man gradually establishes itself in his knowledge and volition through progressive creative realization and through appropriation on the part of man. Mere natural beings have no such ideal, no proper historical development, because no freedom. But man is a being

1 Belg. 14: Atque in omnibus plane perfectum, which however the edition of 1612 has not. F. C., p. 640, speaks indeed of a concreata justicia orig., but also adds: ad quam homo in veritate, sanctitate et justicia creatus fuerat.

summoned to freedom and historical development. Hence in his case the idea and the actuality of the idea exist apart, the latter being the fruit of free acts and coming gradually into existence. In relation to God, man's free acts are not productive in character, but are acts of reception, which may be discontinued, but without which further creative communication or realization of the idea cannot proceed.1 The freedom of man, even of empirical man, is in essential connection 2 with the morally necessary, the divine; and by this fact, not by mere liberum arbitrium, is he potentially, i.e. by his very destination, the image of the ethical God. Accordingly, from the first, destination is to be distinguished from realization.

The Catholic Church, on this point halting behind the Greek, which in the most positive way maintains this distinction, falls into a double error, that of a magical and of a Pelagianizing tendency. In order that divine grace may not send man forth empty-handed from its presence, ethical perfection is assigned him as a donum, as if this did not require to be worked out by means of freedom. On the other hand, the Roman Church, being anxious to preserve man's freedom even after the Fall, discovers his indefeasible nature precisely in liberum arbitrium, which is regarded for the most part as empty of itself, as the neutrality of freedom, while grace and holiness themselves are said to be a divine donum superadditum. The liberum arbitrium referred to has no essential relation to the contents of goodness, a view which must lead to the Scotist dogma, that man's rational capacity stands merely in a casual relation to goodness, i.c. can only receive as good what the positive legislation accepted as divine declares such, but is never able to recognise the intrinsic excellence of goodness, because this would imply that we were able to recognise it as rational in itself. The reason of this blending of magical and Pelagian tendencies lies in the mutual exclusiveness of the divine and human according to Catholic teaching, which exclusiveness is again repeated in its theory of grace. So far as grace operates, it excludes the activity of man, snatches him, so to speak, from himself for the purpose of bringing him into communion with the good; and grace, instead of being quickening and creative in its influence, puts 1 Matt. xiii. 12. § 40, 3.