divine predicates, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, have reference only to the work of redemption (Trinity of revelation); he did not deny a Trinity of nature, which he was willing to adore as a mystery, but he rejected the idea that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are its necessary and personal predicates.

He taught that, instead of a Trinity of persons (set forth in the symbols of the church), we must hold a Trinity of the person, by which he understood, that that which is divine in Christ is the Father, that the divine united with the human is the Son, and the divine which proceeds from him is the Holy Spirit. The first Christians, in their simplicity, believed in three persons because they understood everything in its literal sense. The orthodox Trinitarians may also go to heaven, where they will be enlightened on this subject. But no one can be admitted into heaven who believes in the existence of three Gods, though with his mouth he may confess only one; for the entire life of heaven, and the wisdom of all the angels, is founded on the recognition and confession of one God, and on the belief that that one God is also man; and that he, who is at the same time God and man, is the Lord (Jehovah, Zebaoth, Shaddai.) See his Divine Revelation, i. (die Lehre des neuen Jerusalem vom Herrn, edit. by Tafel, 1823), p. 118, ss.

See Bengel, Abriss der sogenannten Brüdergemeinde, pp. 74, 75: "Can any one approve of the doctrine of Zinzendorf, who refuses to attribute the work of creation to the Father, and maintains that he (the Father) was either ministering to and assisting his Son, or looking at his work, or enjoying divine rest, while the latter was creating the world? who further ascribes so many other things which also belong to the Father, to the Son alone? who also ascribes to the Holy Ghost a kind of motherhood as a personal characteristic and, lastly, who treats, in so presumptuous a way, the divine doctrine of the ever-blessed Deity?" p. 119: "We ought not to slip over the Son, but neither also the Father, as if he were of no account. The latter, compared with the former, is a new, and hence a great pleasure for the devil."-Bengel also finds fault with the familiar style in which Zinzendorf treats these mysteries. Comp. p. 78, ss. [and Von der Goltz, in Jahrb. f. deutsche Theologie, 1861.] Wackernagel, Lesebuch, iii. p. 1063. In the Idea Fidei Fratrum is no particular locus de Trinitate, but a section concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (§ 84). The doctrine in question is there simply treated in its scriptural aspects, to which is added: "It is not only vain and foolish, but also dangerous, to descend into the depths of the Deity, and that incomprehensible eternity, of which nothing is revealed to us. There-1 fore we do not inquire into those things which belong to the depths of the Deity, because we hold such a course to be better than to endeavor to determine that which Scripture has not determined. It clearly teaches us: God has an only-begotten Son whom he has offered for us; there is also one Holy Ghost who is uncreated, but proceeds from the Father, and is sent to us through Christ."

Schleiermacher, Treatise on Sabellius in the Berliner Zeitschrift [translated by Moses Stuart, in Biblical Repos. (Andov.), first series, vol. v.]: Glaubenslehre, ii. § 170, ss. p. 574, ss. De Wette, kirkliche Dogmatik,

§ 43, 44 (pp. 81, 82). Twesten, Dogmatik, ii. p. 179, ss. Lücke, in the Studien und Kritiken, 1840, part 1, p. 91. On the other side: Nitzsch, in the Studien und Kritiken, 1841, part 2.

'Lessing (Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes, § 73) had already said: "What if this doctrine (of the Trinity) should lead human reason to acknowledge, that God cannot possibly be understood to be one, in that sense in which all finite things are one? that his unity must be a transcendental unity which does not exclude a kind of plurality." Schelling, Methode des akademischen Studiums, p. 102: "It is clear that the idea of a Trinity is absurd, unless it be considered on speculative grounds.... The incarnation of God is an eternal incarnation.".... Comp. p. 184. Comp. Blasche, Das Böse, etc., pp. 106, 107. Hegel, Religionsphilosophie, vol. ii., p. 230, ss.: "By God being a living spirit, we understand that he can distinguish himself from himself, produce Another, and in this Other remain identical with himself. This becoming Another, is the eternal absorption and yet production of himself." P. 261: "That which first existed was the idea in its simple universality, the Father. The second is the particular, the idea in its manifestation, the Son-viz., the idea in its external existence; so that the external manifestation is a reflex of the first, and is known as the divine idea, the identity of the divine with the human. The third is this consciousness, God as the Holy Spirit; and this spirit, as existing, is the church.-Daub makes a distinction between Deus a quo, in quo, et cui satis est Deus; Theologum. p. 110. Marheineke, Dogmatik, p. 260: "In a direct and abstract sense God is only the identity, the being which is not yet Thought, but only Spirit, per se (an sich)—the Father. In order to be this in reality, he distinguishes himself from himself, sets himself as another in distinction from himself; and in so far as he exists for himself in this separate existence, he is the Son. But inasmuch as he refers himself to himself, and abrogates this separate existence, he is a being existing in and for himself [Germ. An und für sich seiender], or Spirit."-Concerning the relation in which this speculative Trinity stands to the ecclesiastical doctrine, see Strauss, Dogmatik, i. p. 492; and Weisse, Phil. Dogmatik, § 394-481, especially § 409. The latter, from the speculative point of view, resolves the Trinity thus: the divine Reason-the Father; the divine heart (Gemüth), and the nature-in-God— the Son; the divine will-the Holy Ghost.

• Schleiermacher and Hase assign to it the last place in their systems (Hase makes it the sum and conclusion of the Christology); the adherents of Hegel the first; the former consider it the topstone, the latter the foundation of the building. This is still further connected with their views about the nature of religion. Rothe is nearest right, when he designates the Trinitarian idea of God, as set forth in Christian speculation, as entirely different from the Trinitarian idea in the church doctrine; and he openly grants that the Biblical, terms, Father, Son, and Spirit, designate wholly different relations of God from those of his immanent mode of being (Theol. Ethik, i. 77, 8q.) Compare among the recent divines, Lange, ii. 123, sq. Liebner, i. 67 (criticising the latest discussions). Martensen, 95, sq. Ebrard, i. 141, 89.

§ 296.

CREATION AND PRESERVATION OF THE WORLD. PROVIDENCE.
THEODICY.

2

After the followers of the Wolfian philosophy, and the like, had in vain endeavored to reconcile the Mosaic account of the creation with the results and hypotheses of their natural philosophy and metaphysics,' Herder, by his genial interpretation rescued this story from their hands, and brought it back to the sphere of sacred poetry, recognizing its internal truthfulness. Since that time only a few writers have defended its literal meaning. The definitions concerning the idea of creation itself, and the cognate ideas of preservation, providence, and the government of the world, are closely connected with the systems of Deism, Theism, and Pantheism* (comp. § 293). The so-called Theodicy (i. e. the mode of explaining the existence of evil in the world)' is also connected with these fundamental views, and at the same time passes over into the doctrines respecting demonology and anthropology (see below).

1

Comp. the views entertained by Michaelis and others, in the work of Herder (note 2); for further particulars see Bretschneider Entwicklung, p. 450, ss. Silberschlag, Geogonie, oder Erklärung der mosaischen Schöpfungsgeschichte, Berlin, 1780-83, 3 voll., 4to. New attempts to save the record from the standpoint of the natural sciences, by Buckland, Wagner, Pfaff, Fabri, and others. [Hugh Miller, John Pye Smith, Lyell, President Hitchcock; Dawes' Archaia, etc.] Comp. Ebrard, Die Weltanschanung der Bibel und die Naturwissenschaft, in the "Zukunft der Kirche," Jahrg., 1847. [Keil, Die biblische Schöpfungsgeschichte und die geologische Erdbildungstheorien, in Theol. Zeitschrift, 1860, Aug. Keerl, Der Mensch, das Ebenbild Gottes, i. 1860.]

Herder in his work, Die älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlects, eine nach Jahrhunderten enthüllte heilige Schrift., 1774, ss. (Comp. the review in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek xxv. p. 24, xxx. p. 53); Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, vol. ii. p. 303, ss.; Geist der hebræischen Poesie, i. p. 139, ss.

Comp. Bretschneider, p. 451. Supernaturalists also, such as Reinhard (p. 167, ss.), and others, conceded something to modern criticism. In more recent times, however, the theory of six periods (instead of days) has had earnest advocates. [See Tayler Lewis, Six Days of Creation, and Bible and Science, or the World-Problem, 1856.]

4 The idea of a creation out of nothing is founded on theistic views of the world. These views are deistic, when the creation and preservation of the world are too much separated from each other, and the connection existing between them is destroyed; they become pantheistic, when creation

appears as a mere part of preservation. Comp. the passages from the works of Fichte, Hegel, and Marheineke, collected by Hase, p. 179; and Schleiermacher, christliche Glaubenslehre, i. § 40; and Weisse, Phil. Dogmatik, § 538-556.-Further, the idea of providence is theistic, and intimately connected with the idea of a personal God; it is wanting in the schemes of deism and pantheism, which run into fatalism on the one side or the other.

C. H. Blasche, das Böse in Einklange mit der Weltordnung dargestellt, Leipz., 1827. He has revived the earlier notion, that evil is necessary in order to form a contrast with good, etc. So, too, with the adherents of the latest school. Among the more recent, see Rothe, iii. 170; Martensen, 107; Ebrard, i. 201. [Comp. particularly the New England discussions, on Sin as the necessary means of the greatest good: above, § 285, d.]

>

§ 297.

THE DOCTRINE CONCERNING ANGELS AND DEMONS.

4

During the prosaic age the belief in the existence and agency of angels had almost wholly disappeared, and supernaturalists themselves, who, on the authority of Scripture, continued to believe in their existence, knew not what to do with them.' On the other hand, the enthusiastic Swedenborg looked only the more boldly into the angelic world, but most arbitrarily substituted the notion of glorified men for the Scriptural idea of angels, and denied the personal existence of the devil. The devil was the subject of chief derision with the advocates of what were called the enlightened views of the age. Semler explained (after the example of Bekker) the demoniacal possessions by a reference to empirical psychology. But even those supernaturalists who, on exegetical grounds, believed in the reality of the demoniacal possessions recorded in the New Testament, were far from asserting their possibility in our age. In the present century, however, the belief in demoniacal possessions as affecting the body, which had continued to obtain among the lower orders of the people notwithstanding the progress of rationalism, was revived among the educated classes of Protestants themselves, for the most part in connection with the phenomena of animal magnetism and clairvoyance.' The doctrine concerning the devil too, assumed a new dogmatic significancy. Schleiermacher vindicated its poetic rights-viz. as regards sacred poetry; while Daub endeavored to assign a kind of personal existence to the author of evil: the latter, however, introduced some Manichean elements into this doctrine. Most of our theologians are now of opinion that where the doctrine concerning sin is rightly understood, the belief in the metaphysical existence of the devil is of subordinate importance; inasmuch as, according to the strictness of Scripture, he belongs at

any rate to the order of finite beings, over whose temptations (however they may show themselves) the Christian man is bound to have the victory. The doctrine respecting angels has also again come to honor among the latest writers on systematic theology, by some considered rather in a philosophic and idealizing sense, by others simply referred to the Scriptural declarations."

Thus e. g. Reinhard, p. 176 ss. He does not venture to decide which office they have in the present time (p. 191). Storr, § 49 (quoted by Hase, Dogmatik, p. 237).

Divine Revelation, i., p. 87: " Men are always surrounded by spirits and angels of God, who understand everything spiritually, because they themselves possess a spiritual nature. After death men are also instructed by angels," p. 102; comp. ii., p. 102, 126, 178, 226. In many places Swedenborg relates his discourses with angels who, in his opinion, are human beings. Angels breathe as well as men, their hearts also beat; they breathe according to the measure of Divine wisdom which they receive from the Lord; their hearts beat according to the measure of Divine love which they receive from the Lord, p. 112, comp. p. 220. Angels and spirits are also men; for all the good and true which proceeds from man is human in its form; but the Lord is the Divine-Good, and the Divine-True itself, hence he is man himself, from whom every man is man, i., p. 112. Because angels are angels on account of the degree of love and wisdom which they possess, and the same is the case with men, it is evident, that on account of the good connected with the true, angels are angels of heaven, and men are men of the church, p. 157. The wisdom of angels consists in the power to see and to apprehend what they think, p. 213. All that takes place in the spiritual world, is correspondence; for it is in correspondence with the inclinations of angels and spirits; p. 250.-In opposition to the doctrine of the church, that the angels were first created, and that the devil is a fallen angel, Swedenborg professes (p. 180) that he was taught by the angels themselves, that in the whole heaven there is not one single angel who was created at first, nor in the whole of hell one single devil who was created as an angel of light, etc. but that all angels, both in heaven and in hell, derive their origin from the human race. Hell and devil are one and the same, and angels and heaven are one and the same; comp. p. 303. That which is in man-viz. his spiritis, according to its true nature, an angel, p. 281, therefore man is created to become an angel, p. 289. In some places Swedenborg understands the Scriptural term angel in a symbolical sense. Comp. vol. ii., p. 6, 16, 18, 52,

307.

'De Dæmoniacis, 1760 (4th ed., 1779.)-Versuch einer biblischen Dæmonologie, Halle, 1776.

4

Reinhard, p. 185 ss., p. 206, speaks only of those diseases which the devil is said to have caused in the times of Christ and his apostles. Comp. p. 211. "We admit such corporeal possessions in the narratives of the gospel only on the testimony of Christ and his apostles. Accordingly, as long as such an authentic testimony is wanting in modern times, no man is justified