Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 664

640

§ 101.

For

sword.

1

THE PEKIOD OF NAIVETY

am come

to set

man

[Div. Ill

at variance with

man."

am come to send fire on the earth and what will Which sayings but delineate I, if it be already kindled?" the character of Christian heroism in contrast to a timid irenics, which fills in every gap, and covers up every differAlso, " I

;

Conflict might have been in part postponed, if the world of that age had still been confined to the stage of infantile unconsciousness, or if a tabula rasa could have been made of all development attained. But this could not be, since the Christian religion was commissioned to appear in a world which boasted of a very ripe development, and spoke at times of the golden age of emperors, and which, notwithstanding its spiritual dearth, prided itself on great things. This placed the Christian religion as an opposing force over ence.

against the historical results of a broad, and, in part, a deep-

searching development, which was sufficient unto itself, and which would not readily part with the sceptre of power over Sooner or later the Christian religion was the spirits of men.

bound

to conflict

with the existing state of things at every

and was forced at once to do this (1) with the pseudoreligions, which were still dominant; (2) with the world of thought, which it first depopulated, and then undertook to populate with its own content; and (3) with the actual world, both national and social, the whole machinery of which it resolved to place upon another pivot. This threefold antithesis

point,

:

shows itself at once with the appearance of the apostles, who would have been utterly impotent but for their spiritual heroism. Which heroism also, for the most part, they sealed From the very beginning the conflict with their blood. assumed the character of a life and death struggle on the one side being arrayed the ripest products which unregenerate human nature had thus far commanded, and the richest development the human consciousness had attained to without higher revelation and enlightening and opposed to this, upon the other side, the "foolishness of the cross," which proclaimed the necessity of palingenesis, prophesied an entirely different condition which was to ripen from this, and at the same time announced a "wisdom" that was to arrav itself antithetically ;

;

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