The Essence of Christianity by Feuerbach Ludwig 1804-1872 & Hardpress

Author:Feuerbach Ludwig 1804-1872 & Hardpress [1804-1872, Feuerbach Ludwig & Hardpress]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781313981316
Google: V8BhnQEACAAJ
Publisher: Hardpress
Published: 2013-01-15T21:04:48+00:00

PART II.

THE FALSE OR THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF RELIGION

XIX. THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION

THE ESSENTIAL standpoint of religion is the practical or subjective. The end of religion is the welfare, the salvation, the ultimate felicity of man; the relation of man to God is nothing else than his relation to his own spiritual good; God is the realised salvation of the soul, or the unlimited power of effecting the salvation, the bliss of man.1 The Christian religion is specially distinguished from other religions in this,—that no other has given equal prominence to the salvation of man. But this salvation is not temporal earthly prosperity and wellbeing. On the contrary, the most genuine Christians have declared that earthly good draws man away from God, whereas adversity, suffering, afflictions lead him back to God, and hence are alone suited to Christians. Why? Because in trouble man is only practically or subjectively disposed; in trouble he has resource only to the one thing needful; in trouble God is felt to be a want of man. Pleasure, joy, expands man; trouble, suffering, contracts and concentrates him; in suffering man denies the reality of the world; the things that charm the imagination of the artist and the intellect of the thinker lose their attraction for him, their power over him; he is absorbed in himself, in his own soul. The soul thus self-absorbed, self-concentrated, seeking satisfaction in itself alone, denying the world, idealistic in relation to the world, to Nature in general, but realistic in relation to man, caring only for its inherent need of salvation,—this soul is God. God, as the object of religion,—and only as such is he God,—God in the sense of a nomen proprium, not of a vague, metaphysical entity, is essentially an object only of religion, not of philosophy,—of feeling, not of the intellect,—of the heart’s necessity, not of the mind’s freedom: in short, an object which is the reflex not of the theoretical but of the practical tendency in man.

Religion annexes to its doctrines a curse and a blessing, damnation and salvation. Blessed is he that believeth, cursed is he that believeth not. Thus it appeals not to reason, but to feeling, to the desire of happiness, to the passions of hope and fear. It does not take the theoretic point of view; otherwise it must have been free to enunciate its doctrines without attaching to them practical consequences, without to a certain extent compelling belief in them; for when the case stands thus: I am lost if I do not believe,—the conscience is under a subtle kind of constraint; the fear of hell urges me to believe. Even supposing my belief to be in its origin free, fear inevitably intermingles itself; my conscience is always under constraint; doubt, the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me a crime. And as in religion the highest idea, the highest existence is God, so the highest crime is doubt in God, or the doubt that God exists. But that which I do

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