The New Life of the Spirit

THE NEW LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
Sec. IL

When, in treating of the fact of the resurrection, and especially of the constitution of the future corporeity, the apostle says, in reference to Gen. ii. 7, that the first Adam was made et? -tyv^iiv £waav; the last, i.e. the Adam that concludes the history of humanity, e« mevfia fyoiroiovv,—he characterizes thereby the destination for which man was originally intended, as a destination attained in Christ. For, in the first-created man, spirit and body were first of all united by means of the soul to a self-living nature (^v^rj £a>aa), to whose own decision it was left whether it would allow itself to be determined according to God's mind by the spirit which immediately originates in God, or would selfishly conclude against God in its own separate life. For the soul was first of all the personal link of human nature; but the spirit was to become the personal power, i.e. the ruling, glorifying, and, so to speak, personifying power, of the entire personality. This object remained unattained; for the spirit—instead of proving itself ^wottoiovv, i.e. an all-pervading power of life, in ever increasing energy and with ever extending result—fell under the bondage of the flesh in such a way, that, although its God-resembling substance continues still, its God-resembling life is quenched. Man, from the good, but still in some measure undetermined, position of a self-living ^frv^rj fwtra (undetermined, in that it still wanted the confirmation and establishment of man's own proper self-determination), instead of becoming m/evfiaTiKo<;, ue. directed on all sides by the spirit that lives and moves in the God who was its source, became -v/ru^i/io? and aapKiKo<;, i.e. altogether determined by His -^v^r), escaped from the spirit, and identified in a mode adversely determined, and by the aap}; fallen away from the spirit, and therefore, from a material nature, become a gross materialistic nature. The spirit is not what it was intended to be—the personal might of the entire life; but only still a consciousness of the individual life held together by the soul. The Psyche has usurped the right of the Pneuma; in it, and not in the Pneuma, the individual life of the person has its united form of existence.¹ But in Christ a new beginning is established, which bears in itself the most infallible guarantee of completion; and on account of the superabundant intensity of its power of propagation, suggests the hope of a renewal of the whole of humanity. The spirit of the first Adam had God's presence, as it were, as a productive root, from which it could be nourished and strengthened, but from which also it might be disjoined. In the second Adam, on the other hand, the Logos united Himself inseparably with the human spirit, in such a w⁷ay, that in proportion as the threefold human life is developed out of its embryonic elements, the Logos also, which has made itself the personal ground of this life, proves itself more and more to be the divine personifying might of the same. Therefore the apostle says, o Iir^aTo? 'ASaf>t, (eyevero) eh vvevfia tfooiroiovv. The essential condition of the Adam that brings the history of humanity to its result, is distinguished as it were, a priori, from the essential condition of the Adam that begins it. The latter was a beginning to be completed; the former is the beginning of the completion itself: for His spirit, because united to the Logos, is irvevfia fyooiroiovv; and it cannot but be that it must prove itself in the region of His own personality, and thence outwardly upon humanity, an all-overpowering principle of Life, and thereby bring forward the end of the completion.

But that the history of humanity should have begun as it now ends, was an impossibility. The apostle asserts this in 1 Cor. xv. 46. The position of man as a spiritually embodied and free nature is of necessity constituted first of all psychical, i.e. subjected to the actualized dominion of the spirit by means of the Psyche. The pneumatic position is the appointed result. Pervading by the spirit, or what is the same thing, glorification of man's nature, is the end, not the beginning. Precisely because it is the end, the irvevfia in the New Testament is conceived as occupying a position that overtops and determines all other psychological ideas.²

The destination of the earthly man for a life pervaded by the spirit and of free powers, which had been placed at an un

¹ Vid. v. Zezschwitz, Profan/jriicitiil u. Ml. Sprachgeist, p. 46.
» Ibid. I.e. p. 33.

attainable distance by the fall, is realized in Christ. "The first man," adds the apostle, ver. 47, "is of the earth, formed of dust; the second man is from heaven." But is not then the spirit of the first man of heavenly origin, inasmuch as it was breathed into him from God; and, moreover, is not the corporeity of Christ also of earthly origin, inasmuch as He was born of Mary? True, in both cases: the first man had a heavenly side, and the second man had an earthly side of His nature. Even the corporeity of the Exalted One, although celestially transformed and taken up into the Godhead, is still, in consideration of its origin, no other than that which was assumed in Mary. But still the antithesis of the apostle consists in its complete sharpness; it refers to the fundamentally and essentially distinct commencements of the two founders of humanity. The one, in that God the Creator first of all formed dust of the earth into a human body, had a real earthly beginning; the other, on the other hand, had a personal heavenly beginning, in that God the Redeemer, of His own free self-power, entered into the womb of the Virgin: the one became a person, because the created spirit was united with the body which came into existence without his co-operation; the other was already a person, when He made Himself the subject of a human nature that did not come into existence without His will. While thus the task was proposed to the one, spiritually to overcome the earthly base of his being, which anticipated his knowledge and will,—a task which he might, and also which he might not, accomplish, and which in effect he did not accomplish; the other is, as it were, a priori, Lord in the region of human nature, into which, as descended from heaven, He entered, by the power of a consciously free will, without losing Himself; and although His spirit does not at once glorify the body, it is still in the power of the divine heavenly Ego, which is conscions in Him of itself to itself in a human manner, as an a priori power and guarantee of an infallible glorification.¹ The

¹ I have proceeded above from the critically attested reading, i ltirtpn; Mpu^o; \% mpetnm. The o Ktip/of which the textus receptus has before i£ ovpxnov, is, however, altogether according to the meaning of the apostle; and when I consider the intentional expression ix yijf xo'"*ofi it appears to me that as if oipxrov corresponds to the U yjjf, there must also be a predicative idea to correspond to the yfiUi;. The original text had, as I am

apostle is not here concerned with the way of the Lord from the power of glorification to the realization of glorification: he sees Him, as it were, in the heavenly glory of the end attained, but with especial retrospect to the divinely-fulfilled spiritual principle, of which that life of glory must be the unfailing consequence.

When, therefore, in ver. 48 he thence concludes, that as the old humanity, according to the first Adam, must be made earthly, so the new humanity, according to the second Adam, must be made heavenly; and that as we have borne the image of the earthly (the first Adam), so also we shall bear (<f>opeoofiev) the image of the heavenly (the second Adam), he means thereby the consummation placed before us at the resurrection, which will bring to outward manifestation that for which the ground is prepared, by our becoming previously inwardly like to Christ, through being transplanted from the position of the '^u^'? fwira into the position of the Vvcv/ta fyjoiroiovv; for without participation in the wevfia tjooiroiovv of the Incarnate One, although He was still subjected to the mortal conditions of a fleshly body, we have no part in the awfia irvevfiaruibv of the Risen and Exalted One.

But how do we receive a part in the life-giving spirit, and in consequence thereof, also in the spiritual body of Christ, the new heavenly man? A share in the body, soul, and spirit of the first Adam, in their determination by the fall, we have by means of physical begetting, like the lower animals. A new humanity could not possibly originate from Christ in this manner. It originates by means of a new creation, which

convinced, o ltvrtpoi Kvpia; ej ovpxvov without the i before Kvpm;. For (1) Tertullian, Adv. Marc. v. 10, translates with the old Latin translation, "Primus homo de humo terrenus, secundo dominus de coelo," without here contending with Marcion. But that the latter, in ver. 45, read dominus novissimus (o iaxxro; Kipioi) pro novissimo Adam, bears an indirect witness in favour of the originality of the Kipm; in ver. 47. (2) The Greek Dial, contra Marc, writes also the reading, i ltvrtpo; Kvpio; f£ ovpttmi, on Marcion's account, who thereby had wished to oppose the reality of the incarnation of Christ. It is plain how o fai,rtpo; Kvpm; became suspicious, as being Marcionitish: one could not reconcile one's self to the true meaning, "the second (man), the Lord from heaven;" and so found a remedy, partly through a repetition of the dnDpuvo;, partly by insertion of the article that was intentionally omitted before the predicative idea.

moreover is a birth, but, as a birth from above, is essentially different from the earthly birth. By the power of the eternal Word united in Him with the human constitution of nature, Christ is a person creatively powerful, which, so far generally as the distance of the creature from God permits likeness, can produce from its nature its like; in addition to which, the humanity of the God-man, after it is taken up into the circle of the absolute internal divine life, became the Pleroma and Medium of the entire triune Godhead.

But the new creation is distinguished from the first. The latter created man out of nothingness into existence; the former finds the ungodly being of man in existence, and transforms it into a godly one.¹ Its point of entrance is the conscience, that "remains of spirit in the psychical man ;"² and it is completed by first of all changing the godlessness of man— his separation from God—into fellowship with God, which is effected by the proffer of itself of the newly-acquired divine love through Christ to man, in the word that condemns sin and promises forgiveness of sins, and by man's laying hold of this word and its subject, and receiving them into himself by means of the faith which this word produces. With this most internal operation of all which addresses itself to the innermost nature of man that is unalterably referred to God, and first of all changes man's consciousness of his mutual relation to God, i.e. his conscience, into a good one; briefly, with justification, the work of grace begins.³ Its first operation is a free love, that comes through on God's side to meet man; on man's side a change of consciousness effected sola fide. The transference of the human Ego out of the principle of wrath into the prin

¹ For beyond the Sabbath of creation, into which God entered, there is no further creation, in the sense of production of new natures, but only creative confirmation of that which had been fundamentally created at the beginning. This against Schultz, Voraussetzungen der christl. Unsterblichkeitslehre (1861), p. 172.

^J Thus v. Zezschwitz names the conscience (Profang. u. bibl. Sprachg. p. 55).

³ In F. Weber, Die Lehre vom Gewissen, I.e. p. 85: "If the difference between the divine and human will came into consciousness in the conscience, there needed faith in the forgiveness of sins to do away with this difference, to receive a good conscience by means of faith, i.e. to change the judgment of conscience," etc.

ciple of love makes the beginning (vid. Div. III. Sec. V.). Thus, with the new birth or regeneration of the Ego, the work of grace began in the old covenant; and so far as it occurs in the consciousness, it remains also in the New Testament, limited within the present life to this life-giving point of origination.

But since the mystery of the incarnation has been accomplished, other divine agencies are added to this one, which make sinful man a partaker in the spirit, the soul, the body of Christ; whereby, as by his descent from Adam he was earthly, so by his derivation from Christ he might become spiritual and heavenly. These are agencies which,—just as little as in the case of the inbreathing which endued the first man with soul, and just as little as in the case of the descent of children, in respect of spirit and soul, from their parents,—are to be represented as if Christ gave up a portion of His spirit, soul, and body, which is absurd. But there proceed from Christ, according to His threefold human condition, certain agencies, which establish man, in the way of participation with Christ's spirit, soul, and body, in a fellowship which is powerful to transform his own spirit, his own soul, his own body. The work of grace is thus carried forward by the fact, that (1) we receive of the spirit of Christ, which, when it put aside every limitation in the resurrection, was combined into one with the Holy Spirit, so that all communication of the Spirit, as is shown by the pentecostal gift, is effected since the ascension of Christ through the spirit of the Son of man. This communication of the Spirit again revives the extinguished image of God in our spirit, and keeps it living: it restores our spirit thereby to its true nature; so that man, who even naturally has not ceased to have a irvevfia, now for the first time again begins to have a rvevfia rightly (Jude 19), and to be irvevfiariKos (1 Cor. ii. 12-16; comp. irvevfia, John iii. 6).¹ (2.) We receive of Christ's soul, for we ¹ The matter is clear, and yet is often lamentably confused. That Scripture distinguishes in the work of grace a human sr»tS^a from the "mivfia of God or of Christ, is shown by passages such as Rom. viii. 16, 2 Cor. vii. 1, comp. 1 Cor. ii. 11, v. 3, without contradiction. Looking to his substantial nature, no man is without this ir'nifta; but, looking to his destination for a divinely-associated personal power of human entire life, all who stand outside of grace are \^x/*oi; and in so far as they have extinguished in themselves the last remains of spirit—the conscience—they

receive of Christ's blood; but the blood is the soul, i.e. soul and blood are involved in one another (Div. IV. Sec. XI.). It is the blood in and with which He poured out His soul for us (Isa. liii. 12), but not that blood which flowed from His dying form upon the ground, but that which remained, in identity with the former, to Him the Exalted One,—the blood which extinguished the wrath, and is now entirely pervaded in its complete perfect doxa by the divine love. This divine human blood of the Mediator becomes the tincture of our soul, whose doxa has become Turba and although, within the range of this life, it still does not abrogate this Turba, yet it removes its liability to condemnation, and therefore its curse. And by the power of love and of peace that it contains in itself, it appeases the raging wild struggle of powers; so that by virtue of this blood, and of the spirit which in Christ's spirit has again become God's, the soul recovers its godlike doxa, if not at once in mid-day clearness, yet still, as it were, in morning twilight and dawning. In the essential relation in which the soul stands to the body, this is also to the advantage of the body; but we receive, moreover, (3) of the flesh of Christ, which, because it came into being by means of heavenly begetting in the womb of Mary, and is pervaded by the life-giving Spirit (John vi. 63), is of the nature of spirit, and is capable of spiritual uses. This flesh, which He Himself called heavenly bread of life, and manna that makes immortal, enters into us without minglinc with our sinpervaded materialistic animal flesh; but in respect of this our Adamic flesh, it becomes for us a power of gracious encourage

are absolutely without spirit, ir»tCfta fti) t^oim; (Jude 19). The work of grace consists precisely in this, that it realizes again the lost godliko nature of the spirit that is called to dominion, and develops a spiritual beginning of the man thus once again restored (1 Cor. xv. 45). That in many places it is hard to say whether the human or the divine irni,ua is to be understood, arises from the fact that the ir'vti,u.a of the Godhead and of Christ, that has become immanent in the human iwtvfta, or the human irnvfta renewed by means of this immanence, is meant. Scripture does not in that respect keep divided in conception that which is actually involved.

¹ The seven strings of the soul, says my Elberfeld critic, arc out of tune. That which has made them discordant, is the world-spirit that has got within them, and through this the spirit of darkness. If the spirit of Light do not again harmonize the seven strings, their noise and croaking will neither cease in this world nor in the world to come.

ment and of victory—an assurance and pledge of life in the midst of death—a tincture of immortality, which in spite of corruption lays hold of the essence of our flesh, in order eventually in the resurrection to assimilate to itself even its outward appearance.¹ These three divine agencies peculiar to the New Testament, proceeding from Christ's spirit, soul, and body upon our threefold constitution (1 Thess. v. 23), may be called the regeneration of the natural life; so far as the whole circumference of the constitution innate in man, in which the merely actual Ego is established as a centre, may be comprehended under the name of nature (Div. IV. Sec. II.).

In what distinct way the means of grace, the word and sacrament, serve to this manifestation of the new man accord

¹ That which Philo (who also in his fashion was a forerunner of Christianity) so often lays down as the aim of the soul, to be attained by the condescending and merciful love of God, and of His Logos, has thus first become truly attainable by the incarnation of the Logos, and the fulness of grace disclosed thereby. The ladder which Jacob saw, says Philo (Opp. ed. Man gey, i. 642), has a significance of a cosmologic-symbolical and of an anthropologic-symbolical kind. "If we take in view the latter, the soul corresponds to the ladder, whose basis, sensuous perception (xfoiaoi;), is corporeal, and so to speak earthly; but its top, the absolutely pure spirit (voSf), is heavenly. In the soul, according to its entire nature, the Logoi (Aoyw) of God pass incessantly up and down, drawing it upwards when they ascend with themselves, detaching it from this mortal state, procuring for it the glimpse of things peculiarly and only worthy to be seen, without dragging it down when they descend. For God and the divine Logos have not injury in view, but condescend to the human race in kindness and compassion, rendering help and assistance in order to make alive again the soul that is still dwelling in the body as in a fluctuating stream, —powers of healing breathing forth upon it from them. It is true, in absolutely purified dispositions (8/«e»o/«/;) God alone dwells unheard and unseen, the director of all, as is declared to the wise man in a recorded saying of God (Lev. xxvi. 12), ' I will dwell in them, and I will be their God.' But to the souls of those who still are engaged in the process of purification, and have as yet not fully cleansed the life that has become foul and polluted by the encumbering corporeity, angels associate themselves, divine Logoi (Aoyo/), refining them by the contemplation of their beauty and goodness. How heavy, however, is the evil confusion of evil indwellers, which is expelled when the One Good (ti( i dyxU;) makes His dwelling, is manifest. Therefore, O soul, give diligence still to become God's house—a holy temple; from a soul so absolutely weak, to become a strong; and from one so powerless, a mighty one j a prudent soul, from a foolish one; a deliberate from a frantic one."

ing to the likeness of Christ—this and other dogmatic questions are apart from the purpose of biblical psychology.¹ It would, however, be to circumscribe this science unreasonably, if it were denied the right of expanding itself, in the way in which we have undertaken to develop it, over the new spiritual life. As the naturally spiritual-psychical constitution of man is a constitution not merely ethically, but also substantially, affected with corruption, so also is its restoration a restitution at the same time ethical and substantial; and therefore the work of grace which is the foundation of this restoration is a psychologic phenomenon. Because the theological sciences are an organism, none is so independent as not to be connected on all sides with the others, and to be articulated with them. One is incomplete without the others. How much need dogmatics have of psychology, and how rightly the latter extends its investigation, even into the soteriologic field, will be still more plainly evident, as we come to agree upon the twofold sphere of human subjectivity, in which the mysterious fact of regeneration is completed.