The first part of Anthon Günther’s work began with the theoretical problem of describing the nature of God and his relation with nature and finite spirits. Günther opposed modern pantheism, which tried to put God on the same level with finite entities. He insisted that divine self-consciousness is on a completely different level from human self-consciousness, where the former involved God positing its own substance as an object (Logos) different from God as subject and noticing the identity of itself as object and itself as subject as a third entity (divine Spirit), while human self-consciousness could note its own dependence on this interconnected trinity of entities. At the end of the first part, Günther hinted that we could still learn more about divinity through our conscience, which he suggested was a direct pronunciation of divine existence to humans.
The second part of the book engages this very topic of human conscience. The setting of the first part - a theology student exchanging letters with his uncle, a mouthpiece of Günther - continues in the second part, by nephew presenting to his uncle the problem of evil. Nephew notes that because modern pantheism denies freedom of human will, it has to accept that evil is just a necessary aspect of human consciousness, which could be overcome only by returning humans to the unconscious existence of animals. In effect, nephew insists, this would mean either that the devil is equally strong as God or that God himself is also the source of evil.
To make his point, nephew picks out two recent philosophers who had discussed the question of evil. First of these is I. H. Fichte, whom we met in the first part of the book and who was the son of the more famous philosopher, J. G. Fichte. Fichte’s ideas on evil begin from the Kantian notion that humans have an innate and inexplicable predisposition toward evil, which hinders the freedom of our will. Fichte tries to explicate this notion further by suggesting that the universality of evil requires that we must assume an inexplicable, supernatural, destructive principle as the source of all evil - that is, Fichte endorses dualism. Furthermore, Fichte assumes that humans have had to decide between the creative principle or God and the destructive principle, temporal existence in separation from God being the result of a wrong choice. Nephew points out that the idea of a pre-temporal choice releases temporal human consciousness of all responsibility for their life choices. In addition, he notes that this idea of temporality as a result of corruption is in contradiction with another theory of Fichte’s, namely, that of God revealing himself through human spirits.
As his second example, nephew chooses Bernard Heinrich Blasche, better known as a pedagogue. In his more philosophical works, Blasche endorses a panentheist position, where God is the point of unity of the world, finite entities being just necessary self-particularisation and differentiation of this unity. Evil means for Blasche simply separation from original unity, being thus a mere intrinsic development of a possibility inherent in God himself. In effect, nephew concludes, Blasche simply identifies God with the devil.
Uncle agrees with nephew that the two philosophers fail to explain the true origin of evil. He sees Fichte as ultimately being committed to pantheism, because of his notion that individuals are just revelation of God, which means that they can never truly be separate from God and therefore cannot be evil. Blasche, on the other hand, ultimately follows the trend set by Schelling, whereby freedom is swallowed by necessity. In an interesting side remark, uncle notes that his contemporaries do the very same thing, when they explain bad decisions of individuals by differences of temperament and bodily influences.
With the options of the eternal dualism and the interpretation of evil as a modification of good ruled out, it is up to the nephew to come up with a third option. The only solution left, he thinks, is that evil arises from the level of finite entities, being thus something that is not a necessary part of existence. For instance, he concludes, in the original state, as intended by God, humans were not evil, but they became evil, when they opposed divine will and made their own interest into their highest law. Yet, this solution begs the question: how could a human, made perfect by God, fall into evil?
Nephew tries to find the answer from the works of a noted theologian, August Tholuck. Tholuck had insisted, firstly, that God couldn’t have given human a predisposition toward evil. Yet, Tholuck had noted, humans had an ability for evil in the sense that being evil wasn’t in contradiction with the essence of humanity, but only with the end appointed by God to humans. No true reason could persuade a perfect human to turn evil, Tholuck admitted, but they could be instigated to a blind, reasonless act, if deceived by deceptive reasons. Tholuck’s conclusion had been that the allure of the devil had been persuasive enough.
Uncle is not convinced of Tholuck’s account. He notes that it hinges on a formal notion of possibility, which outlines only what is thinkable. A more substantial notion of possibility is linked to actuality in the substantial sense, which the uncle defines as just another name for the system of causal relations. Possibility and necessity, he suggests, are then just different ways to reflect on this nexus of causality: we speak of necessity, when causal relations are certain and uniform, and of possibility or contingency, when the relations are uncertain. Furthermore, nature is especially characterised by necessity and spirits by possibility, because latter have a freedom to manipulate causal chains that the former do not, and indeed, uncle insists, with spirits disposition cannot really be distinguished from possibility or ability.
Because ability and disposition to evil cannot be separated, uncle notes, the seeming contradiction still remains - why would God allow humans to choose evil? The reason, uncle remarks, cannot be that finite creatures as such could not exist without this possibility, because natural things as necessary cannot be evil. Uncle thus denies the Augustinian idea that evil derives ultimately from finite entities being created out of nothing and thus having intrinsic lack in their essence - he notes that Augustine mistakenly treated nothing if it was something substantial. Augustine’s mistake led then to the same error pervading also Tholuck’s theory, uncle says - both philosophers thought that evil was caused by acting blindly and without reason, although it is quite the opposite, that is, evil and sinful action causes blindness.
Uncle returns then to the original state of human beings. God, he begins, created other beings, firstly, because he wanted to reveal himself to other beings, and secondly, because he lovingly desired that other beings would share in his blessedness. The original human being, uncle describes, had a spirit created immediately by God and a body fashioned by organic forces created by God. This original human being knew God as the source of its existence, itself as a subject of this knowledge of God and nature as something in close connection with itself. Now, uncle continues, God revealed also to human being the end fashioned to it and commanded the human to form itself according to that end by taking part in the blessedness of God. In a sense, then, the original human being, as imagined by the uncle, was not yet perfect, but could perfect itself through its own action, making human then a sort of image of God as the creator. The original human being became evil, uncle explains, because it chose to not subjugate to divine will. By so doing, it did not cancel its own existence and certainly not the divine existence, but merely contradicted the divine command to remain in connection with God.
Nephew accepts at once uncle’s account and adds quickly that other, non-embodied spirits or angels must have also faced a similar choice - essence of the sin of the devil is the same as the sin of humans, that is, choosing oneself over God. The consequence of this sinful choice, he notes, is that the sinful creature cannot anymore be called the image of God, that is, it is not in connection with divine substance - by trying to become positive in itself, a creature distanced itself from God, just like two positive poles of magnets repel one another. In case of humans, nephew explains, this distancing means especially the loss of God-given ability of human spirit to control its animal body effectively. In effect, then, nephew suggests, sin of spirit of trying to rule by its own force leads to flesh rebelling against the spirit. Concrete effects of this rebellion, he points out, are the eventual succumbing of human bodies to forces of nature in death and the necessity of humans to reproduce sexually. But it is not just nature that opposes the sinful human being, but also divine will, nephew adds, and the human hears this opposition as a voice of its own conscience declaring guilt for the sin.
Uncle is ready to add a few important details to the nephew’s account. Firstly, he points out that the sin of fallen angels differs from human sin, because the former do not have bodies and therefore do not reproduce and have further generations of angels or a history in the proper sense of the word. Thus, uncle deduces, disembodied spirits could not really experience any salvation, but they are eternally condemned to an existence without God. How can such eternal damnation be justified? Uncle’s answer is that this is simply what the fallen angels have wanted and always will want - their choice was to live without God, who out of his love lets the fallen spirits live without God. Indeed, he continues, this is the very purpose of the existence of free creatures - to let them decide whether they want to live in the light of God or to shroud themselves in a shadowy existence of a sinner.
Furthermore, uncle shows another sense, in which the image of God has been destroyed in the sinful humanity. What is given to a human being when he becomes an image of God is not the full divinity, which a finite creature could not obtain. Instead, it has to be something that could be shared by humans and God, namely, self-consciousness. Now, even sinful humans are conscious of themselves in a sense, but their self-consciousness is not as clear as when they understand their relation to God. Instead, sinful humans can confuse themselves with God or nature or confuse God with nature. In other words, various forms of non-Christian ideologies, like pantheism, are another consequence of human sin.
Finally, uncle points out that guilt is not in a proper sense of the word a consequence of the sin. Sin, he explains, is a relative concept, in which someone changes his relation toward God. Now, a necessary counterpart or the other side of this sinful action is a reciprocal action of God severing his connection to the sinner. Feeling of guilt, uncle says, is then the necessary form in which sinful persons experience their own sinful action. Difference is that the sinful action cancels itself immediately - by severing its ties to God, sinner also destroys the abilities, by which it could again make sinful choices. On the contrary, the feeling of guilt lingers on as a thought of God, which is now as good as dead for the sinner.
The account so far has shown how a human being in their original state could have sinned. The next problem is why humans now appear to be born already in a sinful state. Traditional answer was the notion of an original, hereditary sin, which was a middle position between traducianism - the idea that spirits of humans were born out of the spirits of their parents - and the Origenean theory that human spirits had existed before the birth of their bodies and had been condemned to an earthly life because of a choice in that earlier, pretemporal state. The official catholic position was that human spirits were generated by God, at the same time as their bodies were generated, thus making the two other positions untenable. The mediating position indicated that original sin of the first was somehow transmitted to their descendants, even if the spirits of these descendants were made directly by God. Question is how this transmission was possible.
Nephew considers first the solution offered by Philipp Marheineke, a theologian of Hegelian school. Marheineke suggested that all humans shared the original sin, because they all were part of the human genus. This general sin, instigated by first humans, had to still become our personal sin through our individual choice, Marheineke said, because without personal choice we could not be responsible for the sin. Marheineke also suggested that this choice was somehow inevitable, so that no individual was in the end exempt from guilt. Nephew notes that Marheineke’s solution is no real solution: if the choice of evil is necessary for humans, then they are not really responsible for the original sin and are like mere animals.
Nephew’s answer to Marheineke is that original, hereditary sin must be something essentialy different from personal sin based on our bad choices. Furthermore, he differentiates between a complete personality of an actual individual, created by free choices, and spirit as a complex of unactualised potentialities. Nephew points out that even before becoming a full personality, individual spirit is active, for instance, in differentiation of various psychological capacities. These prepersonal activities of spirit, nephew concludes, are still unfree or instinctual and could be said to be affected by the original sin, if they were hindered by separation from God.
Nephew’s answer still leaves open the question why God continues to create human spirits that remain in separation from God. His solution lies in the dual nature of humans. Beyond spirits, he says, humans also have bodies, which happen to be naturally generated and connected to divinely created spirits. This means, nephew insists, that humans form no mere abstract class, but a genus or family, where the first person represents the whole of humanity. Because new humans belong to such an organic whole, their spirits must be affected by the corruption of the first humans. In effect, this means that the new humans are also divorced from God, coming into contact only with the voice of conscience declaring human guilt. Even more, nephew insists, the activities of new humans are tainted by a tendency to pridefully choose oneself over God and a fixation with nature and its delights.
Nephew admits that God could still create spirits linked to divinity, but these would form a completely new species, unrelated to the descendants of the first human. He also admits that God could simply destroy the family of humans, but won’t do it, because of a possibility to eventually save some of the lost humans.
Uncle still presents some clarifications to the hereditary nature of original sin. His main point lies in the notion that humanity is connected by a sort of Platonic idea (although he calls it Kantian). This idea is not just an abstract concept, he explains, but a true organic unity, through which we humans can feel a connection with one another. In effect, it is also a blueprint for generating humans, which was perverted by the sin of the original humans and thus resulted in the creation of perverted humans.
Uncle also explains that the sinful disposition of the humans does not lie in their spirits as such, which still have the ability to choose God. Instead, the perversity or sinfulness lies in their being disconnected from God and at the same time connected with an animal body. The animal body as such knows nothing about God, because it feels only appearances and lives only for sustaining itself through its descendants. Spirit, on the other hand, starts to revolve around itself, when not sustained by divine light. Because the human spirit is organically connected with the body, it is also tempted by its sensuous concerns. Still, uncle notes, there is something helping spirit to gain control over the body and turn again toward God, namely the voice of conscience.
The next letter of the nephew concerns the various ways humans could relate to the call of conscience. The relation to conscience is, in fact, the way in which the nephew classifies various religions. He wants, thus, to present an alternative to various philosophies of religion of German idealists, where religions were usually put in a developmental order. As an example, nephew gives an account of Johann Erdmann’s philosophy of the history of religion, which seems like a slight modification of the Hegelian philosophy of religion. Nephew’s judgement is clear: human beings have an innate tendency for such abstract conceptualisations that have little to no basis in empirical facts.
True principle of classifying religions, nephew insists, is whether followers of that religion have obeyed the call of conscience or not. The latter, he surmises, is the essence of paganism. By turning away from the call of the God, pagans cloud their understanding of the proper relation of humans to God and nature. Firstly, they might think humans as essentially similar to nature, falling to some sort of pantheism. The nephew supposes two possible extreme forms of pantheism, with various mediating positions between them. First type of pantheism supposes that spirits are emanations from the absolute and nature is then a yet further emanation from spirit. Although nephew does not identify this idealistic pantheism with any particular religion or philosophy, it bears a striking resemblance to Neoplatonism. The second, realistic form of pantheism reverses the roles of nature and spirit, suggesting that human spirit is just a development of its natural side. Nephew finds traces of this idea in Greek polytheism, in the sense that Greeks believed some humans could eventually evolve from mere natural state into real divinities.
A contrast to the pantheistic religions, nephew continues, is provided by dualisms, where the struggle between spirit and nature is explained through the existence of two equally powerful principles. He suggests that dualism has two extreme forms, corresponding to two forms of pantheism. Just like realistic pantheism speaks for the self-development of humans, an ethical dualism, exemplified by Persian religion, states that humans should become heroes fighting for the good principle. On the other hand, just like idealistic pantheism speaks instead of action, more of an occasional mystical retreat into the original unity, theoretical dualism, which nephew identifies with Buddhism, supposes that humans spirits will eternally be mere playthings of dualistic forces, reincarnating from a better fate to worse and back.
Even paganism wasn’t completely mired in error, nephew admits and points out various indication of theism in Hindu writings. Even more important to him are hints of a coming saviour in various pagan religions. Yet, nephew says, the proper answer to the call of conscience - obeying God - was shown by Jewish people. Because of the proper answer, nephew explains, they received a second revelation of God, not as a commanding lord, but as a loving father. When the rest of humankind was falling more and more toward error, the chosen people could keep the idea of loving father alive.
In addition to the new revelation, nephew adds, the original revelation of a commanding lord had to be kept alive also, which happened by God declaring in audible voice the divine law. Thus, God very literally ruled the chosen people, while pagan societies were based on mere human will. Nephew also notes another contrast: while paganism spread all over globe, the force of Judaism was not in extension, but in intension, making it understandable, why there could be only one chosen people. Despite being a positive contrast to paganism, nephew reminds the reader that Judaism had its weak points also.Jews confused symbols, like animal sacrifice, with their true ethical meaning. Eventually, this led to Jewish cult becoming a mechanical following of rites and rituals, while the prophecies quickly became mere signs of an awaited upcoming political upheaval.
When the juxtaposition of paganism and Judaism had developed to its extreme, nephew continues, a saviour had to arrive. The task of this saviour or Christ, nephew says, was to build anew the original relation between humans and God. This second Adam had to be, then, directly unified with God or one of the moments of the trinity. In fact, nephew adds, he had to be the moment that is involved in God becoming an object both to himself and to others, that is, the second person or Logos. Because Christ should save humanity, he should also have a body belonging to the human family. Finally, Christ should face a similar choice like the first humans did, that is, he had to renounce sin both externally, by living in poverty, and internally, by freely obeying the plan of God.
What puzzles nephew is the relation of the human and divine side of Christ. The official catholic dogma was another mediating position between extremes, one of which held that the divine nature swallowed immediately and completely the humanity of Christ, while the other extreme held that the human Jesus was only in his adult life attached to Logos during his baptism. The mediating position stated that Christ united two different natures (humanity and divinity) within a single unified person. Nephew thinks that this unification of persons makes the human side of Christ too subservient, since Christ then has no human self-consciousness distinct from the divine self-consciousness.
The lack of human self-consciousness is especially vital in relation to the question of salvation, nephew clarifies. How can we call Christ a representative of humanity, if he experiences everything like God would, for instance, knows everything that is about to happen to him? And is his choice of pure life really something worthy of applaud, since the choice is made by a divine person? Despite his doubts about the means of salvation, nephew does not want to follow Duns Scotus, who said that God had just arbitrarily decided to let Christ be crucified and then accept this as a salvation for humanity. Instead, nephew insists God must have had a reason for choosing the particular method of salvation he did.
It is again up to the uncle to explain what the nephew had not understood. His main point is that Church Fathers and scholastics were interested in their account about the objective side of the entity called Christ - is this combination of divine and human sides a unified individual entity? This is evidenced by the Greek of the original, hypostasis, that was translated as person by the Latin church - it is not so much a personality, but an individual existence, compared to general nature or substance, that the word refers to. Subjective experience, uncle insists, became a philosophical topic only after Descartes, so it is not a wonder, if the phenomenology of the experience of Christ was not a problem older philosophers or theologians considered.
Thus, uncle finds it acceptable to assume that the human personality of Jesus exists as well as the consciousness of divine Logos in Christ. He notes that multilayered personality is not a rare thing, because even the divine trinity has a unified abstract personality built on top of three more concrete personalities. Other examples uncle mentions are a consciousness of the natural genus, built on top of experiences of individual animals, and human personality, which consists of an animal and spiritual consciousness. Thus, although Jesus was joined with Logos to form a single, unified entity or Christ, Jesus the human need not have the divine perspective of things, even if he was always aware of sharing his thoughts with Logos. At times Logos controlled Christ, but at other times it left the control to Jesus, who then was just as human and ignorant of the true essence of everything as we all are.
Nephew still wants to tackle the question of how the suffering of an innocent person like Christ can help the sinful humans. His point of reference is the theory of de Maistre, who suggests that guilt has something to do with our animal life, embodied especially in blood, so that it has to be paid in blood, no matter whose blood it is. The nephew has several things to criticise in this account. How can our unfree animal side be held accountable for the sin, which has been instigated by our spiritual side? And how can someone else’s blood pay for one’s own sin?
The true explanation, nephew says, is the essence of a human being as a synthesis of animal body and spirit. Just like persons of trinity, our animal and spiritual sides are so closely interconnected that even guilt of the spirit touches the animal body. Now, while spirits as such are independent individuals, animals form an organic whole - a genus - which also makes the inheritance of guilt possible for humans. Indeed, a sin of the representative of the whole genus - the first living person - can make the whole of humanity guilty in the eyes of God. Because humans have a dual nature, their genus can have two representatives - while Adam represented the animal side of humanity, Christ represents its spiritual side. And, nephew concludes, just like Adam’s sin can be inherited by the whole genus, so can Christ’s salvation work be inherited by all humans. Of course, he adds, it requires some effort from the part of the individual human to imitate Christ and become worthy of his salvation.
Salvation is not yet over with the sacrifice of Christ, uncle notes, because Christ merely removed human guilt, but did not yet reconnect humans with God. The work of reconnection, he explains, is left for that moment of divine trinity, which unifies the earlier ones, that is, the Spirit or the sense of community between Father and Logos. The work of the divine Spirit, uncle continues, parallels the work of Christ. Christ was, firstly, a priest who sacrificed himself for the whole of humanity - his followers experience this sacrifice again and again in sacraments, like Eucharist. Additionally, Christ was a prophet who taught the truth of God to his disciples - his followers continue telling this truth to further and further persons. Finally, Christ was a king who set out a hierarchy among his disciples .- the community of his followers are ruled by law and justice.
What uncle is describing is obviously the Christian church, in which humans try to imitate divine salvation through their faith and charity and gain for this service the sacraments, in which the divine Spirit reconnects them with God. This church is to divine Spirit in a sense what Jesus was to Logos, with the exception that church and Spirit do not form a unified entity. As a good Catholic, uncle and Günther with him, places most importance to priests, who represent the human side of salvation. Priests form a distinct class in the Church, just like Jesus was special among humans, but they are not direct descendants of him, just like Jesus was not born from copulation. In fact, it is the class that matters in priests, so the moral worth of the priest does not affect the worth of their position. In fact, uncle concludes, priests are just servants created by the community for the purpose of objectifying the life of love.
What then should we think about Günther’s grand theory? Express catholicism is not a common sight among philosophers nowadays, so many of his basic suppositions seem suspect and quite outlandish. Furthermore, Günther’s attempts at modernising the old faith appear to not have convinced his catholic contemporaries. Even more, his means for this modernisation - theories of consciousness in idealist theories - have been opposed and even supplanted by other trends, making it look quite quaint in the eyes of all except scholars of this period of German thought. Günther's book reads then like a curious relic, which in another possible chain of events might have led to a large scale rethinking of the Catholic faith.
