God Transcendent - Foundation for a Christian Metaphysic

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GOD

TRANSCENDENT

GOD TRANSCENDENT Foundation for a Christian Metaphysic By

KARL PROFESSOR

IN

THE

HEIM UNIVERSITY

OF

TUBINGEN

Translated from the Third German Edition

BY

EDGAR

PRIMROSE

M.C., B.A.(Oxon.); WITH

AN THE

DICKIE

M.A., B.D.(EpIN.)

INTRODUCTION REVISING

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TRANSLATION

By EDWYN

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MONGST the Christian thinkers of our own day in Germany the two, it might be true to say, who, before the Nazi Revolution, exercised the

largest influence upon the thought of the younger generation about the relation of the world to God were Karl Barth and Karl Heim. The name of Barth is now familiar to all in England who have any interest in the recent movements of theological thought.

The name

of Heim, the elder of the two,

is still comparatively unknown in this country. The translation here presented of the first volume of that work in which Professor Heim is now giving a systematic exposition of his Christian belief may serve to introduce him, one hopes, to wide circles of the intelligent public in England, Scotland and the English-speaking countries overseas. The names of Barth and Heim have just been coupled

together.

There

is, however,

a

notable

difference of character between the two men. Barth is the prophet, shaking men’s hearts by a language which is often defiant and violent in paradox. Heim is the thinker who from the quiet of his professional study brings home to men’s minds and

vl

INTRODUCTION

consciences the vital importance for life of God’s call for decision. He has indeed influenced the young generation, not only by his writings, but by his lectures at the University of Tubingen, in which he holds a chair of theology. Throngs of young men before the Revolution would come to listen to him ; sometimes from six to seven hundred might be seen out of the thousand or so theological students in this University. Karl Heim was born in Wiirtemberg in 1874. From 1899 to 1902 he was Secretary of the Student Christian Movement in Germany. Later in life he gave himself more closely to the study of philosophy, and in 1907 he was given a post as Privat-Dozent in the University of Halle; then in 1914 he became an Ordentlicher Professor in the University of Miinster, and now, since 1920, he has occupied his chair at Tiibingen. Occasionally he has attended Student Conferences in places far away—China and America —and come in contact with types of religious life different from that of German Protestantism. His first book to attract attention was Das Weltbild der Zukunft (The Idea of the Universe in the Coming Time), published in 1904. Other writings have followed in the intervening years, showing a sensitive reaction to the different phases through which the German people has passed in this eventful period of history. A selection of essays translated into English by Mr. E. P. Dickie was published by the Student Christian Movement Press in 1930, under the title The New Divine Order. The problems which have

INTRODUCTION

Vii

specially exercised Heim’s thought have been those connected with the theory of knowledge and faith, and in regard to faith the note of his philosophy has been to emphasise the factor of will and decision. In some respects his philosophy has close affinities with that of the Barthian school, though in the earlier edition of Glaube und Denken certain elements in Barth’s teaching came in for very severe criticism. Heim is closer than Barth is to the older Evangelical tradition. In the work of which the first volume is here presented in an English version, Heim set out to give the world a completer statement than he had yet done of his Christian Weltanschauung (view or theory of the Universe) as a whole. The title of the whole work in German is Der evangelische Glaube und das Denken der Gegenwart: Grundzige einer christlichen Lebensanschauung (Protestant Belief and Modern Thought: Outlines of a Christian View of Life). The volumes which compose it are being published separately, one after another, as time goes on. The opening volume bears in German the title Glaube und Denken (Belief and Thought) The first edition appeared in 1931, and this was followed in the same year, two months later, by the second edition, which

reproduced the first with practically no change. It was a testimony to the eagerness with which an utterance of Heim on these fundamental problems 1The English publishers have thought that a change of the present title would give the British public a better idea beforehand what the book is about.

Vili

INTRODUCTION

of religion was received in Germany that the first edition was sold out almost immediately after its appearance. This first volume was concerned almost entirely with the theistic foundation of the Christian faith, the doctrine concerning God; it contained little that might not be accepted by a pious Jew or by a non-Christian theist. It was indicated that, according to the general plan of the work, two further volumes

were

to follow, one entitled Der Christus-

glaube (Belief in Christ), and the third Der Christliche Gottesglaube und die heutige Naturwissenschaft (Christian Belief in God and Present-day Science). Then, in 1933, came the Nazi revolution, and the

plan of the work underwent drastic change. A third edition of Glaube und Denken was published in 1934, of which the present volume is the translation. This was really a new work. A large part of edition rt and 2 has been cut out, and the book reduced from

434 pages to a slender volume of 250. At the same time a good deal of new matter has been added. Since then the second volume of the series has also appeared, in the present year (1935), with the title Jesus der Herr (Jesus the Lord), and of this, as of the subsequent volumes, it is hoped that a translation may be published in due course. The work is now to consist of four volumes, not three.

Vol. III., we

are told, will be called Jesus der Weltvollender (Jesus the World-Fulfiller), and Vol. IV. will still have the title originally designed for the concluding volume (Christian Belief in God and Modern Science).

INTRODUCTION

1X

It is a pity in some ways that the British public should not be made acquainted with the first volume in the text of the two earlier editions, rather

than in that of the third. For much of the matter cut out is of great interest and impressiveness, especially the concluding part, which sets forth the relation of the human individual to God. On the other hand, the third edition, here translated,

special value as an historical document.

has

Professor

Heim, in view of Nazi Germany, has made his book a

tract for the times. It is interesting to note the very different mental temper of which Professor Heim, as an exponent of Christian belief, had to take account round about him in 1931 and in 1934. In 1931 he had to show the ground of Christian belief to a generation which had lost belief of all kind. His book began thus : “ The day of Weltanschauungen (‘ theories of the Universe ’) is past. The battle about those Gehduse (‘ shelters,’ ‘ domiciles ’) which former generations took refuge in as comfortable abodes and defended against all attacks is over and done. We men of to-day have not merely lost belief in some particular theory of the universe—that of eighteenth-century Rationalism, may be, or Materialism or Monism. No, our misgiving has become deeper. We doubt whether it is possible to form any picture at all of this huge enigmatic Reality in which we find ourselves placed.”

And as he proceeded, Professor Heim depicted the inert despair to which this radical scepticism and loss of philosophic nerve had reduced the sincerest and most intelligent of those who rejected belief in God. To-day he has a wholly different situation to face—

xX

INTRODUCTION

enthusiastic, buoyant belief in a Weltanschauung, in a religion, but unhappily a wrong religion. Our situation in England is not that in Nazi Germany, and possibly Edition II. of Heim’s book would “‘ speak to our condition ”’ (as the old Quakers said) better than Edition III. Yet the truth for which Heim contends against Nazi religion is one which for us too may easily become obscured. Against all theories which equate God with some tendency within the world-process, with the urge of Blood and Race, as the new German religion does, or any other force of this world, Heim reasserts the Christian (and Hebraic) view of God as standing above, “‘beyond,” and yet comprehending and inter-penetrating, all processes in earthly time. The whole of this volume in its present form is concentrated upon that one theme. It would no doubt be a mistake to find in the book any traces of political opposition to the present German régime. Slight indications lead one to suppose that Professor Heim regards the Hitler revolution as having brought great benefits to Germany. He believes there really was a Communist plot to seize the power by a sanguinary coup d’ état which was frustrated only at the last moment by Hitler and his associates. If many English readers of the book are likely to take a different view of those events, that need not matter. The more sincerely Professor Heim shares the views of many patriotic Germans about the new Germany, the more signifi-

INTRODUCTION

toe

abot

cant is his uncompromising opposition to the new German religion. He is certainly among the foremost of those in Germany to-day who stand for Christ, for the God of Isaiah and the Psalmist, in circumstances

of great difficulty and distress. One aspect of Glaube und Denken, obvious in the first

and

second

editions,

and

still discernible

in

the third, deserves notice. The book is one product of a movement of philosophical thought in Germany since the War, much

more

extensive than Heim’s

individual contribution—a movement of which little account has as yet been taken in Great Britain. It is represented by such writers as Heidegger, Martin Buber, and Everhard Grisebach. English knowledge of German philosophy goes generally as far as Husserl, whose Phenomenology is regarded as the Jast word.

Heim, however, in the first edition

of Glaube und Denken could speak of Husserl (still living) as the last exponent of the old order. The old metaphysic went “‘ from Descartes to Husserl”’ : since then the new philosophy was being preached and young Germany was pressing into it. The note of this new philosophy was to emphasise the factors of time and the personal perspective standpoint in all observation of the Universe. Whereas Rationalism had thought of the timeprocess as a uniform impersonal continuum in which minds somehow appeared at certain points, the new metaphysic insisted on the observing Ego as a factor in every view of the Universe: the Ego and the world of objects presented to the Ego had